This paper studies the relationship of mathematics with different components of attitude across genders. The objective is to study the relationship between the different components of attitude toward mathematics across the gender in higher secondary school. The hypothesis of the study is that there is no significant relationship between different components of attitudes and mathematics gender wise (male and female) in higher secondary school. The population of the study consists of class XII students enrolled in higher secondary schools in Ri-Bhoi District, Meghalaya. Simple random sampling technique was used to select the sample from two schools, from each school a total of 50 students from class XII were randomly selected for the study, making a total sample of 100 students. The tools used was, Attitude towards Mathematics Scale, developed by Dr. S.C. Gakhar & Dr. Rajni in 2012. The findings showed that there is no significant correlation between the different components of attitude and mathematics with respect to gender. But there is significant relation in the two components i.e. development of skills and universal outlook.
This quantitative and qualitative research study aimed to examine the attitudes of Arab college students towards the program of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) from three perspectives: cognitive-belief, evaluative, and behavioral, and the relations between their attitudes and their field of study (major), year of study, their experience in learning EAP courses, scores, and the possibility of pursuing a master’s degree. Forty-four subjects from a pool of 150 returned the questionnaire, and eleven were interviewed. Results show a strong correlation between those who have a positive experience in learning English and their attitudes, achieve high scores and their aspirations for pursuing a master’s degree. There is a need for understanding the needs of members of minority groups for learning English, the reasons for their low achievement and attitudes to match the reading materials and pedagogy to their specific needs to help them succeed in the EAP courses.
This study investigates trust conceptualization among Spanish school leaders and teachers, comparing findings with U.S. research. Interviews with 19 participants from four diverse K-12 institutions revealed four themes: trust demonstration, enactment of five trust facets, emphasis on benevolence, and adherence to workplace expectations. Results show similarities with U.S. findings, but with notable variations. Spanish educators emphasized benevolence over honesty, and confidence in trust emerged as a significant topic. Participants consistently reported trust as essential for school stability, requiring substantial time to develop. The study suggests that school leaders and researchers in global contexts should be attentive to nuances in trust conceptualization to foster stronger relationships and promote educational success.
The paper investigates the implementation of the innovative “4+2” pedagogical practice model at the Faculty of Mathematics, Karakalpak State University. This model combines four days of school practice with two days of academic study per week. The findings show that this approach significantly enhances students’ academic performance compared to traditional frameworks. It fosters deeper understanding of theoretical knowledge, its practical application, and increased motivation. A comparison of academic results between students under traditional and “4+2” models reveals notable improvements. Despite some limitations, the model has been adopted by other faculties, highlighting its effectiveness in integrating theory and practice.
Parenting children with ADHD is known to lead to maternal stress that requires coping resources, one of which is a secure attachment orientation. This study examines the effect of an amelioration in ADHD symptoms, executive functions, and self-esteem in children benefiting from a therapeutic horseback riding program on maternal stress and attachment orientation. To test the hypotheses, 123 mothers of children with ADHD filled out pre-, post-, and 12-week follow-up questionnaires assessing their maternal stress and dispositional attachment orientation, which were analyzed using a series of latent growth models and a multi-path mediation model. The results indicated that improvement in children’s executive functions and ADHD symptoms reduced maternal stress and maternal attachment anxiety. By contrast, higher children’s self-esteem did not impact the mothers’ maternal stress or attachment anxiety. Ultimately, the findings demonstrate that the amelioration of children’s ADHD symptoms and executive functions can effectively lower maternal stress and their attachment anxiety.
For many years there has been growing emphasis in Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs) on developing core employability skills among students, particularly in healthcare and business. Increasingly, employers’ demand technical skills and the need for graduates to be adaptable. The integration of Universal Employability Skills (UES) into curricula has become essential as HEIs respond to deeper and complex dynamics in the global educational environment. The drive toward internationalisation is influenced by globalisation factors, creating a demand for graduates who can operate effectively in diverse environments. HEIs face growing market competition compelling them to enhance their appeal to attract international students and maintain enrolment numbers amid changing demographics. The aim of this article is to critically evaluate UES and the competencies required by international students to compete in a global market. The essential skills aligned with key graduate attributes and industry demands are examined, including evaluation of their relevance and effectiveness in preparing students for diverse challenges in the workplace. This critical evaluation assesses the link between UES and the objectives of HEIs, identifying enhancements for integration into curricula. It offers recommendations to align essential skills with employability dimensions, ensuring graduates are better equipped to meet the demands of the global economy.
In the state of Utah, adult education students often leave their programs before 100 hours of instruction, which can leave students without the necessary academic knowledge, skills, and credentials to move forward with postsecondary education and training or employment opportunities. This phenomenological study examines the key factors of persistence in non-traditional students ages 25 and over in an urban adult education program who continued beyond 100 hours of instruction. A semi-structured interview protocol was used to interview 14 students about factors that caused them to stay in an adult education program. The interviews with students examined dispositional, institutional, situational, and motivational factors through a student involvement lens. Findings of this study indicate that students who persist generally have high degrees of involvement. While students had fears and concerns about engaging with adult education, the personnel and culture of the program helped them overcome their unease. Students also had a growth mindset that created expectations of discomfort and effort. Institutional factors such as allowing students to choose the modality of instruction and schedule, having focused and relevant instruction, feeling seen, being treated with respect, communicating regularly with students, tracking progress, and providing quality instruction all helped students persist in the program. Students were motivated to persist because of family and a personal desire to move forward. As programs intentionally impact the institutional factors identified in this study, students will be more likely to persist in adult education programs long enough to build the knowledge and skills necessary to find personal success and sustainable employment.
BackgroundHigh-impact practices (HIPs), such as mentored research, Capstone projects, study abroad, and field experiences, have been shown to improve college student engagement through experience-based learning. Research indicates that these practices can have high impact when they are intentionally designed and delivered to align with institutional mission and professional standards. The administrative structure of a HIP initiative may not consider how to assess program effectiveness. Few close examples exist in the literature to guide program staff to understand whether the HIPs supported by their programs are being designed and delivered for high impact. Our study details the efforts of one unit at a large private university to evaluate the implementation of an experiential learning initiative intended to support faculty to design and deliver high-impact practices to students. PurposeThis qualitative case study responds to the call for assessment to ensure that HIPs qualify as high impact. It illustrates a standards-based approach to evaluating a program of co-curricular, experientially based high-impact practices by determining how educational design and delivery aligns with the institution’s mission and professional standards for best practice. Methodology/approachTo qualitatively evaluate how well our HIP program aligned with institutional mission and HIP standards, we collected narrative data drawn from six faculty projects, faculty interviews, and reflections from 70 participating students. We used the institutional mission and established HIP professional standards as confirmatory themes to code the narrative and observe levels of coverage. Administrative directives were mapped against the confirmatory themes to identify areas of high and low emphasis and emergent themes that fell outside specific mission and standards language were considered for meaning. Findings/conclusionsOur qualitative assessment of a HIP program revealed program strengths and areas in need of improvement. By evaluating the concentration of institutional mission and professional standard themes across the project narratives and within the way the program was structured and administered, we found strong alignment existed in the areas of intellectual growth and interaction with faculty and peers. When we found that other mission themes and standards were present at lower levels, we mapped the administrative directives to the themes and discovered that the high concentration themes occurred more frequently in the directives. This insight led us to observe that addressing all mission and professional standard themes more clearly in the design phase could serve to align administrative directives more closely. In addition to the presence of confirmative themes across the data, we found emergent themes that had meaning to study participants but fell outside of the mission and industry standards. The evaluative process taught us important lessons around how administration-to-faculty program directives can impact the design and delivery of pedagogical practice. RecommendationsEducational leaders should consistently use institutional mission and professional standard language in directives to faculty and staff; training faculty in designing HIPs to meet professional standards can benefit underserved students; and recognizing meaningful themes that emerge through program evaluation can illuminate important unanticipated outcomes.
This study seeks to examine the portrayal of teachers with regard to their personal, ethical, and pedagogic profile, in rabbinical literature, with comparison to other cultures and faiths.The research findings indicate that the figure of the teacher in rabbinical literature is compatible with the requirements and expectations of contemporary teachers. Due to the fact that according to Chazal this is a profession with lofty, particular, universal, and includes hysterical consequences and meaning, not just to preserve the nation’s culture and pass on its beliefs to future generations, but also to the very survival of the nation.
OECD’s PISA 2018 large-scale assessment also covered global competence among students and their parents. This study aimed to study intergenerational competence of three themes of global competence from parents to their children. Using PISA 2018 data, 34,088 parent‐child pairs in seven different OECD countries were analyzed using structural equation modeling. The results showed that parents’ competence on a particular theme of global competence significantly predicted their children’s level of global competence on that theme. The findings could be utilized to enhance the cooperation between schools, teachers, and parents while enhancing students’ global competence.
In the first learning environment study worldwide focusing on EAL (English as an Additional Language) students, we investigated whether EAL status is a determinant of classroom environment perceptions and student outcomes. Six modified scales from the What Is Happening In this Class? (WIHIC), three modified scales from the Test of Science Related Attitudes (TOSRA), and an inquiry achievement test were administered to 721 South Australian middle-school science students. One-way MANOVA yielded significant differences between EAL and non-EAL learners for two learning environment scales (Student Cohesiveness and Involvement) and two student outcomes (Future Intentions to Study Science and Achievement).
This quantitative and qualitative research study investigates the contribution of the course Multiculturalism in Literature on Arab Muslim graduates of the B. Ed program, majoring in teaching English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in a teacher training college in the central part of Israel. The research participants took the course in their second year of studies from 2011 until 2017. Sixty-six participants out of a pool of 123 returned the questionnaire. Fifty-five of the respondents teach in Arab schools, and eleven in Jewish schools. Results show that the course helped them promote their cross-cultural and intercultural understanding and communication, raise their awareness of social and political injustices, and feel empowered as members of a national minority group in Israel.
This paper focuses on Chinese ‘ethnic’ Minzu art education for university undergraduate students, specializing in various subfields of visual arts. Based on data collected during a course on Minzu visual design, analysed visually and discursively, the paper intersects the notions of Minzu (in reference to the 56 official Minzu groups composing Chinese Mainland) and interculturality (understood here as processes of change when people meet) in art education. In the course, groups of art students cooperate on a visual design project at a top Minzu university in China, whereby they need to negotiate artistic creations based on one Minzu group. The interest is on the artistic and visual aspects of their creations. The results highlight a form of curiosity for the ‘other’ anthropologically and artistically that does not seem to be satisfied. As such the students appear to be disappointed by the end products, having found what some refer to as merely superficial Minzu design elements and having had to make changes to them to fit the purpose of the course project. However, interculturality as change in art does happen throughout the course, especially when the students mixed some elements from different Minzu groups in their design. Recommendations for global arts education, from an intercultural perspective, are drawn.
This paper focuses on the perspectives and experiences of teachers in urban high schools in relation to performance-based accountability systems in Ontario, Canada. Drawing on policy enactment theory to capture how standardized testing policies are taken up by teachers, we seek to conceptualize teachers as front-line policy enactors who play a significant role in the policy process. We capture the complex and differentiated responses to testing policies that teachers in our study took by drawing on the typology of policy actors developed by Ball, Maguire and Braun (2012) that positions teachers as narrators, enthusiasts, critics, and receivers of policy. This typology is used as a heuristic device to structure the detailed description of policy actors’ work that emerged from our data. This paper provides significant insight into the implications of large-scale standardized testing policies for educators and equity-deserving students from the perspectives of urban educators.
This article conceptualises Pepe Meamea (Samoan concept of infant/toddler) to ground Samoan cultural understandings, values and beliefs of the Samoan child as a collective, holistic and relational being. The Samoan worldview of children and childhood prioritises the whole child, and this has implications when positioned within a dominant Eurocentric early childhood curriculum (ECE) curriculum and pedagogy framework. The semiotics of the Samoan language references a collective position for personhood rather than an individual one which warrants further examination into Samoan conceptualisations of Pepe Meamea pushing back at normative assumptions. As an innovative practice and philosophy for teaching, Pepe Meamea already has deep Samoan cultural knowledges associated with its term. Pepe Meamea is understood and commonly referred to as infants or newborns. This presents initial talanoa (dialogue) with teachers from six Aoga Amata (Samoan early childhood centres) in a two-year research Teaching and Learning Research Initiative (TLRI) project (2021‐2022). Using Samoan language as the conduit for creation and cultural reference ensures Samoan children’s cultural rights are adhered to through an Indigenous Samoan paradigm. As an innovative practice and concept, Pepe Meamea already has deep cultural Indigenous knowledge associated with its term; however, this article presents the possibilities of Pepe Meamea through the development of a pedagogical and relational framework that promotes its implementation in the Aotearoa New Zealand ECE environment. How the New Zealand Te Whāriki early childhood education (ECE) curriculum is responsive to Pepe Meamea is another dimension this paper will consider as the majority of the New Zealand Samoan population are born and raised in a New Zealand context. This research paper reports on the first phase of the project, the process of co-designing a Pepe Meamea pedagogical framework with Samoan teachers.
A quarter of all preschool children in Sweden have migrant backgrounds. This article explores preschool principals’ views on how societal and cultural changes have affected the demands on staff in multicultural preschools. In the study, twelve principals were interviewed in focus groups where they identified tensions and contradictions for teachers and parents. These are explored through “Dilemmatic spaces”, a conceptual framework that makes it possible to analyse teachers’ everyday practice in relation to societal changes. This article presents the dilemmatic axes that were identified, including preschool teachers’ efforts to show respect for other cultures, versus upholding Swedish culture; and to consider immigrant parents’ expectations versus communicating Swedish values, policies and routines.
Exposing teachers to the basic concepts of neuro-pedagogy could lead to a deeper understanding of the teaching-learning processes. This study examines 24 preservice teachers’ perceptions and attitudes towards neuro-pedagogy. The study was qualitative in design. The participants were interviewed prior to and following a neuro-pedagogy course with respect to their perceptions and attitudes towards using neuroscientific insights in the classroom. Findings illustrate that the neuro-pedagogy course fostered long-lasting learning, by allowing students to connect neuroscientific theory to educational practice.
This article concentrates upon nexuses among peace, diplomacy, and evolving technology via intellectual migration with foci on doctoral research universities. The following salient queries are posited and responses therein: 1) What historical and contemporary pragmatic conditions link the importance of the topics? 2) What are the constructs and illustrations of science diplomacy (as integral to diplomacy) and intellectual migration? 3) What are roles of science diplomacy as observed through formal and informal government and philanthropic initiatives? 4) How are domestic and international universities preparing graduate students and professionals in novel technological manners, to engage in science diplomacy? 5) Via multiple processes and recommendations, how might science diplomacy and evolving technologies be altered and integrated to enhance intellectual migration with an ultimate goal of promoting peace and diplomatic cooperation?
In this article I discuss how teachers’ professional identity has influenced their perceptions and actions in the context of the implementation of the educational policy of Differentiated Instruction (DI) in Cyprus. Utilizing a Bourdieusian framework as the basis for my deliberation I discuss the testimonies of 13 teachers, collected via interviews. It is argued that teachers, perceived themselves as ministers-agents in the service of the society, pursuing the noble mission of educating children. This perception empowered them to persevere and keep on trying, despite the difficulties they encountered.
Course materials in teacher education programmes are one of the means to support young teachers learn content knowledge and pedagogical theories. The materials are chosen to support their learning in a range of areas, and this article presents the findings of a study that explored how Swedish preschool student teachers perceived their course materials in relation to internationalisation and intercultural practice. Questionnaires were administered to students in a preschool teacher education at a Swedish university through the Survey and Report tool, and 94 students responded. Findings indicate that the responding student teachers valued content and materials for three key reasons: (i) materials that were localised, (ii) practice-oriented, and (iii) prepared them for working specifically in Swedish preschools. Identity as a Swedish preschool teacher (Swedish context and preschool teaching focus) appeared to be of greater influence in determining the responding students’ value of content than the higher education goals of globalisation and internationalisation.
