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Fear of COVID-19 and Perceived Stress: The Mediating Roles of Neuroticism and Perceived Social Support

The aim of this research was to recognize the relationship between well-being and civic engagement under the difficult circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic amongst students from Poland, Lithuania and Croatia. Overall, 1362 academic students (Poland, n = 596, Croatia, n = 386, and Lithuania, n = 379) participated in the study. Mean rank differences in civic engagement level (overall CE) were analysed by levels of psychological well-being (overall PWB and its subscales) using the Kruskal–Wallis test (one-way ANOVA on ranks). We conducted post hoc analysis with Bonferroni tests to measure the significance of differences in CE between the detailed levels of PWB. To avoid biases due to interaction effects between dependent variables, the analysis of mean ranks was followed by a binomial logistic regression analysis model and subgroups analysis (by gender and by country). Results obtained showed that students with higher levels of psychological well-being have higher levels of civic engagement. The differences in the CE level are most pronounced in relation to the dimension of a PWB, such as “positive relations with others”, followed by “personal growth”, “autonomy”, and “self-acceptance”. In a crisis, such as a pandemic, it is worth encouraging students to take targeted actions, as well as to create actions referring to personal development and relationships. There were no differences in the direction and shape of the associations between psychological well-being and civic engagement with respect to the country and the gender of the participants, which leads us to draw conclusions pointing to the globalised nature of student experience during the pandemic in this part of Europe.

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The Psychological Well-Being and Civic Engagement of Polish, Croatian and Lithuanian Academic Students during COVID-19 Outbreak

During the COVID-19 pandemic, higher education is adopting online teaching as a panacea to cope with its disruption. Despite university faculty’s efforts, college students need to develop online self-regulated learning to ensure that they achieve good academic performance in this unique learning context. While social support has been found to be an important facilitator of self-regulated learning in general learning contexts, whether and how it works in the pandemic context has yet to be explored. This study drew on social cognitive theory to investigate the relation between social support and online self-regulated learning by considering the mediating effect of online learning self-efficacy and the moderating role of gender. Data were collected from 2616 undergraduates in China who were home-quarantined and received online instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic. The results of a Partial Least Squares regression found social support was positively associated with online self-regulated learning and online learning self-efficacy mediated this positive association in part. Further, the positive association that social support had with online learning self-efficacy and online self-regulated learning were both stronger among males than females. Implications for online education during the COVID-19 pandemic and future research are discussed. 

Social support and online self-regulated learning during the COVID-19 pandemic

Recently, during the COVID-19 pandemic, distance education became mainstream. Many students were not prepared for this situation—they lacked equipment or were not even connected to the Internet. Schools and government institutions had to react quickly to allow students to learn remotely. They had to provide students with equipment (e.g., computers, tablets, and goggles) but also provide them with access to the Internet and other necessary tools. On the other hand, teachers were trying to adopt new technologies in the teaching process to enable more interactivity, mitigate feelings of isolation and disconnection, and enhance student engagement. New technologies, including Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), Mixed Reality (MR), Extended Reality (XR, so-called Metaverse), Big Data, Blockchain, and Free Space Optics (FSO) changed learning, teaching, and assessing. Despite that, some tools were implemented fast, and the COVID-19 pandemic was the trigger for this process; most of these technologies will be used further, even in classroom teaching in both schools and universities. This paper presents a concise review of the emerging technologies applied in distance education. The main emphasis was placed on their influence on the efficiency of the learning process and their psychological impact on users. It turned out that both students and teachers were satisfied with remote learning, while in the case of undergraduate children and high-school students, parents very often expressed their dissatisfaction. The limitation of the availability of remote learning is related to access to stable Internet and computer equipment, which turned out to be a rarity. In the current social context, the obtained results provided valuable insights into factors affecting the acceptance and emerging technologies applied in distance education. Finally, this paper suggests a research direction for the development of effective remote learning techniques.

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The Influence of Emerging Technologies on Distance Education

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The Moderator Role of Spirituality on the Relationship between Fear of COVID-19 and Psychological Well-Being

Background The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic represents an unprecedented situation in the most recent history. It has had a number of negative consequences for individuals and for whole societies. Individual effects of the pandemic include not only loss of life and of physical health, but also deteriorated quality of life. Objective This study examines the effect of core self-evaluations (CSE), social support and fear of COVID-19 on the well-being of university students in Poland during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods We conducted an online survey on a nationwide group of 1,000 students of Polish universities. The survey was carried out between 1 and 15 March 2021. The respondents filled out the following set of tools: World Health Organization Quality of Life Scale, Core Self-Evaluations Scale, Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support and The Fear of COVID-19 Scale. Results The findings showed that core self-evaluations (CSE) were significantly positively associated with well-being in each of the four domains studied: physical health (r = 0.519), psychological (r = 0.763), social relationships (r = 0.465) and environment (r = 0.496). Similarly, social support correlated positively with physical health (r = 0.277), psychological health (r = 0.306), social relationships (r = 0.552) and environment (r = 0.496). Fear of COVID-19 correlated negatively with well-being in the domain of physical health (r = 0.188), in social relationships (r = 0.042) and with regard to the environment (r = 0.071), the correlations were weak. However, the relationship between fear of COVID-19 and well-being in the psychological domain was not confirmed. Conclusion The findings point to the significant role of CSE and the role of social support in the perceived quality of life of young people during the pandemic. They provide valuable data concerning individuals who are particularly vulnerable to the adverse psychological effects at the time of the pandemic. They also prove that research conducted to explore other factors protecting individual well-being in difficult situations, including that of the pandemic, should be continued.

Well-being of Polish university students after the first year of the coronavirus pandemic: The role of core self-evaluations, social support and fear of COVID-19.

The article characterizes the most important changes in the school system undertaken in 2015–2019 and the political context of these changes. The author analyzes the increase in compulsory education age and the assumptions of the education system reform as a result of which junior high schools were closed. The next part presents the opinion of the public opinion about the Polish school and its implemented change. The final issue taken up in the study is the results of the PISA 2018.

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Natalia Stępień-Lampa

Papers

Well-being of Polish university students after the first year of the coronavirus pandemic: The role of core self-evaluations, social support and fear of COVID-19.

The political context of reforms and the condition of the Polish school during the first term of rule of Law and Justice