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This study investigated teaching self-efficacy beliefs and opinions about distance education of teachers in Turkey who switched to distance education during the COVID-19 pandemic. 758 teachers from Turkey completed an online questionnaire comprising demographic information questions, Likert type scale items on self-efficacy for distance education, closed-ended questions addressing teachers' opinions about distance education, and an open-ended question enabling teachers express their experiences with distance education. Data analysis included descriptive statistics, independent samples t-tests, and content analysis. The analysis showed that teachers' beliefs in their own abilities in fulfilling the requirements of distance education, such as organizing effective learning environments and preparing different evaluation activities were not at a high level. The education they received, the active use of technology before the pandemic period and the type of school they work in have effects on teachers' self-efficacy towards distance education. The low number of students attending the live classes negatively affected their motivation. Furthermore, teachers thought that current instructional materials on the platform were not sufficient for students to be successful. However, teachers believed that their experiences in distance education during the pandemic increased their efficiency in education. Most participants received sufficient support from the school administration, but not from parents during this period. Students' lack of computers and/or internet and systemic errors were among the main problems encountered by the teachers regarding the distance education system. In the study, suggestions were made to make distance education more effective.

Research indicates that academic procrastination is a common attitude among learners, and that it generally has a negative correlation with academic performance. The present quantitative causal-comparative study aims to determine the cause of differences, in terms of procrastination tendency, in academic performance among online learners. The study further investigates whether academic procrastination tendency significantly predicts the academic performance of online learners. The sample included a total of 333 online distance learners, from whom data were obtained through an online survey. Results showed that there was no statistically significant difference between male and female learners in terms of academic procrastination. Moreover, low procrastinators had better academic performance than that of high procrastinators, and learners' academic procrastination tendencies significantly predicted academic performance. These results demonstrate that academic procrastination tendency is an important indicator for predicting the academic achievements of online learners.

The main objective of this study is to evaluate the social studies education literature in Turkey through systematic bibliometric analysis. The science mapping method was employed to analyze studies. 252 studies that were extracted from the Web of Science (WoS) database were analyzed. The findings revealed that the number of studies has been dramatically increased in the last decade. Besides, It was found that the majority of publications were published in local journals. Moreover, theses produced in this field are the most cited sources in the articles. It was also concluded that even though there are 65 social studies education departments in Turkish universities, only a few numbers of them made collaborations in the publications. Besides, it was found that there are no multi-country collaborations in social studies education literature in Turkey.

Considering the increasing importance of educational technologies and the debates about the role of technology in education, it is of great importance to reveal research trends in educational technologies. It is also possible to present the big picture of trends and the comparative role of the UK in this picture, which is one of the main countries leading the research trends in the educational technology field. Carrying the existing studies in the literature to a wider range with the comparison of England and the world will levered the literature up to a seminal point. This study is aiming to identify and compare research trends in the educational technology field both in the world and the UK. For this purpose, the studies from 1965 to 2020 indexed in the ERIC database were reviewed by using data mining techniques. The analysis of studies indexed in the field of educational technologies in the ERIC database presented in terms of four fields: Descriptor, Title, Abstract, and Audience. The data were analyzed in terms of these variables and divided into four categories: target audience, methodology, approaches, and technology. Findings have important implications for the field.

ObjectivesSurvival machine learning (ML) has been suggested as a useful approach for forecasting future events, but a growing concern exists that ML models have the potential to cause racial disparities through the data used to train them. This study aims to develop race/ethnicity-specific survival ML models for Hispanic and black women diagnosed with breast cancer to examine whether race/ethnicity-specific ML models outperform the general models trained with all races/ethnicity data.MethodsWe used the data from the US National Cancer Institute's Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results programme registries. We developed the Hispanic-specific and black-specific models and compared them with the general model using the Cox proportional-hazards model, Gradient Boost Tree, survival tree and survival support vector machine.ResultsA total of 322 348 female patients who had breast cancer diagnoses between 1 January 2000 and 31 December 2017 were identified. The race/ethnicity-specific models for Hispanic and black women consistently outperformed the general model when predicting the outcomes of specific race/ethnicity.DiscussionAccurately predicting the survival outcome of a patient is critical in determining treatment options and providing appropriate cancer care. The high-performing models developed in this study can contribute to providing individualised oncology care and improving the survival outcome of black and Hispanic women.ConclusionPredicting the individualised survival outcome of breast cancer can provide the evidence necessary for determining treatment options and high-quality, patient-centred cancer care delivery for under-represented populations. Also, the race/ethnicity-specific ML models can mitigate representation bias and contribute to addressing health disparities.

The field of distance education (DE) is dynamic and constantly evolving; it reflects and adapts according to changes in socio-cultural, demographic, political, and technological domains. Thus, there is a need to understand past and present activities in the field, in order to better inform future research. The main purpose of this study was to examine DE research through data mining and analytics approaches, using social network analysis (SNA) and text mining to conduct a bibliographic analysis. The findings highlighted three main strands of DE research: (1) issues related to open education; (2) the design, support, and quality assurance of online DE; and (3) the implementation and use of educational technology, media, and digital tools. SNA of the bibliometric data identified pivotal theoretical contributions, including that the fields of distance education and educational technology converge. The article concludes with recommendations for future research directions.

The conversation with Alexandra Elbakyan intends to explore the Sci-Hub phenomenon and the core motives that initiated Sci-Hub. Accordingly, Sci-Hub is an open science project that has gone viral and is driven by people who pursue knowledge. The core idea behind the Sci-Hub is very simple: people should have access to knowledge without any restrictions. Elbakyan argues that science should be ruled by the scientist, not by the corporations. It is here, in a publish or perish scholarly world, that Sci-Hub aims to give control back to scientists and empower them. Elbakyan claims that for-profit corporations are gatekeeping knowledge, whereas Sci-Hub is disseminating it for the greater good. The conversation with Elbakyan about Sci-Hub raises a critical question for us to answer: Who is the real owner of the information?

Blended learning, which has emerged as a mainstream approach for bridging onsite and online learning, promises flexibility to stakeholders in the educational process. This paper argues that blended learning can be understood as a process that combines onsite and online learning by blending the strengths of one modality and neutralizing the weaknesses of the other to provide flexibility to learners, instructors, and educational institutions. This flexibility can be afforded to time, space, path, and pace through sequential or parallel designs. In blending modalities and pedagogies, it is important that technologies are properly utilized in achieving the required systematic approach to get a right mix. This paper draws attention to the issues of confusion in terminology, the need to apply a theoretical and conceptual approach to blended learning, the empowerment of educational technology with a suitable pedagogy, the development of liquid curricula to increase flexibility, the extension of the boundaries of blended learning, and the application of blended learning to social contexts as well as to pedagogical contexts.

The purpose of this research is to examine the research that has been done on MOOCs by applying data mining and analytic approaches and to depict the current state of MOOC research. The text mining revealed four broad themes: (I) MOOCs as a mainstreaming learning model in HE, (II) motivation and engagement issues in MOOCs, (III) assessment issues in MOOCs, and (IV) MOOCs for social learning. The social network analysis indicated that MOOCs are a significant aspect of online education and that learning analytics are considered a solution to current MOOC handicaps. Both pivotal contribution analysis and timeline analysis demonstrated that MOOC research has a heavy focus on motivation and engagement, high drop out and low retention rates, and instructional quality. Overall, the research concludes that the first wave of MOOC research largely concentrated on the qualitative characteristics of the phenomenon, while the second and third waves of MOOC research concentrated on the quantitative characteristics.

The purpose of this study was to review concept teaching for a history course, and analyze and compare the case of secondary education history curriculum and course books in Turkey in this context over the past decade. The concepts to be taught were written item-by-item in the 10th-grade (2008) history course curriculum, whereas this was not the case in the 9th- (2007) and 11th- (2009) grade history course curricula. The history course curricula that was prepared for the 9th, 10th, and 11th grades in 2018, and consolidated into a booklet, drew attention to the importance of concept teaching and aimed to teach the concepts within the course; however, it did not specify the concepts to be taught in this curriculum. While examining the history course books prepared for secondary education, it was observed that the 9th-grade history course book prepared in 2009 introduced the concepts under the heading 'Basic Concepts' at the beginning of each subject, and the 10th-grade history course book introduced the concepts under the heading 'Basic Concepts' at the beginning of each unit; however, there was no list of concepts in the 11th-grade history course book, neither at the beginning of the unit nor at the beginning of the subject. As a result, it may be suggested that the target concepts should be introduced word-byword in history course curricula and these concepts should be taught in history course books using alternative teaching methods.

The main objective of this study is to evaluate Citizenship Education (CE) literature through systematic bibliometric analysis. The science mapping method was conducted to analyze data. Because CE is also studied with the names of social studies and civic education in the literature, articles related to these topics were included in the study. 4029 articles and proceeding papers that were obtained from the WoS database were analyzed. As a result of the study, it was revealed that number of publications has been dramatically increased in recent years. Moreover, Theory and Research in Social Education Journal was found as the most relevant source in terms of number of publications about CE. Furthermore, the study conducted by Westheimer and Kahne in 2004 was determined as the most influential source that has the most citations per year in the field. Finally, it was found that USA and UK are the most productive, most cited, and most collaborative countries in terms of scientific publications.

The purpose of this research is to examine activities carried out on Twitter, which is a social media platform, on April 2 Autism Awareness Day; network structure in Turkey and in a global context, interaction patterns, the important nodes, user profiles, hashtag usage, and social mode within the context of the Twitter messages and discourses. In the research, mixed research method was adopted, and social network analysis and content analysis methods were used. The sample constitutes a total of 16565 people with 2790 people from Turkey and 13775 people from all over the world. According to the findings in the sample and Turkey as well as the global clustered-community group structures has been observed that the structure of the network. When compared with global examples of effective institutions related to the ASD in Turkey in the global context, the process of institutions and corporate entities has been determined to be more effective. It is seen that especially famous people who are known in the global context are involved in the process in order to reach more audiences. It is found that hashtag use in Turkey is limited, for example, on the other hand, in a global context hashtag use is more diverse to reach different target groups Comparative concept maps revealed that fewer themes were issued in Turkey while there was a wide range of themes in the global context. Social mode is positive in both samples.

The purpose of this study is to determine pre-service science teachers' (PSTs') argument qualities in the process of discussing some SSIs on Twitter. In this respect, firstly, sources that PSTs use to reach information and ranking of these sources as they access information were taken. The study is designed as a case study and the participants were 13 PSTs (11 females, 2 males). Data were collected through arguments written on Twitter and after classroom discussions, and field notes taken by the researchers. The findings showed that PSTs use Internet, books and social media tools as they try to reach information and spend at least 1 to 5 hours in social media during the day. The findings also showed that online discussions on Twitter developed their argumentation qualities. This may indicate that as PSTs become familiar with writing arguments and realize that they need to consider the elements of arguments, they produce better arguments. It is therefore recommended to the researchers and teachers to provide students with environments where they can be active and conduct informal discussions about SSIs. Social media tools (Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, etc.), at this point, may provide with a useful option.

This paper explores elements of open education within the context of higher education. After an introduction to the origins of open education and its theoretical foundations, the topics of open and distance learning, international education issues in open education, open educational practices and scholarship, open educational resources, MOOCs, prior learning accreditation and recognition, and learner characteristics are considered, following the framework of macro, meso, and micro levels of research in open and distance learning. Implications for future research at the macro, meso, and micro levels are then provided. [The authors of this article belong to The COER Group, Center for Open Education Research (COER), University of Oldenburg, Germany.]