Today, teachers are faced with numerous challenges, especially in Croatia, where extensive educational reform is underway. Education reform has placed a new teaching and learning paradigm in the foreground that demands new knowledge and skills from teachers. Studies and analyses show that teachers are the most important factor in reaching pupils’ educational goals. In additional to professional competencies, pedagogical, psychological, didactic, and methodical teacher competencies are of great importance to the development of knowledge. Using survey data from a sample of (...) 115 students, this paper examines the extent to which students of two institutions of higher education – the Faculty of Croatian Studies and the Catholic University of Croatia – are satisfied with their initial teacher education, and whether they consider it appropriate and sufficient for the challenges their future careers hold. The results of this research show that students are, on average, satisfied with the quality of their studies and teacher education, as well as that they prefer the existing pedagogical competency attainment model that is added to the regular subject study. The research results are analysed in the context of examining the need for a new design of such programmes, their refinement or expansion of teacher education study programmes. (shrink)

While robot-assisted arm and hand training after stroke allows for intensive task-oriented practice, it has provided only limited additional benefit over dose-matched physiotherapy up to now. These rehabilitation devices are possibly too supportive during the exercises. Neurophysiological signals might be one way of avoiding slacking and providing robotic support only when the brain is particularly responsive to peripheral input. We tested the feasibility of three-dimensional robotic assistance for reach-to-grasp movements with a multi-joint exoskeleton during motor imagery-related desynchronization of sensorimotor oscillations (...) in the β-band only. We also registered task-related network changes of cortical functional connectivity by electroencephalography via the imaginary part of the coherence function. Healthy subjects and stroke survivors showed similar patterns – but different aptitudes – of controlling the robotic movement. All participants in this pilot study with nine healthy subjects and two stroke patients achieved their maximum performance during the early stages of the task. Robotic control was significantly higher and less variable when proprioceptive feedback was provided in addition to visual feedback, i.e. when the orthosis was actually attached to the subject’s arm during the task. A distributed cortical network of task-related coherent activity in the θ-band showed significant differences between healthy subjects and stroke patients as well as between early and late periods of the task. Brain-robot interfaces may successfully link three-dimensional robotic training to the participants’ efforts and allow for task-oriented practice of activities of daily living with a physiologically controlled multi-joint exoskeleton. Changes of cortical physiology during the task might also help to make subject-specific adjustments of task difficulty and guide adjunct interventions to facilitate motor learning for functional restoration. (shrink)