Glossary-Items: Letter S
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School Anxiety
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School anxiety refers to an excessive and persistent fear related to attending school or being at school. It may manifest in diffuse physical symptoms such as nausea, headaches, stomachaches, or sleep disturbances. In some cases, the affected child is unable to participate in class and avoids or refuses to enter the school building.
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Schoolwide Enrichment Model (SEM)
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The Schoolwide Enrichment Model (SEM) is a comprehensive approach developed by Joseph Renzulli and Sally Reis for the talent- and interest-based support of students’ abilities.
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Screening
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Screening is a standardized, cost-effective, and brief group test (“rapid test”) that can serve as the starting point for a more comprehensive assessment.
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Self-Competencies
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Self-competencies encompass a range of skills that contribute to an individual’s ability to take action. These include regulating one’s emotions, empathizing with others, self-organization, self-motivation, and frustration tolerance. They play a crucial role in the development of abilities, as they enable children and adolescents to harness their potential even in challenging situations or when faced with distractions.
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Self-concept
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Self-concept refers to how children and adolescents perceive themselves individually and what abilities they ascribe to themselves. Self-concept is formed on the basis of experiences that every child and every adolescent makes with their environment and the reactions to their behavior, achievements, and personality.
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Self-directed learning
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With self-directed learning, children and adolescents take responsibility for their own learning to a large extent. They structure their own learning processes and make decisions about when and how and what content they learn and explore in greater depth.
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Self-Efficacy
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Self-efficacy refers to the degree to which individuals believe they can successfully handle challenging tasks. People with higher self-efficacy expectations tend to be mentally and physically healthier, experience less stress, and achieve better performance in school and work environments.
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Self-Regulation
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Self-regulation is a broad term that encompasses various skills that enable individuals to control their thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. These skills are essential for pursuing personal goals and behaving appropriately in different situations. Self-regulatory processes can be both conscious (e. g., intentionally suppressing an impulse) and unconscious (e. g., regulating body temperature).
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Sensory processing sensitivity
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A person with high sensory processing sensitivity (i.e., a highly sensitive person) is someone who is extremely sensitive and, in a particularly intense experience of feelings or sensory impressions, this can be manifested as a distinct urge for them to move around or feeling the need for cognitive challenges as well as in their vivid imagination. Giftedness can, in some cases, be accompanied by sensory processing sensitivity.
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Similar-to-me effect
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The similar-to-me effect is an error in observation and assessment by educators in which they base their evaluation of a child’s behavior on an unconscious comparison of the child with themselves.
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Skipping a grade
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Skipping a grade (in German: “Überspringen”) in school is a measure in accelerated learning, and each individual case should be carefully examined and agreed to and supported by everyone involved. It requires—alongside a high cognitive ability—a very good capacity for learning and intrinsic motivation as well as adequate social and emotional maturity.
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Social Space Orientation
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The professional concept of social space orientation involves various network partners (e. g., Kitas, schools, counseling centers, medical and therapeutic practices, or educational institutions) collaborating with residents to shape the living environments of people within a specific social space (e. g., a village, city district, or neighborhood). The goal is to establish conditions that empower residents to act independently and self-reliantly, even in challenging life situations. A central aspect of this approach is the provision of needs-oriented services and support structures, achieved through joint activities and cooperation among the network partners.
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Socioeconomic background
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The term socioeconomic background refers to the social and economic aspects that can have an impact on a person’s life. These can include, for instance, the education level of parents, financial wealth, nationality, or sibling status.
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Stereotype Threat
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Stereotype threat refers to the fear experienced by individuals from stigmatized groups that they may be negatively judged or treated based on stereotypes about their group or that their behavior might inadvertently confirm those stereotypes. Research on stereotype threat has primarily focused on its effects in challenging performance situations. These often unconscious fears can result in performance outcomes that fall below an individual’s potential, paradoxically reinforcing the stereotypes.
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Stereotypes/stereotyping
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Stereotypes are characteristics that are generally regarded as “typical” for a certain group of people (e.g., people from the same social background or of the same gender). These properties are then applied to all the people in this group. Stereotypes, however, are often wrong when they refer to a group and apply even less to individual people in this group with the result that they come across as prejudicial.
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Sustained shared thinking
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This term refers to situations in which educators and children enter into a dialogue with one another that can be conducive to shared thinking, discussing issues, solving problems, or clarifying concepts.