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The purpose of this study is to examine the associations between the perceptions of primary school teachers about their proficiencies in terms of 21st century skills and their perceptions in relation to managing constructivist learning environments by means of structural equation modeling (SEM). The sample of the study included the classroom teachers from the province of Eskişehir. One hundred eighty-four females and 88 male teacher participated to the study. 21st century skills scale and TCLES were used to derive teacher perceptions regarding their proficiencies in 21st century skills and their use of constructivist approaches in the classrooms. The results revealed that 21st century skills were positively related to teachers' perceptions of the constructivist learning environment. Based on these results, a simple implication could be that when the teachers possess strong perceptions in relation to problem solving, critical thinking, cooperation, communication and creativity, they may appear to provide their students with learning environments that are more open to students' inquiry and investigation and that are thus more conducive to positive student attitudes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Ilkogretim Online is the property of Ilkogretim Online and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Science is a basic course that improves the individuals in terms of cognitive aspects and increases their creativity. In this course, students acquire the habits of thinking objectively and making right decisions about the phenomena and events by examining their environment with scientific methods. In this process, an effort is spent to make students gain scientific knowledge, cognitive process skills and scientific attitudes. Scientific attitudes have an important role in developing scientific literacy. The purpose of this study is to bring up the results of reliability and validity studies of an instrument which is developed for determining scientific attitudes of fifth grade students. The data were collected from 887 students of randomly selected 14 elementary schools in the city of Eskişehir. As a result of factor analysis, the scale grouped in with three factors accounted for 42,08% of total variance with 28 items. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, the aim is to emphasize how to improve the scientific process skills by the application of constructivist approach adopted in the Teaching Program of the Science and Technology course in fifth grade primary school students. The research was designed as an action research. The research was conducted in a primary school in the fall term of 2007-2008 academic years. The data were collected with video records, semi-structured interviews, Scientific Process Skills Test, researcher and students journals. The qualitative data were analyzed by descriptive analysis and the findings were interpreted according to the research question. The quantitative data were analyzed and interpreted by using 15.0 version of SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences) program. The study results revealed that the action research became effective on improvement of participant students' scientific process skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]