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Restrictions on social interaction and travel due to the COVID-19 pandemic have affected how researchers approach fieldwork and data collection. Whilst online focus groups have received attention since the 2000s as a method for qualitative data collection, relatively little of the relevant literature appears to have made use of now ubiquitous video calling software and synchronous, interactive discussion tools. Our own experiences in organising fieldwork aimed at understanding the impact of different “future-proofing” strategies for the European agri-food system during this period resulted in several methodological changes being made at short notice. We present an approach to converting in-person focus group to a virtual methodology and provide a checklist for researchers planning their own online focus groups. Our findings suggest data are comparable to in-person focus groups and factors influencing data quality during online focus groups can be safeguarded. There are several key steps, both before and during the focus groups, which can be taken to ensure the smooth running of such events. We share our reflections on this approach and provide a resource for other researchers moving to online-only data collection.

The purpose of this study is to examine the role of videoconferencing technologies for mediating and transforming emotional experiences in virtual context.

Drawing on empirical data of video conferencing experiences, this study identifies different constitutive relations with technology through which actors cope with actual or potential anxieties in virtual meetings. It draws on the phenomenological-existential tradition (Sartre and Merleau-Ponty) and on an interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA) to conceptualize and illustrate the role of affective affordances in virtual settings.

The study identifies four different body–technology–other relations that provide different action possibilities, both disclosing and concealing, for navigating emotional experiences in virtual encounters of mutual gazing. These findings offer insights into the anatomy of virtual emotions and provide explanations on the nature of Zoom fatigue (interactive exhaustion) and heightened feelings of self-consciousness resulting from video conferencing interactions.

This paper builds on and extends current scholarship on technological affordances, as well as emotions, to suggest that technologies also afford different tactics for navigating emotional experiences. Thus, this paper proposes the notion of affective affordance that can expand current information system (IS) and organization studies (OS) scholarship in important ways. The focus is on videoconference technologies and meetings that have received little research attention and even less so from a perspective on emotions. Importantly, the paper offers nuanced insights that can advance current research discourse on the relationships between technology, human body and emotions.

This practitioner-focused article highlights a collaborative, school-wide project at a PDS that showcased elementary students’ strengths and talents. Based on the children’s book, The Smart Cookie (John, 2021), teachers and the university professor-in-residence developed professional learning communities, which inspired the creation of a space for all students to demonstrate ways in which they were “smart cookies” that aligned with our comprehensive mission of promoting inclusive practices.

Rooted in professional learning communities, teachers at our PDS spent the first half of the school year learning about chosen topics of social–emotional learning, stamina and neurodiversity. The Smart Cookie Project was created to demonstrate the connections between these topics. Students at the PDS were given the opportunity to create an original project that showcased their creativity, interests and talents. Projects were then displayed during a schoolwide showcase.

The impact of the project and the showcase demonstrated the importance of creating opportunities for both teacher and student innovation. The project brought the community together, allowed students to be viewed through strengths-based perspectives, helped teachers see how their own learning can positively impact their practice and emphasized the need for honoring student choice in the classroom.

The project discussed here can lend itself to fellow PDSs looking to adopt innovative instructional approaches, honor inclusive practices and situate students in places of strength.

The purpose of this study is to examine how dialogic spaces were co-constituted (opened, broadened and deepened) between students engaged in divergent and convergent collaborative learning tasks, orchestrated by teachers in Finnish primary and secondary schools. The concept of dialogic space refers to a dynamic, shared resource of ideas in dialogue and has come to represent an ideal form of educational interaction, in the contexts of collaborative learning, joint creative work and shared knowledge-building.

A socio-cultural discourse analysis of video-observed classroom dialogue, entailing the development of a new analytic typology, was undertaken to explore the co-constitution of dialogic space. The data are derived from two qualitative studies, one examining dialogue to co-create fictive video stories in primary-school classrooms (divergent task), the other investigating collaborative knowledge building in secondary-school health education (convergent task).

Dialogic spaces were opened through group settings and by the students’ selection of topics. In the divergent task, the broadening of dialogic space derived from the heterogeneous group settings, whereas in the convergent task, from the multiple and various information sources involved. As regards the deepening of dialogic space, explicit reflective talk remained scarce; instead the norms deriving from the school-context tasks and requirements guided the group dialogue.

This study lays the groundwork for subsequent research regarding the orchestration of dialogic space in divergent and convergent tasks by offering a typology to operationalise dialogic space for further, more systematic, comparisons and aiding the understandings of the processes implicated in intercreating and interthinking. This in turn is of significance for the development of dialogic pedagogies.

The purpose of this paper is to examine Conscious Discipline’s (CD) Parenting Education Curriculum (CD PEC), the parenting component of CD’s research-based social and emotional learning program. CD aims to change child behavior by changing how adults understand and manage their own behaviors and emotions. Researchers explored CD PEC’s association with improved parenting skills, parent–child relationships and child behavior and emotion management.

During pre- and post-site visits, parents in four Head Start programs completed the Attentive Parenting Survey (n=25) and interviews (n=19); and 20 staff were also interviewed.

Parents reported that CD PEC shifted their perspectives and practices for managing children’s challenging behaviors, improved parent–child relationships and resulted in decreased child behavior problems.

The study was correlational, based on self-report, and had a small sample with no comparison group.

This study supports CD PEC as a means of shifting parenting practices, relationships and child behavior by focusing on adult social-emotional skills and self-regulation.

This study provides preliminary evidence that addressing the social-emotional needs of adults is a viable step to helping children improve their social skills, emotion regulation and general behavior, which have all been linked to later academic and life success.

The paper studies improvements in parents’ emotion recognition and self-regulation before disciplining their children.

The idea to use computers for teaching and learning is over 50 years old. Numerous attempts to use computers for knowledge dissemination under a variety of names have failed in many cases, and have become successful in others. The essence of this paper can be summarized in two sentences. One, in some niches, applications tend to be successful. Second, attempts to fully eliminate humans from the educational process are bound to fail, yet if a large number of aspects is handled well, the role of teachers can indeed be much reduced. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Report on experimental results.

In some niches, applications of e-Learning technology tend to be successful. However, attempts to fully eliminate humans from the educational process are bound to fail, yet if a large number of aspects is handled well, the role of teachers can indeed be much reduced.

A number of features that seemed essential in earlier e-Learning systems turn out to be superfluous.

New e-Learning systems have to concentrate on quality of content, not complex technology.

E-Learning the right way helps learners, teachers and institutions.

Experiments reported verify or do the opposite of often loosely stated opinions.

This study was intended to ensure learner-centred pedagogy in an open and distance learning environment by applying scaffolding and positive reinforcement techniques.

This study critically analysed the context and current instructional practice of Bangladesh Open University (BOU) via document analysis and literature review. The conceptual framework of this study was adapted from the ADDIE model, i.e. the analysis, design, development, implementation and evaluation model.

The study explored that the instructional practice of BOU was dominated by teacher-centred pedagogy. Hence, to ensure learner-centred pedagogy, the researchers developed three model lesson plans. These lesson plans infused the theoretical directives of scaffolding and positive reinforcement as well as several assessment tasks which can assess the learners’ lower-order and higher-order thinking skills. The researchers also presented possible challenges for the sound implementation of these model lesson plans and suggested pragmatic solutions accordingly.

This study recommended that the combined application of scaffolding and positive reinforcement would effectively ensure learner-centred pedagogy.

This paper aims to introduce the Empatia video reflection method, designed to enhance care workers’ awareness of empathic care. The method makes the quality of care visible, which is needed when digitalization efforts in elder care focus on the efficiency and adequacy of care work.

The Empatia method leans on previous studies of the interaction between care professionals and clients and elaborates further previous video reflection methods. In empathic care work, the care worker sees the client on their life continuum, rather than focusing on only medical treatments.

The empirical example demonstrates how a care worker gained awareness of their empathic interaction habits. Within the work community, the reflection process sparked discussions on values: the purpose of care work and how to conduct empathic care. Focusing on empathic relationships in care fosters both the client’s and the care worker’s well-being.

The strength of the Empatia method is that it makes empathy visible in interaction and something that is individually and collectively learnable. The Empatia includes an analytical tool for researchers to reveal empathy in client interaction. It can be developed further into a reflection tool for service work to learn how to be empathic in service encounters.

Compared to other video-stimulated recall methods, the Empatia involves contextual understanding of care work. Empowering positive interactions instead of detecting errors and solving problems is a novel concept and is scantily used in studies of organizational learning. The Empatia provides a detailed method description that allows for the replication of the method by anyone.

The internet and search engines dominate within people’s information acquisition, especially among the younger generations. Given this trend, this study aims to explore if information and communication technology (ICT) practices, internet reliance and views of knowledge and knowing, i.e. epistemic beliefs, interact with each other. Everyday practices and conceptions among beginning undergraduate students are studied as a challenge for higher education.

The study builds upon survey-based quantitative data operationalising students’ epistemic beliefs, their internet reliance and their ICT practices. The survey items were used to compute subscales describing these traits, and the connections were explored using correlations analysis.

The results suggest that the more beginning undergraduate students rely on internet-based information, the more they are inclined to epistemic beliefs where knowledge is regarded as certain, unchanging, unambiguous and as being handed down by some authority.

The approach used in the study applies to the sample used, and further research is required to test the applicability of the approach on larger samples.

The study highlights the risk of everyday information practices being transferred into the educational context.

Ignorance of these changes may pose a risk for knowledge building on different educational levels and in a longer perspective, a threat to democracy.

While there is some research on epistemic beliefs in relation to internet-based information, studies approaching the problem over a possible connection between epistemic beliefs and internet reliance are scarce. In addition, this study implies a conceptual bridge between epistemic beliefs and internet reliance over the concept of algorithmic authority.

This research addresses a need in early childhood education for evidence-based teaching strategies that build emotional self-regulation skills in young children. The intervention assessed in this study focused on increasing the emotion vocabulary of preschool-aged students.

This mixed-methods, quasi-experimental study evaluated the impact a dialogic reading approach combined with direct instruction of emotion words during a shared book-reading activity had on students' emotion vocabulary knowledge. The study was conducted in a licensed daycare center in a suburb of Chicago, Illinois, with ten four- and five-year-old students. Pre- and post-session surveys assessed the intervention's impact on the students' receptive and expressive vocabulary knowledge, and observation notes captured the students' responses to the intervention activities.

The results showed significant increases with small to medium effect sizes between the students’ pre- and post-session survey scores for both receptive and expressive emotion vocabulary knowledge, a strong positive correlation between the level of student engagement during the intervention and their emotion vocabulary assessment scores, and the impact other variables had on the intervention’s effectiveness.

This research provides information on a culturally adaptable and quickly learned teaching strategy that could be used to build emotional self-regulation skills in the early childhood classroom.

This research uniquely applies this intervention as a universal strategy with preschool-aged children.