Alessandro Pepe

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.2196/50326.].

Adolescents who experience school burnout feel overwhelmed and disengaged from school. Among the protective factors, Trait Emotional Intelligence (TEI) can play an important role in preventing school burnout and promoting well-being during adolescence. In the present study, we aimed at testing, within a single conceptual comprehensive model, how students’ TEI affects their level of well-being, both directly and indirectly via school burnout. A total of 229 Italian high school students (110 females; M = 16.64 years, SD = 1.46) were asked to complete three self-report quantitative measures evaluating their TEI, school burnout, and well-being, respectively. The structural equation model revealed that participants’ TEI had a significant association with both their levels of school burnout and well-being. TEI was found to have both a direct and an indirect significant effect—by reducing the impact of school burnout—on participants’ well-being. Significant effects of age and gender emerged. We discuss the practical and educational implications of the findings.

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Background: Virtual reality (VR) is helpful for the management of stress and anxiety. However, current interventions have limitations related to location (ie, therapist’s office or hospitals) and content (ie, virtual experiences only for relaxation). Objective: This randomized pilot trial aims to investigate the efficacy and acceptability of a brief remote VR-based training for supporting stress and anxiety management in a sample of Italian health care workers. Methods: A total of 29 doctors and nurses (n=21; 72% female; mean age 35.6, SD 10.3 years) were recruited and randomized to a VR intervention group or a control group in a passive control condition. Participants assigned to the VR intervention group received remote VR-based training consisting of 3 sessions at home delivered in 1 week using the VR psychoeducational experience “MIND-VR” and the 360° relaxing video “The Secret Garden.” The primary outcome measures were stress, anxiety, depression, and the knowledge of stress and anxiety assessed at baseline and posttreatment. We also evaluated the immediate effect of the remote VR-based training sessions on the perceived state of anxiety and negative and positive emotions. The secondary outcome measure was the usability at home of the VR system and content. Results: The VR intervention significantly reduced stress levels as assessed by the Perceived Stress Scale (6.46, 95% CI 2.77 to 10.5; P=.046) and increased the knowledge of stress and anxiety, as evaluated by the ad hoc questionnaire adopted (–2.09, 95% CI –3.86 to –0.529; P=.046). However, the home-based VR training did not yield similar reductions in stress, anxiety, and depression levels as assessed by the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale-21 items or in trait anxiety as evaluated through the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory Form Y-1. After the home training sessions with VR, there was a significant decrease in anxiety, anger, and sadness and an increase in happiness levels. Analyses of the questionnaires on usability indicated that the health care workers found using the VR system at home easy and without adverse effects related to cybersickness. Of 33 participants, 29 (88%) adhered to the protocol. Conclusions: The results of this randomized pilot study suggest that a week-long home VR intervention, created with content created specifically for this purpose and available free of charge, can help individuals manage stress and anxiety, encouraging further research investigating the potential of remote VR interventions to support mental health. Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT04611399; https://tinyurl.com/scxunprd

The contribution presents the results of a study on the meanings and practices of juvenile participation in decision-making processes in guardianship, using the collage approach. As made explicit in several policies, participation is crucial for the protection of minors and one of the main prevention strategies. In this framework, within broader qualitative research with a phenomenological-hermeneutic approach that questioned the meanings and practices of participation in place in the educational centres involved, we will dwell on the use of artistic language in the practice of collage as a mediator and facilitator within spaces of consultation of minors for the emergence and sharing of experiences of participation to which girls and boys were witnesses. In conclusion, it will be possible to share some considerations on the topic of child participation that are useful for guiding educational practices to make the participation of girls and boys in decision-making processes concrete.

It is with great pleasure that we introduce the new volume (n.7, issue 1) of the International Journal about Parents in Education. During the last years, the journal has increased the number of submissions from a wider international audience who is continuously working on the topic of parents in education. Looking at bibliometric measures, the IJPE’s H-index (Hirsh, 2005) and Gindex (Egghe, 2006) are steady growing: this represents a quite satisfying result for a still young (and tenaciously open access) journal, situated in a very challenging and competitive context.

The present paper explores the amount of research activity estimated through the growth of scientific literature in the field of parents’ participation in their childrens’ schooling: it is a so-called bibliometric analysis. Assessing the “size of science” is a complex task, but bibliometric techniques have been shown to be useful in the development of scientific research activity to address emerging concerns such as the rate of development of a certain discipline and of some specific areas of scientific interest (Katz & Hicks, 1997).Data for analysis were collected from several relevant queries restricted to articles accessible through Cambridge Scientific Abstract (C.S.A.) on-line research platform. Nearly 11,000 bibliographic records were retrieved, with publication dates ranging from 1966 to 2005.In this study researchers attempted to answer two main research questions: which is the rate of literature growth in the field of parent participation (and the expected rate for the forthcoming years)? Which are the different patterns of literature production through different research fields (Pedagogy,Psychology, Sociology, etc.)?Our results reveal a strong growth rate in the number of articles published, and rather significant differences in the various disciplines taken into consideration.

In psychology and social science, visual research methods (VRM; visual storytelling, photo-elicitation method, photo-walking, visual auto-ethnography) have been used as an innovative exploratory approach for evaluating visual-identities, life histories, and other collective features of local cultures. In many cases, visual and image-based methods offer great potential in developing bottom-up, participatory, and innovative research designs with vulnerable or disadvantaged communities. However, mainly for methodological reasons, VRM remained with a limited status within the “orthodox” word-based oriented landscape of qualitative paradigms. Informed by a review of recent literature, the terrain covered by the present chapter includes some examples of innovative applications of VRM with vulnerable communities (e.g., communities in rural South Africa, children living in low-warfare contexts, South Asian women). Based on our empirical work, we argue that the adoption of VRM offers four distinct benefits: a) it helps in gathering richer research materials, b) the methods favor the inclusion of a third layer (e.g., visual) of raw data in addition to other traditional sources (e.g., lexical and numerical), c) it addresses the topic of power relations between researcher and participant, and d) it promotes bottom-up participatory approaches with specific communities. Implications from this methodological design’s practical use will also be discussed, particularly in terms of the decolonization of research practices and ethical aspects to guide practitioners’ research in challenging contexts working with vulnerable populations.