Problems of Education in the 21st Century

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Authors: Editorial Board

Problems of Education in the 21st Century, ISSN 1822-7864 (Print) ISSN 2538-7111 (Online) Vol. 82, No. 1, 2024

7-28

Authors: Abdullah Mohammad Alhowail, Saad Eid Albaqami

The present study examined critical thinking (CT) and its importance in Saudi secondary education. The sample included upper-secondary students and teachers in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia's capital and largest city. Qualitative and quantitative methods were used to study students' CT skill development, barriers to growth, instructors' views on CT advancement, and students' views on their CT skills. The study examines secondary school students' critical thinking development and impediments. It also examined teachers' perceptions of their students' progress in CT. The research collected quantitative data from 374 questionnaires and qualitative data from eight interviews. SPSS performed regression analysis on survey quantitative data. A thematic analysis was employed to evaluate qualitative interview data. The quantitative findings from the surveys revealed uneven CT skills. The findings also showed that gender, Grade Point Average (GPA) and family background affect CT. The qualitative findings from the interviews with the teachers stressed the importance of collaborative programming and active student engagement in classroom activities to foster CT. Bullying and peer pressure hindered autonomous and CT, making it difficult for instructors to motivate and support students. The findings emphasised the importance of teachers in creating a safe learning environment and encouraging analytical thinking. Recommendations for improving CT in Saudi secondary education were proposed addressing several critical aspects of CT advancement, including curriculum development, teacher training, parental involvement, government-led extracurricular learning, teacher-student interactions, and gender equality in CT advancement. This study could help Saudi students develop CT skills to meet the challenges of the modern world.

48-65

Authors: Erkan Efilti, Recai Doğan, Argen Zhumgalbekov, Süleyman Barbaros Yalçın

Increasing research reveals the impact of technostress on life satisfaction among academics. In line with the determined purpose, it is first determined whether there is a significant difference in terms of technostress and life satisfaction between demographic variables such as age, gender, field of science and years of experience. Secondly, an answer was sought to the question of whether there was a significant impact of technostress on life satisfaction. To achieve the determined research purpose, the relational scanning model was used. The study involved 342 academic participants working at different universities in Kyrgyzstan who agreed to participate voluntarily. The research was conducted with 342 academics, 207 women and 135 men. To analyze the data obtained, t-test, one-way ANOVA, Pearson’s correlation analysis and linear regression analysis were used. As a result of the research, it was determined that there was a low level of negative association between life satisfaction and the socially focused technostress sub-dimension score among the technostress sub-dimensions. Life satisfaction and general technostress level were determined to be permanent and significant among the technostress sub-dimensions such as profession-oriented, technical subject-oriented learning-teaching process-oriented and personal technostress sub-dimensions. The regression analysis revealed that general technostress emerged, but the sub-dimensions showed no influence on life satisfaction, and that single socially focused technostress had a negative predictive impact on life satisfaction.

85-101

Authors: Ebubekir Eroğlu, Serpil Özdemir

Selecting and remembering the necessary information from rapidly increasing information requires summarization skills. Research on improving students' summarization skills has focused on deletion, generalization, and reconstruction strategies. However, direct teaching of these strategies does not yield successful results. For this reason, researchers have turned to teaching summarization based on understanding the text. Knowing the macrostructure and superstructure of the text can help understand the text and select the information to be included in the summary. The aim of this study is to determine the effect of macrostructure and superstructure teaching on summary writing achievement. The study was conducted in a one-group pretest-posttest design and lasted for 6 weeks. The study was conducted with 22 seventh grade students in a public secondary school. The data were collected with a total of 132 summary texts in which students summarized five stories. The summaries of texts were scored with the Text Summary Evaluation Rubric (TSER). As a result of the study, significant differences were obtained in summarization achievement in favor of the posttest. Based on this result, it is recommended that macrostructure and superstructure teaching be included in programs and course books. This study is limited to narrative texts. In future studies, whether the achievement in summarization narrative and informative texts differs and how long it takes for different age groups to develop their achievement in summarization of different types of texts can be examined based on text structure teaching.

117-132

Authors: Okan Sarigöz, Hasan Özgür

Educators may occasionally neglect certain parts of the curriculum that they consider relatively unimportant. There are instances when inadequate time and pupils' readiness for central examinations are cited as justifications for these occurrences. The aim of this research was to examine the reasons that lead teachers who teach courses that are tested on the Upper- Secondary School Entrance Exam, which is the central exam for 8th graders, to ignore the curriculum according to the opinions of the teachers. The research was designed according to the case study, a type of qualitative research. The study group of the research consists of a total of 15 teachers, 6 of whom work in private schools and 9 of whom work in public schools, in the province of Hatay in the 2021-2022 academic year. A purposive criterion sampling method was used to select the teachers. Research data were collected through a semi-structured interview form and analyzed by content analysis method. It was found that most of the teachers interviewed ignored or abandoned the curriculum because of central exams or external pressures. It was stated that some reasons related to school administrators, parents and students forced teachers to make changes in course teaching methods and processes or forced them to abandon the curriculum.

149-150

Authors: Ayşegül Aslan

Abstract. Erratum for “Aslan, A. (2022). The opinions and needs of science center instructors: The case of Gokmen space and aviation training center (GUHEM). Problems of Education in the 21st Century, 80(6), 792–810. https://doi.org/10.33225/pec/22.80.792”. Keywords: erratum