The aim of this study was to explore ELT (English Language Teaching) student teachers’ perspectives on the use of web 2.0 technologies in language learning contexts. In order to do so, 139 student teachers from a state university in Turkey were given training on web technologies along with their practical usages. Three months after this training, a questionnaire adapted from previous instruments was administered to participating student teachers. Moreover, the follow up interviews were carried out with only 20 student teachers in five groups, the aim of which was to take a deeper insight about the items in the questionnaire. Both the questionnaire and the interview results revealed that student teachers seemed to have positive feelings about the use of web technologies despite some challenges such as lack of technological devices encountered.

Art is an indispensable compenent of human life for his spirit like breath for his body and it is a civilisation criterion for social life like economical improvements or like political dynamics. Art education has a special situation in offical education policies even in preschool process and involves special instruments to provide growing of a child. Human always need artistic approach and art works to feel humanistic senses in his life during his life and he always need to learn contemporary artistic approaches to innovate his life and to realing his life to contemporary conditions. People who can understand existence and who can explore mean of life perceive that learning art is requirement of life. Learning art provide man a spiritual energy which is actually source of life. Everybody has not equal facilities about art in the world because of locations and conditions of countries but eveybody can reach his own artistic facilities and knowledges in his society. Learning art depends on individual will of someone and learning art is never undertaken by offical organisations. But art education is a necessity for every society. Art education is not sufficient in official education for someone who need art and artistic approach in his life in some countries and so he has to use artistic facilities and opportunities in social life in national dimension and also in international dimension. Governments and also private sector must provide facilities and apportunities for people to arrive at art works and to learn artistic approaches.

In this research it was carried out to examine the relationship between elementary students' attitudes towards mathematics and studying to mathematics lesson. For this purpose, the relationship between elementary students 'attitudes towards mathematics and studying to mathematics lesson of 500 primary school students in Istanbul is investigated. It is investigated whether there is a relationship between mathematics attitude and students' gender, and if there is someone that help to study lesson at home, and whether they have their own room and computer, and for what purpose the computer is used, and their family's economic level, and the duration of regular lesson study, and the duration of daily mathematics lesson study. To provide the data that is required for the purpose of the study, questionnaire containing demographic characteristics and "Mathematics Attitude Scale" that is developed by Baykul (1990), were used to collect data. It has been seen that there is significant differences, among students using the computer to prepare homeworks and all other students on behalf of using the computer to prepare homeworks. It was found a significant differences in mathematics attitude on behalf of the students who study regulary every day lesson, by comparison of students those study regulary lesson every day and the students those don't study regulary every day. Significant differences were found between the students who study lesson more than 2 hours a day and all other students,on behalf of the students who study lesson more than 2 hours a day. Also significant differences were found between Also a significant differences were found between children of 800-2000 TL-income families and children from other families, on behalf of children of 800-2000 TL-income families.

The aim of this research is to determine meeting level of student requests for teaching-learning process, physical environment and social activities of the school, called learning environment. In this descriptive research, 30 item- “Student Aspirations from School” were used as a means of collecting data. The sample of the research is consist of 904 6, 7 and 8 graders from the primary schools in the city center of Ankara. For statistical resolutions of the data gathered during the research, frequency distribution, mean, standard deviation, T test, single direction variance analysis were employed. Significance level for difference tests was used as p<.05. Findings show that student aspirations from school are met in general. When examined in terms of dimensions, expectations are met at the highest level in teaching and learning activities, at the lowest level in the physical environment and capacity of the school. The level to meet the needs of the female students about teaching and learning process is higher than the males’, but there is no significant difference between genders in physical environment and social activities dimensions.

This paper describes a tool to improve the electronics laboratory process. The tools really constitute a virtual electronic laboratory because it is made up of a set of virtual experiments with a user-friendly graphic interface and interactive simulated electronic instruments relating practical concepts with theoretical ones. The combination of the demonstration and the virtual electronic laboratory constitute a bridge between theoretical lessons and laboratory classes. The professor can use the experiments of the virtual laboratory in the classroom to improve student retention. Using this tool, undergraduate students improve their performance and increase their efficiency in the laboratory. A pilot experience has been implemented for Basic Electronics. This work demonstrates that instrumentation experience is greatly enhanced by integration Virtual Instrumentation into the Laboratory. The incorporation of computer data acquisitions into the undergraduate laboratory provides students with a valuable tool for data collection and analysis.

This study employed descriptive survey design. It discussed the adoption of and integration of Technology Support Learning Systems(TSLS) in teaching and learning for distance learning and full time students .It also discussed various concerted efforts at integrating web-based learning into the teaching and learning of Science and Technology Education at the Post-Basic Institutions (STEP-B) . The specific objectives of this study are to: (i) investigate TSLS adoption and usage among the students of Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife for both distance and residential learning,(ii) determine the availability and adequacy of the facilities / infrastructures for TSLS,(iii) assess the level of implementation of TSLS (iv) determine the TSL format adopted by the University,(v) find out student’s acceptance to use the type of TSL format adopted, and (vi)investigate the challenges facing the integration and utilization of TSLS . The study sample consisted two hundred and fifty undergraduate students and fifty six staff selected from OAU Ife. The research instrument is made of 35items divided into 5 sections. The results showed that adoption and usage of TSLS in OAU Ife was very high. TSLS facilities and infrastructure are inadequate for both full time and distance learners. The students were enthusiastic to accept and use the new TSLS (Academic Blackboard and Multi-site teaching using the blended learning approach. The major challenges as ranked by the students are: techno-phobia, band with problem, epileptic power supply and insufficient infrastructure.

The aim of present study is investigation on relationship among mathematics teachers’ thinking styles and amount of their using of process-based teaching methods. This research is to determine that which one of thinking styles is the strongest predictor for using of methods of Process-based teaching by math teachers. The method of this research is descriptive and correlation one. The sample group is comprised of 103 mathematics teachers that are selected randomly, 55 female and 48 male. Instruments of research were questionnaires of Sternberg Thinking Styles and Process-based Teaching Methods (PTM). The Pearson correlation and analysis of regression are used. The results show that there is a positive relationship between thinking styles of Judicial, Liberal, External, Executive and Global with using of the PTM by math teachers. The Step wise regression analysis shows that for male teachers Liberal and Local thinking styles are the stronger predictors for using of PTM. But for female the only strong predictor was Liberal thinking style.

The present study aimed at establishing the effectiveness of the Student Representative Council in Open and Distance Learning institutions. A case study was undertaken at the Zimbabwe Open University, in the Mashonaland East region which the researchers selected to understand in depth regardless of number of there being 10 regions in the ZOU. In order to make an assessment of the effectiveness of the Student Representative Council at the Zimbabwe Open University, this current study sought to find out what services were being offered by the SRC, how beneficial these services were and how effective the SRC had been in addressing student concerns. The study also aimed at unearthing the challenges which the SRC faced in their quest to provide effective student services. The respondents were drawn from all the 436 active ZOU students from the four faculties in Mashonaland East region duly registered for the August-December 2010 semester. A sample of 100 students was drawn and consisted of 10 Student Representative Council members, and 90 ordinary students. The responses from the students were solicited through the use of a questionnaire, for the ordinary students, while the student representatives` views were extracted through the use interviews. Findings revealed that at most, the SRC was not being effective in rendering the services for which they were elected. No meetings had been held with students although only one had been held with the Regional Administration. Students` grievances were obtained through a suggestion box once, but unfortunately, these had not been deliberated upon. The most dominating challenge was lack of funds and this made the majority of the SRC`s objectives unattainable during the 2010 academic year. For the effective functioning of the SRC, it is recommended that financial control of the students` monies should be devolved to regions in order to expedite disbursements to various service providers. For ease of coordination, office space should be availed to the SRC where the receive students` issues and sit for their meetings. There is also need for a vigorous campaign to have the students linked with their counterparts in universities inside and outside the country for exchange programmes.

The question of why some distance education students in the Department of Education at the Zimbabwe Open University (ZOU) successfully complete their studies while others do not is becoming increasingly important as distance education moves from a marginal to an integral role in the provision of higher education. In order to unravel this issue and initiate some academic debate, the Department of Education at the ZOU mounted a national survey between June 2008 and July 2010 aimed at ascertaining the reasons for low completion rate among research students studying for the Bachelor of Education in Educational Management (B.Ed.- Educational Management). A survey of 100 research students was undertaken. Respondents were asked to identify and explain institutional and student- related factors that affected their progress and success in research projects. Major factors found to impact negatively on students’ progress included financial problems, lack of books and journals, poor communication and poor supervision by some tutors. Personal and domestic factors found to impact negatively on students successfulness included the following: financial problems, distance between the student and the Regional Centre and lack of technology. The present study recommended that ZOU needs to decentralize its operations to district centres so as to reduce distance between students and supervisors. Project Supervisors need thorough training for them to effectively assist students to throughout the project. The Library should offer inter-net facilities, relevant and recent book and journals.

The major aim of the study was to reveal prospective elementary teachers’ pedagogical beliefs. The following research questions were addressed in the study: “What are prospective elementary teachers’ teaching beliefs?” and “Do their teaching beliefs differ based on their gender?. Data were gathered by using the adopted version of Teacher Beliefs Survey developed by Benjamin (2003). The instrument assessed traditional and constructivist view of teaching with a number of 18 items. It was distributed to 234 fourth-grade Prospective Elementary Classroom Teachers. The participants were categorized by using cluster analyze based on their pedagogical beliefs. The analysis results showed that majority of the participants hold constructivist teaching belief whereas remaining presented traditional and pragmatic views. Non parametric statistic test was conducted whether the participants’ teaching beliefs differed based on gender. Chi square analysis showed significant difference between gender and teaching beliefs of the participants.

The purpose of the study is twofold: (1) to investigate the pre-service teachers’ levels of “metacognitive awareness” and comparison of sub-awareness scores, and (2) to explore relationships among metacognitive awareness factors and other independent variables including gender, GPA, course grades, and graduated high school type. The data were collected during “Computer Applications in Education” course in Spring-2010. 49 students completed the “Metacognitive Awareness Inventory (MAI)” developed by Schraw and Dennison (1994). There are 52 items loaded into 2 factors which are ‘knowledge of cognition’ and ‘regulation of cognition’. High reliability coefficients were found for these factors (form .91 to .97). Students’ scores on MAI were calculated and used to find out relations with other descriptive factors. Results and interpretation of the statistical analyses reporting mutual interaction among these variables were presented.

This paper reports on a study that investigated beliefs about second foreign language learning of Turkish EFL learners, compared their beliefs about learning German, Italian and French as a second foreign language and explored within-group variation in these learners’ beliefs. The primary purpose of this study is to identify Turkish learners’ beliefs about compulsory second foreign language courses in French, Italian and German at an English-medium university in Turkey. Another aim of the study is to identify the underlying reasons the students have for choosing and not choosing a particular second foreign language course among available options as well as to see whether beliefs varied according to the semester of the students. The results indicated that the participants had different beliefs about second foreign languages and that their beliefs are stable over time.

Several studies done elsewhere have indicated and concluded that a gap really exists between the quality of graduates produced and what the market demands (Mpairwe, 2010). For this and other reasons, training institutions and employers have accepted the need to seek mitigatory steps to bridge the gap. Among other steps, institutions of learning have introduced internship programmes also referred to as field attachment in some of their degree and non-degree programmes. There has also been the realisation that imparting the relevant practical skills is a partnership between the training institution and the prospective employers through student internships. However, despite these positive intentions, interns on field attachment have faced serious challenges among which are insufficient time and lack of funding for the programmes. It is behind this background that the present study sought to establish the benefits and challenges faced by student interns at the Zimbabwe Open University. The study focussed on two of the university`s faculties: the Faculty of Science and technology and that of Applied Social Sciences. Most of the students on internship were from these faculties. Being quantitative in nature, the study employed the use of the questionnaire to solicit data from the 50 respondents chosen through convenience sampling. Results showed that the majority of the students preferred the attachment programme because it exposed them to the real expectations of the world of work. However, a number of challenges militated against the effectiveness of the programmes. Challenges include some fulltime employees being reluctant to disclose important information to students. A number of supervisors are too busy to provide effective supervision. Current duration of attachment is not sufficient for all the disciplines. Moreover, some employees regard interns as a threat to their position and in some cases some supervisors possess inferior qualifications than the student interns.