Finnish Schools, Activity Approach in Teacher Education and COVID-19 Pandemic Consequences for Students – in the New Issue of the "Psychological Science and Education"

The new issue of the journal Psychological Science and Education (#3, 2021) is out in June, 2021. The issue opens with a paper on “Activity approach in teacher education”. It addresses the content and outcomes of the project on modernization of teacher education in Russia (2014-2017) aimed at enhancing professional development of future teachers. The paper describes the theoretical concept behind the new activity-based model of teacher training which was developed and subsequently tested in the course of the project implementation. Also, it highlights several unresolved issues in teacher training and provides some suggestions for the next stage of teacher education development.

The “Developmental Psychology” section presents a study in which a comparative analysis of developmental levels of mental (sensory and intellectual) abilities was carried out in modern preschoolers and their peers who attended kindergartens in the last third of the 20^th century (in the‘pre-digital’ era)

Another study in this section focuses on the intergenerational differences in social well-being of adolescents: special attention is paid to identifying the relationships between values, the clarity of plans, the assessment of life success and possible social threats, taking into account the influence of gender and age characteristics. The study revealed that modern teenagers plan their future more carefully, and the complex of life values associated with self-realization in the educational, cultural and professional spheres is more significant to them. At the same time, values associated with successful self-realization in family life have become less significant to them.

Yet another paper of the issue is dedicated to the features of life and well-being in students during distance learning in the course of the COVID-19 epidemic. The results of the study showed that  during distance learning, the lifestyle of a significant proportion of students is characterized by pronounced deviations from the recommended values. Sleep deprivation, an unbalanced diet, a decrease in physical activity - all this, along with a pronounced academic load of medical students, leads to a deterioration in their functional state. At the same time, the main predictors of physical well-being are regular physical activity and commitment to a healthy lifestyle, while emotional well-being is largely determined by the personal characteristics of students and the ability to adapt to a new learning regime.

The topic of COVID-19 pandemic consequences is continued in a study on the factors impacting the behavioural intention of students to use e-learning in higher education during the pandemic. The study shows that performance expectancy, effort expectancy, facilitating conditions, hedonic motivation and price value did not have any influence upon students’ behavioural intention to use e-learning, whereas social influence and habit had a significant impact.

The “Educational Psychology” section explores some educational aspects of going to school in Finland concerning students with special educational needs/services. The paper highlights that it is not universally proved that full integration is the best way; neither is it proved that we need an entire set of segregated and specialized schools for several different kinds of special needs.

Another paper in this section addresses the psychological and didactic issues of creating digital textbooks. The paper analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of digital textbooks in general and explores their effectiveness.