European Journal of Contemporary Education

5-13

Authors: Artur Aziyev, Kadisha Shalgynbayeva, Aigul Aitysheva, Akan Alpyssov

The experimental study aims to investigate the impact of specially organized psychological training on the professional sensitivity of educational psychologists in perceiving and assessing the personal and behavioral features of schoolchildren. The study utilizes a mixed approach including an analytical and theoretical review of psychological and pedagogical literature and an experiment with educational psychologists from Kazakh schools. The authors employ various psychological tools and assessment methods, including tests to evaluate social intelligence, emotional intelligence, and professional qualities, followed by statistical analysis to assess changes in professional sensitivity. The theoretical analysis discloses the relationship between the improvement of professional sensitivity of an educational psychologist in the perception and assessment of a school student’s personality and behavioral characteristics and the specially organized psychological training designed to promote the successful development of professional sensitivity in educational psychologists. Based on the analysis of theoretical provisions regarding the development of professional sensitivity of educational psychologists, the authors clarify the essence of the term “professional sensitivity of an educational psychologist”. This theoretical approach serves as a basis to substantiate the process of improvement of the professional sensitivity of an educational psychologist to the perception and assessment of a school student’s personality and behavioral characteristics. The study substantiates the provision that specially organized psychological training contributes to the successful development of professional sensitivity in educational psychologists. Experimental findings show a significant improvement in educational psychologists’ professional sensitivity after the training. The experimental group demonstrates a marked increase in the indicators of social intelligence (+21.7 %), emotional intelligence (+76.3 %), and such professionally important qualities as empathy (+85.3 %) and self-motivation (+49.4 %). On the contrary, the control group displays minimal changes in these parameters. The authors substantiate the high effectiveness of the proposed training for the development of professionally important qualities of an educational psychologist. This is relevant to fostering reflexivity, regulating personal emotions, understanding others' feelings, along with empathy, self-drive, emotional perception, listening skills, and social savvy. Educational establishments are advised to apply the study's findings in practice.

23-35

Authors: Stepan A. Boyko, Evgenia G. Razdyakonova

The widespread use of modern information technology in the educational process of the Russian education system forces the need to develop new educational standards and approaches focused on consideration of the individual characteristics of students. This leads to a need to consider the individual characteristics of students that can influence the acquisition of necessary knowledge and skills. This study involved the task to consider the influence of factors such as sex, age and academic year on the introductory and final testing results of bachelors of mineral resources, who took training courses in English for special purposes on the basis of the corpus-based approach model in teaching and determination of its efficiency. The experimental training is presented in three stages: introductory, operational and final. These stages included learning English for special purposes based on the corpus analysis model of the grammatical environment of terminological units, introductory and final testing with subsequent statistical processing of the data obtained. The experimental training outcome obtained demonstrated that the degree of the influence of sex and academic year on academic performance was less pronounced at the introductory testing stage, while it was more pronounced at the final testing stage. The influence of the age groups of students on the data was noted at both stages of testing. It was expressed in the simple average values of the age groups of 17 and 21 years, indicating a downward value in accordance with the age of students. The paired samples T-test data helped us reveal the learning efficiency. Such samples demonstrated sufficient statistical significance of the differences in the average values of the final and introductory testing data.

54-66

Authors: Gulbanu Kabzhanova, Rakhila Aubakirova, Oxana Belenko, Gulnar Tursungozhinova

The purpose of the article was to explore the development and implementation of effective pedagogical strategies for the formation of meta-competence in teaching a foreign language through the use of smart resources. The article offers the results of theoretical studies of the pedagogical potential of smart resources, discusses the advantages and problems associated with the integration of smart resources into learning. Based on the latest scientific research and their own empirical research, the authors propose a basis for the development and integration into the educational process of effective pedagogical strategies that promote the development of meta-competence using intellectual resources. The article emphasizes the need for professional development of teachers to ensure the successful implementation of these strategies, the importance of taking into account factors such as individual differences of students, technological literacy in the development and implementation of pedagogical approaches. In conclusion, it is argued that the integration of smart resources into foreign language learning can effectively contribute to the development of students' meta-competence. By giving students the opportunity to take responsibility for their learning processes, the strategies proposed by the authors contribute to the development of students' independence, which is necessary for lifelong learning.

82-94

Authors: Agon Kokaj, Ruzhdi Kadrija

The use of ICT in education is another way to motivate, assess and be able to have an easier approach to education and learning. Different courses can be taught online that would have a practical background, those being directly and inderactily realated to engineering, education or even social sciences. We have analysed multidimentional phsychologiycal and practical factores associated with online teaching, where emotional intellency was at the center of our focus. Based on the questionare we selected, a designed pie chart statistical analysis is applied. Emotional problems for implementation, emotional challenges including monotony during the online learning process are analysed. Intereactivy student-teacher, effectiveness and riability of online teaching is statistically analysed and a quantitative conlusion is derived for the future application of this mode of teaching. The experience derived during the period of the epidemy Covid 19 and the development of IT technology made online teching complementary to the convetional mode of education and learning, as shown in our study as well. It would be very logical to emphasize that students must have the chance to get associated with online learning and this is for many several reasons to come at hand. The next generation of teachers should be able to write code assess code and perform short term flow charts.

106-120

Authors: Thi Van Anh Le, Thi My Hong Tieu, Thi Phuong Thao-Do, Huong Thi Pham

This study aimed to explore how student teachers self-evaluated their competencies and evaluated the effectiveness of teacher training in the Northwest Universities and Colleges. A total of 538 student teachers from universities and colleges of teacher education in Northwest Vietnam voluntarily participated in the survey. The questionnaire focused on the self-assessment of these student teachers’ qualities and competencies as a teacher. They were also asked to evaluate the training they received for these competencies. The results showed that most of the student teachers could identify their strengths and limitations in the role of a teacher and assessed themselves at good levels for the surveyed competencies including teacher ideology and qualities, professional skills, and soft skills. In general, the training just met their expectations, yet no particular field was evaluated at an excellent level. Based on these findings, suggestions were made to review the initial teacher education programs at the participating universities and colleges.

132-140

Authors: Romualdas K. Malinauskas, Eimantas Pocius, Tomas Saulius

Recently, there has been an increasing need to develop mental toughness of students who participate in sport, in order to improve their adaptation not only during sporting activities but also in other contexts. Developing mental toughness skills among sport school students is one of the main ways to ensure their psychological well-being, and therefore research in this area is of great importance. However, there is currently a lack of adapted validity measures that consider socio-cultural factors to assess their psychological skills, namely mental toughness. For this purpose, it is necessary to adapt and validate a modern, useful measure of psychological resilience skills. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to conduct an adaptation of the Psychological Performance Inventory-Alternative (PPI-A) for sport school students. The participants of the study were 378 basketball sport school students aged 15-18 years from different Lithuanian basketball sport schools. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted using Jamovi software. Pearson correlation coefficients and average variance extracted were calculated using Jamovi software and Excel program. These indicators were used to check the convergent and discriminant validity of the questionnaire. Reliability of the questionnaire was checked using Cronbach's alpha and McDonald's omega. Structural equation modelling showed an acceptable fit of the four-factor PPI-A model. Validity and reliability analyses revealed a good level of internal consistency between the factors. Given the appropriate psychometric properties, the Lithuanian version of the Psychological Performance Inventory-Alternative (PPI-A) can be used in studies aimed at better understanding of mental toughness among sport school students. Further research on the structure of the instrument is also warranted in order to validate the questionnaire for other samples.

162-171

Authors: Arslanbek Mukhametkairov, Berik Matayev, Assyl Matayeva, Nataliia Fominykh

The study aims to analyze the efficiency of developing soft skills with the use of project technologies. The relevance of the study owes to the need for developing soft skills in the younger generation. This need relates to the increased demand for communication and teamwork skills in specialists. The emphasis on these skills is especially topical in school education, where their development via project activities facilitates meaningful interpersonal interaction between project participants. The established goal is achieved in the study through a set of theoretical and empirical research methods, including the analysis of literature on soft skills development, including in the context of the school educational environment, and a pedagogical experiment to test the efficiency of project technologies in developing the soft skills of high school students. The obtained findings indicate a positive dynamic in the soft skills of high school students taught using project activities. For this reason, the study stresses the need to substitute the passive traditional pedagogics limited to the transmission of knowledge with active pedagogics.

185-200

Authors: Yonit Nissim, Eitan Simon

This quantitative study delves into the emotional experiences of teachers as they navigated hybrid teaching from home during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, with a particular focus on understanding the relationship between physical space and emotions. This was a turning point, for the first time in the teacher's professional life, the space takes on a significant dimension. The research involved 135 teachers hailing from northern Israel, aiming to shed light on the intricate interplay between work environment and emotional well-being amidst unprecedented circumstances. The findings of the study revealed alarmingly high levels of fatigue among the participating teachers, indicative of the immense challenges they faced while transitioning to remote teaching. Interestingly, teachers who engaged in continuing education programs tailored to remote teaching exhibited higher levels of optimism compared to their counterparts who did not participate in such programs. However, despite their increased optimism, teachers who underwent these programs also reported elevated levels of burnout and fatigue, suggesting a complex relationship between professional development and emotional strain. One of the key insights gleaned from the study was the significant impact of working from home on teachers' emotional states, with many experiencing burnout and grappling with strong negative emotions. Moreover, the data unveiled a weak yet discernible negative correlation between the level of optimism and the number of hours spent working from home, indicating that increased home working hours were associated with decreased optimism levels among teachers.

211-221

Authors: Valentina N. Pulyaeva, Irinа A. Ivanova, Marina A. Ponomareva, Alla N. Stolyarova

The development of professional competencies of personnel is an important task for modern organizations. And its effective solution is facilitated by the emerging opportunity to use artificial intelligence, with the help of which the boundaries of access to the latest tools and training technologies are expanding, allowing personnel to adapt to changes and prepare them to solve current problems and achieve strategic goals. Also, the use of digital services and tools opens up broad prospects for ensuring continuous training and development of personnel, which helps to increase the value of human capital in the organization. One of the promising innovations using artificial intelligence is chat bot technology, which provides quick information search, improves adaptation and communication processes, activates human potential, and helps improve learning efficiency through additional interaction with people through text messages. The article presents a summary of the experience of organizations in using chat bot practices in the HRM system. The implementation of the chat bot technology saves labor costs and allows companies’ management to personalize training, provide staff with highly intelligent support, free up their time from performing routine tasks, maintain a high level of interactivity in the learning process, while continuously monitoring the acquisition of knowledge by employees with receiving feedback. The following methods were used for the study: analysis, synthesis, comparison, graphic description, structuring, modeling, visualization. The authors have developed algorithms for working with requests for personnel training. It has been shown that the implementation of chat bot technology saves labor costs and increases the efficiency of work with internal clients of the HR department. The authors calculated the effectiveness of the chat bot by reducing the time spent processing applications from internal clients of the HR department. In further research, it is advisable to continue the work begun in terms of expanding the functions of the chat bot and supplementing its algorithm with machine learning.

234-244

Authors: Jacob Owusu Sarfo, Paul Obeng, Timothy Pritchard Debrah, Newton Isaac Gbordzo, Crescens Osei Bonsu Ofori, Richmond Stephen Sorkpor, Kodwo Owusu

Serious injuries among adolescents are a leading cause of death and a global public health concern. This study examined the prevalence and correlates of serious injuries among in-school adolescents in Saint Lucia. Using a two-stage cluster sampling design to attain a fair population representation, we analysed data from the World Health Organization’s 2018 Global School-based Health Survey among adolescents in the Eastern Caribbean Island of Saint Lucia. We used the Chi-square test and binomial logistic regression analysis with an adjusted odds ratio (AOR) at a 95 % confidence interval (CI). We observed that the prevalence rate of serious injuries among adolescents in Saint Lucia was 44.5 % (24.5 % male versus 20.0 % female). After controlling for other factors, serious injuries among in-school adolescents in Saint Lucia were predicted by sex (male) (AOR=1.110, 95 % CI=0.792-1.556), missing class without permission (AOR=1.308, 95 % CI=1.009-1.696), abusing alcohol (AOR=1.370, 95 % CI=1.114-1.684), experiencing physical attacks (AOR=1.669, 95 % CI=1.327-2.099), physical fight (AOR=1.527, 95 % CI=1.529-1.225) and being bullied (AOR=2.171, 95 % CI=1.712-2.753). Adolescent health promotion and injury prevention programmes should adopt multidisciplinary approaches to address these personal and psychosocial risk factors in Saint Lucia.

254-267

Authors: Elvira R. Skornyakova, Ekaterina V. Vinogradova

The paper is intended to reveal positive experience of applying a newly-elaborated thesaurus modelling technology which represents an effective tool of engineering pedagogy process involving comprehensive learning of the professional vocabulary. The participants of the research were second-year engineering students of the mineral resources specializations in St. Petersburg Mining University. Conventional-based way of learning English professional terminology and vocabulary acquisition through thesaurus modelling within ESP course were used in control and experimental groups accordingly during the academic year of 2022–2023 which entails writing assignments accomplishment and final essay assessment. The gathered data were manually put into the SPSS software and analyzed statistically with the chi-square test output with identification of p-value. The purpose of the study was to determine what impact thesaurus modelling technology has on the mastering of such general competences as communication, project development and implementation, teamwork and leadership, critical thinking, self-regulation while teaching professional vocabulary to engineering students within ESP course. The results of the final essay assessment as well as the results of the general competences questionnaire proved to be statistically effective and revealed uneven distribution. The interpretation of the results showed that although communication skills and self-regulation capacity have been mastered almost equally by students of both groups, other general competences as project development and implementation, teamwork and leadership have been developed by the experimental group much more profoundly than the control group.

283-291

Authors: Zita Somfalvi, Gabriella Pusztai

In Hungary, between 1996 and 2022, a law was in force that ordered to have an at least B2 level foreign language exam to be able to get the degree. The legislation was suspended during the COVID period and abolished in 2022. It is agreed that learning achievement is strongly determined by socio-economic status, but no multidimensional study has yet been carried out on the impact of language-specific social and cultural capital. In the present study, we aim to investigate these close relationship structures among students without a language exam at the end of university years. We hypothesised that language-specific social capital influences attitudes towards language learning and thus the chances of passing the language exam. We conducted a survey among students who graduated from two higher education institutions in the most populous but economically least developed regions of Hungary, but did not obtain a degree due to lack of language proficiency. As a control group, we also interviewed successful language learners who as university students, already had a language examination that met the exit requirements. The full survey was carried out through our online questionnaire sent out on Neptun (Neptun is a unified study system software, which performs the academic and financial administration and educational organisation tasks of Hungarian higher education institutions). Our results show that linguistic social capital in the network of contacts has a significant impact on language proficiency. Informal relationships also have an impact on the effectiveness of foreign language learning, as friends belong to a similar social group to the language learner. The significance of the study of the Hungarian context lies in the unique language examination requirement for higher education, but there are also international lessons to be learned. The cultural and social diversity of learners and students means that language learning cannot be left to families to motivate, create a foreign language environment and provide other factors that support language learning, so research on language learning should no longer focus solely on middle-class language learners.

305-325

Authors: Vilma Žydžiūnaitė, Baiba Martinsone

There is growing evidence of the role of relationships in teaching, learning and disciplining. This research aimed to compare Latvian and Lithuanian teachers’ experiences regarding their empowerment through contributing to positive relationships and power through using positive discipline in school environment. The research questions were two: What does empowerment mean to teachers through their contribution to positive relationships in the school environment? What does the use of positive discipline in the classroom mean for teachers in regard to their power? The total sample consisted of 152 teachers from LV and LT. The research was implemented by applying semi-structured interviews with focus groups and using latent qualitative content analysis for data analysis. Findings showed that LT teachers express their expectations for relationship improvement, while Latvian teachers speak about actions for implementing empowering relationships in the school environment; LT teachers emphasize their power through creating the dyadic trustful, group-related relationships with students as a basic for teaching/learning, while LV teachers use the potential of the school community. Conclusions highlight that LT teachers relate positive discipline to learning from experience which means learning knowledge and skills through direct practice. This entails teachers and students reflecting on the experience they have had to identify new skills and knowledge that they can use within the specific context, case or situation. Regarding their power to apply positive discipline, LV teachers highlight their individual responsibility for structuring the learning environment and managing the classroom, which is related to the teacher’s professional expertise/teaching methodology.

332-336

Authors: Oleg E. Chuikov, Igor B. Lagutin, Igor А. Gordeev, Vladimir A. Svechnikov

This work celebrates the 355th anniversary of the birth of the eminent Russian pedagogue Leonty Filippovich Magnitsky (1669–1739). The principal sources for this work are biographical studies focusing on the scholar’s life and work. In terms of methodology, use was made of content analysis, the biographical method, the historical-systems method, and synthesis. The study’s findings revealed that this preeminent Russian pedagogue and educationist owed his fame largely to his book ‘Arithmetic’ (to use the shortened title), Russia’s first formal mathematics textbook. An expert in the methodology of teaching mathematics, a highly erudite specialist, and a solid philologist, L.F. Magnitsky devoted a significant portion of his career to teaching at the School of Mathematics and Navigation in Moscow, which he headed up in the latter years of his life. Descended from an unprivileged social background, L.F. Magnitsky achieved everything in life through his own talent and hard work. Not only did his innate passion for learning and science earn him wealth and honors but it also garnered him his catchy surname. The scholar was expertly competent in mathematics, astronomy, navigation, and geodesy and had a command of several languages – Latin, Greek, Dutch, German, French, and Italian.

347-351

Authors: Irina Yu. Cherkasova, Larisa A. Koroleva, Valentina S. Nikitina, Natalia V. Svechnikova

This work examined the pedagogical periodical press in the Vilna Educational District in the period 1862–1915. The study’s source base incorporated narrowly specialized reference and encyclopedic works on the history of the Russian periodical press. In terms of methodology, use was made of content analysis to isolate a selection of periodicals published in 1862–1915 in the Vilna Educational District. The study’s findings revealed that there were five academic pedagogical periodicals published in the Vilna Educational District between 1862 and 1915. These journals were geographically distributed as follows: three published in Vilno, one – in Mogilev on the Dnieper, and one – in Grodno. Among them, the periodicals that were in operation for a relatively long time were Tsirkulyar po Vilenskomu Uchebnomu Okrugu and Narodnoye Obrazovaniye v Vilenskom Uchebnom Okruge, with both sustained through government funding and being in operation in Vilno up until the city was evacuated during World War I. Among the rest of the journals, of particular note is the periodical Pedagogicheskiye Zapiski, which was a supplement to the children’s magazine Zor’ka – 18 issues of this journal were produced between 1905 and 1908. The remaining two publications, Belorussky Uchitel’sky Vestnik (published in Mogilev on the Dnieper) and Pedagogicheskoye Delo (Grodno), existed for relatively short periods of time, with fewer than 10 issues of each produced.

359-365

Authors: Goran Rajović, Sergei N. Bratanovskii, Alexander Y. Epifanov, Milena S. Bratanovskaya

Building on wide-ranging statistical material, the work looks into the public education system in the Fergana Oblast in the pre-revolutionary period. The research materials included both archival resources from the Russian State Historical Archive, St. Petersburg, Russian Federation, and published collections of documents, which are represented by annual reviews of the Fergana Oblast, stretching over the period from 1887 to 1913. The work’s methodology is based on system, statistical and chronological methods. In conclusion, the authors come out with the following findings: 1. In the pre-revolutionary period, the development of the public education system in the Fergana Oblast had unique local distinctions. Efforts by the Russian administration to introduce secular education were made in an unfriendly environment, where the Asian Muslim population took negatively any attempts to change the deep-rooted traditions of the local patriarchal society. 2. In the period from 1887 to 1913, the Russian administration was able to found several gymnasiums and progymnasiums in the region, which made secondary education accessible both in the Oblast's center and in some district cities. Lower and primary education went along a similar path in the region. 3. Despite the positive trends set by the launch of Russian and Russian-indigenous educational institutions, as the Russian population was insignificant in the region, it had some of the lowest indicators in the Russian Empire both in the number of secular educational institutions and in the number of children enrolled in them.

374-383

Authors: Artyom Yu. Peretyatko

The article is devoted to analyzing the ten-year publication activity of Cherkas Global University. The author concludes that the most popular publications of Cherkas Global University are devoted to the regional history of the Russian Empire (first of all, the history of regional education systems). At the same time, from purely historical articles the most demanded are works on the history of the Caucasus and Ukraine. The article concludes that this is due to the genesis of Cherkas Global University, which originally emerged in the Caucasus, in Sochi, and its evolution, during which several Ukrainian scholars became employees of Cherkas Global University. The article relates the activities of Cherkas Global University to the peculiarities of the "Soviet division of scientific labour" identified by M. von Hagen: the clear division of Soviet historical science into center and periphery, with the center, which uses most of its resources, dealing with imperial/Soviet history, and regional history being provincialized. It is shown that the work of Cherkas Global University is a form of reaction of regional scholars to such a "system of division of scientific labour", which did not lose its relevance with the collapse of the USSR. Cherkas Global University helps historians from the regions, who in Soviet times were the scientific periphery, to demonstrate their research in the international arena. Such an opportunity is available not only to Cherkas Global University staff, but also to other scholars: the journal published by Cherkas Global University "Bylye Gody" actively publishes research by authors not only from Ukraine and the Caucasus, but also from Kazakhstan, Siberia, Kalmykia, the Urals, the Don, and so on. The author assumes that such results were achieved due to the focus on international cooperation, networked cooperation, and a move away from dependence on the authorities of a particular state.