Editorial

Feyyat Gökçe

Dear Teacher Educators, Educational Scientists and Educationalists,

A total of five articles, four of which are in English and one in Turkish, are published in the first issue of 2016 for the Journal of Teacher Education and Educators.

In the first article, which reports a study conducted with preservice teachers in a foundational education institute, Latisha L. Smith, Audrey C. Rule, Sarah E. Montgomery and Billie J. Cowley analyze preservice teachers’ instructional strategies with impoverished students in an educational context. According to the results of the research, students state that they communicate more easily with teachers who are close to them and they find the learning environment sincere when they are with those teachers. With their research, researchers find that university-community partnerships might provide teachers meaningful experiences in their preservice education.

In the second article, Demet Yaylı examines the views of preservice teachers and teacher educators on concerns about listening in a foreign language. The research aims to reveal the effects of the listening skill on other language learning skills. As the results of the research show, preservice teachers and teacher educators have similar views about listening concerns in a foreign language, reasons and results of this concern and coping with the issue. These similarities show that both preservice teachers and teacher educators are aware of their issues regarding listening, but this knowledge does not help them lower their level of concern.

Nesrin Öztürk, author of the third article entitled “Analyzing Preservice Classroom Teachers’ Understanding of Metacognition and Metacognition Training”, aims to analyze preservice classroom teachers’ knowledge and skills about metacognition training. In the research it is found that preservice teachers do not know the concept of metacognition well and their level of pedagogic perception of the concept does not support metacognition training. Based on these findings, the researcher suggests teacher educators should conduct researches on the perception of metacognition training and the efficiency of practice based research method courses.

In the fourth article, İsmail Çakır ve Oya Büyükyavuz aim to identify the opinions of first grade English language teaching students about the content of an Advanced Reading and Writing course.  The study also aims to reveal the expectations of the students from the instructor, and the suggestions of the students to improve the course. According to findings, most of the participants think that there should be more reading activities for the improvement of writing skills. They state that there should be more emphasis on grammar, vocabulary and orthographic rules in the course.

In the last article, Vural Hoşgörür examined the establishment, processes and practices of internal auditing in the Turkish Ministry of Education, regulated by Law No. 5018. The researcher finds that internal auditing department in the Turkish Ministry of Education, founded to reallocate resources more efficiently, productively and economically, is not able to achieve its departmental goals as predicted. Thus, he suggests that improvements should be made to personnel development, organizational structure and working conditions of internal auditing department.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the authors who have contributed with their articles, the reviewers who have spared their efforts in the evaluation of those articles and the members of the science board, subject-field editors and the technical support team for all their valuable efforts in the first issue of 2016 for the Journal of Teacher Education and Educators.

We hope to be reunited with you again in the future issues of the Journal of Teacher Education and Educators…