Aim: This paper presents a qualitative study of the experiences of parents raising children with autism, as reflected in the media. The study aimed to explore the lived experiences of parents of children with autism and the challenges they face in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Methods: A content analysis of 20 media articles featuring parents of autistic children was conducted. The articles were selected from a range of sources, including newspapers, magazines, and online news portals. Results: We identified four major themes: supports, education, spousal relationships, and future. It should be noted that these themes are often intertwined. Conclusion: The findings highlight the importance of providing support and resources to parents of children with autism, as well as the need for greater awareness and understanding of the challenges they face. The implications of these findings for policy and practice are discussed, and suggestions for future research are presented.

Current trends in educational sciences can best be evaluated by assessing the master and doctoral theses defended at the universities. The goal of the present paper was to do a qualitative content analysis of the titles of master theses defended at the Faculty of Educational Sciences at the University of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Total of 393 master theses defended in the period from 2012 to 2021 were the subject of this analysis. Of these, 287 were defended at the department for teacher education and 106 at the department for preschool education. As expected, most of the studies dealt with early elementary school students and preschool children. Many studies contained the term “development” in its title, and it was referring to all domains from speech to socio- emotional and motor development. Several studies examined parental and teachers’ attitudes towards various topics. In relation to the subject, most studies dealt with science education, followed by physical education and language. A number of studies had special education as the main topic, covering issues of teacher competencies, creativity, support to students with developmental disabilities, to the quality of life. Students have studied various relevant topics. In the future, we expect to see an increase in studies covering digital competencies of teachers and evaluation of online education.

The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) was developed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development to measure students’ knowledge and skills needed for today’s society. PISA is a large-scale assessment of 15-year-old students in reading, mathematics, and science. In this analysis of PISA data from Bosnia and Herzegovina (BIH), we examined the relationship between gender, mathematics achievement, and perceived meaning in life in BIH students. The sample for this analysis comprised 6480 students (3148 females and 3332 males). The results of the analysis revealed a small but statistically significant, negative relationship between mathematics and the student’s perception of the meaning in life. Boys achieved higher scores in mathematics than girls, but the difference was relatively small. In addition, boys’ rating of meaning in life was higher than that of girls. Knowing what factors influence mathematical achievement might help educators create better intervention programs. In conclusion, we provided some possible explanations for these data.

Introduction: Scientists have long searched for the best way to evaluate scientific performance and have come up with numerous indices. Probably, the most famous index is the h-index, a metric that has been used widely in science metrics ever since it appeared. In this study, I evaluated the potential of the new metric Research Interest Score created by ResearchGate (RG). Methods: I analyzed the different metric indices for 88 most cited researchers at the University of Sarajevo. In particular, the number of citations and h-indexes were taken from the Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar databases for these researchers and were correlated with their Research Interest Scores. As a measure of correlation, Pearson correlation coefficients was used. In addition, I conducted a regression analysis to examine how scientometric indices from the Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar predict the Research Interest Score.  Results: The Research Interest Score was most strongly correlated with the number of Google Scholar Citations, followed by the Web of Science citations.  Interestingly, the Research Interest Score was not highly correlated with any of the h-indexes. The regression model was statistically significant and explained 90% of the variance in the Research Interest Scores predicted by the Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar metric indices. The strongest predictor of the Research Interest Score was the number of Google Scholar citations. Conclusions: The Research Interest Score, a new scientometric measure created by ResearchGate, certainly has a potential to be used as a valid measure of scientific impact.

Neuromyths are prevalent in all spheres of life and can be found in all professions. The teaching profession is especially susceptible to neuromyths as teachers want to provide the most effective, science-based instruction to their students. Sometimes these instructions are not based on scientific studies but on a misinterpretation of scientific findings or neuromyths. The goal of the present paper was to examine the prevalence of seven popular neuromyths in teachers in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BIH). The sample for this study comprised 300 teachers from all parts of BIH. The research material comprised 300 teachers (232 females and 62 males) from all parts of BIH. Participants were either personally invited to the study or recruited through an online survey sent to schools throughout BIH and teacher organizations. As a method we used the Questionnaire consisting of basic demographic information on the participants (gender, working experience, type of teacher) and 7 neuromyths statements on which participants were asked to answer whether they think the statement is true, not true, or they do not know. The results of this study indicate a wide prevalence of neuromyths in BIH teachers. The prevalence ranged from 17% to 82%. The most prevalent myth is about learning styles, while the least prevalent was that drinking less than 8 glasses of water causes a brain to shrink. There were statistically significant differences in the prevalence of neuromyths in relation to the teachers’ gender for every statement. However, the trend is not uniform. Although, overall the neuromyths were more prevalent in female teachers (for 5 items), for two neuromyth statements, male teachers had a higher prevalence. Additionally, the prevalence of neuromyths was more frequent in early-grade teachers. It should be noted that there are also differences in the results obtained for the different types of neuromyths. Neuroscience is important for education and for the teachers. Thus, more attention should be given to the process of translating neuroscientific findings into useful facts for teachers. One way to improve this process is through the continual professional development of teachers in the field of neuroscience.

Measuring scientific impact has long become a fact of academic life. Better scholarly output is related to higher chances of being promoted and winning a research grant. There are numerous ways to measure scholarly impact, such as through the number of publications and citation analysis. The most widely used databases for assessing these metrics are Google Scholar (GS), Scopus, and Web of Science (WoS). The goal of the present paper is to provide an in-depth analysis of GS profiles and to compare GS metrics with different metric indices from Scopus and WoS. An additional goal is to do a qualitative analysis of profiles that were identified as outliers through the visual inspection of various metric indices ratios. The sample for this study consisted of 100 researchers from the University of Sarajevo with highest number of citations according to their GS profiles. The results of this study indicated a high correlation between different metric indices. Outlier analysis revealed several errors in GS profiles, some of which are attributable to GS algorithms. An in-depth analysis of outliers provided important data for identifying limitations of all metrics currently used in researcher’s evaluation. We conclude the article with several suggestions on how to improve the evaluation of individual scholar’s research output.

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a frequent neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by hyperactivity, inattention, and impul- sivity. The issue of whether ADHD is a socially constructed disorder has received much attention. The goal of the present study was to examine the clinical prevalence of ADHD in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BIH). An additional goal was to investigate the prevalence of school-aged children who fulfill the criteria for the condition but do not have a clinical diagnosis. For the first research goal, the sample consisted of five University Clinical Centers in BIH that provided data on the prevalence. For the second goal, the sample consisted of 1935 parents of children aged 6 to 15 years. Parents of 1935 school-aged children from the Federation BIH completed the questionnaire regarding ADHD symptoms. Children ranged in age from 6 to 15 years. The mean age of children was 10.2 years (SD- 2.1 years). There were 1061 girls and 874 boys in the sample. Five hospitals in the Federation BIH (4 University Clinical Centers and 1 Cantonal Hos- pital) were sent a questionnaire to provide us with information on how many school-aged children were diagnosed with ADHD and their basic demographic data. In addition, the Clinical Centers were asked to provide information on what treatment they provide to children with ADHD. The results of this study indicated that clinical diagnosis of ADHD is infrequent. The number of clinically confirmed cases of ADHD in the Federation BIH was 138 or less than 0.001%. On the other hand, accord ing to survey data, there is a prevalence rate of ADHD indicated like that observed in western countries. According to the parents’ reports, there were 97 children or 5% who fulfilled the criteria for ADHD diagnosis. In relation to gender distribution of ADHD, there were more boys (88 boys) than girls (50 girls) with a clinically confirmed diagnosis of ADHD and boys were 1.76 times more likely to have a ADHD diagnosis than were girls. On the other hand there were more girls than boys who had ADHD according to parents’ reports, but this difference, according to the Chi square test, was not statistically significant (ꭓ 2 = 0.14; p = ,70). The results of this study have clearly shown that ADHD is underdiag- nozed in Bosnia and Herzegovina. There is a huge discrepancy between the clinically diagnosed children and the parent-reported symptoms of ADHD. Given the burden that ADHD has on children and their families it should be of the utmost importance to provide timely diagnosis and proper treatment. One way to improve the current situation is through a better cooperation between school staff (psychologists, teachers), parents, and medical professionals.

Attainment of reading ability is one of the most important goals of early elementary education. The goal of the present study was to compare groups of good readers and poor readers on several cognitive and linguistic skills and to determine the influence of these variables in differentiating these two groups of readers. An additional goal was to determine whether there are differences in proportion of boys and girls in groups of good and poor readers. The sample for this study comprised 60 third-grade children divided in two categories, 30 children in the category of good readers and 30 children in the category of poor readers. The results of this study revealed the largest differences between good readers and poor readers were on the phoneme deletion task and processing speed task. Another finding is that more boys than girls were in the group of good readers and more girls than boys in the group of poor readers. It is very important to know which underlying skills best differentiate good and poor readers at certain age. This in turn will lead to creating more effective reading interventions.  

Neuromyths are prevalent in all spheres of life and can be found in all professions. The teaching profession is especially susceptible to neuromyths as teachers want to provide the most effective, sci- ence-based instruction to their students. Sometimes these instructions are not based on scientific studies but on a misinterpretation of scientific findings or neuromyths. The goal of the present paper was to examine the prevalence of seven popular neuromyths in teachers in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BIH). The research study comprised 300 teachers from all parts of BIH. The research material comprised 300 teachers (232 females and 62 males) from all parts of BIH. Participants were either personally invited to the study or recruited through an online survey sent to schools throughout BIH and teacher organizations. As a me thod we used the Questionnaire consisting of basic demographic information on the participants (gender, working experience, type of teacher) and 7 neuromyths statements on which participants were asked to answer whether they think the statement is true, not true, or they do not know, The results of this study indicate a wide prevalence of neuromyths in BIH teachers. The prevalence ranged from 17% to 82%. The most prevalent myth is about learning styles, while the least preva- lent was that drinking less than 8 glasses of water causes a brain to shrink. There were statistically significant differences in the preva- lence of neuromyths in relation to the teachers’ gender for every statement. However, the trend is not uniform. Although, overall the neuromyths were more prevalent in female teachers (for 5 items), for two neuromyth statements, male teachers had a higher prevalence. Additionally, the prevalence of neuromyths was more frequent in early-grade teachers. It should be noted that there are also differences in the results obtained for the different types of neuromyths. Neuroscience is important for education and for the teachers. Thus, more attention should be given to the process of translating neuro-scientific findings into useful facts for teachers. One way to improve this process is through the continual professional development of teachers in the field of neuroscience.

Interest in academic ranking systems increased substantially in the last two decades. The majority of existing ranking systems are highly exclusive and cover up to 1500 best-positioned world universities. An exception to these ranking systems is the Webometrics ranking, which ranks more than 31000 universities throughout the world. In this study, we wanted to examine what factors best predict the Webometrics rankings. The sample for this study consisted of 102 European universities, with the Webometrics ranks ranging from 18th position to 6969th position. We examined the effects of the number of Web of Science publications, Scopus publications, and ResearchGate-related data on Webometrics ranking. Data retrieved from the academic social network site ResearchGate predicted 72% of the variance in the Webometrics ranking. The number of Scopus publications was the single best determinant of whether the university will be positioned in the top 1000 ranked universities. These results indicate the potential use of ResearchGate scores in the rankings of universities and serve as a proxy for universities’ excellence. This, in turn, can be useful to government policymakers and university leaders in creating better strategies for enhancing the reputation of universities.

Reading is one of the most important academic skills that children master in the early grades of elementary school. The simple view of reading postulates that it consists of decoding abilities and linguistic understanding. The present study aims to explore the development of decoding abilities in the Bosnian language in children from Grade 3 to Grade 5. We assessed the relationships between word reading and pseudoword reading as measures of decoding skills, and phonemic deletion task, rapid automatized naming (RAN) of letters, and RAN of objects as the predictors of decoding skills. The sample for this study comprised 36 children (16 girls, 20 boys). This study’s results showed a significant improvement in decoding skills from Grade 3 to Grade 5. The best predictor of word reading in Grade 5 was RAN of objects in Grade 3, followed by RAN of letters in Grade 3. On the other hand, the significant predictors of pseudoword reading in Grade 5 were RAN of objects and the phoneme deletion task in Grade 3. Understanding reading development from Grade 3 to Grade 5 is informative and can help create better reading instruction for all readers.

Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) often have deficits in motor skills, especially balance. This article presents a meta-analytic review of 15 intervention studies that aimed to improve balance in children and adolescents with ASD. Across these studies, there were 195 participants with ASD for whom pre-intervention and post-intervention balance scores were available. We measured the standardized mean difference (Hedges’ g) between their pre-intervention and post-intervention balance scores and found a large, positive effect from these balance interventions (standardized mean difference—1.82 (95% CI [1.34, 2.29]). Various balance intervention procedures were shown to be very efficacious for children and adolescents with ASD. Clearly, balance is a motor skill that is very susceptible to intervention efforts. We also provided recommendations to researchers regarding what information to include when conducting intervention studies.

ABSTRACT Executive functions (EF) play a key role in child’s development as they are necessary prerequisites for everyday functioning and later academic success. Much research has been directed at examining whether EF are unidimensional or multidimensional construct. In this study, we tested two theoretically driven models and one mathematically driven EF model based on the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Functions – Preschool Edition (BRIEF-P). The sample for this study consisted of 102 children with intellectual disability (77 boys, 25 girls), aged 40–71 months (mean age- 62.1 months, SD- 7.6 months). Early childhood special education teachers completed the BRIEF-P Teacher Version. Confirmatory Factor Analysis was used to assess the validity of different EF models. The original BRIEF-P, with a second-order, three-factor model and one-factor model were not a good fit to the data. Mathematically driven one-factor model, with the addition of correlated errors between the scales of working memory and shift, and working memory and plan/organize was a good model fit. The current study indicates that EF differentiation begins to emerge at preschool age in children with intellectual disabilities. Understanding EF structure in children with intellectual disability will help create better intervention programs for this population.