The objective of this study was to determine whether empathy and occupational commitment significantly contribute to the emotional exhaustion of nurses. The sample group was 158 nurses from two regional Lithuanian hospitals, who completed self-report measures. A questionnaire consisted of 10 items reflecting empathy appearing on Davis (1983) Indi- vidual Reactivity Index, 4 occupational commitment items from Miller et al. (1988), and 7 emotional exhaustion items from the Maslach Burnout Inventory (Maslach, Jackson, 1981). Correlation analyses and structural equation modeling were employed to interpret the results. The results showed that nurses’ occupational commitment plays an important role in the degree of emotional exhaustion they experience. Nurses having more empathy are more likely to develop higher occupational commitment. In addition, it was found that higher levels of empathy and occupational commitment of nurses are associated with lower emotional exhaustion. Nurses who stayed in the profession longer developed stronger occupational commitment. Therefore, the conclusion was made that differences in emotional exhaustion among nurses may be explained directly by occupational commitment and indirectly by empathy and nursing experience.

The existing research findings still do not provide a clear understanding of the links between adolescent school experience and their identity formation. To address this gap, we analyzed the dynamic links between adolescent school experiences and identity formation by exploring the cross-lagged associations between school engagement, school burnout and identity processing styles (information-oriented, normative and diffuse-avoidant) over a 2-year period during middle-to-late adolescence. The sample of this school-based study included 916 adolescents (51.4% females) in the 9th to 12th grades from diverse socio-economic and family backgrounds. The results from the cross-lagged analyses with three time points revealed that (a) school engagement positively predicted information-oriented identity processing over a 2-year period; (b) school burnout positively predicted the reliance on normative and diffuse-avoidant identity styles across the three measurements; (c) the effects were stable over the three time points and across different gender, grade, and socio-economic status groups. The unidirectional effects identified in our study support the general prediction that active engagement in learning at school can serve as a resource for adolescent identity formation, while school burnout, in contrast, can hinder the formation of adolescent identity. This points to the importance of taking developmental identity-related needs of adolescents into account when planning the school curriculum.

We investigated the longitudinal links between parental teaching of reading and spelling and children’s word reading and spelling skills. Data of 244 Lithuanian parent–child dyads were analyzed, who were followed across three time points: end of kindergarten (T1; Mage = 6.88; 116 girls), beginning of Grade 1 (T2), and end of Grade 1 (T3). The children’s word reading and spelling skills were tested, and the parents answered questionnaires on the frequency with which they taught their children reading and spelling. Overall, the results showed that the parents were responsive to their children’s skill levels across the domains of reading and spelling and across time (i.e., the transition from kindergarten to Grade 1 and across Grade 1). However, differences between the domains of reading and spelling were also observed. In particular, in the domain of reading and across the transition from kindergarten to Grade 1, the parents responded to their children’s skill levels by increasing the time spent teaching children with poor word reading skills, and decreasing the teaching time for the children with good word reading skills. In contrast, as spelling skills may require more time to develop, parents maintained similar frequencies of teaching spelling across the transition to Grade 1 for all children, and only parents of good spellers taught less spelling at the end of Grade 1 than parents of children with poor and average word spelling skills.

Abstract. In the context of increasing ethnic diversity in many European countries, a successful development and integration of ethnic minority youth becomes a central concern for the future of Europe. It is particularly important to understand specific challenges and opportunities related to identity development among ethnic minority youth. The aim of this review is to integrate recent findings on identity development among ethnic minority youth in Europe. We identified three crosscutting themes in the literature. The “intensified identity work” approach suggests that ethnic minority youth are more engaged in identity work compared to their mainstream peers. The “diverging identity outcomes” themes represents a discussion on the opposite outcomes of identity development among ethnic minority youth. The “third way or hybrid identity” approach suggests that ethnic minority youth can build on globalization and other cultural resources, as well as on their own developmental flexibility to form novel, adaptive patterns of identity. We discuss the complementarity of the three approaches and suggest directions for further studies with ethnic minority youth. We also show how the findings of this review can help practitioners and policy makers in Europe to support ethnic minority youth in their identity development.