Multidisciplinary Journal of School Education

Editorial

Sylwia Janina Wojciechowska — Tue, 08 Jun 2021 14:09:29 +0000

Family Relationships, Dialogue, and Philosophy for Children:

Giuseppina D'Addelfio, Maria Vinciguerra — Tue, 08 Jun 2021 13:32:45 +0000

The paper deals with the importance of words and dialogue in family education. In the first part, some evidence of an action research is presented – shaped in a hermeneutic phenomenological framework and thanks to the Philosophy for Children method and materials. Then some key words are pointed out, meant as formative goals for parents’ educational support, so as to highlight the importance of dialogue among generations and, mainly, of the ethical responsibility of parents in education.

Words to Encourage Evangelization: A Comparison of Lexical Frequencies in the Writings of Pope Francis and Fr. Tomás Morales, SJ

María Á. Martín-del Pozo — Tue, 08 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Studying language through naturally-occurring data is easily feasible nowadays thanks to the use of concordancers. Using the software package AntConc by Laurence Anthony, the author approaches the linguistic style of Pope Francis in four of his apostolic exhortations. His lexical frequencies are compared to those of Venerable Fr. Tomás Morales, a Spanish Jesuit (1908–1994) who is considered a prophet of our time for anticipating the teachings of the Second Vatican Council twenty years beforehand. The two have several aspects in common, mainly in making laypeople aware of the universal call to sanctity and the missionary responsibility acquired in baptism. The results of the comparison show a similarity in the lexical choices. The article’s conclusions and implications are considered in relation to the word in education and in evangelization.

Politics and the Inadequacy of Words in Joseph Conrad’s Non-Fiction

Sylwia Janina Wojciechowska — Tue, 08 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The Polish-born English novelist, Joseph Conrad, once challenged the general public with a statement which stigmatized the printed word in wartime coverage as being cold, silent, and colorless. The aim of this article is to investigate the manner in which the writer himself applied words in his wartime non-fictional works in order to bestow a lasting effect on his texts. It is argued that irony renders his non-fiction memorable. Thus, the focus is first placed on the manner in which irony features in Conrad’s political essays, collected in Notes on Life and Letters, from 1921. It is argued that irony applied in his non-fiction represents what Wayne C. Booth termed stable irony. Further, it is claimed that, as a spokesman for a non-existent country, Conrad succeeded in transposing the Polish perspective into a discourse familiar to the British public. This seems possible due to the application of the concept of the body politic and the deployment of Gothic imagery. Finally, the paper examines the manner in which words are effectively used to voice the stance of a moralist on truth and the lie of the printed word in the turbulent times around the end of the 19th century.

The Meaning of Silence for Mastering the Practitioner’s Reflective Skills

Maria Szymańska — Tue, 08 Jun 2021 13:58:29 +0000

The aim of the article is to show the meaning of practicing silence, enhancing the quality of the reflective skills of the reflective practitioner. These skills – being, speaking, disclosing, testing, and probing – reveal one’s reflective competences, which require time and silence to be developed. The reflective practitioner is a person who can creatively interact with their true-self, others, the world, and God. Therefore, he or she finds time to distance themselves from many stimuli that bombard the mind and the outer environment and treats silence and quietness more as a challenge, rather than a threat to their own existence. Silence, perceived as a space for finding a new quality of one’s identity, is presented in the paper in different perspectives. The meaning of listening silence is especially worth noticing in the domain of education, which is preoccupied with large streams of information coming from varied sources that demand to be acquired. That is why this goal seems important for those who must cope with matters connected with teaching, learning, upbringing, and development. I attempt to deal with this briefly in a theoretical, practically-oriented analysis by suggesting some solutions covered in the material below.

The Dimension of the Teacher-Student Relationship: Frequent Language and its Conditioning Factors

Marta Blanco Navarro — Tue, 08 Jun 2021 14:01:35 +0000

In our paper, we approach the question of the relationship between a teacher and a student from an interdisciplinary methodology that integrates philosophical, ethical, and pedagogical knowledge. Starting from a notion of a person as being open to reality and constitutively religated to it, we wish to discern how to establish adequate relationships with each of the individuals existing within it. Specifically, we focus on the interpersonal dimension that can be established in a school context. As a result of this reflection, we propose a series of guidelines in relation to some linguistic expressions, to be carried out according to the student’s own understanding.

Teachers’ Collective Efficacy as a Predictor of Students’ Academic Performance in North Central Nigeria

Tue, 08 Jun 2021 14:04:40 +0000

Public secondary schools in Nigeria occupy a significant position for providing qualitative education, yet there has been increasing public discontent with the quality of students being produced in the country’s public secondary schools. Teachers are regarded as one of the resources necessary for achieving the goals of secondary education. It is against this backdrop that this study examined teachers’ collective efficacy as a predictor of students’ academic performance in North Central Nigeria. Three research questions and hypotheses were generated to guide the study, which made use of a correlation-type descriptive research design with a population consisting of all teachers in the North Central region. An instrument titled the Teachers’ Collective Efficacy Questionnaire (TCEQ) was developed to elicit pertinent data from the participants. Also, students’ academic achievement was measured. The results of the study revealed that no substantial nexus existed between the teachers’ experience and the students’ academic achievement. However, the teachers’ verbal encouragement was found to be an important predictor of the learners’ academic success. Similarly, the teachers’ academic emphasis was a significant predictor of the learners’ academic performance. Based on this, it was established that teachers’ collective efficacy is an important predictor that can be used to improve students’ academic achievement. The study recommended that education administrators should acquaint their staff with the importance of collective efficacy towards improving students’ academic performance. It was also recommended that the government should organize workshops, seminars, and conferences for the supervisors, principals, and teachers of schools on efficacy issues and that teachers should be well motivated to maintain a high degree of efficacy in their various schools.

Developing Critical Thinking in the Next Generation of Teachers at Universities:

Erika Novotna — Tue, 08 Jun 2021 14:13:05 +0000

The world of education has changed. Information is available anywhere and at any time. It can be daunting to understand and assess it and to distinguish a hoax from objective reality. The training of future teachers at universities needs to be changed so that a graduate from a Faculty of Education will become a professional capable of teaching others how to learn. Teachers can no longer only transmit information and evaluate how students acquire it. They should make learning meaningful and guide learners toward critical thinking. The underlying assumption is that they themselves can think critically. The aim of the study is to compare the level of critical thinking in university students between two generations of students, Generation Y (Millennials) and Generation Z (the iGeneration).

The Application of Video Games in Education

Diego Rodríguez-Ponga Albalá — Tue, 08 Jun 2021 14:19:50 +0000

There is a lack of motivation in high schools that is difficult to ignore. This is even worse in the case of history courses, which are perceived by students as “useless.” Many would cite video games and mobile phones as some of the technological changes that explain how teenagers are less interested in such subjects. However, there is an enormous educational potential in video games that should not be ignored. This work is an explanation of how history can be translated not only through audio-visual language, but also in the form of a new type of word: ludic language. Moreover, an educational activity is proposed in order to find a solution to this lack of motivation. For this activity, the Early Modern period simulator Europa Universalis IV has been chosen as the video game to be implemented in a history class for 14-year-olds.

Words and Silence in Job Mentoring

Joaquin Solana, Carmen Ruiz-Viñals — Tue, 08 Jun 2021 14:23:36 +0000

Today, economic sustainability is a social priority and it implies positive, rewarding, and creative relationships in the workplace. Creativity, innovation, and subjective welfare will remain extremely important for sustainable production models in an age of technological acceleration, ecological threats, and digital globalization. With the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the new ways to organize work, this is even more important. The basis for this is to be found in education, especially in secondary and higher education. Good mentoring is becoming essential in professional development; this activity is based on words and silence, using corporate and individual coaching tools to open new doors of creativity. Following Peter Drucker’s (1954) work in management thinking and the approach of positive psychologists, this paper presents a new concept of sustainable working relationships for the 21st century based on words and narratives.