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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of elementary school teachers’ psychological factors on their behavioral intentions for healthy nutrition in their daily life within an extended version of the theory of planned behavior (TPB). Design/methodology/approach The design of the study is correlation study. Findings Constructs in the proposal model formed accounted for of variance of intentions and behaviors successfully. Considering the entire proposed model, while personal norm is the most influential factor on intention, self-identity is the most consistent effects on teachers’ behavior. However, among the constructs of TPB, perceived behavioral control is the strongest influence on both intention and behavior. Originality/value In the literature, factors affecting healthy behaviors by using TPB focused on mainly children (8–10 year old) and adolescents (11–16 year old) all over the world. However, in some countries, several studies were conducted on adults (e.g. Astrøsm and Rise, 2001; Brouwer and Mosack, 2015), to the best of our knowledge, while there is no study conducted on adults including teachers in Turkey. In addition, recently, two meta-analysis studies were published: Riebl et al. (2015) and Mcdermott et al. (2015). These studies suggested that future studies related to healthy nutrition in the scope of TPB should be continued to investigate.

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The purpose of this research was to examine pre-service science teachers' academic motivation and academic self-efficacy toward biology. The sample consisted of 369 pre-service science teachers who enrolled in the faculty of education of two universities in Turkey. Data were collected through Academic Motivation Scale (AMS) (Glynn & Koballa, 2006) and Academic Self-efficacy Scale (ASES) (Woo, 1999). The findings revealed that pre-service science teachers' academic self-efficacy and academic motivation toward biology are high. Additionally, combination of the independent variables was significantly related to the academic self-efficacy scores, while it was not significantly related to the academic motivation. More specifically, it was found that only university variable made a statistically significant contribution to the prediction of pre-service science teachers' academic motivation and academic self-efficacy. There were strong, positive correlations between pre-service science teachers' academic motivation and academic self-efficacy and subdimensions of AMS and ASES except 'test anxiety'. The relationship of test anxiety with all of the subdimensions was small.

Using mobile applications in science education has proven to be effective as it adds multiple benefits including learning gains, motivation to learn, and collaborative learning. However, some teachers are reluctant to use this technology for reasons derived from different factors. Hence, it is important to identify what factors affect teachers’ intentions to use mobile applications, in order to take actions aiming to encourage them to use this technology in their classes. Accordingly, this study proposes a model to predict science teachers’ intentions to use mobile applications in the teaching process. Our model merges the Technology Acceptance Model, the Flow Theory, and the Theory of Planned Behavior. It includes 11 hypotheses that were tested with 1203 pre-service and in-service science teachers from different cities in Turkey. Additionally, the study investigates the mediating role of attitude and perceived usefulness on teachers’ intentions to use mobile apps. Further, it examines the moderating role of the sample type on teachers’ behavioral intentions. The results indicate that all 11 hypotheses were significant to explain teachers’ intentions to use mobile applications. Finally, the study raises theoretical and practical implications to guide stakeholders to undertake actions to enrich educational settings through the use of mobile applications.