Conference Agenda

Students are more likely to cross borders to pursue their studies as they reach more advanced levels of education (OECD 2022). According to the latest researches (Mok, Xiong, Ke, Cheung, 2021; Bilecen, 2020) and statistics (OECD 2022, UNESCO 2020) international student mobility has been rising considerably faster over the last three decades and now exeeding 4.4 million international students worldwide. Students mobility and the internationalization of higher education creates a better understanding of the diversity of experiences (França, Padilla, 2022).

Researchers (Shields 2019; Chung et al. 2018) who have studied first year students in higher education have found that a certain percentage of students do not complete their studies and obtain a bachelor's or master's degree. On the one hand, it depends on the entrants' own motivation and environmental factors (Eidimtas, Juceviciene 2014). On the other hand, it is noticed that one of the possible reasons for failure is racial, ethnic, socioeconomic differences (Banks and Banks, 2019; Quaye, 2019).

Another aspect, which researches (Museus 2014, Hurtado et. al. 2012) emphasize, that students came from abroad face with negative campus climates, higher levels of discrimination from faculty or local society and greater insensicity in the classroom than their colleagues.

International students’ past educational experiences, worldviews, and cultural approaches can be quite different from those of domestic student, even despite sharing the same racial background. Research has shown how international students from non-European countries are less socially engaged with their college than their European peers (Quaye, Harper, Pendakur, 2019). Other studies also stress, that student encounter with specific challenges for example: English language and learning (pronunciation and accent, class discussions in silence and etc.), social isolation (loss of social network, differences in preferred style of learning in peer group and etc.), cultural norms (classroom interactions between teachers and students, academic norms and etc.).

Museus (2014) Culturaly Enganging Campus Environments (CECE) theoretical model is grounded by Tinto (1975, 1987, 1993) theory. The CECE model posits that a variety of external influences (i.e., finances, employment, family influences) shape individual influences (i.e., sense of belonging, academic dispositions, and academic performance) and success among racially diverse college student populations. The model also suggests that students enter higher education with precollege inputs (i.e., demographic characteristics, initial academic dispositions, academic preparation) that influence individual influences and success. The focal point of the model underscores the environmental (i.e. culturally engaging campus environments) and individual influences on college success. Specifically, the focal area of the model suggests that the degree to which culturally engaging campus environments exist at a particular postsecondary institution is positively associated with more positive individual factors and ultimately greater student success.

A number of studies have also been conducted on the adaptation of foreign students studying in Lithuania (Razgulin, Smigelskas, Argustaite-Zailskiene, 2021; Grebliauskiene, 2019, Gudaityte et al. 2014). Also, it was analyzed student attitudes towards learning space (classroom) environment created at specialized biomedical university by Eidimtas, Bruneviciute, Blazeviciene (2018). However, factors, circumstances, perhaps direct facts, that allow teachers to recognize other forms of diversity in Higher Education (HE) which was impacted by learner's earlier educational culture, were not examined.

The aim of this research is to reveal the possibilities to recognize other forms of diversity in learning environments in Higher Education

The objectives of the research were the following: 1) To analyze the expectations of first year students to the learning environment; 2) To reveal key elements of other forms of diversity in learning environments in HE.

This self-study of our practice as teacher educators explores a graduate course focused on inclusive pedagogy and teacher professionalism involving an ethical and social commitment to all students. The purpose of this research is to find new ways to work with teacher students through reviewing their learning processes. The aim is to understand key learning moments witnessed in students’ self-assessment papers and how we can build on those to further support students in their learning. The research question is: What are the different ways of learning that students report in their self-assessment?

Inclusion can be realized when teachers see themselves as agents of change, with the values, knowledge and attitudes that allow every student to succeed (UNESCO, 2020). An essential element of inclusive education involves ensuring that all teachers are prepared to teach all students. Inclusion implies a shift from emphasizing the source of learning differences or difficulties in school as coming from within the pupil or from their social circumstances to viewing the problem as the influence of the system of education or the environment (Schuelka et al., 2019). School is then a place where difference is understood as fundamental to human development and the aim is to create rich learning environments for all students through differentiation, focusing on what is to be taught rather than who is to learn it (Óskarsdóttir et al., 2018). So, rather than expecting pupils to assimilate to existing school and subject structures, the curricula, teaching practices and learning situations must mirror the inherently diverse human nature.

Teaching for equity, where teaching practices that presume diversity from the beginning are employed and built on a recognition of pupil resources, can be considered simply as good teaching for all. These connotations of inclusion challenge all teachers to investigate their values and beliefs, to reflect on their understanding of teaching, learning and curriculum, and to reinvent their roles as participants in school change. Through the recognition of their identities, their unique qualities and their roles, teachers have more opportunities to empower their pupils. In working with diverse pupils, it is critical that teachers understand how their own identities influence the ways they work and how they respect the value of diverse identities (Freire, 2005).

Teaching people to become responsive teachers in inclusive settings is not straightforward because people do not necessarily refer to their own experience of diverse classrooms. It can be demanding to create a learning environment of trust, collaboration and problem solving, as reconstructing thinking, beliefs and learning takes time (Guðjónsdóttir & Óskarsdóttir, 2023). It can be challenging, both for participants and teacher educators, to move out of the comfort zone, risk uncertainty and explore new ways of planning, teaching, and learning. However, previous research in teacher education reports that most participants were comfortable with the various learning environments provided (Guðjónsdóttir & Óskarsdóttir, 2020).

Feedback to students is a key element in learning to become responsive teacher in inclusive settings. Formative assessment can influence future performance and provide information from feedback that improves learning (Black & Wiliam, 2009). It is a planned, ongoing process that can be used by students and teachers to elicit and use evidence of student learning to improve their progress in achieving intended learning outcomes (CCSSO, 2018). Thus, formative assessment is a method teachers can use to improve instruction and impact the teaching-learning process aiming to enhance students’ understanding of their own learning and to give them an opportunity to influence their learning (Brookhart, 2013).

As the field of international student mobility (ISM) research develops, it is becoming more and more obvious that there is a lack of a theoretical framework that would encompass different disciplinary contributions and bare a coherent explanatory power for often contradictory empirical findings. The great disparity emerges when the research is done into individual decision-making as opposed to general international student flows as more variables inevitably are drawn into consideration and human agency starts to manifest. Despite acknowledged and well-researched influences of macro-level push and pull factors shaping ISM, students make agentic decisions to take part in mobility on an individual micro level. To investigate these decisions the research needs to account for “students' visions of the past, their perceptions of the present and their ambitions about the future” which are fluid and subjective (Wells, 2014, p.22).

Despite the apparent contradictions in research on ISM participation and decision-making, it is, nevertheless, possible to create a Meta-Framework based on the complementary nature of various paradigmatic and disciplinary approaches and their convergence potential. The theorised Meta-Framework of ISM decision-making builds upon previous applications to ISM of Rational Choice model (Lörz, Netz, & Quast, 2016), Rubicon Model of Action Phases (Netz, 2015), Theory of Planned behaviour (Kim & Lawrence, 2021; Albien & Mashatola, 2021; Goel, de Jong, & Schusenberg, 2010, 2012; Presley et al., 2010; Petzold & Moog, 2018; ) and Self-determination theory (Chirkov et al, 2007; Yue & Lu, 2022) combined with studies on push-pull factors across various contexts, research on the effect of personality traits and the recently theorised overarching theory of migration – Aspiration-Capability Framework - proposed by de Hass (2021)

Until recently due to the plethora of factors affecting individual ISM decisions, testing the validity of such Meta-Framework would be very difficult, if not impossible. IaD allows us to assess the decision-making process of those involved in the absence of the most prominent barriers to participation, such as financial, academic, and familial. Most importantly it gives us an opportunity to explore the changes evoked by purely educational international experience (stripped of country immersion components) and how these changes alter aspirations for studying abroad as a transition into another educational culture before all.

It is generally believed that a physical study abroad period enhances future mobility aspirations (e.g. Findlay et al., 2006; Wiers-Jenssen, 2008). Lee et al. (2022) found that those students who have participated in international virtual exchange (a type of Internationalisation at a Distance (IaD)) are twice more likely to take part in immersive study abroad. However, the authors acknowledge that the correlation can take different forms, with either study abroad intentions leading to engagement with IaD opportunities, or vice versa, showing how the two are bound together on the motivational level.

The research questions are, thus, the following:

1. How does motivation for IaD participation differ from motivation for physical student mobility, if any?
2. How does IaD participation affect consequent aspirations for cross-border immersive study abroad?
3. What is a possible mechanism behind such influence as an overarching model of ISM decision-making?

The outcomes of this research are likely to make a substantial contribution to both theory and practice. Apart from proposing a more universal theory of individual decision-making in ISM that has the potential to erase contradictions among existing empirical findings, it allows distinguishing between students whose disengagement with studies abroad is a well-weighted rational decision, a product of existing constraints, or an overseen opportunity due to limited vision.

Educationalists across the globe face ever-increasing pressure to reform and improve schooling (Kalenze, 2014). But they regularly struggle to implement and sustain these changes as intended (Fullan, 2007; Hallinger & Heck, 2011). This is not particularly surprising: educational change, as with all behavioral change, is neither linear nor externally controllable. It is a process of differential enactment based on a myriad of individual and collective psychosocial processes, which theorists often term “sensemaking” (Brown et al., 2015).

Diverse literatures, from organizational psychology to learning science, adopt a cognitive lens to describe and explain this complexity. More specifically, scholars often highlight the power of individual beliefs (Ajzen, 2005) and perceptions (Smith, 2001) in shaping behavior change. That is, the ways in which actors conceptualize and assess external phenomena essentially direct their decisions to adopt or alter all manner of actions (George & Jones, 2001). Education researchers, in particular, have long demonstrated that teachers’ pedagogical beliefs shape not only their classroom behaviors (Raths, 2001), but also their approaches to novel reforms (Fives & Buehl, 2016). They have further shown that students’ educational conceptions inform all manner of pedagogical decisions, from engagement and motivation (Könings, 2007) to learning approach (Dart et al., 2000).

However, the nature of and interrelations between belief and perception are underexplored in the context of educational change. First, empirical studies have rarely aimed to link these cognitive constructs with actual changes at the heart of teaching and learning—classroom-level pedagogical practices (Fives & Gill, 2015). Second, researchers have rarely collected longitudinal data on these shifting concepts (Wiltsey Stirman et al., 2012). Third, studies on educational change tend to either assess only a handful of qualitative cases, or reduce data down to average beliefs across a diversity of actors (Zhang & Soergel, 2014). Finally, studies generally overlook the classroom-shaping power of students’ cognitive processes, particularly as they interact with teachers’ shifting beliefs and practices (Hilgendorf, 2012). Taken together, these traditionally static, non-agentic snapshots complicate a detailed understanding of the complex cognitive mechanisms underpinning educational change.

This study adopts a multi-case, mixed methods, longitudinal approach to bridge these gaps. It seeks to build a theoretical model of individual pedagogical belief, perception, and behavior change, answering three interrelated questions:

• How do schooling beliefs, reform perceptions, and pedagogical practices change over time for individual teachers and students?

• What types of teacher and student profiles emerge from analysis of their schooling beliefs, reform perceptions, and pedagogical change?

• To what extent do schooling beliefs and reform perceptions relate to pedagogical change, for individual teachers and students?

Set in the context of public education reform in Sao Paulo, Brazil, this project analyzes the shifting beliefs, perceptions, and behaviors of students and teachers across five upper-primary schools implementing a government-led reform known as Ensino Integral. This “whole education” reform aims to not only double the school day from four to eight hours, but also shift pedagogy toward student-centered, hands-on, and contextualized learning (Diretrizes do Programa Ensino Integral, 2016).