Search Results (14)

This systematic literature review examines the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Extended Reality (XR) technologies in language education, synthesizing findings from 32 empirical studies published between 2017 and 2024. Guided by the PRISMA framework, we searched four databases—ERIC, Web of Science, Scopus, and IEEE Xplore—to identify studies that explicitly integrated both AI and XR to support language learning. The review explores publication trends, educational settings, target languages, language skills, learning outcomes, and theoretical frameworks, and analyzes how AI–XR technologies have been pedagogically integrated, and identifies affordances, challenges, design considerations, and future directions of AI–XR integration. Key integration strategies include coupling AI with XR technologies such as automatic speech recognition, natural language processing, computer vision, and conversational agents to support skills like speaking, vocabulary, writing, and intercultural competence. The reported affordances pertain to technical, pedagogical, and affective dimensions. However, challenges persist in terms of technical limitations, pedagogical constraints, scalability and generalizability, ethical and human-centered concerns, and infrastructure and cost barriers. Design recommendations and future directions emphasize the need for adaptive AI dialogue systems, broader pedagogical applications, longitudinal studies, learner-centered interaction, scalable and accessible design, and evaluation. This review offers a comprehensive synthesis to guide researchers, educators, and developers in designing effective AI–XR language learning experiences. Full article

Orthographic knowledge is a critical component of skilled language use, yet its large-scale behavioral signatures remain understudied in Spanish. To address this gap, we developed OrthoKnow-SP, a megastudy that captures spelling decisions from 27,185 native Spanish-speaking adults who completed an 80-item forced-choice task. Each trial required selecting the correctly spelled word from a pair comprising a real word and a pseudohomophone foil that preserved pronunciation while violating the correct graphemic representation. The stimuli targeted six high-confusability contrasts in Spanish orthography. We recorded response accuracy and reaction times for over 2.17 million trials, alongside demographic and device metadata. Results show robust variability across items and individuals, with item-level metrics closely aligned with independent norms of word prevalence. A composite difficulty index integrating speed and accuracy further allowed fine-grained item ranking. The dataset provides the first population-scale norms of Spanish spelling difficulty, capturing regional and generational diversity absent from traditional lab-based studies. Public release of OrthoKnow-SP enables new research on the cognitive and demographic factors shaping orthographic decisions, and provides educators, clinicians, and developers with a valuable benchmark for assessing spelling competence and modeling written language processing. Full article

The growing number of public one-way and two-way immersion schools (French/German) in the Swiss cantons of Bern, Jura, and Neuchâtel has resulted in an increased need for teachers who are explicitly prepared for those schools. This need led to the thoughtfully conceptualized two-way immersion curriculum “Cursus bilingue/Bilingualer Studiengang,” jointly offered by two universities of teacher education located in the French- and German-speaking areas of Switzerland. This study explores the professionalization process of future primary teachers from Bern, Jura, and the bilingual program who are confronted with professional requirements. A scientific tool, used in a longitudinal perspective (2020–2023), documents how students of the two-way immersion and the French and German programs (n = 1021) weigh these requirements in the competence and challenge dimensions. A linear mixed-effects model was used to analyze their appraisal within each dimension across time and context. Independently of the context, the competence weighting increases for all students between t₁ and t₃. However, the challenge weighting exhibits a peak at t₂ in all contexts, maybe due to the consciousness-raising of faced challenges after half of the program. With teaching internships in two linguistic regions, two-way immersion students demonstrate a capacity for adaptability. Research-based and practitioner-informed implications for an induction program aiming to foster the further professionalization needed to master the new complexities during the career-entry stage are presented. Full article

The development of students’ skills, abilities, competences and knowledge is the basis for sustainable socio-economic development. Today we live in a world that is in continuous change, both economically and socially, which also determines a change in the requirements on the labor market and therefore graduates and higher education institutions must continuously adapt to these changes. Thus, higher education institutions must adapt their teaching strategies and educational offer, while students must develop new skills and competences. The main purpose of this article is to analyze the extent to which the information, skills, attitudes and competences acquired by graduates of physical education and sports faculties during their years of study influence their standard of living, job satisfaction and confidence. To achieve this objective, we asked the following research questions: 1. To what extent do the information, skills, abilities and competences acquired by students during their years of study influence their income level, standard of living, job satisfaction and level of confidence in the workplace? 2. What is the self-perception of students regarding the information, skills, abilities and knowledge that students possess? 3. What is the perception of employers regarding the information, skills, abilities and knowledge that students possess? 4. To what extent are there differences between students’ self-perception and employers’ perception regarding the information, skills, abilities and knowledge that students possess? Thus, data were collected through two questionnaires, one distributed among 333 graduates from physical education and sports faculties in Romania and one to 11 employers working in the sports industry in Romania. The data obtained from the students were analyzed using SPSS 24, and it was found that there is a small correlation between the information, skills, competences and knowledge acquired during the years of study and the standard of living, job satisfaction and the confidence in one’s own ability to successfully perform tasks at work. Among the skills, abilities and aptitudes that students consider themselves to excel in are a passion for sports, the continuous desire for improvement, conscientiousness, teamwork, openness to new things and respect for hierarchies and regulations. At the opposite end, graduates consider that they need to improve their public speaking skills, management skills, their ability to communicate in a foreign language, their ability to sell themselves and their ability to manage a project. Full article

Previous research on providing feedback on public speaking has investigated the effectiveness of feedback sources, namely teacher feedback, peer feedback, and self-feedback, in enhancing public speaking competence, predominantly individually. However, how these sources of feedback can be collectively harnessed to optimize learner engagement and public speaking performance still warrants further investigation. Adopting a pre- and post-test quasi-experimental design, this study randomly assigned four classes to four feedback conditions: Group 1 received teacher feedback, Group 2 self-feedback and teacher feedback, Group 3 peer and teacher feedback, and Group 4 feedback from all three sources. Both student engagement, measured using the Public Speaking Feedback Engagement Scale (PSFES), and their public speaking performance ratings, assessed using the Public Speaking Competency Instrument (PSCI), were validated using Rasch analysis. The inferential statistics revealed that Group 3 showed significant improvements across nearly all three dimensions of engagement, whereas Group 2 experienced significant declines in all dimensions of engagement except behavioral engagement. Group 3 demonstrated significantly greater engagement gain compared to Groups 2 and 4, indicating the synergistic effect of peer and teacher feedback in contrast to the limited impact of self-feedback. Additionally, all groups demonstrated significant improvements except for Group 2, which showed significantly lower improvement compared to Group 4. The following correlation analysis identified a significant correlation between the gain of students’ behavioral engagement and the gain of public speaking performance, whereas such association was absent between cognitive or emotional engagement and public speaking competence. This study suggests that peer feedback should be preceded by group discussion and supplemented with teacher feedback in classes for enhancing the teacher–student dialog, while self-feedback should be conducted after class to improve student engagement and public speaking performance. Full article

Phenomenon-based learning (hereinafter PhenoBL) is widely studied in the majority of European countries, especially given that research data indicate that PhenoBL is more successful in providing effective learning, better student achievement, a stronger interest in science, and even a higher happiness index. However, there are sparse data on the educational practice of this method in Lithuania, particularly in foreign language teaching (FLT). Thus, teachers’ professional preparation for the effective implementation of PhenoBL remains one of the most relevant research problems. For this reason, this study aims to analyse the experiences of Lithuanian foreign language teachers in incorporating PhenoBL into FLT. Fifteen individual semi-structured interviews were conducted, and the obtained data were analysed by applying qualitative inductive content analysis. An inductive content analysis of the interview reports revealed six themes and related categories: the perception of student-centred teaching, the development of subject integration competencies, teamwork development competencies, research-planning skills, the positioning of personal responsibilities and duties, and foreign language usage emancipation, i.e. setting free from personal fears (fear to make grammar, vocabulary mistakes, while speaking in public) to speak a foreign languages. The content of the revealed themes indicated that teachers highlighted the flexibility of PhenoBL from the perspective of its application to different language learning levels within one group. The majority of the respondents underlined the necessity for the development of an active didactic competence. Other respondents mentioned the importance of the correlation between personal creativity competence development and success in PhenoBL. It was also stressed that if a teacher wants to be successful while using PhenoB, they must to be prepared to work with integration-based and communication-emancipatory methods, must be student-centred, must have competencies in teaching several subjects, must be good at teamwork, and must be good at managing learning time. Full article

Participation of people from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities in public health research is often limited by challenges with recruitment, retention and second-language data collection. Consequently, people from CALD communities are at risk of their needs being marginalised in public health interventions. This paper presents intrinsic case analyses of two studies which were adapted to increase the cultural competence of research processes. Both cases were part of the Optimise study, a major mixed methods research study in Australia which provided evidence to inform the Victorian state government’s decision-making about COVID-19 public health measures. Case study 1 involved the core Optimise longitudinal cohort study and Case study 2 was the CARE Victorian representative survey, an Optimise sub-study. Both case studies engaged cultural advisors and bilingual staff to adjust the survey measures and research processes to suit target CALD communities. Reflexive processes provided insights into the strengths and weaknesses of the inclusive strategies. Selected survey results are provided, demonstrating variation across CALD communities and in comparison to participants who reported speaking English at home. While in most cases a gradient of disadvantage was evident for CALD communities, some patterns were unexpected. The case studies demonstrate the challenge and value of investing in culturally competent research processes to ensure research guiding policy captures a spectrum of experiences and perspectives. Full article

English for foreign language (EFL) novice writer-researchers are faced with an increasing pressure for international publication as a prerequisite for sustainable career development in academia. The use of metadiscourse, as a key indicator for their discourse competence, has been a subject of research for English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and/or English for Specific Purposes (ESP) scholars. This study investigates metadiscourse features of research articles’ (RA) results and discussion (R&D) sections written by Chinese PhD students and their writer identities reflected through metadiscourse choice. A corpus was built, consisting of a subcorpus of R&D of unpublished research articles (RAs) written by Chinese PhD students (CNWs) and one of the same part-genre by English-speaking expert writers (EEWs). Metadiscourse used by the two groups were identified based on Hyland’s interpersonal model of metadiscourse. Quantitative analyses on the frequency and variety of metadiscourse markers found a significant difference not only in interactional metadiscourse but also in some subcategories of interactive and interactional metadiscourse, indicating that CNWs attach more importance to organisation of ideas than to the persuasiveness of arguments. A questionnaire survey was conducted to explore the influence of the CNWs’ perception of RA writing on their metadiscourse choice. It revealed that knowledge of generic conventions and metadiscourse functions, awareness of the writer–reader relationship, and confidence in language competence may influence metadiscourse choice. The paper concludes with the view that the CNWs generally view themselves as a recounter and reporter of their research, remaining conservative when presenting an authoritative voice and a confident identity as a knowledge creator. Full article

Cacao cultivation is rapidly increasing in Latin America under the influence of public policies and external markets. In Ecuador, the cultivated surface of high quality cacao trees has doubled in the last 50 years, creating great expectations in neighboring countries. Here, we investigated the social-ecological sustainability of cacao-based agroforestry systems in four rural Amazonian highlands communities in eastern Ecuador, close to the region where cacao was once domesticated. Kichwa- and Shuar-speaking groups were interviewed by adapting Ostrom’s institutional diagnostic framework for social-ecological systems. Through a set of specifically created indicator variables, we identified key interactions and outcomes to understand the fragility and the sustainability of those communities. The studied communities were fairly young, with land rights secured less than 30 years ago in most cases. Per-family surfaces were very restricted (typically one hectare) and plots were divided between cash producing crops and their own home food. The small production per household goes through a precarious commercialization by both intermediaries and cooperatives, making the cacao bean production merely sufficient for pocket money. Ties with specialist producers in one community close to the capital has promoted the use of native cacao lines. Elsewhere, improved varieties of high productivity are planted along native trees being commercialized indistinctly. The continuity of these communities currently depend on a reorganization of their demography with parts of the population working elsewhere, as cacao bean production alone will continue to be insufficient, and will compete with their food self-sufficiency. Full article

There is strong consensus about the importance of early childhood development (ECD) for improving population health and closing the health inequity gap. Environmental features and public policies across sectors and jurisdictions are known to influence ECD. International comparisons provide valuable opportunities to better understand the impact of these ecological determinants on ECD. This study compared ECD outcomes between metropolitan Melbourne (Australia) and Montreal (Canada), and contrasted disparities across demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. Methods: Population wide surveys using the Early Development Instrument (EDI) were conducted among 4–6 years-old children in both Montreal and Melbourne in 2012, measuring five domains of ECD: 1-Physical Health/Well-Being (PHYS); 2-Social Competence (SOC); 3-Emotional Maturity (EMOT); 4-Language/Cognitive Development (COGN); and 5-Communication Skills/General Knowledge (COMM). Descriptive analyses of summary EDI indicators and domain indicators (including median scores and interquartile ranges) were compared between metropolitan areas, using their respective 95% confident intervals (CIs). Analyses were performed using Stata software (v14). Results: The proportion of children developmentally vulnerable in at least one domain of ECD was 26.8% (95% CIs: 26.2, 27.3) in Montreal vs. 19.2% (95% CIs: 18.8, 19.5) in Melbourne. The Melbourne advantage was greatest for EMOT and COGN (11.5% vs. 6.9%; 13.0% vs. 5.8%). In both Montreal and Melbourne, boys, immigrants, children not speaking the language of the majority at home, and those living in the most deprived areas were at greater risk of being developmentally vulnerable. Relative risks as a function of home language and area-level deprivation subgroups were smaller in Montreal than in Melbourne. Conclusion: This study shows that Melbourne’s children globally experience better ECD outcomes than Montreal’s children, but that inequity gaps are greater in Melbourne for language and area-level deprivation subgroups. Further research is warranted to identify the environmental factors, policies, and programs that account for these observed differences. Full article

This paper studies the impacts of food safety risk perception on the different dimensions of governmental trust. A logistic regression model was constructed based on the multidimensional analysis of government trust (i.e., competence, benevolence and honesty) with food safety risk perception, economic growth, combating corruption, social trust, political participation and demographic characteristics as explanatory variables. The main findings are that respondents with low levels of food risk perception, high political participation and a positive evaluation of economic growth and anti-corruption performance show high levels of trust in government competence, benevolence and honesty. Social trust has a spillover effect, which has a significant impact on government competence and benevolence but has no significant impact on the honesty of the government, which reflects the distinction between different dimensions of the public’s trust in their government. Highly educated people have low levels of trust in government competence, high levels of trust in government benevolence, and no significant impact on the judgment of government honesty. In general, the public speak lowly of the status of food safety and have limited interest in political participation. The government is better to strengthen food safety supervision and develop social capital to further enhance the public’s governmental trust. Full article

The experience was carried out with the students of the optional subject “Wine and Health”, taught in 4th year of Degree of Oenology. This Degree has a low number of students, due to that, in the first year of teaching (2013/14) only three students enrolled in the subject, so we considered it was necessary to do something “different” to motivate students to enroll in this subject. This was carried out by inviting them to do a literature review on some topics, such as the relationship between moderate wine intake and Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Cancer or Allergy. In addition, they had to make an audiovisual presentation and expose it in the Conference of Viticulture and Oenology that are celebrated in Almendralejo (Badajoz, Spain), every year at the beginning of May. In general, after five years it has been observed that this methodology has increased the interest of students for this subject, which is reflected in more students in class, more class attendance and great interest. In addition, they have developed transversal skills such as public speaking, which has provided them with security and will probably be useful when conducting job interviews. Full article

From the perspective of reflexive governance, this study probes into the transformative capacity and roles of government and civil society, and aims to determine how the authoritative developmental neo-liberalism state was challenged by civil society in democratization from the end of the 1980s, when it encountered a crisis of governance legitimacy. By analyzing the anti-petrochemical movement of the recent two decades, this paper recognizes the important historic line, and proposes that without innovative governance, a regime of expert politics with hidden and delayed risk will result in higher degrees of mistrust and confrontational positions by the public. In contrast to the government, local and civil societies are growing through the anti-pollution appeals of simple group protests into systematic and robust civic knowledge and strategic action. By administrative, legislative, judicial, and risk statement paths, such strategic mobilizations break through authoritative expert politics and reshape new civic epistemology. The process of reflexive governance is extremely radical. When two parties cannot commit to dealing with a high degree of mistrust, they will not be able to manage the more dramatic threat of climate change. Fundamentally speaking, a robust civil society will be an important driving power competing with government, in terms of constructing innovative governance. Full article

Foreign languages are becoming an essential prerequisite for a successful carrier among all professions including public health professionals in many countries. The expanding role of English as a mode of communication allows for university graduates to project and to seek their career in English-speaking countries. The present study was carried out in the framework of EU Leonardo da Vinci project “Specialist English as a foreign language for European public health.” The study aimed to get a deeper insight how the English language is perceived as a foreign language, by Polish and Lithuanian public health students, what is level of their language competence, which level of English proficiency they expect to use in future.
Material and methods. A total of 246 respondents completed the special questionnaires in autumn semester in 2005. A questionnaire form was developed by the international project team. For evaluation of English competences, the Language Passport (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages of Council of Europe) was applied.
Results. Current self-rated proficiency of the English language was at the same level for Lithuanian (3.47±1.14) and Polish (3.31±0.83) respondents (P>0.05). Majority of respondents (88.6% of Lithuanian and 87.8% of Polish) reported using the English language for their current studies. Respondents reported a significant increase in necessity for higher level of English proficiency in future: mean scores provided by respondents changed from B1 level to B2 level. Respondents gave priority to less formal and practice-based interactive English teaching methods (going abroad, contacts with native speakers) in comparison with theory-oriented methods of learning (self-studying, Internet courses).
Conclusions. Similar levels of English language in all five areas of language skills were established in Polish and Lithuanian university students. Respondents gave more priorities to less formal and practice-based interactive English teaching methods (going abroad, contacts with native speakers) in comparison with theory-oriented or classroom-based methods of learning (self-studying, Internet courses). Survey showed a growing interest of students in improving English language in the future in Poland and Lithuania. Full article