Search Results (622)

Decolonising assessment remains an underdeveloped yet essential component of higher education transformation. In research, much attention has been assigned to decolonising content knowledge and pedagogy, with limited attention to assessment. Hence, this systematic literature review examines empirical studies published between 2018 and 2025 to explore how decolonial assessment is enacted in higher education. Using the PRISMA 2020 framework, 17 studies were analysed to identify theoretical foundations, methodological trends, dominant themes, key findings, and literature gaps to make recommendations for future research. The findings reveal six interconnected practices characterising decolonial assessment: humanising learning, contextualising assessment within students’ cultural and community realities, disrupting power hierarchies through co-creation, collaborative and peer-based approaches, diversifying modes of expression, and enhancing transparency and cultural responsiveness. These practices validate students’ lived experiences, foreground multiple epistemologies, and challenge traditional assessment norms, thereby promoting deeper engagement, agency, and belonging. However, the scholarship is constrained by a reliance on small-scale qualitative designs, limited theoretical development, and regional concentration, particularly in South Africa and the United States. The review concludes that while decolonial assessment offers transformative potential, its broader institutional uptake requires methodological pluralism, stronger theoretical frameworks, and policy-level support. The paper recommends embedding decolonial principles in assessment design, expanding research across diverse contexts, and strengthening lecturer capacity to develop equitable, inclusive, and contextually grounded assessment practices that advance epistemic justice in higher education. Full article

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. Full article

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. Full article

Generative AI has reached the early, ideational phase of architectural design, the stage most tightly bound to conceptual creativity, yet its effect on student creativity remains unevenly investigated. This study examines the transfer of creativity from handmade concept to AI refinement. In a first-year studio, 45 students developed a bus-stop design and then reworked it using AI visualisation tools. Pre-AI and post-AI designs were rated by experts using the same nine-dimensional Consensual Assessment Technique (CAT) rubric; the prompt log was text-mined; and the two streams were linked for each student and analysed. Results suggest a modest rise in total creativity (3.38 to 3.71; Wilcoxon p = 0.022, dz = 0.38), yet concentrated in appropriateness; functional adequacy (+0.80), structural feasibility (+0.78), and environmental response (+0.56) increased significantly, while novelty dimensions remained unaltered. The cohort suggested a reordering: weaker starters gained most and several strong starters declined. Although baseline input creativity dominated the prediction of output quality and prompt behaviour added no significant variance once it was controlled, gains were largest when students let AI transform their original concepts. Results indicate that in the context of this study, generative AI acts as a leveller and redirector of creativity, strengthening the buildability of weaker designs without raising originality, with direct implications for how studios deploy and teach the tool. As results are based on a single first-year cohort, institution, design brief, and an observational within-student design, the findings are limited to exploratory evidence of conditional creativity transfer rather than causal evidence. Full article

Competence frameworks function as structured knowledge codification systems: authoritative, domain-wide representations of professional knowledge that define what counts as competence within a field and how it should be organised. As such, they constitute a form of professional knowledge encyclopaedia, structured to comprehensively map an emerging or established knowledge domain. This paper examines how eight EU and international competence frameworks codify AI-related knowledge for STEAM educators, using a dual analytical lens comprising AI-TPACK and STEAMCompEdu. Read through this dual lens, the cross-framework analysis identifies four knowledge dimensions insufficiently addressed in the existing landscape: interdisciplinary pedagogical knowledge, creative-aesthetic AI knowledge, ethics as embedded disciplinary practice, and inquiry-oriented AI pedagogy. Based on these findings, the paper proposes three emerging theoretical extensions to AI-TPACK to address the identified lacunae and discusses implications for the design of structured professional knowledge codification systems that better represent complex, interdisciplinary, and rapidly evolving knowledge domains. Full article

The early design courses engage and hone students’ visual, spatial, and communicative skills so that first-year design students begin to understand composition, abstraction, hierarchy, development of process, and representation through experimental, process-driven exercises. Exhibitions have traditionally presented the students’ final work; however, virtual exhibitions allow one to push past the physical studio and present student work as a sustained pedagogical experience. A case study was presented of the development and curation of a speculative gallery-style virtual exhibition for process work by first-year students undertaking Basic Design and a Design Communication course. Rather than falling into the pitfall of functioning as a “digital stand-in for the gallery” approaches were considered where virtual curation becomes an educative space for being literate in the visual, mindful learning, and observer witnessing peer students enculturating themselves into identity. Using a practice-based reflective approach, to examine curatorial decisions (visual sequencing, categorisation, representation, and navigational design), exploring how exhibition design frames beginner work and communicates thinking and process rather than simply “polished” outcomes. It is argued that virtual exhibition, by allowing for prolonged engagement with works, scaling access, and encouraging a visual dialogue among peers, may extend the foundation of design learning. The study contributes to discourse on design pedagogy, digital curation, and the shifting educational place of exhibitions in foundation-level design education. Full article

The rapid digitalisation of the construction and built-environment sectors has increased demand for innovative teaching methods in higher education. Among emerging digital tools, metaverse applications offer immersive and interactive learning environments with the potential to transform traditional pedagogical practices. This study evaluates the adoption of the metaverse application (EON-XR) in built-environment education by examining educator training outcomes using the Kirkpatrick model. The evaluation focuses on a structured training workshop designed to equip built-environment educators with the skills to integrate metaverse-based applications into first-year teaching modules. A post-training evaluation employed a Google Forms survey instrument explicitly aligned with Kirkpatrick’s four evaluation levels: reaction, learning, behaviour, and results, with Levels 3 (Behaviour) and 4 (Results) operationalised as behavioural-intention and perceived-results proxies collected immediately post-training, ahead of any classroom implementation. The instrument captured educators’ perceptions of usability, relevance, pedagogical value, behavioural intention to apply acquired skills, and the broader institutional and disciplinary implications of metaverse adoption. Both qualitative and quantitative data were analyzed to assess the training programme’s effectiveness across these four dimensions. Findings indicate a generally positive reaction to metaverse training, with educators recognizing the relevance and user-friendliness of the EON-XR application. Evidence of learning was demonstrated by increased confidence and perceived competence in applying metaverse tools for teaching. At the behavioural level, participants expressed strong intentions to integrate metaverse applications into their teaching practice. At the results level, the training was perceived as enhancing teaching engagement, stimulating interest in construction digitalisation, and contributing to the institutional standing of higher education providers. The study concludes that metaverse-based educator training can play a critical role in advancing digital pedagogy within built-environment education. By applying the Kirkpatrick model, this research provides a structured, replicable framework for evaluating the adoption of immersive technology in higher education contexts. Full article

Gifted Education remains a contested and unevenly integrated domain within Initial Teacher Education (ITE). Its position is further complicated by conceptual instability surrounding identification, classification, and educational equity. Despite substantial contributions across psychology, neuroscience, and education, its translation into practice is constrained by conceptual instability, fragmented disciplinary accounts, and institutional pressures toward standardisation. This paper argues that the marginalisation of diverse Highly Able learners is not primarily due to insufficient knowledge, but to a structural failure to integrate existing knowledge into a coherent account of challenge. Drawing on policy analysis and interdisciplinary synthesis, the paper shows how psychological accounts of motivation and engagement, neuroscientific evidence on experience-dependent plasticity, and educational frameworks prioritising scalable pedagogy operate in parallel rather than in synthesis. Within ITE, this fragmentation contributes to a diminished understanding of high-level challenges; currently the challenge is often reduced to a simple notion of ‘stretch’ embedded within generic differentiation or adaptive teaching. To address this, the paper elaborates on Equality of Challenge as a normative and integrative principle, with a focus on low-threshold high-ceiling approaches. It reframes challenge as a matter of distributive justice and educational entitlement, positioning appropriately demanding educational experiences as a core entitlement for all learners rather than a targeted provision. It connects disciplinary insights into a shared account of how challenge should be designed and enacted within ITE and classroom practice. Full article

Physical education (PE) is commonly justified through its contributions to physical fitness, motor skill development, sport participation, and health-enhancing physical activity. These aims remain important, but they do not fully capture PE’s potential as a curriculum context for lifestyle learning and neurobehavioral well-being. This narrative review used structured literature mapping and conceptual framework development to examine how PE may connect embodied movement experiences with motivation, stress and emotion regulation, self-efficacy, resilience, recovery-related awareness, and lifestyle self-regulation in adolescents and young adults. Literature searches were conducted iteratively in PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science Core Collection, SPORTDiscus, and ERIC, with the final search update completed on 20 June 2026. The synthesis identified a curriculum-to-lifestyle gap: existing evidence more often examines whether PE, physical activity, sport, or physical literacy is associated with health or psychological outcomes than how curriculum, teaching climate, reflection, assessment, and peer interaction may support transferable self-regulatory learning. The review therefore proposes an evidence-informed, curriculum-oriented conceptual framework linking PE design and pedagogy with proximal motivational, emotional, cognitive-regulatory, behavioral, and embodied processes. The framework does not imply that PE automatically improves mental health, directly produces neurobiological change, or replaces specialist care. Evidence is stronger for proximal educational processes than for sustained transfer beyond PE. Future research should test clearly specified curriculum mechanisms, implementation conditions, assessment approaches, and longitudinal transfer. Full article

Educational practices in primary schools are not formed in isolation from social and cultural heritage. In Malaysia’s multi-ethnic society, shaped by colonial history, diverse migration genealogies, and intergenerational transmission of familial and community values, the pedagogical orientations of teachers and the learning dispositions of students are deeply embedded in historical and cultural processes. This study examines how family–community genealogies, cultural heritage, and intergenerational educational narratives intersect with teacher training practices, specifically learner autonomy promotion, teacher-as-facilitator orientation, and flexible learning environment creation, to shape pedagogical practice in a multi-ethnic primary school in Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia. A qualitative interpretive research design was employed. Eight participants, seven experienced primary school teachers and one student representative were purposively selected from a multi-ethnic primary school in Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia. Data were generated through semi-structured interviews guided by four thematically organised dimensions drawn from the genealogy of education framework and analysed using Braun and Clarke’s six-phase thematic analysis. Four interconnected themes emerged: (1) convergent cross-genealogical endorsement of learner-centred pedagogy despite diverse ethnic community educational inheritances; (2) the teacher-as-facilitator role as the most genealogically resonant pedagogical shift from colonial transmission traditions; (3) flexible learning environments as inspirationally valued but materially constrained sites of genealogical negotiation; and (4) the perceived inseparability of facilitative practice and positive student learning outcomes. The findings illuminate how historically situated family–community genealogies shape the reception and enactment of contemporary pedagogical practices in Malaysia’s post-colonial, multi-ethnic primary school context. Full article

This empirical study positions hotel-based sport wellness programs as structured physical activity offerings embedded in co-created guest experiences in luxury hotels in Saudi Arabia. It examines how the quality of wellness sports programs relates to guests’ satisfaction with the program, loyalty intentions toward the hotel, and self-reported physical activity orientation and intention. The construct is operationalized as guests’ perceived increase in activity during the stay and their stated intention to maintain or increase activity afterward. The study also tests the mediating roles of perceived health benefits and enjoyment, as well as the moderating role of staff health communication. Drawing on service quality and expectancy disconfirmation perspectives, together with health belief and motor learning insights, a cross-sectional survey was conducted with 412 guests who had participated in structured sport-based wellness sessions during their stay in Saudi Arabian luxury hotels. Data were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS SEM). Wellness sport program quality was positively associated with perceived health benefits, enjoyment, and program satisfaction, and both perceived health benefits and enjoyment partially mediated the quality satisfaction relationship, indicating parallel cognitive and affective pathways in the guest experience. Program satisfaction, in turn, was positively associated with guests’ loyalty intentions and their self-reported orientation toward maintaining healthier physical activity routines after their stay, while staff health communication significantly strengthened the association between program quality and perceived health benefits. These results contribute to wellness tourism and hospitality research by integrating sport pedagogy and health communication into an experience-centric framework and by clarifying how hotel-based sport wellness offerings can support satisfaction, loyalty, and self-reported physical activity orientation in an emerging tourism destination. Practical implications are offered for hotel managers seeking to design human-centered, health-oriented wellness services aligned with Vision 2030 and global physical activity promotion agendas, recognizing that the findings represent perception-based associations that are a promising foundation for future longitudinal and behavioral research. Full article

Drawing on Self-Determination Theory (SDT) and the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS) framework, this study tested a moderated mediation model in which two dimensions of GenAI-assisted teaching predict children’s creative learning engagement through autonomous motivation. Cross-sectional survey data collected from 486 preschool teachers across 52 kindergartens in three Chinese provinces were analysed with structural equation modelling and bias-corrected bootstrap procedures. AI-enhanced interactive pedagogy was positively associated with autonomous motivation, whereas AI-dependent passive instruction was negatively associated with it; only passive instruction exhibited a direct negative link with creative learning engagement. Autonomous motivation fully mediated the interactive pedagogy pathway and partially mediated the passive instruction pathway. Perceived teacher–child interaction quality significantly moderated the passive instruction to motivation path, attenuating the indirect association to non-significance at high levels of perceived interaction quality. Because all constructs were assessed via teacher self-report at a single time point, the observed associations reflect teachers’ perceptions rather than objectively measured behaviours, and causal inference is not warranted. The study offers theoretical and practical insights for designing developmentally appropriate, teacher-scaffolded GenAI integration in preschool education. Full article

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. Full article

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. Full article

(1) Background: Pre-service teachers enter university with extensive digital experience, yet this familiarity does not guarantee pedagogically grounded ICT integration. (2) Objective: This study examines the sociodemographic profile, digital trajectory, ICT perceptions, and methodological orientation of 295 students in the Primary Education Degree and the Secondary Education Teacher Training Master’s program at CES Don Bosco, a Spanish university. (3) Method: A quantitative, descriptive-correlational, cross-sectional design was used, combining non-parametric statistics with cluster analysis and multiple regression. (4) Results: Teaching specialization was significantly associated with age profile (χ²(1) = 67.46, p < 0.001, φ = V = 0.478). Daily ICT exposure showed a weak, negligible association with tool familiarity (ρ = 0.155, p = 0.008), and no asymmetry emerged between the technological and methodological repertoires once expressed proportionally (Wilcoxon Z = 1.32, p = 0.186, r = 0.08). Cluster analysis identified two digital profiles differing not in tool familiarity but in how experience was acquired. Regression showed specific ICT training, not daily exposure, modestly predicted methodological orientation (R² = 0.055). (5) Conclusions: Findings do not support a large technology–pedagogy gap; deliberate training, not passive exposure, predicts methodological orientation. As a single-institution case study, results should not be generalized beyond this context. Full article