Compliance with any policies, laws and regulations, including university compliance with quality assurance mechanisms globally, depends on the practicability of those mechanisms. Like other countries, Tanzania has quality assurance mechanisms that require universities to comply. However, the existing audit reports have shown non-compliance cases to such mechanisms. This study sought to explore the practicability of the existing quality assurance mechanisms in promoting universities’ compliance in Tanzania. The documentary reviews, interviews, and focus group discussions were used to collect data from the 4 universities and 46 students, academics, and quality assurance directors and officers as a sample size selected purposively. The data were analysed through content analysis. The findings revealed that the existing quality assurance mechanisms are generally practicable; however, there are quality assurance requirements with practicability challenges due to contextual factors. Such requirements include senior academics in administrative duties, academics’ promotion, academics’ recruitment, inclusive and participatory teaching approaches, requirements with extra financial costs, examination scripts’ marking, and invigilation restrictions. This study concludes that the practicability challenges of some quality assurance mechanisms are one reason for non-compliance cases at some Tanzanian universities. It recommends that key stakeholders be involved in establishing mechanisms, and all contextual factors must be addressed to enhance practicability.

Understanding graphs in the dynamics of market (DM) is a challenge to learners; its teaching demands a specific kind of teacher’s knowledge. This study aims to examine the topic-specific pedagogical content knowledge (TSPCK) of experienced economics teachers in teaching graphs in DM to enhance learners’ understanding of the topic. It reports using a qualitative approach underpinned by the TSPCK framework for teaching specific topics developed by Mavhunga. Data were collected through classroom observations and analyzed thematically using a case study of two economics teachers. The study revealed that adopting a step-by-step approach and the use of worked graphical examples promote an understanding of graphs in DM. It also established that active learning is preferable to the predominant chalk-and-talk (lecture) method of teaching graphs in DM. The study proposed a Dynamics of Market Graphical Framework (DMG-Framework) to enable teachers, particularly pre-service teachers in lesson delivery, to enhance learners’ understanding of graphs in DM. The result of this study will broaden the international view in the teaching of graphs in DM.

Listening is a language skill that is acquired in childhood but can be improved throughout the educational process. It is of great importance in both educational and everyday life. The objective of this study is to identify the importance given to listening training by students, assess their listening skills, and determine what can be done to improve their listening skills to top levels. The study group consists of 50 Turkish language teachers from various primary and secondary schools in Turkey and Northern Cyprus. A 9-question interview form was used to collect data. The data obtained were analyzed using content analysis, frequencies, and percentages. Based on the results, most Turkish language teachers revealed that their students do not listen sufficiently to their teachers, and the reasons for this could be related to the school, teachers, curriculum, or the students themselves. Additionally, the teachers stated that it is essential to emphasize the importance of listening to students in the first place, and it could be beneficial to increase the number of listening activities in the course books and assess and evaluate listening skills more frequently.

The ability to think creatively has a vital role in the development of preschool children. This research provides a comprehensive review of innovative approaches and strategies for developing creative thinking in preschool children based on current trends and methodologies used in educational settings. This research shows three significant areas: (a) creative thinking skills in preschool children, (b) factors influencing creative thinking skills in depth, and (c) innovative strategies and approaches to stimulate creative thinking abilities in preschool children. This research uses a literature study method assisted by the publish perish application to find reference sources related to creative thinking abilities in preschool children. Studies show that creative thinking abilities in preschool children enable them to find innovative solutions, help them adapt to challenges, foster self-confidence and courage, and enrich their experience and knowledge of the world around them. Meanwhile, preschool children's creative thinking abilities are influenced by collaboration from the external environment (parents, teachers, and society); providing support and examples for children to develop and stimulate their creative thinking skills is very important.

In the early stages of adopting online learning, both learners and teachers displayed resistance, but the COVID-19 pandemic has forced a widespread shift to digital learning. To facilitate this transition, there is a growing focus on highlighting the effectiveness of online learning, which directly impacts learning outcomes. This study investigates online learning effectiveness through an integrated framework that considers online assessment practices and online course design as independent variables, with online learning support as a moderating variable. Understanding the effectiveness of online learning is crucial as hybrid learning becomes the "new norm" in education, combining online and offline methods for teaching the digital generation. Using a quantitative research design involving 232 students at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, the study found that online assessment practices and course design significantly influence students perceived learning outcomes in an online learning environment. Additionally, online learning support positively moderates this relationship. These findings offer a comprehensive perspective on how online assessment practices, course design, and support systems contribute to the quality of higher education in Malaysia amidst evolving educational practices.

This study aims to explore the impact of outdoor education on senior elementary school students' perceptions of scientific literacy and learning motivation. 42 senior elementary school students (25 males, 17 females; average age = 11.6) were enrolled and divided into experimental (N = 21) and control (N = 21) groups. Participants were taught the same content about science for four weeks. The control group adopted traditional indoor teaching, whereas the experimental group adopted outdoor education. Before and after the course, each student completed the 23 items of scientific literacy and the 6 items of learning motivation scale. The results show that the experimental group had significantly higher perceptions of scientific literacy and learning motivation. The outdoor education teaching method has positive effects on the higher levels of awareness and creative development of students. These findings imply that outdoor education has a positive effect on improving students' perceptions of scientific literacy and learning motivation.

This research attempts to map the trend of research related to differentiated instruction (DI). The research was conducted in May 2023 by researching research articles in the Scopus database. The search data from Scopus used title, abstract, and keyword searches. Research articles were analyzed descriptively based on year of publication, journal name, affiliation, country, and researcher name. The article database from Scopus was analyzed through VOSviewer and RStudio software so that a bibliometric map could be depicted in research related to DI. Based on the Scopus analysis results, it showed that publications of articles related to DI had increased from 2011 to 2021, although it decreased in 2016. The journal with the largest contributor to the publication of research articles related to DI was the Teaching and Teacher Education Journal. Vrije Universitiet Brusel was the university with the most published articles on DI. The country that contributed the most to the research articles related to DI was the United States. Struyven was the most productive scholar related to DI. Through network visualization, it was revealed that the evolution map of research related to DI was divided into five clusters.

The development of communicative competence is a fundamental goal of Slovene language teaching in Slovene primary schools. As part of this goal, reading literacy is also being developed. In the project Reading Literacy and the Development of Slovene–ARLEM (Awareness, Reading, Language, Evaluation, Models), a reading comprehension test for fifth and eighth grade has been developed, consisting of four tests. This article focuses on two of them, the Vocabulary Test and the Reading Comprehension Test for fifth and eighth grade. A study conducted among more than one thousand students showed a correlation between students’ vocabulary comprehension and reading comprehension, and a relationship between these two variables and teachers’ assessment of students’ reading and students’ grades in the school subjects Slovene, math, and social studies / history. The results also show that, on average, boys score lower than girls, that on average, students whose first language is not Slovene score lower than students whose first language is Slovene, and that students who receive additional professional help with reading score lower than students who do not need additional help with reading. The results confirm the importance of developing vocabulary and reading skills randomly and in a planned way in all school subjects. Furthermore, the results show the importance of acquiring reading techniques over time and developing reading motivation. Furthermore, the results show the need for cross-curricular integration, individualization, and differentiation.

This article describes a methodology and a didactic innovation in higher education that employs Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) across four universities in the fields of sociology, psychology, social education and economics in order to explore the phenomenon of economic violence. The COIL activities were developed by four teachers in the second semester of 2022. The students explored the social and cultural origins of economic violence and the daily exposure to economic inequality in the domestic sphere, while also studying the prevention and responses offered by anti-violence centers from both organizational and social perspectives. The most novel aspect of COIL projects is the research approach to the topic (gender violence) and the students' participation in extracurricular activities, namely presenting the results of their research developed during their academic subjects after the course, at international events. In this study, we describe the projects and the assessment of this part of the research, analyzing the perceptions of the Italian and Spanish students who participated in the dissemination activity. The students' perceptions were recorded through a semi-structured questionnaire utilizing Likert scales and open-ended questions, which included their self-assessments of their knowledge before and after participating in the project, the impact on their development of competences and skills, and their satisfaction with the whole experience. Students acquired a great deal of knowledge and understanding of the phenomenon being studied through COIL methodology and connected these extracurricular activities to a clear improvement in their transversal skills.

Given curiosity’s fundamental role in motivation and learning and considering the widespread use of digital stories as educational tools from the preschool age, we pursued measuring preschoolers’ curiosity when interacting with digital stories. Using 129 toddlers and preschoolers as a sample, three groups (one for each class) were given different versions of the same digital story to listen to: interactive, non-interactive, and animated. Toddlers' verbal and nonverbal behaviors were utilized to quantify curiosity as a condition brought on by the app. The participants' verbal and nonverbal behaviors were recorded during the digital reading aloud. Every child's data was encoded at one-minute intervals to examine concurrent behavior, and the results were then compiled. The findings show that interactive presentation formats encourage more touching and language use but less noise production and that interaction and the creative use of hot spots in digital illustrations are key elements in piquing viewers' curiosity while contributing to the strengthening of the engagement to the activity and the cultivation of critical thinking, creativity, and imagination.

Augmented reality offers diverse potential applications for STEM education, enabling students to engage directly with virtual elements in real-time and providing them with immersive, natural experiences. This study conducted a bibliometric analysis of articles on this topic on the Scopus database to determine some quantitative information, such as general information about publications, countries, institutions, authors with the most contributions, and key trends in applying augmented reality technology in STEM education. An analysis of 201 studies published from 2005 to 2023 using Biblioshiny software and VOSviewer reveals that the United States leads in the number of studies conducted on this issue. Kryvyi Rih National University, Ukraine, has the most studies. The authors who contributed the most studies with the most citations on this issue are Lindner, C. and Rienow, A. from Ruhr University Bochum, Germany. Two primary research trends emerge, focusing on how Augmented Reality technology is utilized, particularly in STEM fields like Chemistry, which combines learning forms with other learning support tools and media such as mobile applications. Secondly, integrating augmented reality and virtual reality technologies into STEM programs at the university level, design of games, and virtual tools. This study offers important data for researchers looking to explore future applications of augmented reality technology within STEM education.

This study aimed to optimize critical thinking by empowering reflective and impulsive students' collaboration, communication, and information literacy skills through information literacy-oriented e-books in STEM-integrated problem-based learning (PBL). The research method used was a descriptive explorative approach. The study subjects consisted of five reflective students and five impulsive students. The measurement of cognitive style used the Matching Familiar Figure Test (MFFT) instrument. Collaboration skills were assessed through observation sheets, critical thinking and communication skills were assessed through student worksheets based on problem-solving tasks, and information literacy was assessed through a questionnaire. The study found that reflective students excelled in critical thinking and information literacy, while impulsive students demonstrated superior collaboration skills. As for communication skills, reflective and impulsive students have different advantages for each indicator of communication skills. This study can conclude that implementing information literacy-oriented e-books through STEM-integrated PBL can optimize reflective and impulsive students' critical thinking, collaboration, communication, and information literacy skills. The implication of this study is the importance of integrating 21st century skills holistically in learning practices, especially in the digital era, to prepare the younger generation to face the challenges of the 21st century.

Work-based learning (WBL) is an important tool for enhancing students' employability skills in vocational education and training. Many studies have underlined the importance of a variable of WBL, self-efficacy, and vocational identity in developing vocational students' employability skills. Nonetheless, the research is limited and examined separately. Therefore, this study investigates how WBL, self-efficacy, and vocational identity influence employability skills and how self-efficacy moderates between WBL and employability skills. Four hundred and three state university students in Yogyakarta were involved in the data collection. This study used structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis to test its hypothesis. The results of the study revealed that the implementation of WBL did not have a direct effect on employability skills; however, self-efficacy was able to moderate the relationship between WBL and employability skills. However, WBL directly influences vocational identity, which in turn directly influences employability skills, while self-efficacy also directly influences employability skills. This research has important implications for improving learning that can improve students' self-efficacy skills in an effort to build students' employability skills in vocational education and training.

This study addresses global concerns surrounding elementary students' science performance following the COVID-19, as a result of international tests such as Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) highlight the ongoing challenges that urge the exploration of innovative educational approaches to improve science learning. This research employed gamification-assisted instruction and explored its impact on enhancing the understanding of science concepts and attitudes toward science class among fourth graders. The study adopted a quasi-experimental design and included an experimental group (ExG) that was taught using a gamification strategy and a control group (CoG) that was taught using a traditional method with a sample of 38 female elementary students from a public school in Jordan. Data were gathered using valid and reliable tools: the developed scientific concepts test and the Attitude Towards Science class measures. The ANCOVA analysis revealed that gamification significantly improves the acquisition of scientific concepts (η2=.208) and boosts a positive attitude toward science classes among elementary students (η2=.626). These findings encourage decision-makers to incorporate gamification into science teaching practices and methods.

Children diagnosed with moderate autism spectrum disorder (MASD) exhibit a range of socially unacceptable behaviors, which notably include social withdrawal behavior (SWB); these individuals tend to disengage from various social contexts, consequently impeding their communication and social interaction capabilities. The primary objective of this research was to employ miniatures (diorama) as a methodological approach to construct semi-naturalistic scenarios for children with MASD that authentically represent their quotidian experiences and facilitate interaction, contributing to the alleviation of their SWB. The research sample comprised 21 children with MASD, aged between 6 and 9 years, who were enrolled at the Al-Jabr Institute in Al-Ahsa, Saudi Arabia. A quasi-experimental methodology was adopted to align with the research's inherent characteristics, using a three-group design. The instruments utilized included the Social Withdrawal Behavior Scale (SWBS) alongside a training program devised by the authors. The results showed a significant reduction in SWB among those children to whom the diorama program was applied. Results also indicated the continuation of this effect after the end of the diorama program period for two consecutive months. The outcomes encourage further implementation of the diorama methodology on more extensive samples and across a broader geographic scope within Saudi Arabia, thereby facilitating the generalization of the findings to the entire population of children diagnosed with MASD. Findings also encourage the enhancement of the diorama's role in forthcoming experimental inquiries to ascertain its efficacy in mitigating other socially maladaptive behaviors exhibited by children with MASD.

The aim of this research was to assess changes in secondary school students’ grades longitudinally, including the semester before the COVID-19 pandemic, the period of distance learning, and two semesters when students had returned to face-to-face learning. In this longitudinal study, n=263 Latvian students’ grades from the period of six semesters (autumn 2019 to spring 2022) were collected and analyzed for seven study subjects (mathematics, English, Latvian, biology, chemistry, physics, and literature), using Friedman’s ANOVA, and Wilcoxon test for comparison. Results show that grades increased for several study subjects during the beginning of the distance learning period (e.g., mathematics and Latvian). However, this initial increase diminished after students had returned to schools to study in-person, especially for the subjects of mathematics and Latvian (native language). Decreases in students’ grades after returning to face-to-face studies indicate possible accumulated negative long-term effects of distance learning. The dynamics of the grades differ in various study subjects (e.g., relative stability in chemistry, decrease in mathematics, Latvian, biology), thus justifying the approach to analyze each study subject or study field separately. This study gives insight into longitudinal changes in students’ academic achievement, following the same students throughout their whole secondary school period from 10th to 12th grade during the pandemic.

This study analyzes trends, collaborations, and research developments on augmented reality (AR) in mathematics education using a bibliometric approach. Data were collected from the Scopus database on July 31, 2024, identifying 542 documents published between 2015 and 2024. After screening, 194 journal articles were selected for analysis. Using VOSviewer, the study produced visualizations related to document types, publication trends, journal sources, research subjects, institutions, countries, keywords, and author collaborations. The results show that 88.7% of the documents are journal articles, indicating that this topic is predominantly published in scholarly journals. Publication trends reveal significant growth since 2016, peaking in 2024, reflecting increasing global interest. Education Sciences and IEEE Access are among the top journal sources. Subject-wise, social sciences and computer science are the main disciplines exploring AR in mathematics education. Chitkara University (India) and Johannes Kepler University Linz (Austria) are leading institutions, while the United States, Malaysia, and Spain contribute the most publications. Keyword analysis shows rapid growth in research using terms such as "augmented reality" and "mathematics education," emphasizing the role of immersive technology in enhancing student engagement and conceptual understanding through visual and interactive learning. Influential authors like Lavicza, Mantri, and Haas highlight the importance of global collaboration. Based on a thematic analysis of the most-cited articles, this study proposes the AI Mathematical Education Impact and Outcome Framework. In conclusion, although research on AR in mathematics education has significantly advanced, further studies are needed to evaluate its effectiveness across varied educational contexts.

Research in mathematics education and interdisciplinarity is varied and extensive, covering multiple approaches that reflect a growing interest in this type of perspective. The objective of this study is to systematize the findings of research on interdisciplinary mathematics education published between 2019 and 2024. The review was carried out following the guidelines of the PRISMA statement, allowing us to identify 49 articles published in journals indexed in the Web of Science (WOS) and Scopus databases. Subsequently, a content analysis was carried out to identify methodological and theoretical aspects present in the studies reviewed, such as methodology employed, education level of participants, disciplines integrated with mathematics, and types of interdisciplinary tasks proposed. Additionally, four main research themes were identified: (a) understanding of interdisciplinarity; (b) pedagogical strategies for interdisciplinary development in mathematics education; (c) interdisciplinarity for the development of mathematical skills; and (d) professional development of mathematics teachers. The results reveal a sustained increase in the number of publications, which reflects a growing interest in the interdisciplinary approach in mathematics education. Finally, several challenges and opportunities are highlighted for future research, including the need to develop an interdisciplinary teacher training model, the creation of pedagogical strategies that promote greater interconnection between disciplines, and the need to carry out more studies focused on early childhood and primary education in this area.

The aim of this study is to investigate how postgraduate English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students perceive the impact of the Postgraduate Professional Diploma in Teaching program on promoting effective education for sustainable development (ESD). The study employed a descriptive approach, involving 228 participants. The study employed a 28-item questionnaire, and the data were analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics software. The findings suggest that participants believe the program employs strategic actions and policies to achieve its long-term development goals for effective English teaching. The results also showed that participants place a high value on the program because it encourages innovative efforts to enhance the quality of learning, provides them with a range of assessment tools to help teach English effectively in the long term, and offers students opportunities to practice feedback techniques that enhance learning in the classroom. Furthermore, because participants were exposed to a pre-service training program in an effective manner, the results demonstrated statistically significant differences among participants regarding the program's impact on promoting effective ESD based on the study's variables. According to the study, it is also necessary to incorporate sustainable development concerns into English instruction and provide participants with information about the benefits of sustainable development.

This study investigates how undergraduate art majors at the National University of Art Education in Vietnam perceive the cultural integration into their English curriculum. A quantitative design was employed using a researcher-developed questionnaire administered to 214 students. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics, independent-samples t-tests, and multiple regression. Findings indicated that students valued culturally relevant content, particularly materials connected to both Vietnamese and international art as well as experiential and student-centered instructional strategies. Reported challenges included limited cultural background knowledge, cognitive overload, and reduced confidence when discussing culture in English. Crucially, results from multiple regression revealed that how culture is taught may have a greater impact on students’ experiences than the content itself. Therefore, these findings underscore the importance of aligning instructional approaches with learners’ disciplinary identities and offer implications for culturally responsive curriculum design, professional development, and the implementation of context-specific teaching strategies in English language instruction for art students.