ALTERNATIVE LEARNING SPACES, BODY AWARENESS AND POSTMODERN CHILDREN'S IMAGE - RECOMMENDATION OF ARTICLES
In our July selection of publications by ELTE PPK staff, you can read about the role played by the pedagogical space in skill development, the questionable effects of heartbeat detection, the relationship between sexual maturity and physical performance, or gain insight into the novel analysis of the image of children through Japanese anime.
Contents
- Competence development in an open learning space
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Exploring alternative pedagogical spaces to support 21st century skills development
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The role of school management in institutional absorption capacity
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Education and crisis management
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Music, theater and experience – or music(al) theater leisure
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Do we need to accurately perceive our heartbeats? Cardioceptive accuracy and sensibility are independent from indicators of negative affectivity, body awareness, body image dissatisfaction, and alexithymia
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Sensory and affective aspects of the perception of respiratory resistance
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The effect of puberty on physical performance
Competence development in an open learning space
21st century skills include competences for everyday life and work, such as cooperation and teamwork, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills, which are also developed in the pedagogical space. In the framework of this research, we sought to find out in which pedagogical space alternative schools, which have declared to develop 21st century skills in their pedagogical programme, implement competence development.
Exploring alternative pedagogical spaces to support 21st century skills development
The pedagogical space: the architecture of the school, the layout of the school, the natural and infrastructural environment of the school and the design of the classrooms, among other things, play a significant role in developing student’s skills and abilities. This paper presents the principles of alternative schools with regard to the design of pedagogical space and their implementation through an analysis of pedagogical programmes and school photographs.
The role of school management in institutional absorption capacity
What is the importance of absorption capacity in public education institutions? What effective way do we see for the organization to support the creation, maintenance and spread of innovations? What exemplary good leadership practices could we observe in the Hungarian public education system? Among other things, we are looking for answers to these questions in our present study. This paper provides an insight into research results on network-based school management. Many findings show that while horizontal learning within schools is often strong, external links are weaker, and there are only a few educational actors able to collaborate effectively with other sectors. In this paper, we present a management practice that sees schools as a part of the socio-ecological system, able to recognize the resources of the environment and access them in the longer term. The model developed provides a clear view of the content areas and platforms for internal and external collaborations, selection filters, and dynamics.
Education and crisis management
In recent years, the COVID-19 epidemic and related restrictions have required major adaptations in most sectors. During this period, countless new, innovative solutions were created, with the help of which organizations can increase their competitiveness even in the post-pandemic period. With the introduction of distance learning and home learning, remarkable learning organization solutions were created in many institutions in the education sector as well. The authors of the present study rely on the results of two larger-scale publications, which, built on each other over the course of a decade, investigated the theoretical connections of educational changes through qualitative and quantitative analysis of the relevant processes in Hungary. Readers can see how an educational research conducted according to a proven protocol for many years was transformed as a result of the pandemic: how the research questions and theoretical frameworks were supplemented, what new data collection and analysis solutions appeared. In addition, relying on empirical data, they can become familiar with the assumed correlations between the operational and management characteristics of educational institutions and their reactions to the emergency.
Educational Changes and Crisis Management
This paper provides an insight into the results of a large-scale mixed-methods research series on educational change over a decade, the last phase of which coincided with the coronavirus epidemic, which provided an opportunity to analyse emergency changes. An important question was how to adapt to the changed environment using innovative research methods and what correlations can be assumed between school characteristics before the epidemic and responses to the crisis. The focus of this paper is accordingly twofold: it addresses both the issue of temporary and longer-term changes in research methods and dilemmas that address the relationship between crisis responses that lead to sustained school-level development and organizational conditions, leadership strategies, developmental knowledge and prior pedagogical practices. Building on the latter, our paper presents a model developed by the authors that describes the relationship between organisational behaviour and crisis responses, illustrated by case studies.
Music, theater and experience – or music(al) theater leisure
Musical theater is one of the subfields of mental or intellectual recreation that fulfills an entertainment function. The genre appeared already in the 19th-century Hungary. Its significant representatives were, for example, the orpheums in the capital, Budapest (as the predecessor of the Budapest Operetta Theater, the so-called Somossy Orpheum since 1894). In addition to these, the National Theater (the former Hungarian Theater of Pest between 1837-1840), the People’s Theater (since 1875), and the Hungarian State Opera (since 1884) offered such performances. A significant part of the architecturally excellent buildings is attributed to the famous Viennese architects, Fellner and Helmer, but Miklós Ybl’s Opera House design is also outstanding. You can get to know them also during theatre-building walks. By the 20th and 21st century, the musical genre appeared more widely also in the repertoire of prose theaters, also in the countryside, as well as in open-air facilities. In addition to the characteristics of the three theater genres richly interwoven with music, this study also aims to present the spiritual/intellectual/mental recreational effects, since attending these kinds of productions can also create experience and a state close-to-flow.
Do we need to accurately perceive our heartbeats? Cardioceptive accuracy and sensibility are independent from indicators of negative affectivity, body awareness, body image dissatisfaction, and alexithymia
Assessment of the acuity of heartbeat perception, dubbed cardioceptive accuracy, as well as its association with various psychological characteristics are hot topics of interoception research. In this study, we aimed (1) to replicate previously reported findings on the association between the mental tracking task and a novel motor tracking task that eliminates disturbing tactile sensations; and (2) to explore associations between performance in the latter task and indicators of negative affectivity (anxiety, depression, anxiety sensitivity, somatic symptom distress), alexithymia, body focus, and dissatisfaction with body image. 102 young people (age = 20.8±5.08 yrs) participated in the study. Mental tracking score was significantly higher than motor tracking scores, although they were strongly associated. Frequentist correlation analysis showed no significant associations between indicators of cardioceptive accuracy and questionnaire scores; Bayesian analysis indicated the lack of association for the majority of the cases. Similarly, detectors and non-detectors showed no differences in any of the assessed characteristics and Bayesian results typically supported the lack of associations. In conclusion, cardioceptive accuracy, as assessed with different tracking methods, is not associated with the aforementioned self-reported characteristics in young individuals.
Sensory and affective aspects of the perception of respiratory resistance
Perception of airway resistance has a sensory and an affective aspect, i.e., perceived resistance and unpleasantness, respectively. The current study aimed to shed more light on the relationship of these aspects, as well as their malleability to trait-like aspects of body awareness. In a laboratory study, 71 young participants completed two respiratory resistive load discrimination tasks relying on sensory and affective evaluation, respectively, and filled out questionnaires assessing somatosensory amplification, anxiety sensitivity, somatic symptoms distress, and breath awareness. Frequentist and Bayesian statistical analysis revealed no differences in discrimination accuracy with respect to the sensory and affective aspect of perceived resistance. Psychological traits were not associated with accuracy scores. In conclusion, affective evaluation of respiratory load is as accurate as sensory evaluation. Neither sensory not affective accuracy is influenced by various aspects of body awareness.
The effect of puberty on physical performance
As for age at menarche, recent results of the “Körmend Growth Study” series are in accordance with those of regional studies (Budapest, Kaposvár, Jászság, Székesfehérvár, Érd, and Makó) in Hungary. The age at menarche was collected with the status quo method and elaborated with probit analysis. The median of the estimated values show a positive secular trend in the 20th Century. In the 21st century, this trend became less expressed. Our recent Körmend research in 2018, however, revealed decrease in the age of the first period (M=12.43 year). The reason is probably the robust and significant increase of body mass or even more, that of body fat. Proper knowledge concerning the sexual maturation process is inevitable for physical instructors, coaches and other sports experts, inasmuch as physical performance of children greatly differs in distinct stages of sexual maturation. The seven item conditional motor capacities test series confirms this as well.