The purpose of this study was to investigate the smoking habits of Greek elementary school students, their attitudes towards smoking, and their perceptions of the health consequences of tobacco use. Data were obtained from 1,092 elementary school students who completed a 24-item questionnaire designed for this study. Results indicated more older…

The aim of the study was to record the attitudes and intentions of Greek and Cypriot primary education teachers towards teaching children with special educational needs (SENs) in mainstream schools. The instrument used was based on "Planned Behaviour Theory". The sample of the study included 179 educators, 87 from Greece (34 men, 52…

It seems that geography teaching faces almost the same problems around the world. Geography teachers try to find new methods to teach geography based mainly on pupils' experiences. This paper describes a teaching approach that focuses on what pupils think about geography. The children are asked to prepare and present a box filled with objects that…

The purpose of this study was to assess Greek primary (1st to 6th grade) school children's dietary habits and the factors influencing them. Our results show that children know the value of different foods. The socio-economic status of father has no effect on the attitude of children towards choosing their diet, however, mothers' educational status…

The aim of this research is to examine how social learning is connected to the acquisition of knowledge and abilities. One hundred and nineteen "A" grade students (60 boys and 59 girls) attending public primary school participated. The collection of data was carried out according to: (1) the "Athina" Test (AT) and (2) teachers'…

This study focuses on the shared variance between reading comprehension and word-level reading skills in a population of 534 Greek children in Grades 2 through 4. The correlations between measures of word and pseudoword accuracy and fluency, on the one hand, and vocabulary and comprehension skills, on the other, were sizeable and stable or…

This paper presents the methodology and main results of a longitudinal study in Greece that explored the learning and psychosocial difficulties of immigrant pupils, as compared with those of their Greek classmates. The "Teacher-Child Rating Scale" (T-CRS) and "Child Rating Scale" (CRS) were used as instruments to measure the…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of an intervention program aimed to develop fair play behaviours in a school Olympic Education program. One hundred and twenty six, 5th-grade students from 4 elementary schools participated in this study, 66 of which were in the experimental group and 60 in the control group. The results…

Investigated knowledge and preferences of 176 Greek children, aged 9 to 11, with regard to dietary oils and fats. Results indicate that these children lacked the knowledge they needed to make healthy food choices, and that teaching strategies should be developed to address their needs. (SLD)

We are delighted to welcome you to the International Psychological Applications Conference and Trends 2014, taking place in Porto, Portugal, from 4 to 6 of April. Psychology, in our time, offers a large range of scientific fields where it can be applied. The goal of understanding individuals and groups (mental functions and behavioral…

Studied the use of research-based principles to create a learning environment for teaching mechanics to one class of Greek fifth and sixth graders. Students were encouraged to take active control of their learning, make predictions, and test their own hypotheses. Results show significant differences between experimental and control groups,…

This paper addresses the question of whether particle ideas help or hinder young pupils' understanding of changes of state and dissolving. Two matched groups in a primary school in Greece (ages 10/11, n = 20 and n = 19) were respectively taught one of two parallel lesson schemes. Covering the same phenomena, one scheme incorporated particle ideas,…

Investigated Greek elementary teachers' personal theories on student writing. Surveys of teachers from urban and suburban schools indicated that teachers considered good writing a gift, not a teachable skill. They viewed the teachers' role as that of a judge, not a helper or collaborator, and students' writing as a product, not a process and as…

This article provides an illustration of how multilevel modelling, which is the standard method for assessing the "school effect" in school effectiveness research, can be combined with the regression-discontinuity approach. While multilevel modelling yields only estimates of relative school effects (differences between schools), the…

We conducted a longitudinal study examining the role of phonemic awareness, phonological processing, and grammatical skills in the development of reading and spelling abilities in Greek. A battery of cognitive, linguistic, and literacy tasks was administered to 131 primary school children (65 7-year-olds and 66 9-year-olds) and was repeated in the…