Journal of Higher Education and Science

012-023

Authors: Engin DEMİR, Cennet GÖLOĞLU DEMİR, Mehmet Çağatay ÖZDEMİR

Despite the changes made related to academic promotion and appointment over the years in Turkey, there have been two main criteria: academic publications after PhD and foreign language proficiency. It commonly known that faculty members come across several problems during the process of attaining the title of associate professorship and these problems affect the academic environment in several ways. The purpose of this study is to reveal the faculty members’ views on the academic promotion in postdoctoral process and provide further suggestions.. Data were gathered through a semi-structured interview form including 10 items prepared by the researcher and analyzed through content analysis. In addition, a criterion table comprised of 25 items was applied to the participants before the interview. These criteria were determined by the InteruniversityBoard of Turkey and other universities. 18 faculty members marked the criteria they consider essential. Participants consisted of faculty members from science, social and medical fields. Results of the study revealed that faculty members considered associate professorship exam and foreign language exam necessary. According to the faculty members, the criteria related to publishing international articles and lecturing at undergraduate and graduate levels were especially very important among all criteria and the current system had a determinant role in the faculty members’ behaviors and academic publications. Faculty members stated that foreign language exam did not measure language proficiency accurately ; academic positions were not assigned fairly; there were some problems about the quality of academic publications, ethics and being a scientist. Similarly, they clearly stated that the society did not rely on scientists. The results gained in the study corroborate the need to review the academic promotion and appointment process. An increase in the number of such studies that examine faculty members’ perceptions is recommended due to their potential for providing a basis for future.

028-040

Authors: Aysun KAPUCUGİL İKİZ, Muhammet DAMAR, Güzin ÖZDAĞOĞLU, Cenk ÖZLER, Yasemin ARBAK, Pınar TUNCEL, İlgi KARAPINAR, Recep YAPAREL

For the purpose of providing a better quality of service for their students, higher education institutions develop both academic and social strategies that will meet students’ expectations, and they can monitor the performance of the related activities efficiently by integrating them into their strategic plans. Although students’ expectations from the institutions in which they are registered can be provided directly through feedback mechanisms, there is a need for a sustainable system through which students’ opinions on all of the services are gathered in a systematic way. In this regard, the objective of this study was to design an information system measuring the satisfaction level of the students about the services/ facilities provided by the university on a regular basis and reporting the results of the measurement to the university management in a certain format. In this descriptive research that was carried out within the scope of Dokuz Eylul University quality assessment, evaluation and assurance activities in higher education, an electronic form was developed which was integrated into the Dokuz Eylul University Information System. Through this form, particular questions were asked covering many service dimensions, i.e., infrastructure facilities, the provided services, educational and career development, approaches of the university towards the students, communication with students, attitudes of students towards the university, etc. The evaluations of students’ feedback were performed based on descriptive statistics, and an additional assessment scale was also generated to classify and order the overall satisfaction levels as primary priority to improve, secondary priority to improve, opportunities available, and the areas where the university is strong. This system helped to make decisions for the improvements in required fields, generated inputs to the strategic plan of Dokuz Eylul University for determining policies and goals to increase the quality of education, student satisfaction and provided a capability for performance evaluation in the achievement of these goals by systematic measurements.

051-058

Authors: Hilal BÜYÜKGÖZE, Şefika Şule ERÇETİN

The current study focuses on the relationship between organizational attraction perceptions and perceived individual-organization compatibility of university students toward the organizations they would like to work after university graduation. The participants consisted of 253 university students including 161 females and 92 males. Participant age ranged from 19 to 28 years (range = 9, X = 21.26, SD = 1.619). Of the participants, 106 were juniors (41.9%), and 147 were senior year students (58.1%). The ‘Applicant Attraction Instrument’ of Rau and Hyland was used to measure the organizational attraction perceptions of the university students. Participants’ perceived individual-organization compatibility was assessed with the ‘Perceived Person-Organization Fit Instrument’ developed by Cable and DeRue. While the reliability of the scales used in the study was examined by the calculation of Cronbach alpha internal consistency coefficients, the validity was investigated by conducting confirmatory factor analysis on LISREL software. Findings indicated a positive and moderate correlation between organizational attraction perceptions and perceived individual-organization compatibility among university students toward the organizations they would like to work after graduation (r = .615). Further, participants’ organizational attraction perceptions were found to explain 38% of the variance in their perceived individual-organization compatibility. Results suggested that stronger perceived organizational attraction of an aimed organization relates to greater perceived individual-organization compatibility for undergraduate students. The results of the study are discussed with the relevant theories and literature on the issues.

067-077

Authors: Somayyeh RADMARD

By investigating international students’ reasons for choosing higher education, this study attempts to reveal the factors influencing students’ tendency for international education with various descriptive statistics. The study is based on the scanning method. The international students studying at universities in Ankara in the academic year 2011-2012 were selected as the investigated population of this survey. A total of 545 students selected using the ‘appropriate sampling method’ from the research population constituted the sample of the research. The data were gathered through distributing a questionnaire composed of three different sections which was designed by the researcher. The data were first explained in terms of their frequency, percentage, mean and standard deviation. Little research has been conducted on international students in Turkey. According to the findings of this study, The majority of the students studying in Turkey come from Turkish-speaking neighboring countries. The findings of the present study also reveal that there seems to be no systematic policy for attracting international students to Turkey. Students’ academic accomplishment has been negatively influenced by their low level of proficiency in the Turkish language. In addition, international students also suffer from difficulty in becoming accustomed to their social environment. According to the findings of the study, most international students have economic problems. Despite these problems, the majority of the international students in Turkey were satisfied with their education. In order to maintain the satisfaction of international students, adopting both long-term and short-term strategies and policies by government is recommended. Having a positive attitude towards Turkey can be considered as one of the reasons to select Turkey as a destination for higher education. In general, the findings of the study illustrated that international students selected Turkey mainly due to their cultural proximity, Turkey’s comparatively developed economy and access to high-quality higher education.

091-098

Authors: Tuğçe TÜRTEN KAYMAZ, Şahika ŞİMŞEK ÇETİNKAYA, Elif BAKIR, Yeter Sinem ÜZAR ÖZÇETİN, Şenay GÜL, Nilay ERCAN ŞAHİN, Fatma USLU ŞAHAN, Seher BAŞARAN, Zahide TUNÇBİLEK

This study was conducted to investigate the data about the Bologna Process on the websites of universities’ undergraduate nursing programs in Turkey. In this descriptive study, all state and private universities which have BSc Nursing Programs and are within the scope of the Council of Higher Education of Turkey were included. Data were collected between May 1st and June 1st, 2015 by searching the websites of universities that were included in this study. An Evaluation Form that was developed by the researchers was used to collect data. Data were analyzed by using frequencies and percentages. We found that 77.2% of the universities included in the study were state universities and information about the Bologna Process could be found by using the website link on the main page in 65.3% of these universities. The majority of the universities (87.1%) had general information about their program but 44% did not take the European Credit Transfer System into consideration on compulsory lessons and 41% of them on elective lessons. It was found that the majority of essential nursing lessons held by eight departments in BSc of Nursing programs had an Information Package of Lessons (68.1%-77.6%) and that this package contained information on the European Credit Transfer System Credits in 72.3%-82.7% and calculations of student workload in 54.2%-65.6%. In conclusion, the universities with BSc Nursing Program did not have full information about the Bologna Process on their websites. We recommend making the necessary updates on these websites according to the standard format of the Council of Higher Education of Turkey to avoid giving inadequate and false information about the Bologna Process.

099-117

Authors: Elif BAHADIR

Postgraduate education, which is regarded as necessary in the field of education in order to improve the qualifications of teachers seen as culture workers, has become more important than it used to be. In this context, the attitudes of prospective teachers toward pursuing a postgraduate education are crucial. In this study, all of the components, including grades, scores and the attitudes of prospective teachers were interpreted by a fuzzy logic-based evaluation for admission to postgraduate education. The attitudes of the underpostgraduate students towards postgraduate education were determined according to ‘the Postgraduate Attitude Scale’. The students’ four year college grade point averages and ‘academic personnel and postgraduate education entrance exam’ scores were also taken into account, and their eligibility for postgraduate education was assessed by using fuzzy logic rules. The study was conducted with 155 prospective teachers who were underpostgraduate students in the program of mathematics teaching for elementary school. During the study, after the test operation was done with one-third of the data, an 80.77% result of the general prediction rate was obtained. These results were further analyzed in detail, and 76 out of 96 students who were eligible for postgraduate education and 48 out of the 59 remaining students were predicted correctly. The data obtained from the study was assessed using fuzzy logic methods, and this approach has proven to reach more effective and accurate results.

132-138

Authors: Semahat AYSU

The aim of this study was to investigate the discourse markers used by 104 elementary-level prep class students studying at Namık Kemal University in Turkey. Students were required to write a paragraph with 80-100 words as part of their mid-term exam in the academic year of 2013-2014. A small-size corpus was constructed by using these writings. The corpus was analyzed via a software program called as AntConc 3.2.4. in order to find out the types and frequency of discourse markers. It was revealed that 180 discourse markers were used by elementary-level students: ‘and’ was used 98 times, but occurred 51 times, ‘because’ was written 18 times and other discourse markers of ‘then’, ‘so’, ‘also’, ‘too’ and ‘still’ were used 7, 2, 2, 1, 1 times respectively. Furthermore, according to Fraser’s (1999) taxonomy of discourse markers, 180 discourse markers were grouped into four categories. It was found out that 101 markers were elaborative markers, 52 were contrastive markers, 18 were causative markers and 9 were inferential markers.

150-162

Authors: Yılmaz TONBUL

This study aimed to develop suggestions for the management of the Institute of Social Sciences on the effective execution of postgraduate education. A ‘mixed’ design was used. Data collection tools were applied directly to student population without the use of any sampling method. For advisors, criterion sampling was used.The participants of the study were composed of 207 postgraduate students registered at the Institute of Social Sciences and 39 instructors at Ege University. The student data were collected via the Supervisor Evaluation Scale and interview guide consisting of open-ended questions. The instructor data were collected during semi-structured focus group interviews. The participants stressed the informative, supportive and instructional roles of the institute for improving the quality of graduate education. In addition, differences as well as commonalities between the expectations of the students and those of the instructors were detected. The students’ expectations from the institute were the protection of students’ rights, mediation, ensuring the diversity of elective courses, the proper teaching of the courses in accordance with the nature of graduate education, and provision of information about career, time and stress management. Besides, the instructors’ expectations included attracting qualified candidates to programs, informing students, supporting the students with cadre and scholarship, reducing bureaucratic procedures, regulating the processes of supervisor selection and thesis proposal, providing access to resources during the processes of both course work and thesis writing, and forming colloquiums. The institute’s existing structure, authority distribution, staff and budget resources were found to be inadequate for increasing the quality of postgraduate education. Regarding the course and thesis stages, one third of the supervisors were evaluated as insufficient by the students. Many suggestions related to practice were made with respect to the findings.