Search

According to empirical evidence, there are associations between resilience and stress, resilience and emotion regulation, and emotion regulation and stress. However, studies underlying the mechanisms between resilience and stress among teachers are sparse. This study examines the associations between these variables and investigates which emotion regulation strategies mediate the relationship between resilience and perceived stress among k-12 school teachers. In a sample of 1390 school and high school teachers, with an average of 14.84 years (SD = 10.58) of work experience, resilience was positively correlated with cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression and negatively with perceived stress. Cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression negatively correlated with perceived stress. Results of the multiple mediation model indicated that only expressive suppression mediated the association between participants' resilience and their perceived stress level. Additionally, gender and teaching status represented significant covariates of the mediation model. These results highlight the importance of emotion regulation in understanding how resilience relates to perceived stress among k-12 school teachers.

Practice guidelines for early childhood education (ECE) and clinical autism interventions (Naturalistic Developmental Behavioral Intervention, NDBI) have emerged separately in history, represent different disciplines, and operate within different service systems in the United States. This article identifies priorities, principles, and practices that are shared across the NDBI and ECE frameworks, unique to each framework but compatible with the other, or in conflict. Both frameworks support converging inclusive ECE models focused on autism in that they are both grounded in responsive relationships, natural learning environments, and strategies to promote children's motivation and active engagement. While compatible in general, each framework extends the other in important ways. For example, NDBI goes beyond the ECE frameworks by focusing on a more fine-grained examination of learning strategies and targets. Opportunities for bridging gaps are identified, including the use of implementation science frameworks to integrate perspectives from different stakeholder groups, supporting the scale-up of inclusion preschools in community settings.

One of the most complex topics in Geography is linked to cultural landscapes. Although this concept has aroused the interest of scholars from different nations and the bibliography is diverse, among students there are still uncertainties concerning the meaning of cultural landscapes. Thus, at the Faculty of Geography, Babes-Bolyai University, in Cluj-Napoca, Regional Planning and Development M.Sc. programme, the students had in their first semester a discipline named Cultural Landscapes, which provided the theoretical background using international references. For assessment, students were asked to transfer their knowledge into practice by realising a postcard with cultural landscapes of Cluj-Napoca city. This paper analyses the process of learning during solving the task, presenting firstly different views about cultural landscapes in geographical literature. The methodology used comprises the analysis of the process of learning, starting from discussions on the theory and going to the presentation of the task, the evaluation and the actual process of making the postcards undertook by the students. There were eight postcards realised in pairs which were assessed using an especially designed grid. The whole activity carried out by the students was analysed from a didactic point of view. It is demonstrated that, being helped by theoretical discussions during the courses, the students managed to understand the cultural landscape and, moreover, to put into practice what they had learned. Thus, they managed to achieve a different perspective for some familiar landscapes from the city, in which they had lived for about three years. This learning activity actually put the theoretical frame into another light and so the students had become more aware of the meaning of cultural landscapes by experiencing them on their own.

The paper begins with some issues related to aesthetics, aesthetic education, art and axiological education. The empirical research has the general assumption that secondary school students and youth have difficulties in selecting values. The objective of the research was three fold: to design, to organize and to carry learning activities from which students shall acquire educational values through the study of art objects. The exploratory research was conducted on a sample of 50 students (25 in experimental group and 25 in control group). The content sample included fairy-tales and short stories ("Beauty and the Beast; The money earned" by Alexandru Mitru) and artistic topics on several well-known art objects (The Endless Column, Table of Silence, The Gate of Kiss, Peles castle, Voronet monastery, and St. Michael's Cathedral from Cluj-Napoca). The tested hypothesis stated that "if secondary school students are involved in learning contexts where they perceive, analyze and explain artistic objects then they develop aesthetic and ethic values." The learning context students were exposed to represents the independent variable and the outputs--the educational values themselves--represent the dependent variable. In order to test for the hypothesis we planned a formative didactic experiment. In order to test the hypothesis the pre-test/post-test design was used.

Executive function deficits are among the most frequently reported symptoms of autism spectrum disorders (ASDs), however, there have been few functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies that investigate the neural substrates of executive function deficits in ASDs, and only one in adolescents. The current study examined cognitive control--the ability to maintain task context online to support adaptive functioning in the face of response competition--in 22 adolescents aged 12-18 with autism spectrum disorders and 23 age, gender, and IQ matched typically developing subjects. During the cue phase of the task, where subjects must maintain information online to overcome a prepotent response tendency, typically developing subjects recruited significantly more anterior frontal (BA 10), parietal (BA 7 and BA 40), and occipital regions (BA 18) for high control trials (25% of trials) versus low control trials (75% of trials). Both groups showed similar activation for low control cues, however the ASD group exhibited significantly less activation for high control cues. Functional connectivity analysis using time series correlation, factor analysis, and beta series correlation methods provided convergent evidence that the ASD group exhibited lower levels of functional connectivity and less network integration between frontal, parietal, and occipital regions. In the typically developing group, fronto-parietal connectivity was related to lower error rates on high control trials. In the autism group, reduced fronto-parietal connectivity was related to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder symptoms. (Contains 5 figures and 8 tables.)

Orbitofrontal cortical (OFC) dysfunction has been repeatedly involved in obsessive-compulsive disorder, but the precise significance of this abnormality is still unclear. Current neurocognitive models propose that specific areas of the OFC contribute to behavioral regulation by representing the anticipated affective value of future events. This leads to the hypothesis that these OFC areas are hyperactive in patients, reflecting ruminative preoccupation with future aversive events. In experimental situations, such hyperactivity should be triggered by negative affect in response to high likelihood of events such as the conflict between simultaneously active incompatible responses, which can potentially lead to poor task performance. We tested this hypothesis by examining fMRI indices of brain activity of 15 OCD patients and 15 matched controls. Subjects were scanned while performing a cognitive task which involved responding to cues and subsequent probes, and some of the probes elicited response conflict. Relative to controls, the lateral OFC of patients was specifically hyperactive to cues associated with high proportion of subsequent high-conflict probes. The level of OFC hyperactivity correlated directly with the severity of anxiety symptoms. These results support the hypothesis that OCD is characterized by exaggerated OFC representations of anticipated aversive events. (Contains 1 figure and 1 table.)