Searching for New Answers: The Application of Task‐Technology Fit to E‐Textbook Usage

Students have been slow to adopt e‐textbooks even though they are often less expensive than traditional textbooks. Prior e‐textbook research has focused on adoption behavior, with little research to date on how students perceive e‐textbooks fitting their needs. This work builds upon Task‐Technology Fit (TTF) and Consumer Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT2) theory to present a student‐perspective model of e‐textbook usage. By contextualizing TTF and UTAUT2 to e‐textbooks, the research fills a gap in the literature and provides guidance to researchers and practitioners. The goal of the research is to understand how students perceive their task of learning to fit with e‐textbook technology, and how that fit influences e‐textbook usage and expected performance in their classes. To achieve this goal, the research develops a model to test the relationship between perceived TTF of e‐textbooks and UTAUT2‐defined user characteristics that encourage adoption behaviors, thus facilitating student learning. The findings show that four factors impact a student's perceived TTF: substitution, habit, hedonic motivation, and facilitating conditions. Furthermore, perceived TTF positively correlates with students’ e‐textbook usage and expected performance in classes when using e‐textbooks. While price value exhibits a measurable effect on e‐textbook utilization, it is a minor factor.     

Does war contribute to family violence against children? Findings from a two-generational multi-informant study in Northern Uganda

After 20 years of civil war in Northern Uganda, the continuity of violence within the family constitutes a major challenge to children's healthy development in the post-conflict era. Previous exposure to trauma and ongoing psychopathology in guardians potentially contribute to parental perpetration against children and dysfunctional interactions in the child's family ecology that increase children's risk of maltreatment. In order to investigate distal and proximal risk factors of child victimization, we first aimed to identify factors leading to more self-reported perpetration in guardians. Second, we examined factors in the child's family environment that promote child-reported experiences of maltreatment. Using a two-generational design we interviewed 368 children, 365 female guardians, and 304 male guardians from seven war-affected rural communities in Northern Uganda on the basis of standardized questionnaires. We found that the strongest predictors of self-reported aggressive parenting behaviors toward the child were guardians’ own experiences of childhood maltreatment, followed by female guardians’ victimization experiences in their intimate relationship and male guardians’ posttrautmatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms and alcohol-related problems. Regarding children's self-report of victimization in the family, proximal factors including violence between adults in the household and male guardians’ PTSD symptom severity level predicted higher levels of maltreatment. Distal variables such as female guardians’ history of childhood victimization and female guardians’ exposure to traumatic war events also increased children's report of maltreatment. The current findings suggest that in the context of organized violence, an intergenerational cycle of violence persists that is exacerbated by female guardians’ re-victimization experiences and male guardians’ psychopathological symptoms.     

Encouraging E‐Textbook Adoption: Merging Two Models

This research builds a new model by drawing upon e‐textbook adoption models developed in two recent publications, which share similarities but have different findings. Although they both achieve positive results, these two prior e‐textbook studies employ different methods and background theories. This research bridges these earlier models and develops a third, parsimonious, blended model for e‐textbook adoption. Using a survey of undergraduate students, the authors first assess each model independently. Broadening the diversity of the sample population yields results that are similar, yet slightly different from those found in the prior two studies. Next, this study develops a single blended, parsimonious model that explains a higher proportion of the variance than the prior studies with just three constructs: perceived usefulness, hedonic motivation, and habit. In addition to developing and testing a new parsimonious model, this research provides theoretical and practical guidance for e‐textbook usage.     

Erwartungshaltungen von Sekundärschullehrern in Nairobi

This article analyses the factors influencing the attitude of secondary school teachers in Nairobi. The findings are based on data collected in a three months field study. 30 interviews supplemented by questionnaires and observation show that due to the principle of equal pay for equal work the younger male teachers suffer from relative deprivation in status and are therefore the least motivated and the most likely to change the profession. An explanation can be found in their socio-economic situation and in the incompatibility of male expectations with career opportunities. In this context, direct working conditions don't seem to have a significant influence on teachers' attitude.     

Trauma-related impairment in children—A survey in Sri Lankan provinces affected by armed conflict

ObjectivesThe present study examined traumatic experiences, PTSD, and co-morbid symptoms in relation to neuropsychological and school performance in school children affected by two decades of civil war and unrest.MethodThe epidemiological survey of children's mental health included a representative sample of 420 school children. Local teachers were trained to administer a translation of the UCLA-PTSD Index Form. The instrument and the epidemiological findings were validated by assessment through clinical expert interview, school grades, and neuropsychological testing in a subsample (N = 67).ResultsNinety-two percent of the children surveyed had experienced severely traumatizing events such as combat, bombing, shelling, or witnessing the death of a loved one. Twenty-five percent met the criteria for a diagnosis of PTSD. Traumatized children reported lasting interference of experiences with their daily life, which was corroborated by memory testing, scores in school performance and ratings of social withdrawal. Depressive symptoms and poor physical health were frequent in these children. The majority of trained teachers achieved valid results in the structured interviews.ConclusionPerformance and functioning in children are related to the total load of traumatic events experienced. An important component of psychosocial programs in post-conflict areas should include increasing community-based awareness of the consequences of traumatic stress, both as a preventative measure and as a way of decreasing stigmatization of affected individuals.     

Challenges to the counsellor in a changing world — The impact of environmental changes in universities on the concepts of student counselling

This article will first consider in a systematic way how student counselling is related to change. In doing so it will refer to the development of student counselling in Germany. Formulating the thesis that student counsellors find themselves symptomatically confronted with changes which hint at deeper challenges than those they have known before, it will then explore new dimensions of change in universities and show how they may be linked with impulses and answers given by counselling and psychotherapy. Finally it will take a look at the professionalization of student counselling in the light of those changes.Bergische Universität — Gesamthochschule Wuppertal     

Student counselling in Germany: An overview

The aim of this report is to describe the development of the student counselling system at German universities. The first chapter gives a short review of the situation in the first decades after the war. The second chapter describes the setting up of working models for student counselling systems which served as a basis for the development of counselling centres in the seventies on a larger scale. Chapter III reports on the student counselling service at Bonn University as an example for a unit integrating information, orientation and person-centred counselling facilities as well as psychological counselling, and in Chapter IV Rott gives an overview of the situation of psychological counselling in Germany.