Search

BACKGROUND: Understanding the stressors and coping strategies of nursing students in their first clinical training is important for improving student performance, helping students develop a professional identity and problem-solving skills, and improving the clinical teaching aspects of the curriculum in nursing programmes. While previous research have examined nurses' sources of stress and coping styles in the Arab region, there is limited understanding of these stressors and coping strategies of nursing students within the UAE context thereby, highlighting the novelty and significance of the study. METHODS: A qualitative study was conducted using semi-structured interviews. Overall 30 students who were undergoing their first clinical placement in Year 2 at the University of Sharjah between May and June 2022 were recruited. All interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim and analyzed for themes. RESULTS: During their first clinical training, nursing students are exposed to stress from different sources, including the clinical environment, unfriendly clinical tutors, feelings of disconnection, multiple expectations of clinical staff and patients, and gaps between the curriculum of theory classes and labatories skills and students' clinical experiences. We extracted three main themes that described students' stress and use of coping strategies during clinical training: (1) managing expectations; (2) theory-practice gap; and (3) learning to cope. Learning to cope, included two subthemes: positive coping strategies and negative coping strategies. CONCLUSIONS: This qualitative study sheds light from the students viewpoint about the intricate interplay between managing expectations, theory practice gap and learning to cope. Therefore, it is imperative for nursing faculty, clinical agencies and curriculum planners to ensure maximum learning in the clinical by recognizing the significance of the stressors encountered and help students develop positive coping strategies to manage the clinical stressors encountered. Further research is required look at the perspective of clinical stressors from clinical tutors who supervise students during their first clinical practicum.

The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in English language education has generated significant interest and anticipation due to its potential to transform teaching methodologies and enhance learning outcomes. With this in mind, the present study explored the perspectives of 452 Iranian EFL instructors on AI integration in English language education, focusing on efficiency, social and emotional development, engagement, feedback, critical thinking, and the role of teachers. The participants’ thoughts, opinions, and concerns regarding advantages, disadvantages and challenges were gathered through an online questionnaire that included both closed and open-ended questions. This was followed by semi-structured interview sessions with a cohort of EFL instructors, facilitating the collection of both qualitative and quantitative data. The results revealed predominantly positive perceptions regarding AI technology such as ChatGPT in English language education. However, concerns regarding AI tools’ capabilities and limitations were expressed. EFL instructors held neutral attitudes towards the impact of AI tools such as ChatGPT on students’ social-emotional development and high order skills. The results further highlighted a spectrum of opinions on the merits (e.g., fostering collaboration and community building), drawbacks (e.g., insufficient consideration of sociolinguistic nuances and Americentric data), and potential challenges (e.g., apprehension of change) associated with AI integration. The study concluded by discussing the implications of these findings for English language education in Iran and offering recommendations for the effective and ethical integration of AI tools in EFL classrooms.

This study was conducted before the outbreak of the pandemic and now the results seem clear. The intensive forced use of distance technologies in the educational process has changed the approach to education forever. What exactly has changed? this is already a topic for new research. We suggest going back a little and see how the role of the teacher changed as the use of digital technologies intensified before the pandemic. This article analyzes the studies devoted to teachers’ experiences in interacting with digital environments, and reviews digital learning systems, environments, and tools. The study found that there are many opportunities, applications, and automated digital environments in the world, but none of them can, to a greater or lesser extent, do without a supervisor, or a teacher. In addition, the paper found that, despite the diversity of digital learning tools, that issues existed related to using such tools by teachers due to the lack of adequate digital competence or even because some teachers tend to have a negative attitude towards this new concept of education. Therefore, sufficient conditions and opportunities should be created for teachers to obtain the required digital competence and to explore the culture of digital technology in education and learning environments to succeed in the subsequent integration of digital technology into the field of education.

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought about collective experiences of grief; thus, counselors-in-training (CITs) and their doctoral student supervisors may encounter increases in grief-oriented clinical work. In considering how to support CITs’ work with grieving clients, doctoral supervisors should be prepared to help CITs manage experiences of vicarious grief (VG). Given the ubiquity of loss and the limited amount of grief-specific coursework in counselor training, CITs could benefit from exploring their experiences of VG with their doctoral supervisors in clinical supervision—a core area of training for doctoral students enrolled in counselor education programs accredited by the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs. In this manuscript, we (a) provide an overview of the literature on VG, (b) discuss the potential impact of VG on CITs, (c) present a case study illustrating attention to VG in supervision, and (d) provide practical strategies doctoral supervisors can employ when addressing VG in supervision, drawing on Bernard and Goodyear’s discrimination model.

Aim: This study was carried out in order to examine whether there is a difference between the quality of life and motor skills of children with intellectual disability who participate in physical education activities and those who do not participate.Method: This study was conducted with a total of 34 children with 16 children in the control group (8 girls, 8 boys) and 18 children in the experimental group (11 boys, 7 girls) using a pre-test, post-test and control group experimental design. A 14-week "Physical Education Activities Program" was applied to the children in the experimental group. Children in the control group did not participate in physical education activities. The Bruininks Oseretsky test of motor proficiency second edition brief form 2010 to measure the motor performance and “Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory (PedsQL)” developed by Varni et al. in 1999 Varni, J. W., Seid, M. and Rode, A. C. 1999. The PedsQLTM: The measurement model for the pediatric quality of life inventory. Med Care, 37, 126–139.[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar] were used for children with intellectual disability.Findings: When the motor skill tests of the children with intellectual disability in the experimental group were evaluated, significant improvements were found in fine motor precision, fine motor integration, manual dexterity, bilateral coordination, balance, speed and agility, upper limb coordination, strength tests and all dimension scores for quality of life compared to the pre-test (p < 0.05). In the control group, a statistically significant improvement was observed in the quality of life Physical Functioning score and fine motor integration, bilateral coordination, and upper limb coordination tests (p < 0.05). More significant improvement was observed in motor skills and quality of life in children with intellectual disability who participated in the 14-week physical education program compared to the control group.Conclusion: Physical education activities contributed positively to improving the motor skills and quality of life of children with intellectual disability.

Five years after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks by foreign nationals -- including several terrorists on student visas -- the security concerns over foreign student visas are being weighed against competitiveness concerns. Potential foreign students, as well as all aliens, must satisfy Department of State (DOS) consular officers abroad and immigration inspectors upon entry to the United States that they are not ineligible for visas under the so-called "grounds for inadmissibility" of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which include security and terrorist concerns. The consular officers who process visa applicants are required to check the consolidated Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB) before issuing any visa. In part because of these security measures, student visa debates have expanded to include both security and market-based discussions. Higher education institutions in the United States are concerned over their ability to attract the numbers and quality of foreign students, and whether the post-September 11 security measures impede the entry of potential students into the U.S. education system. The fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) increasingly rely on foreign students, and these fields hold a top priority with most research institutions. Furthermore, the U.S. economy has a high demand for the skill-sets produced in these fields of study, and the STEM students often provide a major link between the academic community and the labor market. Consequently, many groups in higher education and the private sector are seeking to expand pathways for foreign students to emigrate. All nonimmigrant students are issued visas from one of three categories, and are monitored and tracked by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The number of foreign students admitted to the United States has more than doubled over the past two decades. Issues related to foreign students continue to arise.

It has been widely theorized and empirically proven that self-regulated learning (SRL) is related to more desired learning outcomes, e.g., higher performance in transfer tests. Research has shifted to understanding the role of SRL during learning, such as the strategies and learning activities, learners employ and engage in the different SRL phases, which contribute to learning achievement. From a methodological perspective, measuring SRL using think-aloud data has been shown to be more insightful than self-report surveys as it helps better in determining the link between SRL activities and learning achievements. Educational process mining on the basis of think-aloud data enables a deeper understanding and more fine-grained analyses of SRL processes. Although students’ SRL is highly contextualized, there are consistent findings of the link between SRL activities and learning outcomes pointing to some consistency of the processes that support learning. However, past studies have utilized differing approaches which make generalization of findings between studies investigating the unfolding of SRL processes during learning a challenge. In the present study with 29 university students, we measured SRL via concurrent think-aloud protocols in a pre-post design using a similar approach from a previous study in an online learning environment during a 45-min learning session, where students learned about three topics and wrote an essay. Results revealed significant learning gain and replication of links between SRL activities and transfer performance, similar to past research. Additionally, temporal structures of successful and less successful students indicated meaningful differences associated with both theoretical assumptions and past research findings. In conclusion, extending prior research by exploring SRL patterns in an online learning setting provides insights to the replicability of previous findings from online learning settings and new findings show that it is important not only to focus on the repertoire of SRL strategies but also on how and when they are used.

This article aims to propose a conceptual model for evaluating the knowledge stage of a professional activity. Starting from an integrative literature review, a method that allows us to assess, criticize and synthesize empirical or theoretical knowledge, we explore the evolutions of the model by Dreyfus and Dreyfus (1980). The collection and analysis process followed a six-stage process, starting from a guiding question and proceeding to a literature search, so that data collection and critical analysis of information could be carried out in a structured and codified way, enabling the discussion of results and, finally, the presentation of the review. As a result, we suggest a model capable of classifying a professional competence in accordance with the literature, through a model that considers practice, theoretical/technical knowledge, and attitude as axes for the evolution of learning. The suggested model contributes to the construction of a skills assessment instrument.