Abstract This study explores the intersection of visual art and music, focusing on masks as a profound artistic element. It addresses three core objectives: how viewers interpret artistic masks, how classical music featuring masks corresponds with visual mask imagery, and how listeners express their responses through self-drawn masks inspired by Arnold Schönberg’s Pierrot Lunaire (No. 7). Thirty-one adults without formal training in art or music participated in three phases: mask viewing, art–music pairing, and audiographic mask drawing. The viewing phase revealed diverse and often speculative interpretations of unseen elements. Some participants’ music–mask pairings diverged significantly from the researcher’s, highlighting subjective and varied interpretive strategies. Drawings evoked by Schönberg’s piece predominantly expressed repulsion and negative emotion. Overall, the study highlights the educational value of integrating visual and musical art forms, showing how crossmodal engagement can foster emotional insight, creative expression, and interpretive openness in diverse learning contexts.
The aim of the present study was to explore the views of young children surrounding digital technologies in their lives. The participants included 30 Arab children from Israel, aged 4 to 6, who participated in in-depth interviews regarding their views on digital technologies in their lives. The interviews included the children taking pictures and drawing digital devices at home. The interviews were analysed using content analysis. The findings yielded information regarding digital devices in children's day-to-day lives, entertainment and learning purposes of digital technologies, gender differences, digital devices as an opportunity for social interactions and restrictions on the use of digital technologies. It is recommended that preschool teachers and parents more effectively mediate children's use of digital technologies and adapt them to the children's views.
Aim/Purpose: This study explored teachers’ data-driven decision-making processes during routine and emergency remote teaching, as experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic. Background: Decision-making is essential in teaching, with informed decisions promoting student learning and teachers’ professional development most effectively. However, obstacles to the use of data have been identified in many studies. Methodology: Using a qualitative methodology (N=20), we studied how teachers make decisions, what data is available, and what data they would like to have to improve their decision-making. We used an inductive approach (bottom-up), utilizing teachers’ statements related to decision-making as the unit of analysis. Contribution: Our findings shed an important light on teachers’ Data-Driven Decision-Making (DDDM), highlighting the differences between routine and Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT). Findings: Overall, we found that teachers make teaching decisions in three main areas: pedagogy, discipline-related issues, and appearance and behavior. They shift between making decisions based on data and making decisions based on intuition. Academic-related decisions are the most prominent in routine teaching, and during ERT, they were almost the only area in which teachers’ decisions were made. Teachers reported collecting data about students’ academic achievements and emotional state and considered the organizational culture, consultation with colleagues, and parents’ involvement before decision-making. Recommendations for Practitioners: Promote a culture of data-driven decision-making across the education system; Make diverse and rich data of different types accessible to teachers; Increase professional and emotional support for teachers. Recommendation for Researchers: Researchers have the potential to expand the scope of this study by conducting research using other methodologies and in different countries. Impact on Society: This study highlights the importance of teachers’ data-driven decision-making in improving teaching practices and promoting students’ achievement. Future Research: Additional research is required to examine data-driven decision-making in diverse circumstances.
The growing evidence favoring the positive effect of exercise on cognition is mostly based on men participants (75%). We therefore exposed females and males to acute exercise and evaluated gender cognitive response to this intervention. Thirty- two adults (M=17; F=15) ages 18-34 participated in the study. The exercise consisted of ten repetitions: 10 seconds sprints at maximal speed, followed by 50 seconds active recovery. Stroop test (ST) 1-3; Trail-making test (TMT) 1-2; Word fluency were evaluated prior to; immediately post exercise; and at 45’ recovery. Two-way ANOVA with repeated measures (three test points X 2 gender groups) was used to test the effect of exercise on cognitive performance. All participants reached close to maximal heart rates at the end of the 10th sprint round. Stroop 1- 2 results improved for both males and females from pre to post exercise (p<0.01). After 45’ males returned to pre-exercise while females retained high values. For Stroop 3 both genders improved from pre to post (p<0.01) and retained high values after 45’. For TMT-1 males showed no response while females’ results improved immediately and at 45’ post intervention (p<0.01). For TMT-2 both genders improved after exercise (p<0.01); however, only females continued improving at 45’ recovery. Word fluency was positively affected by exercise in males only. Acute bout of exercise has a positive immediate effect on cognitive performance both in males and females; whereas males returned to pre-intervention values at 45’ min recovery, females retained the positive effect of exercise also after 45 minutes.
