Preparing Preservice English Language Teachers to Teach at Unprecedented Times: The Case of Turkey

COVID-19 has impacted education negatively to a certain extent by suspending schools and universities, ending face-to-face and practical education, and causing a rapid transition to distance education. These changes have led to several negative effects on teachers and students such as anxiety, stress, and depression, which demonstrates the importance of teacher preparedness to teach at unprecedented times such as COVID-19. Therefore, assessing and evaluating teacher preparedness has become significant. One way to do this is to evaluate teacher education programs with a new perspective developed considering the effects of COVID-19 on education. Therefore, the present study aimed to find out how teacher education programs can prepare teachers to teach at unprecedented times by focusing on the English language teacher education program (ELTEP) of Turkey. It was designed as a qualitative study in which the ELTEP of Turkey was used as the data collection tool. The collected data were content analyzed. The findings have shown that the ELTEP of Turkey can prepare preservice English language teachers to teach at unprecedented times through three psychological courses, five technology courses, and 21 pedagogical courses. The findings were discussed, and suggestions for further studies were made

Cancer and Mindfulness Based Intervention Programs: Systematic Review

Recently, the effects of the mindfulness-based interventions on psychological health and quality of life have been studied with the patients having psychological disorders as well as the patients with physical illnesses, especially patients with cancer. The current systematic literature review aims to investigate the randomized controlled trials made to find out the effects of the mindfulness-based interventions (mindfulness-based stress reduction program, mindfulness-based cognitive therapy and mindfulness-based art therapy) on cancer patients. Mindfulness-based therapies were found to be superior to control groups in all of the studies. Mindfulness-based therapies reduced psychological problems such as depression, anxiety, anger, and stress, leads post-traumatic growth and improved life quality as well as had positive effects on pain, fatigue, sleep and somatic symptoms in cancer patients

Preparing Preservice English Language Teachers to Teach at Unprecedented Times: the Case of Turkey

COVID-19 has impacted education negatively to a certain extent by suspending schools and universities, ending face-to-face and practical education, and causing a rapid transition to distance education. These changes have led to several negative effects on teachers and students such as anxiety, stress, and depression, which demonstrates the importance of teacher preparedness to teach at unprecedented times such as COVID-19. Therefore, assessing and evaluating teacher preparedness has become significant. One way to do this is to evaluate teacher education programs with a new perspective developed considering the effects of COVID-19 on education. Therefore, the present study aimed to find out how teacher education programs can prepare teachers to teach at unprecedented times by focusing on the English language teacher education program (ELTEP) of Turkey. It was designed as a qualitative study in which the ELTEP of Turkey was used as the data collection tool. The collected data were content analyzed. The findings have shown that the ELTEP of Turkey can prepare preservice English language teachers to teach at unprecedented times through three psychological courses, five technology courses, and 21 pedagogical courses. The findings were discussed, and suggestions for further studies were made

Breast cancer and post-traumatic growth: A systemical review study

INTRODUCTION: Breast cancer is a serious threat to people’s health. In addition to negative psychological disorders including depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress symptoms, positive changes such as post-traumatic growth (PTG) can be experienced. OBJECTIVES: The aim of this systematic review was to determine the variables related to PTG in people with breast cancer. METHODS: We searched five database (SCOPUS, Cochrane, Medline, Science Direct, and Pubmed) starting from 1990, by guidance of PRISMA criteria, using the keywords “breast cancer”, “post traumatic growth”, “stress related growth”, and “benefit finding”. RESULTS: There were conflicting findings regarding the relationship between PTG and following variables: sociodemographic variables such as age, education level, marital status, disease-related variables such as cancer stage, time since diagnosis, type of treatment. We observed that these variables may have a low effect on PTG. In addition, personality characteristics such as optimism, spirituality, and hope were found to be associated with PTG. Functional or problem-focused coping such as positive restructuring, acceptance, and religious coping, and ruminative thoughts predict PTG as a part of cognitive processing. Besides, social support has an important role in experiencing PTG. CONCLUSIONS: Psychosocial interventions for cancer patients are increasing day by day, but the scarcity of interventions which aims increase PTG is noteworthy. With this review, we recommend developing intervention programs that include functional coping strategies such as stress management, social skills training, cognitive techniques focused on ruminative thoughts, and positive restructuring. DISCLOSURE: No significant relationships

Is Women's Place Beyond the Glass Ceiling? The Gender Gap in Academic Psychiatry Publications in Turkey

Introduction: In terms of academic positions and activities, women seem to be disadvantaged in various aspects all over the world. Our study aims to investigate the representation of male and female genders in academic psychiatry journals in Turkey.Method: We included the publications in the academic psychiatry journals indexed in The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey, Turkish Academic Network and Information Center, which were published between 2011 and 2020.12 journals were grouped as SCI-E/ SSCI (n=4), ESCI (n=4), and other international indexes (n=4). A total of 5179 articles were reviewed.Results: The ratios of female authors per article, female first author, female correspondence author, and female last author were found to be lower in the SCI-E/SSCI and ESCI groups compared to the other international index groups (p<0.05). In all article types, the rate of women as the last author was lower than the rate of women as the first author (p<0.05).Conclusion: The paucity of the female authors in the last authorship position and the editorial articles can be interpreted as the glass ceiling effect. To ensure gender equality in academic publications, universities and the editorial boards of journals should fight against gender-based bias and discrimination

Posttraumatic growth levels of healthcare workers in two periods with different intensities of COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic threatens health-care workers' (HCW) mental health and well-being. Although traumatic life events may result in psychiatric disorders, occasionally they give rise to positive changes, such as post-traumatic growth. Accordingly, the present study evaluated the traumatic stress, anxiety, and depression levels of HCWs and their post-traumatic growth levels during the pandemic. In addition, the study aimed to assess the changes in psychological outcomes during the pandemic. For this aim, the data were collected in two different periods. The first data-collection period was between May and July 2020, and the second period started in November 2020 and ended in January 2021. The sociodemographic data form, Impact of Events Scale-Revised (IES-R), Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7), Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9), and Post-traumatic Growth Inventory (PTGI) were used to collect data. Sixty-six HCWs participated in the study. No significant differences appeared between the baseline scores and 6-month follow-up in the depression, anxiety, and traumatic stress levels of HCWs. Furthermore, the PTGI scores decreased significantly over time. Although the change in the psychological distress scores was not statistically significant, the depression and post-traumatic stress scores increased over time. Previous research specified an inverse-parabolic relationship between traumatic stress and PTGI. Our results support previous research; as the exposure to the stressors continues, individual traumatic stress levels increase, psychiatric disorders become frequent, and affirmative changes (like post-traumatic growth) decline