Journal of Higher Education and Science

14-26

Authors: Türker KURT, Sedat GÜMÜŞ

New higher education trends such as massification, quality development efforts, and increased competition at both national and international levels have forced higher education institutions to change consistently and increase their capacity. As a result, universities have entered a new era in which their financial needs dramatically increased. Given the fact that the significant parts of the higher education expenditures are traditionally covered by the state budget in most countries, we are in a very critical period. Yet, the sources allocated from the state budget are not sufficient to fulfill the needs of universities in most of the time. In this regard, how to meet the increased financial needs of higher education is one of the most important issues which higher education systems have faced. Therefore, it is very important to investigate the financial structures of universities in different countries and provide informed alternatives for Turkey. The aims of this study are investigating the current situation and trends regarding to higher education financing in developed countries and providing suggestions on higher education financing in Turkey.

32-40

Authors: Özkan KIRMIZI

Self-concept, self efficacy, and self-regulation are three important factors that predict the success of L2 learners to a large extent. Therefore, the present study was designed to measure the academic self-concept, self efficacy, self-regulation level of higher education students in relation to academic achievement and self-evaluation and secondarily to investigate the correlation between academic self-concept, selfefficacy, and self-regulation. In the present study, academic self-concept was conceptualized as comprising of two main components: academic confidence and academic effort. The participants of the study are 130 higher education EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners enrolled in English Language and Literature department. Liu and Wang's (2005) academic self-concept scale was used as the main data collection tool. It consists of two sub-scales; academic confidence and academic effort scales. A four-item questionnaire was formed by examining the literature in order to measure self-efficacy and Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ), developed by Pintrich et al. (1991), was used to measure self-regulation beliefs of students. Descriptive, variance, correlation and regression analyses were conducted in order to analyze the data. The results indicated that higher education Turkish EFL learners have a moderate-to-high level of self-concept, self-efficacy, self-regulation, and self-evaluation. High achieving students were found to have higher levels of selfregulation, self-evaluation and academic confidence. Correlation analysis indicated that all of the variables of the study are highly correlated with academic success and regression analysis revealed that self-efficacy was the most important predictor of academic success.

52-67

Authors: Murat ESEN, Dilek ESEN

The purpose of this study is to measure the attitudes of faculty members regarding a performance evaluation system. Scan model has been carried out on 122 university faculty members that work for a university chosen by deliberate sampling method. The survey questionnaire was developed from the study of Tonbul and the corresponding area of literature determined by Turkish Council of Higher Education relating to “criteria for promotion and appointment of positions”. The data were analyzed using SPSS 17 with the reliability analysis, factor analysis, variance analysis, Kruskal Wallis-H, Mann Withney-U tests and means. According to findings of the research, the most significant performance dimensions perceived by faculty members were respectively research, education and training, community service and management support. Besides, university members looked favorably on a performance evaluation system assessing their performance periodically.

80-87

Authors: Sevil GÜNER, Mine YURDAKUL, Nalan YETİM

This study was designed as a qualitative descriptive study to map out the challenges and suggestions in regard to the problems of professionalization of midwifery in Turkey and it was presented as a master thesis in June 2012. The study was conducted in seven universities in Turkey which provided master programs in midwifery. The study participants included twenty faculty members in midwifery departments in these universities who consented to participate. An interview guide consisting of 10 semistructured open-ended questions was used as an instrument of data collection and interviews were recorded. The process of data collections was conducted as face-to-face interviews by a researcher between 28th June 2011-7th December 2011. The recordings were transformed into text. Written audio recording outputs were analyzed by the content analysis which is one of the qualitative data analysis method. Major problems of professionalization of midwifery in Turkey were found as incompetent legislative regulations in midwifery, insufficient professional organizations, problems of autonomy, and insufficient scientific researches in the field. The participants suggested updating the legislative regulations, opening doctoral programs in midwifery departments, strenghtening professional organizations, supporting clinical midwifes to conduct scientific researches. In light of the results, it was concluded that professionalization of midwifery has still certain structural problems. It is maintained that regulations to be made in line with the suggestions in this study will certainly enhance professionalization of midwifery. It was pointed out that it is required to support graduate programs in midwifery, to open new doctoral programs, to support midwifery departments in terms of equipment and human resources, to clarify job definitions, to decrease the number of students in these faculties and to enact legislative regulations in regard to midwifery profession.

99-108

Authors: Oğuzhan KARADENİZ, Melek ULUSOY

Named as 4+4+4 by the public, the law which extends the compulsory education in Turkey to 12 years stage by stage and which demands some amendments in Elementary Education Law Number 6287 and some other laws came into force by being published in the Official Gazette with number 28261 on 11th April, 2012. Social Studies was continued to be implemented in the 5, 6, 7 and 8th grades as a major area course in the 4+4+4 education system. The changes and innovations that are performed in the program have created different effects on the administrators, the teachers and the students at the schools. In this research, it was aimed to determine the opinions of the social studies teachers about the chaotic situations caused by innovations and changes experienced in social studies. The Research is a special case study conducted with the qualitative research approach. As a result, teachers who participated in the survey evaluated the positive and negative aspects of the 4+4+4 education system application. It is determined that the teachers who find the system negative had chaotic situations about student’s age, physical environment, application-guidance, harmony wih school, continuity of the system öngörülemeand administration problems. It is concluded that in social studies teaching, teachers had chaotic situations because of deficiency of the program, inadequate time of lessons causing not to catch up with the scheduled time, harmony problems of the students who begin the secondary school just after the fourth grade and students’ insufficiency in cognitive and sensual developmental levels of readiness. It is determined that students had chaotic problems caused by the change of their physical environment, leaving their friends and leaving their class teacher while trying to adapt to their new branch teacher. It is determined that these results made the teachers face chaotic and complex situations and caused them not to be able to foresee the future.

73-89

Authors: Emel AKÖZER, Mehmet AKÖZER

Plagiarism allegations on similarities between Dr. Benjamin Spock's Baby and Child Care (1946) and Dr. İhsan Doğramacı's Annenin Kitabı (1952; The Mother's Book) and the public presentation of the ruling on the 15th of April, 2014 by European Court of Human Rights consummating legal proceedings on these allegations, are not likely to contribute to ensuring a correct understanding of plagiarism as conceived in science ethics in the general public and scientific community. First, the Court has not ruled in support of the veracity of allegations. Second, parallels between the two books – regarding genre, claims to originality, and the nature of similarities – do not justify evaluation in reference to the concept of plagiarism as defined in science ethics. Besides, intellectual property law, on which allegations pretend to be based, cannot be taken to found illegitimacy of plagiarism in terms of science ethics. Science ethics defines plagiarism as misconduct positively with reference to norms of scientific integrity, the fairness principle, and values essential to collaborative work, rather than negatively with reference to violation of intellectual property. In the mid-20th century, in an environment where such principles or values have not yet taken root, the course of the discovery of DNA structure, one of the century's greatest breakthroughs, has enabled ethics violations substantially surpassing issues of intellectual property or plagiarism, and moreover, these violations have apologists even today. Scientific integrity and fairness imply “treating colleagues with integrity and honesty” as equally as “providing proper references and giving due credits to the work of others”. Abusing plagiarism allegations as a means to defame colleagues or permitting such abuse to become commonplace neither suits advocacy of scientific ethics nor complies with the “fairness” principle. A strategy to fight plagiarism must be tested against whether or not it contributes to entrench the norm of scientific integrity and fairness principle or how far it contributes.

99-111

Authors: Metin ÖZKAN, Tokay GEDİKOĞLU

This research originated from the increasing number of discussions in relation to the financial support of higher education, the quest for creating sustainable resources for the increasing demand of higher education and the inadequate number of academic research that focuses on the finance of higher education in Turkey and seen as a necessity. In line with this requirement, it is aimed to determine the opinions of the participants regarding how the Turkish Higher Education should be financed. The study population consists of administrative staffs who conduct financial issues in universities. Universities included into the sample are identified based on stratified sampling method by considering the rankings revealed by “University Ranking by Academic Performance (URAP)”. The sample of the study includes 138 staffs conducting the financial issues of these universities. The data are collected by means of a questionnaire consisting of 48 items developed by the researchers. According to the findings, higher education should be financed predominantly by diversification of the resources instead of financing by public resources. It is suggested that this method can also develop financial autonomy and thus can provide an opportunity for using the resources more effectively. Resources from the public budget to determine the amount to be transferred to the university is a determinant of performance criteria, the amount determined by the method of allocation be given directly to universities and colleges by the method of budget spending this budget bag is required. Performance criteria should be taken into consideration during the identification of resources to be transferred to universities from the public budget, the amount determined should be assigned directly to universities and universities should spend this budget by considering their own priorities.

124-131

Authors: Murat YALMAN, Tamer KUTLUCA

Services provided for students in traditional libraries at universities have been renovated in line with the development of technology. Therefore, today libraries are not evaluated with their sizes of places but with the variety and abundance of sources found in libraries. In terms of current educational activities, it is fairly important for universities to structure and renovate their libraries. The reason is that learning is now independent of place and time. The spread of the Internet and of Internet technologies and the increase in the number of Internet users make e-library obligatory and unavoidable. Therefore, universities should internalize the concept of e-library and take electronic library into consideration while restructuring their library services. The present study tried to determine how to carry out an e-library design in accordance with the library services of universities. In this process, the overall purpose was to determine the needs by examining the user interface of the webpage designed, its interface features, its differences, ease of its use, its clarity for users to understand and the pros and cons of the system. In this way, universities using e-library are believed to provide their students with better services by increasing their quality of education.

141-147

Authors: Enes GÖK

In the United States of America, the term “clinical faculty” has been used to define diff erent positions academic personnel hold in various fields and job sett ings. Although it possesses diff erent meanings, the main argument is that the clinical faculty position in general, is designated to bring practical knowledge and expertise to the professional schools by filling the gap between theory and practice. Schools of education, as in other professional schools, also off er this type of clinical faculty position to provide practical knowledge to their students who will need it in their future lives as teachers, administrators and practitioners. Th is study aims to discuss the future of clinical faculty in schools of education through analyzing the position, in terms of job specifications, eff ectiveness, job requirements, personnel rights and the issues this category of faculty encounters in a cross comparative way across the fields of education, law and medicine. One of the main recommendations of the paper is that the future of clinical faculty should be secured through creating a clinical – tenure - track faculty positions in schools of education as in other professional schools instead of keeping them under the general appointment and promotion rules and regulations with the other faculty members. In this way, both the clinical faculty members' problems related to job security, compensation, and promotion and non-clinical faculty members' concerns related to quality will be resolved.

156-166

Authors: Mehmet Ali GÜLPINAR

In our era in which the higher education is undergoing a fast transformation at the paradigm level throughout the world, it has become imperative to re-handle and restructure the higher education system in all its aspects. In this process, carrying out studies through various methods like holding search conferences/meetings, thematic meetings, workshops at the national level as well as more detailed studies done at university, faculty and department level are also of importance. In this context, this study aims at evaluating the search meeting in which the present and the future of a university and a faculty were handled, evaluating the ‘present of the faculty' and searching for answers to the question “How should tomorrow's School of Medicine be?” In four search meetings each lasted four hours overall and held with 58 participants at the total, an unusual format of ‘brainstorm' composed of three sessions was used and the content analysis of the writt en views and evaluations stated by the participants during the first session was performed. Th e findings obtained from the study indicate the importance of micro scale studies to be conducted on the university level, faculty level and department level as well as the macro scale studies to be conducted for restructuring the higher education with its main frame, structure, functions and administration.

176-181

Authors: Mehmet Bilgin SAYDAM, Nuray ÖZGÜLNAR, Feyza DARENDELİLER

The aquisition of clinical and practical skills is the main target during the speciality training program. On the other hand, acquisition of skills in reading and interpreting scientific knowledge are also important training targets in order to develop and update clinical practice constantly. Th e process of thesis preparation during the speciality training provides an important opportunity to capture the skills in interpreting scientific knowledge. In Turkey, thesis writing has been obligatory for completion of speciality training for several years. Recently, there has been a discussion about the obligation for clinicians to write a thesis, especially those who are undertaking specialist training in education and research hospitals. Th e aim of this study was to evaluate the pros and cons of thesis writing during speciality training using a questionnaire that was sent to specialists. Th is descriptive and analytical study was conducted as an e-questionnaire between December, 2013, and May, 2014. A likert scale consisted of 18 questions has been prepared in accordance with this study. Th e questionnaire was sent to 1536 physicians. 328 of the questionnaires have been included in the study by evaluating the responses obtained from 345 of the participants. Th e response rate was 23%. Th e Cronbach alpha coeff icient was 0.77. Out of the 328 questionnaires, 11.9 %were from Basic Medical Sciences, 57%from Internal Medical Sciences, and 30.2%from Surgical Medical Sciences. Among the respondents, the percentage of specialists, assistant professors, associate professors and professors were 20.7%, 8.2%, 13.7%, and 57.3%, respectively. Independent of specialty field and aff iliation, the respondents concluded that the conduction and thesis writing contributed to their scientific career in spite of the common problems they encountered regarding adequate time for preparation. Furthermore, they concluded that thesis writing had a positive eff ect in the development of their scientific thinking and writing skills. It was determined that there had been inadequate education regarding methodology and basic research methods prior to thesis preparation. Nearly all respondents emphasized the necessity of thesis preparation. In conclusion, based on our study, thesis writing is recommended; however, in order to improve this process it is a fact that more eff icient organization of financial resources, workforce, and time is needed.

191-196

Authors: Latife UTAŞ AKHAN

The aim of this study is to determine the att achment styles of the nursing students. Th e samples for this descriptive research have been conducted by the nursing students of a state School of Health. Th e research was conducted between 03 – 14th of January, 2011 with 383 students among 491 who agreed to participate in the research. In order to gather the data, demographic data collection form and the relationships scale inventory which was developed by Griff in & Bartholomew (1994) and of which the reliability of validity was conducted by Sümer & Güngör (1994) were used. It is determined that the students with indiff erent att achment style have high level of alcohol-cigarett e consumption and that having social security aff ects the att achment styles of the students in a safe manner and that there are diff erences in the att achment styles depending on the gender. It is found that women have an anxious att achment style while men have an indiff erent att achment style. It is established that fearful att achment style appears when the level of maternal education is low and the indiff erent style of att achment appears when it is higher. It is identified that paternal education and age range does not aff ect the student's att achment style. It is determined that the style of att achment aff ects the habits like alcohol consumption and smoking and that the presence of a social security and the level of maternal education have a role in identifying the styles of att achment and that there are diff erences in styles of att achment depending on the gender.

18-27

Authors: Zafer ÇELİK, Bekir S. GÜR

Since the establishment of the Council of Higher Education in 1981, university autonomy and the governance of higher education system in Turkey have been contentious topics. There is a public demand for decreasing the power of the Council and increasing the autonomy of universities in Turkey. Notwithstanding the consensus on reforming the higher education system, there is no consensus on the content of the reform. Accordingly, there is a need for scientific studies presenting the state of higher education in Turkey from an internationally comparative perspective. This study includes three parts. The first part investigates the governance of higher education systems based on the examples from the OECD and Europe. The second part discusses the governance of higher education institution and how the institutional autonomy is defined. The third part presents the changes that the governance of higher education system in Turkey underwent from a historical perspective. In the conclusion, based on the international comparisons, some policy recommendations are proposed in order to contribute to the reform discussions in Turkey.

36-50

Authors: Erkan YAMAN, Kayhan RUÇLAR

The aim of this study is to determine the relationship between the sense of organizational silence and the organizational culture the instructors perceived. In this study, the scale for determining organizational culture developed by İpek (1999) and the scale for measuring organizational silence developed by Çakıcı (2007) and adapted by Soycan (2010) are used. No remarkable difference was found in the academic staff's sense of organizational silence degree according to their genders and educational backgrounds. It was seen that the instructors' sense of organizational silence had remarkable differences according to their age group, faculty, sense of administration type in their institutions, frequency of their face-to-face communication with their administrators and their thoughts of speaking clearly with their administrators. It was observed that research assistants had a significantly higher sense of organizational silence than the lecturers in the sense of ‘Lack of Experience'. It was seen that academicians who had 1-5 years of employment period had the highest sense of organizational silence while those who had 21 years or more employment period had the lowest sense of organizational silence in the sense of ‘Lack of Experience' of organizational silence. When the points that participant academicians got from organizational silence and organizational culture scales analyzed in the correlation table, it was found out that there was a remarkable relationship between the academicians' sense of organizational silence and sense of organizational culture. This relationship was a medium-level negative relationship between subdimensions of two scales. A medium-level negative relationship between the organizational silence (total) and the organizational culture was also seen. Based on the findings, university administrators were proposed to create a participant culture in their institutions as well as to encourage instructors to speak clearly and increase the frequency of contact with them.

56-66

Authors: Dilek KEKEÇ MORKOÇ, Mustafa DOĞAN

Many institutions prepare websites for their users in order to meet the increasing need for information in the era of change. The importance of the internet is undeniable in distribution and sharing of information. The internet of the institutions and their methods of usage and functions via websites are one of those factors that improve the institutions’ reputation and prestige. Particularly, while universities convey a lot of knowledge/messages to their actual and potential users via websites, on the other hand many users are able to access to any information they need through these pages. In this study, the importance of university websites and their use of promotional purposes were examined via the websites of departments providing four-year tourism education. The first three tourism departments of State and Foundation Universities with the highest base score according to 2012-2013 ‘Student Selection and Placement Center’ were selected and examined with content analysis method. In this research, the question of how these six universities selected within the scope of case studies use their websites belonging to their tourism departments as a promotion tool is tried to be answered.

184-192

Authors: Mustafa ACAR, Hüsnü BİLİR

Globalization process has been tearing down the walls, hence flattening the world. Improved transportation and communication possibilities have enabled easier and faster cross-border flow of people, money, capital, goods and services. Parallel to this, international competitiveness has become ever more important in a globalizing world. Universities, be it public or private, are critical institutions in the development, change and transformation of the nations. They can contribute to a nation’s competitiveness primarily in two ways: raising skilled labor, developing new technologies and promoting innovation. This study stresses three interrelated issues in order for the universities to make their expected contribution to a nation’s competitiveness: market-oriented operation of the universities, minimization of their dependency on public funding, and promotion of competition among universities. A university where its graduates cannot find job and there is no contribution to technology and innovation is nothing more than waste of resources. Therefore, in order to increase performance of the universities, such measures should be taken as to reduce their dependency on public funding, promote universityindustry collaboration, increase contribution of the beneficiaries to finance the expenditures of the higher education services, and allocate public funds to universities based on their academic and innovative performance.

200-204

Authors: Mohamed MILIANI

The Algerian higher education system has been undergoing a strong change that can be compared to a revolution to its structures, schemes, procedures ever since 2004: a date that corresponds to the launching of the ‘Licence-Master-Doctorate’ or ‘LMD’ reform. Not least of these procedures is the erection of a Quality system that started in 2010. Yet, one of the difficulties the implementation of the LMD system experienced, was due to the policy of slow and progressive setting up of new LMD learning schemes by universities from 2004 up to 2010 (date of last issued LMD training programs). The fact that universities were not forced to enter the new scheme was somehow detrimental to the overall policy’s coherence and advancement. Indeed, it took time for universities to switch from a dual system of university programs (old and LMD systems offered to freshmen) to a single frame, namely that of the LMD. The concern for Quality was then on the Ministry’s agenda from 2008 first through an international conference on Quality Assurance that was held in Algiers under the aegis of the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research. Part of the ministry’s strategic plan scheduled to go until 2030, is the procedure aiming at a quality system that consists of the following components: the LMD training package, the national qualifications framework, the quality assurance system, the quality assurance frame of reference, the national standards, and the key performance indicators.

214-219

Authors: Zeynep Medine ÖZMEN, Funda AYDIN GÜÇ

Along with the development of science, the need for academicians is also increasing day by day. In many countries doctorate is a prerequisite for academicians. So, doctorate is very important for the quality of higher education and advancement of science. Therefore, the challenges of doctoral education period to be identified and to be solved by taking the opinions of doctoral students whom will be the future academicians. In this sense, this study aimed to describe challenges of doctoral students and their strategies to overcome these challenges. For this aim, semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten doctoral students in the Department of Primary or Secondary Science and Mathematics Education in Karadeniz Technical University. Challenges faced by participants and their strategies were analyzed by using qualitative methods. Two researchers analyzed the data and thematic coding was used. After two researcher coded data the reliability of the analysis was calculated as 0.86. The findings are presented with three main themes: challenges, strategies and suggestions. It was seen that the most important challenges of the students were related with their supervisors, that they usually used self abandonment strategies to solve these challenges and that their made suggestions usually related to the challenges and also strategies. Considering the challenges faced by students as well as their suggestions to cope with these, solution proposals which may contribute in the development of doctoral education in Turkey were made.

228-235

Authors: Servet ÖZDEMİR, Ali Çağatay KILINÇ, Zeki ÖĞDEM, Emre ER

The purpose of this study was to examine the satisfaction levels of the students of Faculty of Education about the quality of faculty life with respect to different variables. ‘The Quality of School Life Scale’ originally developed by Epstein and McPartland (1976) and adapted into Turkish by Yılmaz and Çokluk & Bökeoğlu (2006) was used to gather data. A total of 287 students studying at Mehmet Akif University Faculty of Education in 2012-2013 academic year participated in the study. Results revealed that students’ satisfaction levels on the quality of faculty life were of medium level. Students’ satisfaction levels on the quality of faculty life differed significantly according to their grade level, where as their satisfaction levels did not differ significantly according to gender, age, and receiving scholarship variables. Suggestions were presented to increase the satisfaction levels of the students in terms of the quality of faculty life at the end of the research.

244-251

Authors: Yalçın KANBAY, Özgür ASLAN, Elif IŞIK, Nurhayat KILIÇ

Due to the fact that critical thinking and problem solving skills are essential components of educational and social lives of individuals, this present study which investigate critical thinking and problem solving skills of undergraduate students of nursing was planned. This is a descriptive study. The study population consisted of undergraduate nursing students of a university during the 2011-2012 academic year. Any specific sampling method was not determined and only the voluntary students was enrolled in the study . Several participants were excluded due to incomplete questionnaires, and eventually a total of 231 nursing students were included in the final sampling. Socio Demographic Features Data Form and the California Critical Thinking Disposition Scale and Problem Solving Inventory were used for data collection. The mean age of 231 subjects (148 girls, 83 boys) was 21.34. The mean score of critical thinking was 255.71 for the first-grade, 255.57 for the second-grade, 264.73 for the third-grade, and 256.468 for the forth-grade students. The mean score of critical thinking was determined as 257.41 for the sample, which can be considered as an average value. Although there are mean score differences of critical thinking between the classes , they were not statistically significant (p> 0.05). With regard to the mean score of problem solving, the first-grade students had 92.86, the second-grade students had 94. 29, the third-grade students had 87.00, and the forth-grade students had 92.87. The mean score of problem solving was determined as 92.450 for the sample. Although there are differences between the classes in terms of mean scores of problem solving, it was not found statistically significant (p> 0.05). In this study, statistically significant correlation could not be identified between age and critical thinking skills of the subjects (p>0.05). However, a negative correlation was identified at low levels between critical thinking skills and problem solving skills. Accordingly, problem solving scores increased in parallel to an increase in the critical thinking scores. Problem Solving Inventory is a measuring tool indicating an increase in the problem solving skills in parallel to a decrease in the scores. Therefore, as the critical thinking skills of individuals go up, their problem solving skills also increase. Furthermore, according to the outcomes of the study, critical thinking and problem solving skills of the students did not show any correlation between genders (p>0.05). As a result, we concluded that the mean scores of critical thinking skills were found at medium levels among nursing students and the mean scores of critical thinking and problem-solving skills between the classes displayed no differences. In addition, no relationship between the age and gender of the subjects and their critical thinking and problem solving skills was identified. Moreover, in parallel to an increase in the scores of critical thinking skills, problem solving skills also increased.