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Free time of problem children is a topical problem of our society. Children and youth occupation has always caused many social problems: unoccupied pupils commit more offences, crime, come into the scope of law enforcement institutions more frequently. The subject of the master’s work is to examine the free time activities of Vilnius municipality “Šviesos“ secondary school problem pupils. The following problems are being solved: 1. To analyze social, pedagogical and psychological literature invoking it for the problem under analysis. 2. To discuss the occupation question of problem children in Lithuania while analyzing children’s rights and the legal documents that regulate social security. 3. To display socialization agents that influence the free time of problem children. 4. To examine the attitude of problem children to free time activities. 5. To examine the forms and duration of free time of problem children. 6. To display the school’s part organizing the free time of problem children. To actualize the problems of the master’s work the following empirical methods were used: a discussion with problem children, their parents, class teachers, observation, data collection, case analysis, the analysis of the essays written by problem children as well as by children excluded from this group, standardized interviews with pupils, their parents, class teachers and headmaster. The research results have demonstrated that the free time of problem children has been granted greater... [to full text]

The purpose of the present study was to examine the effects of participation in a Problem-based learning (PBL) teacher education program at the University of British Columbia. The PBL teacher education program included changes to the program of studies and changes to the practica experiences. First, this study examined changes in the PBL teacher education students' feelings of teacher efficacy, feelings of teacher preparedness, and learning styles arid strategies. The PBL students, showed significant increases in their feelings of personal teaching efficacy and feelings of teacher preparedness. In order to better understand the changes over time in the PBL teacher education students the present study also compared the opinions and attitudes towards inclusion of students with special needs, feelings of satisfaction with their programs, feelings of preparedness, and ratings of self-directed learning using both Likert-scale and short answer responses of the. same PBL students to 40 non-PBL teacher education students. The results indicated that proportionally more PBL than non-PBL teacher education students had increased concerns about inclusion of children with special needs. As well, proportionally more PBL than non-PBL teacher education students felt the time that they had spent in the classroom had the greatest influence on changes in their opinions. The results revealed that proportionally fewer PBL than non-PBL teacher education students felt well prepared. Participation in a PBL curriculum was not found to have an effect on students' feelings of satisfaction with their program or ratings of self-directed learning. To further examine the effects of a PBL curriculum in teacher education, the present study also examined the perceptions of university and school-based personnel who were involved with PBL. The results from this investigation revealed that the majority of the groups involved agreed that a PBL curriculum does have an effect on reasoning, interest, enthusiasm, and satisfaction of faculty and teacher education students. The majority of participant groups also were of the opinion that PBL and non-PBL curriculums provided equal knowledge of basic skills and principles, and professional preparation to the students. Implications of the findings are discussed.

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Interpersonal negotiation strategies and ego development of 32 preadolescents attending a day treatment program and 33 non-referred, demographically matched preadolescents was compared. The Interpersonal Negotiation Strategies Interview was used to assess perspective taking across contexts of familiar vs. unfamiliar, peer vs. adult interpersonal dilemmas. Referred preadolescents generated developmentally lower strategies than non-referred preadolescents, specifically in contexts involving unfamiliar adults and familiar children. Level of perspective taking predicted parent's rating of maladapted behaviour on the Child Behaviour Checklist-Revised. Ego development was not supported as a moderator but was positively related to perspective taking, suggesting that similar pathways of development underlie each measure.