Korean students achieve high academic performance within a high-stakes education system, while concerns about student well-being remain. Although gratitude has been proposed as a potential psychological resource, applying etic frameworks to this population may overlook culturally situated meanings. To address this limitation, the present study adopted an emic perspective to examine how Korean adolescents experience gratitude. Using interpretative phenomenological analysis, the authors analysed five weeks of diary entries from 21 middle school students aged 13 to 15 years. The analysis yielded the STARR framework, which comprises five interrelated dimensions: Sense (noticing received benefits); Transition (reframing routine care as gift-like); Affect (experiencing gratitude alongside other emotions); Recognise (inferring benefactors' intentions and burdens); and Respond (expressing thanks, reciprocating, or adjusting behaviour). This culturally grounded framework provides considerations for culturally sensitive gratitude education.
Under neoliberal educational systems, graduates of teacher education programmes may face precarious work conditions and struggle to develop secure, stable and strong teacher identities. Despite the significance of this issue, research on how language teachers experience the precarisation of the profession remains limited. Therefore, in this exploratory qualitative inquiry, the authors drew on a multi-layered conceptualisation of (language) teacher identity (re)construction to examine how temporary language teachers negotiated their teacher identities. Specifically, the authors focused on a group of temporary English language teachers in T & uuml;rkiye, analysing how they perceived their professional identities. The analysis revealed that their 'temporary' status negatively influenced both their teaching practices and their attitudes towards their professional identities. Nevertheless, they often adopted an entrepreneurial mindset, viewing their teaching experiences as an investment towards securing permanent employment. Building on these points, the authors discussed the implications of temporary employment for the (language) teaching profession and offered recommendations for key stakeholders.
This study explored the lived experiences of children aged 8-12 and their caregivers navigating school can't (SC), an emotionally based school non-attendance driven by a stress/distress relationship, rather than defiance. Using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), six neurodivergent children and young people shared how school environments influenced feelings of safety, belonging and overwhelm. Findings revealed that the distress that resulted from school-based stressors was often embodied through physical symptoms and exacerbated by inconsistent school supports and unmet sensory needs. Withdrawal emerged as a protective response to unsafe or invalidating contexts. The study underscores the need for trauma-informed, neuroaffirming and family-centred practices that prioritise emotional safety as fundamental to inclusion and learning.
