THE POWERFUL LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS IN VOCATIONAL AND TECHNICAL SECONDARY EDUCATION IN TURKEY: TEACHERS' VIEWS

This research aims to determine the opinions of vocational high school teachers about the Powerful Learning Environment (PLE) approach in vocational and technical secondary education. This study, which was carried out with the qualitative research method, was designed with the phenomenological pattern. The participants of the research consist of 28 teachers. The data were obtained with a semi-structured interview form, and the descriptive analysis method was used in data analysis. According to the results of the research, the obstacles to creating a PLE in vocational and technical education are the theoretical weight of the course programs, work-orientedness in internship workplaces (rejection of the learning process) and outdated vocational field training program modules and workshop equipment. On the other hand, the suggestions for creating a PLE in vocational and technical education are using an on-the-job learning model and increasing the internship period, reducing the theoretical Intensity in the curriculum and emphasizing the practice and increasing teacher orientation, providing program, equipment and workshop materials suitable for technological development, constant communication and interaction between teacher-student-parent-internship employer, the establishment of commercial relations between vocational high schools and establishment of virtual companies in entrepreneurship clubs, meeting with industry representatives to adapt to the changing expectations of the post-pandemic industry and using the advantages of peer learning in vocational skills education.  Article visualizations

Ancient and Current Chaos Theories

Chaos theories developed in the last three decades have made very important contributions to our understanding of dynamical systems and natural phenomena. The meaning of chaos in the current theories and in the past is somewhat different from each other. In this work, the properties of dynamical systems and the evolution of chaotic systems were discussed in terms of the views of ancient philosophers. The meaning of chaos in Anaximenes’ philosophy and its role in the Ancient natural philosophy has been discussed in relation to other natural philosophers such as of Anaximander, Parmenides, Heraclitus, Empedocles, Leucippus (i.e. atomists) and Aristotle. In addition, the fundamental concepts of statistical mechanics and the current chaos theories were discussed in relation to the views in Ancient natural philosophy. The roots of the scientific concepts such as randomness, autocatalysis, nonlinear growth, information, pattern, etc. in the Ancient natural philosophy were investigated

PROBLEMS AND SOLUTION SUGGESTIONS ENCOUNTERED IN VOCATIONAL SKILL TRAINING IN VOCATIONAL HIGH SCHOOLS: TEACHERS’ VIEWS

This study aims to determine the problems encountered in the process of acquiring vocational skills in vocational high schools and their suggestions according to the opinions of teachers working in the vocational branches of the production-manufacturing sector. In the research, the phenomenological method, one of the qualitative research methods, was used. The study group of the research consists of 21 teachers from different branches. The data were obtained by the semi-structured interview method. The content analysis method was used in data analysis. According to the findings of the research, the problems in vocational skills training are lack of materials, technological infrastructure problems, incompatibility of training programs with the needs of the industry, inability to adapt to changing vocational skills, misguidance in the choice of vocational field and educational system-school management based problems.  Article visualizations

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TÜBİTAK MAG Proje31.01.200

Viscoelasticity and pattern formations in stock market indices

The viscoelastic and thermodynamic properties of four stock indices, namely, DJI, Nasdaq-100, Nasdaq-Composite, and S&P were analyzed for a period of 30 years from 1986 to 2015. The asset values (or index) can be placed into Aristotelian ‘potentiality-actuality’ framework by using scattering diagram. Thus, the index values can be transformed into vectorial forms in a scattering diagram, and each vector can be split into its horizontal and vertical components. According to viscoelastic theory, the horizontal component represents the conservative, and the vertical component represents the dissipative behavior. The related storage and the loss modulus of these components are determined and then work-like and heat-like terms are calculated. It is found that the change of storage and loss modulus with Wiener noise (W) exhibit interesting patterns. The loss modulus shows a featherlike pattern, whereas the storage modulus shows figurative man-like pattern. These patterns are formed due to branchings in the system and imply that stock indices do have a kind of ‘fine-order’ which can be detected when the change of modulus values are plotted with respect to Wiener noise. In theoretical calculations it is shown that the tips of the featherlike patterns stay at negative W values, but get closer to W = 0 as the drift in the system increases. The shift of the tip point from W = 0 indicates that the price change involves higher number of positive Wiener number corrections than the negative Wiener. The work-like and heat-like terms also exhibit patterns but with different appearance than modulus patterns. The decisional changes of people are reflected as the arrows in the scattering diagram and the propagation path of these vectors resemble the path of crack propagation. The distribution of the angle between two subsequent vectors shows a peak at 90°, indicating that the path mostly obeys the crack path occurring in hard objects. Entropy mimics the Wiener noise in the evolution of stock index value although they describe different properties. Entropy fluctuates at fast increase and fast fall of index value, and fluctuation becomes very high at minimum values of the index. The curvature of a circle passing from the two ends of the vector and the point of intersection of its horizontal and vertical components designates the reactivity involved in the market and the radius of circle behaves somehow similar to entropy and Wiener noise. The change of entropy and Wiener noise with radius exhibits patterns with four branches

Dynamics of the world terror and the war in Iraq

The dynamics of world terror and the war in Iraq were studied from different aspects. World terror displays a scaling growth while the rate equations of the civilian and the US-soldier casualties in Iraq both display zero-order chemical kinetics. The fractal dimensions of scattering diagrams were evaluated. Animal diagrams were obtained from scattering diagrams. A similarity/dissimilarity ratio was defined to relate any casualty event to a former one. This ratio implies that the dynamics of civilian casualties in Iraq is very complex. The changes of topological indices of animal diagrams were evaluated with respect to time and the area of the blank zones. The topological index changes linearly with time, and there exists a scaling relation between the topological index and the area of the blank zones in the case of world terror. The area of blank zones in the scattering diagram of US-soldiers decreases with the increase of topological index implying that the dynamics is confined to the scattering diagram. The area keeps almost constant for civilian casualties in Iraq with a jump after some time, and it implies that the dynamics has a growing tendency. There are two self-similarity patterns in the scattering diagram of world terror; one is peak-like and expanding, and the other is triangular and controls the growth. There is only a triangular controlling pattern for the scattering diagram of civilian casualties, and there is no significant self-similarity pattern for the scattering diagram of the US-soldier casualties in Iraq

Autocatalysis as The Natural Philosophy Underlying Complexity and Biological Evolution

The importance and different aspects of autocatalysis in evolution was analyzed. The behaviour of autocatalytic reactions mainly the Lotka-Volterra and the Schlögl equations were discussed in terms of phase change, entropy, and their oscillation frequency. The increase of complexity as the general direction of evolution was examined on some patterns in terms of both their entropy and information content. In addition, the relation between stability and functionality, stability and cohesion were discussed. It was concluded that evolution drifts in the direction of increasing complexity as a kind of natural philosophy to counteract the increase of entropy in the universe