The introduction of STEM education, and specifically the implementation of educational robotics (ER), has drawn researchers’ attention and has shown that teachers play a crucial role in leading this innovation. The present study concerns in-service and pre-service early childhood teachers, focusing on their perceptions and attitudes about ER use in daily teaching practice. The data were collected via a questionnaire (N = 201) and explored using latent class analysis, which detected distinct clusters/profiles of participants based on their pattern of responses. Two clusters were identified: Cluster1 was relatively homogeneous, including those who share a positive attitude towards ER, while Cluster2 was heterogeneous, comprising participants with inconsistent responses and expressing negative and skeptical thinking. The cluster memberships were associated with external covariates, such as age, years of teaching experience, and variables measuring their technological competencies. The results showed that teaching experience and age were negatively associated with cluster1-membership, while educational robotics knowledge was positively associated. The findings are interpretable, and the implications for education are discussed considering the current literature.

Contemporary mobile technologies offer tablets and smartphones that elicit young children’s active participation in various educational apps, dramatically transforming playing, learning, and communication. Even the most knowledgeable users face difficulties in deciding about the value and appropriateness of the so-called educational apps because of many factors that should be considered. Their importance for children’s attitudes is affected by the perceived positive and negative aspects, which vary across a multiplicity of criteria. Filling the gap in the relevant literature, a new instrument, named PEAU-p (Perceptions about Educational Apps Use–parents), was developed and validated in the present study designed to measure parents’ perception of educational apps for kindergarten pupils. Data (N = 435) were collected via online procedures, and the psychometric properties of PEAU-p were studied via exploratory and confirmatory methods. Principal Components Analysis extracted six factors, namely Usability, Enjoyment, Involvement, Learning, Worries, and Values, which explained 72.42% of the total variance. Subsequently, by implementing Latent Class Analysis based on the above factors, four Clusters (i.e., parents’ Profiles) were extracted corresponding to their perceptions and attitudes towards the educational apps used for kindergarten pupils. Those were named as ‘mild attitude’, ‘negative attitude’, ‘positive attitude’, and ‘indifferent attitude’. This categorization, besides the statistical support, is fully interpretable, and the profiles were associated with certain covariates, such as age, the number of children, knowledge on new technologies, or distal outcomes, e.g., the frequency of using apps, the general position towards apps or their intention to recommend apps use. The findings are discussed within the current research field, investigating the influential role parents play in young children’s media selection and use.

During the last decade, there has been an explosive increase in the number of mobile apps that are called educational and target children aged three to six. Research has shown that only a few of them have been created taking into consideration young children’s development and learning processes. The key question that emerges is how parents, custodians, or teachers can choose appropriate, high-quality educational apps. Literature has presented limited assessment tools based on advanced statistical procedures, which allow one to address validity and reliability issues. This study investigates the dimensions of using and operating educational apps for kids and presents a thirteen-item assessment instrument along with its psychometric properties. Data (N = 218) were collected via an electronic questionnaire from pre-service teachers of preschool education. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) with Varimax rotation was used to investigate the underlying dimensions. The resulting structure included four factors, namely: Usability, Efficiency, Parental Control, and Security. PCA supported the factorial validity of the instrument, while the reliability measures of Cronbach’s alpha for the four dimensions were satisfactory. Finally, a lucid discussion on the findings is provided.

Teachers’ innovative work behavior (TIWB) is crucial in the contemporary demanding educational environments for overcoming any commonplace issues and to ensure sustainability and development. It refers to a process in which the employee tries to create new ideas, adopt them, apply them in the school context, and then communicate them to other members of the organization in order to achieve a communal benefit. Among a plethora of factors that could influence such behavior, self-efficacy, burnout, and irrational beliefs have been proposed as potential covariates. In the present study, the associations of the above constructs with TIWB are concomitantly investigated by employing structural equation modeling (SEM). Data were taken from the participation of in-service teachers (N = 964) in primary education via self-reported questionnaires. The proposed SEM model exhibited a satisfactory goodness-of-fit to the empirical data, highlighting the direct effects of the independent variables on TIWB, while mediation analysis showed that irrational beliefs and burnout act also as mediators between self-efficacy and innovative work behavior. The findings are in line with previous reports and are interpretable in the context of modern theories, while a discussion on theoretical and practical implications along with emerging ideas and perspectives for further research is provided.

Following our previous paper (Chem. Educator, 2004, 9, 398-405), we analyze further the results of a national examination from the perspective of conceptual learning versus algorithmic problem solving. Detailed achievement data were studied for a sample of 499 eleventh-grade students (age about 17), who were following various branches or streams leading to all kinds of higher-education studies in Greece (the ”Positive‘, the ”Theoretical‘, and the ”Technological‘ Branches). Using qualitative criteria, we distinguished the questions into: (i) simple knowledge-recall, (ii) conceptual, and (iii) well-practiced (algorithmic), stoichiometric, exercises. The latter could further be divided into simple and more demanding ones. As in the previous study, this categorization was also supported by statistical principal component analysis, but this time a marginal structure was extracted, because (possibly) of the limited number and the low difficulty of the postulated conceptual questions. The interest of the study lies mainly in the comparison among the different branches, with the students of the Positive Branch demonstrating the highest mean scores. In addition, students‘ thinking was categorized according to Nakhleh‘s scheme. The Positive Branch had the highest number of students with algorithmic and with conceptual ability, but all branches had about equal share of students high only in conceptual ability. [Chem. Educ. Res. Pract., 2005, 6 (2), 104-118]

Background: The influence of cognitive factors on financial capacity across the dementia spectrum of cognitive aging, Alzheimer’s disease (AD), and mild cognitive impairment (MCI) has been little investigated, while it has not been investigated at all in other types of dementia as well as in extended samples of elders in Greece. Objective: The aim of this study is to investigate financial capacity, to develop a tool, test its psychometric properties, validate, and then test the tool in groups of healthy controls compared to elders with dementia, while examining other facets of their cognitive performance. Methods: 719 elders from Greece including healthy participants and patients with different types of dementia were examined with Legal Capacity for Property Law Transactions Assessment Scale (LCPLTAS) and a battery of neuropsychological tests concerning various cognitive functions. Results: Significantly different profiles in the scores and subscores of LCPLTAS for all the groups of dementia patients were found, with a general incapacity finding for all the dementia groups including the MCI patients. Logistic regression showed that Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), Geriatric Depression Scale, and Trail Making Part B predicted competence on LCPLTAS for the dementia patients. Persons with MCI and dementia had lower financial knowledge scores than those without cognitive impairment, with MMSE scores below 27 suggestive as an indication of financial incapacity. Conclusion: The LCPLTAS provides information for a strong positive correlation with MMSE, while the use both of MMSE and LCPLTAS as adequate measures of financial (in)capacity is discussed for the Greek legal procedures regarding elder guardianship cases.