What difficulties arise when implementing large-scale pedagogical reforms?

Higher education in general, and in engineering higher education in particular, is constantly under pressure to introduce reforms that improve the employability of graduates. Among the most common claims is the development of a more active and competency-based teaching oriented to the development of professional and personal skills. The university institution responds to these claims, sometimes in a timid way, but others by embarking on great transformation projects. A good example of this is the project to build the European Higher Education Area.However, the challenge of developing a more active and competency-based teaching faces numerous difficulties and barriers because many of the necessary changes are in sharp contrast with a status quo that has been consolidated over centuries. Difficulties and barriers include a lack of deep understanding (and even lack of acceptance) of some of the implications of the challenges we are facing, the learning of new techniques and tools that are not easy to use or unsuitable organizational structures.In this paper, we explore the nature of some of the challenges and review the difficulties and barriers most mentioned most often by those who dare to try. Anyone who wants to address the challenges or has a responsibility to facilitate changes should be aware of all these difficulties and barriers.

Higher Education Institutions (HEI) are facing a number of problems during the last decades: the need to update the curricula to make it compatible with the similar ones from other national and European universities; demand to update the content and the pedagogical approach due to knowledge, technological and research development. Open Educational Resources (OER) might be a sound strategy for institutions to meet these challenges. At the same time OER are themselves one of the challenges that the teachers are faced with. OER could be implemented in courses in different ways, depending on the types of OER and the educational philosophy adopted by the teachers. The paper describes some challenges for implementing Open Educational Resources by teachers in Higher Education in Moldova: the level of awareness on availability and usage of OER; fair use matters; quality assurance of resources; pedagogical approaches for implementing OER into teaching and learning. The paper also grasps the issues of the digital divide that emerge when investigating these challenges. The judgment is based on the literature analysis and on the author’s teaching experience within courses for initial and continuous professional teachers’ training.

In recent years, the implementation of outcome based education (OBE) has been much emphasized in developed and developing nations which led to becoming the focal point for educational reforms. In outcome based education, students are responsible for their own learning and the assessment of learning are based on the outcomes instead of the contents being taught. However, much criticism against the OBE has also been presented in various papers regarding the actual implementation of OBE. In this paper, we discussed the issues and challenges of implementing an outcome based education in engineering education particularly in Faculty of Engineering, UNIMAS, Malaysia.

This study explores the challenges involved in scaling up projects and in implementing policies across the whole school system in the area of teaching higher order thinking (HOT) in Israeli science classrooms. Eight semi-structured individual interviews were conducted with science education experts who hold leading positions pertaining to learning and instruction on the state level of the following school subjects: elementary and junior- high school science and technology; high-school physics; high school chemistry; and high school biology. Some of the challenges that the interviews revealed are common to many types of educational change processes. The interviews also revealed several challenges which are more specific to the educational endeavor of teaching HOT according to the infusion approach across large numbers of classrooms: challenges involved in weaving HOT into multiple, varied, specific science contents; challenges involved in planning a reasonable and coherent developmental sequence of thinking goals; the fact that content goals tend to have priority over thinking goals and thus to disperse of the latter in policy documents and in implementation processes; and finally, the considerable challenges (pedagogical and organizational) involved in developing educators’ sound and deep professional knowledge in the area of teaching HOT and metacognition on a large, nation-wide scale. The data shows that wide-scale implementation of thinking in Israeli science classrooms often develops as an evolutionary rather than as a revolutionary process. The implications for designing large scale implementation programs aimed at fostering students’ reasoning are discussed.

This paper delves into the implementation of environmental pollution and damage prevention instruments in Indonesia, highlighting the inherent issues and challenges. It scrutinizes the efficacy of existing measures in curbing environmental degradation and explores the obstacles hindering their successful execution. The findings underscore a myriad of challenges confronting the implementation process, ranging from regulatory gaps and enforcement deficiencies to institutional capacity constraints. Despite the presence of legislation aimed at safeguarding the environment, enforcement mechanisms often fall short due to inadequate resources, corruption, and lack of coordination among relevant stakeholders. Additionally, the complexity of environmental issues, coupled with rapid industrialization and urbanization, exacerbates the challenges faced in mitigating pollution and preserving natural resources. Addressing these challenges necessitates a multi-faceted approach that encompasses legislative reforms, capacity building initiatives, and enhanced collaboration between government agencies, civil society, and the private sector. Strengthening regulatory frameworks, improving monitoring and enforcement mechanisms, and promoting public awareness are crucial steps towards achieving sustainable environmental management in Indonesia. Moreover, integrating environmental considerations into broader policy agendas and fostering international cooperation are vital for addressing cross-border environmental challenges and ensuring long-term environmental sustainability. In conclusion, while Indonesia has made strides in formulating environmental policies, effective implementation remains a pressing issue. By identifying and addressing the challenges impeding the execution of pollution prevention instruments, Indonesia can bolster its environmental governance framework and pave the way for a greener and more sustainable future.

This study focuses on Instructional Design (ID) as a critical methodology in structuring effective educational experiences, aligning educational technologies with pedagogical theories to optimize learning. It investigated the barriers to its implementation, including institutional resistance, the lack of specific training for instructional designers, and challenges in creating engaging educational materials. The goal was to explore ID practices, their advantages and disadvantages, and to clarify the role of the instructional design professional in education. The methodology consisted of a qualitative literature review, analyzing relevant literature to understand the implications of ID in education. The results indicate that, despite the challenges, ID has significant potential to promote more personalized and student-centered learning. However, its effectiveness depends on overcoming obstacles related to its adoption and on the proper training of instructional designers. It concludes that a collaborative approach among educators, designers, and institutions is essential for the successful implementation of ID, emphasizing the need for ongoing research to identify innovative strategies that address the challenges of modern education.

On the basis of 13 agile transformation cases over 15 years, we identify nine challenges associated with implementing Scaled Agile Framework, Scrum at Scale, Spotify, Large-Scale Scrum, Nexus, and other mixed or customized large-scale agile frameworks. These challenges should be considered by organizations aspiring to pursue a large-scale agile strategy. We also provide recommendations for practitioners and agile researchers.

The education system in Kosovo is in the phase of implementing the curricular reforms which aim at changing the teaching and learning approach. The new curriculum is a necessary innovation in pre-university education system and it has already started to be implemented in all schools in Kosovo, faces many difficulties, especially in achieving learning outcomes in some curricular areas. This research aims at analyzing the obstacles and challenges in achieving results in the Languages and Communication area and to recommend appropriate ways to facilitate its implementation. The representative group consists 75 teachers who work in five primary schools in Kosovo while the data is collected through a questionnaire for teachers. The research findings show that most teachers have sufficient knowledge and have positive attitude towards new curriculum. Challenges arising from this process are: insufficient knowledge of the new curriculum, inadequate cooperation among the teachers, lack of ICT and supporting materials in schools, difficulties in planning the learning results, and non-regular monitoring of teachers, textbook compliance with the principles and requirements of the new curriculum The development of competences and the improvement of results in this area can be achieved through changing educational policies as well as monitoring and accountability of teachers.

The increasing gap between the demand and supply of graduates with high-level qualifications, i.e. tertiary attainment levels, has been a central driver for curricular higher education reforms in Europe. In the last decade, the Bologna Process has established curricular reforms; however, progress toward the implementation of the pedagogical concept of student-centred learning in European higher education has been rather slow. This paper reviews the current educational policy context within which European higher education institutions operate. Societal developments and trends as well as curricular reform efforts to facilitate a paradigm and culture shift from teacher-centred learning to student-centred learning are discussed. The paper further outlines major obstacles from the perspectives of faculty and students that continue to hinder the successful and widespread implementation of a student-centred learning approach in higher education practice.

Educational change, particularly English language teaching (ELT) pedagogical reforms, has received much attention from language researchers in the era of globalization and internationalization. Despite the recognition of problems in implementation, ELT pedagogical reforms have been widely introduced and adopted in schools all over the world, particularly in Vietnam. What English teachers’ overall perceptions, understanding, and practices are, and what influential factors on response to ELT pedagogical reforms are, the major foci in this study. The data were collected from 102 teachers of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in different high-schools (grades 10, 11 and 12) in the Mekong Delta. The results from the questionnaire and interview revealed that the teachers highly perceived ELT pedagogical reforms. Moreover, the results also showed that the teachers well understood the values of ELT pedagogical reforms. However, the findings also showed that the teacher’s practices of ELT pedagogical reforms were above average and that their practices did not match with their understanding of the values of ELT pedagogical reforms. Besides that, from the findings, the EFL high-school teachers were relative strongly influenced, both the internal and external factors; the main influential factors are students’ learning outcomes after implementing ELT pedagogical reforms, teachers’ attitudes towards the adoption of these reforms, and teachers’ self-efficacy on their teaching. Moreover, the study contributed an interesting finding to the literature that teaching and learning culture is a factor that influenced teachers’ responses. Based on these findings, implications were made for enhancing teachers’ teaching practices in response to ELT pedagogical...