Contents
Dinara Bisimbaeva
Editorial: Following author guidelines or how to avoid desk rejection 6
Yerkhan Abduldayev, Talgat Zhussipbek, Yedil Nurymbetov, Akmarzhan Nogaibayeva
Teachers’ Perception of the Factors Influencing English Language Use in EMI Science Classroom: A Qualitative Study 10
Novita Dewi, Yustina Devi Ardhiani, Emanuel Sunarto, Anne Shakka
Unveiling Supervisor-Supervisee Relationships in Master’s Thesis Writing: Insights from Students’ Voices 23
Musa Nushi, Vida Khazaei
Gravity of EFL Learners’ Grammatical Errors: A Survey-Based Study of Teachers’ Perception 38
Irina Ivanova, Mikhail Rozhkov
Overcoming as a Factor of Self-Development 54
Lera Kamalova
Formation of Emotional Well-Being of Younger Schoolchildren Through Fairy Tale Therapy 70
Oksana Kokoreva, Natalya Peshkova, Svetlana Bashinova, Venera Khamdamova
The Conditioning of Understanding of Social Causality by Deaf Primary School Students on Family Characteristics 85
Sergey Mikheev
The Influence of Online Discussions on the Formation of Argumentation skills in Future Engineers 100
Maria Prokhorova, Lia Kozlova, Valentina Kravchenko
Design and Approbation of a Test of Diagnosing Students’ Ability to Innovative Entrepreneurial Activity “SINPRED” 116
Margarita Khusnutdinova, Alexandra Filipova
“Unpacking” Agency in the School Project: Prospects for a Participatory Approach 139
Month : June 2024
Editorial: Following author guidelines or how to avoid desk rejection
When a new manuscript is submitted, the editorial team of Education and Self Development carries out a preliminary assessment and checks it for compliance with the journal guidelines. In case of successful initial check, the manuscript is sent out for peer review. Unfortunately, the percentage of papers that are rejected by editors prior to review is quite high. In this editorial I want to discuss why it happens and how to avoid a desk reject.
One of the key reasons for rejecting a paper is inconsistency with the Journal’s scope. When such cases occur, we realise that an author has not done the groundwork and has not read the journal aims. Before submitting a manuscript, authors must visit a journal website, get familiar with its mission, identify the target audience, learn about the submission process, and even read through some published works. It is highly recommended to select a target journal reasonably in advance, and this choice should be solely based on the scope of a journal.
The second ground for rejection is when a manuscript does not follow journal guidelines. As with the scope, submission guidelines can be found on the journal website. I should point out that instructions for authors who are interested in submitting their works to Education and Self Development are available on our website in the tab ‘Submit an article’ (Author guidelines).
Teachers’ Perception of the Factors Influencing English Language Use in EMI Science Classroom: A Qualitative Study
This article explores the factors that affect the extent of students’ English language use in English-medium instruction (EMI) science classrooms. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven science teachers from private and public schools in Astana city, and thematic analysis was employed to analyze the qualitative data. The findings from the study highlight several factors that influence the extent of English language usage in science subjects, focusing specifically on the teacher factor. The teacher’s language skills and methods affect students’ English usage, with negative factors including Kazakh/Russian language use. The initial level of English is also important, such as the number of years of English language training and preparation for international exams. Understanding these findings can help inform strategies and interventions aimed at promoting and enhancing students’ English language usage in science subjects, ultimately improving their comprehension and academic performance.
Unveiling Supervisor-Supervisee Relationships in Master’s Thesis Writing: Insights from Students’ Voices
One of the issues that Master’s students frequently experience when writing their theses is how they view and communicate with their supervisors. This study aims to gain a comprehensive understanding of supervisor-supervisee relationships in Master’s thesis writing. The study’s objective is to explore Master’s students’ supervision practices, their interactions with supervisors, and their implications for humanistic education and holistic student development. Participants at a private university in Yogyakarta, Indonesia took the online survey using Google Forms, which contained questions about their thesis writing and other connected concerns. The accounts gathered from the 35 students who responded to the questions were processed as data and interpreted using Krippendorf’s qualitative content analysis and Polkinghorne’s narrative inquiry. The framework employed was intersectionality. The study reveals that the participants perceived supervisors as (1) affable and professional academic mentors, (2) intellectual partners, and (3) personal confidantes. The participants’ accounts may provide insight into the ideal supervisor-supervisee relationship. The supervisees’ perspectives suggest that supervisors’ triple roles assist students in managing relationships and promoting whole-person growth. Several implications for strengthening humanistic education and self-development are highlighted in the study, including supervisory responsibilities, cura personalis, emotional support, and holistic development. This study contributes to the existing literature by focusing on the often-overlooked perspectives of thesis students in Indonesia, particularly at the Master’s level.
Gravity of EFL Learners’ Grammatical Errors: A Survey-Based Study of Teachers’ Perception
The present study investigates 110 EFL teachers’ perception of the gravity of ten types of grammatical errors made by EFL learners in terms of acceptability. Moreover, it examines the relationship of age, gender, academic degree, years of teaching experience, and the highest level taught with the teachers’ judgements. Results revealed that the teachers’ evaluations form a hierarchy in which errors are placed at different gravity levels in accordance with their level of acceptability. Moreover, the three variables of academic degree, years of teaching experience, and the highest level taught had a positive correlation with the teachers’ evaluations. This study suggests that teachers should make their evaluations systematic, treat errors in accordance with their priority, and become aware of the factors that contribute to evaluations of grammatical errors.
Overcoming as a Factor of Self-Development
The article analyzes the results of a study aimed at studying overcoming as a leading factor that ensures self-development of the individual and actualizes the need to use pedagogical tools in modern educational practice that contribute to the formation in children and young people of the perception of overcoming difficulties as an opportunity for personal growth. The relevance of studying the problem of self-development and its procedural component is due to various reasons: the new socio-cultural reality, which predetermined the rapid pace of self-development as a condition for the competitiveness of the individual; a high level of motivation of the younger generation to achieve success as a result of self-development; the unpreparedness of modern children and youth to overcome obstacles on the way to achieving the goal; the presence of psychological barriers blocking readiness for self-development. The conclusions are based both on the results of a theoretical analysis of modern scientific literature and on the results of our surveys. Empirical research methods were survey methods presented by the author’s tools. The study involved 2474 students aged 11-16 living in the Moscow, Yaroslavl, Kostroma and Kaluga regions. The study included the design and testing of the technology of pedagogical support for self-development of adolescents in additional education in a situation of overcoming difficulties, the implementation of which makes it possible to form adolescents’ readiness for self-development, helps to build up individual experience of successful overcoming through the purposeful formation of adaptive coping strategies. The conclusion is made about the effectiveness of the implementation of technology in the conditions of additional education, as well as the possibility of dissemination of the received pedagogical experience in educational organizations of various types and types.
Formation of Emotional Well-Being of Younger Schoolchildren Through Fairy Tale Therapy
The psychological and emotional well-being of children is one of the most discussed problems in modern scientific research.
In studies of domestic psychologists, it was found that 37% of children have increased and 16% of children have high general school anxiety. Studying at school, worries about grades and performance are the main reason for increased anxiety among schoolchildren.
One of the conditions for the development of a child’s personality is emotional well-being, which can be developed through fairy tale therapy. The fairy tale therapy method allows for the development of the emotional well-being of children, since it uses the metaphorical resources of fairy tales and creates conditions for maintaining a stable emotional-positive state and life satisfaction.
The paper sets out to experimentally test the effectiveness of using fairy tale therapy in the formation of the emotional well-being of schoolchildren.
The diagnostics selected were: 1) test tasks “The Magical Land of Feelings” (authors: T.D. Zinkevich-Evstigneeva, T.M. Grabenko, D.A. Frolov); 2) SAN test questionnaire (V.A. Doskin’s method).
A fairytale therapy program “My Emotions” was created to develop the emotional well-being of elementary school students. The study showed a positive growth trend in the number of children in the experimental group demonstrating emotional well-being, a sense of joy, motivation to study and communicate with peers. The developed program for fairy tale therapy “My Emotions” can be used by primary school teachers to develop the emotional well-being of children in extracurricular activities, and for the professional training of teachers and psychologists.
The Conditioning of Understanding of Social Causality by Deaf Primary School Students on Family Characteristics
The most important natural condition for the social development of the personality of any child is full-fledged interpersonal communication, which is impossible without the elementary skills of a cause-and-effect analysis of a problem situation of interaction based on an understanding of social causality, identifying causal relationships between the actions of individuals in the process of joint activity and communication. The process of developing an understanding of social causality in a child with hearing impairment has its own specifics. These children have difficulty mastering the logical connections and relationships between phenomena, events and people’s actions. This hinders both their adequate assessment of others and the formation of an understanding of social causality. There is a relationship between the emotional, moral and social development of deaf children and the characteristics of the parental family. In families where both the child and the parents have hearing impairments, emotional relationships develop that are close to those that are typical for hearing families. In contrast, hearing parents cannot develop the same successful relationship with their children. Thus, the focus of our attention is the conditionality of the understanding of social causality by deaf junior schoolchildren by the characteristics of the family. Based on the foregoing, the purpose of the study is to analyze the influence of the characteristics of a family with deaf and hearing parents on the general level of development of a child’s understanding of social causality, which will optimize this process in a family and educational organization.
The paper presents the results of our own experimental study, containing a qualitative analysis of empirical data. It has been established that the impoverishment of understanding of social causality in deaf children with hearing parents is largely due to the inability of adult hearing people to provoke small deaf children to emotional communication. Deaf elementary school students raised by deaf parents are relatively more socially adapted and have a greater level of development of understanding of social causality than deaf elementary school students from families of hearing parents.
The results of the study can be used as a basis for purposeful correctional and developmental work with deaf junior schoolchildren and their families to develop an understanding of social causation.
The Influence of Online Discussions on the Formation of Argumentation skills in Future Engineers
The paper presents the results of empirical research on the effectiveness of online discussions (OD) as a tool for forming argumentation skills among technical university students. On the one hand the actuality of the research is conditioned by the significance of discussion-based training of modern technical specialists under conditions of networking and socio-technical transformation of engineering activity. On the other hand, this problem is not elaborated in the domestic, pedagogies and also contradictory and poorly studied aspects in the foreign one. The results of the present study are important for scientifically substantiated methodological implementation of new approaches to engineering training under conditions of digitalization of education and increased requirements for discussion and information competence of a modern technical specialist. The research was conducted on the basis of two Novosibirsk universities and covered 350 second – and third-year students in “construction” and “automation and computer engineering” baccalaureate specialties. The analysis of the OD results conducted in VLE “Moodle” using “debate” (synchronous discussion) and “forum” (asynchronous discussion) methods showed that inclusion of online-discussions in to the educational process of technical universities improves argumentation skills of future engineers by 20-30 %. The data obtained at the stages of the forming and control experiment let us reveal a higher efficiency of asynchronous forms of online-discussions in comparison with synchronous ones. Their advantage is to 28,68 %, depending on the formed component of argumentation. Based on the results of the study recommendations were given to teachers to improve the effectiveness of social interaction of students during OD, including the feasibility of replacing debates with synchronous discussion methods, more focused on the joint search for solutions.
Design and Approbation of a Test of Diagnosing Students’ Ability to Innovative Entrepreneurial Activity “SINPRED”
Due to the need to ensure economic growth and improving competitiveness of the Russian economy, the development of youth innovative entrepreneurship is relevant for our country. This requires not only the implementation of appropriate educational programs, but also selection of young people for admission on the basis of an effective assessment of their abilities and readiness to create an innovative business. The goal of the investigation is to design and test psychodiagnostic method that solves the problem of prompt assessment of students’ ability to innovative entrepreneurship. The test SINPRED is elaborated on the basis of the authored by Prokhorova and Belokon model of psychic determinants of effective entrepreneurial activity, connected with innovations. The test contains: instruction, 56 statements, the agreement with which the testee expresses on a seven-rank scale; key of primary data processing; normalized points (stens), worked out for two groups of testees (women and men); manual on processing and interpretation of diagnostics results. For empirical foundation of the methodics indices of students’ behavior, singled out by 5 experts, are used. Verification of discriminatory power, internal consistency, reliability of the test is carried out on the sampling of 180 students. 152 students comprise the sampling for evaluating of methodics validity. For defining the test factor structure and its standardization the results of 308 students questioning are utilized. It is revealed that the created test possesses a high level of discriminatory power and test-retest reliability. All test assignments are correlated with each other. The scales of the methodics have a sufficient level of validity. During the test approbation significant differences between women and men are unveiled on four primary scales: leadership, creativity, nonconformity, early entrepreneurial experience. The acquired differences additionally confirm discriminatory power and criteria validity of the test, and also indicate perspective of scientific investigations, that uncover peculiarities of determination and molding ability to innovative entrepreneurship, conditioned by sex.
“Unpacking” Agency in the School Project: Prospects for a Participatory Approach
School has become more project-oriented. There is tremendous potential for student agency here. Children’s agency can be revealed through a participatory approach to childhood sociology.
The analysis model is based on the principles of participatory methodology and interpretive reproduction by Corsaro. Three groups of variables are identified: the subjectivity of the child, the balance of power between the child and the adult, and the joint creativity of the participants.
The empirical basis of the study is the “Green School” case, implemented online with the participation of five schoolchildren and one teacher from the Khabarovsk Territory. Observation, interviews, focus groups, and text analysis were used for the monographic analysis of the “case”.
In a space of “equal participation”, where students and a teacher are co-participants and co-researchers, children’s agency can be disclosed. Children maximally expresses themselves through free choice, gaining personal experience in the process of making decisions. Responsibility arises not as an “obligation”, but as a motivation for learning: “how can we do it to make it better”. The results of this work can be used by educators in organizing project-based research activities for students, utilizing sociological methods adapted to the study of children.