Search Results (26)

Social support is the gratification of basic social needs (affection, belonging, esteem or approval, security, identity) through interaction with others. Social support at school allows students to perceive themselves as competent during learning and to enjoy school in general. Little is known about social support at school for students with sensory disabilities. This review aims to synthesize findings from studies examining social support at school for students with hearing and visual impairments. A search of computerized databases was supplemented by a manual search of the bibliographies of the main publications. The synthesis of the literature suggests that all students need adequate support devices in class and properly trained support teachers. However, visually impaired students are more likely to have access to resources compared to those with hearing impairments. Students with visual impairments attending regular schools are more positive about the availability of resources than those with hearing impairments attending special schools. Overall, senior secondary school students indicate higher resource availability than junior secondary school ones. Still, very few studies have investigated social support for students with sensory disabilities. Thus, further research is needed to confirm these results. Full article

This research addresses the social exclusion of elderly citizens in terms of lifelong education via an interdisciplinary STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics) approach. Technological literacy among older people is a critical factor in social exclusion. This study seeks to provide senior citizens with competencies in scientific, artistic, mathematical, and technological domains by enhancing scientific and technological literacy. The research developed a series of non-formal education sessions on the golden ratio using a STEAM educational approach. A quantitative methodology approach was carried out by using a diagnostic survey of the participants’ conceptions and a subsequent quasi-experimental study to evaluate the impact of the intervention. This study, conducted with 37 senior citizens (n = 37), found positive results aligning with the existing literature on the potential of the STEAM approach. The STEAM approach proved to be engaging for seniors, offering a holistic and interdisciplinary educational experience. Despite the limited availability of science educational programs for seniors and the scarcity of studies on lifelong learning using the STEAM approach, this research highlights the need for such initiatives, especially given the growing senior population. Applying STEAM education shows promise in enhancing scientific literacy and motivation among adult learners. By integrating mathematical concepts, such as the golden ratio, with practical applications in arts and natural sciences, STEAM education can provide a rich, motivating, and accessible learning experience, promoting active and healthy ageing through lifelong learning. Further research and development in this area could maximise educational benefits for the senior population. Full article

Over the past two decades, environmental sustainability has become a key corporate and organisational issue. Today, firms are increasingly turning to existing and emerging digital technologies to help ensure that they meet the medium and long-term needs and expectations of customers and other stakeholders with respect to sustainability performance. This raises the important question of which digitisation factors most significantly impact environmental sustainability performance, as well as the mediating factor of sustainability innovation balance (the ability of a firm to balance the exploration of new innovations with the exploitation of existing innovations). A comprehensive survey instrument was developed and refined through expert feedback and a pilot study, leading to data collection from 374 professionals in the Freight and Logistics industry in Saudi Arabia, all of whom held senior positions in areas such as business development, IT, and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) departments. This data was then analysed using structural equation modelling (SEM). The results of this analysis showed that the key factors impacting sustainability performance were digital competence, strategy alignment, digital adaptability, innovation exploitation and innovation exploration. These findings contribute to the current literature by expanding our understanding of the real-world drivers of sustainability performance. In practical terms, the study will help managers improve sustainability performance by enhancing resource efficiency, streamlining, and supply chain management, as well as improving employee engagement and training, fostering a culture of sustainability within the organisation. Full article

In Norway, there is a rising trend in the number of senior immigrants. Engagement in society is known to be crucial to their well-being and health, with participation in voluntary activities being one way of partaking in a community. A qualitative study was conducted, involving 12 immigrant women aged 50 years and above. Semi-structured interviews were utilized to gain insight into their experiences of participation in activities, aiming to identify both facilitators and barriers to their engagement in activities provided by voluntary organizations. The analysis resulted in two main themes and five sub-themes. According to the women’s experience, learning Norwegian was important for successful integration. They also emphasized the importance of social relationships for improved self-perceived health and a sense of belonging in a community. Language challenges and limited social integration were barriers negatively impacting their participation, with health being a crucial factor determining their capacity to engage in voluntary services. Since most of the women talked about their health, this became an important topic of further investigation. This article is a contribution towards gaining further insight into the experiences of senior immigrant women participating in voluntary services and explores the challenges faced by voluntary organizations in improving information dissemination and minimizing barriers to participation. Public health competence can improve knowledge regarding facilitating health-promoting participation in voluntary services. Full article

The digital transformation of healthcare and nursing is becoming increasingly important due to demographic change and the growing shortage of skilled workers. In order to ensure the participation of senior citizens in digital assistive technologies, educational concepts and support services are needed to promote digital skills in older adults. Therefore, the specific needs and prerequisites of this target group have to be taken into consideration. This paper asks how educational programs for the support of digital competences of older adults are designed and implemented. A scoping review was conducted to systematically extract existing findings from the literature. Four databases (Cinahl, PubMed, Web of Science Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), ERIC) were searched using an exploratory strategy to identify studies that address educational concepts promoting digital competences for older adults. A total of 47 publications were included in the qualitative analysis and show a variety of strategies to deal with the promotion of digital competences for elderly people. In conclusion, programs dealing with the promotion of digital competences for elderly people should be flexibly adapted to the target group with its specific needs and challenges such as fears, lack of previous experience, or physical limitations. For successful implementation, social support is of outstanding importance. Full article

Competency-based education is designed to produce quality graduates and competent practitioners in social work. However, comparative studies to identify how social work education adapts to demands in practice from employers in coordination with the development of the profession across nations are rare. This study examines the influence of education quality and profession commitment on undergraduate social work students’ perceptions of their professional competence in Indonesia and Taiwan. A sample of 872 senior-year students from private and public universities was surveyed using a structured questionnaire. The analysis found that in the two countries, both education quality and professional commitment were positively associated with students’ perceptions of competence. Additionally, students’ commitment was a relatively important predictor in Indonesia but not in Taiwan. Implications for educators and profession development are discussed for societies where social work relies on the state for licensing and funding of practice. Full article

Intuitive career decisions can influence people’s career choices and subsequent job competencies, which are related to their development and happiness. There is evidence that both anxiety and social distance influence intuitive career decisions individually, but it is unclear how employment anxiety and social distance influence intuitive career decisions individually and how they interact to influence intuitive career decisions. Drawing on the cognitive–emotional dual-system model, in this study, 298 college students and 386 senior job-seeking students were tested through behavioral experiments and questionnaires, respectively. The results showed that employment anxious individuals have a higher intuitive level in career decision making, and they also have a higher intuitive level when making career decisions for others at a far social distance. In addition, employment anxiety and social distance interact to influence the intuitiveness of career decision making. When making career decisions for themselves and those who are close to them, the increase in employment anxiety will increase the intuitive level. Therefore, in a non-anxious situation, you can make career decisions on your own or get help from someone close to you, but in anxious situations, you can turn to others who are at a far social distance to help make decisions. Full article

Achievement emotions, defined as the emotions generated in the academic process or by achievement results, are critical for an individual’s mental health, personality development, and academic productivity. Referring to the well-known big-fish-little-pond effect on academic self-concept, which describes the well-known phenomenon that students in selective schools/classes tend to have lower academic self-concepts than those who are comparably competent but attend regular schools/classes, Pekrun and colleagues focused on German students and proposed a similar happy-fish-little-pond effect on achievement emotions in 2019. In our paper, we examined whether this effect exists in extreme cases. To maximize the positive reflected-glory effect of being in a selective school and minimize the negative social comparison contrast effects that result from being ranked low in the school, we conducted an investigation in the Chinese collectivist cultural setting and compared the achievement emotions of students from a highly selective senior middle school with those of students from a regular school where the top-ranking students fell short of the bottom-ranking students in the selective school in terms of academic performance. Through an analysis of variance and a moderated serial mediation model, our study revealed that the bottom-ranking students in the selective school had less positive achievement emotions, lower academic self-concepts, and more negative achievement emotions than the top-ranking students in the regular school, providing strong evidence that students rely more on social comparison than on objective self-evaluation standards to evaluate themselves. The implications of the results for educational policies are discussed. Full article

In the 21st century, society has been undergoing a technology-driven transformation which heralds a new revolution that has potential to strengthen the position of an individual and community but may also lead to the marginalization of certain groups. The Internet of Things takes advantage of the technology’s potential to improve digital competencies and the quality of life in society. The purpose of this paper is to obtain information about the digital competencies and needs of contemporary seniors and pre-senior age people, as well as socially sensitive groups from Poland’s rural areas. To strength the level of internet infrastructure in rural areas, power line communication (PLC) systems that utilize high-voltage line(s) between transformer substations are presented as a cost-effective communication tool. PowerLink IP has made PLC systems today more attractive and efficient than ever before. Based on nation-wide representative surveys conducted in deliberately selected groups, we collected information on digital competencies and formulated recommendations pertaining to the structure and contents of an innovative internet portal as regards offering, sharing, and the availability of commercial and social services targeted at seniors and other dependent groups. The recommended portal combines the needs of target groups with interests of entrepreneurs, self-government authorities, and NGOs. Full article

The purpose of this study was to identify the most vulnerable group among older Korean adults regarding information literacy. Once that was identified, the study aimed to provide basic data for developing strategies to improve information literacy by investigating the factors that influence the ability to utilize the Data Communication Equipment (DCE). The subjects included 10,073 older adults from the 10,299 participants of the 2017 Korean National Survey of Older Adults. The mean age of the older people was 74.06 years from a range of 65 to 106 years old. This study excluded the 216 individuals who did not complete the survey. The data were analyzed using the SPSS 18.0 program. A univariate analysis was performed to identify the most vulnerable group with regard to DCE competence. To investigate the factors that influence DCE competence, a logistic regression analysis was performed on the significant variables in the univariate analysis, while the nominal variables were treated as dummies. Senior citizens in Korea were less able to utilize DCE when they had higher ages, lower education levels, were women, lived alone, lower incomes, decreased sensory function, decreased cognitive function, negative value of learning, no lifelong learning, and smaller social networks. The factors influencing DCE competence in older adults were as follows: age, education level, income level, health status, cognitive function, social networks, lifelong learning, and the value of learning. For DCE competence in older adults to be effectively improved, adequate support must be provided to the vulnerable group. Furthermore, support for personalized DCE utilization seems essential and should consider a person’s age, education level, income, health status, cognitive function, social networks, lifelong learning and the value of learning. Full article

Background: Service-learning is an effective intervention to solve social issues. The purpose of this study is to assess the effectiveness of intergenerational virtual service-learning on loneliness and ageism. Method: This study used a pre-post design. A group of undergraduate students were randomly assigned to a “service-learning” project (n = 18). They were paired with seniors (n = 22) to have at least a 30-min weekly virtual interaction for six weeks. The following scales were used: the Aging Semantic Differential (ASD) Scale, the UCLA Loneliness Scale, a one-item researcher generated Likert-rating of loneliness, and two-item researcher generated Likert-rating of student competence. Results: Among college students, the service-learning group showed lower ASD and ageism scores at the post-test compared to the non-service-learning group, t (1, 40) = −2.027, p = 0.049; t (1, 40) = −2.102, p = 0.042, respectively. Among seniors, loneliness scores on the UCLA Scale and the one-item scale of loneliness dropped significantly from pre- to post-interactions with students, t (1, 19) = 2.301, p = 0.033, and t (1, 22) = 2.412, p = 0.009, respectively. Conclusion: Virtual service-learning is an effective way to solve social issues such as loneliness and ageism. Full article

A larger amount of older people need to participate in working life due to the global demographic change. It is the employer, through the manager, who enables employees to have access to measures in the workplace that facilitate and enable a sustainable extended working life. The aim of this study was to evaluate work life factors associated with managers believing their employees can work versus wanting to work until age 65 or older. This cross-sectional study included 249 managers in the Swedish municipality sector. Logistic regression analysis was used to investigate associations between different univariate estimates and in data modelling using the SwAge-model. The result stated that 79% of managers believed their employees ‘can’ work and 58% of managers believed their employees ‘want to’ work until age 65 or older. Health, physical work environment, skills and competence are associated the strongest to managers believing employees ‘can’ work until age 65 or older. Insufficient social support at work and lacking possibilities for relocations associated the strongest to managers believing employees would not ‘want to’ work until age 65 or older. Though, several countries (especially in Europe) have included in their social policy measures that retirement age be increased after 65, proposing ages approaching 70. When these proposals become laws, through obligation, people will have no choice (if they want to or if they can continue working). However, people’s attitudes to work may be different (especially after the COVID-19 pandemic), and this analysis of the participating managers’ attitudes showed there is a difference between why employees ‘can’ versus ‘want’ to work respectively. Therefore, different strategies may be needed to contribute to employees both being able to and willing to participate in working life until an older age. These findings on managers’ perspectives, regarding whether they believe employees would be able to versus would want to work and the SwAge-model, will hopefully contribute to an increased understanding of organisational actions and measures in the process of creating a sustainable extended working life and to increase senior employees’ employability. Full article

Objective: To compare the differences between the work competencies self-reported by nurse aides’ and those perceived by nurses. Method: A cross-sectional survey was employed. The settings were units implemented a skill mix model institution in Taiwan. The instruments consisted of the participants’ demographic data and a nurse aide work competence scale. Results: The results indicated that the nurse aides had room for improvement in terms of “problem solving” and “activity design”. The nurse aides and nurses differed significantly in terms of the nurse aides’ competence in “activity design”, as the nurse aides reported themselves to be more competent in “activity design” than reported by the nurses. Conclusion: Nurse aides should be incorporated into cross-disciplinary teams. Activity design should be handled by other healthcare providers such as physical therapists or senior social workers. Full article

For most learners of English as a foreign language (EFL), there has long been a lack of effective opportunities to practice English writing skills. However, the recent development of social networking services (SNS) provides new possibilities for these learners to practice writing English in a meaningful way. Meanwhile, with the popularity of social media in language learning, writing is unnecessarily in the form of plain text, and multimodal composing based on text and additional modes such as audio, video or images has been a new form of writing activity instead. This study integrated SNS-based multimodal composing activities into secondary and higher education, with the aim of determining its effects on learners’ writing performance. Two classes in senior high school Grade 10 and four in college were recruited, three as the control groups without using SNS-based multimodal composing, and others as the experimental groups. While all classes’ writing performance improved between pretest and posttest, the gains in overall writing competence by experimental groups and the gains in three detailed aspects (readability, lexical complexity and syntactic complexity) by college students were significantly larger. Progress in detailed aspects, on the other hand, was different across different groups. These findings are discussed in relation to specific characteristics of multimodal composing and SNS-based learning that enables learners to improve writing performance. Full article

Recent health care developments have emphasized person-centered care, which highlights individualized treatments rather than focusing solely on the nature of a given disease. Thus, we aim to identify the factors and construct a structural equation model for developing person-centered care competency among senior nursing students based on the social cognitive career theory and a subsequent literature review. We use a hypothetical model to examine the factors influencing person-centered care competency, and using a structured questionnaire, and we collect data on self-awareness, the clinical learning environment, clinical practicum adaptation, nursing professionalism, empathy, and person-centered care competency. The participants include 383 third- and fourth-year senior nursing students who had undergone at least one semester of clinical practice in South Korea. SPSS/WIN 26.0 is used to analyze all obtained data, while AMOS 25.0 is used for structural equation modeling. The final model is confirmed to be suitable for explaining and predicting person-centered care competency among participants. Nursing professionalism, empathy, clinical practicum adaptation, self-awareness, and the clinical learning environment explained 38.8% of the total variance among participants. Strategies and interventions designed to enhance person-centered care competency for senior nursing students should particularly focus on nursing professionalism, empathy, clinical practicum adaptation, self-awareness, and the clinical learning environment. Full article