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Land use changes, driven by human activities such as agricultural intensification and urban expansion, have drastic effects on biodiversity. As these changes are anticipated to continue, understanding species’ adaptations to their evolving habitats is essential to find solutions for effective conservation efforts and sustainable management. In this study, we investigated how long-term changes in the agricultural landscape influence the breeding performance of a population of barn owls (Tyto alba) residing in nest boxes using data collected from 1993 until 2020. Specifically, we assessed how agricultural intensification, urbanization, and site availability affected barn owls' site occupancy and breeding success. Our results reveal that nest boxes surrounded by more agricultural fields are more likely to be occupied and have higher fledging success. Additionally, nest boxes installed higher on the barn were more likely to be occupied. Owls laid more eggs in nest boxes facing North than South or East. Clutches laid in nest boxes installed at higher altitudes were smaller. Finally, nest boxes with a higher density of surrounding nest boxes were less likely to be occupied and had smaller clutches. These insights show barn owls high reliance on the agricultural landscape surrounding their nesting sites, but also the importance of nest box characteristics to optimize their breeding success.

IntroductionPreparing host-society children for contact with refugees coming into their classes poses a new and important challenge for countries with little prior experience in integration. Imagined contact is a prejudice-reduction intervention that can be particularly useful in this context. However, its long-term effects and potential age-related variations in its efficacy among primary school children remain understudied.MethodsThis study investigated the short-term and long-term effects of an imagined contact school intervention on the change in attitudes and contact intentions of 1,544 children aged 7–15. Of these, 827 participated in a four-session-long intervention delivered by their teachers within their regular classes, while 717 served as a comparison group. Short-term effects were assessed approximately one week after the last intervention session, with long-term effects evaluated around two and a half months later.ResultsOur findings indicate that the imagined contact intervention instigates positive changes in intergroup attitudes and contact intentions in both the short term and long term, but only for the children in the lower grades of primary school.DiscussionWhile the durability of these effects among younger participants holds promise for future use of imagined contact in schools, we also scrutinize potential developmental and methodological explanations of the absence of expected intervention effects among older children.

Interdependence, a mutual dependence between entities, is a key concept to understand interactions occurring in social and natural environments. We argue that understanding social and natural phenomena in terms of interdependence could predict children's pro-environmental behaviors (PEBs). The existing literature reveals a lack of studies promoting PEBs among children. We first reviewed the literature on interdependence to demonstrate why it is a theoretically viable construct to foster PEBs in children. Second, we identified a lack of instruments to measure children's preference for explanations in terms of interdependence. Thus, in study 1, we developed and administered a 9-item vignette-based scale combining pictures and everyday situations with various explanations, the Preference for Explanations in Terms of Interdependence scale—PETI to 351 Swiss pupils (10-12 years old). Exploratory factor analysis revealed a one-dimensional structure. Analyses showed satisfying nomological and predictive validity (on self-reported behaviors). Study 2 (N = 96) was conducted at recreational areas and aimed at extending the predictive validity of the PETI scale to actual behaviors. Contrary to our expectations, results revealed no direct effect of the PETI score, but a significant main effect of age, and a significant interaction effect between PETI and age showing that PETI was more positively associated to PEBs for older (10-13 years old) than for younger (6-9 years old) children. Reliability analyses suggested that the PETI scale is better suited for children aged 10 and over. We discuss the utility of the PETI scale in studying the relationship between children's understanding of interdependence and the endorsement of PEBs.

To encourage energy conservation, some interventions refer to abstract, large-scale, and complex phenomena (e.g., climate change), while others rely on concrete actions (e.g., changing light bulbs) and consequences (e.g., saving money). Some also combine both. Mostly conducted in non-applied settings, existing studies that compare the impact of abstract vs. concrete pro-environmental interventions have yielded mixed results. Moreover, they have not documented the potential advantage, in the long term, of adding abstract information to an existing concrete intervention. With this goal in mind, we joined an intervention in which households of two neighbourhoods (N = 177) participated in an energy conservation programme encouraging and facilitating concrete energy-conserving behaviours. We randomly assigned about half of the households to a concrete-only condition (the basic intervention) and half to a condition in which we also provided abstract environmental information. Results showed that an abstract message added to a concrete intervention successfully increased the amount of attention households reported paying to energy consumption six months after the intervention, compared to the concrete-only intervention. An abstract message also had an indirect impact on energy saving behaviours six months later, through increased biospheric (environmental) values. Taken together, these results suggest that low-level construal goals, such as everyday energy saving behaviours, should be accompanied by high-level construal goals, such as limiting climate change, to increase individuals’ willingness to act for the environment.

Higher education institutes (HEI) face considerable challenges in navigating how to respond to the escalating and intertwined socio-ecological sustainability crises. Many dedicated individuals working in the sector are already driving meaningful action through rigorous research, teaching, knowledge sharing, and public engagement, while there is a growing consensus that sector-wide change is needed to ensure that aspirational declarations and positive individual actions translate into sustainable and transformative change. This article seeks to contribute to such efforts by illustrating a number of trends, examples, and reflections on how third-level educational institutes can act sustainably. We highlight the potential of five strategies HEI could employ to support the creation of a more sustainable future namely, (i) innovative approaches to climate change education; (ii) research agendas for societal transformations; (iii) providing climate change education for professional development; (iv) supporting public intellectuals; and (iv) investing in whole-systems approaches to greening the campus. The insights are the product of an interdisciplinary working group with members from across Europe, Australia, and the UK. These international examples provide insight and a sense of possibility for future application.

If today the anthropogenic origin of climate change gathers almost total scientific consensus, human pro-environmental action is not changing with sufficient impact to keep global warming within the 1.5° limit. Environmental psychology has traditionally focused on the underlying barriers towards more pro-environmental behaviours. Emotions—like fear or anger—may act as such barriers especially in case of radical change (e.g., degrowth). While minority influence has been extensively applied to understand societal change, it has rarely been applied to understand the emotional responses that may hinder counter-normative pro-environmental messages. However, past literature on emotions shows that, in challenging situations—the likes of radical minority conflict—people will tend to use their emotional reaction to maintain societal status quo. Two studies investigated how participants emotionally react towards a counter-normative pro-environmental minority message (advocating degrowth). A qualitative (thematic analyses) and a quantitative (emotional self-report paradigm) studies showed that participants report emotions that allow them to realign themselves with the cultural backdrop of the social dominant paradigm (growth), thus resisting change. Specifically, although all participants tend to demonstrate higher proportions of control-oriented emotions, men do so more. These effects, as well as questions of cultural and ideological dominance, are discussed considering barriers towards pro-environmentalism.

In this 28-country study (N = 6112), we assessed how subjective perceptions and objective indicators of wealth were associated with majority group members’ perceptions of realistic threat related to immigration. Subjective wealth was assessed by individuals’ perceptions of their personal wealth (current/anticipated) and of their country´s wealth, whereas objective country-level wealth was assessed by GDP and HDI. Multilevel analyses showed that living in a country with a lower objective wealth and perceiving the country's relative wealth as low were associated with higher levels of perceived realistic threat. We also found that an anticipated decrease in personal wealth in the future was associated with higher threat perceptions only in low HDI countries. Our results suggest that perceived realistic threat is fostered by a perceived decline in the current wealth of the country, and country-level wealth may play a role in calibrating threat responses to anticipated personal wealth.

Considering the evolving and unpredictable job market, adaptability is an important skill for young adults. Such adaptability implies that schools need to teach key social competences, like communication, collaboration, or problem-solving. In this area, a gender gap has consistently been found, showing that boys display social competences less than girls. A large-scale nationwide multilab longitudinal experiment--the ProFAN project--was conducted in France among more than 10,000 vocational high-school students. Its primary goal was to develop and test an intervention promoting a range of psychological and psychosocial variables in vocational high schools, including social competences. This 2-year long, three-wave field experiment compared the effects of a cooperative learning method--the jigsaw classroom, that entails positive goal and resource interdependence--to two control conditions: one that involves cooperation with resource independence, and the other that remains business-as-usual. This article focuses on the differential development of perceived social competences of adolescent boys and girls over time, comparing the three pedagogical methods. Results of longitudinal multilevel modeling replicate the gender gap in perceived social competences and show that this gap widens with time. However, and most importantly, the analyses revealed that such widening of the gender gap was greater in the two control conditions than in the jigsaw condition, in which the evolution of boys' and girls' perceptions of social competences remained similar over time. Contributions to the understanding of the development and teaching of social competences in education settings are discussed.

Teachers' beliefs about students' errors are influenced by structural factors and by other beliefs towards education and students that teachers may hold. The literature on this topic has provided some evidence and some mixed results. Furthermore, some structural aspects related to errors have not been considered in framing teachers' beliefs about errors, such as the use of grades as a classroom assessment practice, which is strongly related to errors in testing situations. Based on these premises, this study aimed to explore teachers' beliefs about errors and the practices teachers report using to deal with students' errors in the classroom and teachers' beliefs about the interdependence between grades and errors. Italian teachers (N = 33) from primary, middle, and secondary schools had been interviewed and the qualitative data were analysed through reflexive thematic analysis. The results showed that, according to teachers, errors acquire different meanings in the learning process, which are related to the roles they play in fostering or not learning. Furthermore, in describing these roles teachers reported to use specific practices to deal with students' errors. Finally, teachers acknowledged that classroom assessment based on grades has a negative interdependency with errors that makes it difficult to present errors as a fruitful part of learning both in learning and testing situations. Our results reveal the ambivalence of teachers' beliefs about errors and shed light on the challenges the grading evaluation system poses to teachers.

Existing research on the education of refugee children has been conducted in countries with a longstanding tradition of refugee integration. The aim of this study was to gain insight into the integration process of refugee children in Croatian schools. Croatia is a small EU country with limited experience in refugee integration. The phenomenological approach was used to examine the experiences and perspectives of the relevant actors. Interviews and focus group discussions were conducted with refugee children (N = 15), their parents (N = 5), classmates (N = 50), and school staff (N = 54) from six elementary schools in Zagreb. Data analyses suggested three general needs: educational, language, and social, each of them connected to more specific needs, challenges, and suggestions. The results of the study are discussed within the Schachner et al. (2017) framework of immigrant adolescents' acculturation.