Social anxiety is associated with similar emotional impairments during digital and face-to-face communication in daily life

Background:Retrospective studies have found that people with elevated social anxiety (SA) show a preference for digital/online communication, which may be due to perceptions of enhanced emotional safety. Whether these preferences for/benefits of digital compared to face-to-face communication manifest in the real world has yet to be explored. Methods: We recruited samples of college students (N = 125) and community adults (N = 303) with varying levels of SA, sampled their emotions during digital and face-to-face communication using ecological momentary assessment (EMA) (Study 1) and a day reconstruction method (DRM) (Study 2), and preregistered our hypotheses (https://osf.io/e4y7x/). Results: Results from both studies showed that SA did not predict the likelihood of engaging in digital compared to face-to-face communication, and SA was associated with less positive and more negative emotions regardless of communication medium. Study 2 also showed that whether digital communication was synchronous (e.g., in real time via phone/video chat) or asynchronous (e.g., texting/instant messaging) did not impact the association between SA and emotions. Limitations: EMA and DRM methods, despite their many advantages, may be suboptimal for assessing the occurrence of digital communication behaviors relative to more objective methods (e.g., passively collecting smartphone communication data). Using event-contingent responding may have also yielded more reports of digital communication, thus strengthening our power to detect small, cross-level interaction effects. Conclusions:These results challenge beliefs that digital/online communication provides a source of emotional safety for people with elevated SA and suggests a greater need to address SA-related emotional impairments across digital communication platforms.

How do undergraduate nursing students learn in the hospital setting? A scoping review of conceptualisations, operationalisations and learning activities

ObjectivesAlthough clinical learning is pivotal for nursing education, the learning process itself and the terminology to address this topic remain underexposed in the literature. This study aimed to examine how concepts equivalent to ‘learning in practice’ are used and operationalised and which learning activities are reported in the nursing education literature. The final aim was to propose terminology for future studies.DesignThe scoping framework proposed by Arksey and O’Malley was used to answer the research questions and address gaps in the literature. Two systematic searches were conducted in PubMed, EBSCO/ERIC and EBSCO/CINAHL between May and September 2018: first, to identify concepts equivalent to ‘learning in practice’ and, second, to find studies operationalising these concepts. Eligible articles were studies that examined the regular learning of undergraduate nursing students in the hospital setting. Conceptualisations, theoretical frameworks and operationalisations were mapped descriptively. Results relating to how students learn were synthesised using thematic analysis. Quality assessment was performed using the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme checklist.ResultsFrom 9360 abstracts, 17 articles were included. Five studies adopted a general, yet not explained, synonym for learning in practice, and the other approaches focused on the social, unplanned or active nature of learning. All studies used a qualitative approach. The small number of studies and medium study quality hampered a thorough comparison of concepts. The synthesis of results revealed five types of learning activities, acknowledged by an expert panel, in which autonomy, interactions and cognitive processing were central themes.ConclusionsBoth theoretical approaches and learning activities of the current body of research fit into experiential learning theories, which can be used to guide and improve future studies. Gaps in the literature include formal and informal components of learning, the relation between learning and learning outcomes and the interplay between behaviour and cognitive processing.

Penerapan Kurikulum 2013 pada Pendidikan Dasar Pekanbaru

Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk (1) menyelidiki penerapan kurikulum 2013 pada pendidikan dasar di Pekanbaru dan (2) menyelidiki kendala yang dihadapi oleh guru pada pendidikan dasar di Pekanbaru dalam menerapkan kurikulum 2013. Ini adalah penelitian deskriptif kualitatif yang menggambarkan penerapan kurikulum 2013 oleh para guru di pendidikan dasar di Pekanbaru dan kendala yang mereka hadapi. Subjek dalam penelitian ini adalah enam pendidikan dasar di Pekanbaru yang menerapkan kurikulum 2013. Subjek adalah Sekolah Dasar 36 sebagai sekolah yang memiliki kelompok belajar besar, sekolah dasar 160 sebagai sekolah yang memiliki kelompok belajar sedang, sekolah dasar 134 sebagai sekolah yang memiliki kelompok belajar kecil, SMA 1, SMA 6, dan SMA 23. Data dikumpulkan dengan mengamati pembelajaran dan mewawancarai para guru dan kepala sekolah. Data yang dianalisis menunjukkan bahwa pembelajaran berbasis kurikulum 2013 di sekolah dasar di Pekanbaru belum berjalan dengan baik. Ada beberapa kendala dalam menerapkan kurikulum 2013 dalam pendidikan dasar di Pekanbaru seperti, (1) pemahaman guru masih kurang dari kurikulum 2013; (2) belum ada perubahan "pola pikir" guru untuk pembelajaran kurikulum 2013; (3) sinkronisasi antara guru kelas dan guru PJOK belum terjadi; dan (4) para guru belum memahami penilaian otentik pada kurikulum 2013. This research aims to (1) investigate the implementation of curriculum 2013 at basic education in Pekanbaru and (2) investigate the obstacles which faced by teachers at basic education in Pekanbaru implementing the curriculum 2013. This is a qualitative descriptive study which describing the implementation of curriculum 2013 by teachers at basic education in Pekanbaru and the obstacles which they faced. The subject in this study were six basic education in Pekanbaru which implementing the curriculum 2013 The subjects are the elementary School 36 as the school which having large study group, the elementary school 160 as the school which having medium study group, the elementary school 134 as the school which having small study group, yunior high school 1, yunior high school 6, and yunior high school 23. The data was collected by observing the learning and interviewing the teachers and headmaster. The analyzed data showed that the learning based of curriculum 2013 at elementary school in Pekanbaru had not gone well yet. There were some obstacles on implementing curriculum 2013 in basic education in Pekanbaru such as, (1) the understanding of teacher was still less to the curriculum 2013; (2) there is no change of “mindset” of teacher to the learning of curriculum 2013 yet; (3) the sychronization between the class teacher and the PJOK teacher is not happened yet; and (4) the teachers did not understand the authentic assessment on curriculum 2013 yet.

Intercultural competence of university teachers: a challenge of internationalization

The aim of the authors is to respond to the growing demands on the intercultural competence of university teachers due to intensified internationalization pressures on higher education, especially due to the growing number of students and teachers’ international exchanges. They report on an intercultural course design responding to this need, presenting a case study from Slovakia. First, they define the need of intercultural competence of university teachers, especially those teaching in English-medium study programmes. Then they share a) findings from a needs analysis preceding the design of a new curriculum for an intercultural competence course (ICC) at Matej Bel University (MBU) with three aims (development of linguistic, cultural and pedagogic competences); and b) results from action research during piloting the ICC course. A comparison of 2011 and 2018 surveys pointed to the growing dominance of the English language, including an increasing command of English by MBU teachers. The ICC curriculum, tailored to the pre-identified teachers’ needs, proved to be a feasible way of facilitating their intercultural competence. Its implementation revealed persistent prejudices and difficulties associated with overcoming them. It also confirmed a significant deficit in preparing university teachers for their role as intercultural mediators in English-medium courses.