Background: Social-emotional skills are pivotal for children’s intra- and interpersonal well-being. Social-emotional learning (SEL) interventions have been shown to improve these skills, with self...Show moreBackground: Social-emotional skills are pivotal for children’s intra- and interpersonal well-being. Social-emotional learning (SEL) interventions have been shown to improve these skills, with self-awareness (SA) being the most influential intervention component. However, these interventions apply varying conceptualizations and operationalizations of SA. Therefore, the defining characteristics of SA interventions and their effect on children’s well-being are unknown. Identifying these could help educators, policy makers and researchers to optimise content and accessibility of SA intervention to the benefit of children’s mental health. Therefore, this systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to analyse the characteristics and effectiveness of currently available interventions targeting SA in children, and to examine children’s cultural background as potential moderator. Method: Eight electronic databases (PubMed, PsycINFO, EMBASE, EMCARE, ERIC, Cochrane Controlled Register of Trials (CENTRAL), Web of Science and Academic Search Premier) were searched for intervention studies investigating SA interventions in September 2019. Children’s SA was the primary outcome of interest, positive and negative mental health were the secondary. Of 7050 identified studies, 42 were included in the systematic review and 29 in the meta-analysis. Results: It was found that SA interventions had a small to moderate effect on children’s SA (g = 0.31 (0.05), 95% CI [0.21, 0.40], p < .001). Furthermore, they had a positive effect on children’s mental health. Cultural background did not significantly moderate SA intervention effectiveness. There was no evidence for publication bias. Conclusion: Overall, interventions targeting SA can positively influence the level of SA and mental health in children irrespective of their cultural backgrounds.Show less
This thesis sets out to explore workplace communication of a multinational organization, through electronically transmitted messages (emails) involving employees in three power distance...Show moreThis thesis sets out to explore workplace communication of a multinational organization, through electronically transmitted messages (emails) involving employees in three power distance relationships, namely superiors to subordinates, subordinates to superiors and equals to equals. To carry out this study a corpus of 107 primary, work-related internal emails, written in English as a lingua franca by twelve participants, was gathered. Importantly, the participants belong to different nations, thus they have different linguistic backgrounds. This study aimed to examine the language use in the informants’ email and to shed more light on how people of various levels within a company, communicate in different ways. Therefore, intercultural communication is used as the principal analytical framework, so as to describe the communication between different employees, from various ethnicities and with various cultural backgrounds while performing a discursive and socio-pragmatic study using speech act and politeness theories. In this study, speech act theory, in an adapted version, is used for allocating the email messages gathered based on their communicative functions. Further, in order to investigate important pragmatic aspects of language use the theory of Brown and Levinson (1987) concerning universal politeness strategies is employed. The study further considered significant factors, which may influence the linguistic choices people make when communicating through email in the workplace, namely ethnicity, social distance and gender. The findings revealed that hierarchy played the most significant role in the composition of email messages, amongst the three power distance relationships. Likewise, social distance and cultural background were influential factors, however, the study found that gender differences did not play a crucial role in the politeness level displayed in workplace email communication. Interestingly, the study provided evidence that workplace culture plays a critical role and can affect the language use in email communication amongst employees at all hierarchical levels.Show less
