Journal of Education, Society and Behavioural Science

Mutual help between people is worth advocating. Previous studies have shown that beneficiaries return the favor due to gratitude after the benefactor gives help to the beneficiary, but the scope of the discussion is limited to the beneficiary’s reciprocity to the benefactor, which is what academic studies call direct reciprocity. The present study extends the object of this reciprocity to a third party, i.e., upstream reciprocity. In addition, studies on reciprocity lack comparison of the effect of different benefactors. Therefore, the present study explores the effect of parents and friends’ help on university students’ upstream reciprocity. We designed separate texts for the experiment with either parents or friends who provided help to the university students. Participants filled out the upstream reciprocity questionnaires after reading the experiment’s text. The present study found that friends’ help is able to elicit more upstream reciprocity than their parents’ help in university students.

First-year college students face a difficult task of self-regulating in a formal academic environment, especially those lacking the fundamental skills to do so. The purpose of this study is to assess the self-regulated processes of first-year students at a Minority Serving Institution, or MSI. Participants consisted of 822 freshmen (519 females; 303 males) enrolled in an orientation course at a Minority Serving Institution in the United States. Collection of data included using the Self-Regulation Questionnaire designed to assess self-regulatory processes through self-report. The questionnaire was administered through Taskstream system and analyzed through version SPSS 23 for continued analysis of data. The data were analyzed using a regression analysis to determine whether correlations existed within or between variables. The self-regulation score was calculated by totaling all the items.

Analysis of data from this study indicated that females (r = -.12, p<.001) and transfer students (r = .14, p<.001) had significantly higher SRQ scores. The data also revealed that for self-regulation, more transfer students (41.5%) placed in the high (intact) category than did non-transfer students (24.7%). A stepwise regression model predicting the SRQ total score were based on six candidate demographic variables. The final two variable model was significant (p = .001) and accounted for 3.2% of the variance in the SRQ total score. Specifically, SRQ total scores were higher for transfer students (β = .13, p = .001) and for females (β = -.11, p = .001).

Among 822 participants, 306 fell into the low self-regulation range; 293 were in the mid-level self-regulation range; and 223 ranked in the high self-regulation range. Results stemming from the dataset revealed that thirty-seven percent of first-year students have low self-regulatory scores. Nearly 50% of the male students were less favorable to self-regulate than female students during their experience in post-secondary education.

The purpose of the current study was to examine the general secondary school (GSS) science teachers’ gender responsive pedagogy (GRP) implementation status. To do so, descriptive survey research design was employed.  Teachers, department heads and school principals were taken as respondents of the study comprehensively. And students were also participants of the study conveniently. Questionnaire, interview, and focus group discussion (FGD) were considered as the principal data collection tools. The collected data was analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively: the data collected through questionnaire was analyzed via mean, std., one sample t-test.  And the data gathered by open ended items, interview, and FGD as well was analyzed via words, phrases, statements and narration.  The analyzed data noted that GSS science teachers of the North Wollo Zone had facilitated GRP fairly.  Thus, they found as effective in relation to language usage, classroom setups, classroom interaction, and addressing sexual harassment. To do so, availability of qualified school supervisors and principals, and realization of new education training policy (NETP) were considered as possible opportunities.  However, teachers as well ineffective to prepare gender responsive (GR) lesson plan, to prepare and use GR instructional materials and to have GR management of sexual maturation.  This vanity of teachers was sourced from ranges of challenges: economic, culture, school and teacher related.  Therefore, extra support in natural sciences should be given for girls beginning from lower primary education; Confidence building dialogues through involvement of female role model need to be initiated in schools; Gender based counseling, information and remedial learning programs like tutorial classes should be strengthened in schools; Since they used as experience sharing center, gender-sensitive expansion of ICT facilities, including computer labs and internet delivery infrastructure should be expanded in schools.

Aims: School teachers have hundreds of spontaneous interactions with students each hour, requiring frequent decision-making. Often these interactions require social understanding and emotional self-regulation, two constructs often identified with wisdom and mindfulness.  Increasing mindfulness could aid wiser management of classroom demands. The present study evaluated effects of an online mindfulness course on measured wisdom in a sample of public elementary school teachers.

Study Design: This study used a pretest posttest design using data collected immediately before taking the online mindfulness course and after completion of the course. End of the school year follow-up data was analyzed for all teachers.

Place and Duration of Study: Participants were enrolled from multiple cities across the United States including Boston, Columbus, Chicago, Milwaukee, Seattle, and San Diego between June 2014 and June 2015. Data were collected online and analyzed at the University of Chicago.

Methodology: Public elementary school teachers (n = 12) were assigned to a mindfulness training or a matched wait-list condition (11 female, 1 male; age range 26 – 57 years). Teachers had a range of teaching experiences from 1 to 36 years (median =18 years) and taught grades K-4 at schools with 30% - 50% Caucasian students with 40%-60% students receiving free and reduced-price lunches. We used standardized measures for mindfulness, wisdom, emotion regulation, compassion, theory of mind, state/trait anxiety, stress, burnout, and efficacy.

Results: Online mindfulness training produced a significant increase in mindful awareness and changes in cognitive wisdom implying increased understanding of inter/intrapersonal concerns. There was a significant increase in mindful attention in those who completed both pre- and post-class online evaluations (n = 10) solicited by Mindful Schools (t (9) = 2.738, p = .02) from 54.3 to 59.9 following training (ΔM= 5.6, SD = 6.5). Wisdom, measured with Ardelt’s Three-Dimensional Wisdom Scale (n =12), demonstrated a significant change increase in the cognitive dimension of wisdom (t(11) = 2.39, p =.03) with a non-significant increase in the affective dimension (t(11) =1.38, p =.19) and a non-significant reduction in the reflective dimension of wisdom (t(11) =.96, p = .35) following mindfulness training.

Conclusion:  Online mindfulness training may help develop wise decision making as a skill for teachers to aid classroom management and social problem solving.

For an appropriate way to deal with teaching and learning the Science Related Disciplines (SRD) there is an axiomatic need to accept an integrated-holistic approach both in terms of the way we regard them and of how we practice them. As a result of that need, this paper presents a multi-prong proposition to  substantiate that teaching and learning of the SRD have recently undergone a paradigm shift from a Relational Literacies approach, based on searching for knowledge, and  which in turn has replaced the traditional Independent Disciplines approach, based on transmitting knowledge, towards an integrated-holistic approach, bringing education into the new Integrated Competences paradigm, which is based on formulating knowledge and which should be understood as representing the confrontation of the Science Related Disciplines with the real world and its conditions.