Dear Colleagues and Readers, Now, we introduce you to the second issue of the Volume Three of the Journal of Innovative Research in Teacher Education (JIRTE). Starting from the current issue, the Editorial Board decided to accept manuscripts submitted in English only. This issue includes eleven papers shortly introduced below. The first paper, authored by Selim Gündoğan, investigates the mediator role of school burnout in the relationship between self-regulation and subjective well-being. The findings indicate that self-regulation positively affects subjective well-being while negatively affecting school burnout as school burnout also negatively affects subjective well-being. Filiz Dere and Taner Çiftçi’s paper, titled “Problems preschool teachers encounter in the use of out-of-school learning environments”, phenomenologically investigates preschool teachers’ experiences of out-of-school activities carried out within their professional practice. Its results reveal that preschool teachers try to utilize out-of-school learning environments as much as they can, but they encounter several problems, some of which are based on parents’ reluctance to support teachers aiming to utilize out-of-school learning contexts. The third paper is related to STEM training practices related to preschool education. Authored by Özge Savaş and Perihan Tuğba Şeker, this quasi-experimental research investigates the effect of STEM education training practices on preschool students’ scientific process skills. It concludes that STEM training practices positively affect children's scientific process skills. In his critical review of the relevant literature, Ünal Deniz examines the relevant studies of teachers’ professional identities. This study indicates that although teachers' professional identity has critical importance in teacher development and teaching practices, questions like how teacher education can play a role in identity construction remain unanswered. Lütfiye Coşkun’s comparative study aims to identify American and Turkish preservice teachers’ perceptions of the purpose of art activities in early childhood education. In respect of the art activities, the findings reveal similarities and differences experienced in the American and Turkish contexts. Authored by Mehmet Melik Kaya, the sixth paper of this issue examines the relationship between social studies student teachers’ conception of global citizenship and their self-transcendence levels. The results conclude that self-transcendence could be an important predictor of how prospective teachers conceptualize global citizenship. Aykar Tekin Bozkurt and Zeynep Yılmaz Öztürk’s paper examines the recent research focusing on inclusive education. The research findings indicate that the number of studies on inclusive education has been arising gradually, which provides signals of a promising future in the relevant field. In their scale developments study, Nail Değirmenci, Bahadır Kılcan, Yusuf İNEL, and Ali Gökalp aim to develop an instrument to be used in measuring the democratic behavior tendencies of middle school students. In the end, they conclude that the developed instrument has a valid and reliable structure and can be used to determine the democratic behavior tendencies of middle school students. In their descriptive quantitative study, Havva Nur Ekizce, Burcu Anılan, and Nurhan Atalay measure pre-service teachers’ awareness levels related to Industry 4.0 concepts. The findings indicate that the preservice teachers’ levels of awareness of Industry 4.0 concepts are rather low and differ significantly concerning the variables of gender, academic average grade, mother and father’s education levels, family income, following scientific journals and websites, and knowing the technological concepts prominent in education. Written by Mevlüt Kara, the tents paper of this issue is related to the relationships between school culture and teacher leadership. This predictive correlational research indicates that having positive attitudes toward teacher leadership, the participating teachers have relatively higher levels of perception about the task culture, success culture, and support culture while their perceptions of bureaucratic culture are moderate. The last paper authored by Emel Bayrak Özmutlu and Pınar Kanık Uysal quantitatively analyses the main idea questions being asked in Turkish language course examinations. The most important findings of this research indicate that the answers to the main idea questions were explicitly included in the text, particularly through the end of the text. Receiving and publishing a growing number of studies in this very issue, I would like to thank my colleagues in the Editorial and Scientific Boards for their contribution to the increasing quality of works to be published in JIRTE. I would also like to thank all my colleagues who contributed to the current issue either as authors or peer reviewers. We are looking forward to seeing you again in a new issue. Dr. Erkan Dinç

This study aims to investigate the mediator role of school burnout in the relationship between self-regulation and subjective well-being. Participants of the study are 390 university students aged between 18 and 30. In the study, the Self-Regulation Scale, Maslach Burnout Inventory-Student Survey, and the short form of the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire have been applied to collect data. The results demonstrated that self-regulation positively affects subjective well-being while negatively affecting school burnout as school burnout also negatively affects subjective well-being. Additionally, it was concluded that school burnout has a mediatory role in the relationship between self-regulation and subjective well-being. Based on these findings, it could be stated that any study that would be carried out to promote the self-regulation skills of an individual would lead to positive results in subjective well-being and would improve skills to cope with school burnout.

This study evaluates the problems encountered in using out-of-school learning environments in preschool education. The descriptive phenomenological method was used to describe the experiences of preschool teachers. The working group comprises 20 preschool teachers in kindergartens affiliated with the Ministry of National Education in Konya. The participants were selected by the criterion sampling method, one of the purposive sampling types. The researchers used the semi-structured interview method to collect the data. The data were analyzed using the content analysis method. The research results showed that most preschool teachers "sometimes" use out-of-school learning environments and mostly prefer "factories" as out-of-school learning environments. Moreover, all preschool teachers utilize out-of-school learning environments to conduct “science and nature observation.” Lastly, the most common problem in using out-of-school learning environments was caused by parents. Based on the results, the parents should be informed about the importance of out-of-school learning environments at the beginning of the semester, and their support should be received.

This study was conducted to examine the effect of STEM education training practices developed for preschool children by the researcher on scientific process skills. The research is in the form of a quasi-experimental study. The research group consists of preschool children studying in the preschool classrooms of a primary school in 2020-2021. In the research, the "Preschool Scientific Process Skill Test " developed by Sahin, Yıldırım, Sürmeli, and Güven (2018) and the "General Information Form" developed by the researcher were used as data collection tools. At the beginning of the research, a pre-test was applied to each participant after obtaining the necessary permissions. STEM education training activities developed by the researcher were applied to the children in the experimental group during the research process; the daily education flow specified in the 2013 Preschool Education Program continued for the children in the control group.  Independent groups T-Test was performed to reveal the difference between pre-test and post-test scores; paired sample T-Test was conducted to see if there was a significant difference between pre-test and post-test scores of experimental and control groups. T-Test and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to see the effect of demographics on scientific process skills. According to the results of the analyses, no significant difference was found between pre-test scores; however, a significant difference was observed between post-test scores in favor of the experimental group. It was concluded that the developed STEM training practices positively affect the children's scientific process skills.

The roles of teachers in organizing, directing, evaluating, and applying within the school place teachers in a critical position in determining the quality of education. For this reason, it is accepted that teacher qualification is an important indicator of the quality of education. At this point, the concept of professional identity, which includes teachers' professional learning, development, and practices, gains importance. The concept of professional identity emerged as a separate research topic in the literature after the 1980s and has gradually increased in the following years. Although current studies provide an important understanding of the concept, the formation and development of teachers’ professional identities continue to be seen as one of the main problem areas in the literature. From this point of view, in this study, the formation and development of teachers’ professional identities have been comprehensively discussed based on the relevant literature. The results of the research show that although teachers' professional identity has critical importance in teacher development and teaching practices, important questions remain about how teacher education can participate in identity construction. In this respect, it is thought that the results obtained within the scope of the study are important in terms of showing the basic elements that affect the formation and development of teachers’ professional identities. In addition, it is thought that the study may offer various ideas to policymakers and practitioners to establish a standard professional identity development procedure that will prioritize the professional development of teachers. 

This study aims at identifying American and Turkish early childhood preservice teachers’ perceptions of the purpose of art activities in early childhood education and the relationships between rankings of the participants made through a self-reported importance order survey. A total of 270 preservice teachers studying at the University of North Texas and Kilis 7 Aralık University participated in the study. “Art activities evaluation sheet” was used to collect data. The data were analyzed using median values, Man Whitney U Test, and Kruskal-Wallis H test. The obtained results showed that there are both some similarities and differences in the American and Turkish preservice teachers’ perceptions of the purpose of art activities. Both American and Turkish early childhood preservice teachers gave the highest priority to the same item “Art activities improve creativity”. However, some items were valued differently by American and Turkish preservice teachers. No gender-related differences were observed in the rank orders of both American and Turkish preservice teachers.

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between global citizenship and self-transcendence in pre-service social studies teachers. Some psychological factors such as personality and self may be effective in the formation of the perception of universal citizenship. Therefore, the concept of self-transcendence, which is thought to affect the perception of global citizenship, was discussed in this study. The study group consisted of 175 pre-service teachers studying in the Department of Social Studies at a state university in the Central Anatolia region of Turkey. As one of the general survey models in quantitative research methods, the relational survey model was used in this study. Global Citizenship Scale and Self-Transcendence Scale were used as data collection tools.  Through the analysis, the global citizenship and self-transcendence levels of the teacher candidates were found to be moderate. Based on the findings of the research, it was concluded that self-transcendence could be an important predictor of global citizenship. In other words, pre-service teachers may be more prone to global citizenship as the level of self-transcendence increases.

This study aimed to review the literature on "Inclusive education" in the Web of Science (WoS) database between 1992-2021 and determine the leading trends and progress by using the bibliometric parameters. The bibliometric data were obtained from the WoS database and visualized using the Vosviewer software. The data set was analyzed according to bibliometric indicators such as the number of articles, the top 20 publications, the most frequently used keywords, the cooperation between countries and the distribution of keywords. The analysis results showed a significant increase in scientific research on inclusive education since 2010. The analysis results revealed that the word "Inclusive education" was the most commonly used keyword in scientific research among the 8174 keywords. The USA is the leading country in terms of scientific productivity and the number of published articles. The study findings indicate that "inclusive education" has an important place in education and guidance research and signals the promising future of research in this field.

This study aims to develop a measurement tool to find out the democratic behaviour tendencies of middle school students at school. For this purpose, the scale items were created by drawing upon the relevant literature and consulting with experts. The triple Likert-type scale, prepared by considering the levels of middle school students, was administered to a total of 512 students studying in five middle schools in the Denizli, Uşak, and Afyon provinces in the fall semester of the 2021-2022 academic year. The Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) revealed that the scale structure consisted of 12 items gathered under 3 factors “Being Respectful”, “Being Responsible” and “Equal Treatment” and factor loads varied between .49 and .74. The correlation analysis revealed that the correlation coefficients of the items collected under the factors forming the scale were higher than .20. The Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA), which was carried out to confirm the structure formed with the EFA, revealed that the model formed was perfectly compatible with the collected data and the factors differed significantly, according to the Chi-Square (X2), significance and measurement values. It was also found that the developed scale explained 46.40% of the total variance and the Cronbach's Alpha value for the overall scale was .72. It was concluded that the measurement tool is a valid and reliable structure that can be used to determine the democratic behaviour tendencies of middle school students at school.

With the developments experienced in recent years, the current period, called Industry 4.0, which includes concepts such as the internet of objects, artificial intelligence, dark factories, and embedded systems, has influenced many areas. One of the areas most affected by these developments is education. The knowledge level of pre-service teachers about these concepts is very important in this study, the purpose was to determine the pre-service science teachers’ levels of awareness of Industry 4.0 concepts. “Industry 4.0 Conceptual Awareness Scale” prepared by Dogan and Baloglu (2020) was used as a data collection tool. The findings obtained in the study revealed that the preservice teachers’ levels of awareness of Industry 4.0 concepts differed significantly concerning the variables of gender, academic average grade, mother and father’s education levels, family income, following scientific journals and websites, and knowing the technological concepts prominent in education. Consequently, it was seen that the pre-service science teachers' awareness of Industry 4.0 concepts was generally at a level below the average, except for certain concepts.

This study aimed to examine the relationship between school culture and teacher leadership based on the perceptions of teachers working in primary schools. The study was designed with a predictive correlational model. The sample consisted of 625 teachers who were determined through a simple random sampling technique. The data were collected through the School Culture Scale and the Teacher Leadership Scale. In data analysis, mean and standard deviation were used to reveal the participants’ level of perception. Additionally, Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient and multiple regression analyses were performed. As a result, it was revealed that the teachers have relatively higher levels of perception about the task culture, success culture, and support culture while their perceptions of bureaucratic culture are moderate. Moreover, it was concluded that the participants’ overall perceptions of teacher leadership are partially high. It was found that there is a moderate positive and significant relationship between teacher leadership and the sub-dimensions of the task, support, and success cultures, and a low level of positive and significant relationship with the sub-dimension of bureaucratic culture. Finally, it was yielded that task culture, support culture, success culture, and bureaucratic culture predict teacher leadership significantly. Therefore, it is suggested to develop informal relationships, create an environment of trust, promote horizontal organizational structures, support teacher autonomy, and appreciate teacher achievement to develop teacher leadership at schools.

This study aims to examine the main idea questions included in Turkish course exams. The study was carried out with a non-intervention research model. The research analyses were carried out on 178 questions which were determined to be the main idea questions among 1,432 questions in 238 exam papers from 138 schools. It was observed that there were no main idea questions in approximately half of the exam papers examined in the study. The main idea questions in the exam papers were asked with 10 different question stems. More than half of the main idea questions examined were open-ended. An expository text type was used in the majority of the main idea questions. Examination of the main idea questions revealed that in most of them, the main idea was explicitly included in the text. Moreover, it was seen that in the texts used for main idea questions, the main idea was mostly included at the end of the text. This situation casts doubt on the extent to which the exams applied in schools are adequate in terms of preparing students for international exams. For this reason, curriculum development studies should be included that will serve to make teachers more competent in increasing the quality and quantity of main idea questions in Turkish exams and to improve students’ ability to find the main idea, scaffolding models should be designed and made familiar to teachers and students.