Volume 5, Issue 1

The article is an analysis of the current topic – digitalization of the educational process. In the course of collecting and interpreting the known data, the authors cite the pedagogical foundations of digital literacy, the current state of digital learning and problems, and the prospects for the development of this direction in the future are also considered. In addition, the situations of creating a digital ecosystem in individual countries of the world were analyzed.

The aim of this work is to describe several experiences of STEMbach in different areas: engineering, economics, materials, etc. The STEMbach is a program carried out by high school students during their two years of study to obtain their High School Diploma (equivalent to A-levels), designed for both the Humanities and Sciences modalities, and created alongside the Galician strategy for digital education. It encourages the vocation of the scholars towards scientific and technological research and allows a connection directly with the college education. The STEM works explained in this work were developed between the University of A Coruña and several high schools located in the region of Galicia (North-West of Spain). Results were very constructive for promoting STEM careers.

This article presents the analysis and discussion of solving geometry tasks by Portuguese Basic Education students, using material from the Poly-UNiverse in Teacher Training Education (PUNTE) project. The teaching experience developed was aimed at testing and disseminating new resources, and innovative and transdisciplinary methodologies in the areas of Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics (STEAM). The adopted methodology involved two phases. The first phase was exploratory, followed by a second phase where the exploration of geometry concepts in the plane (namely, the perimeter and the similarity of triangles) was carried out using the Poly-Universe material. The results of the study show that the Poly-Universe materials constituted an important teaching resource in solving the proposed tasks. Its manipulation allowed the visualisation of the situations involved in the tasks, as well as contributed to an implication in the activities developed by the students.

Mathematics and Music are closely connected and their multifaceted relationship has been explored since ancient times. Pythagoras was one of the first who discovered and formalized one of those connections by studying the arithmetic of musical intervals, expressing them by numerical ratios and relating ratios to consonance/dissonance notions, being the Pythagorean tuning and scale based on arithmetic principles. Another interesting link between Mathematics and Music is the geometric approach to musical composition. Geometric patterns are present in different musical style compositions and some composing techniques, such as the 12-tone technique, use geometric transformations, involving also applications of modular arithmetic and set theory to Music. The aim of this work is to present existing relations between Mathematics and Music and to propose automatic exercise generation for exploring and studying those relations. The exercises are generated using the system MVGEN and the LaTeX package MusiXTeX. The generation process and the automatically generated exercises can be used for creating learning and assessment materials for education in Mathematics and Music, linking Science and Art.

High dropout rates in the first year of undergraduate studies are an expression of the secondary–tertiary transition problem and they seem to be particularly high in those degree programs where specialized mathematics courses are taught in the first year of study. Research shows that students’ difficulties during the transition period cannot be reduced to purely cognitive factors. In this article, we address the secondary–tertiary transition problem in mathematics for engineering students. Based on a questionnaire with focus beyond the purely cognitive aspects, a comparison of the transition problem at three European mid-sized universities is carried out, to identify common challenges and difficulties, as well as differences. The questionnaire concentrates on the four dimensions (personal, organizational, content related, and social) and corresponding critical requirements for a successful transition described in Trautwein, C., & Bosse, E. (2017). The first year in higher education – critical requirements from the student perspective. Higher Education , 73 , 371–387. A group of 308 first-year engineering students partook in the study. In the presentation, we highlight students’ perceptions regarding the transition, changes, and challenges they experienced under the above-mentioned four dimensions and discuss similarities and differences between countries.

In a Swedish second semester course on Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometry in mathematics education at Karlstad University, a bridging teaching strategy comprising elements from Mathematics, Didactics, History, Literature, and Technology was applied by using the concept of Narrative Didactics and Digital Interactive Mathematical Maps developed by the Professorship for Didactics of Mathematics at the University of Passau, Germany. The complete assessment of the teaching strategy comprised both an evaluation of the technological and the narrative didactical scaffolding and was partly analysed previously concerning especially the technology acceptance aspect, while here we broaden and deepen the evaluation analysis of the application of narrative didactic elements. Regarding the latter, at the end of the course, students were asked to formulate a short historical-oriented narrative motivation for a school topic of own choice with the help of information provided by the timeline of the Mathematical Map. A representative example of these art-combining products is presented and evaluated according to elements of narrative didactics. Results indicate a fruitful, promising, and synergetic connection between different fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts, and Mathematics that can lead to a richer and more sustainable learning process in mathematics lessons both at university and school level.

The importance of STEAM education in preparing students to deal with societal challenges is nowadays an international recommendation. We may find different perspectives concerning STEAM education and the integration of its disciplines. A possible pathway to achieve a balanced integration is through Engineering Design (ED), starting from problems of reality that enable the articulated mobilization of concepts from various disciplinary areas, promoting interdisciplinary where teamwork and context play a fundamental role. This article reports a study with primary preservice teachers (6–12 years old) that aims to analyze the learning displayed and the difficulties underlying the usage of ED in solving STEAM problems. The participants were 45 preservice teachers. We adopted a qualitative methodology, and data were collected through observation, documents, artifacts, and photos. The preliminary results show a very positive reaction of the participants to the experience of solving real context problems collaboratively and mobilizing mathematical and physical science concepts in an integrated way. We identified active engagement, persistence, and motivation in the creation of a model that fulfilled the requested conditions. Difficulties were evidenced in the identification of some concepts and the mobilization of adequate scientific language in the argumentation of decisions.

The need for addressing global and societal problems is stronger than ever, as demonstrated by the UN Sustainable Development Goals and National Academy of Engineering Grand Challenges. However, engineering undergraduate students rarely get to experience engaging with the associated real-world projects and challenges. This has the potential to result in attenuation from engineering education and career pathways. This study aimed to overcome this issue by reaching the United States’ untapped future engineering workforce via an engineering educator professional development “train-the-trainer” program. This train-the-trainer program guided engineering educators to apply evidence-based pedagogical methods (e.g., backward course design) to couple entrepreneurial mindset (EM) development with STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, math) and bio-inspired design in an effort to improve the retention of underrepresented engineering students via a transdisciplinary, humanistic approach. This study employed a mixed methods approach including retrospective post-then-pre items based on perceived learning gains, rating the overall satisfaction with the program, and open-ended questions to better understand what went well, what did not go so well, and what can be improved. From a practical perspective, this study shows that integrating STEAM (with a specific focus on the arts) into the engineering classroom promotes problem-solving and critical thinking across disciplines. Here, applying STEAM principles encourages diverse perspective taking and making by bridging paradigms and theoretical frameworks across a variety of humanities and technical disciplines. As a result, combining STEAM with bio-inspired design and the EM has the capacity to increase engagement and broaden participation among students traditionally underrepresented in engineering, including females and minoritized populations.

Escape rooms are an increasingly popular form of live-action entertainment in which teams of players need to solve puzzles to escape or reach a narrative goal within a specified time limit. Current research suggests that this style of activity promotes the effective use of team skills in the classroom, which are desirable in the workplace, and also that students are more engaged in the hands-on learning environment. During this study we created a game designed to teach mathematical concepts related to finding missing side lengths in a right-angled triangle using trigonometry to secondary school students who had limited knowledge in this area. Our experiment tested the success of our escape room’s teaching capabilities through comparing student performance on a test completed immediately after finishing the game. We also evaluated whether students’ perception of the applicability of mathematics and their feelings towards studying it improves from playing. Finally, we intended to confirm the findings of other researchers on engagement; extend that to the effective use of team skills through examining if there is a relationship between completion time and the observed behaviours within each team. Results suggest that the game is successful in teaching and building familiarity with some aspects of the topic and that there is no correlation between effective team skills and completion time. We make suggestions for improvements to the game design that would warrant an additional experiment into the teaching potential of escape rooms.

This study introduces a pedagogical model: “the parallel co-inquiry cycles with performative inquiry for character related design” for higher education design studies that focus on characterization. The disciplines benefitting from cross-fertilization provided by the model include game design, fashion design, graphic design, theatre, and actor’s art. Besides the model, the article discusses curriculum integration of a shared thematic denominator Commedia dell’Arte in higher education design studies. The model synthesizes progressive inquiry, drama pedagogical methodologies, and theories on theater with hands-on art workshops to create tangible and digital knowledge vessels for characterization. The research design relies on parallel co-inquiry cycles, participatory ethnography with elements from participatory design tradition. The model identifies three major components within the single 3E-inquiry cycles, namely exercise, experiment and experience. The entire process acquires complexity as each single inquiry cycle enters the next loop of Observe–Plan–Act–Reflect and more time and resources are allocated to the process. The pattern of action and reflection has an iterative cycle format in this model. Reflection has two distinguished purposes: first, to internalize reflective design and to become a reflective practitioner. Second, to see the importance of reflection as distancing oneself from the current process, to allow a reflective mind to linger on the process and learn from mistakes to turn them into assets. Reflection as a metacognitive skill has an all-encompassing purpose in both design and learning processes. The model distinguishes two types of knowledge vessels. Knowledge objects are abstractions that condense knowledge in the co-design process, whereas knowledge artifacts are concrete items, such as masks, outfits, and accessories in both digital and tangible formats. The model connects maker-culture, practice-based inquiry, and performative inquiry in the inquiry cycles. The drama method with performative inquiry acknowledges shared knowledge building in a collaborative, dialogical inquiry that fosters both argumentative and reflection skills.

One of the most difficult types of arithmetic word problems in primary school is compare problems. Among these problems, the most problematic are those in which the relational term is not consistent with the arithmetic operation required for the solution. This study investigates how 10–11-year-old primary school pupils’ read and interpret compare word problems. The consistency effect and the differences between successful and unsuccessful problem solvers are mainly studied using eye-tracking technology. The results show that students are more successful in solving consistent language (CL) problems than inconsistent language (IL) problems. Regarding eye movements during reading and solving the problems, fixation duration on the relational sentence and numbers is longer in the case of IL problems than in the case of CL problems. Compared to successful problem solvers, unsuccessful solvers fixate longer on the relational term, the pronominal reference word, and the statement and relational sentence of IL problems, but not on numbers.

The curricular unit Calculus I – Extraordinary Semester (UCCISE) – was explicitly created to respond to students’ difficulties in the curriculum unit Calculus I (UCCI). Only students who fail the UCCI are allowed to attend UCCISE. Considering the enrolled students’ familiarity with mathematical software, the potential of group work to stimulate collaboration among students, and the existence of several art pieces on the University Campus, led to the proposal of a groups’ project focusing on the calculus of areas based on sections of these pieces. Hence, a STEAM approach emerged to achieve the suggested UCCISE objectives. This study aims to understand how using a STEAM approach in a higher education Calculus course could improve students’ perceptions of mathematics, promote their learning, and contribute to lower levels of failure in UCCISE, using teaching experiments as a research methodology. Four researchers were involved in this study, including the Calculus teacher, so this study has action research characteristics. The interpretive paradigm of analysis was used with the triangulation of data. The collected data come from the students’ productions, interviews, and final questionnaires. Results show that the work developed by the 35 students was relevant and should be a practice to be used in UCCI. This experience led to a reduction in the levels of failure compared to the UCCI. However, in the first years at a university level, STEAM approaches are still challenging.

The use of a learning management system (LMS) is believed to be significant for students’ academic performance, but students’ attitudes regarding its use are divided. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to apply a modified version of the technology acceptance model to determine the motivators for University of Professional Studies Accra students’ behavioural intentions (BIs) and actual use of LMSs using a convenient sampling technique to elicit data from first-year students in the faculty of information technology and communication studies. The investigation included a total of 188 samples. The study used structured equation modelling partial least squares to analyse the data. Specifically, the study employed the importance-performance map analysis to establish the factors that are important to students’ actual use of an LMS. The study’s findings suggest that REL and output quality significantly impact the perceived usefulness (PU). Also, perceived enjoyment and subjective norm exert a significant impact on the perceived ease of use (PEOU). Additionally, PEOU influences the PU, which in turn influences the BI. Furthermore, the findings reveal a strong link between BI and the actual use of the LMS. Finally, the study suggests that students’ BI to use the LMS is the most important factor for students’ actual use. PU is also an important determinant factor of students’ actual use. Following the study’s conclusion that BI and PU are important for students’ actual use of an LMS, higher education administrators must develop rules that increase the students’ PU of LMSs, while also ensuring that current measures that awaken students’ BIs are maintained or improved so that students can use the LMS for academic work.

Gendered barriers in education and attrition along the academic and professional pipeline are key determinants of the current STEM skills shortage. While enrolment in STEM undergraduate courses has been increasing in the recent decades, STEM degree choices still suffer from considerable gender imbalance, whereby women are underrepresented in maths-heavy subjects and overrepresented in biological and healthcare subjects. This study sought to investigate the relationship between maths/science self-confidence and propensity towards STEM careers during secondary education, a critical period in the university course decision-making process. Non-parametric analysis of cross-sectional survey data collected in an English all-girls secondary school revealed an overall decline in self-confidence over the 5 years of secondary education, which was statistically significant for science, but not maths. Self-confidence in maths showed a strong positive correlation with students’ propensity towards careers in maths and science, but not in technology/engineering. Likewise, self-confidence in science was positively correlated with maths and science propensity, but had no effect on technology/engineering propensity. These findings indicate that the teaching of maths and science is by itself not sufficient to promote engagement with STEM career pathways in engineering and technology. Secondary curricula should explicitly emphasise the links between the learning of mathematical and scientific concepts, their practical applications, and the career opportunities they enable.

In this article, we contribute to the longstanding debate among economists regarding the question of “nature or nurture” with respect to economics students’ attitudes toward various allocation mechanisms for a scarce resource. While previous research starts the debate by beginning with first-year economics students, we aim to evaluate pre-first-year individuals, i.e., school pupils. Drawing on the seminal works of Haucap, J., & Just, T. (2010). Not guilty? Another look at the nature and nurture of economics students. European Journal of Law and Economics , 29 (2), 239–254 and Frey, B. S., Pommerehne, W. W., & Gygi, B. (1993). Economics indoctrination or selection? Some empirical results. The Journal of Economic Education , 24 (3), 271–281, we investigate a sample of 697 pupils ranging from the 5th to the 13th grades to determine whether pupils are “born economists” (nature), develop economic thinking (nurture), or both. We find that young individuals start to think differently in early grades and that their thinking and attitudes are shaped differently throughout their school careers, thereby providing support for the effects of both nature and nurture. Our findings show that school time impacts fairness judgments, particularly regarding price mechanisms. Regarding learning or indoctrination, we find that economics-inclined pupils are positively affected by lessons in economics in school, while pupils who are economics-averse draw completely diametric conclusions from economics lessons, thereby exhibiting increased disapproval of price allocation over the course of these classes and increased approval of the first come, first served and governmental action mechanisms. Moreover, we find strong effects of gender and migration background in this context. This study is the first to elucidate the development of economic thinking in 5th–13th grade pupils. Our results are important for economists, educators, and researchers because they can serve as a starting point for subsequent investigations in this under-researched field.

Universities spend significant time and energy establishing a sense of community for their students. University personnel strive to increase school community ties for commuter students who travel back and forth from home to campus under the assumption that these increased ties will predict academic success. In an effort to understand those variables related to commuter student success, 335 participants responded to questions regarding commuter status, psychological sense of community with one’s school, psychological sense of community with one’s hometown, and academic self-handicapping. Results indicated that those with a strong sense of community with their hometown were less likely to engage in academic self-handicapping. Moreover, this relationship was moderated by commuting status, such that the effect was stronger for commuter students than for non-commuter students. Implications for commuter student success and future research are discussed.

This article analyzes international students’ assessment of remote teaching and learning (T&L) during the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic in Portugal. While all students have suffered the consequences of campus lockdowns and distance teaching, international students represent a particularly vulnerable group since, even under normal circumstances, they already have to deal with the challenges of new academic and living conditions. In Portugal, most international students come from Portuguese-speaking (designated as Lusophone) countries. Students’ experiences were gathered via an online cross-sectional survey ( N = 672), and the quantitative analysis compared Lusophone and non-Lusophone students and undergraduate and postgraduate students. Non-Lusophone students were more negative about remote education than Lusophone ones, being less interested in continuing to study online and giving a more negative assessment of the T&L experience than their counterparts. For them, cultural immersion is probably as important as degree attainment. Postgraduate students reported a lesser increase in study time and rated the pedagogical aspects better than undergraduate students, which suggests, by comparison, a better adaptation to the remote regime. Implementing flexible and hybrid education solutions is critical to maintaining international students’ interest.

It can be suggested that pre-service primary school teachers’ sense of belonging to science may be influential to their professionalization within university-based teacher education programs, which intend to prepare them for teaching natural sciences in primary school. Nevertheless, because only few studies have examined teachers’ sense of belonging to science so far, further research in this regard seems both reasonable and necessary. To this end, there is a need for instruments enabling a valid assessment of pre-service primary school teachers’ sense of belonging to science. However, existing sense-of-belonging-to-science instruments require a comparatively long time on task due to their significant number of items. Consequently, the applicability of these instruments within research is limited because surveys in educational contexts must often be brief and economical. The research we present in this article aims to tackle this issue by examining on an exploratory level whether and to what extent pre-service primary school teachers’ sense of belonging to science can be validly assessed using a single-item instrument. In doing so we report qualitative, as well as quantitative, findings that provide evidence regarding the validity of our instrument. Implications of the present study for future research are outlined at the end of this article.

Despite the identified benefits of formative assessment to teaching and learning, its implementation in the classroom remains a significant challenge to teachers. This has widened the gap between the theory and practice of formative assessment in the classroom to enhance students’ learning. This study investigated the potential resource-related factors that affect basic teachers’ adoption of formative assessment in their classrooms. A descriptive survey design with a multistage sampling procedure was employed to select 300 teachers from the six circuits in the Cape Coast Metropolis of Ghana. Data gathered were analyzed using descriptive (mean values, SD) and inferential statistics (two-way ANOVA). Time, workload, overcrowded curriculum, class size, and the number of lessons were reported as barriers to the effective implementation of formative assessment. Findings also revealed no statistically significant interaction effect of gender and grade level on the resource-related barriers. Moreover, grade level and gender had no statistically significant main effects with respect to the resource-related barriers. Recommendations and implications for policy, practice, and future research are discussed.

The purpose of this article is to examine the influence of the school organizational climate on teacher enthusiasm. A sample of 600 teachers was drawn using a multi-stage random sampling method. The study variables were assessed using two main instruments: the organizational climate scale and teacher’s enthusiasm scale. A two-staged structural equation modelling and artificial neural network approach was used for the analysis. The study has unveiled the importance of the school’s organizational climate in determining the enthusiasm level of teachers. All the dimensions of organizational climate acted as significant predictors in the model. The study encourages periodic examination of the school climate and teachers’ enthusiasm to take any decisions or initiatives necessary to address deficiencies in schools.

The aim of the current study is to estimate the graduation grade point average (GPA) at the Arab International University (AIU). The importance of this study is that it is the first of its kind in Syria, particularly under the conditions of the bitter war, which has not yet come to its end. The sample of the study consists of data collected from AIU registry system, which covers students of six faculties from both sexes over a period of 5 years, i.e., between 2014 and 2018. The variables of the study include the student’s high school GPA, the source of the student’s certificate, and the gender of the student (GR). MLR and ANN approaches were employed in the analytical study. The correlation coefficients and several statistical criteria were calculated to evaluate the developed models. Based on the results, it can be concluded that the male students were among the key factors affecting the output, i.e., GPA. In addition, ANN tool is more accurate when the estimation of GPA value is concerned. Further, re-evaluation of this study can be done in future particularly when the male student’ trepidation disappears as stability and safety return to the country.

This study qualitatively investigates solutions to lecturer-related problems caused by the relatively recent introduction of a teaching–research mission at Swiss universities of applied sciences (UASs). It thereby makes an empirical contribution to the debate on organizational actors in higher education. The investigation is informed by a theoretical framework primarily drawn from the literature on organizational actorhood and relies on data from semi-structured interviews. Representing all public UASs in Switzerland, the sample consists of 19 directors and 1 head of institutes of business schools and engineering schools. The analysis identified five problem themes and numerous solutions. The findings suggest that after almost 30 years of their inception, UASs have been utilizing their decision-making leeway to a great extent at the central and decentral levels, and in some cases are still in the process of solving the problems caused by integrating teaching and research activities at the individual and institutional levels. While various solutions in terms of structure, culture, and resources have been developed and implemented, isomorphic tendencies can also be observed. The data suggest that the common key to solving many problems lies in the human resources and a post-Humboldtian configuration of research and teaching.

The balanced scorecard (BSC) is a mission-oriented and strategy-focused performance management tool for educational institutions. The study reviews the literature on the implementation of the BSC by different educational institutions as a strategic performance management. After a comprehensive review of the literature, we analyzed the documents based on the publication trends during the years, authors’ affiliations by countries, sources from which the documents have been published, most frequently used keywords in the documents, and the highest cited documents in the Scopus database. A bibliometric mapping analysis was used to construct and visualize the bibliometric networks. We found that 267 documents that were published in the sources are indexed by Scopus. Finally, gaps in the relevant literature are identified, leading to several directions for future research.

Reciprocal teaching (RT) involves collaborative dialogue between the teacher and students, with the aim of jointly constructing the meaning from a shared text. This study employs RT as a cognitive and metacognitive set of strategies for enhancing students’ reading comprehension and monitoring skills. Thirty-four students were assigned to the RT group for reading instruction, whereas 30 students were assigned to the control group for regular reading instruction. The four RT strategies (predicting, questioning, clarifying, and summarizing) empowered the students to engage in a non-linear approach to comprehend texts and monitor their reading comprehension. They afforded the students the chance to engage in pre-, during-, and post-reading cognitive and metacognitive processes, collaborate with their peers, read with intentionality and focus, and assume shared responsibility for monitoring their advancement in reading comprehension. The students engaged in the scaffolded activities of read-aloud, dialogue, structured comprehension, and peer teaching to develop their reading comprehension and monitoring skills. The results showed that the RT group outperformed the control group on the post-test in both total score of reading comprehension and individual reading skills. Therefore, language instructors are recommended to use an array of effective RT strategies to enhance their students’ reading comprehension and monitoring skills.

The twenty-first century requires Vocational High School (VHS) graduates to have high-order thinking skills (HOTS). Although HOTS-based learning in VHS has been implemented in Indonesia, the graduates are less creative in complex work. Also, teachers have insufficient knowledge about this learning design. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between learning implementation and planning, specifically focusing on the knowledge of teachers in planning lessons. To measure this knowledge, several aspects were established based on the concept of Anderson and Krathwohl’s Taxonomy 2001. The concept was used to measure knowledge, which was categorized into the factual, conceptual, procedural, and meta-cognitive dimensions. To analyze each dimension, critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, and communication were employed as key elements. A quantitative approach with a survey design and a random sample of productive subject teachers was used. Cross-sectional analysis and F -test were applied to the primary data using multiple linear regression. According to the F -test results, planning aspects simultaneously affect the implementation of HOTS-based learning in VHS. This is because the calculated F -value was greater than the table F -value. HOTS-based learning activities can be easily achieved in case the lesson plan has the same basis.

This article revisits the Mincer earnings function and presents comparable estimates of the average monetary returns associated with an additional year of education across different regions worldwide. In contrast to the traditional Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) method commonly employed in the literature, this study applied a cutting-edge approach known as Support Vector Regression (SVR), which belongs to the family of machine learning (ML) algorithms. SVR is specifically chosen to address the bias arising from underfitting inherent in OLS. The analysis focuses on recent data spanning from 2010 to 2018, ensuring temporal homogeneity across the examined regions. The findings reveal that each additional year of education, on average, yields a private rate of returns of 10.4%. Notably, Sub-Saharan Africa exhibits the highest returns to education at 17.8%, while Europe demonstrates the lowest returns at 7.2%. Moreover, higher education is associated with the highest returns across the regions, with a rate of 12%, whereas primary education yields returns of 10%. Interestingly, women generally experience higher returns than men, with rates of 10.6 and 10.1%, respectively. Over time, the returns to education exhibit a modest decline, decreasing at a rate of approximately 0.1% per year, while the average duration of education demonstrates an increase of 0.16 years per year (1% per year). The application of the state-of-the-art ML technique, SVR, not only improves the accuracy of estimates but also enhances predictive performance measures such as the coefficient of determination ( R 2 ) and Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) when compared to the OLS method. The implications drawn from these findings emphasize the need for expanding university education, as well as investments in primary education, along with significant attention toward promoting girls’ education. These findings hold considerable importance for policymakers who are tasked with making informed decisions regarding education expenditure and the implementation of education financing programs.

The current study explored how students in various universities across the United Arab Emirates (UAE) conceptualized inclusive education and views of the future with participation from twenty-one pre-service teachers from different universities within the UAE. Data collection consisted of an open-ended questionnaire and semi-structured interviews analyzed using a qualitative case study within an interpretive paradigm. Results indicated that students unanimously conceptualized inclusion from a holistic point of view and projected the future to be associated with a higher level of differentiated instruction. However, the conditions of the Education Act and the results were not in agreement with the premise of liberation pedagogy, as students with special needs reverted to a passive state and adopted a dependent relationship with the teacher. In conclusion, teachers’ motivation was faith in humanity, the rejection of fatalism, and the belief that all learners can actively participate in the transformation of the world by participating in liberation pedagogy, which caters to the diverse needs of students in present and future environments.

Transformative assessment is a classroom assessment aimed at changing both how teachers teach and students learn a lesson. Nowadays, this kind of assessment needs to be practiced to encourage teachers to be creative and flexible when designing their assessments and for students to be reflective and take responsibility for their learning. Hence, this qualitative study aimed to examine mathematics teachers’ practices of transformative assessment and the associated challenges. Data collected from eight teachers using semi-structured interviews and lesson observations were analysed thematically. It was found that teachers did, in fact, not provide evidence of practicing transformative assessment in their teaching. There was an attempt to align assessment to learning outcomes even though the assessment practice utilized remained traditional. Teachers’ assessment practices focused on fast-learners while leaving behind the majority, lacking balance and equity. Teacher, student, and school-related factors were the main challenges facing the teachers during assessment practices. The study presents possible strategies by which transformative assessment practices in mathematics teaching can be developed, implemented, and sustained to improve students’ learning.

This study aims to determine the implementation and constraints of teachers in assessing students’ attitudes at school. This study adopted a qualitative approach with descriptive methods. This research involved 29 informants, consisting of 23 teachers, three school principals, and three supervisors in South Kalimantan, Indonesia. Data were obtained by using interviews, observation, and documentation. The indicators in this study include the implementation of attitude assessment, the instruments used in assessing attitudes, teacher constraints in assessing attitudes, and follow-up attitude assessments. The supervision process by the school principal and school supervisor has been carried out routinely and continuously. However, the teacher was left to make a sober assessment. The assessment is still being carried out to the extent of filling out the report. This result demonstrated several weaknesses in the quality assurance system for assessing student attitudes.

The introduction and spread of distance learning imply a shift in approaches and methods of its organisation. This affects the methods and goals of the interaction of subjects of educational activity, including their motivation. That is why the question regarding the analysis of educational components and models aimed at increasing the motivation of education applicants is relevant. Based on this, the purpose of the study was formed, which was to investigate pedagogical design in the context of a means to increase students’ interest in the educational process. As a result, the concept of “pedagogical design” was defined in the context of a modern approach to the implementation of educational and professional training of applicants for education. The features of the establishment of the educational environment based on common goals of learning tasks are considered. The study characterised the basics of pedagogical design, namely, the effective formation of goals, scientific, accessibility, self-organisation, and differentiation of the educational process, providing conditions for the development of a person’s experience.

This study aims to examine the effectiveness of online problem-based learning (PBL) tasks on problem-solving ability (PSA) and programming skills of secondary school students. A quantitative research design of a quasi-experimental research was adopted in this study. A purposive non-random sampling method was used to select two schools. Then, a clustered random sampling technique was carried out to select four classes, consisting of 120 students. The classes were divided equally into online PBL and non-online PBL. A problem-solving inventory questionnaire was used to measure PSA before and after the treatment, and pre-post performance tests were used to assess students’ performance. The students underwent 8 weeks of learning tasks by using online PBL via Facebook groups. The findings from this study proved that online PBL improved students’ PSA, and their higher-order thinking skills, and helped them to perform better in learning programming by using Facebook for interaction and participation in the online discussion with a facilitator and peers.

The delivery of education and the outcome it produces largely depend on how students are taught, the resources they are exposed to along with the kind of facilities they are provided with. We have to acknowledge that teaching and learning do not occur in the same way across the world due to critical factors. These factors cause hindrances in the education system that create educational inequalities which exist in various forms as this article aims to outline. Some of these include shortage of teachers, poverty learning-gap, distribution of resources, location of schools, access to scholarship, and school curriculum. It is worth comparing Fiji’s education system to the global context using all the three streams of education that is primary, secondary, and higher education. It is prudent that stakeholders in all three education streams are aware of the nature of inconsistencies that affect the students. This will inform and enable policy makers to engage with the current underlying inequalities in education in order to address these that persist in the world and in Fiji. Conversations that revolve around these issues will be fruitful for the education system in Fiji and worldwide.

Education plays a critical role in the effective pursuit and attainment of overall growth and technological advancement of any country. Thus, if Nigeria as a nation is to achieve competitive growth and technological advancement, the quality and type of her educational system must not only be right but also carefully sustained. If an improved quality of education in the country must be attained and sustained, the quality of her teacher education must be equally enhanced. The quest, therefore, for a sustained high-quality teacher education in Nigeria will not yield positive results; there is no corresponding functional and effective quality assurance (QA) and control mechanism in place. It is against this backdrop that this article reviewed QA mechanisms and approaches in place for the delivery of high-quality teacher education in Nigerian universities, the challenges, and emerging perspectives. It noted, however, that their functionality and productivity in terms of yielding the desirable impact were diminished by a myriad of challenges. The article then proposed an overhaul of the existing QA mechanisms while advocating that educational management and Nigerian authorities on teacher education must insist on acceptable standards and monitor performance to guarantee QA.