Formative assessment as a self-regulation engine in blended language learning: A case study with top-tier engineering talents.

Epistemic injustice in healthcare professional practice: A scoping review.

Radiographer role extension into image interpretation has gained global attention, particularly in low-resource settings where radiologist shortages hinder timely diagnosis. However, limited methodological guidance exists to support the design of complex, context-specific implementation research in this area. This paper outlines and reflects on a four-phase sequential mixed methods design employed to develop and validate a framework for Preliminary Image Evaluation (PIE) by radiographers in Ghana. This methodological paper presents a reflective account of the design decisions and integration strategies that guided a multi-phase mixed methods study on radiographer role extension. Rather than reporting new empirical data, the focus is on the philosophical positioning, analytical choices, and integration logic that shaped the study. Key methods included qualitative interviews, a validated online survey, performance-based image interpretation tests, curriculum document analysis, and a Delphi consensus process. Sequential integration of qualitative, quantitative, documentary, and performance-based data generated meta-inferences that supported cumulative knowledge building and iterative refinement of research tools. The design enabled alignment across data strands, enhanced interpretive trustworthiness, and culminated in a validated PIE framework tailored to resource-constrained environments. Stakeholder engagement throughout the process reinforced contextual relevance and legitimacy. This study demonstrates the methodological strength and contextual value of methodological diversity and purposeful method integration in addressing complex workforce issues. It shows how mixed methods designs can move beyond isolated findings to inform sustainable education reform, workforce development, and policy alignment in radiography. This work offers a methodological model that can guide educators, researchers, and policymakers in designing contextually responsive workforce research. By showcasing how integrated mixed methods can generate policy-relevant and actionable insights, it supports the development of strategic approaches to radiographer role extension.

Navigating the decades: A narrative inquiry into tertiary EFL teacher wellbeing amid Chinese educational reforms

The 21st century has witnessed rapid transformations driven by globalization, digitalization, socio-political changes, and technological advancement. These shifts have significantly reshaped the nature of work, skills, and career opportunities across disciplines. Social sciences, traditionally perceived as limited to academic and teaching professions, have emerged as a dynamic field offering diverse and interdisciplinary career pathways. This research paper explores the evolving career opportunities available to social science graduates in the contemporary world. It examines traditional and emerging career pathways, skill requirements, the role of technology, and the relevance of social sciences in policy-making, governance, corporate sectors, development organizations, and research institutions. Using secondary data, policy reports, and academic literature, the paper highlights how social sciences contribute to understanding complex societal issues and preparing professionals for adaptable and future-oriented careers. The study concludes that social sciences play a crucial role in addressing global challenges and that strategic reforms in education and skill development can further enhance employability and professional growth.

In the field of higher education, the phenomenon of doctoral students dropping out has gained attention from researchers. Yet the reasons driving this phenomenon remain underexplored in the Chinese context. Guided by the Affective Event Theory, this study investigated the environmental characteristics of education that trigger the dropout emotions among doctoral students. Based on thematic analyses of the dropout narratives within a Chinese doctoral students' online community, this study reveals that certain negative yet stable environment characteristics trigger a series of negative events, resulting in doctoral students' dropout sentiment. Specifically, these characteristics include completion difficulty, a lack of academic autonomy, competition and conflict within the shi-men (a supervisor-centric learning community for postgraduate students), and low employment expectations. Based on the findings, this study provides suggestions to improve doctoral students' learning environment, for example, humanizing the power of supervisors and their advising process, helping doctoral students to form communities of learning that give them more channels to communicate their progress and receive feedback and support. This paper contributes to the higher education reform by offering culture-specific directions for research and by providing guidelines for the training of university leaders and supervisors.

ABSTRACT ‘Fungus blindness’ is a persistent underappreciation of fungi’s importance and has significant implications for building regenerative futures. This study explores public perceptions of fungi in a predominantly ‘fungi-blind’ society and whether experiential engagement can challenge them. Two formats were examined: (1) a hands-on workshop, encouraging noticing fungi at macro and micro scales, and (2) an immersive audio experience giving voice to afictional fungus, prompting reflection on ecological interconnectedness. Using Personal Meaning Mapping, the mental models of 70 participants were captured pre- and post-intervention, revealing both affective and cognitive dimensions. Analysis focused on the breadth of participant understanding around ‘fungi’. Pre-intervention findings revealed narrow perceptions dominated by ‘Mushroom’, ‘Food’ and ‘Poison’, alongside limited knowledge of fungal diversity, morphology, and classification. Participants expressed minimal awareness of fungi’s ecological and biotechnological significance alongside a fascination with their strangeness. Post-intervention, ecological learning expanded across both cases, with contextual elements (e.g. ‘trees’ and ‘soil’) facilitating emerging understanding of fungi. Modest shifts towards eco-centric perspectives were also observed, demonstrating the value of experiential approaches in encouraging human-fungi and broader nature-connection. This study advocates educational reform, targeted outreach, and proposes a refined definition of fungus blindness with actionable learning aims.

The "Double reduction" policy in China was promulgated and implemented on July 24, 2021. This was the most rigorous and radical education reform since China was founded, aimed at easing pupils' academic burden and improving their physical and mental health. It sparked extensive public debate across stakeholders (schools, teachers, parents). To delve into public sentiment and improve policy management, this paper analyzes Sina Weibo (Chinese Twitter) posts from July to November 2021. We apply text mining to collect microblogs and comments, and we use Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) for topic extraction. A natural language processing-based (NLP) approach is used to analyze the sentiment. Specifically, we fine-tune a pre-trained Chinese BERT model to classify sentiment, leveraging its superior performance on Weibo data. We report sentiment polarity (positive/negative/neutral) and track its trends over time. We also incorporate engagement metadata (likes/reposts) as indicators. Key findings include the distribution of sentiments, major public concerns, and how sentiment levels evolved around key dates. These insights can help policymakers understand public reactions and guide more responsive education reforms.

The aim of the review is to assess the major educational policies and reform initiatives of the country, and the provisions from the perspective of the shift from the modernist to the postmodernist approach, and their implications for the country’s current educational system. For the review, researchers purposively selected 52 sources from the pool of national policy documents, the country’s constitutional legal provisions, government education policies and plans, and journal articles published between 1956 and 2025, based on thematic relevance. The research concludes that the shift from the modernist to the postmodernist approach of the education system of the country has taken place in three phases of the introduction of Western-style formal education by the Rana regime, the expansion and privatization of education from the year 1950, and the establishment of a monolingual, nationalist, and centralized education system as embodied by the National Education System Plan of the country in the year 1971. The shift from the modernist to the postmodernist approach to the education system of the country has become possible from the year 1990, and the major developments of the period include the promotion of linguistic diversity and the decentralized system of governance of the country’s education system, the provision of inclusive education, the decentralization of the curriculum of the country’s education system with the help of information and communication technology. The review concludes that the country’s education system has shifted from a modernist to a postmodernist approach and continues to evolve within that framework.

ABSTRACT While the debate of the mode of moral education continues globally, teachers in Hong Kong are experiencing challenges due to the absence of a systematic moral education curriculum in schools. The Hong Kong government emphasizes moral education as a cornerstone of kindergarten educational reform, aiming to cultivate students’ adaptability and moral development from the outset of their kindergarten experience. However, there is a paucity of research investigating the support and challenges teachers encounter, particularly concerning moral education in kindergartens, which limits insights into curriculum development. This study aims to identify teachers’ needs for advancing moral education curricula in Hong Kong. Based on Stake’s model of curriculum evaluation, the findings synthesized from semi-structured interviews with 10 kindergarten teachers reveal critical challenges related to insufficient antecedent resources, current kindergarten practices in moral education, and inadequate professional development opportunities. The study emphasized the need for a comprehensive moral education framework encompassing robust teaching materials, valid assessment methods, and enhanced teacher training programs. Such a framework would improve the consistency and effectiveness of moral education by addressing both antecedent and transactional curriculum elements, ultimately fostering students’ moral development within the diverse educational landscape of Hong Kong.

ABSTRACT While network governance has been considered essential for public service delivery, how policy networks work in multi-level hierarchical systems is still understudied. Drawing on ideas about network multiplexity, this study examines the interplay between networks and hierarchy in the policy implementation of a recent educational reform targeting off-campus tutoring in China. Using the Haidian district in Beijing as a case, we employ data from policy documents to map a multiplex network understanding of relations between the actors involved in the implementation. The results illuminate the complex interplay of networks and hierarchy in policy implementation. The lenses of multiplexity allow a novel understanding of how actors are differently interconnected in the policy process network and policy issue network. Specifically, we show that the policy process network exhibits distinctively hierarchical characteristics, whereas the policy issue network highlights less hierarchical and more dispersed relations between actors.

ABSTRACT This article examines professional learning and development (PLD) for secondary classroom music teachers in Wales at a time of curriculum reform. Using complexity theory as a theoretical lens, the study explores how teachers navigate the interrelated political, pedagogical, and professional contexts that shape their classroom practice. Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with nine secondary classroom music teachers, focusing on their lived experiences and conceptualising the factors that should inform PLD design. Findings reveal that the teachers operate within complex adaptive systems characterised by feedback, self-organisation, and contextual responsiveness. While participants valued the autonomy and professional agency afforded by curriculum reform, they reported frustration with externally imposed, generic PLD that failed to address subject-specific or school-level needs. The paper argues for the curriculum framework’s subsidiarity model to be reflected in a locally determined model of PLD, grounded in teachers’ subject and contextual expertise. Such an approach re-positions teachers as co-constructors of professional knowledge, enabling PLD to evolve organically within the dynamic ecologies of practice that underpin contemporary educational reform.

ABSTRACT The French liberal tradition is often characterised by its strong emphasis on political unity and its suspicion toward pluralism. Nineteenth-century historian and politician François Guizot (1787-1874) is presented as a paradigmatic figure of this tradition and is usually credited with having contributed to forge France’s enduring ‘political culture of generality’. This article revisits that interpretation by emphasising a lesser-known aspect of Guizot’s work: the central importance he attributed to decentralisation. By focusing on his theory of civilisation and looking at his education reforms, this study argues that, although Guizot undeniably assigned a central role to the executive power, his main preoccupation throughout the July Monarchy was to prevent any single principle–including the state–from dominating the political order. Guizot sought to institutionalise the permanent tension between unity and diversity that he regarded as the historical condition of European liberty. Public education was a key area in which this tension was organised and maintained. In this light, France’s monist political culture may appear less as the product of a liberal ‘apology for centralisation’ than as the outcome of a theoretically ambitious, yet practically fragile, endeavour to sustain liberty through the continuous preservation of the tension between unity and plurality.

This theoretical study examines the role of 4C skills—communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity—in enhancing the professional competence of English language teachers. Drawing on internationally recognized educational frameworks and relevant scholarly literature, the paper explores how these competencies contribute to contemporary understandings of teacher professionalism in the context of 21st-century education. Using a conceptual and literature-based approach, the study analyzes the pedagogical significance of each component of the 4C framework and discusses the opportunities and challenges associated with their integration into teacher education and professional development, with particular reference to Uzbekistan’s ongoing educational reforms. The findings highlight the need for systematic alignment between policy initiatives, teacher training practices, and competency-based professional development. The study offers theoretical insights and practical recommendations for curriculum developers, teacher educators, and policymakers, while also establishing a conceptual foundation for future empirical research on the implementation of 4C-oriented approaches in English language teacher education.

Abstract Design‐based implementation research (DBIR) offers a promising approach for refining and theorising the implementation and scale‐up of education interventions. However, integrating technology into national education reforms in resource‐constrained contexts adds complexity, involving multiple government bodies, implementers and researchers with differing institutional cultures. We examine how DBIR approaches can be enhanced to adapt to the complexity that technology and scaling bring into nationally led education interventions. To achieve this, we evaluate the DBIR principles and processes used with the Tanzanian government to design, implement and scale the national technology‐supported teacher professional development programme. The intervention uses a Learning Management System, which teachers are intended to access through smart devices. Realist evaluation of two DBIR cycles was undertaken through documentary analysis and reflective workshops with the DBIR team (comprising international, Tanzanian and government researchers). The findings, presented as 10 context–intervention–mechanism–outcome statements, informed the development of the DBIR for digitally enabled education reform (DBIR4DEER) methodological guidelines. The discussion unpacks how DBIR4DEER contributes to the broader implementation research and EdTech literature by demonstrating how its enhancements from DBIR are well suited to navigate shifting government priorities, rapid scaling, technological turbulence and system‐wide stakeholder dynamics. Recommendations include embedding different government bodies into DBIR for stronger evidence uptake, anticipating intervention changes from the volatile technology landscape, rigorously testing technology components before rollout and mapping spheres of control and influence as the intervention becomes unwieldy. DBIR4DEER offers practical guidance for researchers, implementers and policymakers seeking to strengthen EdTech implementation research in large‐scale complex systems in low‐ and middle‐income countries. Practitioner notes What is already known about this topic? Design‐based implementation research (DBIR) is closely related to implementation research and design‐based research but differentiates itself by its commitment to embedding practitioners as equal‐status co‐researchers and developing capacity for sustaining system change. DBIR has been used to align design, research and practice but mostly at the classroom or district level in high‐income contexts. What this paper adds? A critical examination of the DBIR principles and processes used with a large scale, digitally enabled education reform in a resource‐constrained LMIC context. Illustrates how DBIR approaches can be enhanced and nuanced to adapt to the complexity that technology and scaling bring into nationally led education interventions. Cautions that while DBIR has the flexibility to adapt to rapidly shifting technological conditions and generate learning even under imperfect conditions, findings can quickly lose their applicability or lack the rich insights that the DBIR aimed to generate. Implications for practice and/or policy Offers practical DBIR4DEER methodological guidelines for researchers, implementers and policymakers seeking to strengthen EdTech implementation research in similarly large‐scale complex systems. Asserts that the embedding of government officials—from various relevant government bodies—as co‐researchers is the crux of effective DBIR in large‐scale EdTech reforms as it strengthens research ownership, evidence uptake and capacity for sustaining system change.

With the deepening of curriculum reforms in basic education, interdisciplinary teaching has gradually become an important means to enhance students’ core competencies, and teachers’ interdisciplinary teaching competence (ITC) has become a core element of the curriculum reform. Pre-service primary school teachers, as the future backbone of education, play a crucial role in the development of ITC. Knowledge anchors, as a framework that integrates subject knowledge and local cultural resources, provide a new perspective and approach to teacher competence development by linking real-world problems with disciplinary knowledge. Based on theories of ITC and knowledge integration, this paper proposes a pathway for developing pre-service primary school teachers’ ITC from the perspectives of cognitive restructuring, curriculum design, instructional practice, and assessment mechanisms. The pathway is explored with the integration of Shaanxi’s local cultural resources, with research findings indicating that this approach not only effectively promotes the enhancement of pre-service teachers’ ITC but also provides feasible theoretical and practical support for educational reform.

This paper examines the need to decolonise entrepreneurship education in South Africa by addressing epistemic inequalities and aligning curricula with local socio-economic realities. Grounded in decolonial and human capital theories, the study critiques existing programmes that are dominated by Western pedagogies privileging individualism and profit maximization. A literature review shows that current curricula inadequately reflect indigenous knowledge, community-oriented practices, and the informal economy, which remains a crucial site for livelihoods and economic participation. Three key gaps are identified: an overreliance on Eurocentric content, weak contextual relevance to South Africa’s socio-economic challenges, and the exclusion of indigenous and community-driven approaches. These shortcomings limit the curriculum’s capacity to prepare students to address pressing issues such as unemployment, inequality, and informality. The study argues for a decolonised curriculum that integrates African epistemologies, emphasizes social and community entrepreneurship, and produces graduates capable of contributing to inclusive and sustainable development. This study adopts a conceptual and integrative literature-based approach to examine the decolonisation of entrepreneurship education in South Africa. Drawing on peer-reviewed journal articles, policy documents, doctoral studies, and prior empirical research conducted within South African higher education contexts, the paper synthesises existing scholarship to identify structural gaps, epistemic exclusions, and contextual misalignments within entrepreneurship curricula. Rather than presenting new primary empirical data, the study draws on illustrative insights from established South African studies to support conceptual arguments. This approach is appropriate given the paper’s aim to advance theoretical clarity, curricular reflection, and contextually grounded recommendations for entrepreneurship education reform.

This paper aims to explore the new connotation, constituent elements, and systematic cultivation paths of college teachers’ literacy in the digital-intelligent era. Firstly, it analyzes the macro background of education reform driven by technologies such as artificial intelligence and big data, and then sorts out the focus and gaps of current research through literature review. Based on theories such as the Iceberg Model, this paper constructs a teacher’s digital-intelligent competence model covering implicit literacy and explicit abilities. Corresponding to this model, the paper proposes collaborative cultivation strategies from multiple dimensions including internal drive stimulation, external drive support, role transformation, and systematic construction. Finally, the future research directions and practical deepening are prospected, aiming to provide a reference for the construction of college teachers’ teams and the high-quality development of education.

In China, English is considered a second language, and its study spans the entire primary and secondary school stages as well as higher education. Especially at the secondary school level, English is one of the three major core subjects and is also one of the assessment criteria for the high school entrance exam and college entrance exam. For Chinese students, junior high school English marks a transition from concrete to abstract learning and from fragmented to systematic learning. Therefore, junior high school English instruction plays a pivotal role in the entire foreign language learning process. The English Curriculum Standards for Compulsory Education 2022 introduces a new focus in English instruction, placing greater emphasis on cultivating four core competencies in students: learning ability, language proficiency, critical thinking skills, and cultural awareness. Against the backdrop of education reform focused on core literacy development, junior high English teachers face the challenge of low student engagement in the classroom. Gamified teaching models are viewed as a potential solution; however, their application in junior high English instruction lacks systematic research and is subject to practical misconceptions. This study uses a case study approach to analyze a semester-long, competency-based classroom practice in seventh grade at the Jingzhou Experimental Middle School (Lingjun Campus). The findings indicate that the gamified teaching model effectively enhances students' interest in learning, engagement in the classroom, and awareness of cross-cultural communication. It facilitates a shift from passive reception to active inquiry, cultivating critical thinking and metacognitive strategies. The study provides a practical framework for implementing gamified teaching models in secondary English education and offers insights for teacher training and instructional design.

ABSTRACT Climate extremes such as rising temperatures, erratic rainfall and frequent droughts pose significant threats to agriculture‐dependent communities in Kenya. Education plays a crucial role in equipping learners, ‘our future climate stewards,’ with the necessary knowledge and skills to respond to these environmental changes. The 4‐K Club, a school‐based initiative focusing on practical agricultural and environmental learning, serves as a platform for promoting climate‐resilient education. This study examines how teachers' perceptions and socioeconomic factors influence the implementation of climate‐responsive 4‐K Club activities in Junior schools in Makueni County. Data from 108 teachers were analysed using an ordered probit model. The implementation of 4‐K Club activities ranged from 13.0% to 29.6%, reflecting a low level of activity. The study found that gender, education level and teachers' perceptions of digital literacy competency negatively influenced implementation intensity ( β = −0.906, p = 0.015 for gender, β = −0.926, p = 0.016 for education level). In contrast, the presence of an active 4‐K Club and teachers' perceptions of critical thinking and problem‐solving competencies were associated with higher implementation intensity ( β = 5.051, p < 0.001 for active 4‐K Club). These findings underscore the importance of targeted teacher training, enhanced digital infrastructure, and institutional support in strengthening 4‐K Club–based climate education within Kenya's Competency‐Based Education (CBE). This study contributes valuable insights for enhancing teacher preparedness and informing policy frameworks aimed at integrating climate literacy and sustainable practices into school programs, offering lessons for climate education reform in similar developing contexts.