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Many European countries have revised their curricula in recent years, introducing basic computer science concepts. This has paved the way for developing students' computational thinking (CT) skills. Despite increasing uptake, several issues and challenges are emerging for the effective integration of CT skills in compulsory education. The purpose of this paper is to examine the rationale for integrating CT skills in the European primary and lower secondary education curricula and the enablers and barriers to teaching and assessing these skills. A wide range of evidence was collected through three multiple-case studies involving 40 semi-structured interviews with experts, policymakers, school leaders and teachers, and 10 focus groups with students. Thematic analysis was conducted on 3,424 excerpts through NVivo to identify recurring codes and themes regarding implementation of CT skills within the curriculum in nine European countries and to explore commonalities and patterns across the cases. A common enabler is adopting appropriate measures for creating guidelines, learning materials and a large-scale professional development program. On the barrier side, the lack of qualified teachers, lack of quality materials and the challenges related to large-scale upskilling are shared. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, many countries have introduced Computational Thinking (CT) concepts into compulsory education as part of general curriculum reform efforts. A systematic review of academic and grey literature has been conducted to analyse the state of the art in implementing CT in primary and secondary education. In total, 1977 publications were identified, out of which 98 met the inclusion criteria for the review. The results show that, despite a lack of consensus on a common definition, a core set of key CT skills is addressed in primary and lower secondary education. Implementation approaches that emerged from the analysis are discussed and presented according to the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (2016) classification: (i) embedding CT across the curriculum as a transversal theme/skill set; (ii) integrating CT as a separate subject; and (iii) incorporating CT skills within other subjects such as Mathematics and Technology. New approaches to formative assessment of CT are emerging, reflecting different conceptualisations and differences in contextual and motivational aspects of CT curriculum integration. However, further investigation is needed to understand better how gender/equity/inclusion issues impact the quality of computing education integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the discussion on theory and practice issues in relation to literacy and literacy difficulties. Topics include BPS DECP group being in the process of developing updated guidance for the educational psychology (EP) profession; and developments in EP assessment and intervention work for supporting children and young people with literacy difficulties.

The Impulsivity/Reflexivity issue in inhibitory control ability has seldom been investigated in terms of individual differences in typically developing populations. Although there is evidence of changes in executive functioning (EF), including inhibition, in adolescence, very little is known about the role of individual differences. Using the data from 240 14-to-19-year-old high school students who completed a battery of EF tasks (Flanker, Go No-Go, Antisaccade, and Stop signal task), measures of emotion regulation strategies and behavioral difficulties, we performed a latent profile analysis to identify qualitatively distinct score profiles. The results showed the existence in adolescence of two inhibition profiles, Impulsive vs Reflexive, differing in performances at the inhibition tasks. The two profiles were not associated with socio-demographic characteristics, or to psychological variables, such as behavioral characteristics and emotional regulation strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attention is an important, multifaceted cognitive domain that includes many key cognitive processes involved in learning. This study aimed to identify the predictive links between different components of attentional skills and core calculation skills development, using two standardized measures assessing calculation (AC-MT 6–11) and attention skills (CAS) in a sample of 143 typically developing children of age range from 7.6 years to 9.4 years. The results showed that in 2nd grade, selective visuo-spatial attention emerged as an important predictor in the written calculation task, while the ability to inhibit distracting information seemed to better predict accuracy in oral calculation. In 3rd grade, visuo-spatial components of attention emerged as no longer predictive, whereas planning and active visuo-spatial attention abilities emerged as predictive of accuracy in the oral calculation task. These results confirm previous findings about the contribution that attentional skills may have in calculation skills development, supporting evidence for progressive automation attentional components over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on reports outlining disparities in outcome of Covid-19 and aftermath of murder of George Floyd that highlights racism as driver of racial inequities in Great Britain. Topics discussed include contemporary self-assessment checklist used to rate policy and induction, attention to prevailing discourse concerning language within schools and occlusion of infancy of educational psychology as profession by heritage of oppressive ideas.

An evaluation study of a serious game and a system for the automatic emotion recognition designed for helping autistic children to learn to recognize and express emotions by means of their full-body movement is presented. Three-dimensional motion data of full-body movements are obtained from RGB-D sensors and used to recognize emotions by means of linear SVMs. Ten children diagnosed with High Functioning Autism or Asperger Syndrome were involved in the evaluation phase, consisting of repeated sessions to play a specifically designed serious game. Results from the evaluation study show an increase of tasks accuracy from the beginning to the end of training sessions in the trained group. In particular, while the increase of recognition accuracy was concentrated in the first sessions of the game, the increase for expression accuracy is more gradual throughout all sessions. Moreover, the training seems to produce a transfer effect on facial expression recognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attention and working memory are cross-domain functions that regulate both behavioural and learning processes. Few longitudinal studies have focused on the impact of these cognitive resources on spelling skills in the early phase of learning to write. This longitudinal study investigates the contributions of attention and working memory processes to spelling accuracy and handwriting speed in 112 primary school children (2nd, 3rd, and 4th grade; age range: 7.6–9.4 years) learning to write in the Italian transparent orthography. Standardised batteries were used to assess their attention and working memory skills, as well as their spelling. Homophone and non-homophone errors were measured, as they may involve different attentional and working memory processes. The results showed that, for 2nd grade children, selective attention shifting, planning, and inhibition predicted non-homophone errors, whereas sequential working memory predicted homophone errors and writing speed was explained by planning and selective attention. In 3rd grade, only homophone errors were predicted by planning and inhibition. No significant relationships were found in 4th grade, nor in the transition across grades. Dynamic and diversified roles of attentional and working memory processes in predicting different writing skills in early primary school years emerged, with a gradual decrease in the attention–writing relationship with age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An editorial is presented on the concept of trauma tracing back to the First World War. Topics include demonstrating the harmful effects of experiencing catastrophic events such as war, assault, rape, accidents, injury, and witnessing death; movement towards increasing awareness and support of trauma relating to mental health difficulties; and programme supporting the reflection on school ethos.

Research has shown that academic success is strongly associated with positive academic self-efficacy beliefs and that individuals with learning disabilities (LDs) usually report a lower perception of competence than their peers in most learning domains. The aim of this study was two-fold: (1) To compare the performance of inaccurate writers who were not diagnosed with an LD with that of students who were diagnosed with an LD, in order to identify which tasks were the most challenging for individuals with LDs, and (2) to investigate whether inaccurate writers with and without a diagnosis differ in terms of self-perceived difficulties. Two groups were selected from a total sample of 639 students attending seven Italian universities: The first group included 48 participants (24 females) with scores on writing tasks below the 5th percentile, and the second included 51 participants (24 females) who were diagnosed with an LD. The results showed that the two groups significantly differed in the articulatory suppression condition tasks, but not in the standard condition tasks. When groups were matched for performance on writing tasks, students who were diagnosed with an LD reported significantly more perceived difficulties than students without an LD. The implications of these results in terms of the self-efficacy beliefs of students with an LD are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An editorial is presented on Educational and Child Psychology, which includes legislation, adolescent development and learning, therapeutic intervention and supporting interventions and challenge and support the work of psychologist in UK and internationally and the strength of response pays testament to the profession's ability to utilize the research role of educational psychologists.

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses articles in the issue on topics including the role Educational psychologists (EPs) in terms of supporting post-school psychological services; the importance of support during the adoloscene's development; and person-centered planning.