Lesson planning is considered to be an important and efficient tool for effective teaching and learning process. Preparations of effective lesson plan requires teachers to be competent in the pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). This study investigated how the mathematics teachers’ PCK impact their competences on designing effective lesson plans. Twelve in-service mathematics teachers from public secondary schools in Unguja-Island (Zanzibar) of Tanzania were involved. The data were collected using the reviewing of the teachers’ mathematics lesson plan documents and teachers’ interview. The data were analyzed in both quantitative and qualitative mode based on the lesson plan framework guideline (LPFG) and the criteria for better planning of the sections jointly with PCK abilities indicators. The percentage average of occurrence of the sections in the teachers’ designed lesson plan (DLP) and the percentage of occurrence of different category within the sections of the DLP in relation to the criteria were determined. Also, the challenges faced by the teachers in their DLP were identified. The result of the analysis revealed that the PCK competences of mathematics teachers are not good enough to impact their DLP, as some of their designing lesson plan sections were occurred inconsistently. Also, the implementation of PCK competences for effective mathematics teaching found to be at developing stage, as some criteria related to it were not clearly observed in their DLP. The study recommends the demand of in-service training for mathematics teachers on the implementation of teachers’ competences particularly PCK in the lesson plan designing for effective classroom practices.

Technological tools are means by which online teaching could encourage the engagement of students, especially elementary students. The present research studies how elementary teachers develop their use of technological tools in their asynchronous and synchronous online teaching, specifically when this online teaching occurs during emergency education. The research was conducted in the academic year 2019/2020. We interviewed two elementary teachers, where one of them taught asynchronous lessons more than synchronous, while the second taught synchronous lessons more than asynchronous. We analyzed the data using two frameworks: one for interaction type and one for engagement type. The research results indicated that different interaction types influenced teachers’ decisions to use technological tools. In addition, what concerned the teachers’ use of tools at the beginning was the cognitive engagement, but they advanced towards focusing on behavioral and the affective engagement.

This study investigated student teachers’ teaching self-efficacy level and factors that predict it (using five-factor mentoring model). Two hundred and ten third and fourth-year student teachers (N=100/N=110; 93.8% females) were involved in the study and asked to complete a self-report questionnaire. The “Mentoring for Effective Primary Teaching” instrument and “Teachers' Sense of Efficacy Scale” were used to collect the data. Findings indicated that higher levels of student teachers' self-efficacy are positively associated with the level of mentoring experience during the teaching practicum. The results found that fourth-year students reported significantly higher levels of teaching self-efficacy than third-year students. This study reported that there is a significant mean difference in student teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs in terms of having parents in the teaching profession. A multiple regression found that mentor teachers’ personal attributes are the best predictor of student teachers' teaching self-efficacy beliefs.

The increase of English language learners (ELLs) in the United States of America (USA) public school classrooms and the diversification of the global education landscape urges initial teacher preparation programs to equip mainstream teachers with appropriate skills, knowledge, and dispositions to teach ELLs. This paper reports findings from a focus group study on elementary teacher candidates' (TCs') field experiences with ELLs. Based on interviews with four groups of TCs who completed their two practicums with ELLs, the study illustrates how mainstream TCs perceive their field experiences as future teachers of ELLs. The findings suggest that TCs recognize dissonances and develop care toward ELLs through their engagements in ELL-specific field experiences. The study also demonstrates how the recognition of dissonances led to changes in TCs' beliefs and values, which was observed through their imagination. Informed by their field experiences with ELLs, TCs began forming professional agency as future teachers by imagining specific teaching strategies, methods, and approaches they would like to implement with ELLs. Implications and future directions of teacher education programs are also discussed.

Learning by teaching is a technique where students teach an actual class to facilitate active learning. This paper reports ongoing research involving undergraduate students at an established university in Indonesia. The objective of this quantitative study was to find out the effect of this teaching technique in improving students’ 21st century skills. The sample was selected using a cluster sampling technique, where 25 students who were English as a Foreign Language pre-service teachers were assigned to an experimental group, and the other 23 students were treated as a control group. The students in the experimental group were asked to conduct a workshop in groups to students from the same department at a different university. Each group selected one of the topics in their course syllabus. A pre-test measuring the students’ soft skills was conducted before the course started and after it finished. The results show that soft skills, which include accountability, communication, innovation, problem-solving, teamwork, professional working, and networking skills, improved significantly among students in the experimental group, but the improvement was not evident in the control group. Therefore, learning by teaching should be embraced as an alternative teaching technique when soft-skill development becomes a target of instruction.

The learning management system (LMS) is a crucial component of the e-learning transformation which is becoming more urgent amid the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak. The issue of adopting LMS is even more decisive in developing countries, where lots of efforts have been put out to broaden educational opportunities. However, there has not yet been any comprehensive analysis of how LMS-related issues are examined in these countries. To address this gap, this study uses the bibliometric method to construct an overview of research on this topic. The results unveil the distribution of the literature, prominent actors, and dominant themes in the literature of LMS in developing countries. In summary, the topic is a robustly potential research matter. Future researchers can use this study as a starter when investigating relevant subjects.

Prospective teachers facing the 21st century are expected to have the ability to solve problems with a computer mindset. Problems in learning mathematics also require the concept of computational thinking (CT). However, many still find it challenging to solve this problem. The subjects in this study were twenty-one prospective mathematics teachers who took number theory courses, and then two research samples were selected using the purposive sampling technique. This study uses a qualitative descriptive method to describe the thinking process of prospective teachers in solving Diophantine linear equation problems. The results showed that the first subject's thought process was started by turning the problem into a mathematical symbol, looking for the Largest Common Factor (LCF) with the Euclidean algorithm, decomposition process, and evaluation. The second subject does not turn the problem into symbols and does not step back in the algorithm. The researcher found that teacher candidates who found solutions correctly in their thinking process solved mathematical problem used CT components, including reflective abstraction thinking, algorithmic thinking, decomposition, and evaluation. Further research is needed to develop the CT components from the findings of this study on other materials through learning with a CT approach.

Competent instructors need to have the skills, abilities, and competencies to perform tasks effectively, which will affect student learning achievement. This study is guided by the theory of Boyatzis developed by Spencer and Spencer. The Iceberg Competency Model was used as a guideline to identify the competency elements of educators from the agricultural stream in vocational colleges (KV). This research study aims to explore and identify the existing competency elements of agricultural educators in KV. This study used a study population comprising 243 respondents of agricultural educators in KV. To answer the research question, the data analysis was done by Partial Least Squares - Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). This study is a study built to observe the relationship between the latent constructs studied. These constructs consisted of exogenous and endogenous constructs. In this study, exogenous constructs comprised value constructs, social roles, self-image, motives, traits and constraints. At the same time, endogenous constructs involved constructs of skills and knowledge. To ensure that the construct of this study gives meaning to the reflective measurement model, it was evaluated based on internal consistency reliability and validity. Regarding the framework, some indicators that did not qualify were dropped based on factor loading and average variance extracted (AVE). From the analysis conducted, 16 indicators were dropped since they did not meet PLS-SEM requirements. The total number of items retained was 71 indicators. At the final stage of this study, the evaluation model was implemented to form a framework involving the evaluation of the constructs linked to each other.

The government has imposed social restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic, affecting the education sector, including the early childhood school. Distance education offers different methods from the conventional methods, as the students are expected to gain the same skills, including critical thinking skills. Therefore, teachers must provide distance learning innovations using relevant learning media, such as multimedia-based learning. This research aims to assess the efficacy of multimedia learning in early childhood distance learning. This research is a quantitative model with a quasi-experimental pretest and posttest design. The data collection technique utilized questionnaires given to 30 samples of early childhood children. The data were statistically analyzed using SPSS software. The results confirmed that multimedia-based learning for distance learning could develop critical thinking skills in early childhood children during the COVID-19 pandemic. The results of this study offer exploration of learning strategies to improve children’s critical thinking.

This study focuses on online supervisory written feedback on PhD supervisees’ performance, given explicitly through online communication, particularly during the first wave of COVID-19. This unusual situation has brought many different effects on students’ academic lives. This scenario has influenced both students’ and teachers’ mutual communication. A directed qualitative content analysis (DQCA) approach was adapted from previous research and modified for the present context. The current study planned to bring forth the supervisee and supervisors’ perception of the communication and feedback process, considering that online feedback and communication has been a new experience for most students. According to the findings, teachers/supervisors give feedback on students’ production, whereas teacher-student communication also seemed crucial for the performance improvising of learners. The result brought forth a wide range of social, educational, and surprisingly psychological issues both supervisees and supervisors faced during online communication during COVID-19.

This review explores research into the effects of collaborative learning interventions on critical thinking, creative thinking, and metacognitive skill ability on biological learning. The search was conducted from 2000 to 2021. We found 36 critical thinking studies, 18 creative thinking studies, and 14 metacognitive skill studies that met the criteria. The results showed that collaborative learning influences large categories (ES=4.23) on critical thinking, influences large categories (ES= 7.84) on creative thinking, and influences large categories (ES= 8.70) on metacognitive skill. The study's findings show that collaborative learning interventions have the highest impact on metacognitive abilities. Based on these findings, we provide insights for education research and practitioners on collaborative learning interventions that seem to benefit the empowerment of high levels of thinking at various levels of education to be combined with various other interventions in the future. The type of intervention, level of education, materials used, and study quality criteria were included in the study.

The paramount objective of English language teaching and learning is to achieve language competence in communicative purposes with the minimal learners’ errors. To attain that goal, corrective feedback plays an important role due to its efficiency in developing learners’ English capacity. However, the correlation between language students’ and teachers’ views on the issues of corrective feedback including its types, methods and timing has received inadequate attention from educational scholars. This study, therefore, aimed to examine teachers’ and learners’ perceptions of corrective feedback at a higher education institution. The research employed the mixed method with the participation of 425 law-majored sophomores. Specifically, the statistics involved the survey questionnaires, follow-up interviews with students as well as the interview with thirteen teachers of English. The results indicated overall matches between learners’ and teachers’ high remarks on the necessity of oral corrective feedback in the students’ English acquisition. Notably, they both highly valued the use of metalinguistic feedback, prompt feedback for grammatical and lexical errors while explicit correction and recast were preferred for phonological errors. In terms of feedback timing, students were perceived not to be negatively affected by immediate correction, yet expressed their preferences for the delayed corrective feedback, which was compatible with teachers’ views. Such findings set practical pedagogical implications for language educators in the language teaching and learning process.

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.

Mathematics anxiety in initial teacher education is a growing issue that reflects on teacher quality and their student’s maths anxiety and abilities. Previous studies have presented a range of different perspectives to mathematics anxiety. We aimed to explore further the reasons of mathematics anxiety in preservice teachers and suggest some intervention strategies in reducing maths anxiety for initial teacher education systems. We used a mixed methodology in this research analysing both qualitative data along with some quantified data derived from qualitative data sources. The findings provide insights to causes of maths and test anxiety along with some intervention strategies that teacher educators can use in their future teaching.

This study was conducted following the initial stage of the transition to distance education necessitated by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and meeting the various challenges that came with it. At this point, countries and teachers have gained experience in preparing and delivering online education. Therefore, the study aimed to identify the beliefs of primary school mathematics teachers about teaching in synchronous virtual classrooms. It adopted a mixed methods approach, following a convergent parallel design. The overall study sample comprised 410 male and female teachers. A questionnaire was used to collect quantitative data across three dimensions (teaching efficiency, employing the philosophy of active learning, mathematical achievement). There were 31 items (verified for validity and reliability) comprising statements measured using a five-point Likert scale, together with open-ended options for further elaboration. In total, 130 teachers completed the questionnaire. Interviews were conducted with 10 teachers to collect qualitative data. The results show means in the range 3–5.75 for agreement with statements concerning the beliefs of mathematics teachers about teaching in virtual classrooms in the following order of importance: teaching competence; mathematical achievement; employing the philosophy of active learning. The study also found no statistically significant differences attributable to the variables of gender, qualification, or teaching experience, and also that many factors are considered to affect teaching in synchronous virtual classrooms related to the teacher, the family, and the student.

The purpose of this study was to look into teachers' perceptions of code-switching functions and effects in English as a foreign language classroom. In the study, a descriptive survey design and an interview were used to investigate the functions and effects of code-switching in English as a foreign language (EFL) classroom. 46 people responded to the survey questionnaire about code-switching functions and their impact in the classroom. Seven teachers participated in the group interview. The interview findings revealed six functions and four effects of code-switching. According to the survey findings, the majority of teachers supported the use of code-switching in their classrooms because it served a useful purpose in the process of teaching and learning English. The findings also revealed that teachers believed code-switching provided a clear purpose and had a positive impact on instruction and language development in EFL classrooms by creating a sociable environment. It was also demonstrated that code-switching to teachers was effective in EFL classrooms and played an important role in English learning and teaching. The implications of the findings for EFL teachers and language learning settings were discussed.

In the last decades, the notion of universal design for learning (UDL) has gained prominence in the Greek educational scene (former government plan in education, projects based on UDL). This educational philosophy is essentially a necessary inclusive practice given the new conditions, the extreme heterogeneity of the student population due to socio-political and economic factors, and the exceptional circumstances due to COVID-19 pandemic. The UDL aims to ensure access and equity in learning for all learners despite differentiating characteristics. With our study, we seek to investigate whether teachers in secondary and second chance schools (SCS) are ready to implement UDL, what their expectations are, what obstacles they face, and the results of implementation through their records in reflection journals, a practice that is fully consistent with the context of UDL.

The decline in student character is the result of low student learning outcomes. The common student learning outcomes are influenced by several factors, and one of them is teacher-centered, monotonous learning model. For this reason, it is deemed necessary to conduct research that aims to determine the effect of project-based assessment on values clarification technique (VCT) learning on improving students’ learning outcomes by controlling the family environment. This study uses a 2x2 factorial experimental design. The sample was selected through multistage random sampling with 120 students. The two-way ANCOVA data analysis technique was used to analyze the data. The findings obtained after controlling the family environment are: 1) civics learning outcomes from the group of students who used value clarification techniques are higher than those using conventional learning models and 2) civics learning outcomes from the group of students who were given project-based assessments are higher than the group who are given conventional assessments. Thus, it can be recommended that civics education teachers used appropriate VCT and project-based assessments to improve learning outcomes.

The delivery of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) learning to improve an individual’s competence and future career interests has become a critical scientific undertaking for teachers and researchers alike. A plethora of research has proposed various hands-on robotics activities built on constructivist theories, thereby facilitating the development of knowledge based on reality for scientific and non-scientific stakeholders. Robotics may become an essential focus point within technology provision, which is an essential underlying characteristic for the seminal development of computational thinking (CT). However, despite the potential benefit of CT in developing an individual’s problem-solving skills, strategies for improving this ability through hands-on robotics activities largely remain underexplored. This paper highlights the constructs drawn from hands-on robotics activities in a STEM workshop designed for pre-service teacher students. The qualitative research design involved eight participants to investigate the responses of pre-service teachers to a hands-on robotics activity intended to provide STEM material. The research findings emphasise the correlations between the CT principles and STEM learning phases and underscore the roles played by educational robotics to enhance previous literature on learning experience.

Translanguaging enables students to communicate in multiple languages in an English-dominant classroom. It has received considerable attention from scholars in content and language integrated learning (CLIL). Its implementation in primary schools in European countries has been adopted in Asian countries, including Indonesia. This study employed a narrative inquiry investigating a teacher who taught first graders both content matter and English during the COVID-19 forced-remote learning. Furthermore, data were gathered using semi-structured interviews to guide the participant in narrating CLIL science teaching experiences. Virtual observations were carried out eight times to obtain evidence of translanguaging practiced. Due to forced-remote learning, the results indicated that the teacher had to find the most convenient ways to instruct the young students without adding to their burden. Furthermore, it was reported that scaffolding by translanguaging was planned systematically by valuing the students’ L1 and alternating it with English as the target language. The findings also discussed the practical implications of this study to maintain young learners' (YLs) engagement through translanguaging strategies.