Theory of origins of the paper starts from holistic and humanistic approach to upbringing and education, which has a goal of comprehensive development of student. An integral children's development can be encouraged by thoughtful planning of school activities in the school curriculum. Co-creators of the school curriculum (teachers, students and parents) need to create different school activities that will give a chance to the students to express their knowledge, skills and capabilities, and to develop socially as well. In the period of middle childhood there is a special importance is of the social development because the first friendships are made than, strengthens the influence of the school at the social development, and the influence of the family is still present there. In order to understand better the children's social development the paper will display the theories of social development and the research results of the influences on social development of the student. Understanding of the family, school and peer influences on the social development of the student is of an extreme importance as a starting point for creating school activities that would encourage not only social but also integral development of the students.

No abstract

The research aimed to check for difference in learning motivation between students learning online and students participating in modern classroom instruction. The study participants included students attending grades 5 to 8, divided into experimental (online classes) and control groups based on pre-testing. The results show that there is no statistically significant difference in motivation between the tested sub-samples. Student motivation for learning natural sciences declines with their years of schooling, but this is not statistically significant. It can be concluded that online teaching of Science and Biology as a learning tool can be as motivating as modern teaching using active classroom methods.

Digital media has become part of our everyday life in recent years, and this applies especially to school-age students. The COVID-19 pandemic and the transition to distance learning have raised the level of student exposure to the Internet, including its dangers. Aiming to examine the impact of preventive programs for safe Internet practices on the media literacy of children in primary school, we conducted an empirical study among 267 students. Media literacy was analysed in terms of the ways of using digital media as well as in terms of safe Internet practices, and comparisons were made by student gender and age.

Nowadays, as Nature and Biology online learning evolves towards Internet technologies, questions arise as to how students with different general intelligence factors cope with online learning and how students with disabilities respond to challenges including adaptation to online learning. A study was conducted to examine the challenges that students with disabilities faced during Nature and Biology online classes. The research was carried out through a combination of quantitative (N=162 students; Grades 5, 6, 7, and 8 of primary school) and qualitative approaches (N=12 teachers). Using the Mann-Whitney U test, it was clearly shown that the g-factor of students’ intelligence was not identified as a significant predictor (p>0.05) for successful online learning. Furthermore, teachers of students with disabilities were interviewed extensively to identify how students with disabilities respond to the challenges of online learning. Consequently, it has been shown that students with disabilities can progress as well as other students when working in an online environment. Similarly, teachers’ responses indicate that while being supported by the environment (involvement from parents and teachers), students with disabilities successfully respond to the challenges of online learning.