Due to Finnish pupils’ achievements in international comparisons, also Finnish teacher training has been widely acknowledged. Today’s educational policies aim at making teacher training more effective in Finland. However, in order to realize this in practice, not only reforms in educational policy or institutions are enough. More attention should be paid on student teachers’ study processes as a whole. In this article, we introduce an illustration of the factors that comprise student teachers’ study processes at universities. Based on the illustration, we will discuss what makes a good study process as the teacher’s academic degree and how teacher educators can make students’ progress on their study paths motivating and fruitful. We argue that teacher educators should be more thoughtful and willing to genuinely help and confront students as individuals: teacher educators should act as mentors who further students’ engagement in studying.

The aim of this study is to review the academic papers written in Turkey on the subject of school readiness, with regard to one of the dimensions of school readiness, that of schools’ readiness for children. The examinations were carried out using one of the qualitative research designs, namely the nested case study design. The study universe consists of 45 articles in Turkish that include the subject of school readiness published in 26 academic journals between the years 2012-2017. With the purposeful sampling method, 14 academic papers that include the dimension of schools’ readiness for children were taken as the study sample. The obtained data were analyzed by descriptive content analysis. The analysis results show that half of the studies reviewed were published in the year 2014. It was observed that in the papers, among the components of the dimension of schools’ readiness for children, the schools’ physical readiness component was most often mentioned. In the articles including the schools’ physical readiness component, it was observed that mainly, findings indicating that schools were not physically suitable for first-year pupils’ level of physical development had been made. As for the component of teachers’ readiness, research findings were accessed relating to the fact that teachers were not prepared for students in terms of their attitudes and values as well as their professional knowledge and skills. Moreover, in the articles, in terms of readiness of the schedule for students, findings were accessed regarding the fact that primary school programmes were not suitable for the levels of the students or for their levels of readiness.

This study focuses on the evaluation of academic conferences and ways of improving them. The study includes a case study of one university in Israel. Sixty two academic faculty members from varied departments completed a questionnaire, including 61.7% women and 38.3% men. The research participants were asked a single open question: "What do you think could be improved at conferences?" In addition, age, seniority, and the number of times the respondents had initiated or served as a partner in initiating a conference were also examined. The main findings are as follows: Age predicts seniority. Seniority has a positive effect on the number of times the respondent organized or was a partner in organizing a conference. Seniority has a negative effect on time, i.e., the more senior the faculty member the more he or she would like conferences to be short and to the point. Moreover, the amount of initiatives to organize a conference or to be a partner in establishing a conference has a negative effect on interaction, i.e., the more initiating the faculty member the less he or she is interested in interpersonal interactions at conferences. The wish to space out sessions and lectures has a positive effect on the need to improve the quality of the lectures.

The purpose of the current study is to determine pre-service teachers’ opinions about 21st century learner and teacher skills. The study group of the current research is comprised of 391 senior students from an education faculty. As the data collection tool, the 21st century Learner Skills Use Questionnaire and 21st Century Teacher Skills Use Questionnaire were employed. In the analysis of the collected data, frequencies, percentages, arithmetic means, independent samples t-Test, One-Way Anova, Correlation, Mann Whitney-U, Kruskal Wallis techniques were used. The findings of the study revealed that the pre-service teachers’ opinions about 21st century learner and teacher skills vary significantly depending on the variables of gender, department attended, academic achievement, experience of private tutoring and practicum teaching (doing practicum teaching at elementary and secondary schools). As a result, it was concluded that the pre-service teachers are ready for using 21st century learner skills (cognitive skills, autonomous skills, collaboration and flexibility skills, innovativeness skills) and teacher skills (administrative skills, technopedagogical skills, affirmative skills, flexible teaching skills, generative skills). However, it was also found that the pre-service teachers were not able to make enough use of learner and teacher skills during their practicum teaching at schools. Moreover, a positive, medium and significant correlation was found between 21st century learner skills and 21st century teacher skills.

The vision that we will present is not intended to be exhaustive or totalizing, although it does attempt to highlight the most significant aspects that characterize it. It is a reflection of more than twenty years of work in the educational field, at different levels and with different functions, it is also the result of personal evolution, and how she will be subject to evolution. Comparing media studies with the 19th century, it seems that media has conquered an essential position in every individual's life. This study meets the requirements of a growing pool of traditional and non-traditional students, including teachers, who find education as an important aspect for jobs in the modern age of information and technology. This research will utilize the literature which has been published already, including quantitative as well as qualitative measures. Past papers were selected, which were published in different areas. Comparing with other empirical research, the first phase of the procedure of the study is to collect the data The study is to identify the teachers and learner's characteristics such as affective, cognitive, and social factors which causes an impact on learning and teaching enhanced environment in media studies.

This study aimed to describe seven indicators of students’ verbal linguistic intelligence in reading subject. It used a qualitative research method. The subjects of this study were 30 students consisted of 9 male and 21 female students. They took the reading subject in the second semester of the first year. They were given a test of verbal-linguistic intelligence. Seven students were selected to be interviewed because they have verbal-linguistic intelligence and good communication. To find out the validity of the data, the researchers used triangulation of the test results and the results of interviews and triangulation of the second researcher and research assistants. Furthermore, the data were analyzed using the content analysis method which consisted of three steps, they were data reduction, data presentation, and conclusion drawing/verification. The results of the study show that there were seven indicators of verbal-linguistic intelligence of students in reading subject, first, having excellent initial knowledge in mentioning words, second, enjoying wordplay with Scrabble, third, entertaining themselves and other students by playing tongue twisters, fourth, explaining the meaning of the words written and discussed, fifth, having difficulties in mathematics lesson, sixth, their conversation refers to something they have read and heard, and the last, having the ability to write poetry based on personal experience.

The advancement of information and technology resulted in the change in conventional test methods. The weaknesses of the paper-based test can be minimized using the computer-based test (CBT). The development of a CBT desperately needs a computerized item bank. This study aimed to develop a computerized item bank for classroom and school-based assessments. A research and development method is used in this study, which consisted of four phases, i.e., planning, item development, system development, and field testing. Data is collected through documentation, expert judgment, and field testing. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and item response theory. The sample of this study was teachers and high school students in West Sumatera province selected using purposive random sampling techniques. The results of the study are as follows. 1) The computerized item bank has excellent quality based on expert validation. 2) There are 120 items inputted into the item bank system that has a moderate difficulty and good discriminant index based on item response theory. 3) The field testing indicated the computerized economics item banking has high effectiveness of usability, usefulness for the teachers, and feasible for classroom and school-based assessment.

The amount of empirical research conducted in the area of differentiated instruction (DI) is overwhelming, necessitating this bibliometric analysis in order to produce an overview of literature on the topic. The objective of this study is to identify the characteristics of the most-cited educational research published on the topic of DI using science mapping and multi-dimensional bibliometric analysis methods. To answer the research questions which were related to: i) publication, ii) authorship, iii) authors’ keywords, and iv) journals, a total of 100 articles published between 1990 and 2018, generated from SCOPUS, were analysed. The results showed that the most-cited articles and the number of publications were highest between 1995 and 2011. With a total of 545 citations “A Time for Telling”, published in the Journal of Cognition and Instruction (1998), was the most cited. The most significant keywords were: a) differentiated instruction, b) differentiation, c) curriculum, d) mathematics, and e) reading. The analysis showed that there were 283 authors who contributed to the 100 articles, and amongst them Carol McDonald Connor was the greatest contributor. It was also revealed that the great majority of the most-cited publications were from Q1-ranked journals. These findings inform scholarly efforts adopted in developing a diverse knowledge base in the field. The findings are important to scholars as they provide an overview of the progress of research on the topic of DI.

Young pupils engage with technology daily, however, the use that preschool teachers make of technologies and their level of digital expertise are largely unknown. The objective of this study was to determine how these teachers make use of ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) and the frequency with which they use them, as well as to explore the sociodemographic and professional factors related to the different uses. 477 preschool teachers from Spain took part in a survey. The questionnaire, validated by experts, covered the use of ICT as a teaching-learning tool. Three different analyses were carried out, a principal component analysis and a descriptive analysis to determine the type and intensity of use and a multivariate analysis of variance to explore their relationships with sociodemographic and professional variables. The findings defined eight distinct uses of ICT, which seemed to be related to different factors. Teachers did not employ these technologies openly and consistently in their classrooms, but instead used them for occasional tasks that were administrative and bureaucratic in nature. They manifest a limited ICT use for assessment of pupil and for communication and exchange of ideas, information and materials. Instead, ICT were widely used to prepare classroom work (planning, classroom posters…) and as classroom support as a learning tool (routines, games, to record audios…). Among the studied variables, the more significant were teaching experience and type of centre. We discuss the need to advocate for continuous and comprehensive training on the educational potential of these digital resources.

This study aims at exploring the problem of the readiness and competence of new teachers to teach in primary schools. This study specifically focuses on identifying the readiness of new teachers to conduct teaching professionally, and analyzing their competence in conducting teaching. This study employs a mixed-method research design with data collected from two different approaches: a qualitative approach by conducting interviews and observation, and a quantitative approach by conducting a survey. The data were collected from lecturers, graduate teachers working as teachers, graduate teachers working not as teachers, and users of graduate teachers. The results of data collection and analysis were made into several themes. The results showed that the majority of graduates were ready to join the workforce as professional teachers with the risk that they had to accept the lack of welfare and legitimacy as unprofessional teachers because they had to attend further professional education programs. The education provided by the lecturers during their study in their institution in the aspects of knowledge and skills in the field of study and pedagogy became the foundation for new teachers in starting their careers as professional teachers in schools. A good educational process had produced teachers who have competencies with good categories in various aspects.

The Teacher Efficacy for Inclusive Practice (TEIP) scale is an instrument created by Sharma et al. to assess efficacy of instruction in inclusive settings. Despite its increase in use, the TEIP has not been validated with a Spanish teacher population. The aim of this study was to: (1) analyze the psychometric properties and factor structure of the TEIP scale in a sample of Spanish preservice teachers (N = 475; 80% female, 20% male), and (2) examine the level of self-efficacy for inclusive practices that teachers experience when they graduate from their training programs. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses indicate that a Spanish version (TEIP-ES) consisting of 15 items with a three-factor construct explains 61.34 percent of total variance. Item total-correlations ranged from .488 to .778, and factor loadings from .590 to .790. Convergent validity with measures of quality of teacher education (TE) programs and self-report of preparedness to teach in inclusive settings was good. In contrast, self-efficacy for inclusive practices was rated moderately low. Overall, these findings support the construct and convergent validity of the TEIP-ES and suggest that it is a useful instrument to measure self-efficacy for inclusion in Spanish preservice teacher populations. This manuscript reports the findings, discusses the implications for the improvement of TE programs, and suggests possible avenues for future related research.

This study was intended to display the role of eco-school program (Adiwiyata) towards environtmental literacy (EL) of high school students by analyzing, (a) EL of students in Adiwiyata and non-Adiwiyata high schools, and (b) EL of students in Grade X and XI, Adiwiya and non-Adiwiyata high schools in Malang-East Java, Indonesia. The survey involved 275 students. The respondents were from four state high school i.e. SMAN 1, SMAN 3, SMAN 4, and SMAN 7. Data were taken via MSELS questionnaire that was modified and filled online. Aspects of EL include ecological knowledge, environmental affect, cognitive skills, and behavior. The results of multivariate analysis showed that the level of students’ EL was significantly influenced by school type and grade. However, the interaction both of them had no significant effect on their EL. Univariate results on school type factor informed that significant differences occured in all aspects of EL, where the lower identified level of students in Adiwiyata schools compared to Non-Adiwiyata was only in the environmental affect. On the other hand, the significant influence of grade level only occurred in cognitive skills aspect. Broadly speaking, all data analyzes concluded that the application of the Adiwiyata program was able to bring a positive impact on the level of students’ EL. There was also a tendency that the higher the student's grade, the better their EL level.

This study aims to investigate students’ attitudes towards e- book use, and its relationship to self-efficacy and academic motivation in Omani higher education institutions. The sample of the study, which was chosen based on the stratification random method, consisted of 200 students from both genders and different colleges and academic years. To achieve the aims of the study, a descriptive correlational approach was adopted using attitudes, academic motivation and self-efficacy scales developed by the researchers, and administered to the study sample after assessing their psychometric properties. Findings show generally a positive significant correlation between students’ attitudes towards e-book use, self-efficacy, and academic motivation.

New Inquiry-Based Learning (NIBL) was developed to improve students’ multiple higher-order thinking skills (MHOTS), such as thinking critically, analytically, creatively, and practically (CACP). This study aimed to examine the increase of students’ MHOTS ability, their perceptions of the NIBL model, and the contribution of the NIBL model to the learning outcomes.  A quasi-experiment of the nonequivalent control group design was implemented in this study. Research subjects were university students majoring in chemistry education and enrolling in the Organic Chemistry course. The experiment and the control groups consisted of 34 and 32 students, respectively. The collected data were analyzed by using t-test and ANCOVA procedures. N-Gain scores were calculated to measure the differences in the increase in learning outcomes. Eta square values measured the contribution of NIBL. The results of this study revealed that there were differences in the learning outcomes of the experiment and control group. The CACP thinking skills and the mastery of organic chemistry concepts of the experiment group increased significantly. The N-Gain scores of practical thinking skills aspect were on medium category, and for critical, analytical, and creative thinking, as well as for mastery of organic chemistry concepts were on high categories. For the control group, the N-Gain scores of all categories were on low or medium categories. The NIBL model effectively improved the prospective chemistry teachers’ M-HOTS in terms of CACP thinking skills and contributed significantly to the increase in the students’ mastery of organic chemistry concepts.

In our current society, Digital Competence is an essential and basic competence for teachers. The students need trained teachers who know how to use Information and communication technologies (ICTs) and develop them into pedagogy. However, some of them do not know how. This phenomena is called “The generational digital divide”, which occurs when teachers do not have sufficient digital or technological skills or do not adapt to them. This article aims to determine whether the age of teachers has an influence on their knowledge about Information and Communication Technologies. The objective is to detect if there really exists a digital gap between generations, specifically in Dual Vocational Education Training, a kind of education which has been growing in the recent years. To do so, a study with a quantitative and descriptive method has been carried out, with the participation of 1.568 teachers of this training modality in the Autonomous Community of Andalusia. The data were extracted by means of a questionnaire to measure the level of digital teaching competence in Dual Vocational Education and Training schools. The results showed that the level of digital competence shown was medium to low across all dimensions. With regard to the age factor, only the problem-solving dimension was found to be age-dependent.

Metacognition in science teaching involves processes that include self-awareness and self-regulation. Metacognition enables the teachers to facilitate student learning and to reflect on their teaching in order to enable themselves to improve or to make any changes to their teaching. In particular, teaching activities, especially in the 21st century, do not merely involve the transfer of knowledge and then applying that knowledge into daily life, but teachers need to reflect, plan and evaluate learning outcomes to enhance further in teaching. This study attempts to gain the perspective and implementation of metacognition skills in teaching science in the primary school classroom. The data was collected through a qualitative research method based on interviews with six science teachers in primary school using semi-structured interview protocol. The interview data were analysed for emerging themes, guided by the research questions. Teachers have a similar perspective of the understanding of metacognition in science teaching. Further discussion focuses on the implementation of metacognition in science teaching. This discussion is divided into three aspects, which are constraints faced, overcoming the constraints, and efforts made to implement metacognition in science teaching. Hence, the understanding of science teachers in regards to metacognition in science teaching is important and gives a positive impact towards teaching and learning in primary science teaching.

This study aims to determine the effectiveness of the IPA KIT teaching aids for earthquakes science KIT in improving students' collaboration skills and creative thinking. The design of this research is a quasi-experimental research with a stratified random sampling technique. This study involved two classes, namely the experimental class (n = 32) and the control class (n = 33) with a pretest-posttest control group design. This research was conducted at SMP Negeri 5 Depok. The statistical analysis used to test the research hypothesis based on the pretest and posttest scores is the normality test, linearity test, homogeneity test, correlation test, effect size, and MANOVA test. The results showed that the use of IPA KIT teaching aids for earthquakes was more effective in improving students' creative thinking skills and collaboration. Therefore, teachers are advised to use the earthquake science KIT teaching aids for earthquakes to improve the creative thinking skills and collaboration of junior high school students.

Teachers in the constitution in Indonesia are professionals who must meet pedagogical, social, personal, and professional competencies. This qualitative research with a phenomenological approach aims to explore the experiences of the teacher professional education program (PPG) participants in gaining soft skills. The research data were collected through in-depth interviews conducted on fifteen PPG participants consisting of seven females and eight males. The fifteen participants attended PPG in five universities spread out from universities in Central Java, West Java, Yogyakarta Special Region, and Jakarta Special Capital Region. The sampling technique used was purposive sampling. Data analysis was carried out through the horizontalization, texturally, structurally, and essential descriptions stages. The results of this research found that PPG participants received soft skills learning in hidden curriculum patterns so that each participant had an initial understanding and how to get various soft skill understandings. Soft skills obtained by participants during the PPG implementation are self-confidence, collaboration, hard work, respect for culture, patience, wisdom, maturity, mental resilience, humility, responsibility, creative thinking, positive thinking, cooperation, humility, respect for others, and tolerance. This research recommends that soft skills learning at PPG be implemented with a structured curriculum so that participants have better abilities as teachers.

Because of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak, most universities were forced to choose Online Distance Learning (ODL). The study aimed to examine the response of university students to the new situation. A questionnaire was sent to the entire university student population. Based on responses from 606 students, it was revealed that use of all applications in ODL increased. However, only the use of MS Teams increased significantly, while the use of the other applications (email, Moodle, e-textbooks) increased in a range of low to medium in terms of effect sizes, and even nonsignificant for applications such as Padlet and Kahoot. Based on the replies of 414 respondents, a Model of Forced Distance Online Learning Preferences (MoFDOLP) based on Structural Equation Modeling was developed. With a chosen combination of predictors, we succeeded in predicting 95% of variance for Satisfaction, more than 50% for Continuance Preferences variance in MS Teams applications, and nearly 20% in the case of e-materials. Among hypothesized constructs, only Attitudes are a strong predictor of Satisfaction, while Organizational Support, Perceived Ease of Use and Learner Attitude toward Online Learning are not. Satisfaction is a good predictor of Continuance Preferences to use Information Technology after the lockdown ended.

The purpose of the study was to identify how debates effected the analytical thinking abilities of tertiary students and how the debates as an instructional approach were perceived by the students. The study used quantitative data collection methods such as tests and observation checklists and qualitative data collection methods such as a focus group discussion. The data was yielded from the measurements of students’ analytical thinking, critical thinking, problem-solving skills, and decision-making skills. The pretest and posttest measurements were administered using the test of analytical skills, the quiz entitled “Get Ready to Test Your Analytical Skills!”, and the problem-solving test. The study found that the debates improve the students’ analytical thinking abilities and are perceived positively by them. The pretest and posttest measurements results, observation reports, and a focus group discussion showed that the debate-driven instructional model brought positive change to students’ analytical thinking, critical thinking, problem-solving skills, and decision-making skills which are supported by the statistically significant Mean differences in all the variables. The findings from observations implied that the lessons were organised in a way that could sufficiently challenge the students, engage them in the search of information, and presenting their findings based on the facts and statistics. The results obtained from the students’ responses in the outline focus group discussion found that the students appreciated participation in the debates as they associated the experience with job benefits, the practical value of the debates, learning engagement, and research.