Browsing by Author "Alev, Nedim"

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Physics, Chemistry and Biology Student Teachers' Understandings of Nanotechnology
(Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 191 ( 2015 ) 1767 – 1771, 2012) Kurnaz, Mehmet Altan; Alev, Nedim; Pektaş, Murat; Bayraktar, Güntaç
The aim of this study is to determine student teachers’ understandings of nanotechnology. The study was conducted as a case study method. The participant of the study comprised 85 candidate physics (33), chemistry (16) and biology (36) teachers in the Faculty of Education at a university in Black Sea Region in Turkey. To reach the aim of the study, an achievement test with some open ended questions was formed. The answers from the student teachers were analysed using the content analysis method. The data analysis revealed that majority of the questions were responded as ‘I don’t know’ by the student teachers. It was also determined that the student teachers did not scientifically conceptualize “nanotechnology” as expected, and they did not give scientifically accepted examples of nanotechnology. In the light of the findings, the study was highlighted that the student teachers had non-scientific understandings for the nanotechnology. As a consequence of this study, it is thought that the results of this study will be helpful to curriculum developers, researchers and teachers.
Primary and Secondary Postgraduate Students’ Ways of Selecting Courses and Encountered Problems
(Journal of Turkish Science Education, 6(3), 38-52,, 2009-04-15) Kurnaz, Mehmet Altan; Alev, Nedim
Duty of preparing scientists which is among basic missions of universities starts with accepting individuals to the post-graduate education after they graduated from an undergraduate programme. In general, basic aims of post-graduate education are to educate qualified human power; such as, scientists and lecturers, to produce works which lead to developments in technical field, and to do research devoted to finding or proposing solutions to basic problems (Sevinç, 2001). Selecting postgraduate students for Doctorate or Master Programmes requires certain criteria. It is accepted that these criteria effect the quality of the process of educating scientists (Çıkrıkçı-Demirtaşlı, 2002). The quality of this process depends on students’ approaches and their academic experiences in each stage of the process as well as their selection. Postgraduate programmes can be considered as a process consisting of three substages: beginning, research and writing (URL-1). Beginning stage, in this classification, can be described as a preparatory phase for students to prepare themselves for the research stage which includes the process of executing the study and drawing conclusions from the study, and writing stage, on the other hand, is the phase of writing the report of the study. These stages should be considered as parallel processes rather than follow-ups. However, it is widely accepted that the beginning stage is the cornerstone of the whole process. One thing for doing this as it deserves is to select and take certain courses that would make contributions to the preparation for research area. However, little has been done to guide young researchers on how they select or would select courses that are more useful for thier future works. Thus, it is believed that this study would make a contribution to the reader, directors of Master and Doctorate programme, post-graduate students and others, to reflect on their acts.