Search Results (1,300)

Understanding rate of change requires reasoning about measurable quantities and how one quantity changes relative to another. To support this kind of reasoning, teachers should develop the ability to notice students’ quantitative and covariational reasoning. This study examines how preservice teachers (PSTs) attend to, interpret, and respond to students’ quantitative and covariational reasoning in video-based analyses of water-filling rate-of-change tasks. Drawing on relevant research, professional noticing is examined through the lenses of quantitative reasoning and covariational reasoning. Using a design-based qualitative approach, secondary PSTs participated in structured analyses of students’ problem-solving discussions related to rate of change. Data were collected across eight semi-structured sessions. This study reports qualitative analyses from two sessions (Sessions 1 and 2) that focused on rate of change. Findings show that PSTs’ initial attending shifted from perceptual task features (e.g., pouring speed, references to time) toward identification of measurable quantities, recognition of coordination between height and volume, and comparison of equal volume increments. PSTs’ interpretations progressed from recognizing secondary-variable coordination to identifying direct covariation, and their instructional responses became more targeted and content-specific. However, challenges persisted in interpreting students’ informal and visually mediated covariational reasoning. This study contributes to research on professional noticing by integrating quantitative and covariational reasoning as analytic lenses and highlighting implications for teacher preparation in calculus education. Full article

The current study examined the perceptions of elite high school students in the United Arab Emirates about their experiences in learning and acquiring mathematical concepts and skills through the ALEKS system that stands for Assessment and Learning in Knowledge Spaces. ALEKS is an e-assessment and tutoring platform that facilitates the teaching and learning of mathematics for students in Grades 5–12 using versatile and personalized teaching functions. Eight participants of equally mixed gender participated in the study, four Grade 9 and four Grade 10 students. A qualitative research design in the form of one-to-one semi-structured interviews was used to have a deeper understanding of students’ ALEKS experiences, identify the challenges encountered while studying with it, and pinpoint the benefits and advantages of using ALEKS. Results showed that participating students frequently used ALEKS because of two main factors, including rewards promised by teachers and immediate feedback and feeling of immediate achievement provided by the platform. Challenges related to ALEKS were language barriers among the Arabic-speaking students studying in English, a lack of human interaction and support, time management issues, and the necessity for supplementary resources. Multiple advantages were also found, most noticeably how the ALEKS individualized adaptive learning environment helped participants gain more knowledge of mathematical concepts and develop their mathematics skills. Recommendations for mathematics teachers and policymakers include allowing students to utilize ALEKS in small groups in school, aligning ALEKS themes and topics with textbooks learning goals and objectives, giving systematic and personal guidance for increased independent use at home, and making bilingual editions and Arabic-language assets (e.g., tutorial videos) available. Full article

The efficacy of healthcare performance evaluation systems depends on their design and implementation, as well as on their perceived value and integration into daily practice. This study explores the acceptability of a healthcare performance evaluation system, used by health and administrative professionals in four rural healthcare settings in Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Uganda, three years after its implementation. In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted, either in person or via video conference, with 17 professionals involved in system design and implementation. The analysis of qualitative data drew on Sekhon’s Theoretical Framework of Acceptability, using content analysis to identify themes across seven dimensions of acceptability. Key findings show that participants’ perceptions of acceptability of the performance evaluation system are influenced by data disclosure and reputational effect, the system’s understandability, alignment with their mission to improve quality of care, perceived usefulness, experienced opportunity costs, and intervention burden. The key features of the performance evaluation system are the most critical factors contributing to its acceptability, but the administrative burden, which includes professionals’ need to invest more time and change work habits to use the new system, poses some challenges and may hinder the medium- to long-term effectiveness of the intervention. Full article

Competency in musculoskeletal (MSK) ultrasound requires learners to relate probe manipulation to spatial reasoning, image projection, and the appearance of characteristic artefacts, which remains challenging during early training due to the limited spatial context provided by conventional instructional resources. This study investigates whether reconstructing real MSK ultrasound examinations in an immersive extended reality (XR) environment is perceived as useful for early familiarisation with probe handling and image interpretation. The proposed system reproduces ultrasound acquisitions using synchronised ultrasound video, six-degree-of-freedom probe tracking, and surface scans acquired from cadaveric specimens, enabling the reconstruction of spatially accurate probe trajectories with each ultrasound frame linked to a corresponding position and orientation. Within the XR environment, users can interactively explore these trajectories or observe automated playback in which the recorded probe motion is presented together with the corresponding ultrasound sequence. An exploratory evaluation with healthcare professionals was conducted to assess perceived usefulness and clarity of spatial relationships. The results indicate that participants perceived spatially coherent playback of real ultrasound examinations in XR as a potentially useful aid for understanding probe–image relationships. These findings suggest the feasibility of this approach as a complementary resource for introductory MSK ultrasound training. Full article

Electric vehicles represent a promising path toward reducing transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions, but partisan polarization presents a significant barrier to their widespread adoption in the United States. This study provides a detailed look at the auto industry’s strategies for reframing electric vehicles (EVs) to resonate with mainstream American consumers, and it contributes to scholarly understanding of how sustainable products are framed to politically diverse audiences. Through a comprehensive content analysis, we analyze the persuasive strategies in all available EV video advertisements run in the U.S. from 2018 to 2023. Spanning 263 unique advertisements and 62 vehicle models, our analyses reveal the ways that nature and the environment are used in EV ads. Our data show that 90% of EV ads do not make any reference to sustainability, and 71% do not employ nature in any way. Instead, EV ads tend to emphasize vehicle features and performance, and they portray EVs as a futuristic transportation revolution. We situate these findings within the broader literature on partisan polarization of environmental issues, identity signaling in green consumer behavior, and green marketing strategy. We argue that the near-total absence of sustainability messaging in EV advertising reflects an industry-wide strategy to decouple electric vehicles from environmental identity and reframe them as mainstream consumer products. Full article

Emotions play an important role in shaping aggressive behavior, and understanding their underlying psychological mechanisms is particularly relevant among college students. However, existing research has predominantly focused on reactive aggression, while comparatively less attention has been paid to proactive aggression, which is more instrumental in nature and associated with more severe social consequences. In addition, empirical evidence regarding the valence-specific effects of awe remains limited. The present study aimed to examine the differential effects of positive and negative awe on proactive aggression and to explore the role of empathy as a potential mediating mechanism. A total of 110 college students were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: positive awe, negative awe, or neutral emotion. Awe was induced through video clips depicting natural landscapes. Proactive aggression was assessed using a modified bug-killing paradigm, including two behavioral indicators: force intensity and proportion of bugs killed. Empathy was measured using the Interpersonal Reactivity Index. The results revealed a clear differentiation based on the valence of awe. Participants in the positive awe condition exhibited significantly lower levels of proactive aggression than those in the neutral condition across both force intensity (M = 2.86, SD = 0.81 vs. M = 4.17, SD = 0.81) and proportion of bugs killed (M = 0.68, SD = 0.25 vs. M = 0.93, SD = 0.11). In contrast, the inhibitory effects of negative awe were weaker and less consistent. Compared with the neutral condition, negative awe was associated with a lower proportion of bugs killed, although this effect only reached marginal significance (p = 0.06, η² = 0.04), and no significant difference was observed for force intensity. Mediation analyses indicated that empathy partially mediated the association between positive awe and proactive aggression. Empathy accounted for 31% of the total effect in the force intensity pathway (B = −0.02, t = −4.25, p < 0.001, 95% CI [−0.04, −0.01]) and 18% in the proportion-of-bugs-killed pathway (B = −0.003, t = −2.37, p = 0.02, 95% CI [−0.006, −0.001]). Notably, no significant mediating effect of empathy was observed in the negative awe condition, suggesting that the psychological processes linking awe to proactive aggression may differ as a function of emotional valence. Taken together, the present findings suggest that positive awe is reliably associated with lower levels of proactive aggression among college students, and that this association is partially explained by increased empathy. By contrast, the effects of negative awe appear to be fragile and context-dependent, as reflected in their failure to reach statistical significance, indicator-specific manifestation, and the absence of a consistent mediating pathway. These results highlight the importance of distinguishing between positive and negative awe when examining the behavioral consequences of self-transcendent emotions and underscore the need for further research to clarify the conditions under which negative awe may influence aggressive behavior. Full article

Video question answering remains a challenging task that requires a sophisticated understanding of both visual content and temporal dynamics across video sequences. Current approaches typically rely on fixed temporal processing strategies and uniform frame-selection mechanisms, which fail to adapt to the diverse requirements of different question types and may overlook critical visual information. We propose AdaSeViLA, an adaptive framework that enhances video understanding through two key innovations: Adaptive Temporal Window Selection (ATWS) that dynamically adjusts the number of processed frames (3–12 frames) based on question-type classification, and Object-importance-Aware Frame Selection (OAFS) that combines global relevance with local visual saliency for enhanced frame identification. Our approach intelligently allocates computational resources based on question complexity while maintaining high accuracy through improved frame-selection mechanisms. Extensive experiments on three challenging VideoQA benchmarks demonstrate that AdaSeViLA achieves superior performance: 87.4% accuracy on MM-AU (+2.7% over SeViLA), 73.6% on NExT-QA (+0.4% improvement), and 61.6% on STAR (+0.6% gain), while providing up to 4× computational speedup for short-term tasks. These results validate the effectiveness of adaptive temporal processing and object-aware selection in advancing video question answering capabilities. Full article

In recent years, Visual Education has emerged as an innovative and interdisciplinary teaching approach aimed at promoting meaningful learning through the conscious use of visual tools and languages. This educational paradigm helps to facilitate the understanding of complex concepts, translating them into clear and intuitive visual representations, while enhancing memorisation skills, critical information processing and the practical application of acquired knowledge. This systematic review, conducted according to the PRISMA (2020) protocol, analyses the most recent empirical evidence on the effectiveness of Visual Education in educational contexts. The main objective is to assess how the intentional use of visual tools—images, concept maps, educational videos, interactive digital materials, and virtual manipulatives—contributes to enhancing learning processes and developing transversal skills. Through a comparative analysis of fourteen international contributions published between 2020 and 2025, selected from the Scopus, Web of Science and EBSCO databases, the research highlights how Visual Education significantly influences the improvement of academic performance, motivation and cognitive and emotional engagement of students. The results also confirm the inclusive function of visual teaching, which can encourage participation, self-esteem and cooperation even in individuals with special educational needs. The discussion emphasises the need for the systematic integration of Visual Education into school curricula as a strategy to enhance soft skills and promote more equitable, effective learning geared towards the integral development of the individual. Full article

Financial literacy is critical for individual well-being and sustainable economic development, yet significant gaps remain among Portuguese young adults. Using a two-phase design, this study combines a diagnostic assessment and multi-criteria decision analysis to identify and prioritise effective financial education strategies. In Phase 1, a diagnostic questionnaire administered to 172 first-year university students revealed pronounced deficiencies in core financial concepts. Only 29.1% correctly answered a question on compound interest, and almost half were unable to understand the concept of inflation. Additionally, 62.8% reported low exposure to financial education during compulsory schooling, and 59.9% strongly agreed that it should be included in the mandatory curriculum, indicating both unmet need and strong receptiveness. Phase 2 employed the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to evaluate five educational alternatives across four criteria. Engagement and motivation (0.32) and knowledge acquisition (0.31) were prioritised over behavioural impact (0.22) and accessibility (0.15). Based on expert assessments weighted by student preferences, in-person courses emerged as the most effective strategy (0.42), substantially outperforming online courses (0.22), videos and digital content (0.14), books (0.13), and games (0.10). The findings point to the need for policy-driven integration of structured, educator-led financial education within formal curricula, supported by approaches that prioritise active engagement and knowledge acquisition over convenience, with digital tools serving as complements rather than replacements. Full article

Handball performance analysis is still often conducted through the manual review of match videos, while automation on broadcast footage remains challenging due to camera motion, strong perspective effects, and frequent occlusions during dense interactions. This study presents a practical and reproducible monocular pipeline for extracting handball analytics from a single broadcast viewpoint. Players are detected per frame, tracked over time, and projected onto a standardized handball court via homography-based camera calibration. The resulting court-referenced trajectories in metric units enable motion indicators such as distance covered and speed, along with coaching-oriented visual summaries, including trajectory overlays and heatmaps. In addition, clip-level action recognition is performed using interpretable kinematic and scene-derived features and lightweight classifiers, with a comparative evaluation across multiple classical models. The modular design keeps the intermediate steps explicit, supports reproducibility, and facilitates interpretation of both intermediate outputs and final analytics. Experiments on the UNIRI handball dataset demonstrate that meaningful performance analytics and action understanding can be obtained from single-camera broadcast video using transparent intermediate representations. This work highlights the practical potential of interpretable trajectory-based modeling for under-instrumented sports and provides a reproducible baseline for future extensions incorporating richer contextual cues. Full article

Short-form video (SFV) platforms have become a central part of older adults’ digital lives, yet their psychological implications remain theoretically contested. Drawing on social empowerment theory, Self-Determination Theory, attachment theory, and the displacement hypothesis, this study examined whether different sources of social support—family, peer, and community—exert differential effects on life satisfaction through SFV engagement and social connectedness. Survey data were collected from 385 community-dwelling Chinese older adults (mean age = 70.6 years) and analyzed using bootstrapped serial mediation models with 5000 resamples. The results revealed clear source differentiation, as family support most strongly predicted SFV engagement and showed the largest total association with life satisfaction, consistent with a social empowerment mechanism. Community participation showed a weaker but still positive association with engagement, whereas peer support was unrelated to engagement. Across pathways, higher SFV engagement was associated with lower social connectedness, while greater social connectedness was associated with higher life satisfaction. However, none of the chained indirect effects reached significance, suggesting that social support influenced life satisfaction primarily through direct rather than serially mediated pathways. These findings demonstrate the importance of disaggregating social support by source and contribute to a more precise framework for understanding older adults’ digital well-being. Full article

The integration of automated learning and video analysis enables the development of intelligent systems that can operate effectively in uncertain scenarios. These systems can autonomously identify dominant motion dynamics, depending on the theoretical framework used for representation and the learning process used for pattern identification. Current literature offers a state-based approach to describe the key temporal and spatial relationships required to understand motion dynamics. An important aspect of this approach is determining when the number of positively learned rules from a given information source is sufficient to detect dominant motion in automatic surveillance scenarios. This is crucial, as it affects both the variability of movements that monitored subjects can exhibit within the camera’s field of view and the resources needed for effective implementation. This study addresses these gaps through a grammar-based sufficiency criterion, which posits that learning is complete when production rule growth stabilizes, under the assumption of system stationarity. The stability criterion evaluates whether the most probable rules are learned over time, and whenever a high-growth rule is added, it is used to update the criterion. We outline several benefits of having a formal criterion for determining when a symbolic surveillance system has a robust model that explains the observed motion dynamics. Our hypothesis is that a correct model can consistently account for the majority of motion dynamics over time in an automated learning process. The proposed approach is evaluated by modeling motion dynamics in several scenarios using the SEQUITUR algorithm as input and computing the probability of stability along the learning curve, which indicates when the model reaches a steady state of consistent learning. Experimental validation was conducted in real-world scenarios under varying acquisition conditions. The results show that the proposed method achieves robust modeling performance, with accuracy values ranging from 83.56% to 95.92% in dynamic environments. Full article

Early-stage remote site analysis is often hindered by fragmented media that fail to convey sufficient spatial context to off-site collaborators. To address this challenge, we propose SiteSync, a real-time remote collaborative system that combines live video, coarse mesh streaming, georeferenced pose tracking, and 3D spatial annotations to establish a shared spatial understanding between on-site and remote collaborators. The system was evaluated through a counterbalanced within-subject study with 24 participants, comparing the synchronous SiteSync workflow against a traditional asynchronous baseline. The results showed that SiteSync significantly improved task performance by reducing completion time and rework while increasing overall accuracy (all p < 0.001). Participants also reported lower cognitive workload and higher usability. Remote users benefited most significantly. These findings show that the synchronous workflow can improve collaboration efficiency and user experience in early-stage site analysis. Full article

In the post-pandemic higher education context, multilingual students, particularly those from widening participation backgrounds, continue to face academic, linguistic, and socio-emotional challenges that can limit their participation and sense of belonging. This study examines the use of Reflective Video Diaries (RVDs) facilitated through Microsoft Flipgrid as an inclusive pedagogical approach to support reflective engagement, communication, and socio-emotional development among multilingual undergraduate students. Adopting a qualitative iterative action research approach, the study was conducted within a UK university module and involved three cycles of implementation, reflection, and pedagogical refinement, capturing students’ lived experiences rather than measuring causal effects. Multiple methods, including RVDs, end-of-module reflective reports, an anonymous survey, and lecturers’ field notes, were deliberately combined to provide complementary perspectives on students’ experiences, allowing triangulation of data and enhancing the validity and richness of findings. Thematic analysis of this longitudinal dataset collected across the three action-research cycles explored how students experienced RVDs as a space for reflection, peer support, and engagement with learning. Findings indicate that Flipgrid-mediated RVDs functioned as a low-anxiety, flexible, and dialogic learning environment that enabled students to articulate challenges, share progress, and develop reflective awareness, confidence, and a sense of connection with peers and lecturers. Improvements in participation and reflective depth were more evident in later cycles, suggesting that benefits emerged through iterative pedagogical adjustment rather than by video technology alone. Both positive experiences and challenges are reported, providing a balanced account of engagement with the RVDs. The study underscores the potential of inclusive digital pedagogies to inform curriculum planning and policy implementation, supporting equitable learning opportunities and socio-emotional development. By conceptualizing RVDs as relational and inclusive pedagogical practices rather than technological interventions, and by demonstrating how reflective engagement developed across successive action-research cycles, this research contributes to understanding how reflective digital practices can support multilingual learners’ academic and socio-emotional development within socially just higher education contexts. Practical implications for designing inclusive reflective learning environments are discussed. Full article

Elementary music teachers in the United States face many challenges today, including an increasing cultural divide between teachers and students, worsening student behavior, and excessive exposure to technology in children’s lives. These challenges are magnified due to the hundreds of students elementary music teachers see weekly, the lack of teaching and planning time, and inadequate teaching resources, making it difficult to fully understand the culture and learning needs of every child. However, music educators may find culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP) a useful tool for meeting the needs of a diverse student body. Further, when teachers engage in kid culture, the environments and activities that only children have, there is a plethora of music and media to use that children prefer that can help increase engagement and reduce behavioral problems. In this Perspective article, I provide three sample lessons that model instructional strategies that challenge current systems of power and representation in music education and center student agency through singing, chanting, moving, playing, and creating. Using repertoire that students already know and prefer, such as “Old Town Road,” Fortnite dances, and the song “See You Again”, draws from children’s funds of knowledge. Moving away from the Western art music canon and traditional formal education structures (like standard notation) in favor of learning by ear, peer collaboration, and improvisation decolonizes the curriculum. Critical reflexivity occurs when the teacher acts as a learner, constantly adjusting lessons to ensure student agency and addressing ethical issues, such as the intellectual property rights of creators whose work is used in media like Fortnite. By using melodies, songs, and video game movements children already know, music teachers can use the materials and learning processes in kid culture to engage in culturally sustaining pedagogy. I aim to inspire educators and researchers to reflect on sustaining children’s dynamic, cultural practices and better understand how to authentically bring popular music and media into elementary music lessons to provide a more engaging, relevant, and transformative music education. Full article