Search Results (1,193)

School refusal behavior, defined as a child’s prolonged voluntary absence from school for reasons unrelated to illness and/or economic hardship, is a growing concern in Japan. The COVID-19 pandemic has worsened this issue by disrupting children’s lives. This review summarizes the prevalence, contributing factors, and health implications of school refusal, particularly in the context of COVID-19. A literature review of government reports and PubMed-indexed studies indicates that school refusal in Japan has been rising for eleven years, reaching a record 340,000 cases in 2023. Middle school students (6.7%) were the most affected, followed by elementary school students (2.1%). The pandemic intensified school-related, family-related, and child-related risk factors. School closures disrupted routines, reduced peer interactions, and increased social isolation, contributing to higher rates of anxiety and depression. Reports of suicides and mental health disorders among children have also surged. Family stressors, including economic hardship and parental mental health struggles, further exacerbate school refusal. Additionally, remote learning has widened socioeconomic disparities in access to education, leaving vulnerable children at greater risk. Addressing school refusal requires a multifaceted approach involving schools, families, healthcare providers, and policymakers. School-based interventions, mental health approach, and flexible educational programs would be essential. The Japanese government’s “COCOLO Plan” represents progress toward a more inclusive education system, and a comprehensive, interdisciplinary strategy is needed. Ensuring all children receive the necessary support to reengage with education is critical to overcoming the long-term challenges posed by school refusal. Full article

Writing is essential across disciplines, yet undergraduate programs must balance writing instruction with discipline-specific content. To support writing development, we piloted an embedded writing tutor (WT) in two core public health courses serving primarily first-generation, low-income students of color. In this model, a tutor familiar with course content is integrated into the classroom to supplement traditional writing center support. Our aims were to examine (1) students’ perceptions of the WT compared to the university’s writing center, (2) the WT’s experiences and effective tutoring strategies, and (3) the instructor’s perspective on implementing the program. Using qualitative methods, the WT recorded field observations, the instructor compared course progression to prior semesters without embedded support, and students completed end-of-semester evaluations. Thematic analysis indicated that students valued the tutor’s accessibility, patience, and direct feedback, though perceived usefulness varied by course, likely due to differences in assignment structure. Challenges included role confusion and inconsistent feedback. Suggested improvements included requiring draft submissions, clarifying the tutor’s role, and aligning tutor and instructor feedback. Quantitative ratings of satisfaction were higher for the WT than for the writing center. Although the sample size was moderate (N = 79), these findings suggest embedded tutoring is a promising, equity-focused strategy for discipline-specific writing instruction. In the context of budget constraints in higher education, exploring alternative tutoring and pedagogical support models remains essential, particularly for underserved populations. Full article

Student behavior analysis plays a critical role in enhancing educational quality and enabling personalized learning. While previous studies have utilized machine learning models to analyze campus card consumption data, few have integrated multi-source behavioral data with large language models (LLMs) to provide deeper insights. This study proposes an intelligent educational system that examines the relationship between student consumption behavior and academic performance. The system is built upon a dataset collected from students of three majors at Xinjiang Normal University, containing exam scores and campus card transaction records. We designed an artificial intelligence (AI) agent that incorporates LLMs, SageGNN-based graph embeddings, and time-series regularity analysis to generate individualized behavior reports. Experimental evaluations demonstrate that the system effectively captures both temporal consumption patterns and academic fluctuations, offering interpretable and accurate outputs. Compared to baseline LLMs, our model achieves lower perplexity while maintaining high report consistency. The system supports early identification of potential learning risks and enables data-driven decision-making for educational interventions. Furthermore, the constructed multi-source dataset serves as a valuable resource for advancing research in educational data mining, behavioral analytics, and intelligent tutoring systems. Full article

Background: Movement symmetry in the lower limbs is critical for biomechanical efficiency, injury prevention, and athletic performance. Lateral (sideways) jumping challenges force production and control in the frontal plane and provide a unique assessment of neuromuscular coordination that may not be detected through sagittal-plane tasks such as running or vertical jumping. This study aimed to evaluate limb asymmetries in isometric knee muscle torque and ground reaction forces (GRFs) during lateral jumps in healthy young women, using the Symmetry Index (SI) to quantify differences between limbs. Methods: Twenty right-limb dominant females (mean age: 20.65 ± 4.51 years) participated in the study. Isometric torque of the knee flexors and extensors was measured using a dynamometric testing station. Lateral jumps were performed onto dual force platforms, with GRF components (vertical (PD), anterior–posterior (AP), mediolateral (ML)) recorded separately for rightward and leftward jumps. SI was calculated for all parameters to determine side-to-side asymmetries, and paired Student’s t-tests were used for statistical comparisons. Results: Right-limb dominance was evident in both knee flexor and extensor torque. Significant asymmetries were observed across all GRF components, varying with jump direction. The trailing limb in each jump direction typically generated greater propulsion forces. In lateral jumps, the trailing limb is generally the leg positioned opposite to the direction of travel, playing a primary role in generating propulsion and absorbing forces during take-off. SI values revealed both inter-individual variability and consistent direction-dependent asymmetry patterns. Conclusions: The or-posterior and vertical components, with greater loading on the dominant leg. Muscle torque measurements also revealed imbalances, with flexors showing more symmetry than extensors. These findings underline the importance of assessing load symmetry to prevent injury and guide rehabilitation. Full article

This study examines how different instructional media—face-to-face classes, live streaming, pre-recorded videos, and educational games—affect student learning outcomes in finance education. A sample of first-year economics students was assessed on their knowledge of basic financial principles before being randomly assigned to five groups. Four groups attended the same finance course delivered through different media formats, while a fifth group served as a control and received no instruction. After the course, all students completed a second (post-course) assessment. By comparing individual pre- and post-test results, as well as learning gains across the groups, we evaluated the effectiveness of each delivery method. The results show that all four instructional formats significantly improved financial knowledge compared to the control group. Among the media types, educational games proved to be an effective and reliable tool for delivering finance content. However, the differences in learning gains between face-to-face instruction, live streaming, and pre-recorded videos were not statistically significant. These findings indicate that a range of delivery models can be used effectively in finance education. The study contributes to current debates on cost-effective teaching strategies and supports evidence-based decisions on curriculum design in digitally transformed higher education environments after COVID-19. Full article

The paper presents aspects of the elastic behavior of a springboard in school gyms after contact with a basketball (0.500 kg) falling from a height of 1 m or a volunteer student jumping from 30 or 60 cm in three different areas at the end of the springboard. The results recorded obtained from three accelerometers mounted under the main plate of the springboard are presented, primarily focusing on the accelerations and vertical displacements after contact. The springboard has a special construction, the upper plate and the curved support plates being provided with two pairs of conical and cylindrical truncated helical springs, respectively. The accelerometers were placed at different points, centrally on the upper plate and on the support plates. It was found that in the dynamic process of a body falling on the springboard, the coefficient of elasticity/rigidity of the elastic system changes, presenting values of 22.14–71.12 kN/m. Normally, both accelerations and displacements are greater on the upper plate, but its vibratory motion also induces additional movements and vibrations on the two lower plates. The results may be useful both for manufacturers of such equipment and for coaches to give appropriate instructions to athletes. Full article

Students and educators spend considerable time in indoor learning spaces on university campuses, where indoor air quality (IAQ), of which particulate matter (PM) is an important component, is a critical concern that architecture students must address. However, IAQ is seldom monitored and very rarely, if at all, reported in these spaces. We used a novel living lab approach to provide third-year students of building services with a hands-on learning activity. During a two-week monitoring period, students designed, assembled, and operated low-cost PM sensors using Arduino platforms. The data analysis showed hotspots where the IAQ was consistently compromised and showed repetitive patterns in time. Workshop and laboratory areas repeatedly recorded the highest PM levels in 15 min sampling events distributed over daily two-hour segments, averaging 43.3 and 47.9 μg/m³ PM₁₀, respectively, with maxima of 118.6 and 119.9 μg/m³ PM₁₀. These measurements would have qualified as ‘moderate’ IAQ if sustained over a full day. A distinct weekly pattern was discovered, with Mondays being worse. The results demonstrated a new practical approach to monitoring the building’s IAQ at minimal cost while obtaining reproducible data. This tool provided educators with a valuable teaching tool that provided students with a deeper understanding of indoor air pollution. Full article

Accurately discerning the authenticity of facial expressions is crucial for inferring others’ psychological states and behavioral intentions, particularly in shaping interpersonal trust dynamics among elementary school children. While existing literature remains inconclusive regarding school-aged children’s capability to differentiate between genuine and posed facial expressions, this study employed happy and sad facial stimuli to systematically evaluate their discrimination accuracy. Parallel to behavioral measures, children’s gaze patterns during authenticity judgments were recorded using eye-tracking technology. Results revealed that participants demonstrated higher accuracy in identifying genuine versus posed happy expressions, whereas discrimination of sad expressions proved more challenging, especially among lower-grade students. Overall, facial expression recognition accuracy exhibited a positive correlation with grade progression, with visual attention predominantly allocated to the Eye-region. Notably, no grade-dependent differences emerged in region-specific gaze preferences. These findings suggest that school-aged children display emotion-specific recognition competencies, while improvements in accuracy operate independently of gaze strategy development. Full article

Classroom attention is a fundamental cognitive function that is crucial to effective learning and significantly influences academic performance. Recent advances in investigating neural correlates of attention in classroom environments provide insights into underlying neural mechanisms and potentially enhance educational outcomes. This paper presents a scoping review of empirical studies investigating neural activities associated with students’ attention in classroom environments. Based on the 16 studies that we included after systematically searching, five main objectives were identified: (i) examination of neural markers of student attention in classroom environments, (ii) comparison of different learning environments, (iii) comparison of different classroom activities, (iv) data quality examination, and (v) student attention improvement. All selected studies used electroencephalogram (EEG) recording to measure neural activities, primarily using NeuroSky and Emotiv EPOC devices. Researchers measured classroom attention through brain-to-brain synchrony or frequency power. While differences in neural activity across classroom activities were noted, further investigation is needed for consistent results. Most studies focused on university students and had limited sample sizes, though they covered diverse study domains. Overall, while some preliminary results have been identified, there are several concerns regarding the neural measurements of attention used, contradictory findings, lack of verification, and limited sample sizes and techniques. Further studies are recommended to extend our understanding of neural evidence of attention in classroom environments. Full article

This systematic review explores the number and role of the UNO^® card game and UNO-type learning media across different levels of mathematics education. UNO^®-inspired games have gained recognition as innovative pedagogical tools that promote engagement, motivation, and active learning among students in various mathematics topics in the last few years. This review synthesises existing research on the application of these games in preschool, primary, secondary, and higher education settings. We employed a hybrid approach, combining database searches and the snowball method, to ensure a comprehensive and thorough selection of the relevant literature for our systematic review. Published research studies between January 1980 and June 2025 that employed UNO^® or UNO-type card games in education were collected. Forty-one research studies met the inclusion criteria for this review. We sought answers to three research questions. At first, we made a time analysis to organise the collected records. Based on the collection, we identified the mathematical topics for which teachers and researchers used the original UNO^® game or developed UNO-type games at various educational levels, as well as the role of UNO^® and UNO-type games in mathematics education. In approximately 68.29% of the cases, the authors introduce their own educational games modelled after UNO^®. In contrast, just less than one-third of the records (31.71%) utilise the original UNO^® playing cards in the teaching–learning process. The findings indicate that UNO-type educational maths games can enhance conceptual understanding, foster collaborative skills, and improve learning outcomes when appropriately integrated into curricula. This review also offers educators recommendations for effectively introducing these games at various educational levels. We aim to provide an evidence-based, well-structured insight into the potential of UNO^® and UNO-type learning tools. Full article

This study examined the criterion validity of the Chronojump photocell compared to the Witty photocell and studied the instrument’s within-session test–retest reliability. Forty-five university students and physically active males performed ten trials on 10 m linear sprints. Times were recorded simultaneously by both devices to obtain paired outcomes. The main results displayed the significant mean differences in physically active university students between devices (diff = 0.05 s, p < 0.001; trivial ES = 0.1), high Spearman’s correlations (r_s = 0.99; p < 0.0001), substantial CCC (0.98), and SEE = 0.05 s. Bland-Altman’s plot denoted low systematic errors (0.05 s) with no heteroscedasticity (R² = 0.004). The within-session reliability (internal consistency) was high (ICC = 0.88; SEM = 1.14 s; CV = 0.23). In addition, the sensitivity of the instrument showed values of SWC = 0.08 s and SDC = 0.4 s. In conclusion, the Chronojump photocell is a valid instrument for the estimation of time in the acceleration phase of a linear sprint in physically active university students. Additionally, this device is shown to be a reliable tool in the measurement of consecutive trials of linear sprints. Full article

Background: Chronic illness affects children’s health and disrupts the spatial and temporal aspects of schooling by complicating attendance, interrupting learning routines, and exposing institutional rigidity. While many educational systems treat chronicity as an exception to be managed, this review reconceptualizes it as a pedagogical and symbolic challenge to normative assumptions about inclusion, care, and participation. Objective: To systematically examine how school-based behavioral and psychosocial interventions support children and adolescents with chronic health conditions (CHCs) in inclusive educational settings and to analyze what these interventions reveal about institutional practices of care and recognition. Methods: Following PRISMA 2020 guidelines, we conducted a systematic search across five databases, PubMed, ERIC, PsycINFO, Scopus, and Web of Science, for studies published between January 2010 and April 2025. Of 420 records screened, 28 studies met inclusion criteria. Eligible studies reported on school-based interventions for students aged 5–18 with chronic conditions. Methodological quality was appraised using the Cochrane Risk of Bias 2 tool (for RCTs) and the Joanna Briggs Institute checklist (for quasi-experimental designs). Findings were synthesized narratively and thematically. Results: The included studies addressed asthma, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), diabetes, epilepsy, autism, cancer, and food allergies. Interventions ranged from nurse-led management and teacher training to peer education and executive function coaching. Most reported improvements in symptom control, school attendance, academic performance, and psychosocial wellbeing. Several studies also demonstrated how interventions reshaped institutional routines and distributed responsibility for care, challenging rampant assumptions about autonomy, ability, and normativity. Conclusions: School-based interventions for chronic illness operate as health strategies and as symbolic and structural enactments of inclusion. When designed relationally, they modulate schools into responsive institutions where care is integrated in everyday pedagogical and organizational practices. Future research prioritizes longitudinal studies, underrepresented contexts, and the active participation of youth in shaping interventions. Full article

The degradation of physical student examination archives, particularly handwritten essay booklets, presents a significant barrier to longitudinal academic research, institutional record preservation, and student performance analysis. This study introduces a novel natural language processing (NLP)-based framework for the automated reconstruction of damaged academic essay manuscripts using a span-infilling transformer architecture. A synthetic dataset comprising 5000 paired samples of damaged Text and full Text was curated from archived Data Science examination scripts collected at the Center for Applied Data Science, Sol Plaatje University, South Africa. The proposed method fine-tunes a T5-based encoder–decoder model, leveraging span corruption and task-specific prompting to restore missing or illegible segments. Comprehensive evaluation using ROUGE-L, BLEU-4, and BERTScore demonstrates substantial improvements over baseline models including BERT and GPT-2. Qualitative assessments by academic experts further validate the fluency, coherence, and contextual relevance of restored texts. Training dynamics reveal stable convergence without overfitting, while ablation studies confirm the contribution of each architectural component. Token-level error analyses and confidence-scored predictions provide additional interpretability. The proposed framework offers a scalable and effective solution for educational institutions seeking to digitize and recover lost historical student essay records, with potential extensions to other domains, such as digital humanities and archival restoration. Full article

Background/Objectives: As COVID-19 policies shift from government mandates to individual responsibility, understanding how voluntary protective behaviors shape social interactions remains a public health priority. This study examines the association between voluntary mask wearing and interpersonal distance (IPD) preferences in a post-mandate context, focusing on Taiwan, where mask wearing continues to be culturally prevalent. Methods: One hundred university students (50 males, 50 females) in Taiwan completed an online IPD simulation task. Participants adjusted the distance of a virtual avatar in response to targets that varied by gender and mask status. Mask-wearing status upon arrival was recorded naturally, without manipulation. A four-way ANOVA tested the effects of participant gender, participant mask wearing, target gender, and target mask wearing on the preferred IPD. Results: Voluntary mask wearing was more common among female participants (72%) than males (44%). Mask-wearing individuals maintained significantly greater IPDs, suggesting heightened risk perception, whereas masked targets elicited smaller IPDs, possibly due to social signaling of safety. Gender differences emerged in both protective behavior and spatial preferences, with females showing stronger associations between mask use and distancing behavior. Conclusions: These findings offer actionable insights into how voluntary behavioral adaptations continue to shape spatial interaction norms after mandates are lifted. The integration of real-time simulation and statistical modeling highlights the potential of digital behavioral tools to support culturally adaptive, person-centered public health strategies. Full article

Compression pants, as functional sportswear providing external pressure, are widely used to enhance athletic performance and accelerate recovery. However, systematic investigations into their effectiveness during anaerobic exercise and the impact of different pressure levels on performance and post-exercise recovery remain limited. This randomized crossover controlled trial recruited 20 healthy male university students to compare the effects of four garment conditions: non-compressive pants (NCP), moderate-pressure compression pants (MCP), high-pressure compression pants (HCP), and ultra-high-pressure compression pants (UHCP). Anaerobic performance was assessed through vertical jump, agility tests, and the Wingate anaerobic test, with indicators including time at peak power (TPP), peak power (PP), average power (AP), minimum power (MP), power drop (PD), and total energy produced (TEP). Post-exercise blood lactate concentrations and heart rate responses were also monitored. The results showed that both HCP and UHCP significantly improved vertical jump height (p < 0.01), while MCP outperformed all other conditions in agility performance (p < 0.05). In the Wingate test, MCP achieved a shorter TPP compared to NCP (p < 0.05), with significantly higher AP, lower PD, and greater TEP than all other groups (p < 0.05), whereas HCP showed an advantage only in PP over NCP (p < 0.05). Post-exercise, all compression pant groups recorded significantly higher peak blood lactate (Lamax) levels than NCP (p < 0.05), with MCP showing the fastest lactate clearance rate. Heart rate analysis revealed that HCP and UHCP induced higher maximum heart rates (HR_max) (p < 0.05), while MCP exhibited superior heart rate recovery at 3, 5, and 10 min post-exercise (p< 0.05). These findings suggest that compression pants with different pressure levels yield distinct effects on anaerobic performance and physiological recovery. Moderate-pressure compression pants demonstrated the most balanced and beneficial outcomes across multiple performance and recovery metrics, providing practical implications for the individualized design and application of compression garments in athletic training and rehabilitation. Full article