ABSTRACT This paper argues that Ian McEwan’s The Child in Time forges unity through fragmentation, braiding childhood/adulthood, science/liberal arts, and gender into a single epistemic inquiry. Against scholarship that treats these domains as detachable topics and confirmation of already conceived ideas, this study contends that the novel exposes the historical manufacture and political policing of boundaries and dramatizes a shared desire for unity, a desire that has not yet been fully named or justified. In doing so, The Child in Time reclaims the autonomy and epistemic value of fiction as a mode of independent thinking in its own right.

Learning interest is a crucial factor in the educational process because it plays a major role in student engagement in understanding the material. Based on the results of pre-research at MA Al Hikmah Bandar Lampung, it is known that student learning interest in the subject of Akidah Akhlak is still relatively low, especially in the aspects of attention and involvement, which is caused by the dominance of conventional methods and the lack of variety of learning media. This study aims to test the effectiveness of the cooperative learning model of the Think-Pair-Share (TPS) type assisted by flashcards media on increasing student learning interest. The approach used is quantitative with a quasi-experimental method of post-test only control group design. The research sample consisted of two classes, namely class X.A as the experimental group and class X.B as the control group. The data collection instrument used a non-test questionnaire that focused on indicators of attention in learning interest. The results of data analysis using the t-test showed a significance value of 0.001 (p < 0.05), which confirmed a significant difference in learning interest between the two groups. These findings prove that the combination of the TPS model and flashcards is effectively able to overcome the obstacles of low student attention and involvement. The synergy between independent thinking, pair discussions, and idea sharing, supported by visualization of material through flashcards, creates a more active and innovative learning environment. This study concludes that the flashcard-based TPS approach is an effective alternative learning strategy for increasing student motivation and interest in deepening the material on Aqidah and Akhlak.

African philosophy of higher education is an evolving field of discourse. As a distinctively African contribution to critical pedagogy and global philosophical discourse in higher education, there is a paucity of literature for researchers to reference as a starting point to further their discourse. Much of what has been written about education so far involves the cultivation of autonomous action, moral instruction, iteration in higher pedagogy, and responsible action towards the public good or the harmonisation and promotion of collective interests. To address this paucity of research, we propose a need to rethink the African philosophy of higher education, including critical pedagogy from an alternative framework. We begin by presenting an overview of what constitutes an African philosophy of higher education in existing literature. From there, employing the method of conversational analysis, we critique the colonial foundation of higher education in Africa in its current organisation. We then deploy the same method to present a trivalent logico-ontological model of higher education as an alternative framework that can transform learners into creative, critical, and independent thinkers. We conclude by considering the potential impact of such a trivalent logico-ontological model of education on the future of African philosophy of higher education and its role in shaping critical pedagogy in and beyond Africa.

This study explores higher education English teachers’ perspectives on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools in language instruction, considering both their potential benefits and challenges. A mixed-methods design collected quantitative data from 62 English teachers through an online questionnaire and qualitative insights from interviews with three English instructors. Findings indicate that 60% of teachers believe AI aids in lesson planning and grading, 69% consider it a useful feedback tool, and 67% feel it supports instruction in grammar and vocabulary. Nonetheless, concerns were evident, with 62% noting a reduction in real human interaction and 47% worried about student overreliance on AI affecting independent thinking. Qualitative data reinforced these trends, highlighting teachers’ appreciation of AI’s efficiency and pedagogical support alongside apprehensions about job security and diminished interpersonal engagement. Overall, the results suggest that AI can enhance teaching effectiveness if integrated thoughtfully, preserving essential human elements in language education.

Nursing knowledge is neither fixed nor uncomplicated but outcomes driven and competency-based standards underpinning nurse education can result in the dilution of pedagogical principles and a prescriptive and cultural reproduction of knowledge in nursing students. To examine how student nurses navigate the second year of an undergraduate degree programme in the UK and how different learning environments (practice and university) and previous experiences influence their perceptions, meanings and identity. Longitudinal constructivist grounded theory design underpinned by symbolic interactionism and social realism using focus groups and individual interviews. One Higher Education Institution in Northwest England. Year 2 BSc Nursing students (n = 11) FINDINGS: A substantive theory, 'Navigating the second-year landscape: How student nurses construct an identity and engage with knowledge in the second year of an undergraduate degree' was underpinned by six categories: (1) the perceived identity of year two; (2) re-evaluating past, present, future; (3) constructing and balancing identities; (4) engaging with knowledge; (5) reference groups: significant others and the generalized other; and (6) the hidden curriculum: professional socialisation. Students place importance on and seek familiarity in the clinical environment and this can constrain opportunities for deeper critical engagement and hinder the development of autonomous practitioners capable of independent, reflective and critical thinking. Year two marks a pivotal stage in professional identity development and students seek knowledge and guidance from 'significant others' - typically their peers. Informal and hidden elements of the curriculum can influence students' learning and professional identity formation. Findings may have wider implications for opening international discourse on competency-based education including potential transferability to other practice-based professions.

ABSTRACT The rapid advancement of generative artificial intelligence (AI) has fundamentally reshaped information problem-solving (IPS), creating a need for new frameworks in academic and professional contexts. This study proposes AI-IPS by analyzing scaffolded interaction logs, argumentative essays, and semi-structured interviews using inductive and deductive analysis. The participants were 124 undergraduate students from diverse academic backgrounds at a university. The proposed AI-IPS model comprises five key steps: defining the information problem, designing and refining prompts, analyzing and interpreting information, verifying and cross-checking evidence, and organizing and presenting findings. Our findings identify three essential competencies for effective AI-IPS: human-AI collaboration, independent thinking and critical reasoning, and information literacy. We suggest structured instructional scaffolding is required for ensuring the ethical and effective integration of advanced digital tools in education. This framework would equip students with critical reasoning skills and digital fluency, enabling them to navigate AI-generated content responsibly. Conceptually, AI-IPS is grounded in distributed cognition and socio-technical systems perspectives: cognition is accomplished across people, artifacts, and environments rather than residing solely in individuals, and effective performance requires the joint optimization of human and technical components.

This study examines the significance of quest and web quest technologies in developing information competence, digital literacy, and professional skills of future teachers in the context of globalization. Drawing on the pedagogical heritage of Jadid educators and modern competency-based approaches, the research emphasizes independent thinking, creativity, and spiritual development. It demonstrates that quest-based learning enhances students’ motivation, problem-solving abilities, collaboration, and effective use of digital resources in contemporary educational environments.

This empirical exploration investigates how integrating a handwritten diary with a generative AI writing companion can strengthen elementary school students' writing habits and interests in a naturalistic classroom setting. The AI companion serves as a personalized assistant, offering real-time ideas, suggestions, and feedback. By encouraging students to handwrite daily experiences and emotions, then digitize their entries, the approach fosters both reflection and skill development. Over 18 weeks, 32 students from grades three to five (average age 10.5 years old) recorded their diary in Chinese and interacted with the AI companion. This exploratory study employed a pre-post, single-group design, analyzing diary entries, interaction logs, and questionnaire data to assess changes in writing participation and interest. The findings indicate three major outcomes: a notable increase in writing participation, reflected by a rise in the number of ideas and entry length; an enhanced level of writing interest, demonstrating the effectiveness of merging traditional handwriting with AI tools; and improved writing behavior through more frequent and diverse writing activities. When students encountered challenges—such as topic selection or content organization—the AI companion supplied up to three suggestions, preventing information overload and preserving independent thinking. Overall, this interactive, AI-supported environment transformed writing from a solitary task into a dynamic, collaborative process, boosting motivation and quality. The study thus illustrates how strategically blending handwritten diary with innovative AI systems can enrich writing education and sustain students' long-term engagement, while acknowledging its exploratory nature and the need for further research to establish causal links.

This thesis analyzes the didactic possibilities of using a digital learning environment in the process of preparing students for design and engineering activities. The influence of the digital environment on the effectiveness of teaching, interactive cooperation between students and teachers, as well as its importance in the development of digital competencies are highlighted. The research results show that the digital learning environment creates broad opportunities for developing students' independent thinking, technological reasoning, and creative approaches in design and engineering activities.

This article analyzes the pedagogical and didactic importance of using children's games in mother tongue education. Game activity is highlighted as an effective tool for developing students' speaking competence, expanding their vocabulary, strengthening their grammatical knowledge and increasing their communicative activity. Also, the possibilities of strengthening students' independent thinking, creative approach and motivation to the lesson through the integration of game technologies into the educational process are substantiated. The article examines the types of didactic and role-playing games that can be used in native language classes and their methodological features.

This study investigates the integration of different large language models (LLMs) into the Medical Cell Biology Laboratory Course (MCBLC) to enhance bioethics training for undergraduate medical students in China. It further compares the effectiveness of these LLMs in improving teaching outcomes and student learning performances. Key challenges encountered during implementation were identified, and potential strategies to address them were also explored. First-year undergraduate medical students from three medical majors were assigned to five groups. The study involved three phases: instructor-led course introduction, LLM-assisted experimental practice addressing procedural, conceptual, and psychological challenges, and post-training evaluation via questionnaires and blind-graded laboratory reports. Four domestic robust LLMs (DeepSeek, Doubao, KIMI, ChatGLM) were compared to assess their impact on bioethics integration, instructional effectiveness, and student learning outcomes, while documenting students' perceptions and concerns regarding LLM use. The study demonstrated that all four LLMs supported first-year undergraduate medical students in consolidating foundational knowledge, enhancing bioethics proficiency during laboratory practice, and developing critical competencies for future physicians. Questionnaires from 86 students across three majors indicated generally high satisfaction. For Medical Imaging Technology students, DeepSeek (mean 4.3, SD 0.7) and KIMI (mean 4.3, SD 0.8) were rated significantly higher than Doubao (mean 3.9, SD 0.7) and ChatGLM (mean 3.3, SD 0.6). KIMI was also preferred among Health Surveillance and Quarantine (mean 4.4, SD 0.5) and Medical Prevention (mean 4.5, SD 0.5) students. Nevertheless, students expressed concerns regarding potential academic inaccuracies, bias, and possible impact on independent thinking. This study suggested that recent LLMs, particularly KIMI and DeepSeek, may support integrating bioethics into undergraduate medical laboratory courses in a university in China. By assisting students in accessing information, reflecting on ethical issues, and navigating practical challenges, these tools can facilitate learning and foster ethical awareness, competent future physicians. These findings, as an initial exploration and context-specific, indicate that LLMs may support bioethics learning in undergraduate medical laboratory courses and help foster ethically aware, competent future physicians.

Often, teachers and students focus on instructional objectives, such as definitions, formulas, algorithms, or case studies, presented during lectures. However, teachers should also aim at higher-level educational objectives that lead to long-lasting learning. A way to do it is to organize instructional objectives into a cognitive network that addresses higher cognitive skills. I suggest five organizing elements that facilitate a progression from mere assimilation of evolutionary facts to a broader, independent evolutionary thinking: entities, patterns, mechanisms, kinds of questions, and scales. The identification of organizing elements or principles is a mighty tool to empower students so that they can go beyond basic facts and harness their own learning. They provide: (1) a basis for reaching educational and global objectives in the learning of evolutionary biology and (2) metacognitive tools that facilitate learning how to learn.

In the current context of fierce market competition faced by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), employees' independent thinking is crucial for promoting adaptability and innovation. However, traditional managers often prioritize employees' compliance and execution over independent thinking, especially in the development of information technology. This study aims to explore the impact mechanism of employees' independent thinking ability on enterprise organizational performance, focusing on the mediating role of organizational innovation and organizational behavior and the moderating effect of employee empowerment. This empirical study employed a quantitative research design using structural equation modeling (SEM) and collected data from 427 employees randomly selected from small and medium-sized enterprises in Guangdong, China. Based on the findings, most respondents were middle-aged males with 7–9 years of work experience, employed in private firms, with an equal proportion of employees in organizations ranging from 51–250 and more than 251. The regression shows that employee independent thinking (EIT) has a strong and significant positive effect on organizational innovation and organizational behavior. It also directly improves employee performance. Organizational innovation partially mediates the relationship between EIT and performance. However, employee empowerment does not significantly influence or change the effect of independent thinking on their performance. This study highlights theoretical concepts on the relationship between independent thinking ability and enterprise organizational performance, thereby providing synergy with active employee participation for creative performance aligned with its operations and corporate management practices.

This article scientifically analyzes the use of non-traditional approaches in the process of primary education, their role in increasing student activity and their impact on educational effectiveness. It is highlighted that non-traditional methods, such as interactive games, problem situations, creative tasks, STEAM elements, project-based learning and integrative technologies, serve to form students' competencies for independent thinking, communication, and practical activity. The article is based on the person-oriented, activity-based and creativity-stimulating features of non-traditional approaches, unlike traditional teaching.

In this paper, a new personalized recommendation system for English teaching resources is designed on the basis of deep learning, and a personalized English teaching model is innovatively proposed. The features of test information are continuously mined by convolutional neural network. Matrix decomposition technology and Bayesian criterion are adopted, so as to effectively characterize the association between users and English teaching resources, thus completing the recommendation of teaching resources. With the help of questionnaire data, the current status of the teaching practice of the Civics Smart Classroom in colleges and universities is understood. The test results show that the average test scores (P=0.001) and the degree of knowledge mastery (P=0.0045) of the experimental class and the control class are significantly different, indicating that the implementation of the personalized teaching mode based on the deep learning recommendation algorithm is effective. After the teaching practice, the students' independent learning, critical thinking, innovative thinking, problem solving, transfer thinking, effective communication, and cooperation ability are improved to different degrees.

This article examines the pedagogical potential of innovative educational technologies in enhancing academic lyceum students’ interest in learning mathematics. The purpose of the study is to substantiate the effectiveness of integrating information and communication technologies, interactive methods, and learner-centered approaches into mathematics instruction. The research is based on a qualitative and descriptive methodology, including classroom observations, analysis of teaching practices, and reflective evaluation of students’ learning activities in an academic lyceum setting. The findings indicate that the systematic use of innovative technologies increases students’ learning motivation, cognitive engagement, and independent thinking. The study highlights the practical significance of applying modern pedagogical technologies in mathematics education and offers methodological recommendations aimed at improving the quality and effectiveness of teaching in secondary and pre-university education contexts.

This scientific article analyzes the pedagogical, methodological, and social advantages of using information technologies in the modern educational process. The rapid development of digital technologies has significantly transformed the content, structure, and effectiveness of education. In particular, electronic textbooks, distance learning platforms, interactive whiteboards, multimedia tools, and artificial intelligence–based educational resources play an important role in increasing students’ motivation for learning and developing their independent and creative thinking skills. The article highlights the possibilities of individualizing the learning process, enhancing interaction between teachers and students, and implementing transparent and efficient assessment mechanisms through the use of information technologies. In addition, special attention is paid to the role of information technologies in improving digital literacy, increasing the quality of education, and integrating national education systems into the global educational environment. The study emphasizes that the effective application of information technologies contributes to the innovative development of education and creates favorable conditions for lifelong learning. The findings of the research confirm that information technologies are a key factor in ensuring flexibility, accessibility, and efficiency in the educational process.

This article analyzes the issues of improving the teaching methodology of future teachers based on a communicative approach and highlights the theoretical foundations of the formation of communicative competence, modern pedagogical approaches, and the role of interactive teaching methods. Also, ways of effective use of communication-oriented educational technologies in the professional training of future teachers are indicated. The educational process, organized on the basis of a communicative approach, serves the development of independent thinking, speech activity, and professional competencies of future teachers.

This article examines the theoretical and practical aspects of developing creative thinking competencies of future primary education teachers through innovative technological tasks. The study identifies the content and structural components of creative thinking competence and substantiates pedagogical mechanisms that ensure its effective development. The didactic potential of innovative technological tasks is revealed as a means of enhancing independent thinking, problem-solving skills, and the ability to apply non-standard approaches in professional activity. The research findings contribute to improving the professional training of future primary education teachers and serve as a basis for developing methodological recommendations aimed at fostering creativity in teacher education.

An improved Secretary Bird Optimization Algorithm (ISSBOA) is proposed. First, an independent thinking mechanism (IM) enhances the algorithm's ability to avoid local optima traps and broadens global exploration during the optimization process. Second, a sine-square step size mechanism (SM) dynamically adjusts the search step size, effectively balancing the performance deficiencies of the Secretary Bird Optimization Algorithm (SBOA) in both the exploration and exploitation phases. To validate the effectiveness of ISSBOA, simulations are conducted on the IEEE CEC2017 benchmark test suite, with comparisons made against 7 classic metaheuristic algorithms and seven recently proposed improved algorithms. The results demonstrate that ISSBOA achieves optimal performance in two sets of comparison experiments: when compared with the 7 standard algorithms, ISSBOA outperforms them in terms of average fitness value on 23 out of 30 test functions and in terms of variance on 16 functions, achieving an average Friedman test rank of 1.80 (securing first place); when compared with the 7 high-efficiency improved algorithms, it excels in average fitness value on 19 functions and in variance on 15 functions, with an average Friedman test rank of 2.73 (ranking first). This indicates that the proposed ISSBOA has both high optimization accuracy and strong robustness. Additionally, an adaptive transformation function is used to convert the continuous-domain ISSBOA into a binary version (BISSBOA) for discrete optimization tasks such as feature selection. To validate the performance of BISSBOA, a comprehensive evaluation is conducted using 20 public datasets with different dimensions, and comparisons are made against 7 high-performance feature selection algorithms. The results show that BISSBOA outperforms the other comparative algorithms across five evaluation metrics, thereby confirming its practicality and superiority in the field of feature selection.