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Over the past two decades, Turkey has initiated a reform movement to change her classroom assessment system to accommodate performance-based alternative assessment methods in schools. However, research investigating the impact of assessment reform on learning and teaching in schools report that performance assessment approaches have not been implemented effectively. This study investigated the teacher related factors behind the adoption decisions of teachers of these changes introduced. Data for the study were collected through interviews with 53 biology teachers in 24 schools. According to the findings, teachers' lack of self-agency, superficial understanding of the ideas introduced, mistrust that the innovations will work in practice, skepticism about the need for a change and inadequate knowledge and abilities as a result of ineffective dissemination and professional guidance were the main factors affecting the success of the reform. Suggestions to overcome barriers to reform and implications of the findings in managing change are presented and discussed at the end of the paper.

The purpose of this study was to identify the ways in which student teachers understand digestion and the digestive system and, subsequently, their ways of thinking, as reflected in their problem solving approaches and the justification schemes that they used to validate their claims. For this purpose, clinical interviews were conducted with 10 biology student teachers. According to the data, the student teachers possessed different levels of understanding that can be summarized into three categories: (1) naïve, in that their study method was unscientific and memorization-based, (2) fragmented, and (3) unsound. Their ways of thinking were congruent with their ways of understanding, and this was reflected in their explanations, which were constructed ad hoc and focused on simple linear relationships. In line with these ways of thinking, the justification schemes used by the student teachers were mainly external and empirical schemes, which are considered to be unsophisticated or lower-level. This study is the first study that attempts to reveal and classify student teachers' justification schemes in biology. Earlier studies on student learning processes have been conducted in mathematics. We discovered distinct patterns in the justification schemes used by student teachers, and these patterns were related to the nature of biology as a life science. At the end of the paper, we discuss our results and provide suggestions for teacher education and future research.