Aphasia and a Legacy of Violence: Disabling and Enabling Knowledge of the Past in Poland

Neighbors ignited a fierce debate in the Polish press over the remembrance of a WWII pogrom of Jewish Poles by gentile Poles. There were three different responses crafted by media commentators to recuperate the nation. I argue that the debate demonstrated an aphasic structural disorder that rendered knowledge of the past violence and its victims unrecognisable and its implications incomprehensible. My psychoanalytic reading shows that misrecognition of that knowledge to protect the fiction of the Polish gentile Self was the fundamental dynamic in the media commentaries. I examine the aphasic mechanisms of misrecognition and metonymy for insights into how ignorance is repeatedly legitimated and disregard is diffused and how the Self dependency on the Other is barred from recognition. I explicate how aphasia shapes memory and responses to a national rupture and subsequent recuperation.     

Racial incorporation through alignment with whiteness

This study examines alignment with whiteness as a form of racial incorporation among Asian Indian immigrants. Alignment—lining up—explains the process of racial incorporation as a creative construction of similarities in social position, values, interests, and culture. Thirty Asian Indian immigrants were interviewed. We found that they were positioned to interact with white Americans by their material resources, terms of immigration, and prearrival imagination of the U.S. as white. They incorporated themselves by constructing terms of equivalence with whiteness and adopting the discourse of racelessness. We demonstrate how identity capital and affect enable and secure racial alignment.     

PSYCHOLOGICAL COUNSELLING IN MUSIC SCHOOLS IN POLAND

The development of psychological counselling for students of music schools in Poland is presented. The author's counselling experience has shown that crises in music school students can be analyzed in terms of values, technology and socio‐emotional factors. An important feature of psychological diagnosis is the analysis of musical achievement motivation (short, medium and longterm).     

Use of the <Emphasis Type="Italic">Moodle</Emphasis> Platform to Promote an Ongoing Learning When Lecturing General Physics in the Physics,Mathematics and Electronic Engineering Programmes at the University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU

The Moodle platform has been used to put into practice an ongoing evaluation of the students’ Physics learning process. The evaluation has been done on the frame of the course General Physics, which is lectured during the first year of the Physics, Mathematics and Electronic Engineering Programmes at the Faculty of Science and Technology of the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU). A test bank with more than 1000 multiple-choice questions, including conceptual and numerical problems, has been prepared. Throughout the course, the students have to answer a 10-question multiple-choice test for every one of the blocks the course is divided in and which were previously treated and worked in the theoretical lectures and problem-solving sessions. The tests are automatically corrected by Moodle, and under certain criteria, the corresponding mark is taken into account for the final mark of the course. According to the results obtained from a statistical study of the data on the student performances during the last four academic years, it has been observed that there exists an actual correlation between the marks obtained in the Moodle tests and the final mark of the course. In addition, it could be deduced that students who have passed the Moodle tests increase their possibilities of passing the course by an odds ratio close to 3.     

Academic self-concept and achievement in Polish primary schools: cross-lagged modelling and gender-specific effects

This study reports relationships between general academic self-concept and achievement in grade 3 and grade 5. Gender-specific effects were investigated using a longitudinal, two-cycle, 3-year autoregressive cross-lagged panel design in a large, representative sample of Polish primary school pupils (N?=?4226). Analysis revealed (a) reciprocal relations between general academic self-concept and achievement over time but the influence of prior achievement on self-concept was stronger; (b) on average, levels of both constructs declined over time; (c) gender differences were not observed in longitudinal relations (i.e. cross-lagged, autoregressive and intra-wave correlations); (d) girls demonstrated higher mean levels of academic achievement at both grades; and (e) average level of general academic self-concept was not gender differentiated in grade 3 but decreased more for girls. These results are discussed in the light of the theoretical and practical implications.     

Well-being in post-primary schools in Ireland: the assessment and contribution of character strengths

Enhancing the well-being of primary and post-primary students is one of the priorities of the Department of Education and Skills in Ireland. Whilst interventions are being implemented across the board, little is known about the current levels of adolescents’ well-being. Drawing from research on positive education, in the current study well-being was assessed amongst 2822 adolescents, aged 12–19 in Ireland, using the PERMA profiler [Butler, J., and M. L. Kern. (2016). “The PERMA-Profiler: A Brief Multidimensional Measure of Flourishing.” International Journal of Wellbeing 6 (3): 1–48. doi:10.5502/ijw.v6i3.526] and “VIA-Youth Survey” [VIA Character (2014). http://www.viacharacter.org/www/Research-Old2/Psychometric-Data-VIA-Youth-Survey]. Mann–Whitney U-test and multiple regression analyses were conducted in the examination of age and sex differences in students’ well-being scores, and the prediction of the contribution of character-strength-development to well-being. The results showed that students’ well-being decreased steadily from the first year, through to the middle and senior years of post-primary school. Furthermore, in comparison to males, females reported lower levels of well-being across the board, and higher levels of negative emotions and loneliness. Finally, the underuse of character strengths predicted lower levels of well-being in Irish schools. Implications for practice include the importance of customising well-being programmes across different schools and age groups, as well as the potential for the incorporation of psychological tests to evaluate the effectiveness of such interventions.     

Primary and Secondary Students’ Understanding of the Rainfall Phenomenon and Related Water Systems: a Comparative Study of Two Methodological Approaches

Rainfall is a key process in the water cycle, the most structured scientific knowledge about water movement on Earth. Nevertheless, despite being a common topic covered in school science, it entails several cognitive difficulties for young children. This study uses a pictorial task and semi-opened questions to examine primary (11/12 years old) and secondary (12/13 years old) students’ understanding of the elements and processes involved in the hydrologic cycle and how they are integrated into their explanations regarding the rainfall phenomenon. Overall, we have found that the studied children’s (n = 246) conceptual knowledge increases with age. However, they have an incomplete perception of the mechanism of rainfall and its integration into the water cycle. In fact, not all the students have a cyclic notion of water dynamics; they also miss the inclusion and role of groundwater in water systems and present misconceptions regarding key processes, such as condensation and evaporation. Regarding the two diagnostic tools (drawings and questionnaires) used to study children’s understanding, although questionnaires seem more appropriate for assessing lower conceptual levels, each methodological approach is useful for detecting different key concepts and misconceptions related to the rainfall phenomenon and related water cycle. Consequently, a mixed research design using different methods is advised for a comprehensive study of students’ conceptions.