The global learning crisis has heightened concerns about teaching quality, particularly in developing countries where systemic inequities affect educational outcomes. In the Philippines, reports from EDCOM II identified structural weaknesses in the education sector, yet many local systemic barriers remain underexplored. Guided by Systems Theory and employing a phenomenological approach, this study examined the experiences of nine public high school teachers in Cebu, Philippines through a focus group discussion. Findings revealed interconnected barriers related to administration, curriculum and instruction, teacher workforce, infrastructure, centralization, and student-related factors. These challenges contributed to ineffective instructional delivery, reduced teacher well-being and preparedness, poor student performance, and unjustifiable student promotion. The study recommends both short- and long-term reforms, including stronger grassroots participation, qualified leadership, depoliticized governance, evidence-based policymaking, curriculum refinement, improved funding, and increased teacher compensation. The findings highlight underexplored issues beyond EDCOM II and underscore the need for a systems-oriented approach to improving educational quality.
This study investigated how teacher-student interaction predicts learning motivation and academic engagement among Cambodian secondary school students, applying the teaching through interactions framework and self-determination theory in a Southeast Asian setting. Survey data were collected from 434 11th-grade students across six public schools. This study examined the roles of teacher classroom organisation, emotional support, and instructional support in shaping student intrinsic and extrinsic learning motivation, affective, behavioural, and cognitive engagement. The findings revealed strong positive relationships between all teacher-student interaction dimensions and student learning outcomes. Classroom organisation and emotional support were the main predictors across all motivation and engagement types, while instructional support influenced student behavioural engagement and, to a lesser extent, intrinsic motivation. Our findings refine the teaching through interactions framework by emphasising the critical role of classroom organisation in under-resourced educational systems. The study offers valuable insights for teacher training and education policy interventions in Cambodia.
This article advances spatial theorization of Asian American (AsAm) racialization by foregrounding the mutually constitutive nature of the social and spatial in schooling. While critical scholarship has illuminated how race and space intersect, the spatial dimensions of AsAm racialization remain undertheorized. Building on AsianCrit and Critical Race Spatial Analysis, we propose a Spatial AsianCrit framework that conceptualizes racialization as a sociospatial process produced through material, discursive, and lived relations. Drawing on Soja's trialectics of spatiality, including Firstspace (material), Secondspace (imagined), and Thirdspace (lived/reimagined), Spatial AsianCrit situates AsAm racial formation within layered spatial configurations. We illustrate the framework's theoretical and methodological potential to inform research design, analysis, and praxis through two case examples that examine space, place, and AsAm racialization and resistance. These cases reveal spatial logics and power structures contouring AsAm youth and community experiences while opening pathways for transformative educational practice.
Students' self-efficacy in using digital technologies is critical for academic engagement. While previous studies have examined digital self-efficacy among students, they have largely overlooked the impact of students' location. This study therefore addresses this gap by examining rural-urban differences in students' digital self-efficacy and the role of different levels of digital engagement, gender and school type. Using data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2022, the current study conducted a descriptive analysis, t-test and multiple linear regression to explore how digital self-efficacy varies among students. The descriptive statistics indicated a higher frequency of digital engagement in favour of male students and private school students. The t-test results revealed a significant rural-urban disparity in terms of digital self-efficacy in favour of urban students. The multiple linear regression revealed that gender, school type and level of digital engagement predict digital self-efficacy differently in different locations.
In a global context of escalating anti-immigrant rhetoric, teacher support for immigrant students has become a significant educational concern in T & uuml;rkiye and beyond. This phenomenological study, grounded in culturally relevant pedagogy and informed by inclusive education, examines classroom teachers' perspectives on immigrant students and the support they provide in Turkish primary schools. Through criterion sampling, in-depth interviews were conducted with 11 classroom teachers who taught both immigrant and Turkish students. Findings show that teachers supported immigrant students through Turkish language assistance, literacy instruction, parent communication, social interaction, psychological care, and economic assistance. Using culturally relevant pedagogy as an analytical lens, the study shows that these practices promoted access to learning, belonging, and emotional safety, while also revealing limits when support remained compensatory rather than transformative. The study contributes to immigrant education by clarifying the possibilities and limitations of teacher support in inclusive primary classrooms.
The high school to college transition can be an exciting but challenging period for many youth, including the diverse Asian American youth, a group that is rarely researched. In this study, we amplify the voices of six Asian American college students as they discuss belonging during the transition from high school to college. Drawing from both AsianCrit and Asian Diaspora Experience frameworks, we focus our analysis and discussion on the focal youths' definitions of belonging, how transitions they face lead them to seek various spaces of belonging, and the strategies they use to create community, with attention to the role that their identities play across these areas. The focal Asian American youths employ diverse identity-based, network-based, and activity-based strategies, demonstrating agency and resilience in seeking belonging. This study contributes to the literature on belongingness among Asian American college students by examining factors that shape their sense of community and belonging prior to and during the transition to college, as well as considering how identity connects with both community and belonging. We offer implications and recommendations for researchers and secondary/post-secondary education professionals to support Asian American youth in developing a stronger sense of both identity and community during this transition.
Previous research highlights that teachers' beliefs, attitudes, and expectations regarding cultural diversity and immigration significantly influence students' psychosocial and sociocultural adaptation. However, evidence from Spain on teachers' acculturation expectations remains limited. This study analysed such expectations among 320 compulsory education teachers in Spain, examining the role of demographic and psychosocial variables. An online survey assessed support for cultural preservation, assimilation, and separation, alongside pro-diversity beliefs, intercultural sensitivity, and negative stereotypes. Results indicated stronger support for cultural preservation compared to assimilation or separation. Female teachers showed higher endorsement of cultural preservation, while male teachers supported assimilation more. Younger teachers more strongly rejected assimilation and separation than older counterparts. Cultural preservation correlated positively with intercultural sensitivity and pro-diversity beliefs, whereas assimilation and separation were linked to negative stereotypes and lower intercultural sensitivity. These findings underline the need to strengthen intercultural training, critical reflection, and inclusive pedagogical practices in teacher education.
This study examined the impact of integrating children's rights and cultural diversity themes into Social Studies lessons on fourth-grade students' self-regulated learning through the Jigsaw cooperative learning technique. A quasi-experimental pre-test-post-test control group design supported by qualitative data was employed. The study included 36 students from two primary schools in the Central Black Sea Region of T & uuml;rkiye. Data were collected through a self-regulation scale and semi-structured interviews. Quantitative data were analysed using the Mann-Whitney U and Wilcoxon Signed-Rank tests, while qualitative data were analysed through content analysis. Findings showed significant improvements in the experimental group's self-regulation scores, particularly in goal setting, learning strategies, effort regulation, and self-evaluation. Qualitative findings also indicated improved study habits, stronger peer collaboration, and more positive attitudes towards Social Studies. The findings suggest that the Jigsaw technique may support self-regulated learning in primary education.
This qualitative study examines how publication-metric probation reshapes early-career academics' work in Chinese universities. Rather than representing Chinese higher education as a whole, it offers an interpretive account of patterned experiences within a stratified evaluation ecology. Drawing on 36 semi-structured interviews across institutional tiers and disciplinary clusters, the study shows that fixed probation windows convert uncertain publication processes into employment risk. Participants responded by narrowing topics, prioritising lower-risk projects, using collaboration and staged submission as safety nets, and protecting research time by reducing teaching preparation, service, clinical work and other less countable labour. They also described a shift from field-based standards of rigour, originality and practical value towards publishable sufficiency. We argue that metricised probation functions as a temporal and formative evaluative regime: it redistributes academic labour, stratifies coping options, and shapes what early-career academics can pursue, protect and value within wider audit cultures.
This paper examines worksheets as social artefacts that actively mediate classroom interactions and shape learning experiences in early childhood education. Although worksheets are frequently used in many early childhood classrooms, especially for assessment purposes, their interactional and relational effects within the classroom environment have seldom been examined. Through observations and interviews with teachers and children, the study analysed how closed-ended worksheets affect classroom interaction, revealing that they can script authoritative roles for teachers, create patterns of tension, constrain children's agency, and reduce opportunities for joint meaning-making. Viewing worksheets as active participants in social interactions, the paper encourages educators to move beyond discussions about quantity or frequency of use and instead reflect on how pedagogical resources co-construct classroom dynamics and relationships. The study concludes that to foster meaningful learning, pedagogical tools must be evaluated not only for their content but also for their impact on roles, relationships, and user experiences.
Asian American (AsAm) youth are a highly under-studied group (Chang, 2017; Hsieh & Kim, 2020). As a racial group, AsAms are often seen as academically and economically successful, and narratives about how they are "practically white" abound. While the success of AsAm youth is foregrounded, this obscures the very real struggles of AsAm youth (Chatterji & Yin, 2022) who have some of the highest mental health issues and suicide rates in the country (Shih et al., 2019). Caught in the intersecting oppressions of race and gender, AsAm girls must navigate their marginalization on multiple fronts. This marginalization can put AsAm girls at higher risk for stress and mental health issues (Tummala-Narra & Yang, 2019). Yet, AsAm girls exhibit great resiliency and imagination. To this end, this study focuses on the experiences of AsAm high school girls as they negotiate their multiple identities through the use of AsAm young adult literature. One of the major themes around silence and speaking out provides implications for teachers and parents in helping AsAm girls navigate their worlds.
