Объектом исследования явились прогностические способности студентов. Предметом исследования стали психологические особенности прогностической прогностической компетентности (антиципационной состоятельности) и интуиции у студентов с разным уровнем самотрансценденции и экзистенциальной исполненности (как операциональной составляющей самотрансценденции). Магистерская диссертация состоит из введения, двух глав, заключения, списка литературы (72 источника) и приложения, включающего в себя бланки применявшихся методик. Объем магистерской диссертации 89 страниц, на которых размещены 4 рисунка и 6 таблиц. Во введении раскрывается актуальность проблемы исследования, разработанность проблематики, ставятся цель и задачи исследования, определяются объект и предмет исследования, формулируются основная и дополнительные гипотезы, указываются методы и эмпирическая база, а также этапы проведения исследования, научная новизна, теоретическая и практическая значимость работы. Первая глава включает в себя обзор иностранной и отечественной литературы по теме феномена самотрансценденции. Представлены разделы, посвященные исследованию структурных составляющих самотрансценденции и их взаимосвязей студентов. Выводы по первой главе представляют собой итоги по изучению теоретического материала. Вторая глава посвящена эмпирической части исследования. В ней представлено описание организации и методов проведенного исследования и результатов, полученных по всем использованным методикам: опроснику «Шкала экзистенции» (А. Лэнгле, К. Орглер) – шкала самотрансценденции; «Тесту экзистенциальных мотиваций» (В. Б. Шумский, Е. М. Уколовa, Е. Н. Осин, Я. Д. Лупандина) – шкала экзистенциальной исполненности; тесту антиципационной состоятельности (прогностической компетентности) (В. Д. Менделевич); опроснику интуитивного стиля С. Эпстайна (адаптация Т. В. Корниловой, С. А. Корнилова). Также в главе представлен сравнительный и корреляционный анализ результатов исследования. Выводы по главе 2 включают в себя основные результаты эмпирического исследования. В заключении в обобщенном виде изложены результаты теоретической и эмпирической частей работы, а также выводы по выдвинутым гипотезам, обоснована практическая значимость исследования и описаны возможные перспективы дальнейшей разработки данной проблематики. / The object matter of the study are prognostic abilities of students. The subject of the study are the psychological characteristics of predictive competence (anticipatory consistency) and intuition among students with different levels of self-transcendence and existential fulfillment (as an operational component of self-transcendence). The master's thesis consists of an introduction, two chapters, a conclusion, a list of literature (111 sources) and an appendix, which includes the forms of the applied methodologies. The volume of the master's thesis is 121 pages, on which are placed 12 figures and 7 tables. The introduction reveals the relevance of the research problem, the development of the problem, sets the goal and objectives of the study, defines the object and subject of the study, formulates the main and additional hypotheses, indicates the methods and empirical base, as well as the stages of the study, scientific novelty, theoretical and practical significance of the work. The first chapter includes a review of foreign and domestic literature on the topic of the phenomenon of self-transcendence. Sections devoted to the study of the structural components of self-transcendence and their interrelations of students are presented. The conclusions on the first chapter are the results of the study of theoretical material. The second chapter is devoted to the empirical part of the study. It presents a description of the organization and methods of the study and the results obtained by all the methods used: the questionnaire "Scale of Existence" (A. Lenglet, K. Orgler) - the scale of self-transcendence; "Test of existential motivations" (V. B. Shumsky, E. M. Ukolova, E. N. Osin, Y. D. Lupandina) - the scale of existential fulfillment; test of anticipatory consistency (prognostic competence) (V. D. Mendelevich); S. Epstein's intuitive style questionnaire (adapted by T. V. Kornilova, S. A. Kornilov). The chapter also presents a comparative and correlation analysis of the results of the study. The conclusion of the second chapter include the main findings of the empirical study. In conclusion, the results of the theoretical and empirical parts of the work, as well as conclusions on the hypotheses put forward, are summarized, the practical significance of the study is substantiated, and possible prospects for further development of this issue are described.

В диссертации рассмотрены особенности психического и физического развития, а также двигательные способности детей с умственной отсталостью. Разработана программа коррекции координационных способностей посредством игры в бочче. Предложенная программа может быть рекомендована преподавателям адаптивного физического воспитания, педагогам дополнительного образования, воспитателям группы продленного дня, работающим с детьми 12-15 лет с умственной отсталостью. / The dissertation examines the mental and physical development as well as motor abilities of children with intellectual disabilities. A programme for the correction of coordination abilities by playing bocce has been developed. The proposed programme can be recommended to teachers of adaptive physical education, teachers of additional education, educators of day-care groups, working with 12-15 years old children with mental retardation.

First-person shooter (FPS) games are frequently associated with immersion due to their use of a first-person perspective camera, which gives players the impression that they are a part of the game world. When combined with the proteus effect and identification, players can achieve a complete sense of immersion in the character they are portraying. The objective of this study is to delve into the cognitive benefits of engaging in FPS games and to establish a correlation between the level of immersion and cognitive transfer. The data collected from participants who completed reaction tasks were analyzed in conjunction with the IEQ (Immersive experience questionnaire) scores. The IEQ provided quantitative data on immersion. By assessing the participants' cognitive abilities based on their reaction task performance, the study found that playing FPS games can improve accuracy but not affect reaction time. Furthermore, the study found no correlation between immersion and cognitive transfer.

The use of Fibre Reinforced Polymer (FRP) composite materials in structural applications has increased in the past decades in high­performance sectors, such as in the automotive and aeronautic industries, for weight reduction purposes. However, FRP composite materials can offer more significant innovation potential. The application of CNTs in conjunction with composite material can allow the creation of multifunctional materials, relying on FRP for the structural side and CNT for the sensing ability. In this master thesis, the embedment of a Vertical Aligned Carbon Nanotube (VACNT) layer into the interlaminar region of Carbon Fibre (CF) laminates to provide polyvalent sensing ability to the material was investigated. In order to obtain accurate results, the sensor had to be isolated from the rest of the laminate. For this reason, the main problem to be solved in this project was the electrical isolation on the CNT layer and its contacts from the layers of CF laminate. This study aims to find a suitable isolation technique in order to apply the CNT sensor technology, developed in previous studies, into CF laminate. Although thought for aerospace applications, these sensors could be applied to different structural components in various fields. / Användningen av fiberförstärkta polymerer (FRP)-­kompositmaterial i strukturella applikationer har ökat under de senaste decennierna i högpresterande sektorer, såsom i fordons­ och flygindustrin, för viktminskningsändamål. FRP-­kompositmaterial kan dock erbjuda mer betydande innovationspotential. Användningen av CNTs i kombination med kompositmaterial kan möjliggöra skapandet av multifunktionella material, beroende på FRP för den strukturella sidan och CNT för avkänningsförmågan. I denna masteruppsats undersöktes inbäddningen av ett Vertical Aligned Carbon Nanotube (VACNT) lager i den interlaminära regionen av Carbon Fiber (CF) laminat för att ge polyvalent avkänningsförmåga till materialet. För att få exakta resultat måste sensorn isoleras från resten av laminatet. Av denna anledning var huvudproblemet som skulle lösas i detta projekt den elektriska isoleringen på CNT-­lagret och dess kontakter från lagren av CF­-laminat. Denna studie syftar till att hitta en lämplig isoleringsteknik för att tillämpa CNT­sensorteknologin, utvecklad i tidigare studier, i CF-­laminat. Även om de är tänkta för flygtillämpningar, kan dessa sensorer appliceras på olika strukturella komponenter inom olika områden.

The aim of this research study was to increase knowledge of the relationship between the special educational needs teachers (SEN) work and writing difficulties for pupils in year 1–3. The need for the study is motivated by the lack of previous research regarding pupils with writing difficulties and the support they receive from the SEN teacher. The study is qualitative and the empirical data was composed by semi-structured interviews with SEN teachers. The interviews were analysed with a content analysis method. The results showed that SEN teachers can have a supportive function in the assessment of a pupils writing abilities. A pupil with writing difficulties were identified by the teacher through the obligatory assessment material provided by Skolverket. The teachers also identified the difficulties through assessment during the writing process in the everyday work in the classroom. When the teacher has identified signs of writing difficulties, they have a responsibility to inform the student health team. Due to the guarantee of early interventions the pupil is supposed to get additional adjustments which is mainly given within the classroom. The SEN teacher can support the pupil through arly intervention and by supporting the teacher in developing a writing environment based on success factors gained from research. Writing is a complex process that requires multiple functions for the pupil. The results of the study show that the teachers level of knowledge can affect the support given to the pupil. The results from this study show a discrepancy between those schools where support was given to the pupil from the SEN teacher and the extent of the support. One conclusion is that the school leadership has an important task in organizing support for pupils with writing difficulties and the SEN teacher has an important part to play in this support. / Målet med studien var att öka kunskapen om relationen mellan speciallärares arbete och elevers skrivsvårigheter i årskurserna 1–3. Studien är relevant eftersom det finns en kunskapslucka gällande elever med skrivsvårigheter och det stöd som de får av speciallärare. Studien är kvalitativ och empirin samlades in genom semistrukturerade intervjuer med speciallärare. Innehållsanalys användes som metod för att analysera intervjuerna. Resultaten av intervjusvaren visar att speciallärare kan ha en stödjande funktion i bedömningen av elevers skrivförmåga. Elever med skrivsvårigheter identifieras av lärare genom de obligatoriska kartläggningsmaterialen från Skolverket. Lärare identifierade även elevers svårigheter genom bedömning i den dagliga skrivundervisningen. När lärare har identifierat tecken på skrivsvårigheter har lärare ett ansvar att informera elevhälsoteamet. Utifrån läsa-, skriva-, räknagarantin ska elever få extra anpassningar som främst ges inom den ordinarie klassrumsundervisningen. Speciallärare kan ge en elev stöd genom tidiga insatser och genom att handleda lärare i att utveckla skrivundervisning utifrån de framgångsfaktorer som synliggjorts inom forskning. Skrivandet är en komplex process som kräver multipla funktioner av en elev. Resultatet av studien visar att lärares kunskapsnivå gällande skrivundervisningen påverkar det stöd som ges till elever. Studiens resultat visar även på en diskrepans mellan de skolor där stöd inom skrivandet gavs till elever från speciallärare samt omfattningen av detta stöd. En slutsats är att skolans ledning har en viktig uppgift i att organisera stödet till elever med skrivsvårigheter och specialläraren har en viktig uppgift i detta arbete.

Thesis (M.Ed. (Curriculum Studies)) -- University of Limpopo, 2022 / This study intended to investigate the effects of language transition and the educational conduit of language acquisition to learner performance in the academic space, especially in learning Natural sciences and technology. Moreover, refraining from the ideologies of globalization innovation and growth using English as a patriarchal language of choice for transformation. The study followed the qualitative approach with Interpretivism humanistic paradigmatic assessment of human behavior to achieve the aim. A purposive sampling strategy was used in selecting only schools in rural settings of Mankweng Circuit, where the ideologies of the fourth industrial revolution, are marginally advocated by cultural and curriculum perspective. Data collection was done through semi-structured interviews and conducting field observation notes. The results analysed with thematic Tech`s coding method indicated the existence of language transition problems for both teachers and grade four learners from a practical perspective of classroom interaction. Also, learners were unable to receive instruction, for the subject natural sciences and technology solely in English. Therefore, teachers had to device new strategies to curb the problem. The presence of trans-languaging problems in Grade 4 supports the need to review the period and method in which these learners are expected to transit from mother tongue learning to learning solely in English. Moreover, there is a need to review the Natural Sciences and Technology Curriculum Assessment Policy Statement document. Furthermore, prescribed textbook need to be reviewed to ensure inclusivity, eliminating language barriers, because language, forms the core part of learning, communicating and generating new ideas for the fourth industrial revolution.

Due to an educational system that tends to prioritize receptive reading and listening skills and a concomitant lack of opportunities to engage in meaningful spoken production in the target language outside of the class, many English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners in Japan struggle to develop their English speaking abilities even after many years of study. For many of these learners, post-secondary coursework presents a first opportunity to engage in consistent active oral production of the language in interactive communicative situations, but how language abilities develop in this context over time is not well understood. This longitudinal, mixed methods research study explores the development of interactive second language (L2) speaking proficiency of Japanese university students throughout their first year of post-secondary study. The participants were 92 female students from five sections of a required oral communication course of which I was the instructor: 34 from two mid-proficiency sections and 58 from three low-proficiency sections. In addition to the standard curriculum for this course, these participants also completed a series of ten 10-minute discussion tasks in groups of three to four participants on personal information topics of general interest over the course of two 15-week semesters that comprise the academic year. All of the group discussion tasks were video-recorded and carried out under the same procedures: without any pre-task planning time but with a post-task transcription and reflection assignment. The first group discussion task was administered for training and instructional purposes and excluded from the data analyses leaving seven tasks conducted roughly one month apart throughout the academic year as well as one additional repeated task with the same group assignments completed at the end of each semester. In total, nine discussion tasks were carried out for analysis in this study. A number of quantitative measures were collected for this study at various points throughout the academic year. First, all of the group discussion performances were rated using an adapted rating scale consisting of criteria dedicated to complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF) as well as interactional engagement and overall communicative effectiveness. Additional measures consisting of participant ratings assigned to topic difficulty and group member familiarity were collected via questionnaire after each discussion task. Furthermore, measures of extraversion and English-speaking self-efficacy were collected along with the three repeated tasks that spanned the entire year. Finally, initial and end-of-year scores on the TOEIC-IP test consisting only of listening and reading sections were used as measures of general English proficiency. To provide a richer understanding of the participants’ perceptions of their development as well the social and individual difference factors considered most directly relevant to the research questions, an embedded qualitative component consisting of two focus groups and one individual interview was also carried out. The results indicated that the participants in this study made small but significant improvements in their mean interactive English speaking abilities across both the three repeated tasks and between the most temporally distant earliest and latest new tasks administered in the first and second terms, accounting for relatively large amounts of the variance in the measures. Furthermore, the social and individual difference factors investigated were found to jointly predict 56% of the variance seen in the interactive English speaking measures for the three repeated tasks. Of these factors, the participants’ initial general proficiency scores, English speaking self-efficacy ratings, and averaged group member initial proficiency scores were found to be much stronger predictors than their topic difficulty, group member familiarity, and extraversion ratings. When the ratings given along the five rating scale dimensions were inspected, strong relationships were revealed among all of them, though particularly among the CAF rating measures. Tracking these relationships over time revealed that they tended to strengthen from one task to the next with the most readily identifiable changes found among the relationships between accuracy, interactional engagement, and overall communicative effectiveness. Finally, the qualitative component of this study revealed that the participants interviewed perceived changes in their conscious attention during the group discussion tasks shifting from accuracy concerns to speaking fluently/effectively, a general lack of concern for and attention to complexity throughout, and improvement in their interactional engagement over the course of the academic year. Furthermore, the interviewees were found to generally ascribe a high degree of influence on their resulting group discussion task speaking performances to both the topic prompts assigned and their group members’ personalities as well as to the complex interplay between group member proficiency and familiarity among other factors. Although a number of limitations should be taken into account, it is believed that the results of this study provide new, important insights into the longitudinal development of interactive English speaking proficiency in an EFL university context where learners have little engagement with target language beyond limited classroom contact hours. / Teaching & Learning

Today's Swedish mathematics education is largely textbook-bound. At the same time, the textbooks are not reviewed, quality assured or checked by the curriculum in mathematics. The purpose of this study was to investigate the prevalence of open assignments and what abilities these helped the students develop. As a teacher, it is important to be aware of what tasks students encounter as well as what abilities these will train. Previous research shows that open-ended assignments are very helpful for the development of mathematical abilities for students. As an analytical starting point, Sullivan and Lilburn’s (2002) criteria for open-ended questions and MCRF's framework (Lithner et. al, 2010) for mathematical abilities were used. The analysis revealed that there was little data that fell under the criteria for open-ended questions. In the available tasks, they get to develop several mathematical abilities. “Favorit matematik” was the textbook that offered the greatest variety of tasks for developing mathematical abilities in the open-ended assignments that existed.

I dagens skola ur en global kontext pekar forskning på att undervisningen i matematiken är väldigt bokbunden. Forskningen visar samtidigt att läroböckerna behandlar rutinuppgifter i stor utsträckning och liten variation av problemlösningsuppgifter som elever får möta i undervisningen. Detta ger inte samma möjlighet till utmaning av alla de matematiska förmågorna hos eleverna. Syftet med undersökningen var att ta reda på vilka möjligheter läroböckerna gav eleverna att möta problemlösning som kunde stödja deras utveckling inom matematiken.  För att få svar på vårt syfte genomfördes en läromedelsanalys av två olika läroboksserier som innehöll sex böcker totalt. Resultatet pekade på att olika läroböcker presenterade problemlösning på olika sätt, vilket gav eleverna olika möjligheter till problemlösning. Studiens resultat visade också på att det fanns en övervägande mängd rutinuppgifter som hindrar eleverna att tillägna sig matematik. Läraren kommer därför vara en viktig funktion för elevernas utveckling av problemlösning, då de har en avgörande roll att frambringa de matematiska problemens fullständiga potential i elevernas utövande kring de matematiska förmågorna. Lärarens val av läroböcker kan vara avgörande för elevernas möjligheter att möta problemlösning, då läraren måste vara medveten om lärobokens begränsningar och potential för att stödja elevernas utveckling inom matematik. / In today's educational context, research indicates that mathematics instruction is heavily reliant on textbooks. At the same time, studies show that textbooks focus on routine exercises and offer limited variation in the problem-solving tasks students encounter in class. This lack of diversity does not adequately challenge all students' mathematical abilities. The aim of this study was to investigate the extent to which textbooks provide opportunities for students to engage in problem-solving tasks that support their mathematical development. To address this aim, a textbook analysis was conducted on two different textbook series comprising a total of six books. The results indicated that different textbooks presented problem-solving in varying ways, thereby affording students different opportunities for engaging in problem-solving activities. The study also revealed that there is a predominance of routine tasks, which impedes students' ability to fully acquire mathematical skills. Therefore, the role of the teacher is crucial in enhancing students' problem-solving capabilities, as they are instrumental in unlocking the full potential of mathematical problems in the context of developing students' mathematical competencies. Teachers' choice of textbooks can significantly impact students' exposure to problem-solving, as educators must be aware of both the limitations and potential of textbooks in supporting students' mathematical development.

Left hemisphere damage is a frequent cause of aphasia. Analyses of deviant linguistic behaviors provide valuable information about the functional architecture of language. Correlating specific language difficulties with damage to the brain helps shed light on the relationships between language and the neural substrate. The aim of this Ph.D. thesis is to contribute to the understanding of the neural correlates of sentence comprehension, based on behavioral and neuroimaging evidence from aphasia. A substantial amount of research based on lesion-symptom mapping has been devoted to this issue, but several issues remain to be clarified. To consider just an example, lesion-symptom mapping studies have systematically linked the posterior regions of the left hemisphere to sentence comprehension. Surprisingly, however, the same studies failed to provide similarly strong evidence for prefrontal regions, contradicting the results of previous neuropsychological investigations that clearly supported the critical role of these regions in sentence processing. To date, there are enough controversial issues on sentence processing as to warrant reconsideration of available evidence. The present project focused on the neural correlates of the mechanisms involved in thematic role assignment and in the processing of morphosyntactic features. This is because both sets of mechanisms are critical for sentence interpretation both in comprehension and in production. The first step of the project consisted of a systematic literature review and meta-analysis of lesion-symptom investigations of sentence processing (study 1 – Chapter 1). The literature search yielded 43 studies eligible for review, of which 27 were used in the meta-analysis. The main goal was to identify the correlates of thematic role assignment and of morphosyntactic processing. Thematic role assignment errors correlated mainly with damage in the left temporo-parietal regions, and morphosyntactic errors mainly with damage in the prefrontal regions. However, careful consideration of the reviewed and meta-analyzed studies shows that conclusions are biased under several aspects. Data on thematic deficits are based almost exclusively on sentence comprehension, and data on morphosyntactic deficits on sentence production. Furthermore, even the very few studies that evaluated both impairments did so in distinct linguistic contexts, or in different response modalities. In addition, studies that focused on one set of mechanisms did not consider the possibility that performance on their dimension of interest was influenced by damage to the other. For example, studies focusing on thematic comprehension administered thematic foils, but not morphosyntactic foils. Therefore, the neurofunctional correlates emerging from the meta-analysis and the review may offer a biased and/or partial view. As a first attempt at overcoming these limitations, a lesion study on native speakers of Italian with post-left stroke aphasia was conducted (study 2 – Chapter 2) to clarify the neural substrates of morphosyntactic and thematic processes in comprehension. Experimental stimuli consisted of simple declarative, semantically reversible sentences presented in the active or passive voice. In an auditory sentence comprehension task, participants were asked to match a sentence spoken by the computer to the corresponding picture, that had to be distinguished from a thematic, a morphosyntactic or a lexical-semantic foil. Thirty-three left brain-damaged individuals (out of an initial sample of 70) were selected because they fared normally on lexical-semantic foils, but poorly on morphosyntactic (n=15) and/or thematic (n=18) contrasts. Voxel-based Lesion Symptom Mapping (VLSM) analyses retrieved non-overlapping substrates. Morphosyntactic difficulties were uninfluenced by sentence voice and correlated with left inferior and middle frontal damage, whereas thematic role reversals were more frequent on passives and correlated with damage to the superior and middle temporal gyrus and to the superior occipitolateral cortex. Both correlations persisted after covarying for phonological short-term memory. When response accuracy to passive vs active sentences in the presence of thematic foils was considered, portions of the angular and supramarginal gyrus were retrieved. They could provide the neural substrate for thematic reanalysis, that is critical for comprehending sentences with noncanonical word order. However interesting and strong, these results were obtained by considering just one sentence type (declaratives) and by relying on basic neuroimaging data. To go beyond these limitations, the final step of the project relied on more comprehensive behavioral analyses and more advanced neuroimaging techniques (study 3 – Chapter 3). The SCOPRO (Sentence Comprehension and PROduction) language battery was developed, that focuses on thematic and morphosyntactic processes and allows assessing these processes in a variety of reversible sentences in both comprehension and production. SCOPRO was administered to 50 neurotypical subjects (to assess applicability and establish cutoff levels) and 27 aphasic participants (native Italian speakers with left post-stroke aphasia). Of the latter, 21 were included in an MRI-based lesion-symptom mapping study. Results obtained in comprehension tasks were correlated with neuroimaging data (structural T1 and DWI). Lesion maps, disconnectome maps, tract disconnection probability and personalized deterministic tractography data demonstrated the involvement of grey and white matter. Thematic role reversals correlated to cortical damage in the left angular gyrus. They also correlated to cortical damage in the left supramarginal gyrus when controlling for single-word processing in a voxel-based disconnectome-symptom mapping analysis. Thematic errors were associated also with underlying white matter damage. Correlating the probability of tract disconnections and personalized deterministic tractography with thematic role performance involved the left arcuate fasciculus. The posterior segment was associated with thematic role reversals, even after controlling for morphosyntactic and single-word processing. The anterior segment was linked to accuracy on thematic roles when single-word processing was used as a covariate. The long segment also correlated with the level of thematic role performance, but the correlation was no longer present when morphosyntactic performance was used as a covariate. SCOPRO can be used not only to assess language processes in a broad sense (e.g., morphosyntactic vs thematic), but also to look into more detailed issues. Contrasting accuracy on declarative and comparative sentences is an interesting case in point. Both sentence types express reversible relations, but only declaratives require thematic role mapping. Hence, contrasting results between the two could help distinguish the correlates of role mapping from those of reversibility per se. The supramarginal gyrus was damaged in participants who fared poorly in both declaratives and comparatives but, interestingly, the aphasics with selective thematic difficulties had suffered damage to the posterior division of the middle temporal gyrus and to the angular gyrus, whereas those with selective difficulties on comparatives presented with lesions in the parietal and central opercular cortex. Clearly, these results are preliminary and require further investigation. It is unanimously accepted that sentence processing involves a large-scale network including frontal, temporal and parietal cortices and the underlying white matter pathways. The main contribution of the present project is that it allows articulating more detailed hypotheses on the role played by some components of the network during sentence comprehension. Results tie left frontal regions to morphosyntactic processing, posterior temporal regions to the retrieval of verb argument structure, and a posterior-superior parietal area to thematic reanalysis. Preliminary observations also suggest that different neural substrates could be involved in processing reversibility as such and when more specifically implemented in thematic roles. Further studies exploiting detailed behavioral tools like the SCOPRO battery and sophisticated neuroimaging techniques in larger samples will lead to a better understanding of language functions and their processing in the brain.