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Orienteering is an enjoyable sporting activity, which is believed to contribute to its participants' problem-solving skills. People who are engaged in orienteering is expected to hold a map correctly, find their exact place on the map, read the map, make a plan and carry it out to reach the checkpoint, as well as checking the accuracy of the destination. Such steps to be followed during orienteering resemble those of Polya's problem-solving method in education. From this standpoint, this study focused on Polya's problem-solving steps in the field of mathematics, in relation to the outdoor sport of orienteering. On the whole, the present study aimed to examine fourth-grade students at primary school concerning their involvement in an orienteering process as to the steps of Polya's problem-solving method. A case study method was employed from among qualitative research approaches, and a program implementation was adopted as one of the sub-types of the case study method. In this context, the study sample was selected with the convenience sampling technique, from among the purposive sampling techniques. Observations, semi-structured interviews, and head cameras were used as data collection tools. The results indicated that the steps of Polya's problem-solving method can be used for problem-solving during the orienteering process. Based on the results, it is recommended that practical studies be conducted with similar or different research methods so as to contribute to the field.

As the mentoring program has currently constituted a central component in the partnership established between primary schools and teacher education institutions, this research aimed to investigate the practice of mentoring from the perspectives of student teachers and class mentors. The data were collected by means of open-ended questionnaires and semi-structured interviews from the participation of 55 primary school student teachers. Supplementary data were gathered through semi-structured interviews from five class mentors. The results demonstrate important issues such as the unshared understanding of student teachers' teaching experiences between class mentors and the teacher education institution, and that the mentoring program is inadequate in terms of time management. It is suggested that the class mentors should be helped to open up an important opportunity for how to evaluate their practices in order to evaluate those which the student teachers experience.

A growing body of studies into the job of teaching has described it as an overwhelmingly demanding task due to its very nature. This demanding job requires, among many others, a careful consideration of the issue of what the candidate owners think of the department of primary teacher education. This study, undertaken when a group of pre-service primary teachers were undergoing their initial professional education in the department of primary teacher education after two months of recruitment, investigated their initial views of teacher education. The data were collected through group interviews conducted entirely on a voluntary-basis then processed by means of qualitative analysis. The student teachers' pedagogical voices indicated that there were "gaps" between what they expected and what they faced in their initial teacher training courses in order to become effective teachers. [Abstract is provided in both English and Turkish.]