The rapid integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into academic environments has accelerated significantly in the post-COVID-19 era. This study presents a systematic literature review (SLR)evaluating the reported pedagogical benefits and structural challenges of AI applications in education. Following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) framework guidelines, a comprehensive search was executed across major academic databases, targeting peer-reviewed empirical literature published between 2021 and 2026. Applying strict inclusion and exclusion criteria, a final analytical sample of twenty ( N = 20)international studies was synthesized. The thematic analysis demonstrates that while AI tools offer significant educational benefits—such as learning personalisation, enhanced language acquisition, and the automation of administrative workloads—they present critical pedagogical and ethical challenges. These risks focus heavily on cognitive disengagement, diminished student critical thinking, and algorithmic data privacy vulnerabilities. This review highlights that the successful deployment of AI relies on balancing technological integration with robust ethical frameworks while preserving the central instructional responsibility of human educators.
This study examined the effect of a collaborative learning strategy on the reading comprehension and reading fluency of Junior Secondary School III students in Kano State, Nigeria. Reading comprehension and fluency are critical components of academic success at the secondary-school level, yet many students continue to experience persistent difficulties in these areas. The study was guided by two objectives and adopted a quasi-experimental pre-test–post-test control-group design. The population comprised 626 students, from which a sample of 60 students was drawn. Two intact classes were selected and randomly assigned to the experimental group (n = 30) and control group (n = 30). Data were collected using the English Language Achievement Test, which yielded a test–retest reliability coefficient of .80. The experimental group was exposed to structured collaborative learning activities for eight weeks, while the control group received conventional teacher-centred instruction. Data were analysed using mean, standard deviation, and independent-samples (t)-test at the .05 level of significance, while Cohen’s (d) was used to determine effect size. The findings revealed no statistically significant difference between the groups at the pre-test stage. However, significant post-test differences were found in reading comprehension, (t(58) = 6.40), (p < .001), (d = 1.65), and reading fluency, (t(58)= 19.54), (p < .001), (d = 5.04), in favour of the collaborative learning group. The study concluded that the collaborative learning strategy was associated with substantial improvements in students’ reading comprehension and fluency. It was therefore recommended that English-language teachers integrate structured collaborative learning activities into classroom instruction to improve reading outcomes among secondary-school students.
Nowadays, teachers’ socio-emotional competencies are recognized as fundamental for effective teaching and for creating a stimulating and supportive learning environment. The present study examines the impact of three cross-disciplinary elective courses —Effective communication and teamwork, Critical thinking and reflexivity, and Failure management and professional well-being—on the development of pre-service teachers’ socio-emotional and pedagogical competencies. Adopting a convergent parallel mixed-methods design, the research integrates quantitative and qualitative approaches to capture both measurable trends and the experiential dimensions of the training process. The sample comprised 31 female students enrolled in initial teacher education programs at the West University of Timișoara, with each participant engaged in one of the three targeted disciplines. Data were collected through a structured questionnaire complemented byopen-ended items aimed to explore students’ subjective perceptions. Multiple linear regression analysis was employed as the primary analytical strategy to evaluate the collective predictive capacity of these disciplines. The exploratory regression model captured a substantial proportion of variance (R² = 0.85) in students’ perceptions of their professional growth, though this high value is interpreted cautiously given the context-specific sample size. Quantitative findings underscore the prominent role of reflective thinking in perceived professional development, while qualitative evidence highlights the importance of collaborative learning tasks, applied exercises, and a psychologically safe learning environment. Overall, the study supports the deliberate integration ofsocio-emotional training into initial teacher education curricula, offering insights into pathways that support the holistic development of future educators.
A substantial body of research has examined teachers’ self-efficacy; however, much of this literature remains largely concentrated in developed-country contexts, leaving developing regions comparatively underexplored. This systematic literature review addresses that gap by focusing onself-efficacy in teacher education across developing countries, where persistent challenges such as limited resources, overcrowded classrooms, and inadequate training opportunities significantly shape educational experiences. Drawing on Bandura’s self-efficacy theory, the study employs a systematic literature review to analyse 30 empirical studies of self-efficacy in teacher education across developing countries. Following PRISMA guidelines, relevant studies were systematically extracted from major academic databases such as the Web of Science (WOS), Scopus, and ProQuest databases, with inclusion criteria that limited the sample to English-language, peer-reviewed journal articles published between 2016 and 2025. The review identified several major patterns in research themes, methodological approaches, and the geographic distribution of the studies. Overall, the findings indicate that Turkey dominates self-efficacy research among the 13 developing countries, highlighting regional imbalances in scholarly attention and research capacity. Across these studies, self-efficacy of pre-service teachers is shaped primarily by experiential and environmental factors, including the quality of practicum experiences, mentorship support, and institutional environments, rather than demographic characteristics. However, the dominance of cross-sectional quantitative studies restricts understanding of how self-efficacy develops over time and how broader contextual factors influence its evolution. These results strongly underscore the need for more diverse methodological approaches, particularly experimental, qualitative, and longitudinal designs, to provide deeper insights into how teacher self-efficacy develops and operates across varied educational systems and sociocultural settings.
This study examines the linguistic barriers faced by second-year Algerian medical students in an English-as-a-medium-of-instruction (EMI) context, specifically those from a French-medium educational background. It also explores students' attitudes towards using artificial intelligence (AI)tools for learning medical English vocabulary and probes the relationship between these attitudes and their perceived linguistic challenges. A quantitative research design was employed, with data collected via a structured questionnaire divided into two sections: one assessing linguistic barriers in medical English and the other evaluating attitudes towards AI-based vocabulary learning tools. Descriptive statistics, reliability analysis, and Pearson correlation tests were used for data analysis. The findings reveal that students experience moderate difficulties in learning medical English, particularly in productive skills such as pronunciation and writing, which may be influenced by their French-medium educational background within an EMI context. Although students expressed generally positive attitudes towards AI-based tools, correlation analysis indicated no statistically significant relationship between AI attitudes and linguistic barriers. These results suggest that while positive perceptions of AI exist, they are insufficient to address the linguistic challenges faced by students. The study underscores the need for coherent EMI implementation and structured pedagogical integration of AI tools to effectively support students transitioning from a French-medium background.
This study investigates the perceptions and motivation of both teachers and students regarding the use of technology in English language instruction at two central Algerian universities, Ziane Achour University of Djelfa and Ammar Theliji University of Laghouat. Technology has become an increasingly influential force in higher education, yet its motivational role in under-resourced English language learning contexts remains insufficiently understood. In this study, technology refers to educational digital tools used in English language learning, including multimedia resources, mobile applications, online platforms, presentation tools, and communication technologies. Employing a qualitative research design, data were collected through semi-structured interviews with fifteen university teachers and focus group discussions with twenty-five students from the English Language departments in the selected universities. Analysed using Braun andClarke’s (2006) reflexive thematic analysis. The findings reveal that both teachers and students generally perceive technology as a powerful motivational and pedagogical resource that supports engagement, autonomy, and collaboration. At the same time, the results highlight persistent challenges, including limited resources, inadequate training, and unsupportive institutional environments. The study concludes that although there is strong support for integrating technology into English language education, its motivational effectiveness depends substantially on institutional support, digital literacy, and balanced pedagogical implementation rather than on access to technology alone.
This research examines the relationship between students' learning approaches (deep and surface)and their dispositions toward lifelong learning. The OECD (2024) identifies lifelong learning as a key competence for social, professional and economic participation in the contemporary context. In a rapidly changing educational environment, where adaptability and continuous skill development are increasingly important, it is essential to understand the factors that positively influence students'inclination toward lifelong learning. This study pursued two main objectives: (1) to validate theassessment instrument developed by Kirby et al. (2010) for measuring lifelong learning dispositionsin a Romanian context, and (2) to investigate the predictive value of learning approaches on the five dimensions that constitute lifelong learning dispositions (goal setting, application of knowledge and skills, self-direction and self-assessment, information seeking, and adaptation of learningstrategies). The research was conducted on a sample of 155 students from the Department of Educational Sciences at the West University of Timișoara. The findings indicated that the deep approach was a significant positive predictor of lifelong learning dispositions, whereas the surface approach was a significant negative predictor. These findings highlight the importance of educational practices that promote deep approaches to learning, thereby enhancing students'readiness to meet current and future societal demands. This study also contributes to the Romanian literature by providing preliminary evidence regarding the use of an instrument previously validated and used in international research.
This study examined the effect of the multisensory activities in teaching sports-related words(basketball) on a student with specific learning disabilities (dyslexia). The aim of the study was to investigate the effect of this technique, based on the interests of the students, on vocabulary teaching. A single subject design was used and the participant was a 10-year-old male student diagnosed with specific learning disabilities (dyslexia). Data were collected through observation, lesson records and criterion-referenced measurement tools during six-week lesson sessions. The results of the study showed that the goal to learn the target vocabulary was achieved and the student's motivation for learning increased through the lesson plans developed in accordance with the student's interests.
This paper explores the phenomenon of bullying among students in Romanian schools through a cross-sectional, descriptive design, aiming to understand the forms, frequency, causes, and consequences of bullying, and the ways students and teachers respond to such incidents. The research is grounded in the socio-ecological theory and the growing concern over the emotional and psychological impact bullying has on school-aged children. The methodological approach consisted of a questionnaire developed by the authors and applied to a sample of 103 participants, including students from various school levels. Results indicated that bullying is a prevalent issue in Romanian schools, with verbal and physical bullying being the most commonly reported forms. Teacher reactions were mixed, while some responded by addressing the conflict, others showed indifference or failed to act. In some cases, respondents believed that the type of bullying or the victim’s gender could influence the reaction of school staff, although statistical significance was not always clear. The findings confirmed that bullying can have serious emotional and psychological long-term consequences for the victims. Individual characteristics (gender, education level) and contextual factors (field of study, place of residence) were not confirmed in our study as significant influences on respondents'experiences with bullying; these results may be attributable to sample size or the specific Romanian context. Further analysis is recommended to gain a deeper understanding of the influencing factors and the mechanisms underlying the phenomenon of bullying.
The increasing diversity of students’ needs challenges schools to respond equitably. Inclusive education is understood not simply as placing students in the same classroom, but as reducing barriers to participation, learning, and belonging. Such a process cannot be achieved through isolated teacher effort alone, but depends on organisational conditions through which inclusion is supported by school vision, leadership, professional collaboration, and collective learning. The school as a learning organization (SLO) provides a relevant framework for examining organizational conditions that may support inclusive education. The study is theoretically grounded in the relationship between the SLO framework and the SEED model, which positions school-levelorganizational support as a key condition that may contribute to the development of inclusive education. This study examines how specific SLO practices are perceived by teachers and school leaders. It addresses two research questions: (1) Which SLO practices are perceived by teachers and principals as more developed, and which as less developed? and (2) To what extent are there statistically significant differences between teachers’ and principals’ perceptions of these practices? The study is based on a secondary analysis of a Romanian dataset of 613 respondents, including 70 principals and 543 teachers, using the standardized SLO Questionnaire adapted for the Romanian context. Given the ordinal nature of the data and their deviation from normality, nonparametric analyses were used. Friedman tests with Durbin–Conover post hoc comparisons examined differences among practices within each dimension. Mann–Whitney U tests compared principals’ and teachers’ perceptions at item level. The findings reveal a consistent pattern: teachers and principals perceive practices as priorities, commitments or general orientations as more developed than practices related to organizational learning mechanisms. Differences between principals and teachers are selective rather than generalized, and are most pronounced in the area of leadership. The findings are discussed in relation to their implications for school organizational conditions that may support inclusive education.
This article presents an exploratory case study of pedagogical co-design in a Master's programme in French as a Foreign Language (FFL) at the University of Pau and Pays de l'Adour, France. The device articulates two course units - Project Approach and Instructional Design and Integration of Digital Tools-around a shared authentic Learning and Assessment Situation (LAS): the design of a hybrid course on the Moodle platform. Grounded in the competency-based approach and mobilising project-based pedagogy, blended learning, and Universal Design for Learning, it aims to develop in students an integrated vision of pedagogical design that articulates theory and practice, pedagogical engineering, and digital-tool use. We define pedagogical co-design as the collaborative process through which two teachers jointly design an integrated device across their respective courses while engaging students as co-designers of the final artefact, and we situate it within the literature on co-creation and collaborative curriculum-making in higher education. The device was implemented and refined over two successive iterations (2024–2025, collaborative; 2025–2026, individual). Data were collected through three questionnaires-two standardised institutional course evaluations and one researcher-designed questionnaire - combining four-point Likert items, categorical items and open-ended responses, analysed through descriptive statistics and thematic analysis. Findings indicate high student satisfaction, positive engagement fostered by continuous assessment, and a recurrent tension between conceptual input and hands-on practice. Most importantly, students voice an explicit demand for greater curricular coherence, echoed by the coexistence of two non-harmonised assessment grids. The study contributes a two-level account of pedagogical co-design and identifies the collaborative construction of a shared assessment grid as the decisive threshold for integrating learning across articulated courses.
Internationalization in higher education is a debated topic in society, politics and higher education itself. Often, the debate centres on one aspect or form of internationalization, such as student mobility. However, definitions of internationalization relate to many different elements of higher education, including curriculum content and structure, pedagogical approach, and organizational and societal context and values. In this article, the author uses a cooking metaphor to explore some of these aspects and how they relate to each other and to dominant definitions and debates on internationalization. The steps of the recipe take you through internationalizati on research and experiences of educational design and management of international programmes. The key purpose of this conceptual article is to invite readers to critically reflect on their own or their institution’sinternationalization efforts. A central question that this article asks is: What are critical considerations when selecting, combining and preparing ingredients in order to serve ‘healthy and tasty’ dishes of internationalized or globalized education that meet students’ needs? Rather than presenting a prescriptive approach, the cooking metaphor is used to explore the complexity of internationalization and the limitations of dominant definitions. Taking equity, justice and epistemic plurality in higher education seriously, internationalization and globalization efforts need to involve asking critical and uncomfortable questions, including about how and why these concepts are defined, and creating a diversity of dishes in the process.
Background: Engineering education often separates technical design from production planning, although professional product development requires these forms of reasoning to evolve together.Aim: This article analyses a consultancy-based interdisciplinary project-based learning modelimplemented between the “Introduction to Electromechanical Project” (IEP) and the “Introductionto Industrial Project” (IIP) courses.Method: The study follows an implementation-oriented qualitative descriptive case-study design, supported by documentary analysis of project briefs, milestone criteria, student presentations, meeting minutes, consultant reports, photographs, and an anonymous satisfaction questionnaire.Findings: The documentary evidence shows how two IEP groups developed rover-based project concepts while six IIP consultant groups translated those concepts into production -planning, manufacturability, quality-control, logistics, and cost scenarios. Questionnaire results from 25 of 32students indicated favourable perceptions, especially for skills development, teamwork, communication, and problem-solving, while also identifying coordination between courses as the main operational challenge. Contribution: The article provides a transferable implementation framework for integrating technical design and production planning through structured inter-course consultancy.
Curriculum-embedded mobility places an international learning experience within the formal structure of a study programme and may make participation compulsory for programme completion. This study examined students’ perceptions of a model involving mandatory physical mobility, which could be short-term or extend to one or two semesters, with particular attention to perceived benefits, barriers, programme attractiveness, and institutional support. A convergent mixed-methods online survey was completed by 134 higher education students originating from 20 countries and studying in 17 countries. Most respondents were aged 18-28 (89.5%), 64.9% were women, 52.2% were bachelor’s students, and 42.5% had previous physical mobility experience. Quantitative analyses combined descriptive statistics, non-parametric group comparisons, reliability and exploratory dimensionality checks, and Spearman correlations. Open -endedresponses were analysed thematically and integrated with the quantitative results. Students with previous mobility experience reported strong academic, intercultural, linguistic, and transversal -skill benefits. Across the full sample, 92.5% indicated that embedded mobility would increase programme attractiveness, although responses also displayed limited variability and possible ceiling effects. Costs and living expenses were the most widely endorsed barrier, followed by complex procedures, curricular compatibility, and insufficient guidance. Students with and without previous mobility did not differ in their general attitudes towards embedded mobility, but previously mobile students perceived fewer barriers and expressed greater interest in a concrete master’s program requiring a semester abroad. Among mobile students, perceived institutional support, mobility valuation, perceived impact, and embedded-mobility attitudes were positively associated. Qualitative responses clarified that favourable evaluations were conditional on predictable recognition, adequate funding, curricular fit, and flexibility for students unable to travel. Embedded mobility therefore appears attractive to many students, but its legitimacy as a curricular requirement depends on whether institutions make participation academically coherent, financially feasible, and administratively dependable.
The increasing urgency of addressing environmental challenges and the vital role of higher education in cultivating active green citizenship represent two key arguments supporting the necessity of innovative curriculum approaches with broad student accessibility. Across the globe, leading international organisations have emphasised the critical importance of environmental education as a fundamental driver for achieving sustainable development, going beyond specialised courses to become a transversal component of university curricula. However, many higher education institutions still lack accessible and interdisciplinary course offerings that address green citizenship in a competence-based and practice-oriented approach, especially for students from varied educational backgrounds. Our paper presents a case study of the design, implementation, and evaluation of a transversal university course that responds directly to this gap, aimed at cultivating green citizenship among students across all faculties from the West University of Timișoara, Romania. The course is aligned with international commitments such as the UN’s 2030 Agenda, aiming to develop environmentally conscious graduates prepared to engage critically in ecological and civic challenges. Drawing on an interdisciplinary pedagogical framework that combinescommunication science—particularly media literacy and media content production—withenvironmental science, the course integrates theoretical knowledge with practical applications. Social media platforms are employed as a key pedagogical tool, enabling experiential learning through content creation, public engagement, and critical reflection on digital environmental communication. The course aims to empower students to better understand the urgent challenges currently facing the environment, as well as to equip them with the necessary skills to become proactive in addressing them.
This paper re-examines the historiography of teacher mentoring in Romania and the Republic of Moldova through the lens of Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network Theory (ANT). In ANT, an actor-network refers to a material–semiotic assemblage in which agency emerges through associations among human and non-human elements. Rather than treating mentoring as a fixed institutional practice, the analysis conceptualises it as a contingent effect of these shifting assemblages of interactions among heterogeneous elements, including legislation, examination systems, mentor registries, school inspectorates, international organisations, professional discourses, material conditions and classrooms. These assemblages enrol and translate one another, producing temporary alignments that give mentoring its shifting historical forms. The study reveals that these configurations generate complex temporalities, where past arrangements persist and continue to influence current practices. In Romania, teacher mentoring has been predominantly framed as supervision, closely tied to examination practices and a centralised approach to teacher recruitment and validation of professional status. In the Republic of Moldova, it has often been conceptualised as professional support, aligning with Europeanisation discourses yet still marked by Soviet-era legacies. Notably, international agencies and geopolitical pressures emerge as powerful non-human actors, sometimes reinforcing and at other times destabilizing national practices. The paper argues that sustainable reform requires reconfiguring these actor-networks with attention to material conditions, temporal continuities, and geopolitical contexts. It proposes a research agenda informed by ANT that foregrounds translation, instability, and historical recurrence.
This article examines how higher education governance in post-socialist Central and Eastern Europefunctions as an epistemic regime, shaping which forms of knowledge are legitimized and which aremarginalized. Focusing on Poland and Romania, it traces continuities from socialist-era ideologicalcontrol to post-1989 reforms framed around modernization, internationalization, andcompetitiveness. While such reforms dismantled overt political censorship, they introduced new exclusions through managerialism, bibliometric evaluation, and the dominance of English in scholarly publishing. Historical case studies, including the suppression of intellectual traditions under socialism and the marginalization of national-language scholarship in the contemporary period, illustrate how governance mechanisms act as ‘epistemic filters.’ Drawing on decolonial and critical epistemology frameworks, the analysis foregrounds the persistence of disregarded epistemologies, locally rooted, interdisciplinary, and community-oriented forms of knowledge excluded from institutional recognition. The paper argues that addressing epistemic injustice in CEEuniversities requires rethinking evaluative infrastructures, fostering multilingual and regionally relevant scholarship, and recovering marginalized intellectual traditions. By linking governancestructures to the politics of knowledge, the study contributes to debates on epistemic justice in comparative education and calls for governance models that embrace plurality, linguistic diversity, and the democratization of academic legitimacy.
This paper examines how austerity measures adopted in the Romanian educational system, in 2025, are discursively constructed through crisis talk - narratives that frame cuts and policy modifications as both inevitable and morally responsible. This research uses the critical discourse analysis method to analyse a corpus consisting of political speeches, public reactions of relevant stakeholders and legislative texts to identify hidden narratives and rhetorical strategies employed by the decision -makers throughout the summer of 2025, that are serving as a means of normalizing budgetary restrictions applied for the educational sector. The analysis highlights how governmental actors try to legitimize austerity as both inevitable and morally responsible, presenting sacrifice as a duty that must be shared collectively by all members of the society. Meanwhile, counter-discourses voiced by trade unions, NGOs, and representatives of students emphasize the consequences of the measures,social harm, erosion of trust, and the loss of dignity for teachers and students. Findings of this study show that austerity in Romanian education is legitimized less through fiscal reasoning and more through a moralized scarcity discourse that presents solidarity, inevitability, and collective duty as common-sense truths. The paper represents a contribution to research onneoliberal education policies by demonstrating that austerity operates as a discursive mode of governance—one that defines what is feasible, narrows policy alternatives, and justifies resource redistribution in the name of efficiency, while also addressing a gap in the research that does not provide insights into the in-depth effects of austerity in education, besides the economic results.
This study explores the structural and institutional determinants of early human capital formation in Romania, from a territorial perspective. The paper focuses on educational performance measured at the lowest administrative and territorial unit in Romania. Data from the National Evaluation(final exam of lower secondary education) from 2022–2024 is used to analyse how local socioeconomic context, school organisation, and spatial configuration interact to shape student performance. We combine gender-disaggregated educational data with indicators of human development as well as income, education stock and further demographic characteristics. In this sense, the present analysis provides one of the first nationwide studies to investigate how local communities are converging or diverging in terms of educational outcomes. The results highlight that educational performance is highly path-dependent, as localities with historically higher education stock and human development in the past have an advantage in comparison with rural and less developed communities. As the latter tend to fall behind, the findings confirm that territorial inequalities are indeed reinforced through institutional differentiation –schools with legal personality (administrative autonomy) achieve better results than satellite structures, even when the socioeconomic context is similar. The moderation effect of institutional autonomy on the relationship between local development and exam performance outlines that human development alone is not sufficient to deliver convergence in the absence of strong capacity and flexible governance. Results outline that educational inequality in post-socialist Romania is more than a simple function of economic disparity, as it also works for institutional and spatial configurations. The study contributes to further European and international debate on regional convergence, decentralisation and human capital development, as it emphasises that equity in education cannot be achieved in the absence of policy and measures that address governance and autonomy of schools.
This special issue takes stock of current developments in the critical study of sociologies andhistories of education in the Central and Eastern European region. It demarginalizes theintersection of marginalized disciplines within the field of educational sciences that is dominated by psychological and pedagogical approaches within a marginalized region within a global and planetary context. In this vein, the special issue brings together contributions that engage with conceptualizing the social in education, epistemological inequalities, ruptures and continuities within the field of education and social eproduction,governance and social justice in education.
