Search Results (153)

Introduction: Burnout results from chronic stress, consisting of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and decreased personal accomplishment. The objective of this study was to assess the effects of coaching on physician burnout in military obstetrician gynecologists (OB/GYNs). Methods: This was an IRB-approved observational study of coaching for military OB/GYN physicians and students. Physicians and medical students were assigned to attend six virtual group coaching sessions over three months with professional coaches. Coaching groups were organized by level of training. Participants completed surveys (Maslach Burnout Survey for Human Services Survey (MBI-HSS) with Areas of Worklife Survey (AWS)) at baseline and following coaching. A latent profile analysis (LPA) used MBI scores to identify burnout profiles in dimensions of depersonalization (DP), emotional exhaustion (EE), and personal accomplishment (PA). Statistical analysis included paired t-test, and chi squared analyses. Results: 59 participants completed coaching and surveys from August–October 2024. There were no significant differences in MBI scores pre- and post-coaching. LPA identified three profiles: (a) low DP, low EE, high PA, (b) low DP, moderate EE, high PA, (c) high DP, high EE, high PA. When analyzed on MBI definitions, those with a burnout profile (high DP and high EE) had significant improvements in workload, control, and fairness scores on the AWS following coaching (p < 0.05). Conclusions: A professional coaching intervention in military OB/GYN physicians with a burnout profile was associated with significant improvements in workload, control and fairness. Professional coaching may positively impact clinicians, particularly those experiencing burnout, and has the potential to improve retention of the workforce. Full article

Background: Elite soccer performance emerges from the interplay of cognitive, emotional, psychophysiological, and tactical processes that operate in real time during matches. Advances in wearable sensors and artificial intelligence (AI) now allow continuous monitoring of physiological and psychological states. They also allow modeling of how these states relate to tactical and physical performance. Existing reviews have examined machine learning in soccer, heart rate variability (HRV) monitoring, and psychological determinants of performance separately. No scoping review has mapped the intersection of AI analytics, wearable psychophysiological monitoring, and psychological performance constructs as one integrated decision-support framework in elite soccer. Aim: The aim of this study was to map the available evidence on the integration of AI and machine learning with psychophysiological monitoring for performance modeling in elite soccer, to identify the psychological constructs already used as model inputs, to describe the wearable technologies and AI methods applied, and to set out the translational challenges and evidence gaps that need priority attention. Methods: The review followed the PRISMA extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) and the updated Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) methodology. The protocol was registered on the Open Science Framework (OSF). Six databases (PubMed/MEDLINE, Scopus, Web of Science, SPORTDiscus, IEEE Xplore, and PsycINFO) were searched from January 2000 to March 2026 using the Population–Concept–Context (PCC) framework. Two reviewers independently screened titles, abstracts, and full texts (Cohen’s kappa = 0.82). Results: Thirty-six sources met the eligibility criteria after screening of 3104 records. AI and machine learning have been applied widely to predict physical and tactical performance in soccer, yet they rarely include psychological constructs. Reported models (decision trees, gradient boosting, and artificial neural networks) reach high accuracy for physical outcomes in internal validation, for example, above 66% for injury risk. Multi-modal models that add physiological and psychological inputs report stronger prediction. These figures come mostly from internal validation, and external validation and overfitting controls are seldom reported, so they should be read as optimistic upper bounds. Psychological and psychophysiological inputs remain under-represented. Explainable AI (XAI) methods, in particular Shapley Addictive exPlanations (SHAP) values, are appearing, but validation with domain experts is scarce. HRV has been reviewed as a psychophysiological marker in soccer, yet its use within AI decision-support tools for real-time psychological readiness has not been mapped. Three translational challenges stand out: the ecological validity gap between laboratory cognitive tests and match-embedded psychophysiology; the interpretability problem of opaque AI in high-stakes decisions; and the data fragmentation problem created by disconnected physical, tactical, and psychological data streams. Conclusions: Integrating AI with wearable psychophysiological monitoring offers a credible route toward integrated performance modeling in elite soccer. Closing this gap calls for multi-modal frameworks that combine psychological constructs, physiological markers, and tactical data within explainable AI. Research priorities include ecologically valid psychophysiological assessment protocols, position-specific psychological profiling, and practitioner-validated tools that turn AI outputs into usable coaching recommendations. Full article

The present study aimed to examine whether self-esteem acts as a mediator in the relationship between problematic internet use (PIU) and well-being among athletes, and to determine the implications of these relationships for educational practice, coaching strategies, and athlete support interventions. A total of 334 Polish athletes participated in the study and completed the Polish versions of the Generalized Problematic Internet Use Scale 2 (GPIUS2), the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (SES), and the Mental Health Continuum-Short Form (MHC-SF). Pearson’s r correlation coefficients and mediation analyses using a bootstrap approach were conducted. The main results showed that PIU was negatively associated with self-esteem and well-being, whereas self-esteem was positively associated with well-being. Statistically significant, although small, indirect associations through self-esteem were observed between PIU and general well-being, as well as between all dimensions of PIU and emotional and psychological well-being. For social well-being, statistically significant indirect associations were observed only for preference for online social interaction and deficient self-regulation. These findings suggest that self-esteem may represent one psychological factor associated with the interrelations between PIU and well-being in athletes. The results may contribute to a more cautious understanding of the links between problematic internet use, self-esteem, and well-being, and may inform psychoeducational and preventive strategies in sport settings while acknowledging the limited practical significance of the observed effects. Full article

This study examines the development and pedagogical impact of an AI-based pedagogical agent designed for modern e-learning environments. The research addresses a key challenge in digital education: the lack of personalization and immediate feedback in traditional e-learning systems. AI-driven agents “support and motivate learners through instructional interaction” and provide adaptive, data-driven learning experiences that surpass the limitations of rule-based systems. The study begins with a systematic literature review following PRISMA 2020, analyzing 46 publications from 2020 to 2025 to identify current AI architectures, pedagogical roles, and the empirical evidence of learning impact. The findings highlight the growing use of machine learning, deep learning, multimodal analytics, and large language models in educational agents. These systems perform roles such as tutor, coach, evaluator, dialogue partner, and consultant, offering cognitive, metacognitive, emotional, and analytical support. Modern agents “continuously monitor user interaction, analyze engagement, and adapt learning content”, enabling highly personalized learning pathways. The study also presents the design of a multimodal pedagogical agent capable of explanation, task generation, diagnostics, and adaptive feedback. Experimental results with students (n = 20) show improved performance, reduced errors, and higher engagement when learning with the agent. Overall, the research demonstrates that AI-based pedagogical agents enhance learning effectiveness and support autonomous learning in higher education. Full article

Background: This scoping review aimed to systematically identify communication strategies used during Joint Media Engagement (JME) and examine their associations with developmental outcomes and contextual factors. Methods: A systematic search of seven databases (up to April 2025) was conducted using Rayyan, following PRISMA-ScR guidelines; 26 studies met inclusion criteria and were synthesized to categorize parent communication strategies and their theoretical underpinnings. Results: Fifteen distinct communication strategies were identified and organized into four theoretical frameworks; Social Learning, Sociopragmatic, Behaviourist, and Theory of Mind along with a fifth category for technical scaffolding. Strategies aligned with Social Learning were most frequently reported and consistently associated with improvements in children’s language, cognitive, and socio-emotional outcomes. Findings also showed that JME strategies vary based on contextual factors, including parent type, geography, device type, media content, and child characteristics. Although most studies did not explicitly focus on JME, those employing mixed methods provided deeper insights. Conclusions: JME is shaped by both interaction quality and context, with Social Learning-based strategies playing a central role in supporting child development. The findings highlight the need for more rigorous, JME-focused research across diverse digital formats to strengthen the evidence-based parent coaching approaches to optimize JME practices in early childhood. Full article

Positive teacher–student relationships in early childhood predict stronger academic and social–emotional outcomes, whereas conflictual or dependent relationships contribute to children’s stress and behavioral and academic difficulties. While prior research emphasizes teachers’ observable relational behaviors, fewer studies explore the internal emotional and cognitive processes that shape these relationships. This mixed-methods study examined how preschool teachers’ emotion socialization practices (i.e., emotion coaching and dismissing) and their classroom expressions of positive and negative emotions relate to their mental representations of their relationships with students. Quantitative analyses tested whether teachers’ emotional expressiveness moderated associations between their emotion socialization practices and relational representations. Complementing these analyses, qualitative narrative interviews with an independent teacher sample explored how educators described their emotional expressiveness, emotion-related practices, and perceived relationships with students. Informed by emotion socialization theory, attachment theory, and the prosocial classroom model, findings highlight the interplay of teachers’ emotional beliefs, regulation, and relational schemas in shaping classroom climate. Our integration of quantitative and qualitative insights provides a more comprehensive understanding of teachers’ emotional functioning and underscores the importance of supporting educators’ relational and emotional competencies to enhance classroom quality and student well-being. Full article

Diabetes disproportionately affects rural populations in the United States where prevalence and associated complications remain among the highest in the nation. Access to diabetes education and support services is often limited by geography, socioeconomic barriers, and workforce shortages. This study qualitatively explored participant experiences in a telehealth-based Diabetes Self-Management Education and Support (DSMES) program. This study uses interview techniques and takes a phenomenological approach to exploring the lived experiences of 27 program participants. Transcripts were analyzed through three cycles of coding to identify shared themes. Four themes emerged: (1) structural benefits of the program, (2) knowledge gained, (3) lifestyle changes implemented, and (4) improved quality of life. Participants consistently emphasized the value of personalized coaching, emotional encouragement, and practical nutrition education. Findings suggest that individualized telehealth coaching plays an important role in diabetes self-management, particularly in rural and underserved populations. By combining personalization with education and encouragement, programs can improve patient engagement, enhance self-efficacy, and support meaningful behavior change. Full article

Lesson planning is a core professional practice for pre-service teachers, yet opportunities for timely, individualized feedback are frequently constrained by educator workload. While generative AI has the potential to enhance planning processes and expand opportunities for individualized feedback, the provision of comprehensive lesson plans may lead to excessive reliance. This conceptual design paper details the development and theoretical underpinnings of an artificial intelligence-assisted feedback tool that provides self-efficacy-strengthening feedback on lesson plans for pre-service teachers. To promote constructive feedback, the AI-assisted feedback tool integrates principles from educational feedback research and structures feedback to foster teachers’ lesson-planning self-efficacy through mastery-oriented affirmations, vicarious examples, social persuasions, and emotional reassurance. Curriculum alignment is incorporated to support content validity and contextual appropriateness. While the initial implementation of the feedback tool focuses on Western Australian teacher education, an explicit transfer perspective is considered for the German vocational education context. The paper describes the iterative development process that follows a design-based research approach including platform evaluation, internal refinement, and expert review by teacher educators in Western Australia. The resulting system prompt architecture comprises 11 dimensions including general baselines, the interaction between the Lesson Planning Coach and PSTs and the theoretical foundations mentioned above. The tools’ environment, including examples for provided feedback on lesson plans, is presented and discussed. Finally, an outlook is given on the planned empirical research to evaluate the effectiveness of the tool. Full article

Background: Children and adults with disabilities are widely acknowledged to have poorer health and emotional wellbeing than their non-disabled peers, which is further compounded by less access to health services and health-promoting activities. A relatively untried solution is to mobilize community initiatives such as sports to promote better health. Method: Special Olympics (SO) is an international sports organization present in over 200 countries and jurisdictions, engaging with just under four million athletes with intellectual disabilities annually. Research on the perceptions of sports coaches around incorporating health promotion within their sports training has been scarce. Likewise, little attention has been paid to identifying athletes’ understanding of what health means to them and actions that would make them healthier. A qualitative, descriptive study was conducted with eight national SO programs involving 62 coaches and 47 athletes. Group interviews were conducted via Zoom and a thematic content analysis was made of their responses. Results: In all countries, coaches and athletes agreed that the most common needs were healthy eating, healthy weight and exercise. Good mental wellbeing and sleeping well were also named. Ideas were sought from both sets of participants regarding how coaches could assist their athletes to attain better health and the barriers they might face in doing so. Conclusions: Three main conclusions emerged. Athletes and coaches were aware of health deficits and knew of ways to reduce them. Both appreciated the contribution that coaches could make through motivating athletes and providing training activities but were dependent on suitable resources being available to them. Engagement with families and available health and social care services was essential. Health-oriented, sporting activities offer promise in improving the health and wellbeing of persons with developmental disabilities, particularly in less affluent countries with fewer health professionals and poorly developed primary care services. Full article

Elite and high-performance sport is frequently framed as an individual or coach–athlete endeavor, obscuring the broader family systems that sustain athletic careers. Recent scholarship has begun to document the central role of wives and partners within athletic family systems, highlighting the extensive emotional, domestic, logistical, and identity-related labor they perform to support athletic participation and success. Despite its centrality, this labor remains largely invisible within sport science research, organizational policy, and athlete support structures. Drawing on feminist theories of care and family system theory, this narrative review synthesizes interdisciplinary literature examining the unpaid and unrecognized labor of women partners, also commonly referred to as the wives and girlfriends (WAGs), across athletic career stages. Implications for research, policy, and practice are discussed. Full article

Adolescents living with HIV (ALHIV) face ongoing challenges with treatment adherence and engagement in care, resulting in lower viral suppression rates compared to adults. Peer navigation has shown promise in supporting psychosocial well-being and adherence among adults, but evidence specific to adolescents in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) remains limited. This qualitative evidence synthesis (QES) describes and assesses the quality of qualitative and mixed-methods studies on peer navigation and support interventions for ALHIV receiving antiretroviral therapy in SSA. Eligible studies, published in English between January 2015 and October 2025, were identified through a comprehensive search strategy in PubMed, Scopus, CINAHL, and APA PsycArticles. Data were extracted and analyzed thematically using Atlas.ti, and aligned with the Context–Intervention–Mechanism–Outcome (CIMO) framework. PNs in the studies were young people living with HIV who provided education, counselling and adherence support to their peers who were ALHIV. Effective programmes featured structured training, supportive supervision, and flexible delivery models adapted to adolescents’ preferences. Mechanisms of change included trust-building, emotional support, disclosure coaching and empowerment. Reported outcomes included improved adherence, clinic attendance and various psychosocial indicators. However, challenges such as stigma, role ambiguity, limited remuneration, and lack of policy guidance constrained the sustainability and scalability of PN programs. Overall, peer navigation interventions appear effective in strengthening adolescent HIV care when PNs are adequately trained, supervised and contextually adapted. The variation in how peer navigation and support interventions for ALHIV are delivered and designed, along with the lack of standardization of the interventions, may affect the generalizability of the findings and the rollout of PN programs across SSA. Full article

Animal-assisted services (AASs) are increasingly integrated into healthcare, education, and social support settings. However, empirical evidence on the emotional well-being of participating dogs remains limited. This study investigates how dog, session, handler, and client factors influence dogs’ affective states during animal-assisted activities (AAAs), education (AAE), coaching (AAC), and therapy (AAT). A total of 837 sessions involving 63 dogs and 30 handlers were observed, with behavioural scoring and statistical analyses used to analyse the data. Principal Component Analysis then identified key affective components, including playfulness, comfort, anxiety, and uncertainty, which explained 45–61% of the variance. Session circumstances, as well as the characteristics of handlers, clients, and individual dogs—including age, experience, and gender—significantly influenced dogs’ responses. Specifically, older dogs were less playful but more settled, while experience was linked to positive affect in AAAs and AAT, but not in AAC. Female dogs demonstrated increased uncertainty and arousal in AAAs and AAE. The impact of session length varied by context. In AAC, unfamiliar handlers increased tension. Additionally, younger clients were associated with heightened uncertainty or tension in dogs across AAAs, AAC, and AAE. In light of these findings, optimising dog welfare requires matching dogs to suitable roles, attentive session planning, and managing workload. Full article

Background: Nurse coaching can reduce stress throughout the complex psychosocial process associated with the cancer journey, which affects numerous spheres, such as neurological, psychological, physical, and emotional ones. The purpose of this paper is to review the literature to assess the extent of stress reduction among cancer care adopting nurse coaching interventions. Methods: This systematic review and meta-analysis was registered in PROSPERO with id no. CRD420261290368 and performed according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analysis (PRISMA) guidelines. The search approach was performed by mixing keywords with Boolean operators like “coaching intervention”, “oncology nursing” and “stress” throughout the CINAHL, Embase, PubMed, Scopus and Web of Science databases. We assessed stress levels alongside the nurse coaching interventions using the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) Distress Thermometer. Results: A total of three studies were included, comprising 112 participants. Heterogeneity among studies was very high and statistically significant (p < 0.001; τ² = 1.02; I² = 96.2%, with a 95% CI: [85.89; 99.90]); thus, a random-effects model (REML) was applied. A small, non-significant reduction in stress levels following the nurse coaching intervention, with an overall SMD of −0.35 (SE = 0.60; 95% CI: [−1.52, 0.82]; p = 0.556), was recorded. Conclusions: Attention to standardization of core coaching components, while preserving flexibility and personalization, will be critical to advancing implementation in routine oncology care. Overall, nurse coaching represents a promising adjunct to comprehensive cancer care, with the potential to support psychological well-being, empower patients and caregivers, and address the broader determinants of stress throughout the cancer experience. Full article

Teacher preparation is an emotional as well as a cognitive process in which pre-service teachers must develop both reflective judgment and the emotional resilience needed for demanding instructional contexts. This study examined how university-based supervisors enacted the relational spaces of the University-Based Coaching Framework (UBCF) and how these enactments shaped pre-service teachers’ emotional and reflective development. Drawing on qualitative analysis of coaching discourse among three supervisor-pre-service teacher pairs, the comparative case study identifies distinct coaching identities that emerged from supervisors’ patterned relational moves. These identities corresponded to varying intensities of UBCF space enactment and produced differential pathways through a reflective-motional cycle connecting appraisal, coping, and reappraisal. Findings demonstrate that supervisors’ relational stance functions as both cognitive scaffolding and as an emotional regulator. By conceptualizing UBCF-based coaching as an interactional process that integrates relational attunement with reflective challenge, this study contributes new insight into how emotional and cognitive dimensions of supervision jointly support teacher knowledge development and early professional resilience. Full article

Background: Intervention effectiveness studies rarely empirically assess Theories of Change (ToC) to determine how an intervention worked. We examine the ToC underlying the Sugira Muryango (SM) parenting program in rural Rwanda to understand whether the intervention improved child development outcomes via changes in caregivers’ behaviors to improve the home caregiving environment, as hypothesized. Methods: SM uses coaching of parents to create a safe, affectionate, stimulating, and violence-free home environment. A cluster randomized trial enrolled 1049 families with young children. SM had immediate effects on caregiver behaviors, improving scores on the Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (HOME), harsh discipline, caregiver emotion regulation, and provision of dietary diversity. We use structural equation modeling to examine whether change in caregivers’ behaviors explains intervention-related improvements in child development (Ages and Stages Questionnaire) one year after the intervention ended. Results: Improvements in positive caregiving practices, including stimulation and early language learning as captured by the HOME, explained some of the intervention-related changes in child development, including gross motor, communication, problem-solving, and personal-social development. Increased dietary diversity explained intervention-related change in gross motor, problem-solving, and personal-social development. Change in harsh discipline and caregiver emotion regulation did not explain child outcomes. Conclusions: Intervention-related changes related to constructs captured on the HOME and dietary diversity were associated with changes in child development scores, but violent discipline and caregiver emotion regulation were not. Future research should examine whether these components of the intervention can be strengthened and may influence child development via other pathways, for example, via caregiver mental health. Full article