In the light of continuous change of global perspectives, current educational contexts have been evolving to cover the necessary 21st century skills that the individuals must acquire. Two of the 4Cs (creativity, critical thinking, collaboration and communication) of the 21st century educational trends; creativity and creative thinking are the key characteristics of the learners. Considering as one of the requirements of the global communication, knowing and learning a foreign language should keep up with the current improvements in the field of education. Language learners should think critically and creatively in order to communicate with people to enhance the global collaboration. The purpose of this study is to enhance students’ creative thinking skills through appropriate training and to understand the effectiveness of the stimuli type –visual or audio. A pre-experimental research design was chosen for the implementation of the training program. Two different groups –visual and audio – were given either visual or audio stimuli at the beginning of creative thinking tasks. 12 participants were chosen via convenience sampling for each group and the ages of the learners are between 12-13. The training continued for 6 weeks and the participants took 3 hours of training were week. Each training session covered creative thinking tasks which were adapted or designed for the development of creative thinking skills –fluency, flexibility, originality and elaboration. A task-based pretest was implemented before the treatment and the students’ creative thinking skills were measured through figural, written and oral tests and the post-test was implemented to check the effectiveness of the training program. The results were scored by two different raters and the scores were analyzed through SPSS program. The results indicate that the creative thinking capacity of both groups has improved however the visual group students have higher creative thinking after the completion of the training program. This study suggests that although regarded as a higher level of reasoning, creative thinking can be enhanced to some extent among the secondary school learners of English and it should be a part of EFL curriculum as an essential learning skill.
Due to the globalized world, sixty percent of world’s population is bilingual today. Such a population calls for the need to understand bilinguals from a holistic perspective since it is likely that we are surrounded by bilinguals and we are raising bilingual children. Therefore, this study investigates bilingualism from five different dimensions; their perception of bilingualism and languages as Turkish and English, prosodic features in these two languages, sense of self, biculturalism and their language choice to get an overview about bilingual speakers of Turkish and English by adopting a qualitative design. Moreover, this study is one of the few studies involving bilinguals of Turkish and English. The data was collected from 29 bilinguals through an open-ended questionnaire. In data analysis, participants were divided into two main groups as early and late bilinguals; the origins of the bilinguals were also taken into account. Bilinguals’ responses were examined by using inductive data analysis. The results show that bilingual speakers have a unique profile and they make their decisions depending on the context, culture, self-perception and sense of self. Each bilingual is found to be idiosyncratic with linguistic and non-linguistic behaviour he/she displays.
This study aims to determine the sleeping habits of toddlers aged 0-3. The characteristics of the places where toddlers sleep, the way they go into sleep, and if they have sleeping problems or not are examined with regard to different varieties through descriptive scanning model. The participants are 325 mothers who have toddlers aged 0-3. In order to understand toddlers’ sleeping situations, a questionnaire developed by researchers and personal information form consisting of toddlers’ socio-demographic and relevant information (age, gender, the educational background of parents) were used. Crosstab was used to determine the participants’ descriptive characteristics. When the characteristics of the places where toddlers sleep were examined according to ages, it was found out that most of the toddlers slept in the same room with their parents and this rate decreased as the age increased. They mostly sleep through ways in which parental engagement was required more such as craddling, sucking mom or the pacifier, or being with parents. The sleeping problems were more likely experienced in toddlers between 7-24 months, boys, and those whose parents are university graduates. Also, the rate of experiencing sleeping problems was found higher in parents who give tablets to their toddlers and who let their toddlers watch TV for two or more hours. It has been found that children who are told to be hard tempered have a higher sleeping problem. Considering these findings, the role of parents’ attitudes and preventing interventions was found to be important in establishing the sleeping habits of toddlers. Oz Bu arastirmada 0-3 yas grubu cocuklarin uyku aliskanliklarinin belirlenmesi amaclanmistir. Calismada cocuklarin uyuduklari yere ait ozellikler, uykuya gecis sekilleri ve uyku probleminin olup olmadigi cesitli degiskenler acisindan incelenmistir. Arastirmada betimsel tarama modeli kullanilmistir. Arastirmaya 0-3 yas grubu cocuga sahip 325 anne katilmistir. Arastirmada cocuklarin uyku durumlarini belirlemek amaciyla arastirmacilar tarafindan olusturulmus anket ve cocugun sosyo-demografik ozellikleri ile ilgili bilgilerin bulundugu (yas, cinsiyet, anne- babanin ogrenim durumu) kisisel bilgi formu kullanilmistir. Calisma grubunun betimsel niteliklerinin belirlenmesinde capraz tablolar kullanilmistir. Cocuklarin uyuduklari yere ait ozellikler yaslarina gore incelendiginde tum gruplarda cocuklarin buyuk cogunlugunun anne babasiyla ayni odada uyudugu ve bu oranin yas ilerledikce azaldigi gorulmustur. Kucuk cocuklarin cogunlukla sallanarak, anneyi emerek ya da emzikle, ebeveynlerin yaninda bulunmasiyla uykuya dalma gibi daha cok ebeveyn katilimini gerektiren yontemlerle uykuya gectikleri gorulmustur. 7-24 ay arasi cocuklarda, erkek cocuklarinda ve universite mezunu anne ve babalarin cocuklarinda uyku problemi gorulme oraninin daha yuksek oldugu belirlenmistir. Ayrica cocuklarina tablet-telefon veren, iki saat ve uzeri televizyon izletilen annelerin cocuklarinda uyku problemi gorulme oranin da fazla oldugu gorulmustur. Anneler tarafindan zor mizacli oldugu ifade edilen cocuklarin daha yuksek oranda uyku problemi gosterdigi saptanmistir. Bu bulgular neticesinde kucuk cocuklarin uyku aliskanliklarinin olusmasinda ebeveynlerin uygulamalarinin belirleyici oldugu ve uyku konusunda onleyici mudahalelerin onemi vurgulanmistir.