This qualitative study examines the experiences of pre-service high school biology teachers in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam, focusing on the challenges and transformative learning experiences encountered during their school-based internship. It aims to explore the dichotomy between specialized biology knowledge and practical applicability in high school teaching and uncover the significance of fostering student engagement through innovative strategies and the role of mentor teachers in guiding pre-service teachers. Semi-structured interviews were used to collect data from pre-service biology teachers who completed a school-based internship in the Mekong Delta. Thematic analysis was employed to analyze the interview data. The study highlights the challenges of bridging the gap between theoretical knowledge and classroom practice, emphasizing the importance of innovative teaching strategies for student engagement. It recognizes the role of mentor teachers in guiding and enhancing the skills of pre-service teachers in creating effective learning environments. Findings suggest the need for curriculum reforms that balance specialized biology knowledge and practical pedagogical skills. The study emphasizes the importance of experiential learning through teaching apprenticeships to better prepare pre-service teachers for their professional journey.

The purpose of this research is to develop a worksheet that can support a digital science practicum. Conducting a needs analysis comes first in the development of worksheets, then comes product creation. The product produced based on the needs test analysis is a worksheet with the help of science worksheet-augmented reality (SWAR). Two knowledgeable education professionals then evaluate the finished product and test it out on participants or students. The results of the study show that worksheets equipped with augmented reality media are necessary. Meanwhile, the resulting product is valid in an almost perfect category (Pe = 0.7219; Po = 0.9744; K = 0.9078). Student perceptions of the products produced are at an "excellent" level in each category (ME-Av, mean = 3.466; CO-Av, mean = 3.472; CT-Av, mean = 3.503; ST-Av, mean = 3,507; TA-Av, mean = 3.440; IN-Av, mean = 3.640; MO-Av, mean = 3.640). There is a significant inverse relationship between media features (ME-Av) and student interest (IN-Av) based on Pearson's correlation test with r = -.50 (p < .50). Further explanation is presented based on the data that has been collected.

Today's college students relate directly to the information through which they learn. They are the ones who detect the information they need, search and evaluate it, and also use it to develop academic projects. Information literacy programs have increased in universities to support the development of these skills to students. The aim of this study was to provide an instrument that allows the measurement of information competency in higher level students and generate evidence of its validity and reliability. The Information Management Brief Inventory (IMBS) was developed, which consisted of 16 Likert type items. IMBS was applied to a sample of 1,937 students from a public university in northern Mexico. For the evaluation of the construct validity and identification of the factor grouping of the items, an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was carried out. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was carried out to explore the goodness of fit of the model. It was found that the 16 items were grouped into three factors: information management, access to information and information ethics. The psychometric properties of IMBS were adequate.

In this article, we discuss the impacts of using 3D printing in education. Our primary goal is to evaluate the pedagogical impact of lessons utilizing 3D printing. We asked one hundred ninety students in four reference schools about the acceptability of existing 3D materials for teaching. Although the results show high attractiveness for the target group, it turned out that the available lessons primarily focus on the acquisition of technical skills and do not use the potential of education in other areas. We, therefore, proposed a concept for creating multidisciplinary teaching lessons that connect the technical part with other educational areas. We show the application of our concept in a newly developed lesson in biology, where we again evaluate its acceptance among the students. The results show that although the multidisciplinary lessons are more complex, they are still acceptable to the students, and, most importantly, they add significant educational value. Finally, we discuss the possibilities of incorporating 3D printing into the teaching curriculum. We also use a selected use case to illustrate the real-world problems we have encountered.

Due to irregular daytime routines, chronotype changes, side jobs and exam periods, after the COVID-19 pandemic, university students are trying to find new balances in their everyday life. The aim of the present study is to analyze the impact of daytime chronotype and hour preferences for the circadian rhythm on academic achievement among university students, considering their sleep habits and class frequencies in daytime and nighttime classes. Furthermore, this study aimed to analyze the differences in chronotype preferences with regard to age, sex, and academic schedule students are attending. A sample of 87 university second-year Psychology and Management students attending the academic year 2021/2022 after the governmental relief measures of the COVID-19 pandemic completed a 13-item questionnaire on sleep habits and preferences. Further variables encompassed sleep behaviors, such as age, sex, daytime and nighttime classes, as well as academic achievement. The results of the study showed that university students had a higher preference for the morningness type. Additionally, chronotype traits explained 30% (values from regression analysis) of academic achievement but did not directly impact academic results. The sleep&amp;amp;amp;amp;ndash;wake cycle diverged among age groups because the youngest participants (19&amp;amp;amp;amp;ndash;21 years old) and older participants (35&amp;amp;amp;amp;ndash;44 years old) reported higher academic scores during the first semester and the full academic year. No significant differences were identified with respect to sex. There is a lack of literature explaining the effect of sleep hours on academic achievement among students after stay-at-home rules during the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, it is imperative to understand the difficulties students face with regard to their studying hours, working shifts, and daytime or nighttime classes to create a sustainable university system that attends to students&amp;amp;amp;amp;rsquo; needs and necessities.

Psychosocial and educational intervention approaches employ diverse treatment frameworks, most of which involve delivering some form of feedback to participants about their behavior. General conceptions of feedback are well-known to underlie mainstream therapeutic and educational approaches. Recently emerging ‘smart’ approaches also rely on feedback principles. However, little scholarship is available to stitch together evolving strands of feedback principles and no literature characterizes explicitly the diverse landscape of feedback practices employed in education or intervention science. This paper reviews intrinsic conceptions of feedback along with diverse cases of its use in intervention and education. Based on our consideration, we present a typology of feedback modalities that we hope will enrich the efforts of interventionists and educators to design treatment and educational frameworks incorporating feedback.

This study investigated the extent to which demographic variables, principal support and teacher self-efficacy contribute to the collective teacher efficacy. In the study, a non-probability purposive sample was used, which included 761 teachers working in compulsory primary schools in all parts of the Republic of Croatia. The first part of the administered online questionnaire provided data on sociodemographic characteristics of the respondents, while in the second part, the following scales were used: The Principal Support Scale, The Teacher Sense of Teacher Efficacy Scale and The Collective Teacher Efficacy Scale. The results of the performed regression analyses show that: 1) the demographic variables - workplace, promotion to a higher rank and principal support have a predictive value in explaining teachers’ self-efficacy; 2) an average number of students per class, promotion to a higher rank, principal support, teacher engagement and teaching strategies have a predictive value in explaining collective teacher efficacy. The findings of this study will be discussed in terms of their potential impact and future research.

Although central governments, particularly in Latin America and the Caribbean, have defined reducing school dropout rates as a priority, and drawn policies accordingly, there are still young people who do not finish secondary education, and numbers are still alarming. Therefore, it is necessary to observe educational communities and analyze how they interpret and implement guidelines issued by the central government. The following study sought to describe the institutional and teaching practices deployed by four high schools in Valparaíso (Chile) in order to achieve student retention. A qualitative approach was employed. The management team, support professionals, teachers, students, and their families were interviewed. The information gathered was analyzed using the Grounded Theory. As a main finding, establishments use practices such as monitoring attendance, providing support to students facing problematic situations, and encouraging them during class, through a series of strategies. It is recommended that researchers implement this type of methodology for other study objectives, and that the central government consider these results to provide feedback on its policies.

This study aims to analyse the relationship between critical thinking and the learning experience provided by instructors through active learning models, specifically Project-based Learning (PjBL) and Simulation-based Learning (SBL), to the potential achievement of academic performance in undergraduate students. The main analysis technique employed in this research was logistic regression, with additional analysis techniques including discriminant validity, EFA, as well as Kendall’s and Spearman’s correlation, serving as a robustness check. The results of this study indicate significant correlations and effects of critical thinking (CT) on academic performance. Higher levels of CT are associated with a greater likelihood of achieving academic excellence, as indicated by the cum laude distinction, compared to not attaining this distinction. Experiences of receiving PjBL (0.025; 6.816) and SBL (0.014; 14.35) predicted the potential for improving academic performance to reach cum laude recognition, relative to not achieving this distinction. Furthermore, other intercept factors need to be considered to achieve cum laude compared to not achieving cum laude. We recommend that policymakers in higher education, instructors, and others focus on enhancing critical thinking and utilizing both Pub and SBL as learning models to improve students’ academic performance.

There has been a clear shift in higher education to prepare and empower the current students for a future quite different and more complex than that faced by previous generations. In particular, it is expected that they will possess comprehensive abilities to deal with challenges arising from new employment demands and beyond. While liberal arts education has a long history in the West, it has been increasingly implemented more recently in East Asia as one response to the need for educational reform. The research reported here is an empirical study of how liberal arts education has affected individuals from two institutions with distinctive interpretations of “liberal arts education” - University N, the first Sino-foreign joint university in mainland China, and University L, the only public liberal arts university in Hong Kong. Drawing on Bourdieu’s Theory of Practice, this study illustrates the interplay and balance among students’ practical concerns, their sense of social obligation fostered through liberal arts education elements and the wider social structure. Semi-structured interviews with senior students, fresh graduates, and educators were conducted to gather in-depth primary data. These reveal that, by providing interdisciplinary knowledge and transferable skill sets, a liberal arts education experience does enhance individuals’ personal agency and intellectual competencies in a professional context - they are trained to become independent thinkers and learners. Moreover, the “humanistic” aspect of liberal arts is also relevant: having engaged in various activities and programs, students in both universities are encouraged to care, cooperate, and make positive differences in their increasingly interconnected communities.

This study aims to develop a Critical Thinking-Independent Learning (CTIL) model to improve students' critical thinking skills that meet valid, practical, and effective criteria. This type of research was Research and Development (R&D), with a one-group pre-test and post-test design without a controlled class. The CTIL model was validated by three experts in the field of science education and then tested on 156 students in three public junior high schools in Surabaya, Indonesia. The results revealed that: (a) The CTIL model was valid based on the model validity score with an average of 3.73 (very good category) and the validity score of the learning materials with an average of 3.72 (very good category); (b) The practical CTIL model based on the averaged observations of the implementation of learning using the CTIL model was 3.88 (very good category); and (c) The CTIL model was effective based on four determining factors, namely: an increase in critical thinking skills, which was statistically significant at alpha .05; the calculated mean N-gain of .72 (high category), similar mean values for all test classes in all schools participated in this study; the effect size of 3.07 (strong category); and the average student response of 84% (very good category).

This paper presents the meaning and characteristics of collaboration between school counsellors, school principals, and teachers in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic in Slovenia and the extraordinary situation in which work in educational institutions changed dramatically overnight and the community of students and professionals moved into a virtual space. In the first part of the paper, we highlight that a strong network of professionals in an educational institution is key to achieving the vision, goals and quality of educational work. In the second part of the paper, we present the results of a survey conducted through an online questionnaire among 328 Slovenian counsellors during the first wave of COVID-19 in April 2020. The results of this survey show a positive attitude of counsellors towards collaboration with principals and teachers. The emergency situation has raised awareness among all school professionals about the importance of mutual support, while providing an opportunity to reflect on ways to improve mutual collaboration and build mutual relationships that enable quality pedagogical work. One of the biggest challenges for any school community now is to maintain the sense of alliance and mutual support that was created in many schools during the pandemic.

The current research aims to analyze art teaching as an inclusive factor and pays attention to diversity in excluded populations to meet the needs of students in the pandemic context. In regard to methodology, we used the naturalistic paradigm, a qualitative approach, and an inductive method with a phenomenological and hermeneutical design. The data collection techniques we used were semi-structured interviews with teachers of the Regular Basic Education in Peru. The findings show that through the mediation of diverse artistic languages and the implementation of different didactic strategies, it is possible to achieve an interaction free from exclusion barriers, driven by good teaching practices that enable the inclusion and attention to the diversity of students, providing them with opportunities to develop capacities and skills to establish better coexistence. We concluded that art education comprises a lasting learning process that guarantees a healthy environment for peaceful coexistence, which today, inclusive teachers, parents, and students should keep in mind.

Situational interest is an important factor that has a great influence on learning success in both in-school and out-of-school learning situations. Although there has been extensive research on interest in its diverse forms for decades, an evaluated measurement instrument for situational interest that covers the three theoretically defined components of interest (emotional, cognitive, value-related) is still missing. Therefore, in this study, based on person-object theory of interest, a short scale was developed that can be used in a variety of learning programs independent of content or methods. In study 1, eight suitable items were selected and their structure was examined using exploratory methods. In study 2, the results of study 1 were verified using confirmatory factor analyses. Study 3 shows an example of a practical application of the newly developed scale in two different learning settings. The findings provide evidence that the scale developed here is a practical instrument to measure situational interest taking into account all its components. On the one hand, the scale can help teachers evaluate their educational programs; on the other hand, it can be used by researchers to empirically investigate the construct of interest. Thus, the scale makes an important contribution to research and practice.

Kindergarten educators represent the first contact of children with the institutional environment. In this article we assume that kindergarten educators have a significant impact on children's perception of their first/mother tongue and their language development. Language is one of the core kindergarten curriculum areas in which the educator needs to be adequately empowered to set an example for the children, while at the same time developing their communicative competence which is the basis for (later) efficient communication. We carried out a questionnaire-based survey involving 236 students pursuing early childhood education in all three public universities in the Republic of Slovenia which prepares students for the role of kindergarten educators in order to study their perceptions of the language. The questionnaire-based survey was answered by students in their first and third years i.e., when starting and finishing their studies. A large majority of future kindergarten educators consider their positive attitude towards language in general to be extremely important for kindergarten children as language forms the basis for all other curriculum areas. Also, when surveyed, almost all future kindergarten educators considered it essential to be proficient in the language and to encourage language development in children by following their own example. Furthermore, they believe it is important to have a well-developed linguistic capability (language knowledge), to have the capability of crafting linguistically accurate written content and to master a suitable literary expression.

School attendance problems are of great research interest, which is reflected in the increase of scientific publications. This increase hinders the adequate follow-up and updating of the scientific community on the subject. The aim of the present bibliometric study lies in the review of the scientific literature published on school attendance problems during 2014-2021. A bibliographic search and analysis of scientific articles was performed, obtaining a definitive sample of 700 documents. Results were extracted and analyzed for the following indicators: temporal productivity, productivity by authors, co-authorship index, productivity by journals, use of topics, research areas addressed and types of samples used. The number of publications indicates a progressive increase of interest on the subject, which has not corresponded to the creation of a specific journal on the subject. There is also evidence of the need for consensus on the topics to be used; the preference for knowing the factors associated with school attendance problems over other areas of research; and the generalized use of community samples as opposed to more specific ones. In conclusion, the characteristics researched on school attendance problems are presented; knowledge that will facilitate the establishment of intervention processes applicable to different contexts and realities.

The Attraction-Selection-Attrition (ASA) model is a prominent framework for supporting employee retention, stating that organisations attract, select, and retain people who share their values. However, the ASA model only extends to the end of the recruitment stage and lacks clarity on how to assist newcomers in the assimilation process when they first join the organisation. This research proposed a refinement of the ASA paradigm by incorporating the assimilation process of new hires into the new school culture and environment. This study employed a qualitative research approach by interviewing ten participants about the retention process from high teacher retention international schools in Malaysia. Thematic data analysis revealed a new paradigm, 'Attraction-Selection-Onboarding-Retention (ASOR), ' designed to increase teacher retention in international schools. The ASOR model could assist school administrators and human resource managers working in a related setting in properly engaging the workforce to increase teacher retention. This would benefit school sustainability, performance and the local community's economy.

The importance of research competence in pre-service teacher education has been highlighted in many studies, but concerns over the lack and inconsistency of definition, measurement, and development of research competence still exist. This poses a challenge for pre-service education programmes to provide quality education to pre-service teachers in this area. Through a systematic literature review it was found that there is a gap in the existing literature regarding the definition of research competence in pre-service teacher education, as there seems to be no consensus on the definition. There is, however, an agreement that the development of research competence is an important part of study programmes, as it contributes to higher quality education of pre-service teachers. Addressing this, the review proposes a concise definition of research competence as a multifaceted construct that includes critical thinking, self-directed learning, and organizational skills essential for effective research. The review also highlighted a lack of consensus on the most appropriate frameworks and tools to use in measuring research competence in pre-service teachers, with studies using various frameworks and tools that differ in terms of research methods, instruments and sample characteristics. The results suggest that there is a need for greater attention to be paid to the definition and measurement of research competence, as well as its development within pre-service teacher education programmes.

Our research aim is to describe how Preservice Teachers (PSTs) can rehearse and prepare for leading productive talks in mathematics and other subjects. Based on literature and previous research on what constitutes productive talks, we focus on questions and talk moves in this case study, where we follow three groups of PSTs during their practicum, practicing conducting productive talks in mathematics. Our research questions are: What kinds of questions do PSTs ask? What kinds of talk moves do they use? How do these questions and talk moves contribute to the PSTs breaking the IRE (Initiation–Response–Evaluation) pattern and moving towards more productive mathematics talks with complex exchanges of questions and responses? And furthermore: How can we use these findings to improve teacher education in this field? We find that leading productive talks in the mathematics classroom is a challenging task, but there is variation between our three groups in what they struggle with. In accordance with previous research, we also find that the third turn in the exchange, following up after a question and a response is a crucial point in the conversation. One recommendation for teacher education is that video filming and analysing classroom talks might help PSTs to become conscious of and improve on this point. Further research is needed both on long term effect of such practice and focus, and on other ways to improve classroom talks in mathematics and other subjects.

This study investigated young children’s recognition of social rules and responses to social-conventional transgressions in Japanese preschool settings. One hundred twenty-six children aged three to six years old heard four hypothetical stories that describe typical social-conventional transgressions in Japanese preschools. They were asked about their feelings when they witnessed each transgression (emotional response), whether they thought it was better to follow social rules and act like everyone else (social convention judgment), their justification for the judgment, and their willingness to play with the transgressor (interaction judgment). Most participants in all age groups valued following social rules and judged that the transgressor should act like everyone else, but five-year-olds generated more group- and other-oriented justifications for the judgment. Although there were no significant age group differences in interaction judgment, further analysis showed that three-year-olds’ willingness to play with the transgressor was positively related to their positive emotion, whereas such relationships were not found in four- and five-year-olds. The results demonstrate that Japanese children’s responses to social-conventional transgressions become more social and complex throughout young childhood in the Japanese cultural context.