Abstract: Free and compulsory education in India represents a constitutional commitment to equity, social justice, and inclusive development under Article 21A and the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009. This systematic review examines the transformative potential of this rights-based framework by analysing scholarly literature, policy documents, and implementation studies published in the post-RTE period. The review highlights significant achievements, including increased enrollment rates, improved gender parity, infrastructure development, and enhanced access for marginalized communities through inclusive provisions such as Section 12(1)(c). However, persistent challenges remain, particularly in relation to learning outcomes, teacher capacity, regional disparities, and implementation gaps. The findings suggest that while access to schooling has substantially improved, the goal of meaningful and equitable learning is yet to be fully realized. The study emphasizes the need for stronger quality-focused reforms, policy integration with the National Education Policy 2020, and strengthened monitoring mechanisms to ensure that free and compulsory education, fulfils its transformative social mandate.

Abstract Youth leadership has the power of turning innovative ideas into reality of life for the benefit of people, fueling idealism to change society, communities, schools, colleges, universities and organizations, applying skills development processes to solve problems, improving existing system, and ensuring progress in business, technology, and social justice. Youth leadership can shape the future activities for the development of the whole world by facing the local and global issues. Youth leadership has the capacity to face societal challenges driven by new energy, innovative ideas and diverse perspective. Application and implementation of innovative ideas in a very successful way are the process through which social, national and global development can be possible. The introduction and successful implementation of National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 with the aim of turning India into a dynamic and energetic knowledge society and global knowledge power tower by improving school and higher education have given the Youth a chance to face the global issues by involving in sustainable practices, holistic thinking, humanitarian action, shaping community, and paying attention to global responsibilities. To empower youth leadership for the benefit of global progress, it is necessary to pay attention to the ideas of young people. Different types of skills like communication, confidence building, project management and critical thinking of young people must be developed. They must address local issues, advocate for well-being and rights, and solve social problem. For innovation and global responsibility, empowerment of youth leadership is very necessary on account of youth’s fresh energy, digital fluency, adaptable perspectives, providing sustainable development, driving economic growth, and solving complex challenges. Young people can enjoy the chance of training themselves to access courses from organizations, participate in SDG based local and global youth networks, improve innovative problem solutions for sustainable development, and champion the Goals by using digital platforms and their voice. The empowerment of youth plays a very significant part for the benefit of creativity and innovation. Young people empowered with quality education, entrepreneurial opportunities, and vocational training can enrich sustainability and economic growth by becoming active contributors to the economy for making a more progressive society. The need for youth empowerment lies in its capacity to develop self-assured, skillful, and self-dependent individuals who have the power of offering appropriate contribution to society.

The integration of yoga into school physical education in India represents a significant shift toward holistic education in the 21st century. This study examines the strategic role of yoga in enhancing physical health, mental well-being, emotional stability, and cognitive development among school students. In alignment with the vision of the Ministry of Education, India under the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, yoga is increasingly recognized as a vital component of experiential and value-based learning. The study adopts a qualitative and analytical research design, drawing on policy documents, existing literature, and contemporary educational practices to explore the multidimensional contributions of yoga to learner development. The analysis indicates that the systematic integration of yoga within the physical education curriculum can effectively address critical issues such as academic stress, sedentary lifestyles, and declining physical fitness among students. At the same time, the study identifies key challenges, including inadequate infrastructure, insufficient teacher training, and the absence of a standardized curriculum framework, which hinder the effective implementation of yoga in schools. In response, the paper proposes strategic measures to facilitate its structured and sustainable inclusion in the education system. The paper concludes that yoga, as an indigenous knowledge system, has the potential to transform school education into a more inclusive, balanced, and holistic paradigm.

Emerging Technologies, Education, and Governance in Latin American Dentistry: Perspectives from Venezuela and Nicaragua.

Quality of teacher preparation remains central to improving classroom instruction and learner outcomes, particularly in developing educational systems. Guided by Shulman's knowledge-based model for teaching, this study examined preservice teachers’ levels of knowledge across four critical domains: lesson plan preparation, teaching methodology and delivery, classroom organization and management, and professional commitment. A descriptive survey design was adopted, using census to include 101 preservice teachers drawn from a selected teacher education institution. Data were collected using a structured questionnaire and analyzed using descriptive statistics (means and standard deviations). The findings revealed generally high levels of knowledge across all domains. Preservice teachers demonstrated strong competence in lesson planning, particularly in stating lesson summaries and specifying core components. Knowledge of teaching methodology and delivery was also high, with strengths in lesson introduction, questioning strategies, the use of teaching and learning resources, and assessment alignment, although confidence in correcting learners’ language errors was comparatively lower. Respondents further exhibited sound knowledge of classroom organization and management, especially in establishing purposeful learning environments and clear conduct expectations. High levels of professional commitment were evident through reported teaching enthusiasm and systematic lesson record-keeping. However, selected areas require targeted support to strengthen practical enactment. The study concludes that while preservice teachers appear academically prepared, continuous professional development and enhanced practicum supervision are necessary to bridge remaining theory–practice gaps. The findings provide recommendations to inform curriculum review, teacher education policy, and practicum design in Ghanaian teacher preparation programs.

Climate change is one of the greatest socio-environmental challenges of the 21st century, with significant impacts on ecological, economic and social systems. In this context, education has established itself as a fundamental tool to promote cultural, social and political changes oriented towards sustainability. This article analyzes the role of education as an instrument of transformation in the face of climate change in Mexico, considering its evolution from the international arena to its implementation in the national education system. The research was developed with a qualitative methodology based on documentary analysis, bibliographic review and analysis of public policies related to environmental education and education for sustainable development. International instruments such as the 2030 Agenda, the Paris Agreement and UNESCO recommendations were examined, as well as national regulatory frameworks such as the General Law on Climate Change and the General Law on Education. The results show that Mexico has made progress in incorporating climate education into its institutional and curricular framework; however, challenges remain related to the effective mainstreaming of environmental education, teacher training, and social participation. The results were compared with previous research findings, highlighting the need to strengthen interdisciplinary and community-based approaches to climate education. Finally, it is concluded that education is a strategic instrument to build an informed, resilient climate citizenship committed to adaptation and mitigation to climate change, being essential to strengthen educational policies, scientific research and social participation to face the country's environmental challenges.

Inclusive education the practice of educating students with disabilities alongside their non-disabled peers in general education settings with appropriate supports and services represents one of the most significant and contested paradigmshifts in modern educational policy. Since the enactment of landmark legislation including the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) in the United States and the adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) internationally, inclusive education has been progressively embedded as both a legal mandate and a moral imperative in educational systems worldwide. Despite this broad policy consensus, the empirical evidence base regarding the academic, social, and long-term outcomes of inclusive education for students with disabilities and for their non-disabled peers remains complex, contested, and incompletely synthesized. This study employs secondary data analysis to systematically examine the relationship between inclusive educational placement and academic achievement, social outcomes, post-secondary transition, and quality of life for students with disabilities across K-12 grade levels. Drawing upon data from the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) Annual Reports to Congress, the National Longitudinal Transition Study-2 (NLTS-2) and NLTS-2012, the National Center for Education Statistics Digest of Education Statistics, the UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Reports, the OECD Education at a Glance series, and peer-reviewed meta-analyses and systematic reviews published between 2010 and 2024, this article synthesizes evidence across disability categories, grade levels, and national contexts. The findings indicate that well-implemented inclusive education is significantly associated with improved academic achievement, social skill development, and post-secondary outcomes for students with disabilities, while generating neutral to moderately positive effects for non-disabled peers. The quality and intensity of support services, teacher preparation for inclusive instruction, and the degree of genuine curricular access rather than mere physical co-location emerge as the critical determinants of inclusive education outcomes. Persistent equity concerns regarding disproportionate identification and placement of minority students in restrictive settings are examined, and evidence-based recommendations are offered for policymakers, special educators, general educators, and school administrators committed to realizing the transformative potential of genuinely inclusive schooling.

ABSTRACT Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly being adopted in education and holds the potential to transform pedagogical practices. Early childhood, as a critical stage where the foundations of children’s cognitive, social, and emotional development are established, is of particular importance for understanding the role of AI. The aim of this study is to systematically review the body of research conducted on AI in early childhood education. A total of 37 articles were analyzed and evaluated in terms of publication years, countries, research purposes, methods, AI tools employed, and recommendations. The findings reveal a notable rise in academic interest in AI in early childhood education, especially after 2023. Most of the studies were conducted using qualitative methods, with a predominant focus on teachers and children. Among the AI tools, ChatGPT emerged as the most frequently employed, followed by robotic tools. The recommendations emphasized in the reviewed studies primarily focused on the need for more experimental research, curriculum and content development, and support for teachers’ professional development. These findings suggest that AI in early childhood education requires a holistic approach that considers not only pedagogical outcomes but also educational policies and teacher training dimensions.

ABSTRACT This paper critically examines the tension between academic autonomy and the growing bureaucratic control in Indonesian higher education. Using Herbert Marcuse's theory of one-dimensionality, the study investigates how expanding administrative and digital governance affect academic work, professional identities, and intellectual freedom. The research follows a qualitative approach, analyzing higher education policies, ministerial regulations, and institutional guidelines, and is enriched by interviews and observations of lecturers from both public and private universities. The findings indicate that, despite being recognized as autonomous professionals, lecturers’ academic practices are increasingly shaped by administrative duties, performance measures, and standardized reporting. These bureaucratic pressures prioritize efficiency and accountability over critical thinking, creativity, and academic involvement, turning lecturers into administrative agents. This results in the erosion of academic autonomy, a shift in professional identity towards compliance, and a disruption of core academic missions. The paper concludes that bureaucratic control undermines academic freedom and intellectual vitality, calling for participatory governance and reforms that truly value intellectual labor.

ABSTRACT Despite the growing prominence of partnering with children in educational research to influence educational policies and practices, autistic children’s voices and influence for change remain a developing area. There is a growing recognition of autistic children as experts and influencers in their lived experiences, along with a call for their more authentic engagement in the research process as rights-holders. This requires a reconsideration of methodological approaches that are actively child-centric and involve researchers who can enact this imperative in their research. This paper argues that autistic children have legitimate claims to be research participants on their own terms, interrupting and creating new meanings within the intended research process. By drawing on examples from an ethnographic study with two autistic children in a New Zealand school, we demonstrate practices where the researcher challenges and is challenged by research with children who think, act, and learn in diverse ways. Results from research that is child-led and child-rights framed provide unique insights into the children’s world. When researchers adopt reflexive and adaptive ethical data collection approaches for authentic engagement in the children’s world, the children’s views come through different spaces and influence in ways that counter a dominant narrative about autistic children.

ABSTRACT Indonesia's 3T regions – Terluar (Outermost), Terdepan (Frontier), and Tertinggal (Underdeveloped) – are areas where educational disparities are most acute, shaped by geographic isolation, socio-economic deprivation, and significant linguistic diversity. This study examines barriers to literacy development in three 3T-designated districts in West Sumatra Province (Mentawai Islands, Solok Selatan, and Pasaman Barat), evaluates current language education policies, and proposes context-sensitive approaches to improve literacy outcomes. Using an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design, the research integrates quantitative data from literacy assessments and surveys administered to 160 participants with qualitative insights from interviews and field observations. The findings reveal five compounding barriers: mismatches between students' mother tongues and the Bahasa Indonesia medium of instruction, socio-economic pressures reducing school attendance, chronic infrastructure deficits, shortages of teachers trained in multilingual pedagogy, and diminished student motivation. A disconnect between uniform national language education policies and the realities of extreme-periphery settings exacerbates these barriers. In response, the study proposes bilingual and mother-tongue-based instruction, conditional financial support, infrastructure investment, teacher capacity-building in culturally responsive pedagogy, and community-driven curriculum development. It contributes to Language Policy and Planning scholarship by arguing that prevailing frameworks require a structural-capacity dimension accounting for material conditions shaping policy implementation in contexts of compounded marginalization.

ABSTRACT The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 represents a comprehensive restructuring of India's higher education system, yet systematic investigation of its influence on institutional service quality remains limited. This research investigates NEP 2020s influence on service quality dimensions (reliability, assurance, tangibles, empathy, and responsiveness) highlighting significant disparities among stakeholder perceptions. Using quantitative methodology, the study surveyed 760 stakeholders (students, faculty, administrators) from 20 diverse institutions implementing NEP 2020, using a validated SERVQUAL-based instrument. Results indicate substantial perceptual disparities. Administrators report higher satisfaction while students highlight ongoing deficiencies in tangible infrastructure and responsiveness. Regional analysis reveals a widening digital divide, with urban institutions implementing policies more robustly than rural counterparts. Integrating SERVQUAL with Policy Enactment Theory and Stakeholder Theory, the study enhances understanding of how national reforms produce differentiated institutional outcomes. Findings demonstrate that policy effectiveness depends on local capacity, stakeholder alignment, and contextually responsive implementation. These results provide important insights for countries managing large-scale higher education expansion, emphasizing tension between universal quality standards and institutional diversity. The study contributes by exposing systemic asymmetries in reform trajectories and supplying empirical evidence for international discussions on quality assurance in post-massification environments.

ABSTRACT Language education policies in Catalonia have experience in incorporating languages of origin in schools, with more than 15 languages taught both in and out of school and over 100,000 pupils benefiting. This qualitative exploratory study analyzes the implementation of the Arabic Language and Moroccan Culture (LACM) program in Catalan schools. Data were collected through 39 semi-structured interviews with members of the educational community to identify facilitators and barriers. Findings show that, despite institutional efforts to promote linguistic and cultural rapprochement, significant barriers persist, including implementation gaps and a prevailing paternalistic perspective. General guidelines are proposed to improve the program's implementation.

This article aims to delve into the historical roots, as well as the potentially challenging educational landscape, of the municipality of Girau do Ponciano, Alagoas, focusing on its educational development through a historical overview. By recounting, in a discursive manner, the trajectory of its formation, from the arrival of Ponciano, its first inhabitant and founder, through the struggles for its emancipation, to its identity consolidation, it seeks to understand, broadly and consistently, how geographical, social, and economic elements have shaped and continue to influence the local school landscape throughout the history of this municipality. This journey through Girau do Ponciano aims to present the reader with a synthetic yet contextualized overview that may underpin the analysis of any educational policy in this territory, highlighting the complexity of factors that, in addition to permeating, are inherent to the daily lives of schools and, consequently, to the individuals who comprise the school community.

Advocacy is often identified as a necessary component of social work practice. However, both the National Association of Social Workers’ (NASW) Code of Ethics and the Council on Social Work Education’s (CSWE) Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards (EPAS) do not provide a uniform understanding of advocacy, leaving the understanding of advocacy ambiguous. Through a systematic review of forty-three articles published between 2000-2023, this study explores the conceptualization of advocacy within contemporary social work literature. While reviewing the articles, the authors utilized a case-to-cause paradigm to identify how advocacy has been applied throughout contemporary social work literature. While the findings indicate that contemporary literature confirms advocacy as fundamental to social work practice, it leaves the concept of advocacy vague. However, this study is limited to its understanding of advocacy in the social work literature base, and not how advocacy is understood by social work students, educators, and practitioners. This article provides a conceptual definition of advocacy as well as strategies for advocacy’s clarification.

Purpose This study aims to investigate how primary school teachers in the Victorian Government education system achieve agency in their work, aiming to elevate teacher agency as a critical concept in education policy. It responds to the limited recognition of teacher agency in current policy frameworks, particularly in light of increasing teacher attrition. Design/methodology/approach Using place-based narrative inquiry informed by assemblage theory, the research explores how teachers' agency emerges through everyday interactions with people, spaces and policies. Four teachers participated in walking interviews at their schools, sharing stories that were analysed to identify increases and decreases in their capacity to act. Findings The study reveals that teacher agency is not a fixed trait but a relational and emergent phenomenon shaped by socio-material conditions. Teachers achieve agency through informal, affective and spatially situated practices that are often invisible to policy. These practices foster resilience and engagement, challenging dominant narratives of performativity and formalized professional development. Originality/value This paper contributes a novel methodological and theoretical approach by combining narrative inquiry with assemblage theory to decentre the individual and highlight the distributed nature of agency. It offers new insights into how teacher agency can be recognized and supported through policy and leadership practices that attend to the everyday realities of teachers' work. The findings advocate for a reimagining of teacher development and retention strategies that foreground informal, place-based and relational dimensions of professional life.

This study addresses the relationship between digital technologies and inclusion in Mathematics Education, considering contemporary challenges of participation and equity in teaching. The objective is to analyze how the pedagogical use of digital technologies can foster meaningful learning among students in diverse contexts, especially those in situations of educational vulnerability. A qualitative bibliographic approach is adopted, based on the critical analysis of academic productions on Mathematics Education, inclusion, and digital technologies. The selection of works prioritizes recognized studies in the field, enabling the identification of pedagogical principles, teaching strategies, and institutional conditions associated with technology-mediated inclusion. The results indicate that the inclusive potential of digital technologies depends less on the resource itself and more on pedagogical intentionality, teacher education, and the organization of teaching practices. Interactive digital environments, multimodal resources, and active methodologies are shown to expand conceptual access to mathematics and support the participation of students with different learning rhythms and styles. It is concluded that the critical integration of technologies in Mathematics Education represents a promising path toward equity and meaningful learning, provided it is articulated with inclusive principles, continuous teacher education, and educational policies that ensure access and qualified pedagogical use.

This study aims to analyze the influence of teachers' certification and work motivation on the professionalism of State Elementary School teachers in Suak Tapeh District, both partially and simultaneously. Using a quantitative ex post facto approach, data were collected via questionnaires and documentation from 69 teachers and analyzed using SPSS. The results indicate that both certification and work motivation have significant positive effects individually, with motivation showing a slightly stronger influence. Furthermore, their combined impact is substantially greater, explaining a significant portion of the variance in professional standards. The novelty of this research lies in its localized examination of these interconnected factors within a specific Indonesian district, providing contextual empirical evidence. A key practical implication is that educational policy must not only maintain certification programs but also actively foster teacher motivation through systemic support to maximize professional outcomes. This study contributes to the academic literature by quantifying the synergistic relationship between certification and motivation, and offers actionable insights for local administrators seeking to enhance teaching quality through dual-focused strategies.

From maternal metabolism to offspring brain: how high-fructose diets shape neurodevelopment.

This article analyzes inclusive educational public policies in Brazil and the legal responsibility of the State in guaranteeing the right to education for persons with disabilities. The objective is to examine the current regulatory framework, highlighting the Federal Constitution of 1988, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and the Brazilian Inclusion Law, as well as the jurisprudence of superior courts on the matter. Methodologically, a qualitative bibliographic and documentary research was conducted based on constitutional norms, statutory legislation, and decisions of the Federal Supreme Court and the Superior Court of Justice. The results indicate that, although the Brazilian legal system has consolidated the inclusive education paradigm, the implementation of public policies still faces structural and administrative obstacles, intensifying the judicialization of the right to special education. It is concluded that State responsibility is objective and binding, requiring public authorities to ensure specialized educational assistance, reasonable accommodations, and pedagogical accessibility as concrete expressions of human dignity.