This article explores the role of comics as a sustained pedagogical practice within medical education, presenting findings from a longitudinal qualitative study conducted at Penn State College of Medicine, United States. Over two pre-clinical years, a self-selected group of medical students—known as the Comics Cohort—were given comics-making assignments to integrate into their required Humanities curriculum. Through focus groups, individual interviews, and visual narrative analysis of students’ drawings, the study investigated how engaging with comics over time shaped medical students’ ways of seeing, learning, and becoming. We identified three main thematic domains: 1) students learn more deeply when they engage visually; 2) the personal reflection and vulnerability that arise from making comics can be challenging but are also tools for growth; and 3) making and sharing comics creates community and connection. Building on participants’ accounts of repeated comics-based practices, this article conceptualizes drawing as a form of reflective engagement that shapes how students attend to clinical encounters. The act of drawing—repetitive, situated, and open-ended—functioned as a reflective tool through which students developed what we conceptualize as visual attunement: an ethically engaged perceptual stance that integrates attention to bodies, silences, emotions, and context. Rather than using art as an occasional creative supplement, this study found that drawing comics can serve as both a medium and method through which students cultivate professional identity, visual thinking, and critical reflection.

How do you engage students in substantive reflection in an asynchronous online course? This article proposes a shift from resilience toward sustained, supported reflective practice that supports nurse agency. Rather than teach reflection, students are introduced to models that support the development and practice of mindful intention and reflective practice that emphasizes strengths and appreciation. Students are provided with tools to promote reflection, creativity, affective learning, and diversity, equity, and inclusion. Students engage in forums, journals, and ePortfolio platforms, transforming an asynchronous online course into a nontraditional community of practice. The integration of Caring Arts into a Nursing capstone course supported the development and practice of mindful intention, reflection, independent thought, and the actualization of evidence-based practice. In a senior capstone course, nursing students experienced guided reflective practice supported by visual thinking strategies, nonviolent communication, caring science, mindful practice, and the American Association of Colleges of Nursing Essentials, as the foundation for sustained substantive reflective practice.

Innovative qualitative approaches are essential for exploring how health professions education (HPE) can address complex, value-laden constructs such as social accountability. Visual elicitation techniques, including rich picture interviews (RPIs), offer distinctive opportunities to surface layered, affective, and contextually embedded understandings. This methodological study examines participant perspectives on the use of RPIs within a broader qualitative interpretive description on social accountability. 46 participants, including learners, community representatives, faculty, and institutional leaders, created rich pictures (20-30min) followed by semi-structured interviews (60min) conducted virtually in English or French. Importantly, a dedicated segment of each interview explicitly elicited participants' reflections on the RPI process itself, including its accessibility, relevance, and perceived value. Data were analyzed using Braun and Clarke's reflexive thematic analysis. Three overarching themes captured participants' experiences: (a) from hesitation to reflective engagement, (b) visual thinking as a catalyst for dialogue and adaptability, and (c) affordances and boundaries of RPIs. Many began with apprehension, often tied to artistic skill or ambiguity of the task, yet valued RPIs for structuring reflection, deepening emotional engagement, and anchoring abstract concepts in personalized, tangible representations. Participants noted the method's adaptability across cultural, linguistic, and professional contexts, while also identifying barriers such as discomfort with drawing or the abstract nature of social accountability. By documenting these experiences across diverse partner groups, this study offers practical guidance for employing RPIs in HPE and related fields. RPIs can serve not only as data collection tools but as reflective, generative spaces that bridge abstract ideals with concrete experiences.

Empathy is vitally important in graduate medical education (GME) but may be difficult to sustain amid competing clinical, educational, research, and administrative demands. Medical humanities interventions may foster reflection and perspective-taking, yet few theory-informed interventions have been described in GME and interprofessional settings. To describe the development, acceptability, and feasibility of a visual arts and narrative medicine-based workshop for attending physicians, resident physicians, health care students, and interdisciplinary staff. In 2023, patients at a safety-net primary care clinic participated in semistructured interviews and portrait sessions. Narratives, photographs, and de-identified clinical records created by the author team were integrated into a facilitated, discussion-based, 60- to 90-minute workshop grounded in the PRISM model and visual thinking strategies (VTS). Authors facilitated interventions across 6 settings, guiding structured observation and reflection of a single patient's electronic medical record, portrait, and audio interview. Participants completed post-workshop surveys assessing perceived empathy, understanding of patients' perspectives, and anticipated changes in patient care. One hundred fifty-six participants completed workshop evaluations. Most agreed or strongly agreed that the workshop promoted empathy (141 of 156, 90.4%; 18 of 19, 94.7% for residents) and would positively influence their approach to patient care (144 of 156, 92.3%; 17 of 19, 89.5% for residents). Open-ended responses emphasized multidisciplinary perspectives and recognition of patients as whole individuals. The workshop was feasible to implement using standard educational time blocks, 2 facilitators familiar with VTS principles, and minimal audiovisual materials. This intervention is ongoing and being adapted within undergraduate medical education and GME. This theory-informed humanities-based workshop was acceptable and feasible across diverse educational settings and learners.

Epistemic, emotional, and effective stance strategies for the linguistic articulation of visual critical thinking in interculturally responsive EFL instruction

ABSTRACT Critical self-reflection has been identified as key to supporting the ongoing development of social work/welfare professionals. However, while social work/welfare students in higher education are willing, they find critical self-reflection highly confronting and struggle to engage in the higher-order, abstract, and imaginative thinking required for the task. Creative dimensions of critical self-reflection processes in social work/welfare are not well understood. In this article, we offer a (co)meta-reflection on a critical self-reflection case study to illustrate how metaphor can be used as a pedagogical tool for teaching and learning critical self-reflection. This paper aims to contribute to the ongoing discussion regarding using metaphor as a way for higher education students to develop competency in critical self-reflection. We explore the benefits of using metaphor when learning and practising critical self-reflection to conclude that metaphor may support educators and students in higher education to transcend barriers to developing critical self-reflection competency.

IntroductionBiochemistry is often regarded as conceptually dense yet emotionally disconnected, limiting its relevance to patient care. To bridge this gap, an art-based learning intervention was developed to connect biochemistry of diseases with empathy, perspective-taking, and ethical awareness through visual thinking strategies, structured peer role-play, and guided reflection.MethodsThis small-group activity was conducted for 150 first-year medical students over a total duration of 180 minutes. Students were divided into 30 groups and each group received a curated artwork and a biochemical role-play case scenario. Evaluation followed Kirkpatrick's model with a 20-item perception survey and semistructured interviews for level 1 (reaction), postsession assessment, “I used to think, now I think, now I will” reflection, and a 7-item confidence questionnaire for level 2 (learning).ResultsStudents reported high levels of engagement across all components, particularly appreciating visual thinking strategies and structured peer role-play. The postsession assessment score was 24.1 (SD = 3.0) out of 30 [P < .001]. Thematic analysis of documented reflections yielded 16 distinct themes representing the shift in learners’ perspectives and their growing commitment to empathic patient care.DiscussionThe integration of art and role-play into early biochemistry teaching effectively supported students in linking molecular mechanism of diseases with human experiences of illness. It also encouraged thoughtful participation and facilitated emotional and ethical awareness. While the approach proved feasible and impactful within this setting, its broader implementation may depend on institutional support and faculty readiness for arts-integrated pedagogy.

Fractionation of the default network during visual and verbal forms of imaginative thinking

Since the economic upheaval of 1991, modern Indian art has been moving more and more toward research-based and ethnographic methodologies. What started as a plan to fix social division, political violence, and the effects of forgetting history has slowly become part of the institution. This study investigates the nuanced shift in the equilibrium between cognition and perception resulting from that consolidation.I use Henri Bergson's ideas about duration, Jacques Rancière's ideas about the distribution of the sensible, Fredric Jameson's ideas about late capitalism, and Ann Cvetkovich's ideas about emotional archives to show a conceptual shift in post-liberalisation art. The artwork is progressively susceptible to transforming into a medium for argumentation—explicit, research-backed, and discursively fortified—rather than a domain of perceptual uncertainty or visual involvement. The study analyses the reconfiguration of form, audience engagement, and pedagogy within the framework of liberalization, focusing on the methodologies of Shilpa Gupta, Riyas Komu, Gigi Scaria, Raqs Media Collective, and CAMP. I support a renewed emphasis on emotion, duration, and visual thinking, rather than rejecting ethnographic or conceptual approaches. This is not a retreat from politics, but a necessary complication of it in modern art and its pedagogy.

Introduction. The development of musical-creative abilities in younger schoolchildren is an important pedagogical task. Through art, children hone imaginative thinking, comprehend aesthetic concepts, and develop their ability to appreciate artistic expression, imagination, imagination, and out-of-the-box thinking, which are essential for future success in various professions. Materials and methods of research. Various general scientific research methods were used in the work, among them the analysis of scientific literature, observation, systematization, generalization played an important role. The results of the study. The creative criterion in the development of children's musical-creative abilities by means of sand animation includes: independence in creating an artistic image; creative imagination; creative thinking. To increase the mentioned criterion, various forms of education, tools, methods were used, and the necessary conditions were created. Conclusions. The experiment revealed an increase in the creative indicator in the experimental group and no significant improvement in the control group. The success of EG was due to the effective integration of sand animation into a favorable learning environment, which allowed for an increase in average creativity. The applied model, the pedagogical environment and approaches to learning have proved successful, as evidenced by the improvement of independence in creating an artistic image; creative imagination; creative thinking among students.

The persistently low narrative writing skills among elementary students are mainly caused by conventional teaching methods and the limited use of interactive media that stimulate imagination and sequential thinking. This study aims to analyze the impact of integrating Project-Based Learning (PjBL) and digital serial picture puzzles on improving students’ narrative writing skills through a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) approach. The SLR was conducted by systematically identifying, screening, evaluating, and thematically synthesizing 18 relevant articles published between 2018 and 2025, sourced from national and international databases. Data analysis involved thematic synthesis, comparative mapping, and content analysis to capture the effectiveness and synergy of the two approaches. The synthesis results indicate that digital serial picture puzzles are effective in enhancing students’ abilities to organize storylines, describe characters, and understand narrative structures logically and creatively. The application of PjBL significantly improves students’ motivation, creativity, independence, and collaboration in the writing process. The integration of PjBL and digital puzzles produces a synergistic effect, resulting in higher quality narrative writing in terms of coherence, organization, and content depth. However, the review also found a lack of direct implementation studies on the integration of these two approaches. The study recommends the development of an integrated PjBL–digital puzzle learning model and teacher training to support optimal implementation in elementary schools.

This article examines the definition, historical development, and pedagogical applications of infographics in the context of biological education. Particular attention is given to the creation of infographics in biological disciplines and their effective use during lecture sessions. The study focuses on the implementation of histology-based infographics designed for students majoring in Biology Education. These infographics are utilized not only as instructional materials during classroom activities but also as tools for assessing students’ knowledge and understanding. Furthermore, the article highlights the importance of engaging students in the independent development of infographics as part of their self-directed learning. Such activities contribute to the enhancement of visual thinking, analytical skills, and deeper comprehension of complex biological concepts. Experimental findings demonstrate that the integration of infographics into the teaching process significantly improves the quality of learning outcomes, increases students’ engagement, and facilitates better retention of information. The results confirm the effectiveness of infographic-based approaches in modern biological education.

At present, generative AI technology is in rapid iteration and has exerted a broad and profound impact on the education industry. Experiential teaching emphasizes learners' experience and reflection in the learning process, so as to realize the internalization of knowledge, which is highly consistent with the core quality cultivation advocated by the new curriculum standard. However, the traditional experiential teaching is faced with such practical difficulties as static situation creation, superficial experience process, and formalization of reflection. Generative AI makes it possible to solve this dilemma by virtue of its capabilities of multimodal content generation, intelligent dialogue and interaction, and personalized adaptation. Drawing on Kolb's experiential learning cycle and taking the "VR Moot Court" course as an analytical case, this paper discusses four paths of generative AI enabled junior high school Morality and Rule of Law experiential teaching: situational infiltration, interactive infiltration, reflective infiltration and migration verification. These four paths together form a complete learning closed loop from experience to internalization, so that students can obtain embodied experience, deepen cognitive reflection in human-machine dialogue, and complete the meaning construction in the visual thinking. This study provides practical reference for the innovation of Morality and Rule of Law teaching in junior high school under the background of digital transformation of education.

The paper explores how the visual art forms, particularly the Amar Chitra Katha and the early 20th-century calendar art, contribute to the gendered perception of Indian womanhood. The study analyses the illustrations of Sita to investigate the role of visual narratives in constructing the notion of womanhood through three dimensions of Sita: as pious and divine, sensually idealised subject, and an intellectual figure with voice and agency. This changing representation of Sita can thus be understood as a part of a broader cultural paradigm shift which challenges the gendered patriarchal notions and opens spaces for reconstruction, negotiation, embodiment and agency. Building on Rudolf Arnheim’s theory on ‘Visual Thinking’ and Geetha Kapur (2000) theoretical notions regarding visual culture, the analysis focuses on how attire, postures, body movements, curves, positioning, colour, and tone are used to convey the changing perception of womanhood. The study hypothesises that these visual illustrations have contributed to the dynamic visual codification of womanhood, which brings socio-cultural attitudinal shifts in readership in terms of gendered perception and inclusivity.

This study focused on Employee Creativity and Organizational Performance of Telecommunication Firms in Rivers State. Researchers have suggested that creativity is the essential part for firm’s competency and survival. Therefore, organizations need creative employees to initiate innovation. Employee creativity enhances the firms in terms of quality service, product quality that put them ahead of their competitors, especially in the Covid 19 period where there was economic meltdown and firms were downsizing their staff. The problems identified in this study is that over the years many researchers have delved into other areas of management ignoring this subject matter thereby making it almost impossible for employers of labour and owners of businesses to exactly pinpoint the importance of expertise, imaginative thinking and originality as basis for the creativity of employees. To this end three objectives and three research questions was used to guide the study. The researcher used descriptive survey method with a population size of 430 and a sample size of 207 derived with Taro Yemene model. The study used open ended questions with five scale ranking, SPSS software of 2.1 version, mean and standard deviation were also used to analyze the data generated. It was revealed that there is a significant influence of expertise, imaginative thinking and originality on organizational performance of telecommunication firms in Rivers State. The study concluded that the creativity of employee has a very significant influence on the general performance of the telecommunication firms in Rivers State. Based on the findings of the study, it was therefore recommended, among others; that Telecommunication firms in Rivers State should strive to encourage their employees to increase their expertise in terms of mastering and learning new ideas as this will enhance their performance and boost the profit of the firms; they should also task them to be more imaginative in thinking while accomplishing their tasks as this will enhance waste reduction, increase performance, output and profitability of the organization.

Statement of the problem. The article examines interpretation as a creative process in conducting art with an emphasis on the role of the conductor’s aesthetic vision in forming a unique interpretation of a score. The problem is posed by the insufficient representation of the phenomenon of conducting interpretation in modern scientific discourse, where research related to instrumental or vocal performance prevails. Given the interdisciplinary nature of conducting, there is a need for a deeper theoretical understanding of the aesthetic, cognitive and communicative mechanisms of interpretation in this field. A brief analysis of publications indicates that most studies of interpretation in music focus on aspects of the author’s intention, performance accuracy or emotional expression. At the same time, the issues of the conductor’s subjective vision as an interpreter, his role in the formation of the artistic meaning of the work, remain without due attention. This article attempts to fill this gap. Objectives, methods, and novelty of the research. The purpose of the study is to clarify the aesthetic and structural parameters of the conductor’s interpretation and to identify the role of the conductor’s personal aesthetic vision in the process of creative realization of the score. The scientific novelty lies in clarifying the concept of the conductor’s aesthetic vision as an integral construction that encompasses stylistic sensitivity, imaginative thinking, intuition, value orientations, cognitive analyticity and emotional communicability. A new approach to the analysis of the conductor’s interpretation as an individual artistic act, which is the result of a multi-level interaction of the objective musical text and the subjective author’s concept of the performer, is proposed. The research methodology is based on a comprehensive interdisciplinary approach using the structural-analytical method, elements of comparative analysis, a phenomenological approach to understanding interpretation as an experience, as well as observation of the practice of performance and analysis of recordings. Research results. The main results of the study are that the conductor’s aesthetic vision significantly affects all levels of interpretation of the score – from the tempo-rhythmic pattern to the emotional dynamics of performance. The example of comparing interpretations of the same work performed by different conductors shows that even with an unchanged musical text, the artistic result largely depends on the individual aesthetic attitudes, experience, intuition and cultural guidelines of the conductor himself. It has been established that the subjective factor is not a deviation from objectivity, but on the contrary - a factor in revealing the multilayered semantics of a musical work. Conclusion. The conclusions emphasize that the conductor acts not only as a technical coordinator of the performance process, but also as a full-fledged interpreter with his own artistic vision. His aesthetic vision is the content “filter”, through which the score is updated in new performance contexts. Thus, interpretation in conducting is considered a multidimensional creative process, within which the artistic content is not only transmitted, but also reconstructed in accordance with epochal, cultural, social and personal meanings.

Science Fiction (SF) is a young but thriving modern literary genre characterized by vivid portrayals of alternate worlds featuring advanced science and technology, often distant in space and time from ours. Establishing captivating, fantastical, and futuristic environments for imaginative storytelling constantly required profound imagination and innovative thinking of the genre’s creators, propelling the young literary genre to evolve and grow in a relatively short time into one that now exerts a strong influence even outside its original realm of literature, such as cinema and television. As creative works in the written form, the texts of SF novels are the primary source for understanding their nature and characteristics, including the developmental history. In this paper we study in detail how SF has evolved since its beginning via two quantitative techniques, computational linguistics (natural language processing) and network science, jointly applied to a comprehensive data of classical SF in the public domain. We find that the network constructed between the texts based on linguistic similarity enables us to detect the emergence and evolution of distinct themes across different generations, and that the most important events in the history of SF strongly correlate with moments of rapid growth in the genre’s thematic diversity. This shows the necessity of a continuous infusion of new ideas and the resulting elevation in diversity for the success and growth of a creative genre. Also, in this age of a strengthening interest in the scientific understanding of human creativity and machine intelligence, this work represents a contribution to one of the most promising yet underrepresented topics in human-centered data science.

The study deals with a subject that has been largely ignored by Russian scholars of literature: the phenomenon of animalism in literature in terms of Darwin’s and Goethe’s natural philosophical ideas and their various influences on animalistic prose written for children in the 1920s–1940s. Such an influence is exemplified by works of the classic of Russian children’s literature V. Bianki, who always stayed up to date with literary thought as well as scientific theories. The term animalism was introduced by the director of Moscow’s Darwin Museum, A. Kots, in his report, Animalism in light of [ the teachings of ] Darwin and Goethe (1946). According to Kots, two trends dominated the post-Darwinian period of animalist art: a Darwinian animalism and its Goethe-inspired counterpart. The former implied a meticulous depiction of animal protagonists and the use of ‘rational naturalism,’ whereas the latter relied on a combination of scientific (empirical observation) and artistic (visual thinking) methods. Fedyaeva examines Bianki’s oeuvre from the viewpoint of animalism of the latter type, noting that his portrayal of animal protagonists and their adventures is strongly defined by animal psychology.

An identity-based approach for family business successor development: Reflexivity through visual thinking and storytelling

The article substantiates the relevance of training future teachers of choreographic disciplines for the implementation of integrated art projects in the system of extracurricular education. The modern educational paradigm requires a transition from a narrow technical approach to a multidisciplinary one, where choreography acts as a center for the synthesis of various arts. The study aims to reveal the essence of the concept of "readiness of future choreography teachers to implement integrated art projects" and to define its structural components in the context of professional training for extracurricular education institutions. The study is based on the analysis of professional competencies of Master’s students majoring in 024 "Choreography." The author uses a systemic approach to identify the relationship between pedagogical mastery, artistic creativity, and project management skills. It is established that the readiness for integrated project activities is a state of professional maturity that allows a specialist to act as a director-pedagogue. This readiness is defined as a complex personal formation consisting of four components: motivational-value (internal focus on innovation), cognitive (knowledge of the laws of art synthesis), operational-activity (mastery of choreography, staging, and IT tools), and reflexive-creative (ability for non-standard thinking and self-analysis). The role of specialized disciplines, such as "Practicum on Ballet Master Activity" and "Scenic Mastery," as platforms for developing project-based experience is characterized. The difference between traditional choreographic training and integrated approaches – incorporating vocals, digital installations, and drama – is highlighted. The readiness of future choreography teachers to implement integrated projects is not merely a sum of technical skills but a holistic characteristic. It determines the specialist's ability to create an innovative educational and artistic product in extracurricular settings. This approach ensures the development of students' imaginative thinking and emotional intelligence through a multi-sensory artistic environment.