Private schooling is expanding rapidly in Nigeria, yet evidence on whether private schools deliver better learning remains mixed. Using data from the 2015 Nigerian Education Data Survey, a nationally representative household-based assessment of nearly 30,000 primary school children in grades two to six, I estimate differences in foundational skill achievement between private and public school students using ordinary least squares (OLS) and propensity score matching (PSM) to adjust for observable differences between students, and instrumental variable estimation and Heckman selection correction to additionally account for unobserved selection into school types. While private schools outperform public schools in raw comparisons, these advantages largely disappear once selection is accounted for, with at most a small literacy advantage and evidence of a numeracy disadvantage remaining after adjusting for unobservables. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that the numeracy advantage in OLS is driven largely by children who do not receive extra tuition at home and disappears for those who do. Among the poorest households, private school attendance is associated with meaningfully higher achievement in both domains once observable selection is addressed. Regional analysis further shows that the private school achievement advantage is concentrated in the South, with no significant advantage observed in the North in either OLS or PSM. Analysis of native language literacy assessments further shows that the English literacy advantage does not extend to native language literacy and is negative among private school students in Northern Nigeria, supporting the interpretation that differential language of instruction rather than superior school quality drives the observed literacy gap. The results suggest that household selection drives most of the observed differences in achievement at the population level, and that the value of private schooling depends critically on household context, with higher achievement concentrated among the poorest and least-supported students.
Research atmosphere is a critical environmental factor shaping graduate students' competence development. Although prior studies have examined graduate training environments, less is known about how research atmosphere is translated into competence development through students' engagement and motivation. Using survey data from 18,715 graduate students at a “Double First-Class” university in China, this study tested a moderated mediation model with PROCESS Models 4 and 7 and bias-corrected bootstrapping. The findings reveal that research atmosphere has a significant positive impact on graduate student competence development (β = 0.6722, p < 0.001), with learning engagement serving as a partial mediator (mediation rate = 62.19%). Furthermore, academic interest positively moderates the relationship between research atmosphere and learning engagement (β = 0.0447, p < 0.001). These findings underscore the importance of optimizing the research atmosphere, stimulating learning engagement, and cultivating academic interest, thereby providing empirical support for improving the quality of graduate education and fostering innovative talent.
A significant portion of academic discourse examines how national doctoral training systems balance efficiency and scholarly impact. This paper presents a single-country policy analysis of how regulatory time constraints are associated with the performance and productivity of PhD students in Hungary. In Hungary, the government implemented a new structure, introducing a 4+1 year time limit for doctoral training, which replaced the previous open-ended system. Utilizing bibliometric and regression methodologies, we analyzed a comprehensive dataset comprising 2,454 individuals from 18 doctoral schools in economics, business, and regional science. Descriptive pre–post comparisons indicate lower average international publication intensity and citation visibility among post-2016 doctoral cohorts. However, these raw differences do not translate into a statistically significant conditional level difference in the multivariate models once individual characteristics, supervisory capital, and institutional context are accounted for. Instead, the regression and pre–post interaction results indicate selective period-specific differences in the associations between doctoral research outcomes, broader-output productivity, field-adjusted citation efficiency, and selected supervisory characteristics. Research-year exposure shows specification-dependent associations and does not provide a uniform explanation for differences in international research performance. The findings therefore suggest a reweighting of the observable determinants of doctoral research outcomes rather than a uniform regression-adjusted decline in performance levels. The model results, therefore, point to an efficiency–impact trade-off in doctoral training design: more structured timelines may support short-horizon efficiency and more immediate output, whereas more flexible horizons may better accommodate the accumulation of scholarly returns over longer research cycles – an important consideration for policymakers designing doctoral training reforms in similar institutional contexts.
Formative Assessment (FA) has demonstrated positive effects on learning, yet a gap remains in understanding how it takes shape in specific disciplines such as mathematics. Grasping this situated dimension is essential for advancing theoretical and practical frameworks on how teachers appropriate and re-interpret formative assessment principles under real classroom conditions. This study examines how secondary mathematics teachers construct professional narratives about FA after participating in a professional development program. We conducted a qualitative analysis of 213 meaning units derived from open-ended responses to a final survey completed by 88 teachers and triangulated these data with 135 excerpts from four focus groups involving 24 of the participating teachers. Through inductive and comparative coding, we identified 14 FA practices organized into four dimensions: (1) a culture of dialogue and peer learning, (2) supporting self-regulation, (3) feedback loops, and (4) tasks and dialogues that make mathematical thinking visible. Focus group analysis also revealed two emergent dimensions: reconfiguration of the teacher’s role and emotional tensions associated with pedagogical change. The findings show that, in mathematics, FA is appropriated not as a set of discrete techniques but as an interdependent system of practices that reshapes classroom interaction, learning regulation, and the roles of teachers and students. The study contributes evidence on the situated appropriation of FA in mathematics and suggests that its implementation transforms not only classroom practices, but also teachers’ understandings of teaching, learning, and their professional role.
Most children say they want to help peers who are bullied, but in real bullying situations, they often remain passive bystanders. Existing anti‑bullying programs have led to modest improvements in defending, but they typically provide limited opportunities for children to practice defending in realistic, emotionally charged bullying situations. Immersive Virtual Reality (VR) may offer a promising tool to let children rehearse defending in controlled ways in such scenarios. This practice might be particularly helpful for children who experience stronger inhibitions to defend because they are shy. This feasibility study examined whether a brief VR-based training could strengthen defending behavior and defending self-efficacy in bullying situations, and explored whether children who are more shy would benefit in particular. Participants were 22 children aged 6 - 10 years (Mage = 8.41, SD = 0.96; 77.3% boys), from two Dutch primary schools and an after-school care. In a within-subjects pre-post design, children completed two VR bullying scenarios with individualized coaching in between. Observed defending behavior in VR was coded, and children reported defender self-efficacy, tension, VR experience, shyness, and perceived bullying in their classroom. Children showed a substantial increase in observed defending from pre- to post-training, alongside a significant increase in defending self-efficacy, while reported tension remained stable. Shyness did not moderate observed defending at baseline, nor defending improvements. However, more shy children showed a larger gain in defender self-efficacy than their less shy peers. These findings, obtained in a small, age-heterogeneous sample, suggest that immersive VR can be used to elicit measurable changes in defending behavior and perceived defending ability among young children, and that children with higher levels of shyness may be especially responsive in terms of self-efficacy, but they require replication in larger, age-stratified samples. The study, thus, initially illustrates the potential of VR as a tool to study how bystander defending develops and how children’s defending behavior in perceived socially risky situations can be supported.
Students with special educational needs (SEN) attend a wide range of school placements, including mainstream classes, special classes within mainstream schools, and segregated special schools. Research on normative school transitions (e.g., the move from primary to secondary school) suggests that transitions can be particularly challenging for students with SEN. Yet research on school placement transitions (e.g., the move from mainstream to special school) remains relatively limited and has not previously been brought together in a systematic review. This scoping review aimed to provide an overview of the current state of research on school placement transitions for students with SEN by identifying the scope of existing studies and mapping findings related to transition processes and experiences. The review included 23 studies from various countries that addressed diverse research aims and involved students with different SEN types. Most studies employed qualitative methods and had small sample sizes (<20 cases). More than half of the studies examined transitions towards more inclusive placements, reflecting a research interest in supporting inclusive schooling. Across studies, placement transitions were often described as stressful, with students showing short term difficulties but generally adapting with time. The direction of the transfer and its underlying motives (i.e., strategic versus reactive) may shape the transition experience. Students were reported to benefit from environmental adaptations, including adjustments to instructional approaches or reducing mobility barriers, as well as from targeted skills training. More comprehensive research, including quantitative studies, is needed to deepen the understanding of the complex processes involved in placement transitions.
While the impact of job demands and resources on employee well-being has been well established in occupational psychology, empirical studies of this impact among academic staff in post-socialist Central and Eastern Europe remain scarce. This study examines the emotional well-being of academic staff in five Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries –Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, Serbia and Ukraine –within the context of rapidly evolving higher education systems. Drawing on the Job Demands–Resources (JD–R) framework and data from a cross-national survey, the manner in which job demands (e.g. workload, emotional exhaustion, work-life conflict) and job resources (e.g. managerial support, peer collaboration, development opportunities) shape well-being outcomes was analysed. Regression results identify emotional exhaustion, workplace bullying, work-life conflict and workload as strong negative predictors of well-being. Contrary to standard JD–R assumptions, job resources did not exert a direct protective effect under conditions of elevated cumulative demands, suggesting a demand-dominated regime specific to the CEE institutional context. Significant disparities in well-being were observed by age, academic rank and national context. By applying the JD–R model to a geopolitically distinct and institutionally fluid region, this study contributes new insight into how structural and cultural factors mediate academic experiences that offer actionable directions for higher education institutions seeking to promote sustainable academic careers in post-socialist systems.
Teacher burnout is widely recognized as a critical determinant of teaching quality, teacher–student interactions, and students’ learning experiences. Guided by Emotional Contagion Theory, the Job Demands-Resources model, and Self-Determination Theory, this systematic review synthesizes empirical evidence on the association between teacher burnout and student engagement, with particular attention to the directionality of this relationship. Following PRISMA guidelines, we conducted a comprehensive search of PsycINFO, PsycARTICLES, ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, Educational Research Abstracts, PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science. Fifteen eligible studies published between 1995 and 2025 were identified, representing a total sample of 3280 teachers and 15,742 students. Overall, the evidence suggests a predominantly negative association between teacher burnout and student engagement, with emerging indications of potentially bidirectional links. Longitudinal findings further suggest that student disengagement may precede increases in teacher burnout. Associations were generally more pronounced in studies using teacher-reported student engagement than in those using student self-reports, indicating potential informant-related variation. Due to the limited number of eligible studies, heterogeneity in measurement approaches, and incomplete statistical reporting, a quantitative meta-analysis was not feasible. This review highlights the necessity of dual-focus approaches that support both teacher well-being and student engagement. From a policy perspective, the findings underscore the value of school-level strategies that reduce excessive job demands, strengthen instructional and relational resources, and foster supportive classroom climates. The review also points to the need for more rigorous, longitudinal, and multilevel research to inform evidence-based educational policy and practice.
This study examines the effect of a 10–week decision–making skills training programme on the rational decision–making skills of fourth–grade elementary school students. A total of 152 students participated in the study, comprising 78 in the experimental group and 74 in the control group, drawn from four year 4 classes. All students completed the Decision–Making Skills Scale for Elementary School Students as a pre–test. Following this, two classes were randomly assigned to the experimental and control groups, respectively. During the ten–week intervention period, the children in the experimental group were taught modified Nasreddin Hodja anecdotes aimed at improving rational decision–making skills during two hours of Turkish lessons each week. The control group received instruction in standard curriculum topics such as spelling rules and reading comprehension during the same Turkish class periods. The Turkish lesson hours were equal for both groups and no additional instruction was provided to the experimental group. At the end of the training period, all students completed the Decision–Making Skills Scale for Elementary School Students again as a post–test. The results indicated a very slight decrease in decision–making skills from pre– to post–test in the control group, whereas the experimental group showed an increase. This increase was significantly greater than that of the control group. These results suggest that the rational decision–making skills of Fourth–grade students can be improved through a method that can easily be adapted to classroom practices.
Equity in early childhood education is often debated in terms of access; however, the pedagogical content that children experience may be unequally distributed even when access and accountability are formally standardized. This study examined whether pedagogical emphases varied systematically across kindergartens operating under a common quality-assurance regime. Drawing on 720 publicly available kindergarten inspection narratives from Hong Kong (2015–2024) as an empirical proxy for documented practice, this study used structural topic modeling to identify six common pedagogical themes: Regulation and Monitoring, Child Choice and Play, Experiential and Constructive Learning, Physical Development, Moral Socialization, and National Socialization. Fractional logistic regressions linked the prevalence of these themes to kindergarten- and neighborhood-level characteristics. A higher kindergarten cost was associated with less Regulation and Monitoring and more Experiential and Constructive Learning, while larger enrollment was associated with greater Child Choice and Play. Neighborhood educational composition, rather than income, differentiated Moral from National Socialization. The findings suggest that documented pedagogy is stratified along institutional and socioeconomic lines even within a standardized accountability framework, which has implications for assessing equity in children’s enacted learning opportunities.
This study investigates the relationship between gender, positive psychology virtues, and self-perceived academic competencies in a sample of 993 Year 5 and 6 primary pupils from Andalusia, Spain. Informed by the Positive Development and Assessment Competencies Theory (PDAC), this study used a quantitative, cross-sectional design and binary logistic regression to analyse data from validated questionnaires.The results suggest that pupil gender is a significant predictor of self-perceived competencies. Crucially, this relationship appears to be moderated by specific virtues, indicating a complex interplay between dispositional traits and gender in shaping academic self-concept. These findings highlight the need for educational strategies that move beyond simple gender analyses. We suggest integrating virtue-based, gender-sensitive interventions to foster more holistic pupil development and promote an inclusive, equitable learning environment where all pupils can be supported.
In the Education 4.0 era, schools face unprecedented challenges in managing teacher performance effectively. Traditional top-down performance management systems have proven inadequate for fostering continuous professional growth, intrinsic motivation, and adaptive teaching competencies required in increasingly technology-driven learning environments. This study aims to develop, validate, and assess the effectiveness of a School-Based Performance Management (SBPM) model designed to enhance teacher effectiveness across cognitive, affective, and pedagogical dimensions. Using a Research and Development (R&D) design following the ADDIE framework, the study was conducted in three phases: needs analysis, model development, and model validation. Participants included 12 school principals, 186 teachers, and 8 education experts from 24 public secondary schools in [Province, Country]. Validation by experts yielded a content validity index (CVI) of 0.91. Implementation resulted in statistically significant improvements in teacher effectiveness scores (t = 8.74, p < 0.001, Cohen's d = 1.23), digital pedagogy competency (mean increase = 22.4%), and student learning outcomes (mean improvement = 17.8%). The SBPM model provides a contextually responsive, evidence-based framework that empowers schools to manage teacher performance collaboratively, fostering professional accountability and sustainable instructional quality in Education 4.0.
This study explores Indonesian EFL student teachers’ experiences of learning to write news articles through blogging in a Journalism course. The study was motivated by the need to provide meaningful and genre-based writing practice for EFL student teachers, who often face difficulties in generating ideas, organizing information, meeting genre expectations, and writing for authentic aences. Employing a qualitative case study design, the study involved twenty undergraduate student teachers from a private Islamic university in Tangerang, Indonesia; all participants completed an online quetaire, and five volunteers joined follow-up semi-structured interviews. The questionnaire data were alysed descriptively, while the interview data were examined thematically. The findings indicate that blogging supported regular writing practice, helped students understand news text structure, enouraged clearer organization of headlines, leads, and supporting details, and increased engagement by allowing students to publish and share their work. Blogging also promoted peer interaction and selfevaluation because students could read, compare, and comment on one another’s posts. However, some paticpants eprienced challenges related to technical blogging skills, uncertainty about writing standards, limited peer feedback, and discomfort with public online publication. The study concludes that blogging can serve as a useful platform for EFL news writing when it is supported by explicit istrucion, relevant tasks, clear assessment criteria, structured feedback, and ethical awareness in using digital and AI-driven tools.
This study investigates the development of Indonesian language literacy among third-grade elementary school students. The primary problems identified were acute classroom passivity and low reading comprehension, evidenced by an initial learning mastery of only 45.16%, which were largely driven by conventional teacher-centered pedagogy. The objective of this research is to enhance early-grade reading literacy and active participation through an innovative instructional intervention. The proposed method employed a two-cycle Classroom Action Research (CAR) design at SDN Jrebeng Kulon 1, integrating the Problem-Based Learning (PBL) model assisted by serial picture media. This approach utilizes chronological visual scaffolding to facilitate narrative comprehension for students in the concrete operational stage. The results demonstrated a highly significant academic progression: classical learning mastery increased to 70.97% (mean score: 80.80) in Cycle I and culminated in an absolute 100% mastery rate (mean score: 94.51) by the end of Cycle II. The synthesis of these findings reveals that transitioning from static visual aids to serial visual stimuli within a problem-oriented framework effectively mitigates cognitive dissonance and eradicates classroom passivity. In conclusion, the integration of the PBL model with serial picture media serves as a comprehensive pedagogical solution that not only maximizes cognitive reading comprehension but also reconstructs students' verbal articulation and social-collaborative skills, offering a highly scalable strategy for early primary education.
Purpose This study examines the psychological associations of teleological thinking training among teachers, focusing on self-efficacy, psychological empowerment, and job satisfaction. The study further explores whether these psychological resources are statistically associated with indirect pathways linking the training experience to teachers’ professional well-being. Design/methodology/approach A quasi-experimental pre–post design with a control group was employed. The sample consisted of 127 teachers (66 experimental, 61 control). Participants in the experimental group received teleological thinking training, while the control group did not. Data were analyzed using paired and independent samples t-tests, and mediation effects were examined using bootstrapping with 5000 resamples. Findings The findings indicate that participation in teleological thinking training was associated with significant increases in teachers’ self-efficacy and psychological empowerment. Although the between-group difference in job satisfaction did not reach conventional statistical significance, both self-efficacy and psychological empowerment were positively associated with job satisfaction. Bootstrapping analyses revealed statistically significant indirect effects consistent with the proposed mediation framework, suggesting that the relationship between the intervention and job satisfaction may operate through these psychological mechanisms. Originality/value This study provides an exploratory empirical examination of teleological thinking as an emerging cognitive-developmental perspective within teacher professional development. The findings contribute to the literature by highlighting the potential role of future-oriented and purposive cognitive frameworks in shaping teachers’ psychological resources and professional experiences. Rather than presenting teleological thinking as a fully established standalone theory, the study positions it as an emerging integrative perspective that may offer useful directions for future research on teacher cognition, professional development, and educational well-being interventions.
Reading enjoyment is crucial to students’ reading performance and behaviors. Digital reading is common in the digital era. Educators attempt to identify the factors that predict children’s digital reading enjoyment. We utilized five machine learning algorithms to investigate the impact of demographic variables, reading motivations, achievement goals, and family reading environment factors on digital reading enjoyment among 10,979 Chinese children participating in a summer digital reading program. Gradient Boosting was selected as the optimal model with its strong predictive performance (R2: 0.6627, MSE: 0.4152, RMSE: 0.6443, MAE: 0.4530). SHapley Additive exPlanations analysis (SHAP) revealed that the six features with the largest positive contributions to the model’s prediction of digital reading enjoyment were intrinsic motivation, social motivation, mastery goal, self-efficacy, extrinsic motivation, and parental reading autonomy support. In contrast, performance-avoidance goals and performance-approach goals were found to be negative contributors. Further subgroup SHAP analyses revealed differences in feature importance across gender, grade, and area. These findings provide internally validated, model-based evidence that may inform future hypothesis validation and the design of targeted strategies for enhancing children’s digital reading enjoyment.
Against the backdrop of increasingly diverse student learning needs, adaptive teaching practice has become a critical issue for improving classroom instructional quality and promoting educational equity. However, the associative pathway linking teachers' perceived professional learning community (PLC) culture to adaptive teaching practices, as well as its boundary conditions, has not been adequately examined within the Chinese context characterized by the coexistence of strong institutionalized collaboration and high accountability pressure. Drawing on professional capital theory, the present study used data from the Chinese (Shanghai) lower secondary teacher sample of the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) 2024 (N = 1283) and adopted a cross-sectional associative design to examine the association between perceived PLC culture and adaptive teaching practice, with instructional self-efficacy tested as a mediator and work stress as a moderator. The results indicated that (a) perceived PLC culture was significantly and positively associated with adaptive teaching practice; (b) instructional self-efficacy served as a statistically significant partial mediator of this association; and (c) work stress significantly attenuated the positive association between perceived PLC culture and instructional self-efficacy but did not significantly moderate the direct association between perceived PLC culture and adaptive teaching practice. These findings provide association-level empirical evidence regarding the applicability of professional capital theory to the Chinese educational context, identify contextual boundaries of the professional capital transformation pathway, and carry implications for optimizing teacher collaboration and alleviating work stress to support adaptive teaching practice.
Assessment format plays a critical role not only in how learning is measured but also in which aspects of learning become visible. Grounded in a validity-based perspective and epistemic cognition, this study examined how Modeling-Based Instruction (MBI) in an elementary astronomy context influenced students' conceptual understanding and epistemic explanation, and how these effects were represented across multiple-choice (MC) and open-ended (OE) assessments. The study adopts an assessment-centered approach to examine how assessment format shaped the evidence available for interpreting students' learning. The findings revealed a clear formatsensitive pattern. While MBI did not yield a statistically significant improvement in MC-based performance, it was associated with a meaningful increase in OE-based explanation quality and epistemic reasoning. Gain comparisons indicated that learning outcomes were more visible in the OE tasks used in this study than in the conventional four-option MC items. Analysis of students' modeling performances showed a differentiated epistemic profile, with relatively strong scientific accuracy but weaker performance in justification, evidence use, and epistemic use of models. Although process-level epistemic dimensions were positively related to OE outcomes, their unique predictive contribution diminished once baseline explanation ability was controlled. Across formats, results indicated limited convergence, clear divergence in performance patterns, and low classification agreement, suggesting that the specific MC and OE tasks used in this study provided complementary rather than interchangeable evidence about student learning. Taken together, findings demonstrate that conclusions about instructional effectiveness depended in part on the specific assessment formats used in this study, as these formats elicited different forms of learning evidence. The study contributes to science education research by highlighting how the design of assessment tasks and response formats can shape the interpretation of learning outcomes, particularly when instruction targets explanation, justification, and model-based reasoning.
