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Browsing by Author "Yerdelen-Damar, Sevda"

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    Applying Beliefs and Resources Frameworks To the Psychometric Analyses of an Epistemology Survey
    (Amer Physical Soc, 2012) Yerdelen-Damar, Sevda; Elby, Andrew; Eryilmaz, Ali
    This study explored how researchers' views about the form of students' epistemologies influence how the researchers develop and refine surveys and how they interpret survey results. After running standard statistical analyses on 505 physics students' responses to the Turkish version of the Maryland Physics Expectations-II survey, probing students' epistemologies and expectations, we interpreted the results through two different theoretical lenses, the beliefs perspective and the resources perspective. We showed that the beliefs and resources frameworks provided different interpretations of the psychometric analyses, leading to different conclusions about how the survey results should be interpreted and how the survey should be improved.
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    Investigating the Relationships Among Students' Self-Efficacy Beliefs, Their Perceptions of Classroom Learning Environment, Gender, and Chemistry Achievement Through Structural Equation Modeling
    (Routledge Journals, Taylor & Francis Ltd, 2016) Boz, Yezdan; Yerdelen-Damar, Sevda; Aydemir, Nurdane; Aydemir, Murat
    Background: Investigating factors contributing to chemistry achievement is important since it enables us to make more concrete instructional decisions related to improving students? chemistry achievement.Purpose: This study aimed to investigate how students? perceptions of learning environment, self-efficacy and gender are related to chemistry achievement.Sample: Three hundred fifty six high school students with the age range of 14 and 19 from three different schools in the same district were the participants.Design and methods: A structural equation model was designed and tested. Constructivist learning environment survey, self-efficacy scale were the instruments of the study. Information about students? gender and their chemistry grades belonging to the previous semester were also collected.Results: The model testing showed that chemistry self-efficacy beliefs, students? perceptions of constructivist learning environment (through chemistry-self efficacy) and gender were significantly related to chemistry achievement. Moreover, the findings showed that students? chemistry self-efficacy beliefs mediated the relation of students? learning environment perceptions to their chemistry achievement.Conclusions: The present study has some educational implications for teachers, teacher educators and curriculum developers. First of all, self-efficacy was found to have an effect on students? achievement. Therefore, teachers should consider students? self-efficacy beliefs and devise their instruction accordingly. Another implication of this study is the necessity of considering gender differences in designing teachers? instruction.
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    Mediated Effects of Technology Competencies and Experiences on Relations Among Attitudes Towards Technology Use, Technology Ownership, and Self Efficacy About Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge
    (Springer, 2017) Yerdelen-Damar, Sevda; Boz, Yezdan; Aydin-Gunbatar, Sevgi
    This study examined the relations of preservice science teachers' attitudes towards technology use, technology ownership, technology competencies, and experiences to their self-efficacy beliefs about technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK). The present study also investigated interrelations among preservice teachers' attitudes towards technology use, technology ownership, technology competencies, and experiences. The participants of study were 665 elementary preservice science teachers (467 females, 198 males) from 7 colleges in Turkey. The proposed model based on educational technology literature was tested using structural equation modeling. The model testing results revealed that preservice teachers' technology competencies and experiences mediated the relation of technology ownership to their TPACK self efficacy beliefs. The direct relation of their possession of technology to their TPACK self efficacy beliefs was insignificant while the indirect relation through their technology competencies and experiences was significant. The results also indicated there were significant direct effects of preservice teachers' attitudes towards technology use, technology competencies, and experiences on their TPACK self efficacy beliefs.
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    Pre-Service Physics Teachers' Metacognitive Knowledge About Their Instructional Practices
    (Eurasia, 2015) Yerdelen-Damar, Sevda; Ozdemir, Omer Faruk; Unal, Cezmi
    This study aims to investigate pre-service physics teachers' metacognitive knowledge about their teaching practices. The participants included six pre-service physics teachers. A taxonomy of metacognition for teaching was developed to analyze the level of pre-service physics teachers' metacognitive knowledge about their teaching practices. Analysis of data showed that pre-service physics teachers' metacognitive knowledge about their content knowledge was quite satisfactory; however, their metacognitive knowledge about instructional methods, students' pre-instructional knowledge, and the task of teaching needs to be improved. The results of the study provided evidence that metacognitive knowledge on teaching is a fruitful framework to generate interpretations about the participants' instructional processes.
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    Questions About Physics: the Case of a Turkish 'ask a Scientist' Website
    (Springer, 2010) Yerdelen-Damar, Sevda; Eryilmaz, Ali
    The physics questions submitted to an 'ask a scientist' website were classified with respect to field of interest in physics, type of requested information in the question (factual, explanatory, etc.), and motivation for asking the question (applicative or non--applicative). In addition, differences in the number of females' and males' questions in these classifications were determined. Analysis of 995 physics questions submitted to the website indicated that modern physics questions (30.7%) were the most frequent while vibrations and wave motion questions (3.3%) were the least frequent. More than half of the questions (57.8%) were submitted to request factual information. Motivation to ask a question was inferred from the question, and was generally not related to direct and/or personal application. There were obvious differences in the number of questions asked by females and males: 84.7% of questions were asked by males while 15.3% were asked by females. However, significant gender differences were not observed in field of interest in physics, type of information requested in the question, and motivation for asking the question.
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    Relations of Approaches To Learning With Perceptions of Learning Environment and Goal Orientations
    (Turkish Education Assoc, 2015) Yerdelen-Damar, Sevda; Aydin, Sevgi
    This study aimed to investigate the relationships among high school students' approaches to learning science, perceptions of classroom learning environment, and achievement goals. The participants of the study included 800 high school students from 9th to 12th grade in three public schools. A conceptual model constructed based on literature were tested with structural equation modeling. The analysis of the data collected in this study supported the hypothesized model. The findings revealed that students' perceptions of classroom environment and mastery-approach goals affected positively their deep approaches to learning science. In this study, the mediated effect of mastery-approach goals was observed. Mastery approach goals increased the effect of the perceptions of classroom learning environment on deep approaches to learning science. Moreover, it was found that performance-approach, performance-avoidance and mastery-avoidance goals were positively associated with surface-approaches to learning science. Finally, in this study, the positive effect of students' perceptions of classroom learning environment on their mastery-approach goals was observed. The implications of the study for teaching and learning were discussed.
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    Relations of Gender and Socioeconomic Status To Physics Through Metacognition and Self-Efficacy
    (Routledge Journals, Taylor & Francis Ltd, 2013) Yerdelen-Damar, Sevda; Pesman, Haki
    The authors explored how gender and socioeconomic status (SES) predicted physics achievement as mediated by metacognition and physics self-efficacy. Data were collected from 338 high school students. The model designed for exploring how gender and SES-related differences in physics achievement were explained through metacognition and physics self-efficacy was tested. The result showed that metacognition and physics self-efficacy could explain gender- and SES-related differences in physics achievement. In addition, it was observed that physics self-efficacy mediated the relation of metacognition to physics achievement whereas metacognition did not. This finding means that metacognition contributed to physics achievement through physics self-efficacy.
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    Sophisticated Epistemologies of Physics Versus High-Stakes Tests: How Do Elite High School Students Respond To Competing Influences About How To Learn Physics
    (Amer Physical Soc, 2016) Yerdelen-Damar, Sevda; Elby, Andrew
    This study investigates how elite Turkish high school physics students claim to approach learning physics when they are simultaneously (i) engaged in a curriculum that led to significant gains in their epistemological sophistication and (ii) subject to a high-stakes college entrance exam. Students reported taking surface (rote) approaches to learning physics, largely driven by college entrance exam preparation and therefore focused on algorithmic problem solving at the expense of exploring concepts and real-life examples more deeply. By contrast, in recommending study strategies to "Arzu," a hypothetical student who doesn't need to take a college entrance exam and just wants to understand physics deeply, the students focused more on linking concepts and real-life examples and on making sense of the formulas and concepts-deep approaches to learning that reflect somewhat sophisticated epistemologies. These results illustrate how students can epistemically compartmentalize, consciously taking different epistemic stances-different views of what counts as knowing and learning-in different contexts even within the same discipline.
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    Vocational High School Students' Engineering Epistemological Beliefs
    (Tempus Publications, 2017) Balta, Nuri; Yerdelen-Damar, Sevda; Carberry, Adam R.
    This study investigates the engineering epistemological beliefs (EEB) of Turkish vocational high school students. The goal of this research is to reveal changes in these beliefs across grade levels, discipline, and gender. The present study included 314 vocational high school students from five schools in two Turkish cities. A Turkish version of the epistemological belief assessment for engineering (EBAE) questionnaire was created and used to assess student EEBs. Descriptive results indicated that as grade increased, average scores of students' EEB decreased with respect to almost all dimensions of the EBAE. Males reported more sophisticated beliefs than females for all EEB dimensions except for justification for engineering knowing. Participants studying the metal technology discipline reported the most naive EEB, while those studying information technologies displayed the most sophisticated beliefs. The results of inferential statistics showed that while the effect of gender, discipline and grade level were not significant with students' EEB, the effect of interaction of grade level and discipline on students' EEB was statistically significant. This study implies that the vocational school curricula in Turkey should be reconsidered in terms of student engineering epistemological growth.