We discuss the effectiveness of mediated communication (internet communication via a computer tablet) and tacit engagement in a Project on mental health. The project is aimed at improving the wellbeing of adult women living with chronic mental disorders in long-term psychiatric internment. The computer tablets act as "portals" to provide access and conatct with the outside world for patients who have poor (if any) external social support. This support includes a patient-centred psycho-social care, and accompanying clinical and pharmaceutical treatment. (...) Both patients and their relatives accepted the benefits of internet mediation, for very different reasons. For the patient, this is a flash of contact with humanity, and for the relatives the internet communication this proved to be an alternative to the need for physical proximity. As some patients had no relatives or friends to communicate (even remotely) with the outside world, and because there is a school next door to the clinic, we visualized that the communication between these two communities could provide both a therapeutic and poetic act of learning and compassion. The electronic portal could serve as a virtual bridge between two forbidden domains. Although awareness of students of the nearby school was raised about mental health, the use of internet mediation devoid of physical proximity made the students suspicious of the goal of the mediation. From the patient's side, however, each contact was an instance of joy. Several issues were raised from this exercise. (shrink)

We discuss the effectiveness of mediated communication (internet communication via a computer tablet) and tacit engagement in a Project on mental health. The project is aimed at improving the wellbeing of adult women living with chronic mental disorders in long-term psychiatric internment. The computer tablets act as "portals" to provide access and conatct with the outside world for patients who have poor (if any) external social support. This support includes a patient-centred psycho-social care, and accompanying clinical and pharmaceutical treatment. (...) Both patients and their relatives accepted the benefits of internet mediation, for very different reasons. For the patient, this is a flash of contact with humanity, and for the relatives the internet communication this proved to be an alternative to the need for physical proximity. As some patients had no relatives or friends to communicate (even remotely) with the outside world, and because there is a school next door to the clinic, we visualized that the communication between these two communities could provide both a therapeutic and poetic act of learning and compassion. The electronic portal could serve as a virtual bridge between two forbidden domains. Although awareness of students of the nearby school was raised about mental health, the use of internet mediation devoid of physical proximity made the students suspicious of the goal of the mediation. From the patient's side, however, each contact was an instance of joy. Several issues were raised from this exercise. (shrink)

Variable responses to transcranial direct current stimulation protocols across individuals are widely reported, but the reasons behind this variation are unclear. This includes tDCS protocols meant to improve attention. Attentional control is impacted by top-down and bottom-up processes, and this relationship is affected by state characteristics such as anxiety. According to Attentional Control Theory, anxiety biases attention towards bottom-up and stimulus-driven processing. The goal of this study was to explore the extent to which differences in state anxiety and related measures (...) affect visual attention and category learning, both with and without the influence of tDCS. Using discovery learning, participants were trained to classify pictures of European streets into two categories while receiving 30 min of 2.0 mA anodal, cathodal, or sham tDCS over the rVLPFC. The pictures were classifiable according to two separate rules, one stimulus and one hypothesis-driven. The Remote Associates Test, Profile of Mood States, and Attention Networks Task were used to understand the effects of individual differences at baseline on subsequent tDCS-mediated learning. Multinomial logistic regression was fit to predict rule learning based on the baseline measures, with subjects classified according to whether they used the stimulus-driven or hypothesis-driven rule to classify the pictures. The overall model showed a classification accuracy of 74.1%. The type of tDCS stimulation applied, attentional orienting score, and self-reported mood were significant predictors of different categories of rule learning. These results indicate that anxiety can influence the quality of subjects’ attention at the onset of the task and that these attentional differences can influence tDCS-mediated category learning during the rapid assessment of visual scenes. These findings have implications for understanding the complex interactions that give rise to the variability in response to tDCS. (shrink)

The present study investigated the mediating role of conceptions of learning in the relationship between metacognition and academic outcomes among middle school students. The self-report ‘Learning Conceptions Questionnaire’ (LCQ) and ‘Metacognitive questionnaire on the method of study’ (QMS) were administered to 136 middle school students and their academic outcomes were collected. Correlation analyses revealed that within metacognition only self-assessment was positively correlated with academic outcomes. Mediation analysis indicated that a conception of learning as internal attribution of success (...) and failure was significantly involved as mediator in the relationship between metacognition and academic achievements. The present study permitted to advance our knowledge about the relationship between metacognition and academic achievements and it opened the way to practical implications. (shrink)

Cooperative innovation has become a critical method for freight logistics firms in supply chain management. The previous study has proved that relational embeddedness has a positive effect on service innovation performance. However, the influence of organizational learning capacity has been widely ignored. This study focuses on explaining the mechanism of OLC on the relationship between RE and innovation performance of freight logistics service. Firstly, a theoretical model is constructed based on Social Network Theory, and four research hypotheses are presented. (...) Secondly, a sample of 236 respondents from freight logistics firms in China is analyzed to test the hypotheses. Finally, several management implications and recommendations are suggested. The research results demonstrate that both RE and OLC have positive effects on IPFLS. Meanwhile, OLC partially mediates the relationship between RE and IPFLS. The findings provide practical guidance for managers to strengthen the relationship with partners and enhance OLC. (shrink)

Recent developments in the field of education have led to a renewed interest in the mediating role of critical thinking abilities in the relationship between language learning strategies and the intermediate English as a Foreign Language learners’ writing performance. Oxford Placement Test was run to homogenize the participants, and 100 intermediate learners out of 235 were selected. Then, two valid questionnaires of Ricketts’ Critical Thinking Disposition and Oxford’s Strategy Inventory for Language Learning were administered. Having administered the questionnaires, (...) the researchers asked the participants to sit for a writing test. The data collected from the questionnaires and as well as the scores of their writing performances were analyzed through SPSS. The results showed a significant relationship between learning strategies and learners’ writing performances, the sub-sets of learning strategies and learners’ writing performances, and CTA and learners’ learning strategies. However, CTA did not play a mediating role in the relationship between intermediate EFL learners’ learning strategies and writing performance. Based on the results of the study, one might also conclude that strategies seemed to play a more important role in the performance of learners especially their writing performances. Therefore, this study had useful contributions for students, teachers, and curriculum designers. Findings of this research could assist teachers to be aware of learners’ strategies in learning writing and help their students to be responsive to using learning strategies in their learning process and create a satisfactory learning context for using learning strategies. Therefore, learners were able to become independent and feel responsibility for their own learning. Secondly, curriculum developers could take advantage of the findings to include learning strategies training into the curriculum. As a result, students were able to use strategies in their learning process more easily and finally, the results might pave the way for improving the research findings. (shrink)

Given the instructional challenges posed by the influx of minority-language children in North America, this article attempts to examine early childhood bi- or multilingualism in one of the fastest growing ethnic minority groups in Canada, Korean-Canadians. By drawing on a Vygotskian perspective, the article focuses on the affective and social aspects of learning for culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) children and their families. With an emphasis on the integration of language and thought, this article first identifies the instructional applications (...) of Vygotskian perspectives and then describes iterative phases of design-based research aimed at developing technology-mediated collaborative learning environments for trilingual Korean-Canadian children. The technology-mediated collaborative learning environment supported young CLD children's affective, social and cognitive needs and created meaning-centered collaborative learning environments. The paper concludes with a consideration of implications of this technology-mediated collaborative learning environment so as to assist teachers who might be confronted with the educational needs of the growing population of CLD children. (shrink)

In a society where mobility, globalization and contact with people from other cultures have become its basic descriptors, the enhancement of plurilingualism and intercultural understanding seem to be of the utmost concern. From a Positive Psychology Perspective, agency is the human capacity to affect other people positively or negatively through their actions. This agentic vision can be related to mediation, a concept rooted in the socio-cultural learning theory where social interaction is considered a fundamental cornerstone in the development of (...) cognition. Social interactions in the language learning setting may be facilitated through musical activities due to its social bonding effect. This paper tries to offer insights on how a musical-mediated experience in language learning may develop students’ interpersonal and collaborative competences to become active members of a more inclusive society. Mediation, considered as a paradigm shift in the foreign language classroom and the different out-of-class language learning possibilities, could also provide an environment where learners maximize their emotional intelligence. Our paper focuses on this paradigm shift spearheaded by the CEFR Companion Volume and the considerable repercussions it is bound to have for foreign language didactics, as cooperative tasks become central to foreign language learning. We hypothesize that mediated language learning experiences imply a socioemotional change in learners, focusing on the others, on their needs and interests, by trying to help them understand texts, concepts or facilitating communication with their peers. An intervention with a musical-mediated language learning experience was designed and implemented in the classroom. A self assessment scale with mediation descriptors and the socioemotional expertise scale (SEE) were administered. Results show that students become more mindful of their strengths, of their capacity for collaborating and team working. This leads to more awareness of their mediation skills. Students’ mediation skills correlate significantly with their socio-emotional skills, more concretely with their expressivity. The implementation of a musical-mediated experience also promoted tolerance and enhanced learners’ intrinsic motivation for language learning at the same time as they acknowledged their diversity. (shrink)

ArgumentLinking up with recent studies on the experience of space and place in modern youth literature, this article analyzes how the “journey” as a narrative line and motif transformed Dutch early modern travel books for children from classical teaching instruments into explorative knowledge places. In the popular seventeenth-century Glorious and Fortunate Journey to the Holy Land, young readers were invited to travel within the book, which was presented as a place that covers material pages to observe as well as imagined (...) places to read about. Eighteenth-century travel books, for example written by Joachim Heinrich Campe, shifted from an inner to an empirical mode of travelling. They raised the suggestion that they offered unmediated observations and travel experiences, as if reading about places was equal to seeing places. Since travel literature facilitated active knowledge quisition among youngsters, but also left little room for autonomous innovations or different interpretations, this article reveals the emancipatory as well as restrictive character of such places of learning. By turning reading into a kind of travelling, travel books served as a substitute for travel. (shrink)

The study assessed the role of childhood religiosity in adult religiosity and learning motivation in university participants. Participants were 338 university students (mean age = 20.42, SD = 1.53, 47% men) selected from Islamic (50%) and general universities (50%). The findings showed that participants from Islamic university compared to those from general universities scored higher on religious altruism among religiosity outcomes and on self-efficacy and active learning strategies among learning motivation outcomes. The hypothesized associations between childhood religiosity, (...) religious altruism, religious practice, and specific learning motivation outcomes were significant. Childhood religiosity predicted two learning motivation outcomes, self-efficacy and active learning strategies, and only religious altruism in the presence of religious practice mediated these associations. In addition, university status moderated these mediated associations with stronger indirect effects for participants from Islamic universities compared to those from general universities. (shrink)

The effect of task difficulty on inter-task transfer is a classic issue in motor learning. We examined the relation between self-efficacy and transfer of learning after practicing different versions of a stick balancing task. Practicing the same task or an easier version led to significant pre- to post-test transfer of learning, whereas practicing a more difficult version did not. Self-efficacy increased modestly from pre- to post-test with easy practice, but decreased significantly with difficult practice. In addition, self-efficacy (...) immediately prior to the post-test was significantly lower after difficult practice than easy or intermediate practice. Self-efficacy immediately prior to the post-test, performance at the end of practice, and pre-test performance explained 75% of the variance in post-test performance. The mediating role of self-efficacy on transfer of learning offers an alternative explanation for recent findings on the superiority of easy-to-difficult transfer and may help clarify inconsistencies in earlier research. (shrink)

In this study, we tested a possible mechanism of the association between math anxiety and math achievement: the mediating role of math-specific grit. In Study 1, a sample of 10th grade students completed a battery of personality and attitude questionnaires, and math achievement was indexed by curriculum-based examination scores. Mediation analyses indicated that math-specific grit, but not domain-general grit, mediated the relationship between math anxiety and math achievement. In Study 2, we replicated and extended the above findings with another (...) sample of 11th grade students. Mediation analyses indicated that math-specific grit and math-specific procrastination played sequential mediating roles in the relationship between math anxiety and math achievement. That is, individuals with higher math anxiety were less gritty in math learning, possibly further leading them to be more procrastinated in performing math work, which may finally result in worse math achievement. In summary, the current study provides the first evidence that math-specific grit may mediate the relationship between math anxiety and math achievement. Furthermore, it also demonstrated the value of math-specific grit over domain-general grit in predicting math success, which invites a broader investigation on subject-specific grit. (shrink)

ObjectivesUnder the COVID-19 prevention and control policy, online learning has been widely used. The current study aimed to identify latent profiles of self-regulated learning in the context of online mathematics learning during the recurrent outbreak of COVID-19, and examine the mechanisms underlying the relationship between self-regulated learning and online mathematics learning engagement among Chinese junior high school students using variable-and person-centered approaches.MethodsA sample of 428 Chinese junior high school students completed questionnaires on self-regulated learning, (...) perceived academic control, and learning engagement. Mplus7.0 was used to analyze the latent classes of self-regulated learning. A mediation model was conducted using the software SPSS PROCESS macro.ResultsThree profiles of self-regulated learning were identified and named as low self-regulated learning, medium self-regulated learning, and high self-regulated learning. In the mediating analysis, results of the variable-centered approach showed that perceived academic control mediated the effects of self-regulated learning on learning engagement. For the person-centered approach, we selected the low self-regulated learning type as the reference profile, and the analysis revealed that compared with the reference profile, perceived academic control partially mediated the link between the medium self-regulated learning profile and learning engagement; perceived academic control partially mediated the relationship between the high self-regulated learning profile and learning engagement.ConclusionThis study showed the heterogeneity in the online mathematics self-regulated learning patterns of Chinese junior high school students during the COVID-19 pandemic, revealing the internal mechanisms of Chinese junior high school students’ online mathematics learning engagement using variable-and person-centered approaches. Furthermore, the findings of the study have important implications for promoting online mathematics learning engagement among junior high students during the pandemic. (shrink)

Learning burnout is an important indicator that reflects an individual’s learning state. Understanding the influencing factors and mechanism of learning burnout of medical students has practical significance for improving their mental health. This study aimed to explore the mediating roles of school identity and collective self-esteem between school psychological environment and learning burnout in medical students. A total of 2,031 medical students were surveyed using the School Psychological Environment Questionnaire, School Identity Questionnaire, Collective Self-esteem Scale, and (...) Learning Burnout Scale. The results showed the following: school psychological environment had a negative effect on learning burnout among medical students, and school identity and collective self-esteem played significant mediating roles between school psychological environment and learning burnout [95% CI = ]. Specifically, there were three paths that school psychological environment and learning burnout: first, through the independent mediating role of school identity; second, through the independent mediating role of collective self-esteem; and third, through the chain mediating roles of school identity and collective self-esteem. The findings reveal that school psychological environment not only directly influences the learning burnout of medical students but also indirectly influences it through school identity and collective self-esteem. Thus, this study has some important implications for prevention and intervention of learning burnout among medical students. (shrink)

Learning burnout is a pressing issue among Chinese medical undergraduates and Postgraduates and has drawn continuous attention worldwide. Studies have found that problematic smartphone use could affect learning burnout, but more research is needed in this direction. Furthermore, few studies focused on the mediating effect of psychological capital on the relationship between problematic smartphone use and learning burnout. The present study was a cross-sectional survey that recruited 1,800 participants from a medical university in Chongqing, China. A questionnaire (...) based on the Mobile Phone Addiction Tendency Scale, Psychological Capital Questionnaire, Learning Burnout Scale, and demographic variables were administered to these students, and 1,475 provided valid responses. 771 were undergraduates and 704 were postgraduates. Hierarchical regression and the bootstrap method were used to examine the mediating effect of psychological capital. After controlling for demographic variables, problematic smartphone use positively predicted learning burnout in undergraduates and in postgraduates. The partial mediating effect of psychological capital was 0.068 in undergraduates and 0.074 in postgraduates, accounting for 20.67 and 21.64%, respectively, of the total effect of problematic smartphone use on learning burnout. All the 95% confidence intervals did not contain 0. Problematic smartphone use can directly predict learning burnout and their relationship was mediated by psychological capital in Chinese medical undergraduates and postgraduates. Strategies to alleviating problematic smartphone use and enhance psychological capital in medical undergraduates and postgraduates may provide useful suggestions for future interventions on dealing with learning burnout in Chinese medical undergraduates and postgraduates. (shrink)