A sample of eighty Israeli in-service teachers filled out a questionnaire assessing their beliefs about the existence and the anthropogenic origin of climate change, their knowledge about the causes and consequences of climate change and the actions which can be taken to remediate it, as well as their level of concern about it and their readiness to act and teach in a climate-friendly way. The results show gaps in knowledge especially regarding the consequences of climate change, and misconceptions about the causes of climate change. The anthropogenic nature of climate change is well admitted. The percentage of teachers ready to take action to slow down climate change is smaller than the percentage of teachers understanding climate change. There is a significant correlation between knowledge about the consequences of climate change and concern about it and readiness to act. These results lay out the path for possible improvement of climate change instruction in teachers’ preparation programs.

As a contribution to the efforts to understand the influence of peer presence on self-regulated learning, this paper studies students’ reaction to a project-based activity, the final product of which was a scientific communication to peers. In this activity, peer lecturing, the students formulate a question on a topic linked to the course, search scientific information in order to answer the question, and teach the result of their investigations to their class in the form of a whole-class communication. The paper draws on the qualitative analysis of 23 interviews of first-year student teachers involved in peer lecturing in the framework of an introductory zoology course. In this study, the expressed gains in self-regulated learning described by the students are compared to the gains reported in the literature in other project-based methods and in peer teaching. Original gains in motivation (social goals), cognitive processes and self-regulation, are highlighted, while stressing differences between student types. Further development of the method is suggested.

Parenting style affects self-regulation in school pupils, yet its long-term influence on academic behavior is rarely studied. A pilot study was conducted on 83 teacher college students, who filled in a questionnaire measuring recollections of parenting styles (Parental Authority Questionnaire [PAQ]) and self-regulation in learning (Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire [MSLQ]). Unlike in results known about adolescents, authoritative parenting was not significantly associated with students’ present self-regulation skills, except for human resources. Authoritarian parenting was the only parenting style correlated with motivation, self-efficacy, and cognitive strategies and strongly correlated with critical thinking. These results suggest new ways of evaluating the relationship of authoritarian parenting with academic skills.

The current study explored the relationships between parenting styles and problematic internet use (PIU) in male adolescents from Israeli-Arab families. In the research literature, little is known about the role played by parenting in relation to children’s PIU in Arab societies. One hundred and eighty male adolescents whose age ranges from 12 to 16 (M = 13.92, SD = 1.42) reported their internet behavior and their parents’ parenting styles. Controlling for the participants’ age, family size, and grades, parenting styles explained 24% of the variance in PIU scores, with authoritarian parenting being the only significant unique predictor. A further analysis of covariance revealed that adolescents who perceived their parents as authoritative scored lower than their counterparts in PIU. Our findings suggest that while Israeli-Arab male adolescents might benefit from authoritative parenting at home, it is the parental authoritarian practices and behaviors per se that should be targeted as part of PIU intervention and prevention efforts.

Objectives: In this study, we assessed the psychometric properties of the Hebrew version of the 20-item Internet Addiction Test (IAT). Methods: We had 180 Israeli-Arab male adolescents ranging in age from 12 to 16 (M = 13.92, SD = 1.42) complete the IAT and report their pornography viewing habits, their physical activity rate, and their grades at school. Results: We used exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses to determine the tool's structure, resulting with one-factor and 2-factor solutions both accounting for at least 50% of the variance explained by the models (using EFA). Upon dropping item 12 and items 12 and 15 from the one-factor model and the 2-factor model, respectively, the models demonstrated adequate psychometric properties (.73 ≤ α ≤ .94) and fitted fairly with the data (using CFA). The IAT scores correlated significantly with concurrent reports of the participants' pornography viewing, grades at school, and physical activity rate, reinforcing the tool's construct validity. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that the IAT is a valid and reliable instrument for measuring Internet addiction among literate Israeli-Arab male adolescents for whom Hebrew is their second language and, presumably, other Israeli adolescents for whom Hebrew is the native language.