With renewed calls for charter schools by Donald Trump’s new Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, a review of dominant policy theories and their usefulness in analysing policy decision making once again becomes relevant. This paper evaluates the policy case, of the adoption of Charter School Legislation in New York in the late 1990s, making use of Allison and Zelikow’s (1999) example of evaluation of a policy case through multiple lenses. Through the meso-, micro- and macro-level perspectives of the Rational Actor Model, Stage Heuristics, and Kingdon’s Multiple Streams policy theories, we may be able to discern whether they accomplish their intended goal: To provide a perspective of the policy making process.  Once the theories are described, they are each applied to Charter School Legislation of New York in 1998. Working through each lens, this paper describes the policy process, potential actors, and influencers with support of historical data, and draws conclusions about the usefulness of each theory for education policy. Ultimately, lack of transparency in the policy process make outside analysis assumption-laden and more subjective than an objective science. This paper calls for a more transparency at the decision-making level, and integration of more complex lenses into the policy sciences which may better inform education policy students and experts in the field.

The present study aimed at determining the planner profiles of school administrators’ through unearthing their beliefs and understandings towards strategic planning by adopting a typological perspective. The exploratory descriptive approach was employed in the research. The research was conducted with the participation of 21 school administrators in a large province in Southeastern Turkey. The data were collected via one-on-one interviews. Thematic and conceptual coding revealed that the profiles labeled as “right-handed planner, left-handed planner, analyst and catalyst” by Mintzberg (1994) in the strategic planning process could define school administrators’ understandings and beliefs about planning in the current study. In the research, it was revealed that the planner profiles displayed by school administrators differed based on contingent and contextual specificities. However, it was understood that they decided on which planner profile to adopt based on their experiences rather than a technical perspective. The planner profiles of school administrators were discussed in terms of their potential contribution to the strategic planning processes.

This research aims at investigating the effect of Inquiry-Based instruction (IBI) on learners' academic achievement through meta-analytic and thematic approaches. In  the meta-analytic study, 27 studies, which were implemented between 2000 and 2016 years, were examined. CMA and MetaWin statistical programs were used to calculate the effect sizes of these studies. The effect size (0.688) of the study indicates that the use of IBI has a positive effect on learners' achievement. To support findings of the meta-analytic study, a thematic study including 36 studies was applied. As a result of the analysis of the latter study, five themes, namely affective, cognitive and social domain themes, learning environment and negative aspects were generated. The former four themes demonstrated that IBI positively affects learners' achievement except the negative aspects theme. The negative theme stresses out that the effectiveness of IBI depends on how well the IBI activities are planned beforehand. If they are planned in detail, learners can know what to do in the activities. So, IBI can be used systematically in learning as an alternative method which can meet students' needs in technological era. 

The aim of this study, which was carried out in the center of Eskişehir using the survey model of quantitative research, is to describe the emotional literacy skill levels of the high school students and analyze them based on different variables. The study was conducted with 1103 high school students who were selected using stratified sampling method and as the data collection tool, “Emotional Literacy Skill Scale” developed by the researcher was used.

The analyses of the data indicated that the high school students in the center of Eskişehir generally have medium and high levels of emotional literacy. When the demographic variables are examined, there are statistically significant differences in the emotional literacy skill total scores based on the gender, school type, and GPA variables.

It is observed that female students and students with high GPAs have higher scores in many dimensions; thus, the schools, which accept students with high scores and the female students are the majority, have better average in terms of emotional literacy skill.

Pre-service teachers gain experience, positive and negative attitudes towards teaching-learning process, school administration, teacher, student and even school in teaching practice course in pre-service teacher training programs. The purpose of this research was to identify pre-service teachers' perceptions of teaching practice course. Case study research design was used in this qualitative research method. The study group of the research comprised of 42 pre-service teachers who took teaching training course in 2014-2015 academic year.  The purposeful sampling method was used to determine the study group. The data was derived from the semi-structured interview form. Content analysis was employed to analyze the data. The themes were generated as a result of the analysis. The results of the research indicate that pre-service teachers gain experience in teaching profession and be self-confident, learn to be patient and use materials and acquire the importance of communication. On the other hand, they notice some negative cases such as teachers' failures in classroom management, lack of materials, school administrations' negative attitudes and behaviors and teachers' being passive in discipline matters. To overcome these negative cases, suggestions were put forward.

Setting the age for starting elementary students at 60 months old has been a hotly debated topic in Turkey since the Grand National Assembly passed an education reform bill as Law No. 6287, known to the public as the “4+4+4 regulation.” At the outset of its implementation, students who started first grade in school year 2012–2013 had an age distribution in the range of 60 to 84 months. The present research aimed to determine the effect of this age difference among students in the same grade level on their subsequent development. Thus, the study is a longitudinal and causal comparative research since comparison of the two age groups on both readiness for the school and the academic development throughout the four assessments within six months intervals was investigated. The results indicated that students younger than 69 months are disadvantaged against their older peers in all the specified fields and subfields during all the periods studied.

Academic writing is the process of sharing original research with other scholars in accordance with certain standard rules. This process requires correctly following the steps of scientific academic writing. However, a close analysis of recent academic texts reveals a wide range of mistakes or shortcomings. The purpose of this research is to examine the characteristics of academic writing based on the views of the academicians creating it. A semi-structured interview form was created on Google Docs virtual office for this research using qualitative research methodology. Thus, 30 academicians from different cities and universities of Turkey were involved. Content analysis was used to assess the collected data. Each answer given by the academicians was placed into a category such as similarity and relatedness. These categories were transformed into tables by frequency values of the answers, and each table was supported with quotations extracted from the answers. The results show that the academicians presented the highest number of comments about the characteristics related to sections containing “methodology” and “results, discussions and suggestions.” The participants also reported that in their article reviewing process, they encounter the highest number of errors in the “methodology” section, followed by errors in formal standards, spelling-punctuation / expression and academic style.