Students' academic self-concept is a concerning concept in educational research. The purpose of this research is to examine the simultaneous influence and relationship of learning motivation, democratic parenting, and peer relations with academic self-concept in students. This is a correlational research with a cluster random sampling method used to collect data from 962 students. The result showed that learning motivation, democratic parenting, and peer relations had a partial and simultaneous relationship with students' academic self-concept. Furthermore, support from guidance and counselors, homeroom teachers, and parents is essential for students to actualize and develop their character optimally and effectively.  

In the last decade, vocational education in Indonesia has experienced problems in making career decisions for students, which was exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, this research aims to examine the role of self-efficacy and mediate digital literacy, social environment, and counselling guidance in influencing career decision-making. This is an ex-post-facto research design with data collected from a sample of 566 vocational education students in Indonesia through a questionnaire method distributed online using Google Form. The collected data was then analyzed using structural equation modelling (SEM) with path analysis and bootstrap methods. The results revealed that self-efficacy plays a vital role in mediating digital literacy and guiding students in career decision-making. On the other hand, digital literacy, guidance, and counselling have a significant direct effect on self-efficacy and career decision-making. Meanwhile, the social environment only has a significant direct effect on students’ career decision-making. The real role of all elements of vocational education in strengthening self-efficacy, growing digital literacy, monitoring social environment interactions, and providing counselling guidance to students is needed to increase optimism and the quality of career decision-making in vocational education.

Mathematics anxiety has always been an interesting topic to study and discuss in the world of education. This study aimed to (1) investigate the impact of teacher roles, mathematics content, and mathematics anxiety on learning motivation, and (2) explore how students manage mathematics anxiety as a stimulus in learning motivation. This research used mixed methods with embedded concurrent design. The research sample was 100 respondents. The questionnaire instrument was arranged based on a Likert scale with 5 answer choices. This study used a structural equation model and confirmatory factor analysis as data analysis methods. The research findings indicated that: (1) a significant direct impact emerged between mathematics anxiety and students' learning motivation, and there was an indirect impact between the teacher's role and mathematics content on learning motivation; (2) students could manage mathematics anxiety when they were in optimal anxiety or positive anxiety so that they could overcome mathematics anxiety as a stimulus for achievement and deconstruct anxiety into motivation according to experience and personal resources. Results of this study confirmed that the statements about mathematics anxiety which always has a negative impact on motivation and learning achievement is not universal, because mathematics anxiety does not always have a negative impact on motivation and learning achievement if this anxiety is managed effectively.

The article discusses the topical issue of a model of digital competencies for a future teacher. The analysis of the composition and structure of the most relevant models of digital competencies of a citizen and a modern teacher is carried out. In addition, the article reveals approaches to the formation of the content of digital competence, and provides the results of an empirical study, which consists in analyzing the results of a survey of practicing teachers and teacher-training students in order to identify the most demanded digital competencies of a future teacher. The article substantiates the authors’ content of the competence of a future teacher, a university student. The purpose of this article is to develop a theoretical model of digital competence of a future teacher, taking into account the dynamic technologisation of the modern world and the peculiarities of Russian education, based on an analysis of approaches to determining the content of its digital competencies. According to the analysis of studies, the issue of teachers’ digital competence is not sufficiently disclosed. Numerous studies on digital competencies of a person, teacher, etc. do not fully solve the problem of assessing the digital competence of future teachers.

Recent changes due to the COVID-19 pandemic have forced higher education institutions worldwide to transition to online courses. The challenges that the pandemic poses for microteaching are very significant, as it is highly application-based and complicates online implementation. The current study aims to examine prospective teachers' experiences with online microteaching. The participants (N = 21) were Greek university undergraduate students. Specifically, their experiences with online microteaching were examined through reflective texts and follow-up interviews. Data were analyzed based on a mixed-methods approach (quantitative and qualitative) by two independent reviewers. The findings showed that the main advantage of the specific process is the collaboration with fellow students, while the main challenges concern technical difficulties and anxiety. Qualitative analysis revealed that anxiety overlapped with collaboration, while more detailed aspects of the process (e.g., video rehearsals and retakes) provided a unique framework.

This paper analyzes the key determinants of the quality of preschool education in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Based on the analysis of recent data, the paper indicates the status and development trends in this regard in the last decade. Although preschool education in Bosnia and Herzegovina has a long tradition, it is facing a number of challenges, mostly arising from the arrangement of the state system and post-war transition processes which have significantly impoverished this level of education. Therefore, the main goal of this paper is to point out the recent public policy efforts made in the attempt to ensure the quality of preschool education in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as the effects that are being achieved in this regard. Since quality can be approached from the aspects of structure and process, the elementary structural and process dimensions of preschool education will be taken as units of this analysis. Conceptualizing the results of this analysis, the status and quality of preschool education in Bosnia and Herzegovina will be positioned through an orientation towards the European framework for the quality and development trends of preschool education in Europe.

A socio-scientific issue is one of the learning techniques used today, which uses various scientific sources to make students think scientifically to conduct a dialogue and discuss solving a problem. Various problems in socio-scientific are controversial, requiring reasoning, and ethical evaluation in the decision-making process. A conflict between chemical reason and students' social point of view will cause students' different assessments and attitudes towards the socio-scientific issue. This study is a research and development (R&D) that focuses on the instrument's validity with the factor analysis technique to assess attitudes towards the socio-scientific issue in chemistry learning. CFA and EFA analysis found five factors in the tool: anxiety, interests, likes, benefits, confidence, validity, and reliability. The total reliability coefficient is .853. Of the eight instrument feasibility analysis requirements, seven instruments were declared fit to meet construct validity.

Kosovo's education system has two different vocational education and training schools: professional schools and centres of competence. The local authorities-municipal directorates of education manage the professional schools, while the centres of competence are managed at the national level by agency for vocational education and training and adult education (AVETAE), operating under the Ministry of Education. This paper compares the collaboration between public schools, centres of competence, and private businesses. For this research, we used the mixed research methodology by interviewing coordinators of career centres from two professional schools and two centres of competence, and four managers of different firms. The research included a questionnaire filled by teachers from both institutions, prepared using the Likert scale. We analysed the data from this research to identify the differences in how those institutions develop partnerships with private businesses to secure better internship opportunities for their students. The study will provide data about the sustainability of cooperation between these two institutions in the creation of employment opportunities for their graduates. The outcomes will help professional schools and centres of competence to improve their cooperation with the labour market. It will help the career centre coordinators and business owners to create new job opportunities for development.

Phonological awareness relates closely to listening and speaking skills. It also has an important role in learning to read in an alphabetic writing system. In the context of learning a new language, it is essential to figure out an appropriate strategy in accelerating the phonological awareness skill. The present study aims at investigating the effect of embedding phonological awareness training in adult English as a foreign language (EFL) learners’ phonological awareness skill. It involved 63 EFL students who were divided into two groups: Experimental and control. The data were taken by using a phonological awareness test and analyzed by using independent samples t-test. The overall comparison showed that the experimental group who received an embedded phonological awareness training for 4.5 hours (45 minutes of six meetings) surpassed the control group who joined a regular vocabulary class without phonological awareness training (p = .017). Thus, phonological awareness training effectively accelerates adult EFL learners’ phonological awareness skills.

COVID-19 pandemic forces training for principals to be conducted online. This study aims to evaluate the context, input, process, response, study, behavior, and outcome to determine the effectiveness and make recommendations for training. The approach used in this study was a mixed method with a concurrent embedded design and a qualitative method as the main method. The subjects of this study were the principals, committees, and instructors. Data were collected through interviews, observations, and questionnaires and analyzed using Miles and Huberman's model, descriptive analysis, and a t-test. The results show that e-training is effective in context, input, and process. Response, learning, and attitude assessments prove that knowledge, skills, and attitude have improved. Participants will be able to implement the experience gained and impact school quality improvement. This study contributes to the combination of the two evaluation models proven to produce a complete result. The study for the e-training recommends needed assessment before the training, the activity before the training to acquire the skills in using the learning management system, and the monitoring and evaluation after the training.

The practicum is an essential component in the initial training of Secondary Education teachers, as it is the first approach to educational practice that future teachers have. This is a fundamental element for improving the quality of education, as it is one of the objectives of the different educational reforms. This research aims to find out the educational value of the practicum for this group, as well as its advantages and limitations. For this purpose, qualitative research was carried out, using as an instrument an interview with 13 Secondary Education teachers, 2 managers of the master’s degree in Secondary Education Teaching at the University of Granada, 144 students of this master’s degree, and 5 specialists in the subject at a national level. The data obtained were analysed by means of content analysis, using the Nvivo12 program. The most relevant results include the importance of the alternating and interdisciplinary models and development of the activities to be developed by the students during their stay in the schools. Respecting the current model, actions to create the necessary synergies and resources (tutors, supervisors, schools and planning) that promote the training model that is intended are particularly relevant.

The role of preschool teachers in supporting children’s language development is unquestionably substantial. To ensure the quality of preschool teachers’ performance in this specific task, various assessing instruments have been developed and justified in recent years. This study joins such efforts by investigating a new scale based on the “Framework for assessing preschool teacher competence in promoting children’s language development” proposed by a previous research. The scale’s psychometric properties are examined with a sample of 685 Vietnamese preschool teachers. The results supported the four-factor model suggested by the original authors and confirmed its reliability and validity. Finally, further usages of the scale are discussed.

Academic failure and school dropout, or early school leaving, are two of the situations that most concern countries and educational institutions worldwide, because of their prevalence and also their economic and social implications. Despite this prominent role that academic failure and school dropout have in societies, there seems to be no consensus on the literature on their conceptualization, definition, and relationship. Moreover, it is frequent to observe how both concepts are confused or overlap in the scientific literature and how many authors avoid defining these constructs, using them indistinctly. Therefore, this work analyses whether educational research considers them as two different concepts or if they are used indistinctly. For this purpose, 2,051 keywords from 450 articles were subjected to a systematic review and classified into the Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) thesaurus´ descriptors. The results reveal statistically significant differences in the descriptors according to the type of paper to which they correspond (academic failure or dropout). Thus, academic failure is associated with sociocultural, personal, and academic factors, while dropout is linked to employment and educational trajectories. These differences evidence that, although academic failure and school dropout refer to closely related educational problems, there are remarkable differences between them and between the treatment given to each of them in the scientific literature. Therefore, they should be considered as two different concepts. For all this, keyword analysis has proved to be a relevant element for the study of the structure of knowledge, allowing to clearly establish the differences between the two closely related concepts.

In this study we modeled the environmental literacy of Vietnamese preschool teachers. 324 in-service preschool teachers from Ha Noi, Da Nang, and Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam contributed to the study via an online survey. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was used to test the hypotheses of the relationships between environmental knowledge (KN), environmental awareness (AS), decision attitude (DA), personal behavior (PB) and environmental teaching activities (ACT) of these teachers. The results showed that the level of environmental literacy of preschool teachers in Vietnam was moderate with mean score for AS, DA, PB, and ACT ranged from 3.18 to 4.32 on a 5-point Likert-type scale. The results also indicate that the preschool teacher’s KN had a positive impact on AS and DA; PB was influenced by AS, but not by KN or DA. In addition, a correlation analysis showed AS and PB had a positive impact on ACT, while DA had a negative influence on ACT. These findings imply that preschool teachers with certain desirable environmental literacy had more tendencies to implement ACT. Based on the findings, recommendations and implications are provided for policy makers, preschool teachers, and researchers in Vietnam and other countries.

School placement plays a critical and complex role in student teacher development as well as in their professional dispositions and career attitudes. It is where theory and practice meet, teaching skills are developed, professional relationships formed and future careers envisioned. This mixed methods study explores student teachers’ experiences with and perspectives about new models of extended school placements developed in Ireland following significant policy and programme reform. Data was collected through interviews and questionnaires with one of the first cohorts to experience a reconceptualised initial teacher education programme, including extended school placement periods in a variety of school settings. This paper will explore student teachers’ perspectives regarding the value of the extended placement and factors influencing their professional learning, agency and sense of belonging. Overall, our findings confirm the pedagogical benefits of the extended placement in two different school settings for student teachers’ professional learning. However, they also highlight how a number of factors, including the existence (or absence) of school support structures, school culture, peer networks, paid or unpaid additional workload and financial pressures impacted on student teachers’ capabilities to develop their skills and professional agency, their sense of belonging and, in some cases, their physical and mental health.

Multiculturalism in the school environment is challenging for all educational systems. This study examines the effect of multicultural school leadership on multicultural teacher culture and determines mediating effects of multicultural inspiration, personality, and attitude. A quantitative research approach using a cross-sectional survey was used for this study. The population and sample of this study were school principals and high school teachers in Central Java Province, Indonesia. The participants were a total of 357 individuals. Data analysis was done by structural equation modeling (SEM) using the software AMOS 24. The results show that multicultural school leadership directly influences multicultural teacher culture. This study also highlights multicultural inspiration, multicultural personality, and multicultural attitude as factors that mediate the effect of multicultural school leadership on multicultural teacher culture. This study makes a practical and theoretical contribution, especially by providing data to support the improvement of multicultural teacher culture and the importance of multicultural leadership of school leaders in influencing these factors through multicultural inspiration, personality, and attitude.

This descriptive research study aimed to assess the management of the existing policies, guidelines, and procedures on the implementation of the interdisciplinary approach in performance-based assessment (IAPA) before and during Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) as a basis for proposing improvements for its implementation in the “new normal”. 30 senior high school science teachers and school leaders from 5 private and 5 public schools in Metro Manila, Philippines, participated in this study. The participants assessed the management of existing policies, guidelines, and procedures on the IAPA’s implementation using a survey questionnaire and identified its strengths and weaknesses using an interview guide. The researchers developed the instruments used for data collection but subjected to experts’ validation and reliability test. Results reveal that the management of IAPA was effective and that it benefits students and teachers in many ways. However, it has also weaknesses, which are associated with the role of school leaders in the implementation of the policies, guidelines, and/or procedures, especially during the new normal education setting. The study provides suggestions for improving IAPA implementation in the new normal covering both the face-to-face and online learning modalities

Guided by the analytical framework in the current literature, whereby ten nature of science (NOS) aspects were targeted, this study aims at assessing the extent to which the three physics textbooks for Cycle 4 of Fundamental Schools in Burundi represent the NOS aspects. The quantitative embedded research design which combines the qualitative and quantitative to both the representations of text and images were applied to collect and analyses data. Three physics textbooks used in this study as textbooks I, II and III (grade 7 textbook, grade 8 textbook and grade 9 textbook) were purposively selected. 65 physics lessons were analyzed in three steps including exploring representations of NOS aspects, representations of NOS teaching approaches and accuracy and completeness of NOS aspects. Data were collected using a guide document analysis and a rubric of NOS scoring and were analysed descriptively. The findings found a considerable deficit of NOS aspects in the physics textbooks. The findings also revealed the critical situation where the few lessons poorly represent the NOS aspects and the majority of them do not include the aspects of NOS. Furthermore, this study suggests the in-charge of quality assurance to evaluate and deliberate on the accuracy and completeness of physics textbooks for Cycle 4 of Fundamental Education in Burundi.

Mathematics teachers’ instructional strategies lack in-depth knowledge of algebraic systems and hold misconceptions about solving two algebraic equations simultaneously. This study aimed to gain an in-depth analysis of teachers’ knowledge and perceptions about the promotion of conceptual learning and effective teaching of algebraic equations. The main question was, ‘How do junior secondary school mathematics teachers manifest their pedagogical practices when teaching algebraic equations? This article reports on a qualitative, underpinned by the knowledge quartet model study, that sought to explore how junior secondary school teachers’ pedagogical practices manifested in the teaching of algebraic equations. Data were collected from observations, semi-structured interviews, and document analysis of two mathematics teachers purposely selected from two schools. The collected data were analysed using a statistical analysis software called Atlas-ti. (Version 8) and triangulated through thematic analysis. The study revealed that teachers’ choices of representations, examples, and tasks used did not expose learners to hands-on activities that promote understanding and making connections from the underlying algebraic equation concepts. The study proposed Penta-Knowledge Collaborative Planning and Reflective Teaching and Learning Models to enable teachers to collaborate with their peers from the planning stage to lesson delivery reflecting on good practices and strategies for teaching algebraic equations.

The skill to solve mathematical problems facilitates students to develop their basic skills to solve problems in daily life. This study analyzes students' problem-solving process with a reflective cognitive style in constructing probability problems using action, process, object, and schema theory (APOS). The explanatory method was used in this qualitative study. The participants were mathematics students at the Department of Mathematics, Universitas Negeri Semarang. The researchers collected the data with the cognitive style test using the Matching Familiar Figure Test (MFFT), used a valid problem-solving skill test, and the interview questions. The data analysis techniques used were processing and preparing the data for analysis, extensive reading of the data, coding all data, applying the coding process, describing the data, and interpreting the data. The results showed that (1) the problem-solving process of students with symbolic representation was characterized by the use of mathematical symbols to support the problem-solving process in the problem representation phase; (2) the problem-solving process of students with symbolic-visual representation was characterized by the use of symbols, notations, numbers, and visual representation in the form of diagrams in the problem representation phase.