Clue giving behaviours of teachers according to their 8th grade students` perceptions in elementary schools

ABSTRACT CLUE GIVING BEHAVIOURS OF TEACHERS ACCORDING TO THEIR 8th GRADE STUDENTS' PERCEPTIONS IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS Hüma ERDO?AN Anadolu University Graduate School of Educational Sciences Department of Educational Sciences Curriculum and Instruction Program February 2004 Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Mustafa SA?LAM Obtaining these desired outcomes depends on the cognitive and perceptional readiness of students and the quality of teaching performed by the teacher which depends on his/her personal and professional qualities. Elements of this instructional service are clue giving, participation, reinforcement, feedback and correction. Clue giving includes the verbal, written, and visual signs and explanations used by the teacher in order to let students know why and how to something in the teaching-learning process. Effective and productive learning is achieved by the teacher's providing of appropriate clues at the right time. Due to this, research is necessary to determine the correlation between clue giving, which forms an important aspect of instruction and affects its quality, and the other elements. The focus of this study, which is based on this need, was the determination of the situations in which teachers' exhibited clue giving behaviors. The subjects who participated in this research were 8th grade students in the elementary schools of the central district of Eskişehir and the Turkish, Mathematics, Science, and Social Sciences teachers in those schools during the 2001-2002 academic year. The sample was 758 students selected from among the 24 classes of the 6 schools which made l/5th of the 32 schools that had more than four 8th grade classes. A triple likert- type scale which consisted of twenty- seven questions was used to collect data.Misfilled or incompletely filled questionnaires were excluded. The return rate of the questionnaires was 96.6%. For data analysis, SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences) were used. In accord with the purpose of the study, teachers' display of clue giving behaviors was identified primarily. Thus, initially the number of answers students gave on the 27 item questionnaire, their percentages, their average point scores were analyzed generally; and then the same analysis was conducted by taking into consideration the four teachers' fields of specialization. In order to determine the realization rate of the teachers' clue giving behaviors, 3 interval points were identified between the highest and lowest possible scores of the questionnaire, and numbers and percentages were calculated by taking into consideration these intervals. As the final step of the analysis, in order to identify the teachers' clue giving behaviors in their own fields and the differences among the four fields in this respect, the same calculations were repealed for each one of the four teaching fields, that is to say, averages and standard deviations of the teachers' clue giving behaviors for each field were calculated and variance analysis (F test) was carried out. The research results indicate that, in students' opinion, more than half the teachers exhibited clue giving behaviors at a satisfactory level, however, a small group of teachers exhibited clue giving behaviors at an unsatisfactory level. When the teachers' clue giving behaviors were analyzed according to their fields of specialization, it was seen that Turkish language teachers displayed the desired behavior at a satisfactory level, whereas other teachers mostly displayed the desired behavior at an unsatisfactory level. The results indicated that clue giving behavior was displayed at an average level among all teachers; at a high level among Turkish language teachers, and at an average level among Mathematics, Science, and Social Sciences teachers. In students' opinion, a small difference in terms of clue giving behavior existed among teachers according to VItheir fields of specialization. According to the arithmetic mean of the students' responses, the highest mean is observed among Turkish language teachers, Social Science teachers follow them; thirdly, come the Mathematics teachers. The lowest mean Was seen among Science teachers., When the differences among the groups' means were studied, it was found that the differences between Turkish language teachers and Mathematics teachers, Science and Social Sciences teachers, and Mathematics and Social Sciences teachers were significant; however, the difference between Mathematics and Social Sciences teachers was not significant. vıı