A Crisis of Clarity: When Everyone Is Ordering From a Different Menu.

Career development barriers encountered by Taiwanese pharmacy students: A qualitative study across levels of career adaptability.

To evaluate nursing students' attitudes towards end-of-life care and assess the impact of an elective educational course on shaping these attitudes. A cross-sectional observational study with a post-test-only design was conducted at the University of Padua in northern Italy. The study involved 475 third-year nursing students, with 228 participants (48%) completing an online survey. The validated Frommelt Attitude Toward Care of the Dying Scale, Form B, Italian Version (FATCOD Form B-I) was used, and data were analysed through descriptive statistics, t-tests and correlation analyses. Participants demonstrated overall positive attitudes towards end-of-life care, with a mean FATCOD Form B-I score of 118.65 (SD = 9.63). Female students scored significantly higher in communication (p < 0.001) and family care (p = 0.002) than males. However, no significant differences were found between students who completed the elective palliative care course and those who did not. Fear and discomfort with death negatively influenced relationship building with patients, while communication and active care were strongly correlated (r = 0.45, p < 0.001). Although nursing students exhibited generally positive attitudes, the elective course alone was insufficient to significantly enhance preparedness for end-of-life care. A comprehensive, integrated palliative care education programme is necessary to address emotional barriers and improve relational competencies, ensuring students are equipped for compassionate and competent end-of-life care. Although nursing students exhibited generally positive attitudes towards end-of-life care, theoretical instruction alone proved insufficient to significantly enhance their preparedness for palliative care practice. These findings have direct implications for nursing education and clinical care quality: integrating comprehensive, experiential palliative care education throughout nursing curricula, rather than relying on optional standalone courses, may better equip future nurses to deliver compassionate and competent end-of-life care. Despite international recommendations, many nursing students feel unprepared for end-of-life care. This study examined whether an elective palliative care course produces meaningful attitudinal change among final-year nursing students. Students showed generally positive attitudes, with the highest scores in Family care and Communication. No significant difference emerged between students who attended the elective course and those who did not. The findings impact nursing educators and curriculum designers, ultimately benefiting future nurses and the terminally ill patients and families they will care for. This study was reported in accordance with the Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (STROBE) guidelines for observational studies. No patient or public contribution.

Student attitudes towards teacher-student conferencing integrated with teacher-written feedback: Affective, cognitive, and conative dimensions.

Classroom code-switching among postgraduate EFL students in Saudi Arabia: Attitudes, reasons, and perceptions.

Investigating AI competence among Chinese secondary school teachers: Insights from the UNESCO framework.

The rapid integration of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) into undergraduate nursing education has prompted significant debate regarding its impact on the development of critical reasoning, inquiry skills, and clinical judgement. While some scholars argue that reliance on GenAI may undermine independent thinking, contextual decision‑making, and autonomous judgement, emerging perspectives suggest that GenAI has the potential to enhance rather than erode these foundational competencies. This commentary examines the evolving role of GenAI in nursing education and argues that its thoughtful integration can strengthen students' preparedness for increasingly complex, technology‑rich clinical environments. Clinical judgement is central to safe nursing practice and is shaped by the nurse's interpretation of patient needs, contextual factors, and professional reasoning. While GenAI can synthesize large amounts of information efficiently, it does not replace human judgement; instead, it provides data that students must interpret within ethical, relational, and contextual dimensions of care. Integrating GenAI into educational contexts allows students to engage with realistic, data‑driven scenarios that mirror contemporary practice environments, supporting deeper analytical thinking and the ability to critique algorithmic outputs and biases. At the same time, the use of GenAI raises epistemological tensions between nursing's humanistic ways of knowing and AI's computational logic. These tensions underscore concerns that tacit knowledge, ethical reasoning, and patient‑centered judgement may be marginalized if GenAI tools are used uncritically. Addressing this challenge requires adapting nursing theory and curriculum to incorporate digital epistemologies while maintaining the profession's ethical and relational foundations. This commentary concludes that rather than discouraging GenAI use, nursing education must embrace it deliberately and ethically. Through intentional curriculum design, faculty development, and emphasis on AI literacy, educators can ensure that nursing students emerge as competent, reflective practitioners capable of navigating GenAI‑enabled healthcare environments with confidence and integrity.

From Expert to Educator: Translating Expert Performance into Teachable Competencies Through Trainer Development in Endoscopic Simulation.

As generative AI (GenAI) tools such as ChatGPT and GitHub Copilot become pervasive in education, concerns are rising about students using them to complete rather than learn from coursework—risking overreliance, reduced critical thinking, and long-term skill deficits. This paper proposes a design-oriented conceptual model (named Guide-AI-Ed ) to support instructors in reasoning about how course and curriculum design choices may encourage responsible GenAI use in software engineering education. Using a design-based research approach, we applied the Guide-AI-Ed model in two contexts: (1) revising four extensive lab assignments of a final-year Software Testing course at Queen’s University Belfast (QUB), and (2) embedding GenAI-related competencies into the curriculum of a newly developed SE BSc program at Azerbaijan Technical University (AzTU). Interventions included GenAI usage declarations, output validation tasks, peer-review of AI artifacts, and career-relevant messaging. In the course-level case, instructor observations and student artifacts indicated increased critical engagement with GenAI, reduced passive reliance, and improved awareness of validation practices. In the curriculum-level case, the model guided integration of GenAI learning outcomes across multiple modules and levels, enabling longitudinal scaffolding of AI literacy. The Guide-AI-Ed model has served as both a design scaffold and a reflection tool. It has helped us align GenAI-related pedagogy with SE education goals. It can offer a transferable approach to align GenAI integration with SEEd goals and can support broader curriculum innovation in response to rapidly evolving GenAI capabilities.

This study explores teacher’s actions in the implementation of an integrated STEM curriculum embedded with robotics activities with upper-level elementary school students in an after-school setting. The robotics activities are designed to support multidisciplinary learning by engaging students in STEM tasks. Drawing on project-based learning (PBL), the robotics activities situate students’ learning in a hands-on, problem-solving context. This study focuses on the teacher interactions with students while students engaging in a hands-on inquiry and problem-solving process. A qualitative approach was employed; data from video recordings of teacher-student interactions, teacher interviews, and student artifacts revealed how the teacher’s actions facilitated students’ STEM learning and problem-solving in terms of cognitive demand. The findings indicate both the affordances and challenges of implementing and facilitating integrated STEM with robotics activities, particularly for teachers with limited technological backgrounds. Implications for teacher professional development and curriculum design in integrated STEM education are discussed.

Accounting is widely regarded as a complex subject, and traditional teaching methods often fail to fully engage students or enhance learning outcomes. This study investigates the effectiveness of gamification and vocational programmes as pedagogical approaches to improve student engagement and academic performance in accounting education. A quantitative research design was employed, with primary data collected from 254 undergraduate and postgraduate students enrolled in accounting and vocational accounting programmes across India. Measurement scales were adapted from validated studies, and Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) was applied using SmartPLS 4.0 to test the proposed hypotheses. The results indicate that gamification has a significant positive effect on student engagement (β = 0.683, p &lt; 0.001) but does not directly influence academic performance (β = 0.017, p = 0.448). Conversely, vocational programmes positively affect both engagement (β = 0.264, p = 0.014) and academic performance (β = 0.903, p &lt; 0.001). These findings suggest that while gamified interventions enhance motivation, participation, and collaboration, practical and skill-based vocational training is essential for improving measurable learning outcomes. This study contributes to the accounting education literature by demonstrating the complementary roles of gamification and vocational programmes, emphasizing the importance of integrating motivational and performance-oriented pedagogical strategies. For educators and curriculum designers, combining gamified learning with vocationally oriented activities offers a promising approach to increase engagement, reinforce conceptual understanding, and prepare students for real-world professional challenges. The study also provides implications for curriculum design, policy development, and future research on hybrid pedagogical models.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly becoming an integral part of everyday clinical practice, including cardiology and cardiovascular surgery. As AI increasingly influences diagnostic and therapeutic decisions, physicians are expected to interact with these systems in a critical, safe, and ethically grounded manner. This narrative review aims to explore how AI can be systematically integrated into undergraduate and residency medical education, with a particular focus on curriculum design, teaching strategies, assessment models, and educational infrastructure, while considering the context of the Turkish medical education system. A narrative synthesis of international medical education literature, policy documents, and institutional reports was conducted without quantitative meta-analysis. The review was guided by the principles of human-in-the-loop clinical reasoning, ethical AI use, and patient safety. Effective integration of AI into medical education requires a longitudinal and staged curriculum spanning preclinical, clinical, and residency training. Assessment strategies must explicitly address AI-assisted decision-making and be supported by transparent institutional policies governing AI use in examinations, as well as by secure, regulation-compliant digital infrastructure. Educational approaches should encourage learners to critically appraise and contextualize AI outputs rather than accept them uncritically. The reviewed literature supports a competency-based educational framework that integrates AI literacy, ethical reasoning, and context-aware clinical judgment. AI education should be viewed as a core clinical competency that strengthens rather than replaces human judgment. Particularly in high-risk cardiovascular disciplines, a standardized, ethics-centered, and competency-based educational framework is essential to prepare future physicians for AI-augmented healthcare environments.

The development of professional identity among Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) undergraduates is a critical yet complex process shaped by academic, social, and experiential factors. This study employs a qualitative phenomenological approach based on secondary data to explore the lived experiences of CSE students in constructing their professional identities. Drawing on established theoretical frameworks, including Social Identity Theory, Communities of Practice, and Professional Identity Formation, the research identifies key influences such as self-efficacy development, experiential learning opportunities, mentorship, curriculum design, and digital engagement. The findings reveal that professional identity formation is dynamic and nonlinear, characterised by periods of uncertainty, growth, and transformation. Experiential learning and participation in collaborative and digital communities emerge as significant catalysts in bridging the gap between theoretical knowledge and professional practice. However, institutional constraints and unequal access to resources continue to shape students’ identity trajectories. The study contributes to the growing discourse on computing education by providing a holistic understanding of identity development and offering implications for curriculum reform, pedagogical innovation, and inclusive learning environments. Keywords: Professional identity, CSE undergraduates, phenomenology, experiential learning, communities of practice, self-efficacy, digital learning

Finance law and regulation is a required core course of higher vocational finance majors. Whether financial law and regulation instruction design can achieve the purpose of improving students' financial legal literacy and professional practice ability greatly depends on whether it has appropriate instructional design strategies. Taking loan contract legal system as an example, starting from the three aspects of constructivist learning theory, situational cognition theory, and ideological-political curriculum (kecheng sizheng) construction, by means of systematic diagnosis method, four kinds of instructional structural defects existing in today’s financial law and regulation courses have been found. Firstly, there is a lack of coherent connection between teaching content and professional practice. Secondly, teachers dominate most of the teaching activities instead of letting students engage fully. Thirdly, the whole process evaluation pays more attention to results but neglects practitioners’ abilities. Fourthly, the ideological-political curriculum construction is still very weak because it cannot be deeply integrated into every aspect of teaching activities. To solve these problems, this paper tries to build up a tripartite instructional design framework of integrating law knowledge, vocational situation and value shaping together. Theoretical reasoning and experimental evidence indicate that if finance law and regulation courses could put real financial legal cases as organizing threads of teaching contents, use Problem-based Learning (PBL) and Flipped Classroom Model in combination as teaching methods, establish multi-dimensional evaluation system consisting of process evaluation and terminal evaluation parts simultaneously, students’ legal practice ability will surely improve and their own contractual spirit will also grow up.

Undergraduate science courses are in urgent need of increased retention and recruitment of underrepresented minority (URM) college students. There is a significant gap in current approaches to curricular design and their efficacy for URM student retention. To address this, we propose increased incorporation of culturally responsive and sustaining education (CRSE) methodology in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) curricula design. We identify well-documented and effective strategies, emphasizing practices that value students' prior knowledge and relate course content to students' lived experiences. Unlike prior applications of the CRSE conceptual framework that have focused on implementation, here we address curricula design. We present several examples, including the design of a new undergraduate course titled "Intersections Between Race, Biology, and Technology: More Than Skin Deep" that we created in 2024 at Medgar Evers College, an urban Predominantly Black Institution. This course addresses misconceptions about the intersections of race, genetic variation, and artificial intelligence. CRSE develops students' STEM identity through engagement with real-world issues, such as racialized health disparities during the COVID-19 pandemic. Embedding CRSE practices into its design additionally aims to reduce individual instructor's cognitive burden for CRSE implementation. Application of CRSE practices in college-level science courses offers actionable ways to improve relevance and engagement. We propose that educators approach collegiate course design more intentionally to ensure that CRSE practices are encoded within syllabi in order to maximize the positive impact on URM recruitment and retention in STEM fields.

ABSTRACT This case study examines Taiwan’s elementary bilingual science teacher preparation amid dual reforms: the 12-Year Basic Education Curriculum Guidelines (scientific literacy) and the Bilingual 2030 Policy (bilingual competence). Situated in Taiwan’s sole national research centre for elementary science teaching, the study captures systemic tensions in integrating science and language instruction. Grounded in Fullan’s Educational Change Theory, it explores how divergent stakeholder perspectives shape the evaluation of preservice bilingual science teachers’ micro-teaching performance – reflecting their priorities, professional roles, and interpretations of reform demands. Using a convergent mixed-methods design, the study involved 35 science-major preservice teachers conducting microteaching evaluated by two bilingual teacher educators and two elementary teachers with different professional backgrounds (science vs. language). Analyses revealed distinct patterns: the teacher educators prioritised systemic curriculum design and scientific literacy development, while the elementary teachers emphasised classroom practicality, textbook alignment, and the feasibility of English use. These different priorities expose cross-level tensions and resource competition that complicate interdisciplinary integration. The study highlights the need for clearer reform goals, sustained research–practice partnerships, and targeted capacity building. It identifies teacher education institutions as key platforms for navigating these systemic tensions and for fostering collaboration across policy, curriculum, and practice to support sustainable interdisciplinary reform.

Across dental hygiene and therapy education, increasing standardization has led to greater consistency in how professional roles are defined and taught. However, the roles that graduates enter remain variable across healthcare systems and continue to evolve in response to regulatory, workforce, and service pressures. This paper suggests that this variation is not simply a problem of alignment but reflects the interaction of multiple systems shaping how roles are enacted in practice. Drawing on examples from the United Kingdom and the United States, it is proposed that professional roles may be stable in definition within education, but dynamic in function within practice. The implications for dental education are considered, with particular attention to curriculum design, competencies, and assessment. The paper argues that preparing graduates for variability may be as important as preparing them for defined scopes of practice.

The global expansion of English Medium Instruction (EMI) in medical education has intensified demands on students who must simultaneously acquire disciplinary knowledge and operate in a non-native language. This study investigates the coping strategies employed by Arabic-speaking medical students across three Saudi public universities, contributing empirical evidence on how learners adapt to linguistically complex EMI medical contexts. A convergent mixed-methods design combined semi-structured interviews (n = 50 female students), questionnaires (n = 289), and non-participant observations (n = 9) across classrooms, study groups, and laboratories. Qualitative data underwent thematic analysis using NVivo; quantitative data were analysed using descriptive statistics (frequencies and percentages) in SPSS version 27. Triangulation enhanced validity, with trustworthiness ensured via member checking and reflexivity. Students deployed a dynamic repertoire of strategies: multimodal resource use (e.g. 60% commonly watched Arabic YouTube videos, 25% English), translanguaging and translation (68% translated terms), memorisation via flashcards, and collaborative practices (e.g., group translation of slides). Observations confirmed these as central mechanisms for accessing, processing, and consolidating medical knowledge, evolving with proficiency. These practices are essential for disciplinary learning in EMI medical education and can also be understood as preparing students for participation in multilingual medical settings where English functions as a shared professional resource. Findings offer insights for policy, curriculum design (e.g., legitimising translanguaging, embedding multimodality), and pedagogical and language support, particularly where content is taught through a foreign language. They underscore the need for bilingual approaches to enhance clinical readiness and equity in EMI medical contexts.

Despite widespread enthusiasm for Virtual Reality (VR) in education, its adoption in post-primary schools remains limited by uncertainty over curricular integration, design requirements, and practical deployment considerations. This article reports on a three-phase, mixed-methods participatory study involving 114 co-designers, including post-primary students, parents, post-primary school teachers, subject experts, and VR practitioners. Across the three phases, we conducted co-design brainstorming sessions, semi-structured interviews, administered pre- and post-intervention surveys, and collected in-app interaction metrics to identify the design and deployment requirements for VR in post-primary schools. In Phase One, we identified stakeholders’ deployment needs, capturing the socio-technical conditions required for viable classroom integration. In Phase Two, we identified the design requirements through evaluation of an initial prototype. Finally, in Phase Three, we evaluated an advanced prototype with a broader cohort of stakeholders to assess the extent to which the identified needs and requirements supported educationally meaningful and practically deployable VR experiences.

ABSTRACT The adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) in the hospitality and tourism (H&T) industry has accelerated digital transformation and made equipping future H&T professionals with AI literacy essential. This study, situated in Macao’s H&T context, focuses on identifying essential AI competencies for university H&T students and exploring effective technology-aided teaching for instructors. Guided by the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework, interviews with H&T practitioners, educators, and students reveal the need for skills in data analysis, interdisciplinary knowledge, AI-based H&T applications, creativity, prompt engineering, and critical awareness of ethical, legal, and environmental issues. Findings underscore the importance of integrating AI literacy into pedagogy through scaffolding, project-based learning, inquiry-based instruction, and experiential learning approaches like VR/AR simulation and practicum. They provide actionable insights for aligning H&T education with industry demands, positioning AI literacy at the core of curriculum design for a sustainable and AI-driven future in H&T.