Muhammet Usak

• Ph.D in Science Education
• Professor at LEUKOS BV

Primary science education is a concern around the world and quality mentoring within schools can develop preservice teachers’ practices. A five-factor model for mentoring has been identified, namely, personal attributes, system requirements, pedagogical knowledge, modelling, and feedback. Final-year preservice teachers (mentees, n=211) from three T...

Understanding preservice teachers’ memories of their education may aid towards articulating high-impact teaching practices. This study describes 246 preservice teachers’ perceptions of their secondary science education experiences through a questionnaire and 28-item survey. ANOVA was statistically significant about participants’ memories of science...

Th ere is an increasing amount of research focusing on the origin of the human fear of animals. However, other dimensions of human views of frightening animals have been largely neglected. Th is study investigated attitudes toward snakes. Th e Snake Attitude Questionnaire (SAQ), which consisted of 58 Likert-type items (Cronbach's α = 0.91), was adm...

Talking about eating in the passive, as opposed to the active voice, (e.g., The cake will be eaten vs. I will eat the cake) can lead people to see the act of eating to be triggered by the food to a greater extent, leading to the continuation of past eating habits. Depending on whether or not the past habits are healthy, the motivation for healthy e...

Artificial intelligence (AI) in biology education can be defined as the deployment of AI in sections of study that help learners and researchers in their areas of concentration, specifically biological sciences. It gives a significant meaning toward the improvement of biology education since AI contributes toward the improvement of research methods...

Green chemistry can also be referred to as sustainable chemistry and it is the design of chemical products and processes aimed at less or less the use of hazardous substances. It's about lessening the destructive consequences on the environment and the earth's sustainability (Wale et al., 2023; Mane et al., 2023). This accommodates many principles...

Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) is one of the most important research topics in science teacher education. The purpose of this study was to investigate the PCK of science teachers with different teaching experiences and examine the effects of teachers' PCK on students' achievement and attitudes toward science. A mixed methods research design wa...

Mathematics anxiety in initial teacher education is a growing issue that reflects on teacher quality and their student’s maths anxiety and abilities. Previous studies have presented a range of different perspectives to mathematics anxiety. We aimed to explore further the reasons of mathematics anxiety in preservice teachers and suggest some interve...

Hygiene education is becoming increasingly popular and is now addressed in both formal and informal education systems. Examining hygiene education research and developing a vision for the future will lead to creating a roadmap for future research as well as an analysis of past research. Research on hygiene education encompasses a variety of subtopi...

Mathematics anxiety is well known and studied concept. Most of the studies have been focused on the effects of mathematical anxiety on students’ academic achievement, especially from the viewpoint of analysing large national and international data sets. We aim to bring a different perspective to the existing research on mathematics anxiety and resi...

This study aims to map the selected literature on students’ spirituality and well-being to reveal the current and historical research trends in the relevant literature. Bibliographic coupling of the journals, countries, authors, and organizations, and co-occurrences of author keywords were illustrated through VOSviewer. Moreover, citation analysis...

The coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is a global health crisis that has generated fear and negative psychological consequences. The present study evaluated the validity and factor structure of Fear of COVID-19 Scale (FCV-19S) among a sample from the general Indonesian population. The English version of the FCV-19S was translated and bac...

The current research aims to explore the impact of Science and Mathematics teachers’ self-efficacy on their intentions to leave through the mediating effects of their affective wellbeing (stress, burnout, and depression). Data were collected from 329 teachers of Science and Mathematics who were selected randomly with a clustered sampling method fro...

The purpose of this study was to analyze the development of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) of science teachers with different teaching experience on acids and bases and offer new domains of PCK which describe the relationship between PCK and emotional characteristics of teachers and their intellectual knowledge in science teaching. The researc...

In order to manage the worrying predicament of declining global birth rates, a majority of higher-education institutions have commenced to institute a series of diversified strategies in order to make higher-education sustainability count. The aim of this research is to present the results of a study with the goal of helping educational institution...

In order to break through the dual impacts of lower birth rates and COVID-19, a majority of higher education institutions have commenced in providing a series of diversified Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) to effectively reduce these huge dual impacts. This research employed the Social Learning Theory (SLT) of educational doctrine for theoretic...

This study aims to map the Asian literature on emotions in learning, teaching, and leadership through a review of published research in Web of Science Core Collection. In all, 862 articles published between 1990 and 2018 were retrieved and analyzed. Bibliographic coupling of the countries, bibliographic coupling of the authors, co-occurrences of au...

To effectively increase the employment rate of higher education graduates, higher education institutions are doing their best to provide the most high-quality technologized interdisciplinary curriculum, to educate professional expertise in decision-making and to fortify student employability. Therefore, after executing a series of evaluated measure...

The purpose of this study was to explore the inter-relationships among students’ self-esteem, bullying victimization/perpetration behaviours, and perceived parental support, with a focus on how self-esteem mediates the association of parental support and bullying behaviours and how bullying mediates the association of parental support and self-este...

Nowadays, we all are sitting in our homes and watching what is going on in the world, as if we are watching a science fiction movie, in which we have the leading role. Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19), which first appeared in Wuhan (Abdulamir, & Hafidh, 2020; Ait Addi et al., 2020 Aljofan, & Gaipov, 2020; Sorooshian, 2020) and later turned into a pande...

We can define three main factors that become an obstacle on the way of the development of new basketball professionals: insufficient development of certain educational factors; tobacco consumption and the decrease of health quality and activity that is associated with it; engagement with Internet activities. The absence of at least one of these fac...

This study aims to determine the relationship between psychological capital and job satisfaction, organizational commitment, motivation, and the intent to leave. The sample of this study consists of 323 teachers in 25 schools that were selected randomly with clustered sampling method from the schools. The structural equation model that yields the b...

Today, the Internet of Things (IoT) becomes a heterogeneous and highly distributed structure which can respond to the daily needs of people and different organizations. With the fast development of IT‐based technologies such as IoT and cloud computing, low‐cost health services and their support, efficient supervision of the centralized management,...

Critical Thinking is a generally recognized educational ideal at all levels of the educational process. This study validated the critical thinking test on Slovak conditions. Data were collected from 50 respondents studying at university. Bachelor's and Master's students from all grades, aged 21 to 36 (x = 23.00; SD = 2.84) were represented. Model f...

Nowadays, mentoring as an educational form of Russia’s occupational activity is undergoing fundamental changes due to the variety of interrelated factors affecting the mentoring system. The requirements for the mentoring system itself are affected by these changes as well. Nature of the mentoring activity influences socio-economic, political, socio...

Attitudes toward science are more frequently explored than attitudes toward particular science subjects, such as biology. In many countries, however, biology is taught separately from other science subjects. The main aim of this investigation was to detect students' attitudes towards biology, by using a questionnaire as a research tool. Moreover, t...

The topic of alcohol consumption among young people is not a new one. In this paper we investigated the chemical and behavioral effects of alcohol consumption. It belongs to an area of research of plethora of psychologists, sociologists, teachers, etc. There are some differences depending on the country of origin, yet this problem has not been reso...

The topic of alcohol consumption among young people is not a new one. In this paper we investigated the chemical and behavioral effects of alcohol consumption. It belongs to an area of research ofplethora of psychologists, sociologists, teachers, etc. There are some differences depending on the country of origin, yet this problem has not been resol...

Combined Heat and Power (CHP) is the one of new energy resources which has been added to power system in recent years. High efficiency, Loss reducing of power system and etc, are the main advantages of CHP as same as other distributed generations. But, unwanted islanding is one of the main problems for this generation. This article presents a novel...

Science Education is a multidisciplinary field of study with roots about three centuries ago. Researches in this field were published for the first time in a scientific journal with School Science and Mathematics, which started in 1901. The number of scientific journals in Science Education has increased in parallel with the increase in the number...

Motivation toward learning is crucial factor for the students from the beginning of their education and motivation toward learning is changing during education of students and the motivation is influences by many factors. The main aims of the research was to find out the motivation of high school students toward learning, the personality traits of...

1799 prospective elementary and prospective science teachers from six countries (Croatia, Czech Republic, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Turkey) participate in the study about the level of motivation toward science courses, pedagogy courses and self-efficacy. The most important findings were that choosing educational career as the first choice o...

ABSTRACT: Background: 1799 prospective elementary and prospective science teachers from six countries (Croatia, Czech Republic, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Turkey) participate in the study about the level of motivation toward science courses, pedagogy courses and self-efficacy. Material and methods: The most important findings were that choos...

The revelation of misconceptions contributes to better education, especially when that information is described in a specific field of science. Additionally, genetics is one of very problematic topics, and misconceptions appear there frequently as there are difficult interconnections among them. The main aim of the study was to explore high school...

The developing countries are hiding potential risk in many considerations (e.g. migration). The study is focused on the lower secondary school pupils’ knowledge about developing ountries. Costs and benefits associated with the problematic of the study are in the presentation of pupils’ knowledge about developing countries. It provides not only iden...

Significant changes in various spheres of life along with the dynamic growth of industrial capacity and complexity have contributed to the increasing importance of corporate training issues in adult and continuing education. Here, we identify the benefits and difficulties encountered in both national and international techniques of training the hum...

In this study, it is aimed to describe pre-service teachers’s perceptions of CAM (Complementary and Alternative Medicine). The gender, the age, the trust in doctor, the number of suffered diseases and the number of CAM techniques were determined as the variables in the study. The participants of the research were 315 students from the education fac...

The research is focused on finding differences in opinions on euthanasia between seniors and university students. The influence of independent variables on euthanasia, namely the influence of gender, religion and health, was examined. In addition, the research concentrates on the influence of study fields, i.e. the difference between students at a...

Cross national study on opinions on science teaching was revealed on a sample of 1799 (596 males, 1203 females) pre-service elementary and science teachers' enrolled in various departments at selected universities in Croatia, Czech Republic, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Turkey. Three factors explaining 43.4% of variance were extracted from a p...

Cross national study on opinions on science teaching was revealed on a sample of 1799 (596 males, 1203 females) pre-service elementary and science teachers' enrolled in various departments at selected universities in Croatia, Czech Republic, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Turkey. Three factors explaining 43.4% of variance were extracted from a p...

Cross national study on opinions on science teaching was revealed on a sample of 1799 (596 males, 1203 females) pre-service elementary and science teachers’ enrolled in various departments at selected universities in Croatia, Czech Republic, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Turkey. Three factors explaining 43.4% of variance were extracted from a p...

The purpose of this study is to analyse the development of pedagogical content knowledge of science teachers with different teaching experience on acids and bases. Multiple case study method was used in the study. The research was carried out with the participation of six science teachers with different teaching experience. In the selection of part...

Self-talk can help people redirect their attention focused on themselves to the tasks they are working on with important consequences for their task performance. Across four experiments and two different types of languages, Turkish and Slovak, people describing their own behaviors to themselves, as well as merely reading or writing sentences depict...

Birds are one of the most important species that can help protect biodiversity. Although birds are important beings for biodiversity and human existence, there is a relatively less quantity of research that has investigated the interest in and attitudes toward birds. This study aims to investigate the knowledge level of and attitudes toward birds a...

Questionnaires are important tools for assessing attitudes regarding conservation issues. However, they are not easily comparable and their reliability has been insufficiently assessed. We examined factors influencing responses to open- and closed-ended questions about animal conservation to more than 600 schoolchildren (9 years old on average). We...

This paper discusses beliefs about teaching and learning chemistry. The sample includes chemistry student teachers and in-service teachers from Jordan, Turkey and Germany. Two test instruments were used to investigate (student) teachers’ beliefs. A qualitative instrument was used to explore Beliefs about Classroom Organization, Beliefs about Teachi...

The purpose of this study is to examine teacher opinions about science-technology-society-environment (STSE) acquisitions in Turkish Science and Technology Course Curriculum (TSTC). For this purpose, semi-structured interviews were performed with teachers. The participants were addressed questions about their awareness of STSE acquisitions and thei...

The purpose of this study was to measure the freshmen’s level of knowledge about genetics, evolution, human evolution, the nature of science, and opinions on evolution and the presence of non-scientific explanations among Czech, Slovakian, Slovenian and Turkish students. Determination of prior knowledge and pre-conceptions about these issues is imp...

Abstract. The aim of this study was to explore prospective primary teachers (PPTs) pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) regarding the subject of human and environment. This study was carried out with 30 PPTs enrolled in the department of primary education in 2008–2009 academic years. Researchers collected the data by reviewing lesson plans and inter...

This paper describes beliefs held about teaching and learning Chemistry by Turkish teachers and student teachers. The study investigated different aspects of pre- and in-service teachers` belief structures. Part of the study examined teachers` overall beliefs, based on participants' drawings of classroom situations. A qualitative evaluation was emp...

The focus of this study was to investigate whether professors’ pedagogical content knowledge has an impact on Elementary Education [ELE] teacher candidates’ achievement and attitude regarding Biology course. The subjects of the present study consisted of 60 first grade ELE teacher candidates in two classes and two professors (2 males) teaching Biol...

the aim of this study is to specify the subjects which preschool gifted and talented children put forward their unusual ideas and that they have never been dealt with before. The study was carried out with 38 preschool children who attended a summer program that was organized for the gifted and talented children in 2010. In this study, descriptive...

Development of modern bioenergy sector is an important step toward meeting societal demand for reducing CO2 emissions and supplying eco-friendly energy. Young students are the future decision-makers and they will play an important role toward transforming the present fossil fuel driven society into a renewable energy based society. The study aimed...

In this study, it was aimed to adapt the scale of “Student Perceptions of Teachers’ Knowledge (SPOTK)” to Turkish and to examine students’ perceptions about their teachers’ knowledge in the aspect of some variables such as socio-economic status, gender and age. The KMO coefficient was found as 0,926 and the Bartlett Sphericity test was found (χ²=36...

The purpose of the present study was to collect and analyze the research on environmental education in non-traditional settings in Turkey undertaken with various subjects (e.g. students, graduates and teachers) and published over the years of 2000-2011. For systematic analysis, selected data-bases and journals were scrutinized across five pre-deter...

Natural selection favoured survival of individuals who were able to avoid disease. The behavioural immune system is activated especially when our sensory system comes into contact with disease-connoting cues and/or when these cues resemble disease threat. We investigated whether or not perception of modern risky technologies, risky behaviour, e...

Given that unwanted thoughts are enhanced when suppressed, we tested among college freshmen who were about to take an academic exam if an acceptance strategy consisting of not suppressing intrusive thoughts will improve test performance. This strategy proved superior to students' own default strategies as much as a modified, alternative strategy, a...

The aim of the study is to analyze comparatively 2002 (previous) and 2006 (current) Early Childhood Curricula with regard to concepts and attainments associated with environmental education (EE). 2002 and 2006 preschool curricula were firstly retrieved from the web-site of Board of Education and then subjected to content analysis across 41 sub-comp...

Humans (Homo sapiens) are unique primates due to a lack of a thermally insulating fur covering, typical of all other primates. Our primary goal was to examine the "ectoparasite avoidance mediated by mate choice hypothesis" suggesting that women prefer men lacking chest hair in order to avoid ectoparasite loads. We predicted that women living in are...

The purpose of this study is to investigate parents' perceptions over use of ICT in education and use of ICT by their children. As part of the case study, 93 parents from a private high school were accessed. A questionnaire consisting of 57 rating type and open-ended questions was the data source for this research. The results showed that parents h...

The aim of this study is to analyze 9th - 12th grade Biology Course Curricula started to be implemented in 2007 with regard to concepts and attainments addressing to environmental education. In this regard, 9th - 12th grade Biology Course Curricula were analyzed using content-analysis technique, one of the qualitative research methods. 9th -12th gr...

This study examines the level of knowledge of and attitudes toward biotechnology of preservice teachers from Lebanon, Lithuania, Slovakia and Turkey. Data were gathered from a total of 768 preservice teachers from these four countries. The Biotechnology Knowledge Questionnaire and the Biotechnology Attitude Questionnaire were used for data...

In recent years, researchers and educators have been paying more attention to science education in early ages of children. Children's innate curiosity and interest in science, as well as the development and learning benefits of early childhood science instruction, are encouraging researchers and educators to study how to raise the quality of scienc...

Development of environmental literacy, the ultimate goal of environmental education, should not be bound only to the natural sciences. It can also be developed though art and literature when considering the interdisciplinary nature of environmental education. Literary children's books, for example, can be an effective tool to develop students' envi...

This paper describes a case study focusing on the subject matter knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, and beliefs about science teaching of student teachers in Turkey at the start of their university education. The topic of interest was that of teaching chemical reactions in secondary chemistry education. A written test was developed which use...

The purpose of this research was to explore the pedagogical content knowledge of prospective primary school teachers on the subject of phase transitions of matter consisting sample of 41 prospective primary school teachers. Content knowledge test, pedagogical knowledge questionnaire and semi-structured interview were used to collect data. This stud...

The purpose of this study is to examine the acceptance of technology among Turkish pre-service teachers using the TAM. This study was carried out with Turkish university students in the fall semester of 2009. Samples of pre-service teachers from two university departments, Science Education and Mathematics Education, were selected. A total of 773 p...

In recent times exchange of students between countries became popular. As teacher educators we have to prepare our students to teach efficiently in fast changing world and to be effective in future careers with educational technologies not yet discovered. Because of mobility and especially fast development of information and communication technolog...

Genetically modified organisms cannot be regarded as merely a topic for academic debate, since these have serious implications as a research field and for production based on genetic engineering. Public debates rarely base their arguments on elements rooted in scientific arguments and knowledge but are heavily loaded with emotions, opinions and inf...

Human perceives invertebrates less positively than vertebrates because they are small and behaviourally and morphologically unfamiliar. This cross-cultural research focused on Slovakian (n=150) and Turkish (n=164) students' fear, disgust and perceived danger regarding 25 invertebrates [including 5 disease relevant adult insects, 5 ectoparasites, 5...

The aim of this study was to investigate Turkish college students' learning approach regarding biology and ecology classes along with the effects of some selected variables (gender, teacher, year of study, grade in biology and grade in ecology) on students' learning approach. The Turkish version of the Learning Approach Questionnaire was utilized f...

This study focused on investigating students knowledge and misconceptions about birds. The main goal was to find out elementary school pupils' perceptions of birds. Pupils' knowledge and misconceptions were evaluated using a self-constructed knowledge test consisting of 30 questions, twelve of which were open-ended while the rest were multiple choi...

This study investigated the attitudes and achievements 13/14-year-old pupils’ in palaeontology with respect to school type, gender and pupils’ perception of palaeontology teacher. Palaeontology provides important evidence to support the theory of evolution thus it is important for science educator to understand the attitudes held by their pupils in...

In this study, we focused on investigation of students’ knowledge and misconceptions about birds. The main goal was to find out elementary school pupils’ perceptions about birds. Pupils’ knowledge and misconceptions were evaulated by the self-constructed knowledge test. The test consisted of 30 questions, twelve of which were open-ended and rest of...

Human perceives invertebrates less positively than vertebrates because they are small and behaviourally and morphologically unfamiliar. This cross-cultural research focused on Slovakian (n=150) and Turkish (n=164) students' fear, disgust and perceived danger regarding 25 invertebrates [including 5 disease relevant adult insects, 5 ectoparasites, 5...

In this study 103 children (aged 7 - 12 years) from two distinct countries with relatively low (Slovakia) and high (Turkey) wolf population density were interviewed to examine children's overall interest in wolves, their knowledge of wolves, the effects of their keeping pets and their reading stories about wolves. Children in both countries showed...

Throughout the world standards have been developed for teaching in particular key learning areas. These standards also present benchmarks that can assist to measure and compare results from one year to the next. There appears to be no benchmarks for mentoring. An instrument devised to measure mentees' perceptions of their mentoring in primary scien...

This study investigates the possibility of analyzing educational data using the theory of rough sets which is mostly employed in the fields of data analysis and data mining. Data were collected using an open-ended conceptual understanding test of the living things administered to first-year high school students. The responses of randomly selected 6...

Adaptationist view proposes that emotions were shaped by natural selection and their primary function is to protect humans against predators and/or disease threat. This study examined cross-cultural and inter-personal differences in behavioural immune system measured by disgust, fear and perceived danger in participants from high (Turkey) and low (...

This paper focuses on differences of attitudes related to information and communication technologies among Czech and Turkish university students. Student attitudes were evaluated summatively and with respect to gender, year, country, and type of residential area (town/village). Student attitudes were measured by a modified version of the Informatio...

The purpose of the study was to evaluate the efficacy and feasibility of using website in biology education. We have explored the World Wide Web as a possible tool for education about health and nutrition. Th ewebsites were teaching tools for primary school students. Control groups used the traditional educational materials as books or worksheets,...

The purpose of this study is to explain prospective science and technology teachers' pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) about the cell. Lesson preparation, laboratory plan, interview with teacher candidates, and concept mapping were used to collect the data for prospective teacher's PCK. The study was conducted with six prospective science and tec...

Toutes les études convergent pour montrer que : 1) L’éducation à l’environnement est essentielle pour engendrer des comportements responsables et impliquer les citoyens dans des actions concrètes de conservation ; 2) L’expérience de terrain est primordiale pour connecter les individus avec leur environnement. Malheureusement, à l’école comme à la m...

Environmental education should be heavily based on field experiences. Unfortunately, most educational effort for biodiversity is channelled via virtual systems, essentially television, magazines, and Internet/media at school. A limited number of charismatic animal species (i.e. mammals) are employed because they have the virtue to generate strong g...

Research on children's ideas about biological phenomena showed that their interpretations of natural phenomena often diff er from those of scientists. The purpose of this study was to investigate children's ideas about animal breathing systems. This study was descriptive in nature and consisted of a cross age and cross cultural design involving the...