Search Results (126)

The organized integration of research competencies into nursing curricula is still a global challenge and is key for preparing professionals to respond to complex clinical contexts, technological advancements, and contemporary societal demands. At the School of Health of the Polytechnic Institute of Setúbal, a longitudinal research axis was implemented across the four years of the undergraduate nursing program, involving epistemological foundations, the research process, evidence-based practice, and applied practice. Objective: The objective of this study was to describe the design and implementation of the longitudinal axis of research, analyzing institutional indicators of academic success and the progressive development of students’ scientific competencies. Methods: A descriptive documentary study based on institutional data analysis (the number of enrolled students, pass rates, and mean grades in the four research-related curricular units) was conducted, complemented by a review of pedagogical materials produced (two published course booklets: “Research I—From the origin to the dissemination of knowledge” and “Research II—(De)Constructing the Research Process: A Critical and Practical Analysis”) and evidence of scientific dissemination (conference presentations and published articles). Results: A continuous progression in academic performance was observed across the research curricular units, accompanied by increased complexity of student work and enhanced scientific literacy. The sequential structure proved essential: the articulation of epistemology, methodology, critical appraisal, and scientific production demonstrated strong coherence and pedagogical efficiency. Conclusions: The longitudinal research axis constitutes a curricular innovation that strengthens essential scientific competencies in undergraduate nursing education. Longitudinal models that reflect both conceptual and practical progression can significantly contribute to the development of nurses who are critical thinkers, reflective practitioners, and capable of integrating evidence into clinical decision-making. Full article

Simulation is increasingly recognised as a strategic approach in nursing education for developing clinical competencies within safe learning environments. However, there is limited understanding of how virtual patient simulation supports the early development of clinical reasoning from the perspective of nursing students. Aim: To explore the perceptions of first-year undergraduate nursing students regarding the development of clinical reasoning and collaborative decision-making through virtual patient simulation. Methods: A qualitative, descriptive, and exploratory design was adopted. Semi-structured focus groups were conducted with 73 first-year undergraduate nursing students. Data were analysed using thematic content analysis following Bardin’s approach. Results: Students perceived virtual patient simulation as a meaningful and high-impact learning strategy. Realism, interactivity, and group collaboration emerged as key strengths. Engagement with dynamic clinical scenarios supported the integration of theoretical knowledge into practice, enhanced prioritisation skills, and promoted structured clinical reasoning. Collaborative learning facilitated shared reflection and collective problem-solving, while immediate feedback enabled learning through error within a psychologically safe environment. Participants also reported increased confidence and autonomy in decision-making. At the same time, students identified limitations related to software constraints and the alignment between automated assessment and their reasoning processes. Conclusions: Group-based virtual simulation appears to support the early structuring of clinical reasoning, extending beyond technical skill acquisition to foster reflective and collaborative practice. Its educational value, however, depends on intentional curricular integration and strong pedagogical alignment including structured facilitation, alignment between assessment and learning objectives, and opportunities for guided reflection. These findings contribute to a process-oriented understanding of how novice learners make sense of clinical reasoning in simulated contexts. Full article

Reflective practice is an essential component of initial teacher education (ITE) programs in Australia that supports the development of preservice teachers’ responsive decision-making, planning, and ongoing professional growth. Yet, many preservice teachers continue to produce reflections that are descriptive, superficial, or disconnected from evidence of their practice. In response to this challenge, this study examines how mentor teachers support preservice teachers’ professional learning through reflection on video captures of their own teaching. Applying a qualitative study design, data collected using online surveys with mentor teachers indicate that retrospective video analysis enables mentors to identify pedagogically significant moments for reflection that support evidence-based dialogue. Video functions as a teaching microscope, requiring mentors to adjust the focus, direct preservice teachers’ attention, and scaffold their interpretation of what is observed. However, practical and systemic barriers significantly impact sustained implementation. This study highlights the potential of teacher mentors’ use of retrospective video analysis in ITE to enhance preservice teachers’ reflective practice, offering insights into how this approach can be effectively incorporated and scaled. Full article

This research-to-practice study presents a design-oriented framework that integrates challenge-based learning (CBL), experiential learning (EL), and authentic assessment (AA) to support competency development in higher education. The framework aligns the stages of CBL (i.e., engagement, investigation, and solution) with Kolb’s experiential learning cycle and core AA principles, including realism, cognitive challenge, and evaluative judgement. Learning activities are structured around real-world challenges that reflect professional practice, enabling a coherent progression from experience to reflection, conceptualisation, and evaluation, and supporting the systematic development and assessment of student competencies. A single case study illustrates the application of the framework in industrial engineering education, implemented across six interdisciplinary modules at a private university in Mexico. Students engaged in process improvement projects within six small and medium-sized enterprises, fostering problem solving, decision making, and evaluative judgement in authentic contexts. The findings indicate that the framework supports the development of problem-solving and communication competencies, demonstrating its design coherence and practical feasibility. The framework provides structured guidance for educators to align learning objectives, activities, and assessments within CBL environments. However, limitations related to pedagogical integration and the single-case design constrain the generalisability of the findings. Future research should explore cross-disciplinary applications, longitudinal competency development, and adaptation to emerging educational contexts. Full article

Addressing climate change requires an understanding not only of science concepts but also the social, economic, and political factors that influence decision making. Thus, this study investigated the development of socio-scientific reasoning related to climate change action. This case study explored the six dimensions of socio-scientific reasoning (complexity, perspective-taking, inquiry, skepticism, affordance of science, and multiple perspective-taking) of twenty undergraduate students as they engaged with decision making about climate action. Data were collected from classroom worksheets reflecting small group decision making and individual student reflections. Data were analyzed using a rubric that categorized the level of students’ socio-scientific reasoning across the six dimensions. These categorizations were further supported by qualitative interpretation of students’ responses. The findings indicate strong performance in complexity and perspective-taking, while inquiry, skepticism, and the affordance of science were less consistently demonstrated. The study contributes to understanding how simulation-based learning can support the development of SSR and highlights the importance of structured pedagogical design in fostering higher order reasoning in climate education. Full article

While generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is increasingly used by university students for writing support, less is known about its role in discipline-specific professional tasks. This study examines how pre-service primary teachers integrate and conceptualise GenAI when designing Teaching Units for English for Young Learners (EYL), with a focus on whether AI is positioned as a substitute for pedagogical reasoning or as a support within teacher decision-making. The qualitative study involved 75 fifth-year pre-service teachers at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano (Italy), working in 23 groups. Data included 23 Teaching Units and 10 AI Use Reports, analysed through document analysis and thematic coding. GenAI was used mainly for material production (visual and text generation, idea generation, and text revision) and resource adaptation, with limited evidence of use for macro- or micro-planning decisions (objectives, sequencing, assessment). Prompts were often underspecified, but reports described iterative refinement and critical adaptation to improve age appropriateness and reduce lexical overload. Overall, within a transparent course framework, pre-service teachers retained pedagogical ownership while using GenAI as a supplementary resource, underscoring the need to develop pedagogically grounded AI literacy (prompt design, evaluation, and disclosure). Full article

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly transforming architectural education, shifting design studios toward human–AI collaborative workflows. This study investigates the impact of AI integration across the six stages of the architectural design process: pre-design, conceptual design, schematic design, design development, documentation, and presentation. A mixed-methods approach was adopted, combining survey data from 17 master’s degree students with reflective insights from eight faculty members involved in hybrid AI-supported studio environments. AI’s influence was evaluated using six indicators: efficiency, creativity enhancement, accuracy, interdisciplinary integration, adoptability, and environmental or architectural impact. The findings indicate that AI is most effective during early design stages, where it supports idea generation, visualization, and rapid iteration. Its impact becomes less pronounced in later technical phases, where human expertise and critical reasoning remain essential. Students perceived AI as a creative catalyst and productivity enhancer, while faculty emphasized its analytical and evaluative potential in supporting informed decision-making. Overall, AI functions most effectively as a complementary partner rather than a replacement for human agency. The study proposes a structured framework to guide ethical and pedagogically sound AI integration within architectural design studios. Full article

The apprenticeship of observation is a form of anticipatory socialization that is experienced by all individuals who attend K-12 schooling, and is particularly consequential for the subset of this population that eventually becomes professional educators. Based on extensive interviews with professional teachers, sociologist Dan C. Lortie found that the 13,000 h of experience teachers had spent watching their own K-12 teachers constituted a sort of apprenticeship in teaching. This prolonged period of observation is thought to have a profound impact on the work of teachers. By observing their own teachers across thousands of hours, professional educators are said to make decisions in the classroom and in their teaching based on their own individual personalities and preferences instead of pedagogical frameworks or theories; the teacher learning brought about by the apprenticeship of observation leads professional educators to identify teaching they liked and disliked. Teaching decisions made by these educators in the classroom are ultimately based on a binary choice between replicating or rejecting the teaching they previously witnessed as K-12 students. Over time, the apprenticeship of observation has, for some researchers and teacher educators, served as shorthand for describing the replication of traditional teaching approaches across time, in effect suggesting that teachers teach the way they were taught. The power and negative consequences of the apprenticeship of observation have led teacher educators to devise multiple interventions within teacher education programs and pedagogies, which have sought to challenge and overcome the apprenticeship of observation and its negative influence on professional educators’ teacher learning and practice. Full article

Digital technologies are widely recognized for their potential to support active learning and foster higher-order cognitive skills, including critical thinking. However, limited research has examined the extent to which students are directly involved in selecting digital tools that shape their learning. This study investigates teachers’ ability to engage students in the selection and pedagogical use of digital technologies, with attention to practices supporting active, personalized learning and critical thinking. Data were collected from 156 educators across diverse disciplines in five teacher-training colleges in Israel using an online questionnaire assessing levels of digital tool use, from non-use to active student involvement. Item Response Theory (IRT) was applied to model teachers’ proficiency and examine differences across tools and background characteristics. Results indicate substantial variability in teachers’ ability to involve students, with particularly low involvement in tools related to problem-solving, differentiation, and personalized learning. Gender and institutional role were significant predictors, with female educators and those holding additional roles demonstrating higher proficiency. These findings highlight the importance of teachers’ techno-pedagogical competence in enabling student participation in digital decision-making and suggest that involving students in tool selection can support the development of critical thinking and learner agency in digitally mediated learning environments. Full article

The growing complexity and interdependence of critical infrastructures (CIs), increasingly exposed to natural and technological hazards, call for educational approaches to enhance resilience and risk management. This study examines trends, patterns, and challenges in integrating digital and immersive technologies into education and training for stakeholders in critical infrastructure management. A systematic review of peer-reviewed literature was conducted using Scopus as the primary source, covering the last decade and analyzing the corpus across six dimensions: technological approach, pedagogical model, hazard typology, infrastructure domain, stakeholder category, and implementation phase. Following the PRISMA framework, 5635 records were identified and screened through a multistage process combining rule-based filtering and manual review, resulting in 105 papers meeting the inclusion criteria. The analysis reveals a shift from classroom instruction and physical drills toward immersive, simulation-based, and data-informed learning ecosystems that strengthen situational awareness, procedural accuracy, and decision-making under stress. However, the review identifies persistent gaps in evaluation metrics, cross-sector frameworks, and collaborative learning environments that limit adoption. The findings underscore that digital and immersive technologies can reconfigure education and training frameworks, enabling the formation of Resilient Operators endowed with adaptive cognition, continuous learning capacities, and responsiveness to natural hazard-induced technological risks. Full article

This Systematic Quantitative Literature Review (SQLR) examines instructional content (the what) and instructional strategies (the how) that contribute to overall reading performance for students in mainstream English-speaking primary classes. Drawing on 163 peer-reviewed studies published over four and a half decades, the authors examine instructional content and strategies aligned with six interrelated foundational elements of reading development: phonological awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, comprehension, and oral language. In response to the proliferation of reading research and the limitations of narrative reviews, the five iterative phases of the SQLR method enable rigorous selection, coding, and synthesis of studies reporting quantitative evidence of the contribution of instructional content and strategies to students’ overall reading performance. The second part of the paper focuses on phonics instruction, an element of the teaching of reading central to ongoing public, educational, and political debate. The authors identify significant variation in terms of the scale, duration, and year-levels of the reported research, and foreground the complex roles of teacher professional learning, teachers’ pedagogical decision-making, and implementation fidelity in shaping the research projects. The paper finishes by synthesizing evidence that concludes that while phonics instruction can contribute to overall reading performance, its effects are variable and contingent on specific instructional and contextual conditions. Full article

This paper examines the relation between transversal skills, economic education, and financial literacy in modern education. A systematic literature review was conducted in accordance with the PRISMA 2022 methodology, resulting in the selection and analysis of 49 peer-reviewed articles from Scopus and Web of Science. The paper explores theoretical considerations, pedagogical strategies, and the possibility of integrating these fields into educational practice. It identifies three specific points of research interest: firstly, to identify trends in the integration of transversal competencies into economic education; secondly, to assess how transversal skills impact the development of financial literacy; and thirdly, to create recommendations for educational programs and teaching methods. The results highlight that transversal skills—particularly critical thinking, collaboration, being digitally literate, and problem-solving—play an indispensable role in both learning economics and building financial literacy. While students of economic education gain insight into issues such as resource management, market mechanisms, and labor economics, financial literacy provides them with knowledge on personal finance issues, sustainability, and informed decision-making. An original aspect of the research is the attempt to merge transversal skills with economic education and financial literacy within a single framework. The results also indicate future directions of educational reform and point to ways to enhance students’ financial well-being and entrepreneurial capacity. Full article

Engineering education requires pedagogical approaches that integrate sustainability with the development of core technical competencies. This study develops, implements, and evaluates a Sustainability-Integrated Problem-Based Learning (SI-PBL) approach in an undergraduate mechanical vibration course. The approach anchors the learning process in the inherent sustainability characteristics of an engineering problem, requiring students to explicitly negotiate trade-offs between technical performance and sustainability objectives. A quasi-experimental study with 121 mechanical engineering students compared the SI-PBL approach to traditional lecture-based instruction through a compressor redesign project in which students redesigned the balancing system of a single-stage air compressor. Analysis of covariance showed that the SI-PBL cohort achieved significantly larger gains in conceptual understanding ($d=0.74$, $p<0.001$), mathematical proficiency ($d=0.77$, $p<0.001$), complex problem-solving ($d=0.56$, $p<0.001$), and sustainability-oriented decision-making ($d=0.61$, $p<0.001$). A positive correlation between gains in complex problem-solving and sustainability reasoning within the SI-PBL group ($r=0.41$, $p=0.001$) indicated related competency development. The study provides empirical evidence for using sustainability as an integrating context for developing both technical and sustainability competencies in engineering education. Full article

Large Language Models (LLMs) in Intelligent Computer-Assisted Language Learning enable highly personalized learning, yet raise significant challenges related to pedagogical grounding, data privacy, and instructional validity. Although Knowledge Graphs (KGs) and Federated Learning (FL) can mitigate these issues in isolation, evidence on systematic FL–KG–LLM integration for educational language learning remains limited. This scoping review maps the FL–KG–LLM convergence landscape. Following PRISMA-ScR guidelines, we searched six databases and screened 51 papers (2019–2025) using automated extraction. Our findings indicate limited convergence: no papers integrate all three domains, and 58.8% of approaches remain confined to isolated technological silos. Reporting is also uneven across the corpus, with an average “Not Reported” (NR) rate of 84.5%, most notably for privacy mechanisms (92.2%), validation metrics (90.2%), and Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) alignment (88.2%). Domain-specific analysis reveals two distinct patterns: inter-domain gaps (disciplinary silos resulting in expected CEFR absence in single-domain papers) and intra-domain gaps (failure to report domain-critical variables, including 100% parameter NR in FL studies, 86.7% validation NR in KG studies, and 100% CEFR NR in convergence papers). Taken together, these gaps suggest that pedagogical grounding is treated as optional rather than structural. We therefore identify two pillars of pedagogical grounding: a Grounding Pillar, which constrains LLM outputs via Knowledge Graph rules, and a Validation Pillar, which concerns how authoritative frameworks (e.g., CEFR) are mapped onto Knowledge Graph schemas and evaluated. The near-universal absence of CEFR alignment and validation reporting suggests that this second pillar is currently missing, which we term the Integrity Gap—a systematic disconnection between technological innovation and pedagogical grounding inin Intelligent Computer-Assisted Language Learning. By reframing the problem as upstream control and validation, this review informs the design of user-facing automated systems where trust, transparency, and human oversight are critical. Full article

This study examined how pedagogical strategies can support student-coaches’ (SCs) empowerment and promote preservice teachers’ (PSTs) professional learning within Sport Education (SE) seasons. Sixty-seven tenth-grade students (aged 15–18) participated in SE units taught by three PSTs (two males, one female, aged 22–25) enrolled in a master’s degree program in Teaching of Physical Education in Primary and Secondary Education in northern Portugal. Data were collected through participant observation, informal and focus group interviews, and PSTs’ reflective diaries within a Collaborative Action Research (CAR) framework and analyzed thematically. Three CAR cycles addressed key challenges: (1) encouraging SCs to assume responsibility for their role, (2) fostering inclusive and supportive team interactions, (3) strengthening SCs’ sport-specific and instructional knowledge. Guided by a facilitator, PSTs implemented strategies including pre-lesson meetings, structured communication routines, task-modification and feedback cards, accountability systems, and visual identification of SCs. Findings suggest that SCs’ empowerment was progressively constructed through interconnected psychological, relational and pedagogical processes, supported by structured mediation and iterative reflection. Simultaneously, engagement in CAR cycles enabled PSTs to develop adaptive instructional decision-making and mediation strategies. The study highlights how empowerment in SE is shaped through relational and pedagogical conditions and illustrates how CAR can foster reciprocal learning between SCs and PSTs in authentic teacher education contexts. Full article