Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081281

Authors: Pedro Alemán Ramos Paula Morales Almeida

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming higher education, requiring universities to prepare graduates who can use these technologies critically, ethically, and responsibly. However, socially oriented professions remain comparatively underexplored. This study examined preparedness for AI-mediated professional practice among Social Education students through a convergent mixed-methods design integrating perceived AI use, self-reported learning competencies, and professional knowledge requirements. Participants were 49 undergraduate students enrolled in a Social Education degree programme. Quantitative data were collected using a single self-report item assessing perceived AI use and the abbreviated Basic Learning Competencies Scale (COMPES), while qualitative data were obtained through an open-ended question analysed using the Reinert method with IRAMUTEQ. Participants predominantly reported low to moderate perceived AI use. The association between perceived AI use and the overall COMPES score was small and imprecise, r = 0.16, 95% CI [−0.13, 0.42], precluding firm conclusions. Lexical analysis identified six classes that reflected practical applications, professional knowledge, educational considerations, and ethical concerns related to AI-mediated socioeducational practice. The findings suggest that preparedness for AI-mediated practice may involve perceived AI use, self-reported learning competencies, ethical-professional judgement, and professional knowledge requirements. The study provides a preliminary integrative interpretation with implications for curriculum development in Social Education.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081282

Authors: Shuang Lin Hailian Fan Yan Zhu

The current study employed a convenience sampling method and conducted a questionnaire survey among 1066 high school students from a regular high school in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, China. The study explored the relationship between perseverance and depression, as well as the serial mediating roles of study stress and problematic mobile social media use. The following questionnaires were administered: The Perseverance Scale, Study Stress Questionnaire for Middle School Students, Assessment Questionnaire of Problematic Mobile Social Media Usage, and Patient Health Questionnaire. Descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, and the bootstrap method were used to test the serial mediation effect. Results showed that 220 students might exhibit moderate or more severe depressive symptoms (potential prevalence = 20.64%). Significant correlations were observed among the variables and their dimensions. The results indicated perseverance was directly associated with depression. Study stress and problematic mobile social media use played serial mediating roles in the relationship between perseverance and depression. The current findings suggest that perseverance, study stress, and problematic social media use are important factors closely associated with depression risk among high school students. These findings provide potential intervention directions for future mental health promotion efforts in this population.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081280

Authors: Peggy McNeal Erika Heymann Thomas Shipley

Building on previous work to understand mental transformation of solid objects, our work aims to contribute to theory on how individuals visualize fluid transformation. Working at the intersection of discipline-based research in fluid-Earth sciences (oceanography and atmospheric science) and cognitive science, we began by characterizing students’ mental models of fluids in solid body rotation. Using a common pedagogical tool of oceanography and atmospheric science instructors—large water filled rotating tanks—we conducted semi-structured, interactive interviews in conjunction with demonstrations of solid body fluid rotation to elicit participants’ sketched predictions and explanations of their reasoning. We used emergent coding to analyze the data and found that participants confidently predicted fluid behavior; however, their predictions were highly inaccurate, much to the participants’ surprise. These results suggest that the behavior of rotating fluids is unintuitive, and that the mind adopts prior experiences with fluids to fill the gap. We suggest that a better understanding of how humans reason about fluids can inform the cognitive science of event processing and suggest that framing mental transformation using an event perspective may be a productive approach.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081279

Authors: Hebatalla Nazmy Abby Busby Merida Valentin-Mendez

Emerging digital technologies are reshaping interior design practice, increasing the need for educational approaches that intentionally support students’ perceived workforce readiness. This study examined the implementation of a mobile 3D scanning application within a university interior design course to examine its association with students’ technology learning self-efficacy and perceived workforce readiness. Using a one-group pre–post survey design, data were collected from interior design students who participated in a classroom-based 3D scanning activity using Polycam and completed surveys before and after the instructional experience. A total of 29 pre-test and 21 post-test responses were collected. Survey instruments assessed students’ perceived importance, familiarity, and experience with 3D scanning, along with technology adoption characteristics. Post-intervention measures also examined technology learning self-efficacy and perceived workforce readiness domains, including career development, self-regulated learning, problem solving, and technological competence. Welch’s independent-samples t-tests and Mann–Whitney U tests indicated that the post-test group reported significantly higher perceptions of familiarity with and experience using 3D scanning, as well as several technology-adoption perceptions, than the pre-test group, including ease of use, work style compatibility, efficiency gains, result observability, and trialability. One-sample Wilcoxon signed-rank tests showed that post-intervention composite scores for technology learning self-efficacy and perceived workforce readiness domains were significantly higher than the neutral scale midpoint. Qualitative thematic analysis of open-ended responses further supported these findings, identifying themes of ease of use, engagement, enhanced visualization, creativity, and professional relevance. Overall, the findings suggest that participation in the classroom-based mobile 3D scanning activity was associated with positive post-intervention perceptions of technology learning self-efficacy and perceived workforce readiness.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081278

Authors: Xuemei Wang Pei-Ling Hsu

Although Latinas are increasing in participation in K–12 computer science education in the United States, they remain significantly underrepresented in postsecondary computing degree attainment and the professional computing workforce. To better understand this disparity, this literature review synthesized 38 empirical and theoretical studies on Latinas across the computing pipeline in the United States. Drawing on the theoretical foundation of intersectionality and the double bind, this literature review employed an iterative qualitative synthesis approach to identify four major themes: interventions leading to computing, barriers and support within the field, resilience and agency for persistence, and evolving identity and belonging. The findings highlight the need for more research on K–12 experiences, belonging, and institutionally embedded support structures to create more equitable computing pathways for Latinas. This review contributes a Latina-centered synthesis of the literature and offers implications for researchers, educators, and institutional leaders committed to advancing equity in computing.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081277

Authors: Barbara Brown Nadia Delanoy Sharon Friesen Kim Koh Bruna Nogueira

There is limited research examining how technology-enhanced assessment functions in nontraditional schools. The following research question guided our study: How are technology-enhanced formative assessment strategies perceived to support student learning in a flexible-paced high school environment? The study employed an educational design approach to co-develop and implement formative assessment strategies with teacher-participants during six professional learning sessions throughout the school year. Drawing on data from pre- and post-surveys administered to teachers (n = 36), researcher field notes with reflections during the professional learning sessions, and open-ended survey responses from students at the end of the school year (n = 43), we found: (a) a greater reported use of digital methods for formative assessment and a significant increase in the use of authentic, real world assessment criteria; (b) teacher and student perceptions that timely, constructive, and accessible digital feedback supported learning experiences; and (c) recognition that students could be more actively involved in determining assessment criteria. Students also reported benefits from receiving digital feedback, opportunities for self-assessment, and greater clarity in their learning progression. While technology can enrich feedback and efficiency, careful attention must be paid to sustaining equity and learner voice in assessment design.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081274

Authors: Edith Bouton

Despite decades of research demonstrating the learning benefits of dialogic pedagogy, its implementation in K-12 classrooms remains rare. Three structural challenges account for the difficulties of initiating and sustaining dialogic space in classrooms: managing face-threatening conflicts, equalizing power relations, and accommodating the inherent unpredictability of genuine dialogue. These challenges are not incidental to dialogue; I argue that they are the same obstacles that prevent critical and creative thinking from taking root across educational settings. This paper examines how studio pedagogy addresses all three through project-based learning, drawing on ethnographic observations across four studio courses at a premier arts and design institution. I show how treating student projects as active participants in the learning interaction creates a triangulated dialogic space, a three-way relationship between teacher, student, and project, that redirects face-threatening conflict toward project-centered problem-solving, redistributes power without undermining teacher authority, and institutionalizes productive ambiguity as a pedagogical principle. These findings expand the theory of dialogic pedagogy by revealing how material objects can function as mediating actors in dialogue, and they offer practical implications for educators seeking to create sustainable conditions for critical and creative thinking across educational contexts.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081275

Authors: Yoon-Sung Choi Min-Cheol Kim

This study examined elementary pre-service teachers’ artificial intelligence (AI) literacy in ChatGPT-4o-assisted science lesson design. Eight third-year pre-service teachers at a national university of education in Korea participated in a voluntary, non-credit, ten-week program focused on elementary Earth science lessons and used GPT-4o through the web-based ChatGPT interface. Data included pre-task written reflections, ChatGPT interaction logs, lesson plans and instructional artifacts, reflective journals, observation notes, and final reflective reports. A framework-guided thematic analysis examined AI knowledge, AI skills, AI ethics, and AI attitudes, while participant-level trajectories and lesson-design artifacts were analyzed across data sources. Initial AI literacy was heterogeneous rather than uniformly limited. Five of the eight participants articulated some pattern-based, probabilistic, or context-sensitive understanding of ChatGPT, seven of the eight anticipated using prompts that specified instructional conditions, all eight recognized a need to verify AI-generated content, and initial attitudes ranged from affirmative willingness to predominant skepticism. During the program, six of the eight participants showed increasingly contextualized or iterative prompting, and seven of the eight demonstrated artifact-linked verification, revision, supplementation, or alternative tool selection. Attitudinal trajectories were characterized by conditional acceptance rather than a uniform increase in trust. Across the eight participant-level trajectories, the analysis identified refinement, continuity, limited change, and one episode-specific awareness–practice inconsistency. These findings indicate that ChatGPT-assisted science lesson design can provide a practice-based context for examining AI literacy as situated professional judgment involving scientific, curricular, pedagogical, and ethical decision-making, without implying a common developmental progression.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081276

Authors: Jolita Dudaitė Jolanta Urbanovič Romas Prakapas

Students’ sense of safety at school is an important dimension of school climate and student well-being; however, the factors shaping perceived safety remain insufficiently understood. This study examined the extent to which social, emotional, and contextual factors predict students’ sense of safety at school using data from the OECD PISA 2022 assessment in Lithuania (N = 7257). Structural equation modeling (SEM) was employed to analyze the relationships between students’ sense of safety and school belonging, teacher–student relationships, bullying, school safety risks, stress resistance, life satisfaction, socio-economic status, and gender. The findings suggest that students’ sense of belonging was the strongest predictor of perceived safety. Positive teacher–student relationships, higher life satisfaction, and greater stress resistance were also positively associated with students’ sense of safety, whereas bullying and school safety risks were negatively associated with perceived safety. Socio-economic status and gender demonstrated comparatively weaker effects. Overall, the findings suggest that students’ sense of safety is shaped primarily by relational and psychosocial experiences rather than by background characteristics or the mere absence of risk. The study provides preliminary evidence supporting the importance of fostering inclusive and supportive school environments to strengthen students’ perceived safety.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081273

Authors: Bin Jiang

The rapid integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into higher education marks a radical epistemic shift, unsettling long-held assumptions about how knowledge is made, taught, and judged. This paper argues that the theory of living structure offers a timely foundation for liberal arts and whole-person education in the era of AI. Living structure—Christopher Alexander’s term for the recurrent hierarchical order that makes environments feel alive—is treated here as two faces of one phenomenon: living, the right-brain perception of wholeness, and structure, the left-brain order that can be computed through fifteen geometric properties, two fundamental laws, two design principles, and the computable L- and B-scores. From this basis the paper develops a Living Structure + AI paradigm, a new episteme for higher education, deliberately so ordered because living structure is held to be more fundamental than AI: structure is the order of nature and culture, while AI is a tool that gives that order new expression. The argument is grounded in teaching practice led by LivableCityLAB, under its own teaching-research project and in partnership with Residential College 1, spanning architecture and city-science courses or theses, an undergraduate whole-person common-core course (Self and Wholeness), and a new postgraduate course (Experiential Learning: Living Structure + AI Inspired Design). Across these settings, students read built environments structurally, declare a skeleton, and use AI as a structural mediator while making and inhabiting real spaces. Across four campus renovations (total N = 33 students) and the two courses (N = 49 undergraduates; N = 7 postgraduates), structural scores (the L- and B-scores) rose in every renovated case, and these architectural and perceptual measures converged with preference tests and visual-attention analysis; course-embedded, rubric-based assignments provide complementary, though not psychometrically validated, evidence of students’ engagement with the paradigm. This paper closes by arguing that the deepest contribution of Living Structure + AI to liberal arts education is not on paper or on screens but down to earth—in the daily life spaces in which students learn to feel, measure, and remake wholeness.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081272

Authors: Sara Torre Olga Rosa Maria Armigero Valentina Ochner Federico Montalesi Claudio Leone Giulia Romagnolo Maria Beatrice Ligorio

Socio-emotional skills are essential for teachers’ wellbeing, classroom functioning, and promotion of students’ social–emotional development. Digital game-based learning (DGBL) represents a promising approach to promote these competencies through engaging and experiential learning processes. Empathy Quest is a DGBL experience—aimed at fostering emotional intelligence—designed by a multidisciplinary group involving game design, educational psychology, media communication, and teaching expertise. An exploratory evaluation involved 83 teachers in training (74 female; mean age = 46.11 years). Our research questions inquired about teachers’ perceptions of Empathy Quest in terms of game enjoyment, user experience, motivation toward DGBL, and interest in emotional intelligence. After completing a gameplay session, participants filled in the individual interest questionnaire, situational motivation scale, intrinsic motivation inventory, user experience questionnaire, and ad hoc items. Descriptive analyses indicated high levels of motivation, enjoyment, and interest in emotional intelligence. Participants also reported positive user experiences in terms of attractiveness, novelty, and stimulation, alongside good ratings for dependability, perspicuity, and efficiency. Although the post-test-only design does not allow for causal conclusions, the findings suggest that Empathy Quest is a promising tool for engaging future teachers with emotional intelligence and may support the integration of socio-emotional learning into teacher education and professional development contexts.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081271

Authors: Maialen Sistiaga-Poveda Josu Sanz Alonso

Growing concerns regarding children’s disconnection from nature have increased interest in nature-based pedagogies within Early Childhood Education (ECE). This study examined how participation in a Forest School pilot project influenced children’s learning environments, play, human–nature relationships, and science process skills in three ECE settings in Northern Spain. This longitudinal study combined quantitative and qualitative data collection methods to follow 106 children aged 2–5 years throughout a complete academic year of regular Forest School sessions integrated within mainstream schooling. Data collection combined systematic observation scales, semi-structured interviews, environmental attitude measures, and family questionnaires to examine learning environments, children’s play, social interactions, environmental attitudes and science process skills. The findings indicate that forest environments provided richer opportunities for exploratory play, science process skills, and interaction with unstructured materials than conventional playgrounds. Group symbolic play occurred more frequently in forest settings, while lower levels of conflict were observed. Children progressively developed more ecocentric environmental attitudes, empathy toward living beings, and relational forms of environmental care through repeated interaction with nearby ecosystems. Teachers reported that children demonstrated increasing science process skills—including observation, exploration, representation, and communication—through direct interaction with natural phenomena. The study suggests that regular nature-based learning may support the development of science process skills, environmental care, and holistic child development within mainstream ECE contexts.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081270

Authors: Kingston Palthamburaj Mercedes Premalatha Ramesh

Vocabulary learning research increasingly calls for curriculum-aligned evidence and methods that reflect how vocabulary is selected, sequenced, and assessed in real educational systems. However, stream-differentiated curricular pathways may entail distinct lexical demands that are rarely quantified for morphologically rich languages such as Tamil, where surface-form variation and digitization artifacts complicate textbook profiling. This study reports a stream-aware corpus analysis of Singapore Secondary 3 Tamil materials (Express, Higher Tamil, Normal (Academic), Normal (Technical)) using a transparent entry-extraction workflow from list-structured PDF resources. We introduce a morphology- and multiword-unit (MWU)–sensitive profiling approach that (i) operationalizes the unit of analysis as list entries (single-word or multiword), (ii) applies conservative Unicode normalization to reduce Tamil PDF segmentation artifacts, and (iii) avoids reliance on opaque lemmatization, treating results as auditable derived indicators rather than definitive lexical-family counts. The corpus comprises 36 pages and yields 1911 extracted entries (1784 unique in the union of streams; 1871 unique when counted within streams), with MWUs comprising 47.7–57.4% of extracted entries and typical MWUs spanning 2–4 words. Between-stream overlap of unique entries is low (pairwise Jaccard 0.010–0.043), and within-stream recycling across pages is limited (0.9–2.1% of within-stream unique entries repeated on ≥2 pages), suggesting substantial stream-specific instructional emphasis and limited built-in recycling in vocabulary-list components. As an innovation component aligned with emerging GenAI practices, we specify and pilot a textbook-faithful item-generation benchmark in which vocabulary practice items are generated under retrieval constraints and evaluated via transparent, classroom-oriented quality screens (faithfulness/grounding, morphological correctness, appropriateness, distractor plausibility, and bilingual gloss quality). The paper concludes with practical outputs for stream-aligned scope-and-sequence planning and a reproducible pipeline that can be extended as additional materials become available.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081269

Authors: Brenda-Andreea Piuaru Ioana-Simona Ivasciuc Bianca Tescașiu

Across the literature, family involvement is recognized as a key factor for academic progress, inclusive education and personal development. However, family size is rarely examined in bibliometric analyses, despite growing attention to socioeconomic and family-related factors influencing educational participation and inequality. Although empirical evidence does not establish a direct relationship between family size and inclusive education, existing research suggests that inclusive practices are more effective when family-related challenges are acknowledged. This study maps the representation of large families within the literature addressing educational inequality, participation, and inclusion-related processes. A bibliometric and co-occurrence analysis of 395 Web of Science publications (retrieved March 2026) was conducted using VOSviewer and Microsoft Excel. Findings revealed that research emerged in the 1990s and expanded after 2016, with the United States, Ethiopia, and China as leading contributors. Six thematic clusters were identified: socioeconomic participation, child vulnerability, educational outcomes, fertility and gender dynamics, and household-level constraints. Results indicate that large families are unevenly addressed, appearing more frequently in research on educational inequality than in inclusive education. Based on these findings, the study proposes a conceptual framework describing the “lights and shadows” of large family contexts in inclusive education, capturing both constraining and enabling dimensions associated with family structure.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081268

Authors: Sergei Abramovich

This paper shows how the ideas of Archimedes about integrating “mechanical methods” and formal reasoning can be connected with the modern-day use of three computer programs—Wolfram Alpha, Maple, and Excel—in exploring topics related to the elementary theory of numbers. Explorations deal with the subsequences of integer sequences through the step-by-step elimination of every other term obtained in the previous step. This process, resembling the sieve of Eratosthenes and some modern-day sieving algorithms, is applied to tetrahedral numbers stemming from an ancient tradition to associate integers with geometric shapes and social contexts. It is demonstrated that symbolic computations in Wolfram Alpha enable generalization in the construction of sieves that is confirmed by Maple and a spreadsheet. This conceptual paper addresses one of the aims of the Special Issue by demonstrating the duality of mathematics and technology in the sense that whereas the latter facilitates new approaches to knowledge acquisition, the former can be used to improve the efficiency of computations by reflecting on the results made possible by these approaches. The activities conducted advocate for the value of a pedagogical framework that integrates ancient ideas, digital tools, and elementary number theory in the education of mathematics teachers. Reflective comments by teacher candidates are included as appropriate and linked to established educational frameworks to illustrate conformity.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081267

Authors: Femke Legroux Ellen Van den Eynde Jo Tondeur

Blended learning has become a structural feature of contemporary higher education, yet little is known about how students experience the digital study practices that shape their everyday learning rhythms. This qualitative study explores how students navigate autonomy, competence, and relatedness within digitally mediated blended environments. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 students enrolled in blended programs at a Belgian university. Using reflexive thematic analysis, four themes were identified: fostering flexibility without losing orientation, cultivating belonging in blended spaces, providing scaffolds to build competence and motivation, and navigating digital strain. Students valued the autonomy afforded by flexible study rhythms, yet this autonomy was fragile when digital structures were unclear or inconsistent. Belonging depended on visible instructor presence and intentional opportunities for interaction, while competence was shaped by clarity, coherence, and timely feedback across platforms. Digital strain accumulated through extended screen time, technical frictions, and blurred boundaries between study and personal life. These findings offer a situated understanding of how students experience technology-mediated learning as both enabling and demanding. The study highlights the importance of predictable digital routines, relational presence, and coherent design in supporting sustainable engagement in blended higher education.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081265

Authors: Nieves Martín-Alguacil Luis Avedillo

Team-based learning (TBL) is increasingly being implemented in health sciences education to promote active learning and higher-order cognitive skills. However, the long-term effects of TBL on student performance and perceptions remain unclear. This study evaluated the impact of TBL on veterinary anatomy practical sessions over four academic years (2022/2023–2025/2026) using a longitudinal, mixed-methods design. Quantitative measures included performance across TBL components such as individual and team readiness tests, application exercises, formative assessments, and final scores. Cognitive level analysis was based on Bloom’s taxonomy. Student perceptions were collected through Likert-scale surveys, and qualitative responses were analyzed thematically. The results showed consistently low individual readiness scores, indicating persistent challenges in pre-class preparation. However, team performance improved over time, highlighting the benefits of collaborative learning. Application exercise scores and overall performance increased over time, with notable improvements in higher-order cognitive skills compared to a traditional cohort. Students’ perceptions evolved from initial resistance and perceived difficulty to more positive evaluations, with significant reductions in negative comparisons and metacognitive miscalibration, as well as increased positive perceptions. Overall, TBL supported progressive improvements in academic performance and cognitive development. Collaboration mitigated limitations in individual preparation, and student adaptation enhanced the effectiveness of this pedagogical approach in veterinary education.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081266

Authors: Delma Ramos Cathryn Bennett Paul Nava Akira Goodman

College access programs are well documented to build procedural knowledge of admissions and financial aid, yet less is known about how they demystify the hidden curriculum of college-going for Latine students. To address this gap, we examine a four-day college access immersion program for Latine high school students in North Carolina. Guided by a relational engagement framework, we analyzed 205 open-ended survey responses from 96 Latine high school juniors and seniors, collected through the program’s anonymous daily evaluations, using a two-cycle iterative coding approach. Findings reveal five forms of learning through which participants described the program countering dominant narratives of exclusion: (1) reframing identity and culture as assets, (2) building confidence through intergroup exchange, (3) enacting agency for college access, (4) uncovering the hidden curriculum of financial well-being and college persistence, and (5) disrupting exclusionary assumptions about college access. The study extends relational engagement theory by demonstrating how culturally sustaining programmatic networks render implicit institutional knowledge visible and accessible. Implications for research and culturally responsive practice are discussed.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081264

Authors: Edouard Munezero Ágnes Hódi Edit Tóth Marianne Nikolov

Teacher resilience (TR) is essential for teacher well-being, professional commitment, and educational quality. Although recognition, authority, and resilience have received considerable scholarly attention, limited research has examined how recognition and professional authority interact to support TR. Guided by Self-Determination Theory (SDT), this exploratory qualitative study investigated these dynamics through semi-structured interviews with 12 purposively selected teachers (≥3 years’ teaching experience), 12 purposively selected Primary 4–6 students (aged 10–13), and 12 purposively selected parents from selected urban public primary schools in Kigali, Rwanda. Data were analyzed using thematic analysis. Findings suggest that TR is a relational process shaped by interactions among recognition, authority, and supportive professional relationships. Recognition was perceived to foster teachers’ sense of relatedness through student success, parental trust, collaborative engagement, and collegial affirmation, while authority was associated with competence and autonomy through pedagogical expertise, fairness, and care. Based on these findings, the study proposes a preliminary SDT-informed interpretive framework in which recognition and authority function as interconnected relational resources that may support TR. By integrating recognition and authority into a single explanatory framework, this study contributes to TR scholarship and offers insights for strengthening teacher well-being and professional sustainability in resource-constrained and evolving educational contexts.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081262

Authors: Christy L. Jarrard Elizabeth L. Tighe Gal Kaldes Daphne Greenberg Robert C. Hendrick

This study used archival data from 30,453 students enrolled in 289 adult education programs in the state of Georgia, United States during the 2018–2019 school year. We explored how student-, teacher-, and classroom-level factors predict student attendance and academic performance (reading, language, and math) over time. Results indicated several student-level factors predict attendance and educational performance, including age, gender, race/ethnicity, previous educational attainment, low-income status, special needs status, reported barriers to education, and dual enrollment. Depending on the academic subject, age, race, previous education, special needs, and dual enrollment predicted academic growth over time. Teacher-level factors such as teacher experience predicted educational performance; classroom factors such as whether the course was an Integrated Education and Training (IET) class predicted attendance, and distance classes predicted attendance and performance. Certification predicted growth over time for language, and employment status and designation as a distance class predicted growth over time for math. These findings will help state officials improve the delivery of services to further enhance and improve student outcomes.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081263

Authors: Martina Geisen Joerg Zender

This study examines pre-service teachers’ self-efficacy in teaching real-world problems and mathematical modelling. Using a quantitative design, it investigates variation in self-efficacy between primary and special education pre-service teachers across different competence facets. The findings reveal a differentiated, domain-specific pattern of self-efficacy rather than uniform differences between groups. Special education pre-service teachers reported higher self-efficacy in pedagogical content knowledge and task design and differentiation, whereas no significant differences emerged for situation-specific skills and instructional design and enactment. The study contributes to a more differentiated understanding of modelling-related self-efficacy by showing that domain specificity may also operate within a specific area of mathematics teaching. It highlights the relevance of considering different competence facets in teacher education for inclusive mathematics classrooms.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081260

Authors: Lisa K. Kervin Kate L. Lewis Natalie Day Steven J. Howard

Young children increasingly encounter digital technologies in their everyday lives, yet little is known about how adults and children interact with these tools during spontaneous, unstructured play. This study examined adult–child interactions in a dedicated digital play space located within a children’s museum on a university campus. Thirty-six families with a child aged 2.5–5 years old attended 2-h digital playgroup sessions, during which continuous video and audio recordings captured dyadic exchanges. Using inductive analysis of 71 digital interaction episodes, we identified three interrelated themes that shaped how digital play unfolded: expertise, control, and pace. These themes influenced whether adults supported or constrained children’s agency as they navigated digital and non-digital play materials. The findings show how adults’ moment-to-moment decisions—including their own curiosity about the technology—can redirect, extend, or limit children’s discoveries. Digital tools created distinctive opportunities for joint exploration but also introduced challenges to interactional richness when adult attention shifted toward the technology rather than the child. This paper offers an account of how digital play is co-constructed and highlights the importance of attuned adult participation in technology-inspired play.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081261

Authors: Richard Bailey Manolis Adamakis Claude Scheuer

Physical literacy has become influential across education, sport, health, and recreation. Yet the field contains multiple definitions and distinct traditions rather than a single agreed position. One especially influential strand is the Whiteheadian account, the philosophically oriented tradition associated with the British philosopher and physical educationalist Margaret Whitehead and extended through allied writers and institutional work. Whitehead did not invent the term physical literacy, which has a longer history, but she provided its most influential contemporary philosophical reconstruction and helped shape its current international meaning. The Whiteheadian account has been important because it rejects narrow mind–body separation and offers a holistic, lifespan-oriented account of movement, meaning, and human flourishing. The argument advanced here is that the Whiteheadian account is non-dualist in declaration but not always in operation. Its explicit commitment to monism and lived embodiment is not always matched by its practical grammar, in which bodily competence, bodily participation, and visible movement often carry more pedagogical and evaluative weight than minded engagement as a process of learning. Radical embodied cognitive science, especially radical enactivism, offers additional conceptual resources for developing a more explicitly relational account of learning and physical literacy because it begins with situated organism–environment engagement rather than with the later integration of bodily and mental domains. The article concludes by proposing a more relational, process-oriented, and pedagogically robust understanding of physical literacy.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081259

Authors: Marko Radovan Danijela Makovec Radovan

Generative AI tools are spreading rapidly through higher education, yet relationships among students’ perceived familiarity with GenAI, self-reported use, support needs, and critical–responsible orientation remain insufficiently understood. We surveyed 449 students from four Slovenian faculties of education and arts. Perceived familiarity with GenAI was measured using a single self-assessment item rather than a test of knowledge or competence. Critical–responsible orientation was operationalized as the importance students assigned to nine ethical and societal issues; it did not measure observed responsible behavior. Perceived familiarity with GenAI was positively but modestly associated with the frequency, breadth, and diversity of self-reported learning-related GenAI use. Descriptively, students with lower perceived familiarity reported greater support needs across all five areas, while responsible-use guidance was widely requested in both groups. Perceived familiarity with GenAI did not significantly predict critical–responsible orientation; age showed a small positive association. Among the 196 respondents who reported using GenAI for learning, perceived familiarity was the only significant predictor of the number of learning-related purposes; perceived instructional and institutional support and critical–responsible orientation were not independently associated with the outcome. These findings distinguish perceived familiarity with GenAI, self-reported use, support needs, and critical–responsible orientation as related but non-equivalent dimensions of GenAI readiness. Higher education institutions should provide curriculum-based support that combines practical GenAI skills with critical evaluation and attention to responsible use.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081258

Authors: Emily Adah Miller Tingting Li Selin Akgün Hildah Makori Maria Simani Joseph Krajcik

This paper examines how exclusionary epistemic practices embedded in science as a discipline are reproduced in classroom settings and how these practices can be disrupted when teachers adapt existing materials toward goals of epistemic inclusion. The inequities in access, participation, and representation in science that are reproduced at a societal level are developed in the classroom. Students learn how to do science—they develop the epistemic and social practices of the scientific discipline—in science education classes. When exclusion of some students from classroom knowledge building is normalized, marginalization becomes part of how students learn to engage in science and engineering practices. Drawing on a curricular redesign project conducted during the COVID-19 transition to virtual learning, the study highlights how the repositioning of teachers as active agents and experts in curriculum adaptation was central to the work. Using qualitative data-driven coding with productive disciplinary engagement and epistemic inclusion to guide the analysis, critical cases of curricular adaptations were developed with 10 elementary science teachers during a year-long project-based learning online science curriculum enactment project. Five themes associated with disruption of entrenched exclusionary practices emerged that can be codified as adaptation principles: 1. adapt features of project-based learning to: (1) bring in and leverage students’ identities and intellectual resources from home; (2) provide student-centered choice; (3) elicit diverse knowledge, expertise and ideas; (4) support students to make use of many different modalities; (5) dismantle the usual (traditional) structures between the teacher and students.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081257

Authors: Yifan Zhang Rebecca Y. M. Cheung

Grounded in self-determination theory, the present study examined the role of psychological distress as a mediator between autonomous learning and academic engagement among university students in China. In this cross-sectional study, survey data from 234 Chinese university students were collected to evaluate autonomous learning, psychological distress including symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress, and academic engagement. Structural equation modeling indicated that autonomous learning was positively associated with academic engagement and negatively related to psychological distress. Psychological distress, in turn, was negatively associated with academic engagement and mediated the relation between autonomous learning and academic engagement. Additional analyses further revealed significant alternative directionality of effects between psychological distress and autonomous learning, thereby suggesting that the relation may be bidirectional. These findings highlight the importance of fostering autonomous learning and addressing psychological distress to enhance engagement among Chinese students in higher education.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081256

Authors: Stella Gidalevich Maayan Shalev Rachel Anzi-Levie

While most research on biographical narratives has concentrated on the analysis of the final textual product as a means of understanding the narrative, the present study explores the underlying processes of narrative construction and presentation within peer groups in a teacher education college, drawing on the narrators’ own reflections and accounts. Employing on a qualitative grounded theory design, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 current and former special education college students. Participants reflected on the deliberative and interpretive processes, shaping both disclosure decisions and modes of self-presentation. Findings indicate that peer groups constitute a significant force in narrative co-construction. Boundaries of disclosure and degrees of vulnerability were continuously negotiated, through engagement with others’ narratives. Participants employed various narrative strategies, including redemption and normalization frameworks, in order to sustain a coherent and resilient professional self-concept. A key theoretical contribution of the study is the conceptualization of emotional regulation, as an integral component of narrative construction. Participants actively modulated the emotional intensity of their storytelling. Overall, the study suggests that Biographical Narrative practices function as a collaborative and meaning-making process that supports reflective capacity, peer-based scaffolding and resilience, thereby contributing to teacher well-being and professional identity development, in preservice education contexts.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081255

Authors: Myint Swe Khine Ernest Afari

This study investigates instructional practices among 4228 UAE public school teachers using data from the 2024 Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS). Latent Profile Analysis (LPA) of 15 self-reported teaching-practice items identified four distinguishable pedagogical profiles: (1) Comprehensive Practitioners (77.2%), reporting mildly above-average use of practices across all domains with no pronounced emphasis in any area; (2) Limited-Repertoire Teachers (10.1%), reporting the lowest use of nearly all practices; (3) Emerging-Repertoire Teachers (4.5%), showing a similar but less extreme pattern; and (4) Traditional Teachers (8.2%), reporting above-average classroom management alongside below-average cognitive activation and content-linking. The LPA was conducted using mclust (v. 6.1.3) in R. Classification quality was high (entropy = 0.987), although AIC, BIC, and ABIC continued to favour solutions with more than four profiles through the eight-profile models tested; the four-profile solution was retained for its comparatively high entropy, interpretability, and parsimony. The profile structure should therefore be treated as a description of self-reported practice patterns within this analysed, unweighted sample. By mapping diverse teaching behaviours, this study contributes to global discourse on evidence-based pedagogy and supports data-driven reform efforts aligned with the UAE’s national educational vision for world-class schooling.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081254

Authors: Geraldine Townend Marie McGregor Jae Yup Jung Heidi Merrington Ainslie Robinson Trevor Clark

Research on twice-exceptional Autistic (2eA) individuals has predominantly focused on children and adolescents, leaving a limited understanding of adult reflections on schooling. This qualitative retrospective study explored perceived barriers and facilitators to talent development among 17 intellectually gifted Autistic adults from Australia, the United States, and Canada. Using semi-structured interviews and inductive thematic analysis, the findings revealed two overarching themes: barriers to talent development and facilitators of talent development. Barriers included delayed or absent identification of giftedness and autism, inadequate programming, psychosocial challenges (e.g., imposter syndrome, low self-concept), executive functioning difficulties, bullying, and environmental stressors such as classroom structure and sensory load. Facilitators included self-directed learning, supportive relationships with teachers and parents, psychosocial factors such as intrinsic motivation and self-acceptance, and community acceptance that supported belonging and identity development. Participants consistently reported that earlier identification and dual differentiation may have enhanced both academic and psychosocial outcomes. The findings highlight a need for improved professional learning, systematic identification practices, and strengths-based, context-responsive approaches to support equitable talent development for 2eA students.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081253

Authors: Christophe Schinckus Felicia H. L. Chong Amir Hajbaba

The rapid expansion of ChatGPT in higher education and the increasing adoption of generative AI in the financial industry raise important pedagogical questions for finance education. While existing studies often examine the outcomes, risks, or technical affordances of AI-supported learning, less attention has been given to how ChatGPT may reshape the process through which students construct, apply, and evaluate financial knowledge. This conceptual paper develops a co-constructivist model of ChatGPT-induced financial education. The paper adopts a conceptual research design and deductive construct-mapping approach, using the epistemic categories of episteme (theoretical knowledge), techne (practical application), and epitaktike (directing or commanding knowledge). Through this framework, ChatGPT is conceptualized as a Socratic and dialogical platform that can mediate between financial theory, applied reasoning, and responsible judgement. The paper also proposes a co-constructivist grading rubric that pedagogically operationalizes these epistemic dimensions into observable learning behaviours. This article aims at laying down the conceptual foundations of a co-constructivist ChatGPT-supported student-centred, and ethically guided financial learning environment.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081252

Authors: Aslihan Unal John Hobe

Preparing future educators for technology-enhanced learning environments has become increasingly important as artificial intelligence (AI) continues to influence teaching and learning. Guided by the Intelligent Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (i-TPACK) framework, this mixed-methods study examined preservice teachers’ perceptions of AI and the competencies they considered necessary for effective AI integration. Participants included 108 preservice teachers enrolled in a teacher preparation program at a public university in the southeastern United States. Data were collected using a survey containing Likert-scale and open-ended questions. Quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, exploratory factor analysis, and independent-samples t-tests, while qualitative responses were analyzed using thematic coding. The exploratory factor analysis identified a four-factor empirical structure that partially corresponded with the original theoretical domains, with varying levels of internal consistency. Preservice teachers generally viewed AI favorably and recognized its potential to support teaching and learning. Participants with internship experience reported significantly higher scores for perceived changes brought by AI and reasons for using AI than those without internship experience. Qualitative findings identified five competencies considered important for responsible AI integration: AI literacy, prompt engineering, critical evaluation, ethical AI use, and pedagogical balance. Participants also expressed concerns about academic dishonesty, misinformation, overreliance on AI, reduced critical thinking, and loss of human interaction. The findings highlight the importance of preparing preservice teachers to integrate AI in pedagogically meaningful and ethically responsible ways.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081251

Authors: Ezequiel Martínez-Rojas Cristian Zahn-Muñoz Alberto Martínez-Quezada Emilia Di Piero

Quality assurance has become a major force reordering the contemporary university, and in Chile, its most visible expression is the ascent of quality units, which have moved from peripheral offices to, in many cases, vice-rectorate rank. This article examines that trajectory through a descriptive–comparative documentary analysis reconstructing the hierarchical position of these units in the 51 universities recognized by the Ministry of Education and comparing it with the 2008–2009 and 2019 time points, distinguishing the state, traditional private, and private non-Council of Rectors subsectors. Read through neo-institutional theory, the results show that the quality unit has become universal and has consolidated at the top of the hierarchy, albeit unevenly, since vice-rectorate rank remains almost exclusively a private-sector phenomenon, now spreading to the traditional sector. The analysis is organized as a congruence test between the framework’s expectations and the observed patterns, complemented by exact and trend tests. The resulting distribution is consistent with a reading in which legal coercion accounts for the widespread existence of these units, while imitation and market signaling correspond to their elevation, so that isomorphism produces homogeneity within each subsector and divergence between them. The documentary design, however, describes a form whose substantive integration remains undemonstrated.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081250

Authors: Juan Ramón Guijarro-Ojeda Leopoldo Medina Sánchez Brahim Azaoui Cristina Pérez Valverde

Primary CLIL teacher wellbeing remains underexplored in France and Spain. This exploratory, context-specific qualitative study examined the factors that ten primary teachers, five in France (Montpellier and Lille) and five in Andalusia, associated with their wellbeing. Bronfenbrenner’s ecological framework, enriched with the ontosystem and the flourishing/floundering distinction, was used as an interpretive device. The interviews were analysed through reflexive thematic analysis. Participants’ accounts converged around perceived gaps in CLIL-specific training, time, coordination, and human and material resources, while differing in how they interpreted programme stability and recent policy change. The analysis tentatively developed a compensatory pedagogy of affection and a broader pattern of professional delegitimation and identity-related loss. Explicit bilingual professional shame appeared in one account. It also identified native-speaker-oriented linguistic self-demand and an emerging pattern of AI-assisted material adaptation across six accounts. We offer a provisional, context-specific tensional ecological framework to organise the relationships participants described between conditions perceived as structural pressures and personal, relational, formative, and material resources. The framework is intended as a heuristic and hypothesis-generating contribution rather than a validated causal or longitudinal model. The findings identify areas for institutional review and further research.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081249

Authors: Shaoan Zhang Emma E. Regentova Hongming Xu Venkatesan Muthukumar Si Jung Kim

Informal STEM learning experiences are widely used to promote students’ interest and engagement in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), yet limited evidence exists regarding the educational value of one-day STEM outreach events. This study examined middle school students’ perceptions of STEM interest and self-efficacy following participation in NSF STEM Day, a one-day informal STEM learning experience that combined project demonstrations designed by college student mentors with a field-based learning experience at the Museum of Illusions to learn about hands-on robotics, coding, Internet of Things (IoT), and engineering and mathematical concepts. This study explored students’ learning experiences, STEM interests and STEM self-efficacy perceptions, and college student mentors’ reflections. First, participants reported positive learning experiences, and engineering was reported more frequently as an area of STEM interest in the post-survey (38.0%) than the pre-survey (25.6%). Second, they reported positive STEM self-efficacy perceptions in the post-survey. A significant grade-level difference was observed for one STEM self-efficacy item assessing students’ confidence in applying scientific principles, with eighth-grade students reporting higher confidence than sixth-grade students (F(3,26) = 3.76, p = 0.023). Third, qualitative findings showed that college student mentors’ reflections reported positive experiences and valued the opportunity to engage middle school students in hands-on STEM learning activities. The findings contribute evidence regarding the educational value of short-duration STEM outreach experiences for broadening students’ exposure to STEM learning.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081248

Authors: Muhammad Ammar Naufal Nurfaida Tasni Andi Syukriani Anny Sovia Hamzah Upu

Pre-service mathematics teachers engage with AI as both geometry learners and future teachers, yet domain-specific instruments for measuring this usage remain scarce. This study developed and validated the AI Usage in Geometry Learning Scale (AIGLS) and compared usage between two Indonesian teacher-education institutions. A comparative survey covered 178 pre-service mathematics teachers at Universitas Negeri Makassar (UNM, n = 89) and Universitas Negeri Jakarta (UNJ, n = 89). The AIGLS operationalises five dimensions: Conceptual Understanding Support, Problem-Solving Assistance, Geometric Visualisation, Pedagogical Readiness, and Critical Evaluation of AI. A ten-expert panel established content validity (CVI = 0.976). Item analysis excluded all five negatively worded items; all analyses therefore used the final 20-item scale, which showed good full-scale (Cronbach’s α = 0.873) and subscale (α = 0.591–0.810) reliability. ChatGPT was the dominant tool (96.6%), and UNM reported significantly higher usage intensity than UNJ (χ2(4) = 27.917, p < 0.001). Mann–Whitney U tests with Bonferroni correction confirmed UNM scored higher overall (U = 4749.5, p = 0.022, r_rb = −0.20), with Geometric Visualisation showing the largest institutional gap (r_rb = −0.38, medium effect). The validated AIGLS supports measuring AI usage in geometry teacher preparation and informs AI-literacy policy.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081247

Authors: Ida John Marghalara Rashid

Positionality refers to a researcher’s stance within the social context of their research study. It can include information such as gender, race and class, and other characteristics like location. In addition, positionality statements can also include researchers’ personal traits, such as their thoughts, feelings and behaviors. They convey a researcher’s position and are incorporated within research articles to make readers aware of the beliefs and assumptions that a scholar may be bringing into the study. Describing one’s positionality can be particularly beneficial within health professions education (HPE) research, where complex power dynamics often exist between the researcher and participants. However, there is currently limited literature on how positionality statements should be written for HPE research. This paper aims to present an introductory guide on how a novice researcher can write a positionality statement within HPE research, including elements such as reflexivity, location and context, power dynamics, and insider–outsider positioning, as well as the potential risks tied to positionality statements. Additionally, this paper provides readers with a practical step-by-step guide and a real-life example to follow when developing their own positionality statement. By practicing reflexivity and considering how their location and presence impact the research process and participants, a scholar can articulate how their identity and context shape their research approach. Consequently, adding a positionality statement can increase trustworthiness and enhance transparency of a study when they are reflexive, context-specific, ethically constructed and integrated into the research process.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081245

Authors: Rosemary Flynn

This study explores the potential role of higher education (HE) achievement on the development of Recovery Capital (RC) in individuals recovering from addiction. The purpose of the study is to examine an ongoing collaborative project which embeds provision of HE programmes into the residential addiction recovery setting, providing opportunities for HE achievement to marginalised individuals. The collaborative project between South East Technological University (SETU), a higher education institution (HEI) in Ireland and an addiction recovery provider is examined through the theoretical lens of RC. This study compares Irish and international research and the existing literature on RC as it pertains to addiction recovery, including HE achievement. The theoretical lens through which the collaboration is analysed identifies consistencies, gaps or deviations between the case study which includes Pierre Bourdieu’s capital theory and Cloud and Granfield’s RC hypotheses to explore potential alignment with the principles of both concepts. This paper has identified opportunities for further research on several elements of RC, such as the contribution of peer support in HE achievement, particularly within a residential recovery setting, the stage of recovery in conjunction with the timing of the educational intervention, and the weighting or value of certain RC ingredients. These elements could form the basis of future national and international research into the impact of HE achievement on RC and long-term addiction recovery outcomes.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081246

Authors: Andrea Nolan

In Australia, Family Day Care (FDC), the caring and educating of young children in the educator’s own home, plays a role in the diversity of offerings across the early childhood sector. However, FDC educators’ position as professionals is often unrecognised, leaving their work devalued and their agency limited. This study focuses on what FDC educators believe they bring to the early childhood sector, against mounting constraints, positioning themselves as a viable alternative within a suite of professional, quality programme offerings. Survey data from 200 respondents informs the study, analysed utilising thematic analysis and then considered through an Affordance Theory lens. This lens highlights how FDC educators’ perceptions have been shaped by culture, knowledge, ability, history and experience, in relation to the possibilities in the environment that act as either affordances or constraints. The themes identify that educators see themselves as supporting children’s learning through alignment with government frameworks; building safe and nurturing learning environments; establishing relationships with families and gaining a deep knowledge of each child through sustained engagement, yet do not feel recognised for their work as professionals. The paper argues that raising awareness and harnessing potential affordances could provide opportunities for action, leading to a revaluing of FDC.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081243

Authors: Zihan Zheng Lingyi Yan Ye Shen

Spanish–English emergent bilingual children show substantial variability in English reading development, yet less is known about how early Spanish literacy and executive function jointly explain this variability. We first examined whether Spanish early reading skills and executive function skills (working memory, cognitive flexibility, and inhibitory control) predicted children’s initial English reading levels and reading growth. We also investigated whether these executive function skills moderated the association between Spanish early reading skills and English reading. Latent growth curve analyses were conducted to examine these relations among 308 Spanish–English emergent bilingual children. Results showed that inhibitory control predicted bilingual children’s initial English reading levels, whereas Spanish early reading skills predicted English reading growth. Importantly, our moderation analyses showed that inhibitory control moderated the cross-language relation between Spanish early reading skills and English reading growth, with Spanish early reading skills more strongly related to reading growth among children with lower inhibitory control. Findings suggest that Spanish early reading skills and inhibitory control play distinct but interactive roles in bilingual children’s English reading development.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081244

Authors: Yael Grinshtain Tanya Ovenden-Hope Jayne Downey

Educational research has long been influenced by narratives that frame rural, peripheral, remote, and geographically isolated communities through the lens of disadvantage (Corbett, 2020; Roberts & Cuervo, 2015) [...]

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081242

Authors: Carly A. Busch Linnea Bostrom Sumitra Tatapudy Karen S. Markel Andrea P. Belz Elli J. Theobald

Motivation and retention in engineering education are critical elements of a national strategy for many reasons, and thus merit exploration in traditional venues as well as extracurricular settings. We use Self-Determination Theory (SDT) to understand students’ motivation in an authentic undergraduate learning experience geared toward retention in the semiconductor industry, an example of an industry of national importance around the world. Twelve students participated in two cohorts of training in cleanroom techniques and equipment. We conducted semi-structured interviews with participants to probe their perceptions of authenticity, motivation, and engagement in the program. We used thematic analysis to identify emergent themes from interview transcripts and deductively coded for concepts of interest. Participants’ perceptions of authenticity often reconstructed the dimensions of the designed authentic learning experience. Students linked their perceptions of authenticity directly to the SDT constructs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Interestingly, students reported a salience for relatedness in authentic experiences, generated principally through cohort instruction. In the connections between students’ perceptions of authentic learning experiences and motivational drivers, relatedness, an often-overlooked factor in engineering curricula, emerged as particularly relevant to enhance student motivation.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081240

Authors: Susannah Sandrin Katherine Short-Meyerson

Women and Hispanic people in the United States (U.S.) are underrepresented in many physical science and engineering fields, despite higher representation in life science fields. This study examines how science topic (physical vs. life science) influences the role that parents play in the development of their elementary school-age (fourth grade) children’s science-related interests, attitudes, and problem-solving strategies, including differences related to parent and child ethnicity (Hispanic and non-Hispanic) and gender. The participants were 153 girls and boys in fourth grade and their parents in the Phoenix metropolitan area of the United States. Each parent–child dyad’s behaviors as they completed hands-on physical science and life science activities together were examined. Parents and children were more talkative during physical science activities than during life science activities (for parents M = 13.70, SD = 54.99, p = 0.004, and for children M = 20.88, SD = 34.93, p < 0.001), where M = the difference between the number of utterances during physical versus life science problems. In addition, parents provided more explanations/answers, asked more questions to prompt their children, and asked more questions about their child’s understanding during physical science activities as compared to life science activities. Regarding problem-solving strategies, the dyads used their existing knowledge/experience more during physical science activities, whereas they used assumptions more during life science activities. Interactions that occurred between topic and ethnicity or gender, and implications for representation of women and Hispanic students in physical versus life science majors in later years, are also presented.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081241

Authors: Craig Cameron Deanna Grant-Smith Wayne Read

This article examines virtual international work-integrated learning (VIWIL) through the lens of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). ESD, as defined by UNESCO, seeks to equip learners with the knowledge, skills and dispositions required to make informed decisions and take responsible actions to contribute to environmentally sustainable, socially just, economically viable, and peaceful futures. Drawing on UNESCO’s four interdependent sustainability dimensions, we highlight its environmental benefits in reducing carbon-intensive travel, its social contribution to broadening equitable access to international learning opportunities, its political role in fostering global citizenship and intercultural competence, and its economic potential in providing a scalable and financially viable model for work-integrated learning. We present a series of ten design principles for enhancing the contribution of VIWIL to ESD outcomes. Through an anonymised case study, we argue that VIWIL has the potential to offer a practical and inclusive mechanism for developing socio-emotional, cognitive and behavioural global citizenship competencies through digitally mediated workplace learning. In doing so, VIWIL is positioned as an important approach for advancing ESD and contributing to the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081239

Authors: Jiayi Guan Yinuo Liu Yapeng Wang

This study investigates the dual pathways of foreign language enjoyment (FLE) among left-behind children (LBC), a population constituting more than 20% of China’s child population and largely under investigated in the second-language learning context; the focus of this study is on the unique and joint contributions of FLE to learning engagement (LE) and learning burnout (LB) in determining academic achievement (AA). Our results confirm that FLE and LE are positively correlated with EFL achievement, while LB shows a significant negative correlation with EFL achievement. However, they also reveal counterintuitive positive correlations between FLE and LB and between LE and LB among LBC—contradicting prior findings from the general population. More importantly, our path analysis reveals a blocked positive association and an opened negative association: while FLE is significantly associated with LE, LE is not significantly linked to achievement; conversely, FLE is positively connected to LB, which is negatively associated with achievement. This “paradox of enjoyment” reveals that FLE acts as a double-edged sword for Chinese LBC, challenging the unidirectional positive view of FLE in second-language learning and demonstrating that positive emotions alone cannot drive sustainable EFL learning success within this vulnerable group. Our findings highlight the unique socioemotional complexities of LBC, underscoring that fostering enjoyment alone might be insufficient without targeted interventions to alleviate burnout and translate engagement into actual success, and offer valuable insights for educators and policy-makers aiming to improve foreign language education among LBC.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081238

Authors: Victoria C. Rodriguez-Operana Felisha A. Herrera Krystal Lira-Esparza Julio Fregoso

Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) are vital to the STEM pathways of Latine/x and other minoritized students, and experiential learning (ExL) is a high-impact practice shown to support postsecondary STEM success. The purpose of this paper is to understand how these intersect by conducting a systematic literature review on servingness in STEM ExL at HSIs, highlighting a growing body of research and policy efforts emphasizing intentionality in serving Latine/x students. Key findings center on the types of ExL HSI STEM students engage in along with structures for serving, including (1) intentional recruitment and engagement; (2) culturally responsive and sustaining STEM practices; (3) institutional and external support and resources; (4) facilitating interactions and engagement with faculty, staff, and industry professionals; (5) and institutional collaborations. We also identified important academic and non-academic outcomes associated with involvement in STEM ExL initiatives. Insights from this review underscore existing structures within HSIs that support more inclusive STEM ExL, while identifying potential opportunities for transforming STEM education within HSI organizations and systems through institutional, industry, and community capacity-building partnerships. Implications for future work on Latine/x servingness and intentionality in HSI STEM ExL are discussed.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081237

Authors: Mamdouh Alghrieb Youns Maryam Ahmed Abdullah Al-Mazkour Fayrouz Ramadan Elwakil

This study examines how supportive university environment (SUE), faculty competence (COMP), employability skills development (ESD), and financial confidence (FC) shape pre-service teachers’ (PSTs) financial well-being (FWB) and perceived university academic reputation (REP). Drawing on social cognitive theory, human capital logic, and signaling perspectives, this study develops and tests a PLS-SEM model using survey data from 1225 pre-service teachers in Egypt and Kuwait, with ESD and FC operating as key mechanisms linking institutional and instructional factors to student and reputation-related outcomes. The findings show that SUE positively predicts FC and ESD, while COMP enhances ESD. ESD, in turn, positively influences FC, FWB, and REP, and FC further improves FWB. Mediation analysis indicates that ESD and FC explain the indirect effects of SUE and COMP on FWB, while ESD mediates their effects on REP. Cross-country analysis suggests that the model is broadly stable across Egypt and Kuwait. The findings suggest that teacher education institutions should integrate employability-oriented learning, financial confidence-building activities, and faculty-supported career preparation to enhance PSTs’ financial well-being and strengthen perceived academic reputation.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081236

Authors: Vibhavari Vempala Hayley N. Nielsen Erika A. Mosyjowski Joi-Lynn Mondisa Shanna R. Daly Lisa R. Lattuca

Representations of engineering work in the curriculum influence students’ perceptions of valued skills and knowledge in the field. Industrial engineering attracts a diverse group of students and is well positioned to incorporate longstanding calls for comprehensive skills because of its systems-level approach to problem-solving. Examining students’ perceptions of the curriculum of industrial engineering can elucidate how the curriculum shapes diverse students’ understandings of engineering practice and their decisions to persist or leave. Using Holland’s framework of figured worlds, we examined the role of the core industrial engineering curriculum at a Midwestern university (MU) in the United States (U.S.) in shaping undergraduate students’ perceptions of valued skills and knowledge and sense of fit in engineering. Findings from a series of two interviews with 15 upper and lower division industrial engineering students indicate that students perceived the core curriculum at MU to minimally emphasize comprehensive skills, reinforcing a purely technical view of engineering. Further, students expressed a desire for course content that emphasized application of theoretical concepts and social and cultural context and impact. Findings indicate a continuing need for curricular reform incorporating comprehensive skills to engage students, align coursework with real-world engineering practice, and shape the perception of engineering work as inherently sociotechnical.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081235

Authors: Karmen Vesel Strel Katja Jeznik Nina Kristl Patricija Čamernik

Contemporary research increasingly distinguishes between narrower and broader understandings of inclusion. Another perspective adopted in the recent literature is the 4R justice framework, which examines inclusion through four interrelated dimensions of justice—redistribution, recognition, representation, and relationality. Building on this framework, the study argues that, among pedagogical approaches associated with inclusive education, drama-based pedagogical approaches can be meaningfully interpreted across all four dimensions of justice and within both narrower and broader understandings of inclusion. However, the analysis reveals a key limitation in the existing research on drama-based pedagogical approaches: inclusion-related processes are predominantly examined in a fragmented manner, with individual dimensions addressed in isolation rather than as part of a coherent multidimensional construct. In response, the article proposes an integrative analytical framework for examining inclusion-related changes associated with drama-based pedagogical approaches. This framework is explored empirically through a preliminary set of teacher-informed indicators derived from the descriptions of inclusive practices associated with the use of drama-based approaches, based on written submissions collected through a structured form and follow-up semi-structured interviews with teachers. The proposed analytical framework thus adapts the existing 4R conceptualisation for the analysis of inclusion-related changes associated with drama-based pedagogical approaches and provides a preliminary operationalisation through practice-based, teacher-informed qualitative indicators that may inform future instrument-development aimed at systematically investigating inclusion in drama-based pedagogical approaches. The findings further suggest that the most critical challenge may concern representation, which emerged as the most difficult dimension to operationalise through teacher-informed indicators.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081234

Authors: Melissa Gruber Stefanie Faßbender

Teaching in higher education has evolved towards incentivizing approaches that involve active student participation. The use of educational games is a proven approach to enhancing motivation, making students engage with the material. A contemporary illustration of this genre is digital educational escape games (DEEGs). Due to their problem-solving approach, they are particularly suitable for STEM disciplines. Research lacks investigations on how DEEGs influence learning outcomes at different educational levels. This article explores success determinants of DEEGs in two STEM groups: senior vocational education and training students and higher education students. An intervention study was conducted with a DEEG on the subject of cryptography. Data were gathered using a pre- and post-test survey and logfile data extracted from the game backend. The data analysis is based on partial least squares structural equation modeling. The main findings show that statistically significant differences can be observed in the variance explained regarding the target construct learning outcome, as well as in two path coefficients: computer gaming affinity to learning outcome and game use to learning outcome. The differences detected lead to the conclusion that vocational education and training students have different study habits than higher education students, leading to different effects of the predictors on the target construct. Nevertheless, the differences detected in the two samples are to be examined further to verify the results of this exploratory study.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081233

Authors: Eleni Petridou Julie Vaiopoulou Flora Mantelaki Anastasios Molohidis Euripides Hatzikraniotis

This study examines teachers’ acceptance of an inquiry-oriented, Crime Scene Investigation (CSI)-based teaching sequence supported by a Virtual Scanning Electron Microscope (Virtual-SEM) using an extended Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). While TAM has been widely used to explain technology adoption, its traditional focus on cognitive perceptions may not fully capture the pedagogical complexity of educational settings. To address this, the study integrates pedagogical and affective variables, namely Inquiry Engagement (INQ), Trust (TR), and Self-Efficacy (SE), into the TAM framework. Data were collected from 30 teachers who evaluated a teaching sequence designed according to constructivist principles and the 5E Instructional Model. Descriptive statistics, reliability analysis, correlation analysis, and multiple regression analyses were employed to examine the relationships among constructs. The findings indicate high perceived usefulness, positive attitudes, and strong behavioral intention to adopt the sequence. Inquiry Engagement was significantly associated with both Perceived Usefulness and Attitude Toward Use, while Trust was significantly associated with Perceived Ease of Use and attitudes. In contrast, Perceived Usefulness showed a weak and non-significant association with attitudes, suggesting that pedagogical factors may play a particularly important role in technology acceptance. Attitude Toward Use showed the strongest association with Behavioral Intention. The findings provide preliminary support for an extended, pedagogically enriched TAM and highlight the potential importance of instructional design in technology acceptance.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081232

Authors: Thomastine A. Sarchet-Maher Sarah E. Sarchet Karen Tobin Melissa Skyer

Throughout primary and secondary education in the United States, science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics (STEAM) education has become increasingly important as it promotes critical thinking skills and drives competition in the global economy. While some literature exists on teaching science to Deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) students, to date, few studies focus on teaching Deaf students with disabilities (DWD), particularly in STEAM subjects. In this study, we used a collaborative autoethnographic approach to document, reflect on, and modify the instructional approaches and assessment strategies we developed while working with DWD learners in our postsecondary science courses. We analyzed each strategy and categorized them into three areas: (1) facilitating environmental and physical access; (2) facilitating linguistic and cognitive access; and (3) facilitating formative and summative assessment access. We further categorized each strategy as to their potential applications to other science courses, STEAM courses, and/or more broadly. We present our findings as a description of each strategy, explaining how it was implemented and our observations of its outcomes for access, teaching and learning. We recognize that while our autoethnographic approach provides a rich accounting of these strategies, the efficacy of this study is limited by our individual and collective memory and the lack of consistent, formalized student feedback to further validate these findings. Therefore, we call for additional research to evaluate the efficacy and applicability of these and other instructional strategies across STEAM educational settings.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081231

Authors: Irene Spada Matteo Calaon Gualtiero Fantoni

Higher education is undergoing a profound transformation driven by online and generative learning environment expansion, rapidly evolving labour market demands, and the emergence of new educational providers offering flexible, industry-aligned learning activities. Universities are responding by redesigning and expanding their degree programmes, even though institutional rigidity sometimes limits their ability to change. This study investigates how higher education institutions can shift from reactive adaptation to proactive leadership in shaping the future of skills and jobs. We propose a skills mapping approach, applying text mining to syllabi using the European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations (ESCO) classification. The resulting course–skill–occupation map can support communication among stakeholders and update learning objectives, enabling modular curriculum design and micro-credential development. The educational offer of one of the leading technical universities in Europe is presented as a case study. Findings demonstrate how systematic skills extraction can enhance career guidance for students, curriculum development for teachers, and provide actionable insights for upskilling and reskilling.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081230

Authors: Maxwell Tsoka Mpeta Mamotena Rambao Mphoyanga

The aim of this study was to identify the motivations held by graduate teachers at the onset of their initial teacher education. Students were asked to create a collage based on the theme “I come from”, providing a visual and reflective account of their backgrounds and their reasons for enrolling in the PGCE programme. Empirical data were collected from the fifteen collages, along with reflective entries from students who volunteered to participate. Data analysis was conducted through a four-stage process that examined the content of the images, the visual elements, the structural composition of the collages, and the representational aspects, all of which were interpreted in relation to broader social, cultural, and educational discourses. The results suggest that motivations are not standalone; rather, they are intertwined, reflecting a complex interplay of influences. A key finding of the study is that students’ motivations have antecedents deeply rooted in their socio-cultural and economic backgrounds, indicating that personal history, community context, and prior experiences collectively shape their decision to pursue a career in teaching.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081229

Authors: Toshiharu Igarashi Shinya Takei

Ideathons and pitch competitions have expanded rapidly as experiential learning devices, but the textual artefacts they produce—presentation slides—remain under-examined. This study applies interpretable computational text analysis to 104 ideathon decks (1289 content slides) from four cohorts: Cambodia 2023, 2024, 2025 and Thailand 2025. Measures include lexical frequency, TF-IDF, lexicon-based sentiment, a ten-component pitch-completeness proxy, numerical density, and Jaccard similarity. Because sector designation was absent in Cambodia 2023 and present from 2024 onward, the longitudinal Cambodian data support an observational cohort comparison with an institutional change between cohorts; year effects, programme evolution, and sector designation cannot be separated. The Cambodia 2025 vs. Thailand 2025 contrast is a single-year cross-country comparison, not a longitudinal one. Between Cambodia 2023 and 2024, presentations show large Cohen’s d differences with 95% bootstrap confidence intervals (CIs) in total words, unique words, slide count, pitch completeness, and market-related vocabulary, alongside a small decline in type–token ratio. At fixed sector composition, Cambodia 2025 and Thailand 2025 differ sharply in surface vocabulary (top-50 Jaccard = 0.176): Cambodia leans toward agriculture, rural markets, and community development, while Thailand leans toward AI, learning, and cassava-centric agronomy. AI use was not directly measured, so all claims about generative AI are hypothesis-generating; the drop in within-cohort pairwise Jaccard from 2024 to 2025 (0.061 → 0.041) is consistent with—but does not establish—an augmentative rather than homogenising effect of AI assistance. Findings are reported as descriptive associations and interpreted through the lens of constraint-based creativity and institutional theory. We discuss implications for curriculum designers who wish to balance structural templates with exercises that promote diverse problem framings.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081228

Authors: Jovana Vitošević Milica Filipović Damljan Bogićević Mihajlo Djurović Igor Ilić Nikola Stojanović Vladimir Miletić Aleksandra Piljak Biljana Vitošević

Micro-credentials have attracted intense scholarly and policy attention, yet recent practitioner evidence, most notably the 2026 UPCEA survey of US institutions, the catalyst for this review, suggests that institutional commitment has plateaued even as individual engagement deepens. This hybrid review examines whether the peer-reviewed literature can account for that pattern. Sixty-five peer-reviewed studies (2020–2026) and eight major practitioner and policy reports were coded against an identical six-dimension framework spanning adoption, purposes, integration mechanisms, enabling conditions, barriers, and evidence of value. The two evidence streams proved strikingly complementary—and strikingly disconnected. The scholarly literature richly documents purposes, enabling conditions, and barriers, but measures adoption rarely, examines integration mostly in proposal rather than operation, and contains no direct study of the plateau; systematic adoption evidence resides almost entirely in practitioner reporting. Across both streams, recognition emerges as the binding constraint: employers, learners, and quality-assurance systems consistently condition the value of micro-credentials on the credit-bearing integration that most institutions have approached only tentatively. The review concludes that micro-credential value is conferred by institutional integration rather than intrinsic to the credentiaand proposes a research agenda centred on longitudinal adoption trajectories, verified outcomes, and integration observed in practice.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081227

Authors: Daniel Then Caroline Theurer David Cropley Sanna Pohlmann-Rother

The present study examines how accurately a common large language model (ChatGPT 5.0) assesses linguistic and content characteristics of texts written by first-grade students. The focus is on the consistency of LLM assessments and their alignment with human assessments. The database consists of N = 539 texts written by elementary school students. The results show that, contrary to our expectations, LLM assessments of linguistic text characteristics are not generally more consistent than LLM assessments of content text characteristics. Furthermore, alignment between LLM and human assessments is higher for the assessment of single linguistic characteristics (such as the use of cohesive devices) than for the assessment of single content characteristics (such as originality), but not in general. Thus, LLM assessments of linguistic text characteristics in early elementary school are not generally more accurate than LLM assessments of content text characteristics. Based on these findings, we discuss implications for using LLMs as assessment tools in early stages of schooling.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081226

Authors: Therese M. Cumming Jennifer L. Jolly Geraldine Townend Sarah Fleming

Twice-exceptional (2e) students are both gifted and neurodivergent, and are underrepresented in higher education research, particularly outside the United States. This exploratory qualitative study examined Australian 2e university students’ perceptions of effective supports for navigating tertiary education. Guided by Gagné’s Talent Development Mega Model, the study explored how institutional and personal supports shape academic engagement, identity, and achievement. Participants (N = 12) self-identified as 2e and were recruited from a large research-intensive Australian university. Data were gathered through open-ended surveys and analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. Findings revealed delayed identification of exceptionalities, diverse understandings of achievement, and reliance on internal coping strategies alongside external supports, including disability services, faculty flexibility, and technology. Participants emphasised the value of flexible, strengths-based learning environments and institutional recognition of twice-exceptionality. However, existing supports were perceived as generic and deficit-focused, highlighting the need for tailored practices, staff training in neurodiversity, and collaboration to support 2e students.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081225

Authors: Ofer Arazy Dan Peled Joshua Schmidt

Higher education institutions face growing pressure to demonstrate and quantify societal contributions beyond research and teaching; this study addresses measurement challenges for third-mission activity by developing both a conceptual typology and a practical assessment framework. We developed a four-dimension typology—research-based impact, teaching-based impact, campus-management-anchored impact, and administrative infrastructure—that synthesizes the existing literature while drawing attention to under-examined areas such as campus operations and institutional support. Methodologically, we synthesize the literature, analyze national and international best practices, and design an assessment approach that combines individual case studies and evidence-based questionnaires with automated metrics applied in multi-year cycles. We demonstrate that the typology reflects a broad range of impact pathways and argue that the proposed framework balances rigor and feasibility while surfacing key measurement tensions—breadth versus depth; general-purpose versus domain-specific metrics; input versus output indicators; levels of analysis; and assessment burden versus outcome quality. We conclude with actionable recommendations for academic staff, institutional leaders, and national agencies to integrate third-mission activities into evaluation and funding systems, offering a methodological toolkit that may support impact assessment into HEI evaluation without overstating conclusions.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081224

Authors: Heidrun Stoeger Albert Ziegler

Maintaining a stable STEM learning trajectory over an extended duration is a rare achievement. This conceptual paper uses the E3 Framework as an analytical lens to propose that stability is not a default state but a functional achievement of the entire system comprising Resources (E1), Regulation (E2), and Time (E3). We focus specifically on the “social fabric” through which these ecological domains may become functionally interconnected. We then use the online mentoring program CyberMentor as an illustrative case to show how the five functions postulated in the E3 Framework (social robustness, social regulatory realignment, social reproductive renewal of resources, social informational persistence, and social environmental fit) may contribute to trajectory stability. Our conceptual analysis suggests that a strong social fabric may contribute to the stability of STEM learning trajectories by helping ensure that no student has to “STEM alone.”

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081223

Authors: Alberto Cabedo-Mas Dawn Joseph

In contexts of growing social polarisation and cultural complexity, tertiary educators are increasingly called upon to move beyond celebratory multiculturalism towards critically informed intercultural praxis in preparing students for 21st-century classrooms. Drawing on a sustained transnational collaboration between Australia and Spain within initial teacher education, this paper adopts a collaborative autoethnographic approach to critically reflect on our pedagogical practices and their implications for culturally responsive music education. We examine how intercultural musical encounters, particularly those involving culture bearers, can foster cultural competence and critical reflection among pre-service teachers, while also generating tensions related to knowledge, cultural ownership, authenticity, and appropriation. Building on these reflections, we reconceptualise authenticity as a relational and dialogic process, co-constructed through interaction, mediation, and context-sensitive engagement. We propose a conceptual framework grounded in three interrelated dimensions: collaborative partnerships, relational authenticity, and dialogic mediation through educator facilitation. Together, these principles offer an ethically informed and pedagogically grounded approach to intercultural music education that moves beyond representation towards sustained, meaningful engagement with cultural diversity. By foregrounding the role of the educator as a cultural mediator and drawing on insights generated through sustained intercultural practice and prior research, this paper contributes to ongoing debates on belonging, inclusion, and the development of culturally responsive practices in contemporary music teacher education.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081222

Authors: Michele Darienzo Angela M. Kelly

The rapid increase in technological advancements in quantum information science and technology (QIST) necessitates a diverse workforce. The need for understanding how students, especially young women, develop QIST identity is an important consideration in career aspiration formation. With no existing framework for QIST identity development, this qualitative longitudinal exploratory case study combined aspects of identity frameworks in the QIST-adjacent fields of physics, computer science, engineering, and mathematics into a new framework to identify factors influencing QIST identity development for precollege women. This framework was inductively generated from the analysis of 20 interviews with women from a high school QIST outreach program that was developed by university quantum researchers. The first round of interviews (N = 14) was conducted two to four weeks after the conclusion of the QIST workshops and focused on student attitudes towards QIST, while the second round of interviews (N = 6) was conducted six to eighteen months later and focused on emerging elements of the QIST identity framework. Analysis of the interviews showed that the proposed framework, which included performance/competence, interest, recognition, and sense of belonging—found in identity frameworks of QIST-adjacent fields—required the addition of (1) normative comparison, (2) positional advantage, and (3) career expectancy.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081221

Authors: Nives Baranović Ivana Batarelo Kokić

This study investigates how pre-service primary education teachers (PSTs) develop geometric thinking when exposed to an instructional approach based on van Hiele’s theory. Ninety undergraduate students were divided into experimental and control groups and were assessed before and after a semester of Euclidean geometry instruction. Using mixed-methods analysis, the study examined participants’ initial levels of geometric thinking, their progression over time, and the comparative impact of traditional and van Hiele-based instruction. Both groups began with similarly limited geometric understanding and showed improvement, yet only the experimental group achieved statistically significant gains. These findings demonstrate the effectiveness of van Hiele-based instruction in strengthening conceptual understanding and supporting PSTs’ transition from procedural school mathematics to the deductive structure of university geometry. By structuring learning through van Hiele’s levels of thinking and five phases of learning, the instructional approach provided accessible entry points, systematic scaffolding, and opportunities for building coherent conceptual networks. The results suggest that integrating van Hiele-informed approaches into tertiary mathematics courses can support the development of robust geometric thinking and better prepare PSTs for future teaching of geometry.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081220

Authors: Abdulaziz M. Alshammari Faisal F. Alshammari Ali Essa A. Alshammari

This study examines the extent to which Arabic language teachers employ digital learning tools and proposes an explanatory model of their effects on language skills development and students’ quality of life. An explanatory approach was adopted, and data were collected through a questionnaire administered to a sample of 266 Arabic language teachers. Overall, the use of digital learning tools was high across all dimensions. Lesson preparation recorded the highest level, followed by quality of life, lesson implementation, and lesson evaluation. The results indicate that digital learning tools have a positive effect on both language skills development and quality of life. Among the examined dimensions, lesson implementation showed the strongest effect, whereas lesson preparation did not yield a statistically significant effect. Language skills also showed a direct positive effect on quality of life. In addition, the findings indicate an indirect effect of digital learning tools on quality of life through language skills, supporting the mediating role of language skills in explaining the relationships among the study variables.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081219

Authors: Wing Sze Emily Chow

Background: Today, most students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are included in general education settings. Teachers are at the forefront in implementing inclusive practices and supporting these students’ learning. Their self-efficacy and willingness can determine the success of including students with ASD. In Hong Kong, little is known about the perspectives of in-service teachers working with students with ASD in classrooms. Methods: In this study, we measured teachers’ self-efficacy and willingness to implement inclusive practices for students with ASD and explored the relationship between them. Factors contributing to teachers’ self-efficacy and willingness were also investigated. Quantitative data were collected from 446 in-service teachers who participated in a professional development course about supporting students with disabilities at a university in Hong Kong. Results: The results reveal that Hong Kong teachers expressed a moderate level of self-efficacy and willingness in implementing inclusive practices for students with ASD. The results indicate that contact with students with ASD, principal support, and resource availability are predictors of teachers’ self-efficacy and willingness to implement inclusive practices. However, knowledge of inclusive legislation and policy is a predictor of self-efficacy but not willingness. Additionally, age influences teachers’ self-efficacy in inclusive practices, while gender affects their self-efficacy in inclusive practices and collaboration. Conclusions: These findings offer implications and suggestions to policymakers and school principals on supporting teachers in implementing inclusive education and promoting sustainable inclusive practices for students with ASD. These stakeholders should foster supportive environments that encourage positive interactions with students with ASD while providing targeted professional development in assessment and legislative knowledge.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081218

Authors: Cristina Ruiz-Camacho Margarita Gozalo

University students face academic demands that may be associated with reduced use of active coping when perceived as stressful. This study examined whether feedback seeking, cooperative work, time management, and active learning moderated the association between perceived academic stressors and active coping. A cross-sectional, non-experimental design was used with 1014 undergraduates from the University of Extremadura. Participants completed measures of perceived academic stressors (E-CEA), active coping (A-CEA), and good practices (IBPEU). Four separate moderation models were estimated using PROCESS Model 1 with 5000 bootstrap resamples, adjusting for age, gender, year of study, and field of study. Perceived academic stressors were negatively associated with active coping, whereas all four good-practice dimensions were positively associated with it. All interaction terms were positive and statistically significant (B = 0.058–0.086, p = 0.017–0.046), but each accounted for only 0.34–0.49% of additional explained variance. Across all four models, higher reported levels of the corresponding good-practice dimension were associated with a less pronounced negative association between perceived academic stressors and active coping. The findings may inform the development and evaluation of student-support and instructional initiatives focused on feedback literacy, cooperative skills, time planning, and active engagement with learning. They also point to the relevance of educational conditions that may facilitate these practices within university learning environments.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081216

Authors: Blanca Carballo-Mendívil Adrián Jesús Pérez-Morales Alejandro Arellano-González María del Pilar Lizardi-Duarte Nidia Josefina Ríos-Vázquez

Student dropout remains a persistent challenge in higher education, with significant academic, social and institutional implications. Although machine learning (ML) models for dropout prediction have proliferated, most select input variables based on data availability rather than theory and rarely report psychometric validation of the constructs used. This study addresses both gaps by developing and validating an early warning system at a Mexican university using exclusively pre-enrollment data from more than 46,000 student records from 2014 to 2025. Following the CRISP-DM methodology, eight theoretically grounded constructs, anchored in Tinto’s integration model, Bean’s attrition model, and Cabrera et al.’s persistence model, were operationalized from institutional intake questionnaires and assessed for internal consistency using Cronbach’s alpha prior to model training. Eight supervised ML algorithms were benchmarked across distance-based (Logistic Regression, SVM, AdaBoost, ANN) and tree-based (Random Forest, XGBoost, LightGBM, CatBoost) families. A tuned and isotonically calibrated Random Forest achieved the best overall performance (recall = 0.743, F1 = 0.524, ROC-AUC = 0.734, PR-AUC = 0.478) on a strictly held-out test set that was not used at any stage of model development. The 2023–2025 cohorts, whose dropout labels were not yet observable under the institutional definition, were scored prospectively to generate operational risk profiles. SHAP analysis identified high-school GPA, parental education, and household asset indices as dominant predictors, which mapped directly onto the three theoretical frameworks. These findings demonstrate that psychometrically grounded pre-enrollment data alone can support an operationally deployable dropout detection system, enabling proactive, evidence-based retention interventions from the first day of enrollment.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081217

Authors: Hugh Gundlach

This study examines how school music teachers are represented in English-language television series and considers implications for professional identity, pedagogy and recruitment. Drawing on a novel, systematically coded database of 36 on-screen music educators from 28 television series from 1952 to 2026, quantitative description maps demographic attributes (age, gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status), narrative role (minor, major, protagonist), genre and institutional context. Our findings show music teachers are most often supporting characters, typically mid-career, male and predominantly white, with comedy—especially ensemble school comedy—dominating portrayals. Qualitative interpretation demonstrates persistent teacher archetypes and pedagogical tropes: the failed performer turned teacher, the inspirational mentor who singles out a talented student, and blurred teacher–student boundaries. These portrayals routinely privilege spectacle and rapid transformation over sequenced curriculum, assessment and routine labour, risking the creation of distorted public expectations about what music teaching entails. This article situates these findings within contemporary concerns about teacher shortages and declining occupational status in English-language contexts, arguing that mediated images may influence career choice, teacher retention and societal attitudes. Methodological advances include expanded time and geographic contexts of studied texts and detailed coding. The paper concludes by calling for reception and experimental studies to test causal effects on aspiring teachers and to inform teacher education curricula.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081215

Authors: Yangyang Luo Wanyi Zhao Wanruo Shi Qian Xu Yingjie Fan

This study examined how different forms of family cultural capital are linked to Chinese graduate students’ academic engagement and research self-efficacy, and whether these pathways differ by rural–urban background. Drawing on cultural capital theory and social cognitive theory, the study distinguished embodied, objectified, and institutionalized family cultural capital and conceptualized academic engagement as a behavioral pathway through which family-based resources may become relevant to research. Survey data were collected from 412 graduate students at five public universities in China. Partial least squares structural equation modeling with 5000 bootstrap resamples was used to test direct and indirect pathways separately for students from rural and urban backgrounds. The results showed that embodied family cultural capital was positively related to academic engagement in both groups, and academic engagement was positively related to research self-efficacy. Academic engagement mediated the relationship between embodied family cultural capital and research self-efficacy for both rural- and urban-background students. However, embodied family cultural capital only had a significant direct relationship with research self-efficacy among urban-background students. Objectified family cultural capital was only negatively related to research self-efficacy among rural-background students, while institutionalized family cultural capital showed no significant relationships in either group. These findings suggest that family cultural capital is not uniformly converted into research self-efficacy in graduate education. Its role depends on the form of cultural capital and the rural–urban context in which academic engagement is enacted. Theoretically, this study shows that the conversion of family cultural capital into research self-efficacy is form-specific and context-dependent. Practically, it identifies academic engagement as a key leverage point for promoting equitable research development among graduate students from diverse family backgrounds.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081214

Authors: Sara Redondo-Duarte José-Manuel Sáez-López Mario Pena-Garrido María-Belén Morales-Cevallos

This study examined how educational robotics and machine learning activities contributed to the understanding of artificial intelligence (AI) among elementary school students, pre-service teachers, and practicing teachers. The intervention involved 1207 participants, including 1009 fifth-grade students, 93 practicing elementary school teachers, and 105 pre-service teachers. Participants engaged in a series of structured activities focused on educational robotics, visual block-based programming, and machine learning concepts. A pre-experimental design was employed to assess changes in understanding and to explore participants’ perceptions of the learning experience. Statistical analyses included Student’s t-tests, the Kruskal–Wallis H test, and Bonferroni-corrected post hoc comparisons. Results indicated pre–post gains in elementary school students’ understanding of machine learning, AI modeling processes, and fundamental computational concepts following participation in the intervention. Across the three groups, participants reported positive perceptions of the activities and recognized their value for learning about AI. Elementary school students reported higher motivation and stronger engagement in coding-related tasks, likely reflecting their previous experience with Scratch in school settings. Practicing teachers expressed a more interdisciplinary perspective on the educational applications of AI, whereas pre-service teachers demonstrated stronger conceptual understanding of the underlying principles. Overall, the findings suggest that educational robotics and machine learning activities are associated with positive learning experiences and observed gains in AI-related understanding. However, given the pre-experimental design without a control group or random assignment, the results should be interpreted as evidence of observed changes and participant perceptions rather than demonstrated effectiveness.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081213

Authors: Lána McCarthy Martine Smith Duana Quigley

This study develops a theory of parental engagement by exploring the perspectives of both parents and practitioners within a socio-economically disadvantaged area in Dublin, Ireland. Using Constructivist Grounded Theory, data were generated through focus groups with participants involved in the family literacy programme Breakfast Buddies. Analysis resulted in the development of a substantive theory, The Dance of Engagement, which conceptualises parental engagement as a relational, non-linear, and co-constructed process. The findings identify three foundational tenets—safety, equality and trust—as essential conditions underpinning effective parental engagement. Four interconnected categories describe how engagement unfolds in practice: choosing to engage, co-creating engagement, connecting to engage and sharing. These categories illustrate how engagement is initiated, sustained and extended beyond programme settings into home and community contexts. The study demonstrates that personalised practitioner approaches, relational environments and shared ownership of engagement processes support greater parental confidence, sustained participation and reciprocal learning between parents and practitioners. The resulting theory challenges deficit-oriented and participation-based models of parental engagement by focusing on collaboration and contextual responsiveness. The Dance of Engagement offers a theoretically grounded framework with clear implications for policy and practice, particularly for designing inclusive family literacy practices to improve outcomes for children and families in disadvantaged communities.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081212

Authors: Lynde Tan Loshini Naidoo Sharon Wagner

Digital exclusion compounds the challenges that migrant and refugee parents already face in supporting their children’s education. As schooling becomes increasingly digitally mediated, this shift can intensify existing inequalities, particularly when the school and home systems present contradictions that these parents must navigate simultaneously. Grounded in expansive learning theory, this study examines the experiences of 18 migrant and refugee parents in Western Sydney, Australia. It draws on interview data to illuminate the contradictions encountered when supporting their children’s home learning. Through this theoretical lens, we highlight how parents take agentic actions and work to develop solutions tailored to their families’ specific needs and circumstances. The findings identify three broad types of contradictions and the strategies parents employed to overcome barriers to supporting home learning. We argue for a co-construction approach in which schools, parents, and community actors collaborate to promote expansive learning, positioning migrant and refugee parents as active participants in the redesign of school–home–community partnership systems.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081211

Authors: Tiberio Garza Asia Thomas Bryan Dewsbury

Introductory biology courses play a pivotal role in shaping students’ exposure to STEMM disciplines and in influencing persistence along life science pathways, yet relatively little is known about who teaches these gateway courses at a national scale. The collective effort to cultivate inclusive experiences for STEMM students relies on the professional and political structures within which instructors of this key course operate in. This study examines the distribution of faculty appointment types in introductory biology across several hundred U.S. colleges and universities sampled to approximate the national landscape by geographic region and institutional type. Using a large, multi-sheet dataset of class sections, we systematically coded instructor titles into contingent (non-tenure-track), ladder (tenure-track/tenured), and other categories and generated both section-level and institution-level estimates of faculty assignment. We then addressed three questions: (a) whether contingent or ladder faculty teach the majority of introductory biology sections nationally; (b) how the distribution of faculty types varies by institutional characteristics; and (c) how estimates of faculty representation differ when each course section versus each institution is weighted equally. Results indicate that, in this sample, ladder faculty teach a majority of introductory biology sections, although there is substantial variability across institutions and clear contrasts by institutional type and context. Comparisons of section-level and institution-level estimates further show that conclusions about “who teaches” introductory biology depend on the analytic lens, with section-weighted analyses emphasizing the typical student experience and institution-weighted analyses emphasizing typical institutional practice. These findings contribute discipline-specific evidence to broader conversations about how the academic workforce is constituted, and by extension creates inclusive environments and provide methodological guidance for studying faculty roles in gateway STEM education.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081210

Authors: Keri Facer Lara Dzabolova

This paper, based on a keynote given at the Nordic Environmental and Sustainability Educators Conference, explores a set of principles that might inform the responses of environmental educators, in particular those working in Europe, to the growth in political authoritarianism allied with climate denial and ecological extractivism. Taking the form of a manifesto and intended to prompt debate and mutual support, the piece proposes 11 principles: Don’t panic; Acknowledge your own emotions; Explore Possibilities Beyond the Classroom; Work with hope as praxis; Proliferate stories of change; Nurture alternatives; Name and protect gains; Diversify resources and tactics; Practice simple sabotage; See the bigger picture; and Don’t forget the dancing.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081209

Authors: Luis Carlos Escobar Casallas Andrés Chiappe Sandra Martínez-Pérez

This conceptual paper revisits the learning styles debate in the context of generative and adaptive artificial intelligence in higher education. It does not seek to rehabilitate classical learning style taxonomies, whose prescriptive claims have been widely challenged as a neuromyth. Instead, it argues that AI-mediated learning creates new conditions under which patterns of regulation, delegation, verification, iteration, epistemic control, and ethical responsibility may become more observable and pedagogically relevant. Drawing on research on learning styles, neuromyths, AI literacy, adaptive learning, assessment, self-regulated learning, metacognition, and epistemic agency, the paper proposes a conceptual framework for regulation and agency styles in AI-mediated learning. In this framework, style is not treated as a fixed psychological trait or as a category into which learners should be sorted, but as a situated and modifiable profile of decisions and actions distributed across learners, tasks, and intelligent systems. Three analytical dimensions are proposed: epistemic control and metacognitive orchestration, adaptive regulation and generative iteration, and socio-algorithmic agency and ethical governance. The paper concludes with implications for task design, assessment, teacher education, and equitable AI integration.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081208

Authors: Ruth Llopis-Cuenca Iskandar Rementeria Cristina Arriaga Arecia Aguirre

This study explores how teachers working in social music projects in Spain understand their professional development and which elements they identify as central to their learning processes. Although teacher professional development (TPD) has been widely studied in formal music education contexts, less is known about how it unfolds in socially oriented and community-based settings. The study adopts a qualitative design based on in-depth semi-structured interviews with seven music teachers involved in social music projects across Spain. Data were analysed using qualitative content analysis to identify recurring themes and patterns in participants’ accounts. The findings show that teachers understand professional development as an ongoing and situated process closely linked to their daily practice. Experiential learning, adaptation to uncertainty, collaboration with others, and continuous reflection emerge as key elements in their development. In addition, participants highlight the importance of expanding beyond strictly musical training to include pedagogical, social, and relational competences. These results suggest that professional development in social music projects differs from more traditional models by emphasising context, experience, and community engagement. The study contributes to current discussions on music teacher development by highlighting the need for more flexible, collaborative, and context-sensitive approaches to TPD.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081207

Authors: Ángel Alsina María Salgado

This article links Mathematics and the Arts through the STEAM approach to highlight the potential of this interdisciplinary approach in early childhood education. From this perspective, the aim is to present the design and implementation of the STEAM activity, We Build Trees with Cuisenaire Rods, and to analyse how soft skills are promoted within a group of 18 five-year-old pupils. Using the Thick Description approach and an analytical model, it has been identified that: (1) Mathematics and the Arts maintained an ongoing dialogue throughout the sequence of seven tasks included in the STEAM activity; (2) the STEAM activity contributed to the development of soft skills such as critical and creative thinking, problem-solving, collaboration and teamwork, technological and digital literacy, curiosity and autonomy, and design and design thinking. We conclude that, from the interdisciplinary STEAM perspective, the Arts are not an instrumental discipline serving Mathematics, nor is Mathematics merely a setting for working on art; rather, both disciplines enrich one another to promote soft skills in early years education.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081206

Authors: Qizhen Deng Ana Taboada Barber Susan Lutz Klauda Kelly B. Cartwright

This study examined (a) the development of vocabulary breadth and vocabulary depth, operationalized as homonym knowledge, across one academic year (fall to spring) in Grades 1–4 for multilingual learners and English monolinguals and (b) the concurrent and longitudinal relations between homonym knowledge and reading comprehension. Participants were 758 elementary students (60% multilingual learners) who completed measures of vocabulary breadth, homonym knowledge, word identification, and reading comprehension in fall and spring. Two 2 (Time) × 2 (Language) × 4 (Grade) mixed ANOVAs and hierarchical regressions were conducted. Both multilingual learners and monolinguals showed significant growth in vocabulary breadth and homonym knowledge over the academic year, but growth rates were comparable across language groups and grades, indicating a persistent vocabulary gap between multilingual learners and monolinguals. Hierarchical regressions showed that fall homonym knowledge uniquely contributed to fall reading comprehension after controlling for fall vocabulary breadth and word identification. Longitudinally, fall homonym knowledge also predicted spring reading comprehension after accounting for fall reading comprehension, word identification, and vocabulary breadth. These results highlight homonym knowledge as an aspect of vocabulary depth that is associated with reading comprehension in early elementary grades for both multilingual learners and monolinguals, and point to the potential value of explicit instruction on homonyms to support multilingual learners’ literacy and content-area learning.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081204

Authors: Gergő Vida Ágnes Fehér

Mentoring has become a central mechanism of teacher support and professional learning, while the conditions of teaching have been reshaped by socio-political uncertainty, teacher shortages, digitalisation, increasingly diverse student needs, and the COVID-19 pandemic itself. This study aimed to map the conceptual structure and temporal evolution of research on teacher mentoring and professional learning. A longitudinal bibliometric and science-mapping analysis was conducted on 2843 peer-reviewed articles indexed in the Scopus database and published between 2010 and 2025, using co-occurrence (co-word) analysis of author and indexed keywords in VOSviewer 1.6.20, complemented by network, overlay and density visualisations. The final co-word map comprised 123 keyword elements organised into four clusters, with 3312 links and a total link strength of 17,024. The central node was ‘mentoring’ (532 occurrences; 121 links; total link strength = 2212; average publication year = 2019.40). Four thematic lines structured the discourse: (1) professionalisation in the wider sense, including health education mentoring; (2) initial teacher education and the induction of new teachers; (3) higher education and digitally mediated environments of professional learning; and (4) bridging concepts of collaboration and professional identity formation. The findings indicate that, within the literature mapped, mentoring functions as a relational, context-sensitive form of support connecting several arenas of professional learning. This study contributes a longitudinal conceptual map of the field; the results describe the intellectual structure of the literature and do not constitute evidence of the effectiveness of mentoring practices.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081205

Authors: Pireh Pirzada Yue Chen Kok Keong Chai

Feedback is widely recognised as a critical component of learning in higher education, yet its effectiveness in STEM contexts remains uneven in practice. This paper presents a systematic review of feedback research in STEM higher education, examining how students engage with feedback, the conditions that shape feedback literacy, and the role of emotional, cultural, and relational factors. The review identified 52 studies from 1999 to July 2025 through the databases IEEE Xplore, Scopus, ERIC, and EBSCOhost. The findings indicate that engagement with feedback is not a direct outcome of feedback provision, but a mediated process requiring interpretation, evaluation, and enactment. This process is shaped by interacting cognitive, structural, technological, and socio-cultural influences. Feedback literacy emerges as a central mechanism linking instructional design, learner capabilities, and learning outcomes, yet it is often assumed rather than explicitly developed. The findings further highlight a persistent gap between dialogic, learner-centred feedback models and their implementation in large-scale STEM environments. Structural pressures, assessment practices, and technological systems influence how feedback is experienced, often reinforcing evaluative rather than developmental use. Emotional, cultural, and identity-related factors further shape how feedback is interpreted and acted upon. This review contributes an integrated understanding of feedback engagement as a multi-layered and context-dependent process in STEM higher education, emphasising the need to support how feedback is interpreted, discussed, and applied within coherent learning environments.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081203

Authors: Reiville Rêgo Ana Paula Aires Rui Silva Maximino Bessa

This quantitative study adapted the Academic Motivation Scale (AMS) to the Financial Calculus context in higher education. It examined the preliminary psychometric properties of the resulting Financial Literacy Academic Motivation Scale (FLAMS). The 28 AMS items were translated, contextually adapted, and administered to 164 Portuguese undergraduate students enrolled in Financial Calculus during the 2023/2024 and 2024/2025 academic years. Exploratory analysis was used to inspect within-sample item patterns, while confirmatory factor analysis was conducted in the same pooled sample to compare theoretically plausible candidate structures. The refined five-factor, 21-item model, comprising amotivation, external regulation, introjected regulation, identified regulation, and a general a relative improvement over the alternative models considered. Internal consistency was acceptable to high across the retained factors. However, the model did not meet conventional close-fit benchmarks, and the analyses did not provide independent cross-validation or evidence of measurement invariance across academic cohorts. The findings should therefore be interpreted as initial evidence for a context-specific candidate structure rather than as a definitive validation of FLAMS. Future research should replicate the model in larger independent samples, test measurement invariance across cohorts and institutional contexts, and examine associations with external criteria, including Financial Calculus grades, financial-literacy learning outcomes, engagement, and persistence.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081202

Authors: Karima Matar Almazroui

More than 43 million children are currently displaced globally, yet the artificial intelligence (AI) systems deployed in their education are rarely designed with cultural identity, linguistic continuity, or belonging as architectural concerns. Existing frameworks treat identity as a contextual consideration surrounding educational technology; this paper argues that identity should be treated as a design variable within AI system architecture itself. The paper develops the AI-Based Identity Support Framework (AISF), a conceptual model constructed through interdisciplinary synthesis across bodies of literature including cultural bereavement theory, narrative identity, ethical AI design, and multilingual AI systems, and informed by the author’s practitioner engagement with displaced communities (2018–2023). The AISF specifies three interlocking domains (cultural anchoring, emotional co-construction, and adaptive belonging), each defined operationally and accompanied by diagnostic indicators, design principles, and a preliminary assessment rubric. The framework is differentiated from trauma-informed pedagogy, culturally sustaining pedagogy, and principle-based AI ethics as a system-architectural rather than pedagogical construct. The paper engages critically with risks internal to identity-supportive AI architectures, including essentialization, surveillance, and algorithmic identity-fixing, and addresses low-resource deployment constraints. The AISF is intended to provide a structured diagnostic instrument for designers, evaluators, and policymakers, aligned with Sustainable Development Goals 4.7, 10, and 16.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081201

Authors: Lu Xi Qinghua Chen Angel M. Y. Lin

Generative AI (GenAI) has transformed L2 writing, producing human-like prose but often impersonal feedback. This study explores the potential of GenAI–human collaborative feedback, focusing on the first author’s experience as a teaching assistant in a Hong Kong public university’s Bachelor of Education (English language track). Grounded in Ecological Languaging Competencies (ELC) and its affordance framework, this study employs an ethnographic approach informed by narrative inquiry and phenomenology. Data were drawn from Zoom tutoring sessions incorporating interview-style questions to investigate participants’ perspectives and experiences, GenAI-student conversation logs, and final assignments in order to analyze two multilingual students’ GenAI–human-mediated L2 writing processes. Findings are organized around three ELC-informed themes: (1) whole-body sense-making and the meshing of first-order languaging and second-order language; (2) individual languaging agency within a distributed ecosystem; and (3) environmental affordances and functional fit. In both cases, GenAI demonstrates consistent limitations in facilitating the situated, embodied, and affectively attuned dimensions of languaging that effective L2 writing entails. This study makes two contributions: it extends ELC’s affordance network to tertiary-level GenAI–human-mediated L2 writing, and it reconceptualizes writerly authorship as a distributed yet agentively orchestrated practice. Moreover, co-agentic GenAI–human feedback foregrounds ecological embeddedness, writerly agency, and ethical GenAI integration.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081200

Authors: Eleni Kougioumtzidou Kafenia Botsoglou Eleftheria Beazidou George Floros

This literature review examines how gamification influences engagement, motivation, and learning outcomes in distance education. As online learning environments often face challenges related to student isolation and diminished motivation, gamification—the integration of game-design elements into non-game contexts—emerges as a strategic pedagogical tool. Following PRISMA guidelines, this study synthesizes 70 peer-reviewed articles, analyzing key mechanics such as points, leaderboards, and badges, alongside psychological and cognitive frameworks including Self-Determination Theory, Flow Theory, and Cognitive Load Theory. The findings indicate that while gamification positively influences student participation and emotional investment, its effectiveness is highly context-dependent, requiring strict pedagogical alignment and the avoidance of an over-reliance on extrinsic rewards (“pointsification”). Furthermore, the review highlights the role of personalized feedback, cognitive scaffolding, and social interaction in sustaining progress. The results suggest that when integrated thoughtfully, gamification can mitigate online attrition and foster a more resilient, interactive distance learning ecosystem. This work concludes by identifying gaps in current research, particularly regarding methodologically limited long-term cognitive outcomes, the novelty effect, and the necessity for instructor training in gamified methodologies.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081199

Authors: Marita Barabash

This paper explores the interrelations between “precision”, “approximation”, and experimental mathematics supported by digital educational technology in the classroom. It examines the epistemic and pedagogical challenges and opportunities these links create in school mathematics and what is required of teachers to address them. Instances of “approximation” mathematics, emerging from experiments performed with digital tools, are analyzed and evaluated from the standpoint of “precise,” deductive mathematics. The study presents examples where “approximate” computations—or inferences based upon them—are incorrect from the standpoint of “precision” mathematics. It also shows how to correct or further investigate such discrepancies and how school mathematical practices would profit from such approaches. In addition, it discusses instances where experimental mathematics reveals issues typically outside the school curriculum but still conceptually accessible, yielding unexpected or unfamiliar results. The paper also considers recurrent sequences and their hands-on exploration in the context of the interrelation between the three realms of mathematics. The analysis of the examples through the prism of three realms of mathematics linked by digital technologies outlines the ensuing epistemic shift in the mathematics classroom. The teachers’ expectations in view of this shift are analyzed and presented.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081198

Authors: Zaid Almajdoub Patricia Fidalgo Reem Hashem Yahia Alramamneh

The increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) in education has raised important questions about how learners and teachers regulate their thinking when interacting with AI-supported tools. This study investigates metacognitive regulation during the design of AI-supported educational applications by graduate students (N = 12) in a UAE teacher education programme. The qualitative research adopted a multiple-case study method to analyse six student design teams involved in designing educational applications as part of a technology integration course. Data were collected from three main sources: the educational apps themselves, the corresponding Teacher Guides, and reflective interviews conducted using a semi-structured interview guide. Data analysis combined deductive qualitative coding based on the regulation-of-cognition dimensions of the Metacognitive Awareness Inventory (MAI) framework with inductive thematic analysis of participants’ experiences and conceptualisations of AI. The findings show that AI was used differently across the six cases. It appeared to function more as a cognitive scaffold when participants questioned, checked, revised, or justified AI-generated outputs, and more as a shortcut when outputs were used mainly for convenience with limited further reflection. Planning was the most visible regulatory process, while stronger regulatory engagement was evident when AI-generated outputs were examined, questioned, and refined rather than accepted without further consideration.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081197

Authors: Jennifer Pankowski

As colleges and universities enroll increasing numbers of neurodivergent students, questions of inclusion, belonging, and sustained engagement have become central concerns in higher education research and practice. This article presents a theory-informed narrative synthesis of scholarship on dialogic pedagogy, student belonging, neurodiversity, Universal Design for Learning (UDL), and trauma-aware education. It also includes a reflexive institutional illustration of the Ongoing Academic and Social Instruction Support (OASIS) program. Institutionally reported outcomes are interpreted as descriptive indicators rather than causal evidence, given the absence of independent evaluation and comparative data. The analysis highlights both the promise and the constraints of dialogic approaches, including issues of power, scalability, and structural limitations. The article concludes with implications for practice and a research agenda emphasizing longitudinal and comparative evaluation.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081196

Authors: Laurence Craven Daniel R. Fredrick

The release of ChatGPT in November 2022 transformed second language (L2) writing instruction and led to rapid growth in research on large language model (LLM)-generated feedback; however, no synthesis has mapped this literature in terms of feedback quality, learner uptake, and pedagogical integration. This scoping review examines 185 empirical studies published between November 2022 and March 2026 that were identified through a Scopus search (n = 283 screened) and analysed using a systematic keyword-based charting framework applied to full abstracts, with full-text analysis of 35 studies. The review identifies four major patterns: (1) comparative AI–human feedback research dominates the literature (27.6%); (2) content-level feedback remains underexplored (13.5% of studies); (3) learner uptake is rarely measured as a primary outcome; and (4) LLM feedback is broadly comparable to teacher feedback for surface-level errors but weaker for content and argumentation, while learner perceptions often exceed demonstrated performance outcomes. Hybrid AI–teacher models show promising but underexamined potential, accounting for only 12.4% of the literature. The field shows a focus on perceptions rather than learning outcomes, an apparent tendency toward positive-results reporting, and no clear teaching models. This study proposes a typology of LLM feedback functions and outlines a research agenda focused on uptake, longitudinal outcomes, and hybrid AI–teacher integration.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081195

Authors: José A. Núñez-López David Molina-García José L. González-Fernández

Manipulative materials are widely considered valuable resources in geometry education because they may support visualization, spatial reasoning, and conceptual understanding when implemented within appropriate instructional contexts. However, many existing resources focus on isolated concepts and provide limited opportunities for connecting geometric relationships through transformation and decomposition. This study presents Geomaniguras, a manipulative material designed for upper primary and lower secondary education. The research adopts a design and development approach focused on pedagogical design and expert-based validation rather than measuring student learning outcomes. The study combined prototype construction, expert evaluation, and iterative refinement. Twelve specialists in mathematics education assessed the material using a structured validation guide addressing pedagogical usefulness, conceptual coherence, usability, visual design, and classroom applicability. Results indicate that experts perceived Geomaniguras as a potentially valuable resource for exploring polygon classification, area relationships, geometric decomposition, circumference, and the Pythagorean theorem. The findings provide preliminary evidence regarding the pedagogical plausibility and classroom applicability of the material, although no direct conclusions can yet be drawn about instructional effectiveness. The originality of the proposal lies in its integrated conceptual framework, which connects multiple geometric learning experiences within a single manipulative system.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081194

Authors: LaSina M. Jackson Mihwa Park Catherine Lammert

This study investigates a secondary science teacher’s beliefs and attitudes toward marginalized minority students and examines how these beliefs and attitudes influenced students’ science identity development. The study focused on an experienced Black female biology teacher with an MEd in STEM education and her students at an urban high school in a U.S. state where anti-diversity, equity, and inclusion influences on curriculum were particularly strong. All students in the class (N = 21) identified as marginalized minority students. Data sources included teacher interviews, classroom observations, field notes, and student surveys. These data were analyzed and interpreted through the frameworks of Critical Race Theory and culturally responsive teaching. Findings showed that students expressed a strong sense of belonging when their diverse voices, backgrounds, and experiences were acknowledged in the classroom. However, many students also described feeling disconnected from the traditional image of a scientist, which contributed to self-doubt about their potential participation in scientific careers. This study highlights the importance of educators actively engaging with students’ identities, promoting diverse representations within science, and creating supportive and inclusive classroom environments. At the same time, the findings reveal the limits of classroom-based support for science identity development when broader structural barriers and dominant stereotypes about science remain strong influences.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081192

Authors: Jenny Marttila Ruben Fukkink Maarit Silvén

Early childhood education (ECE) professionals’ reflections on mental states have been associated with staff–child interaction quality and child development. However, experimental evidence from mentalization training in ECE teacher education is limited. Fifteen Finnish student teachers with a caregiver background, enrolled in a higher education program, participated in a Video Enhanced Reflective Practice (VERP) intervention. The training was integrated in two blended learning study modules, where the focus was to support children’s language, cognitive, and social–emotional development. The student teachers’ observed mental state talk increased during trainer-guided peer discussions as well as student-guided discussions with two children during picture book reading interactions. The student teachers’ self-reported general interaction skills also improved. In the pilot study, growth was observed in mentalization and interaction skills, following a higher education program that combined VERP with evidence-based content. The preliminary data suggest that future interventions should focus on the transfer of training and on improving ECE student teachers’ talk about emotional states during interactions with children.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081193

Authors: Adam Wong Ken Tsang Wience Lai Shuyang Lin Lai Lam Chan

The proliferation of generative AI (GenAI) in higher education necessitates a shift towards more authentic assessment methods that can genuinely measure student understanding. Student-created screencasts are a potentially valuable yet underexamined assessment format in higher education. A screencast is a screen capture video, which records all the activities on a computer screen. This study examines the efficacy of student-created screencasts as an authentic assessment. Using data from 84 undergraduate students, Elastic Net regression and Shapley Additive Explanations (SHAP) analysis were applied to examine predictive relationships across assessment types: screencasts with audio narration (SWAs), screencasts without audio (SNAs), written assignments, and group project presentations. The findings reveal that SWAs have a moderate-to-strong positive association with test performance, acting as a significantly stronger predictor than both traditional written work and SNAs. The results suggest that narrated screencasts may serve as a useful assessment format for gauging student understanding, supporting the early identification of at-risk students, and providing a platform for developing crucial communication skills. This assessment strategy holds promise for enhancing academic integrity and learning in the GenAI era. This study contributes to assessment research by demonstrating the predictive value of narrated screencasts in identifying at-risk students in AI-supported learning environments. Future research should extend this work through multi-institutional designs, longitudinal analysis, and qualitative investigation of student perceptions in various courses other than artificial intelligence.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081190

Authors: Qianjin Guo Luis Perez Cortes Ana Clara Ventura Jordan Barria-Pineda Deniz Sonmez Diego Chaves-Gnecco Erin Walker Diana Leyva

Parents play a central role in the development of preschoolers’ literacy skills. Prior parent-focused literacy interventions have promoted preschoolers’ literacy skills through either dialogic reading or elaborative reminiscing, but rarely have these approaches been combined. This is a pilot study of Cuéntame Cuentos, a 6-week app-based intervention for Latino families, which included digital storybooks with embedded conversational prompts promoting dialogic reading and elaborative reminiscing. Associations between conversational prompt engagement during app use and gains in preschoolers’ literacy skills from pre- to post-intervention were examined. Participants were 40 Latino parents and their preschoolers living in the U.S. (child M age = 55.12 months; 52.5% girls). Positive quadratic associations between conversational prompt engagement and one measure of children’s story retelling skills (story memory) were observed. At moderate levels of conversational prompt engagement, the associations with gains in story memory were positive. However, at higher levels of conversational prompt engagement, the associations became negative, suggesting unproductive cognitive effort. No associations with other literacy skills were found. While preliminary, these findings underscore the importance of considering not only whether parents and children engage with app-based conversational prompts but also their level of engagement. Implications for the design of digital family literacy interventions are discussed.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081191

Authors: Shelby Cosner Meagan Richard

This manuscript considers the design of equity-oriented clinical experiences within principal preparation programs as a salient mechanism for supporting equity-oriented school improvement in PK-12 schools. This manuscript presents an integrative review of the literature that has examined equity-oriented principal preparation and clinical experiences. While prior reviews have examined principal preparation clinical experiences broadly, this review extends that work by examining how the clinical experience has been and might be designed to cultivate leadership that better serves equity-oriented purposes, specifically. Given that principal leadership is widely recognized as a critical lever for school improvement, and that the clinical experience is arguably the most consequential component of preparation, how programs design that experience for equity-oriented aims has direct implications for whether school leaders are prepared to do the improvement work that marginalized students most need. Our analysis attends to key design features of the clinical experience, including its form and format, clinical work tasks, and developmental supports, with attention to how each has been or might be reoriented for equity-oriented aims. This review highlights broad recommendations advanced by the more conceptual and theoretical literature as well as more granular insights from individual programs’ experiences, making it a comprehensive and actionable starting place for programs interested in strengthening the clinical experience for equity-oriented aims.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081189

Authors: Izgizhan Aubakir Gita Revalde Aliya Murzagaliyeva

This study examines the effectiveness of an integrated teaching model that combines project-based learning (PBL), interactive simulations, and ChatGPT in the teaching of physics. This study was conducted in the context of teaching Rutherford’s atomic model and Bohr’s postulates, and it aimed to assess the impact of the proposed model on students’ academic achievement, the development of research skills, motivation to learn, engagement, and digital competence. A quasi-experimental pre-test–post-test design was employed involving 39 Year 11 students from a specialised secondary school with a focus on physics and mathematics in Kazakhstan. Participants were assigned to one control group (CG, n = 16) and two experimental groups (EG1, n = 12; EG2, n = 11). Academic achievement was assessed using a physics comprehension test, while students’ perceptions of the intervention were examined through a 16-item Likert-scale questionnaire administered to students in the experimental groups (n = 23). Analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) revealed a statistically significant effect of group membership on final test results after controlling for pre-test scores. Post hoc comparisons revealed significantly higher adjusted final test scores in EG2 than in the control group, whereas no significant differences were observed between CG and EG1 or between the two experimental groups. Normalised measures of knowledge gain were higher in both experimental groups than in the control group. Also, Hake’s gain showed improvement in learning outcomes. The results of questionnaires showed an overall positive perception among students. The findings are of significant importance for the training of future physics teachers. The model developed demonstrates the potential for the effective integration of project-based learning, digital simulations, and artificial intelligence tools into school science education.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081188

Authors: Nithipong Yothachai Apisak Sukying

This study investigated the structural relationships among language learning strategies (LLSs), motivational beliefs (MBs), and English language achievement (ELA) among first-year Thai university students learning English as a foreign language (EFL). Grounded in self-regulated learning, social cognitive, and expectancy-value theories, the study examined how LLSs and MBs jointly contribute to ELA. A quantitative cross-sectional design was used, with 913 participants from a public university in Thailand. Data were collected via a structured questionnaire measuring learners’ cognitive, metacognitive, and social strategies; intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, task value, and self-efficacy; and overall assessment of their perceived English learning achievement and self-rated English proficiency across the four language skills. Descriptive statistics, Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA), Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA), and Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) were conducted. Results indicated moderate use of LLSs, with cognitive and metacognitive strategies used more frequently than social strategies. Students reported moderate-to-high motivational beliefs, with task value emerging as the strongest dimension. EFA and CFA supported the reliability and construct validity of the measurement model. SEM analysis demonstrated excellent model fit and revealed that intrinsic motivation, task value, and self-efficacy significantly predicted strategy use and ELA. LLSs showed the strongest direct effect on achievement, whereas extrinsic motivation had no significant direct effect. In addition, LLSs partially mediated the effects of intrinsic motivation, task value, and self-efficacy on achievement. The SEM results indicated that ELA is shaped by the combined influence of adaptive motivation and effective strategic behaviour. Therefore, instructional interventions should synchronously enhance strategic language learning and increase learners’ motivational beliefs to promote English learning achievement.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081187

Authors: Barbara Gilic Skugor Petra Rajkovic Vuletic Mirela Sunda

Physical literacy (PL) has become a central concept in contemporary physical education (PE), promoting holistic movement experiences and lifelong engagement in physical activity. However, it remains unclear how PL principles are reflected in PE curricula and perceived by teachers. This study aimed to preliminarily evaluate the psychometric properties of the Croatian version of the PL-compatible pedagogy questionnaire, examine classroom teachers’ perceptions of Croatian PE curriculum alignment with PL principles, and investigate associations between teachers’ perceived PL and PL-compatible pedagogy. Thirty-three female classroom teachers from Croatia (49.80 ± 10.21 years) completed the Perceived Physical Literacy Questionnaire for Adults (PPLQ-SEE) and the PL-compatible pedagogy questionnaire. The questionnaire demonstrated acceptable internal consistency for exploratory purposes (Cronbach’s α = 0.65). The strongest agreement was observed for acknowledgement of students’ unique movement journeys (ID = 0.56), inclusion (ID = 0.55), meaningful engagement in physical activity (ID = 0.55), and embodiment (ID = 0.53), while lower agreement was found for student movement choice (ID = 0.38) and balanced holistic development (ID = 0.38). Significant associations between teachers’ perceived PL and specific PL-compatible pedagogy items provided initial evidence of construct validity, although these findings should be interpreted as exploratory. These preliminary findings suggest that future PL-based approaches may benefit from placing greater emphasis on student autonomy, movement choice, and holistic learning experiences within PE. However, confirmation in larger and more diverse samples is required.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081186

Authors: María Laura Angelini Isabel Torrijos-Martí Neus Álvarez-Rubio

Simulation-based learning (SBL) is recognized as a transformative methodology in teacher education, yet the social–emotional processes through which pre- and in-service teachers navigate role dissonance remain underexplored. Drawing on the Social–Emotional Learning (SEL) framework proposed by CASEL, this study conceptualizes simulation as a cyclical SEL loop across three phases, pre-briefing, simulation, and debriefing, each activating distinct competencies: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making. This qualitative phenomenological inquiry examines the lived social–emotional experiences of pre- and in-service teachers participating in The School of Valtance, a large-scale, multi-role international simulation embedded in a postgraduate teacher qualification program. Participants from 9 international faculties were deliberately assigned to roles, such as pedagogue, head of studies, and parent, divergent from their professional backgrounds, generating the cognitive–emotional disruption known as the “valley of despair”. Data were gathered through semi-structured interviews, reflective journals, and facilitator field notes across all three simulation phases and subjected to thematic analysis. The findings reveal that role dissonance disrupts participants’ emotional equilibrium, activating self-awareness and social awareness competencies that precede and enable metacognitive growth. The debriefing phase emerges as the space in which the SEL loop closes, as participants articulate and consolidate both the emotional turbulence and relational learning generated during the simulation, transforming affective experience into transferable social–emotional competence. These findings offer practical guidance for simulation designers seeking to embed SEL intentionally across all phases of the pedagogical cycle in intercultural teacher training contexts.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081185

Authors: Sofia Gomes Rosário Mauritti

This article examines the sociological dimensions of non-traditional adult students’ integration into Portuguese higher education through a critical analysis of the O23 access regime at a Portuguese university, Iscte-IUL. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s theoretical framework of cultural capital and institutional habitus, the study critically analyses how alternative pathways such as the “Over 23” Access Regime both challenge and reproduce educational inequalities. Using a quantitative research design that analyzes longitudinal institutional and national data (2012–2025), the research explores the interaction between institutional mechanisms, sociodemographic characteristics, and the academic trajectories of adult students. Special attention is given to the 2020 reforms and their impact on selection criteria and student outcomes. The findings reveal tensions between democratization imperatives and academic standards, underlining how institutional practices mediate access to academic capital for non-traditional students while mapping both opportunities and barriers to their integration. The study enhances sociological debates on educational inequalities and offers insights for higher education policy and social inclusion practices in European contexts.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081184

Authors: Jesica María Abalo Paulos Olalla García Fuentes María-Esther Martínez-Figueira Manuela Raposo-Rivas

Dual University Education is presented as a recent and innovative model in curriculum design, with strong foundations in dual vocational training. The purpose of this study is to examine the image of this educational model as projected by the universities themselves. To this end, a documentary analysis was conducted based on news articles published on the digital press portals of Spanish universities from 2021 to 2025. Following the guidelines of a documentary research approach, a total of 344 items were identified and coded. The results indicate that institutional discourses focus on highlighting the relevance and impact of dual education, presenting arguments both for and against this model regarding the four key stakeholders: students, universities, companies, and society. It is concluded that discourses on Dual University Education portray the coordination between institutions as complex but strategically significant, with notable benefits for these groups.

Education Sciences doi: 10.3390/educsci16081183

Authors: Lingzhu Gong Shiyu Hu Jiangbo Hu Yimin Fu Hui Zhang Yanfei Cao

This study examines the characteristics of abstract language use in gifted preschool children during natural free-play activities and compares them with those of typically developing children. The aim is to enhance our awareness of characteristics of gifted children language use and support them in everyday conversations and activities. Abstract language refers to expressions that describe decontextualized situations or that convey causal reasoning and prediction. It is closely related to the development of children’s language, cognition, and thinking. A total of 16 gifted children (10 boys and 6 girls; M = 73.06 months) were identified using two standardized instruments, the Combined Raven’s Test (Chinese revised version) and the Test of Nonverbal Intelligence, Second Edition (TONI-2). All identified children completed both assessments and scored at or above the 99th percentile on the Combined Raven’s Test and the 98th percentile on the TONI-2. Another 16 typically developing children (10 boys and 6 girls; M = 72.81 months) from the same classes were selected as matched controls based on teacher reports and their typical developmental performance. Drawing on corpus analysis, the study analyzed 2778 utterances produced by the gifted children and 2879 utterances produced by the typically developing children during 30-min free-play sessions. The results showed that, as the level of abstract language increased, both groups displayed a similar declining trend in the frequency of language use. However, a cumulative logit mixed-effects model showed that gifted children had significantly higher odds of producing language at higher levels of abstraction than typically developing children. In addition, gifted children demonstrated higher levels of abstract language during educator–child and peer interactions, whereas their private speech was more concentrated at lower levels of abstraction than that of typically developing children. Based on these findings, the study proposes educational recommendations in three areas: recognising children’s advanced thinking, addressing their specific language needs, and leveraging their communicative strengths. These recommendations may help create a more supportive educational environment for gifted children and better foster their developmental potential.