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BACKGROUND: Torn between the decision to return to school classrooms or continue holding online classes during COVID-19, teachers around the world feel great uncertainty. OBJECTIVE: Bearing in mind that the study of mental health during the pandemic is of great importance for vulnerable categories, and given the role of teachers in society, the aim of this research is to assess teachers’ concerns and anxiety before the start of the school year, and also to examine the factors related to them and propose measures in line with the results. METHODS: The study was conducted as a cross-sectional study before the start of the 2020/2021 school year. The research sample consisted of 286 teachers. For the purposes of this research, a special questionnaire was constructed consisting of a general questionnaire and a Generalized Anxiety Disorder 7-item scale (GAD-7). RESULTS: The strongest predictor of a teacher’s answer that they were concerned about the reopening of schools was their concern for their own life and health and for the life and health of their family members, followed by the amount of information received about COVID-19, and, finally, older age. Only 2% of teachers had mild anxiety. CONCLUSIONS: This research indicated that it is necessary to examine in more detail the degree of teachers’ concern and its impact on their functionality and work process. It is also necessary to repeat the research on the mental health status of teachers and implement procedures in the form of a regular screening program of the mental health status of teachers or implement procedures of support in concern management.

The objective of this work is examination of co-ordinance amongst assessments of logicalmathematical giftedness with young primary school students, made by four groups of evaluators: teachers, parents, coevals and self-evaluators. Teachers of 11 primary schools selected at the area of Republic Srpska were assigned to follow Instructions for Nomination and select most capable students of Years Three and Four, who would be directly involved in the research. An evaluation of logical-mathematical giftedness was performed on a sample of 151 named students, using an instrument created for the needs of this research. The results have shown a high level coordinance in evaluation of logical-mathematical giftedness between teachers and students and between parents and coevals, which leads to a conclusion that there is a scientific justification to innovate the teaching process while working with gifted students at primary schools, by applying a questionnaire developed for evaluation of logical-mathematical giftedness to be done by teachers, parents, students and coevals. This work allows a space for forming data bases on evaluations of students' abilities, in order to plan the next step which would be creating a predictive model based upon likelihood and expectations as to the possibility of identifying giftedness.

The basic idea of the research was to take advantage of IT and establish a direct contact between businesses (employers) and universities in order to exchange relevant data on the knowledge, skills and competencies of students who got their first job in the economy. We used the best practices from previous papers that dealt with designing web questionnaires to more or less similar theme. We created the instruments for data collection which represent the essence of the research, conducted the survey, and programmed the software. The questionnaire is based on Likert-type questions. The programming is done in familiar web technologies. Relying on existing theoretical knowledge we modeled the research, and we are in the first part we constructed an instrument (a questionnaire with 44 questions of Likert type), performed necessary determining of its metric values, and then created a web application for its easy use. As a result of the specific method of programming and designing of pages, we got a functional software that presents web questionnaire which employers can access and evaluate newly hired students.

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