Sascha Spikic's Quick Files

The Quick Files feature was discontinued and it’s files were migrated into this Project on March 11, 2022. The file URL’s will still resolve properly, and the Quick Files logs are available in the Project’s Recent Activity

More of the same? Comparing the personalities of ex-spouse and new partner after divorce

The similarity of the Big Five personality traits of ex-spouses and new partners was examined post-divorce. The notion that divorcees replicate their partner choice (fixed-type hypothesis) was tested against the hypotheses that they learn to select a new partner with more marriage-stabilizing personality traits than their former spouse (learning hypothesis), or are constrained by marriage market forces to repartner with someone who has less stabilizing personality traits (marriage market hypothesis). Data was derived from a Flemish study that sampled divorcees from the national register. The sample consisted of 700 triads of divorcees, their ex-spouses, and their new partners. The analysis results rejected the fixed-type hypothesis and instead supported both the learning hypothesis and the marriage market hypothesis, with higher order repartnering supporting the latter. Women also seemed to validate both hypotheses, as their partner comparison showed decreases in both stabilizing traits (conscientiousness and agreeableness) and destabilizing traits (neuroticism and extraversion). Overall, the results seem to suggest that divorcees do not repartner with someone of the same personality as their ex-spouse, and they are in some cases constrained by marriage market forces to repartner with less stabilizing personalities, while in other cases they are able to improve their partner selection

Fertility practitioners' coping strategies when faced with intra-role conflict from screening aspiring single mothers by choice

Women without a partner can become single mothers by choice through the use of fertility treatments. In Belgium, the decision to accept a candidate single mother by choice rests with the fertility clinic’s multidisciplinary team of fertility practitioners. As a result, the fertility practitioners fulfil a gatekeeping role. However, this can cause an intra-role conflict as the responsibility to select the best fitting candidates is at odds with the responsibility to help patients. In this explorative study, we examine how fertility practitioners cope with the strain resulting from intra-role conflict in the decision-making process regarding single motherhood by choice in Belgium. The findings showed that practitioners appear to mainly resort to problem-focused coping, by constructing a grassroots criteria list and by shifting their role from screening agent to counsellor. These results are based on ten open in-depth interviews with fertility practitioners employed in the multidisciplinary teams of fertility centers, using a reflexive interview lead

Measuring and Activating iSTEM Key Principles among Student Teachers in STEM

Graduates with a STEM profile are in great demand, yet the outflow from these fields of study is highly insufficient. This is partly due to the fragmented way STEM learning content is taught in secondary education. Although the problem can be mitigated with the use of integrated STEM education (i.e., iSTEM), teachers are often unfamiliar with this type of education. To support teachers in implementing high-quality iSTEM education, a digital collaborative learning environment called “CODEM for iSTEM” was created. This study examined to what extent student teachers were immersed in six key principles of iSTEM education through cooperative design of iSTEM learning tools in multidisciplinary teams, namely “problem-centered learning”, “integration of different STEM disciplines”, “modeling”, “inquiry-based learning”, “design-based learning”, and “cooperative learning”