Guadalupe Refugio Flores-Verduzco, Blanca Silvia Fraijo-Sing and César Octavio Tapia-Fonllem

pp 26 - 40

Educational institutions are crucial environments to promote students’ wellbeing. This introduces major challenges into the processes of executing and evaluating programmes such as the ones focused on achieving bullying-free schools. The concept of social wellbeing that is used throughout the present paper is associated to the subjective sense of action in the social construction and understanding of reality. The primary objective was to examine the relationship between Family Support (FS) and Social Wellbeing (SW) of high school education students in the state of Sonora, Mexico, as well as the effect of potential mediation of the School Environment (SE). This research was carried out with a cross-sectional sample of 265 teenagers (average age = 16 years old, SD=1.35), who responded to a self-report scale developed for this research study. The structural model has shown a high predictive power of SE as a mediating variable between FS and SW. Furthermore, both immediate contexts of students, i.e. family and school, were found to be relevant to their emotions and SW, which translates into a lower probability of being a victim of bullying. Therefore, we discuss a concept of SW seen from a perspective related to emotions, where material, economic, and/or monetary factors are not a priority.

Thematic Paper

"It's hard to be everywhere”: Teachers’ perspectives on spatiality, school design and school bullying

Paul Horton, Camilla Forsberg and Robert Thornberg

pp 41 - 55

In this qualitative study, we explore teachers’ perspectives on spatiality, school design and school bullying. The study is part of a larger, ongoing ethnographic research project into the relations between school bullying and the institutional context of schooling being conducted in schools in Sweden, focusing on the perspectives of teachers and students from pre-school class up to grade eight. The findings from this particular study are based on participant observations and semi-structured interviews with teachers from pre-school class to grade six (i.e. approx. ages 5-13) at three schools in Sweden. The findings demonstrate that environmental, social and structural elements of school spaces affect both social relations between students and teachers’ ability to prevent school bullying. Taken as a whole, the study highlights the importance of looking beyond the issue of supervision in schools and considering in more detail the ways in which spatiality and school design influence school bullying and preventative work in schools. 

Irina Rosa Kumschick, Felicitas Thiel, Camilla Goschin and Eva Froehlich

pp 56 - 72

The internship that preservice teachers complete early in the course of their studies paves the way for their transition from the role of student to that of teacher. It gives them a first opportunity to apply theoretical knowledge and develop practical skills, especially to improve their decision-making competences in the three-part process of teaching: planning a lesson, teaching it, and reflecting on the teaching performance (PTR). The present study addresses two research questions. First, to what extent do preservice teachers perceive themselves to be more competent in PTR after their initial teaching internship? Second, to what extent does the individual mood correlate with any reported improvement? 592 preservice teachers participated in the study. Using latent change score modelling, we found learning gains in all three dimensions of PTR. In addition, the results show that negative mood predicts processes of planning and reflecting following the internship, but has no effect on the actual teaching of the lesson. .

Jesús Alonso-Tapia, Diana M. Abello and Ernesto Panadero

pp 73 - 89

This study has a two-fold objective: First, to adapt and validate the Emotions and Motivation Self-Regulation Questionnaire (EMSR-Q) with university students in Colombia, and secondly, to verify whether the relationship model between emotional and motivational self-regulation and academic performance coincides with what was initially proposed by the questionnaire’s authors. A total of 644 higher education students participated in the study. To test the questionnaire’s structural validity and generalizability across cultures and educational levels, confirmatory factor and cross validation analyses were carried out. Besides, to test its predictive validity, a multiple linear regression analysis was carried out. Results showed that the data fit the model well, that the scales of the questionnaire have adequate reliability, and that negative self-regulation of stress and avoidance-oriented self-regulation related negatively and significantly to academic performance. The results support the emotion and motivation self-regulation model proposed by the authors.

Eugeny L. Dotsenko, Vera A. Startseva, Olga V. Pchelina, Elena V. Karaberova and Natalya Ivantsova

pp 90 - 102

This paper discusses a class of phenomena called a “responsible decision”, a type of decision making in which the choice between behavioural capabilities is determined by the alternative values that lie behind them. Using Vygotksy’s theory of cultural and historical development, this paper posits that the process of a child's internalization of interpersonal dialogue is used as a means of making a responsible decision. The participants in the study included 137 Russian children and adolescents, aged 6-17 years old. The procedure used in the study showed an increase in the level of maturity of responsible decisions in children aged 6-11-year-old. The study revealed that the primary school age is the crucial time and area of proximal development for making responsible decisions. This has implications for some of the methods which adults can use to support a child’s ability to make responsible decisions. 

Short Research Report: Gratitude Moderates the Relationship Between Happiness and Resilience

Ian I. Llenares, Custer C. Deocaris, Marjorie Espanola and Jay A. Sario