Personnel Development Practices in Turkish Education System

Abstract Nowadays everything develops and changes very quickly and sustainability of organizational goals will be possible only when personnel can keep up with these changes. From administrative aspect it is important to enhance personnel’s potential and prompt them to achieve organizational goals. Personnel development is a process which influences and develops personnel skills, attitude and knowledge level and it is highly important in educational organizations as well as in other organizations. The objective of this study is to analyse policies of Ministry of National Education for personnel development since the foundation of Turkish Republic and provide concrete proposals for the people and institutions who direct educational policies and creating scheme of education. Findings yielded from literature review have been reported. The findings indicate that the objective in I. Maarif Congress in 1921, Maarif Council or National Education Councils since 1923 and Development Plans is to enhance quality of education. In service trainings have been held by Ministry of National Education with the aim of improving personnel. With the help of National Education Councils and Development Plans, decisions will become more effective and universities will provide cooperation during in service trainings, thereby developing personnel. Keywords: human resources, personnel development, in service training

Astronomical Site Selection for Turkey Using GIS Techniques

A site selection of potential observatory locations in Turkey have been carried out by using Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) coupled with Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and satellite imagery which in turn reduced cost and time and increased the accuracy of the final outcome. The layers of cloud cover, digital elevation model, artificial lights, precipitable water vapor, aerosol optical thickness and wind speed were studied in the GIS system. In conclusion of MCDA, the most suitable regions were found to be located in a strip crossing from southwest to northeast including also a diverted region in southeast of Turkey. These regions are thus our prime candidate locations for future on-site testing. In addition to this major outcome, this study has also been applied to locations of major observatories sites. Since no goal is set for \textit{the best}, the results of this study is limited with a list of positions. Therefore, the list has to be further confirmed with on-site tests. A national funding has been awarded to produce a prototype of an on-site test unit (to measure both astronomical and meteorological parameters) which might be used in this list of locations.Comment: 17 pages, 10 figures, accepted by Experimental Astronom

An investigation of saliva and plasma levels of urotensin 2 in recently diagnosed type 2 diabetes mellitus patients on metformin treatment

Introduction: Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a primary disease of the carbohydrate metabolism that is characterised by absolute or relative insulin deficiency, or insulin resistance. Although life expectancy is low for diabetic patients, the prognosis has been improved in recent decades. Metformin is an oral antidiabetic that reduces insulin resistance and plasma glucose levels by decreasing glucose production in the liver. It can be used as a standalone treatment or in combination with other antidiabetic medications or insulin. Urotensin 2 (U-II), which is one of the most effective known vasoconstrictor peptides, was observed to act as a vasoconstrictor in diseases such as hypertension and heart failure, and to induce vasodilation in healthy volunteers. Some studies have proposed that the activation of the U-II system could lead to metabolic syndrome. Certain studies have determined a link between DM and U-II. However, there exist no studies on the effects of U-II in recently diagnosed type 2 DM patients after metformin treatment. This study aims to investigate the plasma and saliva levels of U-II at diagnosis and after a three-month metformin treatment in recently diagnosed type 2 DM patients, and to compare these levels to those of healthy volunteers. Material and methods: Our study compared 30 recently diagnosed type 2 DM patients to their states after three-month metformin treatment and 30 healthy volunteers. Results: When compared with the control group, there was no significant increase in the plasma and saliva U-II levels of recently diagnosed type 2 DM patients. We determined a statistically significant increase in the plasma and saliva ureotensin-2 levels of recently diagnosed type 2 DM patients after a three-month metformin treatment (p < 0.05).Conclusions: It was concluded that the patients with type 2 DM have a multifactorial aetiopathogenesis and an increase in U-II levels after metformin treatment. Metformin has no known effect on the U-II metabolism; therefore, the findings need confirmation through more clinical and experimental studies with more participants

A Situational Analysis of Educational Supervision in the Turkish Educational System

The purpose of this study is to conduct a situational analysis on the educational supervisions carried out within the Turkish educational system. Content analysis was used in this study, which is one of the qualitative research methods. An interview form was prepared by the researchers in accordance with the study purpose and expert opinion sought to ensure content and face validity. Findings of the study show that; supervision is necessary for an increase in educational quality, sustainability of educational worker development, determination and elimination of possible deficiencies, to ensure not falling behind developments in the educational system, and to collaborate within the school. It has been determined that the agents who carry out the supervision should have professional competencies, should be able to enter into effective communication, should be able to spare enough time for supervision and follow the principles of equality. In addition, the importance of effective and sufficient guidance and parental participation was highlighted. In a change to the Turkish educational system in 2014, the authority and responsibility of supervision was assigned to the school principals. Because it would decrease the psychological pressure that supervision imposes on educational workers, and enable a positive atmosphere for communication over a prolonged period, this change was believed to be beneficial overall. According to another standpoint, because school principals lack professional competencies regarding educational supervision and do not follow the principles of equality, this change instead was believed to be unfavorable

Micromechanical modeling of intrinsic and specimen size effects in microforming

Size effect is a crucial phenomenon in the microforming processes of metallic alloys involving only limited amount of grains. At this scale intrinsic size effect arises due to the size of the grains and the specimen/statistical size effect occurs due to the number of grains where the properties of individual grains become decisive on the mechanical behavior of the material. This paper deals with the micromechanical modeling of the size dependent plastic response of polycrystalline metallic materials at micron scale through a strain gradient crystal plasticity framework. The model is implemented into a Finite Element software as a coupled implicit user element subroutine where the plastic slip and displacement fields are taken as global variables. Uniaxial tensile tests are conducted for microstructures having different number of grains with random orientations in plane strain setting. The influence of the grain size and number on both local and macroscopic behavior of the material is investigated. The attention is focussed on the effect of the grain boundary conditions, deformation rate and the grain size on the mechanical behavior of micron sized specimens. The model is intrinsically capable of capturing both experimentally observed phenomena thanks to the incorporated internal length scale and the crystallographic orientation definition of each grain.JRC.G.I.4-Nuclear Reactor Safety and Emergency Preparednes

Void growth based inter-granular ductile fracture in strain gradient polycrystalline plasticity

The precipitation hardened, high strength aerospace alloys (e.g. Al 7000 alloy series) suffer from loss of fracture toughness due to the heat treatment leading to intergranular ductile fracture. Depending on the quenching and aging processes, large precipitates at the grain boundaries with wide precipitate free zones might develop. Therefore the grain boundaries constitute a potential location for micro void formation and evolution under the effect of external loads. This is a common problem of such materials where there is considerable ductile intergranular fracture, which is normally attributed to the embrittlement effects of the environment in other type of alloys. In this context, for the modeling of such a degradation process, the current paper develops a physics based intergranular cracking model of polycrystalline materials where a strain gradient crystal plasticity model is combined with cohesive zone elements whose traction separation relation is based on the evolution of micro-voids at the grain boundaries. The framework successfully predicts the intergranular crack formation and propagation, taking into account different microstructural features, such as porosity, pore shape, grain orientation distribution, and grain boundary conditions

Influences of Multimedia Lesson Contents On Effective Learning

In the information era that we experience today, there is a rapid change in the methods, techniques and materials used for education and teaching. The usage of information and communication technology-assisted teaching materials are becoming more commonplace. Parallel to these developments, the Ministry of National Education took steps to develop IT substructures of all schools in the country and implemented many projects. The purpose of this study is to determine whether or not the multimedia lesson content used by teachers affect effective learning. This study is a qualitative study, conducted with 45 teachers working in primary schools during the 2011-2012 academic year. According to the study findings, participants believe that using multimedia lesson content during lectures increases student motivation, makes students more curious and interested, and think that using multimedia lesson content has positive effects

TEACHER PERCEPTIONS ON CONFLICT RESOLUTION STYLES OF SCHOOL ADMINISTRATORS

The purpose of this study is to determine conflict management styles of school administrators with regards to teacher perceptions. With this respect, 300 high school teachers working in Bartin constituted the study sample. The scale consisting of five dimensions and adapted into Turkish by Gumuseli (1994) was used as the data collection instrument. The dimensions of the scale are Integrating Style, Compromising Style, Accommodating Style, Dominating Style and Avoiding Style. The scale consists of a total of 28 items. According to the data of the study, teacher opinions about school administrators’ conflict resolution styles are at Sometimes level. Whether or not there are differences between the genders, educational status, year of service and professional duration in the school variables was examined. While there were no significant differences between groups concerning the gender and professional duration variables, there were significant differences for the educational status and years of service variables