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The purpose of this study is to elucidate the relation of 11-14 years old students mapping skills and their achievement levels in mathematics and investigate their mapping skills as regards to various variables. The study was carried out by the use of survey method. The data collection tool employed in the study was the achievement test developed by Sönmez (2010) upon 384 students studying in the central towns of Ankara province in 2012-2013 academic year. The sub problems of the study were solved by the use of t-test, One Way ANOVA and Pearson Correlation tests. The results of the study revealed that the scores of the students related to the all dimensions of the mapping skills of the students showed a positive in favor of the students studying in private schools .The mapping skills of the students did not show a significant difference in the dimensions of understanding the scale, location, and coordinate symbols. But there were significant differences in all other dimensions. Tukey Post Hoc test results showed that the differences were in favor of the 8th year students. Six mapping skills of the students at the secondary education level showed a medium level positive significant correlation with the mathematical achievement scores. In other words the increase in the mathematical achievement levels, increase their mapping skills in every dimensions.

This research aims to determine whether there is a differentiation in affective tendencies towards the environment. For this purpose, to measure the affective tendency toward environment of secondary school students used “affective scale” which is published by Wisconsin Center for Environmental Education and adapted to Turkish by Karatekin (2011) was applied to 330 students studying in three different secondary school students in 2013-2014 academic year in the province of Kocaeli Dilovası county in order to measure the affective tendencies of teacher trainees toward the environment. Data analysis was performed using SPSS 17 statistical software. Analysis of the data, descriptive statistics, t-test for unrelated samples, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used. As a result, secondary school students’ affective tendency toward the environment is moderate. However, 8th grade students more positive to the environment than 7th grade students; the students who are so curious to the environment than low ones, students who are more interest to the environment than low ones and students participating environmental activities more frequently than less participants. According to these results, it is recommended that to be given to environmental education which secondary school students living in industrial area should increase their sense of curiosity towards the environment and enable them to participate more frequently environmental activities.

This study is carried out to determine the metaphors of 9th graders they have towards the concept "earthquake". 194 9th graders in Erciş, Van took part in the study in the academic year of 2012-2013. The data of the study is collected by students' completing the sentence "earthquake is like …, because …." and from the pictures and caricatures drawn by the students about their metaphors for the concept earthquake. The data is analyzed with content analysis method. According to the results of the study, the students produced 72 metaphors about the concept of "earthquake". These metaphors were categorized into 6 different conceptual groups according to their common features. As a result of the study, it was revealed that 5.04% of the students perceive the concept of "earthquake" as doomsday, 4.32% as fear, 3.60% as monster and cradle and 2.88% as death and disaster.