Sonja Pečjak

Didactic Competencies of Teachers from the Learner's Viewpoint.

Teacher competencies can be researched in many different ways. In the present article they are studied from the learner’s viewpoint. The article presents results of the extensive project “Teacher Education for New Competencies for the Knowledge Society and the Role of these Competencies in Educational Goal Attainment at School”, carried out at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Ljubljana, with the financial support of the Slovenian Ministry of Education and Sport. We present the results of the learner’s judgement of the teacher’s didactic competencies. We formed a questionnaire with which we operationalised teacher competencies with the purpose of measuring the teacher’s efficiency of instruction. In order to achieve the goals of modern instruction it is important to engage both models: learner‐centred and teacher‐centred education. The research showed that elements of the traditional instruction model are more frequently used than the model that demands a changed learner role.

Symbolic play as a way of development and learning of preschool children in preschool institutions

SUMMARY The paper considers symbolic play in different age groups of children in preschool institutions. Symbolic play was stimulated through two different structured activities and dictation of the preparation and the use of different toys and play materials (i.e. thematic symbolic play and play related to pictorial material). The childrens play was videotaped in their home playrooms. The videotapes were analysed by competent observers using Smilanskys scale for assessing dramatic and sociodramatic play. Analysis was aimed at establishing which elements determine the symbolic play of children of different age groups with regard to two different play situations, and how they determine it. At the same time, we wished to set out some critical points which significantly determine the nature and course of symbolic play in different age groups of children in preschool institutions. The research also offers certain applied results, since psychological and educational elements of the analysis of the results ca...

School climate in peer bullying: observers' and active participants' perceptions

Peer bullying is a phenomenon present in all schools. The school as an institution has a major role in limiting peer bullying. The primary goal of the study was to determine how different groups of students perceived school climate in relation to peer bullying regarding their role in peer bullying (active participants: bullies, victims, bully-victims and non-active participants: observers). 414 students (from 18 primary and secondary schools) responded to The School Climate Bullying Survey (SCBS; Cornell, 2012), which measures the incidence of various forms of peer bullying and three dimensions of school climate (prevalence of teasing and bullying, aggressive attitudes, and willingness to seek help). The results showed that the active participants in peer bullying report a frequent presence of verbal and social bullying (54% and 40%, respectively) and a significantly lower frequency of physical and cyber bullying (14%). The largest differences between the groups of students were found in their perceptions of the prevalence of aggressive attitudes and willingness to seek help in a school context. In the perceptions of both of these dimensions we found a high degree of similarity between the groups of bullies and victim-bullies, and between the groups of victims and observers. The first two groups, when compared to the victims and observers, perceived to a greater extent that school allows aggression as a way of affirmation among peers and in school in general, and that neither teachers nor peers do not stop the bullying, which discourages the victims from seeking help from them. The results confirmed the existence of the association between students’ perceived school climate by bullying and their behavior (roles) in peer bullying.

Pogledi psihologije na učinkovitost

Prva monografija v novonastali Rostoharjevi zbirki, posvecena Mihajlu Rostoharju, ustanovitelju Oddelka za psihologijo in Instituta za psihologijo na Filozofski fakulteti na Univerzi v Ljubljani. Namen zbirke je v rednem predstavljanju znanstvenega dela clanov Oddelka. Gre za precni prikaz aktualnih raziskav, ki jih objavljajo clanice in clani posameznih Kateder. V prvi monografiji v zbirki se predstavljajo avtorji iz Kateder za razvojno, pedagosko in obco psihologijo, psiholosko metodologijo ter psihologijo dela in organizacije.