Vol 1 No 1 (2022)
Contrasting Behaviorist and Constructivist Perspectives on Learning for Students with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders
Behaviorism and constructivism provide different understandings of the learning process. This paper critically analyses these two learning theories in terms of how they organize and support learning and compares the different manifestations of their application with students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD). The author's own experiences are also used to analyze teaching practice based on these two learning theories. The article concludes by suggesting that authentic teaching situations should combine the two teaching methods and be tailored to students’ needs.
Social support is regarded as a mediator to alleviate health anxiety in general. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic, anxiety was widespread, and the role of social support in the increasing health anxiety for the general population has not yet been studied. This study sought to identify the effect of social support on health anxiety in adult students during the pandemic. This online survey assessed 93 participants from May 1st to June 12th, 2020, which including questionnaires on health anxiety, sleep quality, fear of COVID-19, perceived and multi-dimensional social support. A repeated-measures ANOVA revealed a significant increase in health anxiety, safety behaviors (i.e., seeking avoidance and reassurance) and sleep problems for respondents during the pandemic. Through correlation and mediation analysis, the results has shown that, in the context of the pandemic, the relationship between social support and health anxiety was significant and negative, but safety behaviors and sleep quality were not significantly associated with social support quality. Also, social support still acted as a mediator to buffer the effect of fear of the virus on health anxiety. These findings suggested that during the COVID-19 pandemic, although participants` health anxiety increased significantly, social support still played a role of mediator between fear of virus and health anxiety.
As a new media of information dissemination, the internet network has had a wide and far-reaching impact on people's work, lifestyle, concerns, ideas and other aspects of life. Psychological consciousness of the network functioning and issues is an important part of the construction of the network ecological civilization. This article presents an investigation of College Students' psychological consciousness of the network ecological civilization.
Supporting the Use of Evidence-based Teaching Strategies in Schools: The Role of Educational Psychologists
The most important factor in achieving quality education in schools is the effectiveness of teachers in facilitating learning. This requires teachers to use instructional strategies that have proven effectiveness and avoid those that do not.
Therefore, teachers need to learn about evidence-based practices and know how they can be implemented in schools. The most useful sources of information on evidence-based educational strategies are large-scale syntheses and meta-analyses of research studies. A review of these sources identified eight teacher interventions that are considered to be key evidence-based strategies for improving student outcomes. Brief reviews of the theory and research evidence supporting each of them and links to videos illustrating their use in real-life classrooms are presented. Educational psychologists can use this information to support teachers in implementing these key evidence-based strategies in schools and thereby have a major impact on overall student outcomes in education systems.
A Qualitative Study of the Role of Social Ties and Learning Style Differences in Affecting Chinese International Students’ Perceived Academic Performance
Jian Zhang, Guopeng Wang
This qualitative study aimed to solicit the perceptions of Chinese international students about their social tie formation and learning styles in a European country (Belgium) and relations to their perceived academic performance. Four focus groups, involving 21 Chinese students were conducted. This focus group study provided a picture of the interactional and learning experiences of Chinese international students in Belgium. The results indicated that Chinese students have built primary co-national ties, secondary international ties and tertiary host-national ties (i.e., domestic students) and perceived a number of learning style differences as compared to the western students. Furthermore, this qualitative study captured some essence of how these different social ties and learning style differences influenced Chinese students’ academic performance.