From the Editors

Abstract

Dear Colleagues

It is an honour for us to welcome you as Editors of Cypriot Journal of Educational Sciences which has accepted publications indexed in qualified databases since 2006. Cypriot Journal of Educational Sciences (CJES) is listed in many scholarly citation indexes; DOAJ, Ulrich's Educational Research Abstracts (ERA), EBSCO, Google Scholar, PsycINFO, Asian Education Index & AWER index. Also our major aim is to increase the quality of the journal day by day. We are ready to publish the new studies of Cypriot Journal of Educational Sciences which has 7 full length articles written by authors from Cyprus. This special issue of the Cypriot Journal of Educational Sciences addresses some of the key challenges and new developments of the recent education reforms in Cyprus.    

The aim of this issue is to give the researchers an opportunity to share their academic studies. First of all, I would like to thank all who have contributed to this issue. There are different focuses. For example, Vasfi Tugun explored the proficiency perceptions and attitudes of the teachers towards Technologies of learning about the tablets in order to integrate the mobile learning technologies and to use the tablet PCs in the educational environments in an efficient way. On the other hand, Cigdem Hursen and Dursun Salaz, determine the effects of authentic childhood games in teaching English. The study group of the research consists of 43 5 year old kindergarten students. The study was carried out in the first semester of 2014-2015 academic year. An experimental method was used in this study to state the effects of teaching English vocabulary through authentic childhood games. There were 22 students in the experimental group and 21 students in the control group. To the experimental group the topics were taught through authentic childhood games. Same topics were taught to the control group through traditional methods. According to the results, it is seen that teaching English vocabulary through authentic childhood games have positive impact on academic success. Also, Deniz Ozcan and Leyla Zaroglu determine the opinions of students training in department of gifted education towards education of gifted individuals. The research was formed and conducted in quantitative design. This study was achieved in spring term in 2014-2015 academic year in Near East University. Twenty six teacher candidates training education department of the mentioned university participated to the research. The teacher candidates formed from first and second grade students. Interview form was used as data collection tool. During interview, when necessary semi structured interview was provided to teacher candidates with additional questions. Each of the questions were prepared to obtain different data. The data firstly were formed as written by researcher on computer then analyzed by using content analysis chosen from quantitative research techniques. Each of the answers that teacher candidates gave, were grouped in terms of similarity and interpreted, also one or two answers that were given to each questions, were presented in the same way. In order to increase the reliability of study, the opinions of specialist were taken into consideration and common points were determined.

In addition to these, Zeynep Genc carried out a study on teachers’ candidates. This study was aimed to determine the opinions of students in the department of primary school teaching about preparation and use of materials through teaching practice which is done within Teaching Technologies and Material Designing (TTMD) course in this study. Cigdem Hursen, Ayten Koruroglu, Sultan Bahali and Naziyet Mercan aim of this study is to determine the new trends concerning curricula and instruction. The articles that are published in journals of SSCI and ERIC databases are taken into the scope of this study. The new trends regarding relevant literature are tried to be identified by analysing 3079 articles in total through the content analysis method. Also, the articles that are taken into the scope of the study are limited with the articles published between years of 2005 and 2014.

Mukaddes Sakalli Demirok, Meryem Besgul and Basak Baglama aim of this study was to examine postgraduate thesis studies conducted between the years of 2009 and 2014 in special education field in Turkey based on various variables and figure out how many of these thesis is related with hearing disability. A total number of 146 postgraduate thesis have been found in the thesis scanning center of Higher Education Council (YOK) of Turkey. 126 of these thesis were master thesis and 20 of them were doctorate thesis. Data of the research were analyzed in SPSS 20.0 program. According to the results, it was revealed that quantitative method is the most preferred method in postgraduate thesis and there is much more number of master thesis than doctorate thesis.

Finally Deniz Ozcan and Pelin Gur aim of this study was to determine the opinions of students receiving postgraduate education in special education area about special education. 35 students receiving postgraduate education at Near East University participated in this research. 8 of these students were doctorate student, and 27 of them were master student. This research was conducted in 2014-2015 spring semester. Interview questions used in this research were developed by the researchers. Qualitative research method was used in the research.

I would like to express my thanks to all authors preferring Cypriot Journal of Educational Sciences to make their articles published, all reviewers working seriously in the process of publishing, and also quest editors supporting us in this process.

 

Best regards,

Editor-in-Chief

Prof. Dr. Huseyin Uzunboylu

 

Executive Editor

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Cigdem Hursen