Journal of Educational Sciences

9

Authors: Leyla SAFTA-ZECHERIA

The present paper looks at the way in which political and scientific frameworks, as well as everyday life dynamics work to exclude people living with intellectual disability (ID) in Romania from political life and how these dynamics could be overcome through crafting communicative-dialogic pedagogical interventions geared at political inclusion. I argue that the political exclusion of people with ID is built into the formal political order, as well as doubled by a twofold infantilizing dynamic. On the one hand, the scientific and academic psycho-pedagogical discourse still operates with classifications that inscribe people with ID with chronological “normal” ages inferior to their biological age. Their subject position is thus “fixed” at an age below the voting limited. This move is seconded by the way in which (formerly) institutionalized people with ID are referred to as “children” (despite their fully adult ages) in a small (post)institutional town, as well as in other care settings that I have explored ethnographically. Finally, the paper explores the stepping stones of alternative interventions, built on a communicative-dialogic methodology for politically including people with ID that could work to overcome the infantilizing dynamics.

10

Authors: Tudoriţa GRĂDINARIU

The purpose of this study is to analyze bullying behaviors from an interdisciplinary perspective: legal, psychological and pedagogical. From a legal point of view, the Romanian legislative framework on respect for children's rights has undergone a number of changes in recent years with the accession of Romania to the European Union in 2007. International legislation on respect for children's rights requirescountries that have ratified these provisions to ensure that they are respected and to take measures to ensure that they are not prejudiced. Aggressiveness in students is a predictor of antisocial behaviors in adolescence and adulthood. The psychological perspective of bullying refers to the consequences of this type of behavior.Students involved in aggression are at increased risk of developing a range of psychosomatic symptoms, involvement in delinquency, alcohol and drug abuse, absenteeism.The consequences of these behaviors on the victims are associated with anxiety, depression and suicidal ideation. Through the pedagogical approach to bullying, we focus on the role of teachers in addressing the issue of aggressive behavior in students. The perceived gravity and teacher's response to bullies and victims of bullying are important indicators to be taken into account in making a successful intervention.

13

Authors: Loredana AL GHAZI

The article presents the first years of the autism and the way it was viewed since the autistic features were first observed until 75 years ago when Leo Kanner coined the term “autism”. It took 36 years to Kanner’s “infantile autism” to be formally recognized by the American Psychiatric Association in the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (APA, 1980). Fifty years after Hans Asperger published his four cases of “autistic psychopaths”, whose traits were described as early as 1938 in his postdoctoral thesis, APA introduced the Asperger syndrome in the fourth edition of DSM(1994). However, two decades before Kanner and Asperger, a Russian psychiatrist, Grunia Sukhareva, reported six cases of “schizoid psychopathy” in children and used the term autistic to describe their “tendency towards solitude and avoidance of other people” (Wolff, 1996, p. 129). We bring together three recent extensive accounts on autism history and try to establish who was the first to observe, describe, and label the autistic traits as a separate clinical picture from childhood schizophrenia

13

Authors: Mihai PREDESCU, Loredana AL GHAZI, Ioana DARJAN

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is one of the most researched topics in the last decades. The research led to a better understanding of the field and raised the number of children properly diagnosed. But also, the ASD became a social topic because it affects both families and society as a whole. In this paper, we propose an innovative ecological approach of ASD, based on a holistic approach of it. We recognize the fact that sectorial approaches, such as intervention in school, or family therapy are not sufficient to overcome the ASD. Instead, we propose an ecological model, in which the assessment and interventions are made at individual, family, school and societal level in order to structure a support network for the child and family

23

Authors: Roxana I. HOLIC, Carmen CREŢU

Competitions are one of the most important and attractive activities for students in Romanian schools because they give them the opportunity to deepen the study of a certain discipline and to achieve performance in the favorite field.What is somewhat neglected in literature about educational contests is precisely the presence and influence of emotions experienced by students in the context of competitions that may have a positive or negative impact on the performance achieved. Test anxiety is the most frequently studied phenomenon and mentioned as a problem in the educational psychology, but there are no studies (at least identified by us) that have approached this topic with direct reference to the context of educational competitions (except for sports studies that frequently addresses the issue of competitive anxiety). Another aspect that is rather little studied in research concerned with academic emotions is the influence of emotional regulation on academic performance. Very few studies address the role that emotional regulation strategies have in the relationship between test anxiety and performance.Given the lack of studies on the impact of test anxiety and emotional regulation strategies on performance in educational competitions of adolescents with high intellectual abilities, we have investigated this issue in this study. The selected group of subjects consisted of 541 teenagers who participated in various national Olympiads (2017). The results show that cognitive test anxiety has a positive influence on the performance achieved in educational competitions. Even though emotional regulation strategies do not moderate the relationship between test anxiety and performance, they still have some relationship with both. Thus, test anxiety has positive relationships with all emotional regulation strategies, less with cognitive reappraisal. Performance has only positive relationships with two of the emotional regulation strategies (task-focused strategies and emotion-focused strategies) and negative relationships with other two of them (cognitive-appraising strategies and suppression). These links identified between the variables analyzed can be a contribution to the educational practice, both for students participating in various educational competitions as well as in the case of day-to-day school performance.