Background
The global outbreak of the novel COVID-19 virus presented a significant threat to students’ well-being across the globe. In this paper, we construct a measure of student psychological ...distress related to COVID-19 disruption. We then examine the variation in students’ psychological distress as a function of student demographic characteristics, home, school and student factors and compare the results across countries.
Methods
We use item response theory to construct a comparable scale for students’ psychological distress across participating countries. Furthermore, we employ linear regression to explore the association of student characteristics and other student and school factors.
Results
An internationally comparable scale for students’ psychological distress was constructed using the model assuming equal item parameters across countries. This enables us to compare the levels of students’ psychological distress and its relationships with the construct across countries. The most important factors contributing to students’ psychological distress were school support, school belonging, disrupted sleep, difficulties in learning after the disruption and preparedness for future disruptions. In some countries, we find suggestive evidence that boys exhibited lower psychological distress than girls. We do not find any meaningful relationship between home resources and the students’ psychological distress scale.
Conclusions
Students across participating countries expressed negative feelings about schooling and events happening during the disruption and their effects on their future. We find indication that some school and student factors had a significant relationship with students’ psychological distress in many countries. This was especially the case in countries where remote learning took place during the disruption. In addition, differences across countries are found. The key finding is that high psychological distress is present in all countries studied around the world. However, it is important to note that the factors contributing to this distress are not the same everywhere. Therefore potential interventions must consider country specific factors.
The present paper focuses on teacher?s role in social justice and explores
how teachers perceive and react upon diversity and inequality in their
classrooms. Through a literature review, we aimed to ...answer three research
questions: 1) what are diversity awareness and critical consciousness in
education; 2) why are diversity awareness and critical consciousness
important; and 3) how can diversity awareness and critical consciousness be
supported in teachers. The literature review has revealed that most papers
on teachers? diversity awareness and critical consciousness have been
published within the last few years and that the importance of the two
concepts has been recognized for a wide range of educators. There seems to
be a growing interest in this topic due to the increase of the diversity in
classrooms and the recognition of the teachers? role in addressing diversity
and inequality. However, large-scale studies would be a needed contribution
to the field, as most of the existing studies are small-scale. Based on this
review, we argue that both diversity awareness and critical consciousness
need to be supported through preservice and in-service teacher professional
development programs, if we are to make education systems more inclusive for
all.
Numerous interventions in the school environment focus on supporting empathy to prevent aggressive behaviour. But when planning interventions inside classrooms one needs to consider the context of ...each specific classroom, e.g., relationships between students and teachers. Based on the Developmental System Theory and Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological System Model, this study examines the mediating effect of the positive and negative student-teacher relationships on the relationship between empathy (cognitive and emotional components) and aggression. We use a randomised sample of 539 students from two countries (Slovenia:
N
= 271,
M
= 12.91 years, 56.3% female; Croatia:
N
= 268,
M
= 13.60 years, 47.4% female). We measure empathy with the Interpersonal Reactivity Index, aggression with the AG-UD Aggression Scale and student-teacher-relationships with the Perceived Quality of Student-Teacher Relations measures. The findings show that empathy plays an important role in aggression, but interestingly, the component is different in the two countries. In Slovenia, there is a significant negative direct path from the cognitive component of empathy,
Perspective taking
, to aggression, while in Croatia, there is a similar path, but starting from the emotional component of empathy,
Empathic concern
. In both countries,
Negative student-teacher relationships
mediated the relationship between mentioned components of empathy and aggression, thus showing the importance of classroom context, e.g., the relationships with teachers, when addressing empathy and aggression of students in the school context. The practical implication based on our findings is the prevention of negative student-teacher relationships and the promotion of empathy among students (as well as teachers).
In this paper, we investigate whether the recent immigration-related demographic change in Europe can be associated with changes in expected political participation of young adults. For this, we rely ...on three independent data sources from 12 EU-member countries. To capture young adults' expected political participation, we rely on data from the International Civic and Citizenship Study (ICCS) conducted in 2009 and 2016. Moreover, we use data compiled by Eurostat, which captures the number of asylum applications that were lodged in each of the selected countries. Finally, we use data on national voter turnout as reported by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance. We find that the change in expected electoral participation of students is associated with the number of asylum applications within a country. To gather some evidence that the self-reported data from students reflect society and societal changes, we examine the relationship between expected voting participation and the actual voter turnouts in a country. We find a positive association between these two variables. Our results point to the conclusion that there is an association between the recent migration movements in Europe and the increased political participation in countries. This association is reflected in students and their expectations for future civic and political engagement.
The purpose of the article is to introduce the Children-parents relationship questionnaire (VOS) and to present its metric characteristics. The questionnaire is based on parental styles of D. ...Baumrind (1967) and 3D model of parental styles developed by Milivojević and others (2004). The questionnaire was developed under assumption that relationship between children and their parents influences educational achievement of children. Results on convenience sample (N = 333) of seventh, eighth and ninth grade students in Slovenia show a three dimensional structure of the questionnaire: (a) authoritative parental style and autonomy, (b) authoritarian parental style and (c) rewarding. Questionnaires' reliability in terms of internal consistency (,72 > α < ,95) as well as sensitivity (average r = ,67) proved to be sufficient. Our results show significant gender differences in perceived authoritative parental style and autonomy as well as low association between school grades and the perceived relationship.
The inclusion of social, emotional, and intercultural competences (SEI) in academic contexts has been supported by international organizations, such as the European Union, the United Nations, and the ...OECD, since the early 2000s. However, little information is yet available regarding the assessment of these competences. This paper shares the findings of a systematic literature review that produced an inventory of existing tools for the assessment of SEI competences of students and school staff. This is the first time assessment tools for these three competences have been concurrently reviewed. An interdisciplinary and international research team conducted this systematic literature review in the databases of ERIC, PsycInfo, PSYNDEX, Scopus, and Web of Science. Out of 13,963 articles, 149 assessment tools were examined and processed. In addition to the instrument analysis and a detailed description of the procedure, this article shows the basic theoretical concepts, as well as the limitations, of such a review. It was found that 1) the majority of the discovered instruments rely on self-reported survey and inventory data, 2) of the three competences, intercultural competence had the fewest relevant instruments, and 3) very few tools have been created to assess all three competences together. From this review, it is apparent that a wider variety of assessment tools (other than self-reports), as well as more comprehensive tools (e.g. qualitative analysis of vignettes) for the assessment of all three SEI competences, should be developed to meet international demand. The results of the literature review are available and freely accessible in the form of an assessment catalogue.
•13,963 articles were scanned based on a systematic literature review.•149 assessment tools were detected for social, emotional, intercultural competences.•88.6% of all assessment tools were self-reported inventories.•There are only few relevant instruments on intercultural competences.•Further research is needed on the interconnectedness of all three subareas.
The inclusion of social, emotional, and intercultural competences (SEI) in academic contexts has been supported by international organizations, such as the European Union, the United Nations, and the ...OECD, since the early 2000s. However, little information is yet available regarding the assessment of these competences. This paper shares the findings of a systematic literature review that produced an inventory of existing tools for the assessment of SEI competences of students and school staff. This is the first time assessment tools for these three competences have been concurrently reviewed. An interdisciplinary and international research team conducted this systematic literature review in the databases of ERIC, PsycInfo, PSYNDEX, Scopus, and Web of Science. Out of 13,963 articles, 149 assessment tools were examined and processed. In addition to the instrument analysis and a detailed description of the procedure, this article shows the basic theoretical concepts, as well as the limitations, of such a review. It was found that 1) the majority of the discovered instruments rely on self-reported survey and inventory data, 2) of the three competences, intercultural competence had the fewest relevant instruments, and 3) very few tools have been created to assess all three competences together. From this review, it is apparent that a wider variety of assessment tools (other than self-reports), as well as more comprehensive tools (e.g. qualitative analysis of vignettes) for the assessment of all three SEI competences, should be developed to meet international demand. The results of the literature review are available and freely accessible in the form of an assessment catalogue. (DIPF/Orig.)
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