Evaluation of teachers' experiences and opinions on TÜBİTAK 4004/4005/4006 projects

Since 2007, TÜBİTAK has been providing support under various titles such as Science and Society support programs, Nature Education and Science Schools Support Program (TÜBİTAK 4004), Innovative Education Applications Support Program (TÜBİTAK 4005), TÜBİTAK Science Fairs Support Program (TÜBİTAK 4006) in order to encourage scientific activities for students at various grade levels, teachers and teacher candidates and different segments of the society and to strengthen the science-society relationship. In the TÜBİTAK 4004/4005/4006 projects; it was aimed to bring information together with the society and to disseminate it, to provide information in an understandable way by visualizing it as much as possible and with interactive applications, and this study was carried out to examine the teachers who participated in this program. The changes in the interest and attitudes of many teachers who took part in such projects towards TUBITAK projects, the problems encountered in the preparation and presentation of the projects, how these problems were tried to be resolved, the expectations of teachers from their students and the effects on the careers of teachers were examined. In this study, phenomenology design, which is one of the qualitative research methods, was used. The study group of the study consists of 32 teachers from different branches working in schools affiliated with the Ministry of National Education in various regions of Turkey. The study group of the study was determined by criterion sampling, one of the purposive sampling strategies of the non-probability sampling methods, among the teachers who worked as executives/researchers, participants or consultants in TÜBİTAK 4004/4005/4006 projects. The research data were collected with semi-structured interview forms prepared by the researcher. The validity of the semi-structured interview forms was evaluated in accordance with expert opinions. The interview forms were prepared for two different purposes as "teachers who worked as executives/researchers" and "teachers who worked as participants or consultants" in TÜBİTAK 4004/4005/4006 projects. The interviews were recorded and backed up using voice recorders (telephone or PC). As a result, analyses were conducted with content analysis study. According to the results obtained from the study, it was understood that the main difficulties encountered during the preparation studies were various administrative, logistic, financial and human resource-related difficulties. In particular, difficulties in obtaining materials, limitations in budget planning, uncertainties in providing instructors, long time-consuming official correspondence with institutions, students' absenteeism from the project, administrative support and spatial inadequacies were frequently mentioned. It was stated that they tried to overcome these problems mostly with individual initiative, creating alternative plans, securing them by signing written contracts with institutions and communicating with supporting/alternative institutions. It was emphasized that students' active participation in such projects especially improved their scientific process skills, provided positive development in high-level mental skills such as problem solving, critical thinking and creative thinking, and increased their ability to cooperate in groups. It was also determined that leading TUBITAK projects increased productivity in the academic field, contributed to their careers with article/announcement presentations, contributed to their professional and personal development, contributed to their resumes in terms of academics, and provided the opportunity to meet and collaborate with other colleagues and academics. It was stated that the project process was quite intense and tiring, but it did not have an effect on the teachers' professional career steps.