Evaluating impact of educational research on teachers’ practice: a teacher expectations intervention

This study investigates the relationship between Altmetric Attention Scores (AAS) and traditional citation metrics for articles published in the Journal of Craniofacial Surgery between 1990 and 2025. Bibliometric analyses are commonly used to assess the impact and productivity of scientific studies. However, the growing role of social media platforms in academic dissemination has led to the emergence of alternative metrics like AAS, which measure online engagement and attention. A search conducted on the Dimensions website identified 17,232 articles published during the study period. Of these, 228 articles had an AAS of 5 or higher. The highest AAS values were predominantly associated with articles published in the last decade. Metrics such as the Field Citation Ratio (FCR) and Relative Citation Ratio (RCR) were analyzed alongside AAS values. The top 10 articles with the highest AAS showed that there was no statistical correlation between AAS and traditional citation metrics, including citation count, FCR, and RCR. The findings indicate that although altmetric analyses provide valuable insights into the online visibility of articles, they should be used in conjunction with traditional bibliometric methods for a comprehensive evaluation of scholarly impact. The study also underscores the need for further research to understand the interplay between social media engagement and academic citations. This research contributes to the ongoing discourse on the utility of altmetrics in complementing traditional metrics and provides insights for evaluating the multifaceted impact of scientific publications.

To analyze the relationship between traditional bibliometric measures and Altmetric Scores for articles on thyroid eye disease, examining their scientific and social media impact from 2010 to 2024. We analyzed the 100 most-cited articles on thyroid eye disease from the Web of Science Core Collection, comparing traditional citation metrics with Altmetric Attention Scores. Statistical analyses included Spearman correlation, temporal trend analysis, and comparison of impact patterns across journals and publication years. Among the top 100 cited articles, we found a moderate positive correlation between citations and Altmetric Scores (r = 0.350, p = 0.002). Only 8% of articles achieved high impact in both metrics (>Q3). The median citation count was 40 (interquartile range: 32-59; range: 26-531), while the median Altmetric Score was 3 (interquartile range: 1-10; range: 1-546). Recent articles (2020-2024) showed significantly higher Altmetric Scores compared with earlier periods (median: 11 vs. 1, p < 0.0001). Open access articles demonstrated higher impact in both metrics compared with subscription-based articles. Traditional citation metrics and social media impact measures capture different aspects of research influence in thyroid eye disease literature. The emergence of high-impact therapeutic studies, particularly regarding teprotumumab, demonstrates how breakthrough research can achieve substantial impact across both traditional and alternative metrics. Given the increasing role of social media in research dissemination and patient education, clinicians should consider both traditional and alternative metrics when evaluating research impact and should be prepared to discuss studies that achieve high social media engagement with patients.

X (formerly known as Twitter) is a social media platform gaining popularity in neurosurgery. Other disciplines have demonstrated a positive correlation between Twitter activity and traditional citation metrics. This study aims to determine if X activity is a greater predictor of citation rates than a journal's 5-year impact factor (IF) among major neurosurgical journals. Using a mixed linear model, we compared the predictive value between alternative metrics (such as mentions on X and Altmetric attention score, a weighted aggregate of the attention an article receives on various platforms) and traditional citation metrics (5-year journal IF) on the number of citations an article received by analyzing 7592 articles published from January 2022 to December 2023 in 18 neurosurgical journals. It was necessary to also account for the confounding variable time since publication in the model to determine the true effect of altmetrics. The relative importance (RI) of each predictor variable was determined through permutation testing. X mentions, time since publication, 5-year journal IF, and Altmetric attention score all significantly predict citation rates (P < .001). RI of X mentions on citation rates indicate that X (RI = 0.13) is approximately 8.7x times greater of a predictor of citations than 5-year IF (RI = 0.015) and 5.4x times greater of a predictor than the Altmetric attention score (RI = 0.024). Time of publication remains the strongest predictor (RI = 0.83). Our study shows that in neurosurgical research, while social media mentions (X mentions) are significant, they are weaker predictors of citation rates than time since publication. Traditional journal IF and Altmetric attention scores have weaker predictive value. These findings indicate that altmetrics, especially X mentions, can complement traditional citation metrics.

In the ever-evolving landscape of scholarly communication, research impact assessment has expanded beyond traditional citation metrics. Altmetrics, which encompass a wide range of online indicators like social media mentions, downloads, and blog posts, provide insights into the broader societal engagement with scholarly works. This study explores the relationship between Altmetric Attention Scores (AAS) and traditional citation metrics within the Library and Information Sciences (LIS) domain, focusing on high CiteScore open-access journals. The study collected bibliographic data of top 100 articles from Dimensions.ai database that were published between 2013 and 2022 and assesses the alignment between scholarly recognition and online engagement. The top 100 articles were selected based on highest AAS to focus on the most influential and widely-discussed research in order to provide a comprehensive overview of current trends and impactful findings in the field. The dissemination pattern of research highlights across various social web platforms is examined, shedding light on the diverse channels through which research reaches audiences. Correlation analysis reveals a weak and statistically insignificant connection between AAS and citations for the studied journals, emphasising the nuanced nature of scholarly impact in today’s digital landscape. The findings underscore the need to consider both traditional and alternative metrics when evaluating research influence and engagement in the evolving scholarly communication paradigm of the digital age. While this study is confined to specific journals within the LIS domain, its insights contribute to a deeper understanding of the multifaceted nature of research impact assessment.&#x0D;

This paper proposes using different concepts for guiding institutional practices in times of digitally changing professional teaching work environments. This paper draws upon our previous research and offers a first step of a framework, to understand and explore the new digital changes for professional teaching and learning practice, while engaging in online and virtual work and learning environments. Thereby focusing on the notion of a professional and the social implications of digital work technologies that are used for teaching and learning. The theoretical paper is structured around concepts we identified in our previous work and its potential of adopting them in the context of digital communities of professional practices. Addressing these objectives can hopefully help us to understand, what the effects of digital professional teaching work environments on teaching practice and for teacher’s professional responsibility are, their social effects in everyday teacher work and their practice related knowledge? What capabilities, features or skills are enabling teachers to do so and what guidelines can help them to cope with the current changes? And ultimately, how workplaces, schools and universities can benefit from these ideas? We focus on both human social factors and digital material factors as being inherent to professional teaching and learning practice. We hereby build upon concepts derived from socio-cultural and socio-material theories which are currently not commonly used in the same context, such as: communities of practice which is popular in socio-cultural learning theories whereby the understanding of human development relies on the social world; and extending the community of practice with materiality whereby human development also involves the material world. We contribute with this paper by suggesting that our framework, drawing on concepts of two different but related learning theories is useful for further research, such as on the institutional and individual response to digital change in teaching and learning practice. We believe that our theoretical informed conceptual approach enables to inform an increased professionality of teaching professionals in times of digital work change, activates thinking about different concepts, a change of mindset or at least provide the guidelines for an improved understanding among those involved in teaching practice.

The prestige of publication has been based on traditional citation metrics, most commonly journal impact factor. However, the Internet has radically changed the speed, flow, and sharing of medical information. Furthermore, the explosion of social media, along with development of popular professional and scientific websites and blogs, has led to the need for alternative metrics, known as altmetrics, to quantify the wider impact of research. We explore the evolution of current research impact metrics and examine the evolving role of altmetrics in measuring the wider impact of research. We suggest that altmetrics used in research evaluation should be part of an informed peer-review process such as traditional metrics. Moreover, results based on altmetrics must not lead to direct decision making about research, but instead, should be used to assist experts in making decisions. Finally, traditional and alternative metrics should complement, not replace, each other in the peer-review process.

The continuing expansion of English as a means of international communication has led to negative effects on other languages and cultures. Among the concerns is the critique of the English language teaching industry regarding its hegemonic relationship with local languages especially in English language teaching and learning contexts and practices. As a consequence, a move from previous paradigms of English language teaching to creatively devise new practices that would address locally emerging communicative needs is advocated fostering the values of local cultural, linguistic and teaching and learning norms. Based on this understanding and aspiration, this study involved Vietnamese EFL teachers and investigated the contextual factors contributing to the development of a localized teaching methodology that uses compatible elements of communicative language teaching, the ‘traditional’ approach or a local fusion of both methods. The debate on professional aspects of English language teachers under the binary, native speaker and non-native speaker in a broader, cultural and political context of English learning and teaching, has impacted on the way teachers see themselves and the way teachers conceptualize their teaching practice in English as a foreign language contexts. Research on identity issues considering the politics of English and the pervasiveness of the discourse of native speaker authority in TESOL programs is of great significance in understanding influential factors contributing to language teacher professional identity. This study also explores the impact of TESOL programs on teacher professional identity in local teaching contexts in Vietnam involving teachers’ sense of their pedagogical, linguistic competence and professional roles as language teachers. Drawing on various theories of language teaching and learning, critical pedagogy, teachers’ professional identity from native and non-native perspectives, and teacher cognition and beliefs, this study explores the process of negotiating appropriate teaching practice by a group of Vietnamese MA TESOL teachers after their education in Australia. To understand the teachers’ professional identity and their teaching practice, a qualitative case study approach with the intensive use of in-depth interviews, reflective writing and observation was adopted to generate data. The findings suggest that the TESOL teachers’ self-positioning in Australia as learners and as English teachers in Vietnam contributed to their re-conceptualization of professional identity. Many teacher participants’ growth was not totally shaped by Western ideology and theory in teaching and learning but through the critical construction of knowledge which is both culture-driven and locality-driven. Their previous education background and teaching experience became the platform for them to negotiate their professional identity back home in Vietnam. However, compared to senior teachers with longer years of teaching experience, junior teachers were more deeply influenced by dominant Western-based discourses, which appeared to orient and govern their perceptions, hence influencing their pedagogical approaches in their local teaching contact. Indeed, the teachers’ changed identities were found to contribute much to their choices of pedagogical practices. On the ideological level, while the junior teachers were likely to favour the ‘communicative’ approach, those with longer years of service seemed to feel under less pressure to abandon locally adopted teaching practice or feel ‘backward’ in enacting their role as non-native English teachers. Despite this, some participants still succumbed to the dominant discourses in language teaching and learning. Based on the findings, a number of implications for the ELT field have been suggested, in particular for TESOL education programs and TESOL professionals.

Altmetric analyses are a new way of assessing and sharing scientific knowledge. Traditional metrics and altmetric analyses highlight key publications. The primary objective of this study was to evaluate the social attention paid to highly cited articles related to glaucoma in the recent English literature and compare with traditional citation metrics. "Glaucoma" was entered as a search term into Thomson Reuter's Web of Science database, and all articles related to the topic in the last decade were identified. The 50 highly cited articles (T50 list) were analyzed by topic, journal name, author name, year of the publication and Altmetric Attention Score (AAS). Descriptive statistics and Spearman correlation test were determined with the use of SPSS. According to bibliometric criteria, there were 31,370 eligible articles and the median (range) citation number was recorded as 181.5 (158.75-250.75). The T50 list was ranked with AASs between 176 and 0. The median AAS was 5 (2.75-10). The main subjects of the top 10 highly cited articles were mostly related to follow-up and prognostics about glaucoma (n = 3), while the main subjects of the top 10 articles with the highest AAS were related to genetics in glaucoma pathogenesis (n = 2), treatment modalities (n = 2) and pathophysiology with therapeutics of glaucoma disease (n = 2). AASs and citation number showed a positive moderate correlation (r = 0.403 p = 0.004), although AASs did not correlate with journal impact factor (r = 0.36 p = 0.01). No statistically significant correlation was found for ASSs and citation numbers with H-index of the journals on the T50 list. Bibliometric-based altmetric analyses offer important but different perspectives regarding article impact. This study provides valuable information about trending topics related to glaucoma research and its impact in both the academic literature and social media CLINICAL TRIAL REGISTRATION: With regard to the data characteristics of the manuscript, which is mainly retrospective and international, the clinical trial registration process is theoretically not applicable to this study.

Celebrate the Past and Look to the Future

Measuring reach in oral and maxillofacial surgery: Proposal of a new bibliometric index incorporating reads.

to share the contributions of culture circles for teaching, research, and professional nursing practice, having as framework Paulo Freire's Research Itinerary. this is an experience report of a culture circle, with participation of three professors and ten students, enrolled in a course of a Graduate Program in Nursing in southern Brazil. In this culture circle, a tree was built in which the roots formed the thematic investigation, the stem, coding and decoding, and the leaves, the Research Itinerary critical unveiling. participants demonstrated empowerment of Paulo Freire's assumptions, and building a tree made it possible to discuss in a pleasant and playful way culture circle use in teaching, research, and professional nursing practice. the culture circle promoted reflection and action on nursing praxis, turning Freirean thoughts into something concrete and transforming realities.

This chapter focuses on the pedagogic activities of teachers, who are involved in professional or work-related provisions. It uses a dual professionalism concept at the initial stage to investigate how teachers acquire and apply their teaching know-how or capacities from curriculum development to teaching strategies. The study of the acquisition of knowledge relies on concepts by Clandinin (1985), Shulman (1987), Becher (1994) and Bernstein (1996). The understanding of the application of know-how refers to theories by Eraut (2004), Evans et al. (2010), Loo (2014) and Winch (2014). In particular, recontextualisation processes are used to understand the acquisition and application of the teachers’ capacities. In so doing, a list of contextual activities is ascertained from the various recontextualisation processes. These activities are derived from the teachers’ pedagogic activities across three academic levels and varied disciplines. Thus this chapter offers development of these analysed descriptive narratives and metaphors culminating in a typology of these teaching activities. The empirical data is from a project (Loo, 2018) which investigates the types of teaching and learning using forms of recontextualisation to understand how certain kinds of knowledge such as occupational, disciplinary and pedagogic are acquired and applied in teaching contexts. The participants teach on pre-university or technical and vocational education and training (TVET), first-degree or higher vocational and professional education. The disciplines of these teachers include gas fitting, equine studies, fashion and textiles and airline studies at the TVET level, dental hygiene and accountancy at the higher vocational level, and the training of doctors and Emergency Medicine clinicians at the professional level. There are 21 participants in total with seven from each of the three academic levels. The empirical data is drawn from a questionnaire survey and semi-structured interviews and supporting documents such as curriculum specifications. The findings from the analysed empirical data offer insights into how the teachers acquire and apply their pedagogic and professional know-how. Occupational knowledge refers to the teachers’ professional practices in their disciplines such as airline studies and accountancy, which are used in their teaching practices. The findings also provide additional insights into how the teachers’ capacities/know-how are selected and relocated – recontextualised – for use in the different teaching contexts and technical provisions that they deliver. In so doing, these activities offer a typology of the different recontextualisation processes about the teaching activities at the three academic levels. This typology, drawing from the different classifications of the literature review and analysed empirical data, contributes to a greater understanding of how teachers with professional practices rely on and apply their pedagogic and professional experiences to facilitate their teaching of work-related programmes. It offers different forms of disciplinary knowledge that the teachers refer to and how they make it relevant to their particular discipline. Additionally, the typology points to the symbiotic relationship between teaching and professional practices, the reliance on real-life experiences as well as the appropriate teaching strategies that are employed in education. The findings have implications for occupational teachers, managers of work-related provisions, teacher educators and policymakers.

This thesis uses a set of theoretically informed approaches to understand aspects of the professional careers, development and practices of teachers, addressing three questions in particular. Firstly, how can models, and other theorisations, help illuminate the influence of professional development and practice on a range of outcomes? Secondly, how can focussing on the situated nature of professional practice and initiatives improve understanding of professional learning and practices? Thirdly what new empirical research evidence can the approaches described in the first two research questions produce in relation to professional learning and wider professional practice?&#13;\nIt does so via a set of eight papers published over eleven years, drawing on seven mainly mixed methods studies conducted over a six year period.&#13;\nIn relation to the first research question, the papers use realist understandings of the social world to build a set of path and level models of professional development alongside critiques of these and other models. Additionally, they provide theoretical constructs to support understanding of professional practice, in particular boundary theory and career constructs.&#13;\nIn relation to the second, the papers develop a set of features of context which are missing from earlier accounts, indicating that the context for programmes and change processes can be: dynamic, rather than static; agentic, acting causally not just as a backdrop; relational, operating at different points and in concert with or against other contextual factors; historically located; complex and systemic.&#13;\nFinally, relating to the third question, the papers cover a wide range of studies; however, all focus on the relationship between outcomes and change processes in situ, and in particular the various relationships between the programme or change process; individual teachers or leaders; the organisations within which they work; and wider political and other contexts. The findings link to and illuminate aspects of these relationships.

Peer reviewing and citation metrics are traditionally used in assessing scientific research, with the emphasis on measuring the scientific quality and impact. Consensus among stakeholders of scientific research was building toward the need for assessing the societal benefits of scientific research, in addition to scientific quality. With the recognition of these needs by different governments and research funding agencies, formulating policies and guidelines to incorporate societal impact assessment in grant funding requirements and national science policies began. The most critical and challenging aspect of measuring the societal benefits is identifying assessment tools that efficiently and effectively measure these impacts. With the computer and communication technological advances and fast evolving social networking environment, use of the alternative metrics or altmetrics in assessing the societal impact of research gained attention. In this chapter, these developments are discussed by reviewing literature on the topic. The potential of altmetrics in assessing societal benefits of scientific research, and their strengths and limitation as assessment metrics, the empirical evidence of the correlation between altmetrics and traditional citation metrics, and efforts that are needed and in progress to improve the quality and standards of altmetrics are examined.

Ideas about work-based learning and learning through practical experience have been represented in pedagogical theory and practice for a long time. Their importance is actualised in conditions of wider practical application of competency-based education. Practical teaching and professional practice should constitute an integral part of higher education programmes aimed at developing professional competencies. Practical teaching usually occurs as a part of different subject programmes, whereas professional practice occurs as a separate component of study programmes. The extent to which practical teaching and professional practice will be represented in the overall programme as well as the organisational form in which they will occur depend on professional (vocational) profiles implemented in education. Practical teaching and professional practice are highly important in implementing vocational (professional) profiles in the field of education, such as the professional profile of a pedagogue. This paper provides basic explanations of concepts of work-based learning and learning through practical experience that can be viewed as having theoretical origins in noticing the importance of practical teaching and professional practice as integral parts of educational programmes. In addition, the issue has been examined relating to the roles of practical teaching and professional practice in achieving the basic objectives and outcomes of higher education aimed at developing professional competencies. A separate section of the text provides an overview of the position and share of professional practice in the pedagogy study programme implemented at the Department of Pedagogy and Andragogy of the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Belgrade. As part of this overview, a summary has been given of experience in delivery of compulsory professional practice in school for students of Year Four of bachelor academic studies of pedagogy in the 2019-2020 academic year under the emergency school work conditions caused by the pandemic.