Conference Agenda

In recent years, well-being has become a central reference within educational discourse, particularly in relation to higher education (Fang, Ren, & Sotardi, 2025). This growing prominence does not arise in isolation. It is embedded in a broader post-postmodern condition in which universities are increasingly shaped by acceleration, performative accountability, and competitive logics that profoundly influence how educational experience is lived and interpreted (Donovan, 2013; Rosa, 2019; Biesta, 2021). Within these configurations, academic pathways are frequently reorganised around standardised trajectories and grammars of success, privileging visibility and efficiency over continuity and meaning (Barnett, 2011; Marginson, 2011).
As a consequence, the connection between learning and life orientation becomes increasingly fragile. Students’ experience risks fragmentation, unfolding as a form of shared yet solitary participation in which formal belonging coexists with feelings of disconnection, isolation, and difficulty in being recognised (Barrera Rosales & Marroccoli, 2019).
Within this context, well-being assumes a paradoxical position. It circulates as a promise of care and attentiveness, allowing aspects of student life marginalised to enter institutional discourse. At the same time, it is frequently absorbed into managerial dispositifs that render its enunciation visible without necessarily transforming the pedagogical conditions of formation (Davies, 2015; Volstad et al., 2020; Vohra & Misra, 2025).
It is from within this unresolved configuration that human flourishing comes into view as a pedagogical necessity. The turn to flourishing does not simply broaden the language of well-being; it sharpens the educational question by shifting attention to how educational experience is held together across time—how learning, relationships, and aspirations are enabled to enter into continuity rather than remaining episodic, contingent, or easily disrupted. Understood as a form of sustainable well-being, flourishing names a process through which human development unfolds within lived trajectories, remaining attentive to equity, social justice, and the shared enhancement of educational environments (de Ruyter, 2004; Duraiappah et al., 2022; Lomas et al., 2025).
This pedagogical posture echoes broader international debates on the future of education. UNESCO’s recent work positions flourishing as a normative compass capable of linking present experience with desirable scenarios, without prescribing a uniform vision of the good life across contexts (UNESCO, 2021, 2025).
In this re-orientation, self-narratives come into view as a crucial site for inquiring into flourishing. Drawing on Nussbaum’s (2008) notion of narrative imagination as an ethical capability, self-narration enables individuals to recognise their own lives as already entangled with wider horizons of meaning and possibility. Thus, what is often framed as a private condition becomes, through the mediating role of narration, a matter of collective responsibility (Bruner, 1990; Demetrio, 2012).
If universities can be approached as narrative ecosystems, they are also spaces in which narratives may be reworked, expanded, and held in common. As Salemans and Budding (2022) argue, sharing personal narratives constitutes a powerful way of articulating the public value of higher education—one that foregrounds contribution, relational impact, and long-term significance rather than short-term optimisation.
From this positioning, the research explores how opportunities for human flourishing are recognised and narrated by students within university life, which aspirations for flourishing they express, and how self-narration may sustain their possible realisation in higher education. Attending to students’ stories as both individual and collective expressions, the study also traces which shared dimensions of flourishing emerge across narrative accounts.
These questions guide an inquiry that aims to understand flourishing as a lived and relational educational process, culminating in the co-construction of WONDER (Ways Of Narrating Desirable Educational Routes)—collective narrative manifestos through which students’ voices are returned to the university as a call for responsibility, imagination, and educational renewal.

This paper examines empirical evidence from higher education research on student dropout intentions. Dropping out from university is associated with high individual and societal costs, a lack of innovation, a shortage of skilled workers, and a loss of competitiveness and diversity (Burk/Hetze 2023; Heublein et al. 2022; Bellmann/Leber 2019; Nairz-Wirth/Feldmann 2018). In addition, one of the European Union's goals is to achieve greater equality of educational opportunity – a goal that depends in part on reducing the number of students who drop out from university (Potapova 2025; Vossensteyn et al. 2015). With European universities already reporting high dropout rates within their specific systems (DAAD 2021, Vossensteyn et al. 2015), universities are under increasing pressure to implement measures to prevent student attrition. In this context, dropout intentions can be regarded as an early warning indicator, thus making it a relevant factor in empirical research and the design of effective prevention and intervention strategies (Deuer/Wild 2018).

Within the Austrian context, the average rate of attrition among bachelor’s students is approximately 30% (with respect to bachelor’s programs commencing at public universities during the winter semester 2016/17). It is important to note that most of the students dropping out from university appear to do so during the first two semesters of study (approximately 20%) (Haag et al. 2025). Consequently, it is evident that the transition to higher education represents a critical period for students, and a challenge for the development of their academic habitus. Addressing the issue at early stages, transition management and the strengthening of students’ resilience resources as part of their habitus development are crucial for their future academic and professional success (Frisby et al. 2020; Lane 2020). Moreover, the development of resilience resources and academic success is favoured by the existence and utilization of social networks at the university (social capital). The development of these networks during the transition to higher education poses another significant challenge for students (Berndt/Felix 2020; Hofmann et al. 2020). These influencing factors – including habitus development, resilience resources and building social networks – have been deeply challenged during the COVID-19 pandemic (e.g., distance learning, social isolation), which has increased their relevance in the context of higher education research on student attrition in recent years.

Recent studies on academic success rates at Austrian public universities indicate that male and female students perform nearly equally (Haag et al. 2025). However, additional research has revealed that women tend to withdraw from their studies more rapidly than men, should they choose to drop out (Thaler et al. 2021). Thaler et al. (2021) further assert that the observed gender differences in dropout rates are not inherently attribute to gender itself, but rather to underlying factors that in turn are influenced by gender, such as school choice.

Despite the extensive body of literature addressing university dropout, the prior intention to withdraw from university has been less comprehensively examined by higher education research. While the effects of transition management, resilience, social networks and gender on university dropout have been explored separately, a combined analysis from a longitudinal perspective is also rare. The research questions addressed in this paper are as follows:

(1) How do transitional experiences, resilience, and social networks within the university environment affect the dropout intentions of bachelor's students, with a special focus on gender issues, over time?

(2) What possible guidelines for prevention strategies can be derived from this analysis to address the issue of university dropout as early as possible?

Departmental culture is a central aspect of teachers’ working environment in higher education, shaping teachers’ professional development as well as teaching and learning practices. Despite its importance, how departmental culture is perceived across different national contexts remains underexplored. China and Sweden represent higher education systems with distinct institutional arrangements and approaches to teacher professional development, which are likely to shape how departmental cultures are experienced by university teachers. Against this background, this study examines university teachers’ perceptions of departmental culture in China and Sweden and explores how teachers' perceptions differ across professional backgrounds and professional development practices.

The study is theoretically informed by Hargreaves’ (1994) school culture model and its extension to higher education by Tynjälä and Kálmán’s (2019, 2020). Within this framework, departmental culture is conceptualized as a multidimensional construct encompassing:

(1) culture of departmental support of teaching, referring to the extent to which teaching is valued and supported within departments;

(2) training- and project-centered professional culture, capturing departments’ use of formal and organized approaches to teaching development; and

(3) culture of voluntary collegial collaboration, reflecting informal and voluntary interactions among colleagues around teaching and professional development.

Guided by this framework, the study addresses the following research questions:

1. How do university teachers in China and Sweden perceive departmental culture?

2. How do teachers’ perceptions of departmental culture differ across professional backgrounds and professional development practices?

In this study, professional practices are understood as teachers’ engagement in pedagogical studies and professional development activities related to teaching, while professional background includes disciplinary affiliation and teaching experience.

By examining teachers’ perceptions within two national higher education systems, this study contributes to an international perspective on departmental culture in higher education, highlighting cross-national differences as well as differences associated with teachers’ professional backgrounds and professional development practices. The findings are expected to inform ongoing European and international discussions on academic work environments and teacher professional development in universities.

Evidence-based practices have been a central focus in promoting educational quality during recent decades. In contrast to evidence-informed educational practices that primarily draw upon existing theories and preliminary research results, evidence-based practice necessitates practitioners to incorporate evidence throughout all stages of their professional practices to enhance the validation of instructional interventions (Owen et al., 2022). Within teacher education, different forms and scopes of evidence-based enquiry activities have been employed across the globe to enhance instructional quality. These emphasise the significance of teachers leveraging evidence from multiple sources (e.g., empirical research findings, policy documents, and contextual data) to inform their educational decision-making processes (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1990, 2011).

Despite the theoretical and methodological advancements of evidence-based enquiry, significant challenges persist in teachers’ implementation. One widespread tension is that teachers may perceive enquiry being situated in formal projects or grants that are separated and disconnected from their everyday practice (Berger et al., 2005). Moreover, teachers’ current evidence-based practices primarily rely on established theories, prior research results, guidance from external experts, and summative student assessment data, with limited attention to students’ thinking processes (e.g., Kretlow & Helf, 2013; Zembal-Saul et al., 2002). Nevertheless, evidence generated by students in real-time interactions is often undervalued, hindering the effectiveness of teacher reflection and the development of their “knowing-to” (Mason & Spence, 1999) required for in-the-moment responsive instruction. Another significant challenge is teachers’ confusion when interpreting and negotiating various sources of evidence that emerge in classrooms, such as curriculum requirements, pedagogical principles, and students’ diverse behaviours and engagement patterns that occur simultaneously (Altinyelken, 2011). These challenges hinder the full realisation of teachers’ evidence-based enquiry initiatives, necessitating significant attention to how teachers can more effectively leverage various sources of evidence to incorporate student thinking into their evidence-based practices.

Therefore, this study aims to characterise how teachers engage in evidence-based enquiry through a student-focused professional learning programme. Specifically, it examines how teachers leverage diverse sources of evidence to investigate student thinking within their instructional practices. The research objective can be unpacked into two questions: i) What constitutes the evidence that teachers leverage when investigating student thinking during enquiry? ii) How do teachers leverage diverse sources of evidence to inform their instructional practice?

This study employs cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) as its analytical perspective. Building on Leontiev’s notion of “activity” that involves both materialistic processes as external activities and mental processes as internal activities (Leontiev, as cited in Cong-Lem, 2022), Engeström and Sannino (2021) conceptualise activity system as a dynamic network comprising six interconnected components: subject, object, artefacts, community, rules, and division of labour (Cong-Lem, 2022; Engeström & Sannino, 2010, 2021).

This study specifically centres on the role of “artefacts” and their dynamic interplay with the subject, object, and community across different stages in teachers’ research processes. Artefacts are operationalised as the evidence that teachers leverage during their enquiry into student thinking. For instance, during the planning stage, these involve established theories, prior research results, and curricula that teachers employ to develop their research plans. During the data analysis stage, artefacts involve the empirical evidence that teachers collected during implementation for their analysis and reflection. By examining the various sources of evidence, this study aims to uncover how teachers leverage evidence to investigate student thinking within their instructional practices.

This paper reflects on approaches to decolonial Global Citizenship Education (GCED) and their implementation in educational exchange programs. In particular, it draws on the work of Vanessa Andreotti, whose concept of Global Citizenship Education otherwise advances a holistic approach that, alongside (queer-)feminist and decolonial perspectives, explicitly includes nature as an integral part of coexistence. GCED otherwise thus addresses global and social inequalities as part of a transformative educational approach.

The target groups of educational exchange programs in both the Global South and the Global North are affected by intersecting and interrelated dimensions of disadvantage, including social status, gender, financial circumstances, and mobility opportunities. For organizations running such exchange programs, these initiatives function as mechanisms for shaping relationships with project partners in the Global South on more equal terms.

Accordingly, this paper opens up the following questions: What might Global Citizenship Education look like in practice when approached from a decolonial perspective? How can intersectional positionalities be taken into account and critically discussed? Which specific dispositions and attitudes need to be developed in the sense of convivial forms of living together? Under what conditions is it possible—or impossible—to speak? And how do these approaches contribute to transformative learning processes?

In today’s highly interconnected world, it is essential that education systems prepare students with knowledge to understand complex global challenges and issues (Bourn, 2016). Thus, Global Education (GE) has been one of the major aspects of many curricula across the world to promote values of global citizenship, sustainability, and intercultural understanding (Lantz & Davies, 2015). Attempts to incorporate and implement GE in schools converge at the intersection between curriculum, teachers, and their students, and it depends on teachers as mediators between policy frameworks and classroom realities (Biesta et al., 2014). Hence, the successful implementation of GE in schools largely depends on teachers’ competencies (including their knowledge, pedagogical skills, intercultural sensitivity, and reflective practices).

Extant literature on GCE implementation stresses teachers’ perceptions of not being well prepared to handle GCE-related issues and tending to avoid them in their classroom activities (Neins et al., 2013). Therefore, it is important to explore teacher competencies (knowledge, skills, and abilities) as not only what is required to teach and improve students’ learning, but also as the requisites to facilitate GE implementation in schools and classrooms. Against this background, this paper presents part of a doctoral research project on the intended curriculum and teacher competencies in GE implementation in secondary schools in Kenya and Germany. Focusing on teachers and teacher competencies (including three aspects: (1) knowledge of global issues, (2) pedagogical skills for engaging students in global learning, and (3) intercultural and reflective dispositions), the study aims to address three questions:

1. How do teachers understand GCE in Kenya and Germany?

2. What skills and dispositions do the teachers require to implement GE in their schools and classrooms?

3. Are these competencies and understanding of GE context dependent?

This research reformulates the notion of the global citizen and global citizenship education from the global south perspectives. The notion of global citizen is currently emerging as an important topic across the world both in global north and global south countries. There are some driving issues that have ignited this classic idea to be hotly debated among scholars across the world. Understanding global problems, supporting political movements, creating global ethic, addressing environmental issues, gender inequality, learning global competences, or even just traveling abroad (Andreotti, 2014; Bates, 2012; Dill, 2014; Dower, 2003). However, I would argue that in the current post-truth era where there are a wide range of information and the fake news are easily spread among people, being global citizen means that people are required to have a fair-minded critical thinking (Brown, 2014), in other words, people are able to have a global consciousness to survive in this globalised world (Dill, 2014). By having those global skills, students are expected able to live in a wider community without boundaries. In order to be able to put a fair-minded critical thinking and global mindedness, there are a variety of ways to educate students to be a global citizen. Global citizenship education is one of the way because it can be integrated towards the schools subjects and activities to teach students to be a global citizen (Al-Maamari, 2022; Bamber et al., 2018; Goren & Yemini, 2016). In addition, being a global citizen also posed some threats for some local culture. Some of them argue that it might affect and losing local culture due to the wide range of penetration from outsider (Abdul-Jabbar, 2023).

Currently global citizen can be defined by different purposes. In the United States, Dill (2014) has argued that it consists of global consciousness and global competences. Global consciousness is believed that people need to have some awareness and understanding towards different groups of people, including their opinion (Dill, 2014). In contrast, global competences, it is believed that people need to have some skills that would enable them surviving in current globalised world (Dill, 2014). Andreotti (2014) differentiates between soft and critical approach towards global citizenship education. The soft approach means that global citizens can be developed through some sort of activities such as student exchange, while the critical approach means that it needs to address a deep roots of thinking towards others (Andreotti, 2014). Oxley and Morris (2013) provide more comprehensive frame of references in defining global citizens. They argued that global citizens have been categorised towards cosmopolitan and advocacy based model. Most of these typologies have been developed in the context of the Global North. It is increasingly important to develop our understanding of global citizenship education in a Global South context, in order to sharpen the framework through which we understand this global phenomenon. This research contributes an insight into the Indonesian context, where I argue that global citizenship is important because it shapes students to have fair-minded critical thinking skills, fostering global consciousness, and therefore the relevant skills to survive in a post-truth era.

According to these current debates and the importance of being a global citizen, the main objectives of this research was to identify teachers and pre-service teachers perspectives towards the notion of global citizenship. Understanding teachers perspectives from Indonesian context would support the current debates among scholars and contributes to the global citizenship education research literature among scholars over the world and in particular in the field of intercultural education research. The research question for this study was “what are the Indonesian teachers and pre-service teachers view towards global citizenship education?”

This proposal reports on a doctoral research, previously presented at ECER, that was guided by the following research question: How can Global Citizenship Education through Intercomprehension be integrated into the Portuguese curriculum? The study examines the intersection of Global Citizenship Education (GCE) and Intercomprehension (IC) within the Portuguese educational system, with a particular focus on the first cycle of basic education, corresponding to the early years of schooling, i.e. children aged between 5 and 10 years old.

The main objective of the research is to develop a theoretical framework capable of interpreting the curricular potential of GCE through Intercomprehension in Portugal. Drawing on a Constructivist Grounded Theory (CGT) methodology, the study seeks to build a comprehensive understanding of how these educational concepts intersect and interact within the specific socio-cultural context of the Portuguese education system, and how such interactions may be translated into curricular and pedagogical terms.

At the core of the conceptual framework lies a critical approach to GCE and an understanding of IC as a multifaceted construct. Since receiving particular attention through the Global Education First Initiative (United Nations, 2012), GCE has occupied a prominent place in international and national educational agendas worldwide. Nevertheless, it remains a complex and chameleonic construct, serving and/or being mobilized for multiple purposes and ends (Pashby et al., 2020; Stein, 2015; Tarrozi & Torres, 2018; Torres, 2017). In this sense, to speak about global citizenship education today is to engage with “multiple ideological constellations overlapping and even contradicting one another” (Pashby et al., 2020, p. 1).

A critical approach to GCE (Andreotti, 2006), as one of those ideological constellations, enables a rigorous examination of GCE’s potential to engage with historical legacies—such as Portugal’s colonial past—in connection with contemporary challenges, thereby orienting educational action towards a more sustainable and socially-justice based society. From an ontological perspective, critical GCE also opens space for IC to emerge as an educational goal aimed at preparing citizens for plural interactions of both cultural and linguistic nature (Andrade, 2003; Doyé, 2005; Parrança-da-Silva & Andrade, 2018; Parrança-da-Silva, 2024). This convergence between GCE and IC appears particularly promising insofar as it offers a possible response to requirements articulated in Portuguese curricular orientations that emphasize students’ personal and social development during this stage of schooling—encompassing purposes of qualification, socialization, and subjectification (Biesta, 2009, 2020).

For some time, IC has been described as “One of the most remarkable and challenging ideas for the realization of a plurilingual education” (Doyé, 2005, p. 7). Emerging from didactics debates in the last decade of the twentieth century, IC came to be understood as a communicative situation in which each citizen uses their own language while understanding that of the other. Importantly, since its origins, IC has carried an intention towards inclusion and social justice, insofar as it affords equitable space and voice to one’s identity. This orientation contributed to the development of IC’s multifaceted identity, increasingly recognized not only as a form of communication or a pedagogical approach, but also as a means to foster inclusive educational environments conducive to social justice, as well as equitable and responsible participation.

By exploring and discussing these theoretical underpinnings alongside Portuguese curricular references and the empirical data collected and analyzed during the research process, this study aims to propose a framework that highlights the synergistic relationship between GCE and IC. In doing so, it seeks to offer grounded insights into how educators—particularly teachers in the first cycle of basic education—may effectively integrate these concepts into both the curriculum and their pedagogical practice.

Context, Relevance & European/International Dimension

The European Union’s Working Group on Equality and Values in Education and Training (2021–2025) has emphasised that racism-critical self-reflection among school professionals is widely recognised as a key prerequisite for fostering inclusive and equitable educational environments. In its most recent report, the working group highlights inspiring educational practices and teacher training initiatives from countries such as Spain, Portugal, Germany, Slovakia, Finland, Greece, Slovenia and France. However, Austria is not yet represented among these examples of good practice in addressing racism in schools (European Commission. Directorate General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture., 2023).

Similarly, within German-speaking educational research, Austria has been comparatively slow in systematically addressing racism in schools and has only recently begun to engage more intensively with the topic, particularly within the frameworks of inclusion, global citizenship education, and critical diversity literacy (Mecheril & Melter, 2025). Education systems across Europe are under pressure to uphold equality, respect and democratic values due to the growing influence of right-wing movements.

Beyond explicit or highly visible forms of racist discrimination, little attention has been given to teachers' self-reflection on their own racist attitudes concerning subtle, everyday practices, language use, and implicit mental images. Such microaggressions often operate at hidden and unconscious levels, and can only be addressed when made visible through reflection on one’s own social positioning, privileges and embeddedness within hierarchical and hegemonic school structures (Broden, 2017; Doğmuş, 2024; El-Maawi et al., 2022). This study focuses on how such processes of racism-critical self-reflection are articulated and negotiated in the everyday practices of secondary school professionals.

Research Question / Aim

This study aims to reconstruct the orientations towards racism-critical self-reflection of middle school professionals, and to identify potential avenues for transformative practice in everyday school settings. Through a comparative analysis of narratives from teachers, school social workers and headteachers, the study will explore how professional roles and institutional contexts influence opportunities for racism-critical reflection and action.

Central research question:

How do middle school professionals’ orientations towards racism-critical self-reflection emerge in their narratives of everyday school practice?

Sub-questions:

Which situations and aspects of everyday school practice prompt racism-critical self-reflection among middle school professionals?

How do institutional hierarchies within school staff shape professionals’ possibilities for critical or resistant action?

What orientations towards transformative and inclusive practice can be reconstructed from professionals' narratives?

Theoretical Framework

This study adopts an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on cultural studies, sociology and educational research. Racism is conceptualised as cultural racism (Balibar, 1990; Rommelspacher, 2009) and understood as a structural phenomenon embedded in postcolonial and decolonial power relations (Castro Varela & Dhawan, 2020). Taking an intersectional perspective, racism is considered one of several interrelated dimensions of inequality that allocate power and privilege within society and educational institutions (Walgenbach, 2012). Theories of hegemony and power (Hall et al., 1994; Reckwitz, 2012) offer an analytical framework to examine how racialised norms and practices become normalised in everyday school contexts.

The study also draws on critical whiteness approaches (Tißberger, 2017) to acknowledge the researcher's socially privileged position and its implications for knowledge production and interpretation.

In the field of education, this study draws on transformative theories of learning (Mezirow, 2006) and research on teacher professionalisation, which highlights self-reflection as a vital foundation for anti-racist practice (Akbaba et al., 2022; Helsper, 2018). Although the aims and dimensions of racism-critical self-reflection have been extensively theorised in existing research, little is known about how such reflection is experienced and negotiated in everyday school practice. To address this, the study engages with scholarship on anti-Muslim racism (Said, 2003) to analyse how religious difference intersects with processes of racialisation in European school settings.

In Europe, and globally, international migration and the refugee crisis are significant areas of debate and tension (European Commission, 2026; Jacobsen & Piekut, 2023). At the beginning of 2026, the European Commission announced the European Asylum and Migration Management Strategy, a five-year strategy outlining the EU’s political objectives on migration, which include more assertive migration diplomacy methods and stronger border control initiatives (European Commission, 2026). Perceived threats from ethnic diversity have resulted in decreased tolerance of difference, fueled by extreme right movements and political parties, have increased tensions, distrust and misinformation in host countries surrounding migration, the development of social unrest and these stricter policy regimes (Borgonovi, 2012; Forcier & Doufour, 2016). Trust has an enormously important social function in helping to establish connections between individuals, groups and cultures that are different from one another and in supporting migrants with social and cultural integration (Borgonovi, 2012; Örkény & Székelyi, 2009). Borgonovi (2012), in comparing levels of trust and tolerance between different European countries, notes that education may help with improving levels of trust and tolerance in highly diverse contexts and there is a need to determine factors that promote trust and tolerance to improve social cohesion. This paper argues that trust is a prerequisite for collective knowing and action and explores innovative approaches to building trust with culturally and linguistically diverse migrant learners.

This paper is based on a larger study from Canada, which had the research objective of developing a more equitable and supportive approach to immigrant education and community building. This paper addresses the research question: what educational approaches support building trust with culturally and linguistically diverse migrant learners? The research project which produced the empirical data upon which this paper is based involved the development and evaluation of a pedagogical approach designed following a strengths-based teaching model. Key findings from the empirical data of this study will be used to answer the research question.

The theoretical framework used to develop the pedagogical approach combined theories on situated solidary building (Nagar & Geiger, 2007; Routledge & Derickson, 2015) and embodied learning as a decolonizing praxis (Ng, 2018). Situated solidarities are built upon ‘partial synergies’ meaning that similarities between individuals are recognized, but the group does not have to be homogenous, because there is a simultaneous recognition and respect for difference (Routledge & Derickson, 2015). This duality is significant for developing trust amongst culturally and linguistically diverse learners, because while trust can be more easily developed when similarities are observed amongst individuals (Borgonovi, 2012), finding ways to work across differences without creating inequalities and marginalization is equally important. Within the theory of situated solidarity building, the complimentary process of radical vulnerability has been explored for how it enhances situated understanding and the building of trust (Habiburahman & Alamgir, 2023; Nagar & Shirazi, 2019). Embodied learning approaches support building trust at a deeper level, by acknowledging the whole person in learning and recognizing the significance of emotion and affective dimensions of learning (Ng, 2018).

Participation in this educational research project was described as a “deep and immersive experience”. Participants were surprised by the levels of trust and bonding that emerged. Trusting one another was identified as essential to developing emotional bonds that supported intercultural learning and knowledge exchange. Radical vulnerability supported mutual understanding and trust. The educational solutions for building trust amongst linguistically and culturally diverse migrant learners shared in this paper are a topic of educational interest that will be particularly relevant to educational researchers, scholars, practitioners and policy makers working in European and international contexts at the nexus of migration, social justice, educational quality and equity.

Previous research shows that racial hierarchies continue to inhabit educational spaces in Finland (Kurki, 2024; Alemanji, 2016) as well as other Nordic countries (Stachurska-Kounta, 2025). Non-white students are aware of their disadvantaged position in society (Kurki, 2024) while white students are privileged to remain ignorant towards racial hierarchies (Peltola & Phoenix, 2022). Although whiteness should not be essentialised as a universal experience (Twine & Gallagher, 2008), white supremacy, as an oppressive power structure, maintains colonial values and positions people who do not fit expectations of whiteness outside the norm (Ahmed, 2007).

The aim of this presentation is to outline the main arguments for the summary of my doctoral thesis. Drawing from three journal articles published as part of my doctoral research (Jones et al., 2025; Jones et al., forthcoming; Jones & Mikander, forthcoming), I explore current challenges for practising antiracism pedagogy in Finland and question how dialogue could be used as a tool to challenge colour-evasiveness (Annamma et al., 2016) and silence around race. The main research questions are:

1. How are the concepts of race, racism and whiteness framed in the empirical materials – expert interviews, teaching guides and discussions with groups of young people?
2. In what ways, and to what extent, could dialogical praxis shape antiracism pedagogy?

In approaching the empirical materials from an antiracism pedagogy perspective, the theoretical framework draws from Franz Fanon’s work on the processes of Othering (1952/2021) as well as Paulo Freire’s and bell hooks’ work on critical pedagogy. More specifically, the Fanonian argument of white supremacy creating “a racist structure” (Fanon, 1952/2021, p. 72; see also Fanon 1963/2001), which manifests in processes of Othering across transnational boundaries, functions as the starting point for exploring racialising processes in educational settings. Contemporary educational practice that results in Othering is rooted in the colonial process.

Furthermore, Freire and hooks’ belief that dialogue is foundational for forming critical learning communities that question societal hierarchies has guided the theoretical and methodological thinking for this thesis. Both, Freire (1968/2017) and hooks (1994), perceive dialogue as a tool for questioning hierarchical power structures and building communities with the aim for a more just society. In this thesis, I consider how the critical pedagogy might be applied in Finland today as a moral and political praxis that encourages young people to rethink their perception of societal hierarchies and prepares them for social justice action. Alemanji (2016) argues that antiracism education in Finland requires more participatory methods.

I particularly focus on critical approaches to race from the perspective of whiteness – how might antiracism pedagogy look like in a context where the ideology of white supremacy dominates in educational settings. The work of Fanon, Freire and hooks mostly centres around working with people who experience oppression. However, they all believed that those with (white) privilege become dehumanised by their own oppressive actions and position in society should they not stand up for justice, highlighting the importance of critical education to change oppressive systems.

Questions of power and oppression are often intersectional (Hill Collins & Bilge, 2020). Antiracism should be perceived as a practice that is not limited to race but questions all power structures, such as gender and class (Alemanji, 2016; see also hooks, 1994). In this thesis, the argument centres around how overcoming silence around racial hierarchies might look like in practice in Finland, but the empirical discussion includes intersectional analysis when appropriate. Although the context of the research is on education in Finland, its theoretical framework and methodology add to the international conversation that recognises racism as a continuous barrier for educational equity.

Black African international students are already telling us how power operates in higher education. This paper asks whether education research is equipped and willing to listen. It does not position Black African international students (BAIS) as vulnerable populations needing support, nor as case studies through which broader governance failures can be illustrated. Instead, it positions them as the site where power becomes visible. Universities across Europe claim cosmopolitan identities: welcoming, diverse, internationally minded. Yet for BAIS in Scottish higher education, these ideals coexist with hostile immigration regimes, racialised institutional cultures, colonial legacies, and governance structures that reproduce the inequalities they claim to address. Power operates quietly through policy, institutional norms, and societal narratives about belonging, but it becomes visible when examined through the experiences of those who live within its contradictions.

This paper asks: how do BAIS, as people who live inside these contradictions daily, understand and diagnose the governance systems that shape their higher education experiences? And what does their positional knowledge reveal about the deeper structures of power that a policy focused analysis alone cannot capture? This question emerges from a growing recognition that governance of international students cannot be understood through policy as neutral instrument operating independently; it is embedded within and shaped by colonial legacies, racialised knowledge systems, media narratives, and institutional cultures (Bhambra et al., 2018). Together, these constitute the cosmopolitan trap: universities pursue internationalisation while governance systems simultaneously reproduce racialised and colonial precarity. BAIS do not simply experience this trap; they expose it, revealing the gap between institutional claims and lived realities.

Theoretically, the research draws on Critical Race Theory, postcolonial scholarship, and Black feminist thought, not as an assemblage of frameworks but as tools performing specific analytic work. Critical Race Theory examines how race operates structurally in institutions claiming neutrality or meritocracy. Postcolonial scholarship traces the historical governance of African students from Commonwealth diplomacy to contemporary hostile environment measures, showing the persistence of colonial power in mobility regimes and knowledge systems (Bhambra, 2014; Mbembe, 2016). Black feminist thought, particularly Patricia Hill Collins’ work on the matrix of domination (Collins, 2000, 2019), provides the conceptual foundation for treating BAIS not as research subjects but as situated knowledge producers. Those navigating intersecting systems of power, race, class, nationality, and mobility develop epistemic privilege, revealing structural contradictions that dominant perspectives cannot see.

The research is situated within the poly-crisis framing of Morin and Kern (1999), in which entangled crises compound rather than operate independently. For BAIS in Scottish universities, hostile immigration policies, colonial legacies, racialised institutional cultures, media narratives about African mobility, and students’ identity negotiations interact to produce compounded effects. BAIS experiences are not peripheral to the poly-crisis; they are a site where it becomes visible. The cosmopolitan trap marks the convergence of these entangled crises and exposes the contradiction between institutional rhetoric and governance practice.

This paper contributes to the conference theme of Knowing and Acting by asking: whose knowledge counts? Understanding power in higher education governance, particularly during a poly-crisis, requires listening to those for whom power is lived and not just abstract. By centring BAIS as epistemic authorities, the paper argues that understanding the poly-crisis in higher education requires expanding what counts as valid knowledge. This move is not only epistemological; it is methodological and political. It insists that those positioned as subjects of governance are often better positioned to diagnose it than those who administer it (Hall & Tandon, 2017; Timmis et al., 2024). BAIS are not waiting to be studied; they are already interpreting the system. This paper takes that seriously.

Learning from errors is a central yet context-sensitive component of professional learning in practice-based phases of training. Trainee teachers, resident physicians, and trainee lawyers, are required to perform complex tasks under conditions of high responsibility (Gensch & Waltenberger, 2006; Referendariatskommission, 2025; Rothland & Walter, 2023). Errors are therefore a common feature of everyday work and training, often associated with substantial consequences. At the same time, research on workplace learning and error management emphasizes that errors can constitute important opportunities for learning when they are identified, reflected upon, and addressed constructively (Cannon & Edmondson, 2005; Hetzner et al., 2011).

This contribution examines learning from errors across professional training contexts using a cross-professional comparative perspective. Rather than employing comparison to describe differences between professional groups, the study conceptualizes comparison as an analytical strategy for examining how social and organizational learning conditions relate to error competence across different contextual configurations. The central research question is how feedback-seeking behavior toward supervisors and colleagues and psychological safety at supervisory and team levels are associated with error competence, and to what extent these relationships vary across professional training contexts.

The study focuses on three practice-based training contexts in Germany: teacher training in the preparatory service, postgraduate medical training during the first year of residency, and the legal clerkship. These contexts share key characteristics relevant to learning from errors, including workplace-based learning, close supervision, and high performance demands, while differing in institutional arrangements such as hierarchical structures, evaluation practices, and feedback cultures.

Conceptually, the study draws on research on informal workplace learning, psychological safety, and error orientation. Learning at work is understood as largely informal and socially embedded, relying on participation in work practices, interaction with others, and engagement with concrete work experiences (Stenström & Tynjälä, 2009). Feedback and reflection have been identified as central mechanisms of informal workplace learning, particularly in complex and evaluative contexts (Ellström, 2001).

Feedback-seeking behavior is conceptualized as a proactive and goal-oriented activity through which individuals monitor or inquire about information to reduce uncertainty, correct errors, and develop competence, while simultaneously considering potential social costs such as loss of face and interpersonal risk (Ashford & Cummings, 1983; Brown, 2014).

As engagement in such learning activities is shaped by interpersonal relations, the study draws on the concept of psychological safety, defined as a shared belief that speaking up, asking questions, and admitting mistakes is possible without fear of negative consequences (Edmondson, 1999). Prior research highlights the role of leadership behavior and everyday interactions in shaping perceived interpersonal risk and participation in learning-related activities (Nembhard & Edmondson, 2006).

From an error management perspective, orientations toward errors are linked to learning and adaptation in complex work environments (Frese & Keith, 2015). Research on error orientation conceptualizes dealing with errors as a multidimensional phenomenon encompassing cognitive, behavioral, and emotional aspects (Huish, 2011; Rybowiak et al., 1999). Building on this conceptualization, the present study operationalizes error-related competence using selected scales of the Error Orientation Questionnaire (EOQ) and examines how psychological safety and access to feedback are associated with error competence across professional training contexts.

Internal lateral mobility is a key feature of European labour markets, particularly in large organisations seeking to support reskilling, internal employability, and workforce adaptability in response to economic and technological change. While lateral job transitions are often framed as opportunities for growth, they entail substantial learning demands, as employees encounter unfamiliar work practices, social dynamics, and performance expectations without the formal onboarding typically associated with vertical transitions. Within European policy and organisational discourse, internal mobility is increasingly positioned as a mechanism for lifelong learning and sustainable employability, yet limited empirical attention has been given to how learning is actually supported during lateral transitions. This study focuses on the dynamics of learning in the absence of formal onboarding during internal lateral transfers.

The research examines informal learning during the year following an internal lateral job transition, with particular attention to how employees’ learning practices develop over time and how workplace affordances shape these practices. Situated in the domain of workplace and adult learning, the study responds to calls for process-oriented, empirically substantiated accounts of learning as it unfolds in everyday work activity.

Drawing on well-established European and international traditions in workplace learning research, the study is theoretically grounded in situated learning theory, which conceptualises learning as participation in social practice, and in the concept of workplace affordances, which highlights how organisational arrangements and social relations enable or constrain learning opportunities. From this perspective, learning during a lateral transition is understood as a negotiated process shaped by access to people, tasks, tools, and guidance, alongside employees’ agency in engaging with these opportunities.

The purpose of the study is to describe how informal learning practices emerge during internal lateral transitions and how peers and managers influence these practices through the provision of workplace affordances. The study addresses the following research questions:

1. Which informal learning practices do employees report using during the first year after an internal lateral job move, and how do these practices change across different phases of the transition?

1. How do managers and peers enable or constrain these learning practices through workplace affordances?

1. How do employees exercise agency in seeking, negotiating, and sustaining informal learning opportunities during the transition?

The paper draws on qualitative interview research with employees who have recently undertaken an internal lateral transfer within a large organisation. A qualitative panel design is employed, involving semi-structured interviews conducted at specified points during the first year following the move. Interviews focus on participants’ everyday work activities, challenges encountered, sources of support, and strategies for learning to perform in the new role. Supplementary interviews with managers provide additional perspectives on expectations, support practices, and learning conditions.

Data are analysed using an iterative coding process informed by constant comparison, with attention to learning practices and workplace affordances across different phases of the transition. The analysis focuses on identifying patterns of change in how learning is enacted and supported over time.

The study explores how informal learning during lateral transitions shifts from early reliance on social support and observation towards more selective, agentic, and context-specific practices embedded in everyday work. It highlights how work arrangements, access to colleagues, and managerial involvement shape learning trajectories, and how misalignments between role expectations and available affordances generate tensions in the learning process. By examining how employees negotiate participation, expectations, and responsibility over time, the study provides empirical insight into the relationship between learning and identity development during lateral moves and contributes to understandings of learning as participation in practice during organisational change.

Initial teacher education (ITE) is pivotal for preparing future teachers to navigate increasingly complex educational environments shaped by curriculum reforms, digital transformation, student diversity, and evolving professional expectations (Stevenson, 2023; Heinz, 2024; Darling-Hammond, 2017). Within this framework, the practicum constitutes a core component of teacher education, enabling situated learning, professional socialization, and the integration of theorethical knowledge with school-based practice (Scorţescu et al., 2024; Flores, 2018; Zeichner, 2010). Research has consistently highlighted the importance of supervision, mentoring and school-university partnerships in supporting student teachers’ learning and professional development (Feiman-Nemser, 2001; Goldshaft, 2024; Ambrosetti et al., 2017). Nevertheless, the perspectives of those who directly accompany student teachers in their practicum contexts, namely supervisors and cooperating teachers, remain underexplored (Clarke et al., 2014; Puroila et al., 2021; Shaker, 2023). Giving visibility to these professional voices is essential to understanding how practicum models operate in practice and how they may be strengthened in response to contemporary educational challenges (Russel & Russel, 2011; Bjørndal et al., 2024).

This study examines supervisors’ and cooperating teachers’ perceptions of student teachers’ practicum experiences in Portugal, focusing on three dimensions: perceived learning experiences, challenges faced during the practicum, and suggestions for improvement. By foregrounding these perspectives, the study seeks to contribute for a more empirically grounded understanding of teacher education processes and to inform reflective discussion on curriculum design, supervision practices and institutional collaboration. The study is part of a broader PhD research project entitled “Teacher Education in times of change and the role of the practicum in building professional knowledge: a mixed-methods study”, funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology and conducted in a Portuguese higher education institution. This project comprises a longitudinal study that follows six student teachers throughout their practicum year to examine the development of professional knowledge, competences and professional identity over time. This paper focuses specifically on the perspectives of the professionals who accompanied these students during their practicum.

A qualitative design was adopted, based on semi-structured interviews with five supervisors from the higher education institution and six cooperating teachers from placement schools. Participants supervised student teachers from different subjects’ areas, including History, Portuguese and Informatics. All participants provided informed consent. The interviews gathered biographical and professional information and explored participants’ views on students’ practicum experience, namely their preparation, the strengths and weaknesses, learning outcomes, challenges, and suggestions for practicum and ITE programme improvement. Data were analysed through qualitative content analysis, allowing the identification and organization of recurring themes across interviews and participant groups. For the purposes of this paper, analysis focused on three overarching dimensions: (i) learning experiences perceived by the supervisors and cooperating teachers; ii) challenges faced during the practicum; and (iii) suggestions for improvement.

By examining supervisors’ and cooperating teachers’ perspectives, this study contributes to a deeper understanding of how practicum experiences are enacted and interpreted in practice, highlighting convergences and tensions between institutional structures and school realities. The findings aim to inform curriculum development and decision-making in ITE, particularly in contexts undergoing curricular restructuring and policy reform such as Portugal, providing insights applicable to European and other educational similar systems.Moreover, the study offers insights that contributes to international discussions on teacher education, regarding teacher professionalization, practicum organization, the role of supervision and mentoring, and the alignment between university-based education and professional practice. As a part of an ongoing longitudinal study, this study will be complemented by further analyses integrating additional data and participant perspectives. A more systematic and in-depth examination of the full dataset will enable a deeper understanding of how practicum experiences contribute to the development of professional knowledge, competences and professional identity over time.

Technical and vocational education (TVET) in Ireland is delivered through the further and higher education (HE) institutions at a national level. There are sixteen regional Education and Training Boards (ETBs), and a consolidated HE sector of traditional universities and five Technological Universities. Due to their prior history as Institutes of Technology (IoTs) with a regional focus on the development of technical and vocational education, the recently amalgamated Technology University (TU) sector is strategically positioned to deliver on TVET qualifications to advanced and higher levels nationwide. A significant number of TU lecturers have had previous technical, vocational and professional careers prior to working in a HE organisation. They bring the knowledge, skills and experience of working in practice-based settings to their teaching role in TVET educational programmes.

The aim of this research study is to explore the experiences of individuals who have moved from a technical, vocational or professional career to teaching their expert knowledge and skills in a TVET programme in higher education.

Primary research questions:

Why do practitioners make a career change decision to teach TVET programmes in technological universities? What are TU lecturers’ experiences of their career change from practitioner to teaching their technical, vocational and/or professional knowledge and skills?

The objectives are:

1. To explore what can be learnt from TVET faculty experiences to inform successful career transitions from practitioner to teacher.
2. To advance knowledge how an individual’s career adaptability can influence TVET teacher engagement in their work role
3. To map the transition from an expert practitioner to the teacher career cycle to inform and enhance skills, mobility and career prospects.
4. To develop a conceptual model of how prior educational background and professional experience contribute to an evolving TVET professional identity and agency.

This paper uses insights from the literature on career construction theory, teacher/educator career cycles, employee engagement, perspective transformation, identity self-states.

Career construction theory and career adaptability formed a core construct to understand why individuals move career, their readiness/willingness to change career, personal resources and adaptive behaviours (Savickas, 2021).

Teacher/educator career cycles emphasis the personal, organizational, and career cycle influences on the teacher role (Fessler & Christensen, 1992), and are support by an exploration of the stages in the teaching career (Hubermann, 1993) and evolving expectations for teacher educators (Smith and Flores, 2019).

Employee engagement informs how individuals use varying degrees of their ‘self-in-role’ to perform at work (Kahn, 1990).

Perspective transformation as described by Mezirow (1991) and Cranton, 2016) is a psychological process during which an individual identifies and challenges their existing assumptions that may lead to a change in habits of mind resulting in a new worldview.

Identity self-states and discrepancy theory (Markus & Nurius, 1986) are cognitive expressions of aspirations and fears that are connected to interpretations of past and current selves. These can also explain how prior educational backgrounds, and professional experiences contribute to evolving identities for TVET lecturers (Ping, Schellings and Beijaard, 2018).

This paper argues for an informed understanding of the benefits to HE organisations of practitioner career transition and adaptability to HEs. As TVET education and training advances, the importance of the professional knowledge and experience second-career TVET lecturers bring to their teaching cannot be underestimated. Nor the valuable connections to industry they bring that aligns closely with the TU industry-focused mission as they work to fulfil TU eligibility criteria while adapting and developing their HE careers.

For decades, international development agencies have promoted the transfer of Western vocational training models as a primary solution for youth unemployment in the Global South. Yet, in contexts dominated by vast informal economies, these top-down initiatives, which typically involve importing models of institutional architecture, such as German-style governance structures, qualification frameworks, and curriculum standards, have consistently failed to take root (Walther & Filipiak, 2007). This persistent policy failure stems from a critical oversight: a focus on formal systems at the expense of understanding the relational dynamics of how skills are actually formed, shared, and recognised in practice. If policy continues to ignore the lived realities of learning, it is doomed to repeat its past mistakes. This paper confronts this challenge directly by shifting the analytical focus away from institutional mimicry and towards an examination of relational processes. We ask: how is vocational learning accomplished in a complex, hybrid system where formal institutions are just one part of a much larger picture?

We present preliminary findings from a large-scale study on technical and vocational education and training (TVET) in Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy. The study focuses on the construction sector, a critical engine of employment and economic activity (Ofori, 2012), and spans several of the country’s diverse economic and cultural regions, including the Northwest, North-Central, and southern geopolitical zones. Nigeria provides a critical case for this research, as its TVET landscape is a complex hybrid of traditional apprenticeships, state-run technical colleges, and a growing number of donor-supported dual training initiatives. This complexity makes it an ideal setting to investigate how learning is organised when formal institutional coordination is weak, and to understand the tensions and synergies which arise as global policy models interact with local practices.

To understand this complex situation, our analysis uses two main theoretical tools. First, drawing on critical policy sociology (Ball, 1993), we examine how global TVET policies are interpreted, adapted, and often resisted by local actors, revealing the gap between policy-as-written and policy-as-practiced. Second, we use the principles of critical pedagogy (Freire, 1970) to analyse the power dynamics within the learner-teacher-trainer nexus, questioning educational approaches that create passive, hierarchical relationships rather than fostering active, collaborative learning partnerships. This combined approach allows us to both deconstruct policy failures and understand the lived experiences of those navigating the vocational training system. It moves beyond a simple critique of policy transfer to offer a constructive, empirically grounded alternative for understanding skills formation.

Drawing on document analysis, a mixed-methods survey, and in-depth interviews, our preliminary findings reveal three central patterns. First, vocational learning is primarily organised around participation in productive activity, with formal instruction playing a supplementary role. Second, recognition of competence is largely socially embedded, with informal validation by experienced practitioners often holding more currency than formal certificates. Third, learning opportunities are shaped by relational asymmetries, where access to mentoring and skilled tasks is mediated by social proximity and power relations.

This paper argues that sustainable vocational development depends less on replicating external institutional forms and more on strengthening the relational configurations through which learning is accomplished. It makes three contributions: conceptually, it advances a relational theorisation of vocational learning; empirically, it provides preliminary evidence of skills formation in a major African economy; and analytically, it challenges transfer-oriented approaches by privileging relational process over institutional form.

This paper critically examines how European research has addressed the relationship between migration and Vocational Education and Training (VET, hereinafter) over the past two decades. This contribution adopts an analytical approach, drawing on the corpus assembled through a recently published systematic review (SR, hereinafter) as reported in Bell Sebastián et al. (2025), and re-analysing it from a mapping/meta-research perspective, to reflect on the most salient research trends, the conceptual frameworks employed and the areas that remain underexplored in this field, as identified by the literature, which consistently points to the limited, fragmented and uneven nature of the existing scientific production (Aleghfeli et al., 2024; Jørgensen et al., 2021).

In this way, VET systems in Europe are increasingly being positioned as crucial elements for social inclusion and labour market integration, especially in the context of growing migratory flows (Avis et al., 2022; Jeon, 2019). For this reason, research focusing on the educational trajectories of migrant students in different national contexts has steadily increased (Echeverría & Martínez-Clares, 2021; Gessler et al., 2021). However, several studies have highlighted that there has been less attention to how this body of knowledge has been constructed (Gessler & Siemer, 2020) or to gaps in institutional dimensions (Lyckander et al., 2025) that remain on the margins of academic debate.

Accordingly, this paper addresses three interrelated research questions: (1) What thematic, methodological, and theoretical patterns characterise European research on migration and VET? (2) Which dimensions of VET systems and integration processes have been underexplored in existing research? and (3) What implications do these patterns have for future research agendas and to produce knowledge that informs policymaking in the field of European VET?

Beyond organising what is already known about VET and migration, this mapping-oriented analysis allows us to observe how available knowledge has been constructed, which approaches have gained greater prominence, and which aspects have received less attention. Accordingly, a reflexive approach is adopted towards the scientific production reviewed, examining patterns of concentration and visibility across different national contexts, languages of publication and academic traditions, as well as the unequal representation of methodological approaches or the voices of students who have experienced migration. This perspective is key, as it not only helps to identify thematic gaps, but also to understand how objects of study have been defined and which dimensions have been more accessible within academic debate.

Based on this analysis, the contribution is situated within a tension that runs through much of the literature on VET and migration. On the one hand, there are approaches that explain students’ difficulties in individualised or culturalised terms; on the other, there are studies that link these obstacles to factors such as discrimination, institutional segmentation, administrative uncertainty or the limited recognition of prior trajectories, all within a broader framework of structural and institutional conditions. This highlights the need to complement the prevailing focus on students’ experiences and barriers with more systematic attention to the conditions under which VET systems operate, since it is at this level that the effectiveness of inclusive measures and the possibilities for transfer across different European contexts are largely determined, according to what has been reviewed in the literature.

Profound transformation processes – including digitalisation, demographic shifts, and growing geopolitical tensions – are reshaping labour markets in complex and often unpredictable ways (Aggarwal, 2021; OECD, 2023), with far-reaching implications for how educational knowledge, responsibility, and professionalism are understood.

As future skill requirements become less certain, the relevance of vocational education and training (VET) is gaining renewed attention at the individual, institutional, and systemic levels. In this context, professionals working in development roles within the VET sector are gaining visibility. Positioned at the intersection of educational and organisational concerns, they play a crucial role in shaping adaptive and future-oriented learning environments.

These professionals are typically employed in organisations such as employer associations, training departments of large companies, hospitals, or public administrations. Their responsibilities include the design of training programmes, coordination of learning processes across institutions, and the management of quality assurance and development. Operating at the interface of pedagogical and organisational logics, their work is both educational and strategic in nature. While these actors exert considerable influence in shaping the VET ecosystem, their pedagogical orientation and professional self-understanding remain largely under-researched – particularly when compared to the relatively well-studied roles of in-company trainers and vocational school teachers (Büchter & Meyer, 2024; Forster-Heinzer, 2019).

This study addresses the identified research gap by conducting a systematic narrative literature review. It aims to synthesise key academic contributions from the fields of vocational and adult education, with particular attention to professionals occupying strategic governance and development roles. Their work reflects and responds to changing expectations around knowledge, accountability, and the public role of education.The study is guided by the following central research question: What characterises pedagogical professionalism in vocational education, and how is the concept theoretically conceptualised in the literature on vocational and adult education?

The analysis reveals a theoretically heterogeneous landscape. Three predominant conceptual orientations were identified. The first is a structural-theoretical approach, which conceptualises professionalism in terms of system logics and institutional frameworks. The second is competence-oriented, focusing on skills, standards, and qualification profiles. The third approach is subject- or biography-related, examining identity development and meaning-making processes. Additional perspectives – such as lifelong learning, professional learning communities, and boundary crossing – function as cross-cutting frames that enrich or connect the main theoretical strands.

The review highlights the conceptual ambiguity surrounding pedagogical professionalism and illustrates the difficulty of balancing educational values with organisational objectives – a tension that becomes particularly pronounced in hybrid professional roles. These findings raise broader questions about how educational responsibility is constructed and negotiated in contexts shaped by shifting epistemic cultures, digital transformation, and increasing demands for accountability.

This study advances our understanding of how knowledge, action, and responsibility are negotiated within VET-related knowledge work by bringing a previously underexplored group of strategic professionals into the discourse on professionalisation. Its findings are particularly relevant for ongoing debates about how educational research can respond to systemic uncertainty and how theoretical models of professionalism can inform practice in times of societal transformation.

Although this study is grounded in the German-speaking VET context, its findings speak to broader European debates on the professionalisation of educational actors amidst institutional transformation. Specifically, it aligns with EU-wide initiatives aimed at strengthening VET systems through upskilling strategies, lifelong learning policies, and an increased emphasis on digital and green transition competencies (CEDEFOP, 2023).

Global concern over youth mental health has intensified educational attention to student well-being, often articulated through universal international policy frameworks such as those by World Health Organisation (2021), and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (2021). However, global policies often recontextualised when they are travelled (Robertson & Dale, 2015). Crucially, school leaders play key roles in the enactment of these policies by mediating and interpreting them within their institutional and sociocultural contexts (Agron et al., 2010; Lingard et al., 2007; Powell & Graham, 2017). As a result, leadership practices for student well-being are not a simple matter of implementation, but a situated framework shaped by leaders’ biographies, values, and resources within institutional and policy environments (Lingard & Christie, 2003; Thomson, 2016). This prompts the fundamental questions about how leadership disposition is formed and consequently impacts practices across different education systems. Within this sociological lens, this study will investigate leadership for well-being not as a technical judgement, but a socially and culturally situated form of practice shaped through leaders’ biographies and broader societal conditions.

The study is a cross-cultural comparative study that explores how school leaders in Hong Kong and Finland interpret and enact student well-being in the two distinct educational fields. Though both places engage with global discourse on youth mental health, they do so through divergent moral orders, specific governance logics, and cultural traditions. Finland’s education system is embedded within a Nordic welfare orientation that foregrounds collective care and institutional trust (Sahlberg et al., 2021); whereas Hong Kong’s system is shaped by Confucian moral values, postcolonial legacies, and meritocratic governance (Hue, 2008; Tam et al., 2021; Tan, 2024). These contrasting sociocultural backdrops offer an analytically rich basis for examining how leadership dispositions toward well-being are formed and enacted under different structural conditions.

This study is grounded within Bourdieu’s theory of practice (Bourdieu, 1990), adopting the concepts of habitus, capital, and field as relational and generative tools for analysing leadership dispositions. For this study, leadership habitus is conceptualised as a system of embodied, historically sedimented dispositions through which leaders interpret their responsibilities and act within institutional constraints (Lingard & Christie, 2003). Rather than treating leadership practices as consciously selected behaviours, this framework attends to how dispositions are shaped socio-culturally within the two educational fields and enacted through leadership practices. Grounding the study in the relational and reflexive interpretations of Bourdieu (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992; King, 2000), the study will also treat habitus as adaptive and negotiated, which will unfold how leaders respond reflexively to challenges or tensions between personal values, policy demands, institutional expectations and the resources they have.

The inquiry is carried out through a biographical narrative inquiry within a constructivist-relational epistemology, through which to gain access to the articulated leadership dispositions that are formed over time (Chase, 2005; Riessman, 2008). It captures how leaders make sense and narrate their roles and practices in well-being policy. Reflexivity is integral to the research design, acknowledging my own positionality across insider and outsider roles (Fetterman, 2008), and treating knowledge production through this study as an ethically and interpretively accountable process (Creswell & Creswell, 2018).

In sum, this research questions for this study are as followed:

1. How do school leaders in Hong Kong and Finland articulate their embodied leadership values and dispositions related to student well-being?

2. In what ways are these leadership dispositions shaped by the interplay of their biographical trajectories, various forms of capital, and sociopolitical-institutional contexts?

3. How do leadership dispositions and capital shape the ways school leaders engage with and enact student well-being in practice across the two contexts?

Global conditions are significant factors that impact the vision, mission, goals, objectives, and daily decisions of individuals, societies, institutions, and nations in attaining the set target. For instance, the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted all sectors of economies and individuals, without exception, of schools and industries (Hashim et al., 2024; Irby et al., 2023). The global pandemic necessitated a significant shift in conventional leadership practices and other human engagement to virtual platforms (Cox & Mullen, 2022; Hashim et al., 2024; Irby et al., 2023; Yoshizawa, 2025). Notwithstanding, the gradual patronage of modern leaders in using virtual platforms for other purposes, it was not until the emergence of the pandemic that school leaders significantly transformed to virtual sites, hence contributing to the substantial acceptance of virtual leadership coaching (VLC) in schools (Hashim et al., 2024; Irby et al., 2023; Yurkofsky, 2021). VLC is an innovative approach to deepening learning, reinforcing skills and capabilities, and supporting current leaders to transition and undertake their tasks with clarity, dignity and accountability through virtual platforms (Cox & Mullen, 2022; Hashim et al., 2024; Irby et al., 2023; Yoshizawa, 2025). This led to the heightening integration of technologies in educational leadership, and it continues to shape how professional learning and instructional support are conveyed in diverse settings. This approach therefore reflects the relevance of emerging VLC described in this research as the progressive, structured and technology-mediated coaching furnished by modern schools to leaders and educators with the specific purpose of enhancing instructional practice and learners' learning outcomes. This definition suggests that the present landscape of leadership development is unrestricted by location, such as the USA, Europe or Sub-Saharan African countries, conference rooms, and schedules, furnishing flexibility and adaptability in leadership practices (Cox & Mullen, 2022; Hashim et al., 2024; Irby et al., 2023; Yoshizawa, 2025). Notwithstanding the significant challenge associated with the contemporary virtual learning landscape, which is inaccessibility, exploring the depth of this novel system of leadership practices to improve information delivery and dissemination is relevant ( Kenneth Leithwood, 1995).

The main purpose of this qualitative research is to investigate school leaders' lived experiences of VLC and explore how VLC impacts self-awareness, leadership expansion, and their professional conduct. This research is anchored on three significant research questions: (1) How do school leaders engaged in the school enhancement (SE) project recount their experiences of participating in the VLC? (2) What factors of VLC do school leaders discern as most influential in their growth as leaders? (3) How do school leaders explain the shift in their leadership perspectives, behaviors, and identity anchored on the virtual coaching?

This research is grounded in instructional leadership theory (ILT), transformational leadership theory (TLT), and adult learning theory (ALT) (Munna, 2021; Schunk, 2012; Stone-Johnson et al., 2023; Taylor & Hamdy, 2013).

ILT suggests that strong and effective school leaders exhibit direct influence on their students' learning outcomes by redirecting learning and teaching via professional enhancement, feedback and vision-setting (K. Leithwood et al., 2019; Munna, 2021). TLT furnishes a conceptual idea of comprehending leadership growth as a systematic process encompassing heightened relational influence, self-awareness, and value alignment. ALT portrays leaders as adult learners who essentially benefit from professional learning that is relevant, collaborative, self-directed, and problem-solving oriented (Mukhalalati & Taylor, 2019; Taylor & Hamdy, 2013).

Through the evaluation of the VLC, this research provides insight into the after-pandemic educational realities, through the increasing trajectory in hybrid and remote leadership practices. The present research supports bridging the critical gap in educational leadership studies through an empirical analysis of how leadership practices offered via virtual platforms corroborate instructional enhancements and student academic success.

Today, when high-stakes accountability pressures are emanating from all angles, including governments, state institutions, parents, and other stakeholders, there has been enormous pressure on schools and school districts, especially to up their instructional leadership role effectively and efficiently. This situation highlights the critical role of the school leader in the school ecosystem (Day et al., 2023; Leithwood et al., 2004). To improve instructional quality and monitor the activities and practice school-level leadership, studies (e.g., Kachur et al., 2013; 2010) have revealed the importance of leadership walk-throughs, especially at the elementary school level. Walk-throughs are traditionally associated with school-level leadership teams moving into classrooms to observe teaching and learning; there is growing recognition that they can also serve as a tool for the school leadership team. Although not popular in most districts, according to Alexander et al. (2025), results from a leadership walk-through can provide valuable insights to help the school leadership team reflect on their leadership practices and critically identify ways they could support the attainment of educational outcomes.

As school-level leaders engage in a myriad of activities, including setting direction and guiding their school towards achieving school goals. Leaders ensure good organizational health by creating and shaping the culture and environment of their schools to support academic work (Tomlinson, 2004). Amid performing all these functions, the question that beckons investigation is: who observes the activities of school leaders to ascertain the extent to which their leadership practices will lead to effective school enhancement? In the elementary school setting, a leadership walk-through provides an opportunity to observe the school's activities, including both instructional and non-instructional activities led by the school leadership team. Getting a clear picture of such activities is the basis for leadership walk-throughs. Leadership walk-throughs, usually conducted by an external body or individual, involve a brief but focused observation of the full range of activities of the school leadership team on a typical school day. Leadership walk-throughs help in ascertaining the activities of the school leadership team and determine how school activities can contribute to school improvement and student learning. Leadership walk-throughs, therefore, challenge the long-held assumption that school improvement efforts should focus solely on instruction rather than leadership practices (Leithwood et al., 2019; Sun & Leithwood, 2015). This is because leadership actions, inactions, interactions, and decisions a fundamental to overall school improvement (Yeigh et al., 2019; Bird et al., 2013). The purpose of this proposed study is to examine how leadership walk-throughs can be used to develop elementary school leadership practices. The study is guided by the following research questions:

RQ1: What observable leadership behaviors and practices does the school leadership team show

or enact in their school setting?

RQ2: How do school leadership teams implement instructional, relational, and managerial

practices in their school setting?

The study is conceptually grounded in Management-by-Wandering-Around (MBWA), a leadership approach with roots in Management studies (Kachur et al., 2010; Peters, 1985). Rather than serving as the formal theory for the study, the MBWA is used as a conceptual basis for understanding leadership walk-through as a strategy through which school-level leadership teams can be observed in their natural day setting, undertaking their leadership roles (Alexander et al., 2025; Tucker & Singer, 2015). This study views walkthroughs as structured, non-instrumental, and non-interruptive observations of school leadership teams. Using multiple rounds of brief, informal, and non-evaluative observation by researchers, the study will capture authentic leadership practices, school culture, and daily instructional activities in an elementary school environment.

Aim: 1) to investigate conceptual models for professional development in scientific literature, and 2) to evaluate and select a conceptual model which could help understand school principals’ professional development.

In a rapidly changing world, the need for professional development (PD) applies to all professions, across all industries and areas of work. Education and educational leadership at school level are no exceptions. PD implies that something (what?) in the professional individual changes (how?) over time. But first, why is PD of school principals important?

Why? Reports show a global crisis in the recruitment of school principals (OECD, 2020). Research also show how a possibility of indulging in PD activities strengthens retention and raises job-satisfaction for school principals. (Barber et al., 2010; Darling-Hammond et al., 2022; Pollock & Hauseman, 2016). Understanding PD for school principals might therefore be part of a solution for educational and societal challenges.

A literature review on school principals’ PD shows:

• an imbalance in research among PD for school staff, researchers are to a higher degree interested in PD for teachers than school principals. A Google Scholar search on “professional development for principals” provides only 45% of a similar search on “professional development for teachers”.
• that most focus among researchers is put on school principals entering principalship, less on PD for experienced and even less on late-career principals. (Lazenby et al., 2022).
• that primarily formal PD learning opportunities occupy researchers, while informal and nonformal are of less interest. (Veelen et al., 2017).
• only a few in-depth studies globally in which school principals are given space to reflect on their own PD. (Parylo, 2012).
• that theoretical frameworks and models for school principals’ PD are scarce. (Assor & Oplatka, 2003; Kremer-Hayon & Fessler, 1992; Weindling, 2000).
• that predominant paradigms on educational leadership at school level are mostly silent regarding school principals’ PD.

What? Literature offers a range of conceptual models for understanding professional competence. No model is specifically developed for school principals. Based on a separate analysis, a suitable model would be the holistic approach suggested by Cheetham and Chivers (1998). It is suitable because of 1) the versatile discernment of knowledge and skills, 2) the acknowledgment of meta-competencies and 3) the recognition of context and work environment (where).

How? Research lacks a generally accepted definition of PD, however, it is often described as a process which is complex, interactive, formal, informal, manageable, and measurable. (Desimone et al., 2002). PD furthermore features “individual, social, and occupational dimensions in a collaborative, inquisitive, and self-directed learning environment” (Sancar et al., 2021, p. 4). From a social constructivist perspective, PD is discussed in terms of “lifelong learning”, implying accumulation of skills and professional knowledge, as well as change of value and growth of personal qualities. (Mushayikwa & Lubben, 2009).

The form for PD varies, it takes place not only as formal activities like programs, courses, seminars and conferences but also in informal and nonformal settings. Pennings, Bottenheft, Van de Boer-Visschedjik and Stubbé (2019) state that informal learning is “the most important way to acquire and develop the skills and competencies required for work” (ibid., p. 1). Hess and Kelly (2007) report that 96% of school principals considered informal learning more important for the job than formal in-service training. Professional networks represent another example of this type of informal learning environment and they sometimes include PD activities which are “self-initiated, self-directed and self-managed” (Lazenby et al., 2022, p. 542). Nonformal PD includes for instance self-study processes.

The purpose of this paper is to find a theoretical framework which would help understand how school principals develop professionally.

There is a perceived misconception that children who are visually impaired (VI) are unable to reach the same level of physical activity (PA) as their sighted peers (Alfrey & Jeanes, 2023). Significantly, children who are VI have the potential to achieve at the same level in the same activities as their sighted peers but only when they are provided with equal opportunities (Lieberman et al., 2019). When provided with these opportunities, the fitness levels of those who are VI who engage in regular PA are comparable to sighted individuals (Stuart et al., 2006). It is also indicated in the literature that mainstream class teachers need considerable support to include children who are VI in Physical Education (PE) lessons (Grenier et al., 2023).

This paper therefore aligns with the theme of the European Conference on Educational Research (ECER), Knowing and Acting, acknowledging the opportunities, challenges and dilemmas presented in relation to supporting the inclusion of children with a VI in Primary PE lessons. It also addresses the need to develop practical supports that can be used by mainstream class teachers to enhance inclusive PE practices within the mainstream school setting.

The objective of this study is to design inclusive pedagogical supports which teachers have identified they require to support the inclusion of children who are VI in PE lessons.

This research paper is underpinned by the following research questions:
1. What teaching strategies are currently being employed by teachers during PE lessons to successfully include children who are VI?
2. What are the supports teachers identify that they need for PE lessons to enhance the learning experiences of children who are VI?
3. What support do children identify that they need for PE lessons enhance their learning experiences?
4. How effective are the researcher-designed supports as perceived by teachers and children who are VI?
5. Are there barriers to the implementation of the researcher-designed supports in school settings?

A pragmatic approach will inform the methodology in this research study. Pragmatism focuses on addressing the research questions (Biesta & Burbules, 2003; Clarke & Visser, 2019). Guided by a pragmatic paradigm, the researcher will adopt a sequential design for the study.

Previous research shows that a student’s special needs are structured and understood in different ways. For example, early childhood education pedagogical documents seem to contain varying structures of a child’s special needs (Heiskanen, Alasuutari & Vehkakoski 2018). As a result of the descriptions in the documents, different subject positions are constructed for the child, in which the dominant position is to see the child as problematic and permanently in need of support (ibid; Andreasson & Asplund 2013; Smith 2012.) Isaksson, Lindqvist and Bergström (2010) showed that principals define the student's special support needs using three models: the pedagogical model, the medical model and the social model. Andreasson and Carlsson (2013) in turn suggested that in the personal learning organization plan, the student in need of support is described through deficiencies and characteristics, different from the ideal student in school discourse. According to Vehmaa (2010), defining special needs through pedagogical documents is controversial, as it is based too much on the subjective assessments of professionals about what is good and desired behavior. The practice categorizes children as “ordinary” and “special”. Ultimately, it is also about the power that teaching professionals use when defining a student’s special needs (Ainsworth & Hardy 2004). According to Finnish Basic Education Act (628/1998,7.4.1) the basis for special support is the inadequacy of group-specific forms of support for the student's learning and school attendance. The student's absences, lack of motivation, early stage of the language of instruction or behavioral challenges cannot be grounds for transferring to special support. It is therefore important to also examine the accounts of basic education officials on the grounds on which special support is provided in municipal basic education. With this discursive research, we aim to increase understanding of the constructions of ‘special needs’ultural factors that structure and guide a student’s transition to special support, as well as the subject positions constructed for the student in the accounts. The study draws from socio-constructivist approach: Speech acts of the interviewees are not only representations of the culture of support, but they also contribute to constructing that culture. (Gee 2011; Gergen 2015.) The research aims to answer the following questions:

1. What kind of interpretive repertoires are used for justifying the need for special support?

2. What kind of subject positions are constructed for the student in these interpretive repertoires?

Early childhood education (ECE) is grounded in a pedagogical understanding that views learning as a transaction (Dewey & Bentley, 1991) between children and the world through their bodies, language, emotions, and social relationships, rather than as a linear transfer of information. From this perspective, National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) moves away from understanding developmental domains as separate categories of achievement, and conceptualises them as dynamic, interrelated dimensions that emerge simultaneously within learning processes (NAEYC, 2021). Therefore, in early childhood (EC), holistic development refers to the interplay of developmental domains within the learning context, rather than to their simple accumulation.

STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics) education is deeply rooted in Eurocentric knowledge systems (Kopparla et al., 2022) and defined as an educational approach that integrates science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics (STEAM) disciplines, addressing learning in interdisciplinary contexts (Bybee, 2010). Due to its interdisciplinary nature, STEAM education is associated with contemporary learning theories that view learning as a contextual (Liu & Wu, 2025), process-oriented (Yang, et al., 2025), and problem-based activity (Akcay Malcok & Ceylan, 2022). The integration of STEAM disciplines emphasises learning experiences in which different forms of knowledge are co-constructed (Hachey et al., 2022), rather than acquired within isolated fields.

In ECE context, STEAM education and its increasing visibility is often grounded in theoretical assumptions in the literature with reference to contribute multiple developmental domains, including language (Aktulun et al., 2024), cognitive (Başaran & Bay, 2023), and socio-emotional development (NAEYC, 2021), as well as related competencies such as communication skills (Nikolopoulou, 2023), creativity (Erol et al., 2023), problem-solving (Akcay Malcok & Ceylan, 2022), and critical thinking (Rosyida et al., 2025).

It is methodologically expected and legitimate for individual experimental studies to focus on a specific developmental domain. However, this focus can obscure the extent to which the widespread claim that STEAM can contribute to multiple developmental domains is reflected in research practices across the field. This systematic review takes as its starting point the assumption that STEAM education in EC is theoretically justified with reference to multiple developmental domains and aims to examine how this assumption is concretised in the empirical literature. Specifically, this review aims to examine which developmental domains (e.g., cognitive, language, and socio-emotional) are most frequently investigated in the literature and which domains are comparatively underrepresented. In this respect, the following research questions are posed: (1) What are the general characteristics of the reviewed studies in terms of year of publication, country of origin, and research design, and how have these characteristics evolved over time? and (2) To what extent do experimental STEAM studies in ECE address multiple developmental domains?

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental condition characterized by persistent difficulties in communication, social interaction, and patterns of restricted or repetitive behaviors (American Psychiatric Association, 2022). Students with mild ASD who are educated in special education classrooms require individualized and context-sensitive educational practices, as effective family–teacher collaboration is essential for supporting their academic, social, and emotional development.

The purpose of this qualitative case study is to explore the educational processes of two primary school students diagnosed with mild ASD who are enrolled in a special education classroom in a public school. The study focuses on how these processes are experienced and interpreted by parents and teachers, with the aim of providing a holistic understanding of students’ learning environments. The study explores these processes through the experiences, observations, and expectations of the students’ parents (two mothers and two fathers) and their teachers. By adopting a qualitative case study design, the research aims to provide a holistic understanding of how educational practices are experienced and interpreted by key stakeholders involved in students’ daily learning environments.

This study is grounded in Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological systems theory, which conceptualizes child development as the result of continuous interactions between individuals and multiple, nested environmental systems (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). From this perspective, the educational experiences of students with ASD cannot be understood solely through individual characteristics; rather, they are shaped by interactions occurring within and across family, school, and broader institutional contexts.

Within this framework, the microsystem includes the immediate environments in which students with mild ASD actively participate, particularly the special education classroom and the family. Teacher–student interactions, instructional practices, and emotional support provided in the classroom play a central role in students’ academic and social development. The mesosystem refers to interactions between these settings, most notably family–teacher collaboration, which is considered a critical factor in the effective implementation of individualized educational practices and Individualized Education Programs (IEPs).

The exosystem encompasses contextual factors that indirectly influence students’ educational experiences, such as school management practices, availability of guidance services, and institutional support structures. At the macrosystem level, national policies, cultural perceptions of disability, and societal attitudes toward inclusion shape how special education services are designed and implemented. Finally, the chronosystem highlights developmental changes over time, including the timing of diagnosis, transitions within primary education, and evolving family and school expectations.

To further strengthen the mesosystem dimension of the study, the research also draws on family–school partnership perspectives, which emphasize shared responsibility, mutual trust, and collaborative decision-making between families and educators. This complementary lens supports a holistic understanding of how parents’ and teachers’ experiences intersect in shaping the educational processes of students with mild ASD in special education classrooms.

Significance of the Study

Educational experiences of individuals with ASD should be addressed through a multidimensional framework that integrates individual needs with environmental and contextual factors (Tekin-İftar & Kırcaali-İftar, 2020). While existing research has documented effective instructional strategies for students with ASD, studies offering in-depth, case-based analyses that simultaneously incorporate family and teacher perspectives remain limited, particularly within special education classrooms.

By focusing on two students with mild ASD, this study aims to capture both shared patterns and individual differences in educational experiences. Data derived from parents’ and teachers’ observations are expected to reveal strengths and limitations of current educational practices and contribute to the development of more effective IEPs for students with similar profiles (Kasari & Smith, 2016). Additionally, the study emphasizes the importance of family-teacher collaboration and seeks to offer practical insights for educators, school counselors, and special education professionals (Karal & Alev, 2021; Yıldırım & Şimşek, 2021).

Introduction

The current societal landscape is defined by environmental threats and social turmoil. In this wicked poly-crisis, young people, in particular, are in a difficult position. The effects of climate change and biodiversity loss are expected to increase in the future, piling up on young people. At the same time, young people are encouraged to become future agents of change, but their agency is constrained by various structures and forces (Mustalahti et al., 2023). Young people are steered towards participation via formal, adult-controlled platforms that emphasize integration into the current structures of society (Juusola et al., 2023). For young people, these formal structures and institutions may appear constraining and even non-democratic (Dupuis-Déri, 2021). Meanwhile, actions outside these structures are often unaccepted in schools and other local communities (Kettunen, 2021).

Given this landscape of (un)sustainability, this presentation asks: how does young people’s sustainability agency emerge? What are its implications for environmental education? Drawing from social cognitive theory and action competence literature, the goal is to unpack the positions and agency of young people in and for sustainability. In other words, I illustrate the depth, breadth, and contextuality of young people’s sustainability agency. This work summarizes the core findings of my dissertation, comprising four original research articles that utilize both quantitative and qualitative approaches.

Theoretical framework

In recent years, despite the constraints mentioned above, young people have demonstrated their sustainability agency in many ways. Not only have we witnessed the rise of collective youth-led movements (Neas et al., 2022), but research has also identified the transformative potential of young people’s everyday activism (Skovdal & Benwell, 2021). Building on Bandura’s (2001) notion of agency, Koskela & Paloniemi (2023) defined sustainability agency as the overall desire and associated competencies to undertake actions of different modes to contribute to sustainability at various levels and scales. As people’s experiences, action contexts, and sustainability conceptions change over time, sustainability agency involves the need for continuous self-reflection and learning to adjust one’s actions (Koskela & Paloniemi, 2023).

Following the definition above, I understand sustainability agency as a combination of latent capacity and manifest actions. I approach the former using the concept of action competence, which originally describes an educational approach to foster critical, reflective, and pluralistic thinking by which learners can cope with complex sustainability issues (Mogensen & Schnack, 2010). However, Sass et al. (2020, p. 292) redefined action competence as an educational outcome to “articulate the competence of people to engage in solving sustainability issues”. Furthermore, I divide manifest actions into two categories or modes: sustainability behaviours are performed within the private sphere without challenging the current structures, while sustainability actions are usually collective and targeted at the systemic level (Oinonen & Paloniemi, 2023). Thus, the actions of young people range from behavioural modifications, such as changing one’s diet and cycling instead of driving, to social actions, such as volunteering and engaging in prominent collective movements.

Environmental degradation, resource scarcity and protracted displacement increasingly shape the educational realities of refugee-hosting regions (Dryden-Peterson 2024; Dobson et al. 2021). While these dynamics are evident globally, they are particularly pronounced in low-income countries where refugees are commonly accommodated in camps (Bose 2024). In such contexts, refugees and host communities live in close geographic proximity and depend on shared ecological systems that are under growing strain due to population pressure, deforestation, soil erosion and limited access to sustainable energy (Nakalembe et al. 2022). These environmental pressures intersect with educational inequalities, livelihood precarity and socio-political tensions, shaping everyday life and learning for both refugees and host-community learners (Bjørkhaug et al. 2025; Dryden-Peterson 2024). Despite this interdependence, education responses in refugee-hosting contexts have largely prioritised access, inclusion and system alignment, often overlooking the potential role of education in fostering environmental sustainability, collective agency and shared futures (Dryden-Peterson et al. 2019; Dobson et al. 2021; Bose 2024).

Environmental Sustainability Education (ESE) offers a critical framework for addressing these intertwined challenges by linking ecological understanding with social justice, participation and shared responsibility (Tryggvason et al. 2022). Drawing on Freirean critical pedagogy and ecopedagogical perspectives (Misiaszek 2023; Jones 2023), this study understands ESE as a dialogical and problem-posing process through which learners critically engage with environmental challenges while examining the social, political and economic conditions that shape their educational experiences (Jones 2023; Tryggvason et al. 2022). Rather than framing sustainability as a matter of individual behaviour change or technical environmental management, this approach foregrounds collective learning, critical consciousness and action-oriented competences (Ardoin et al. 2023). In contexts of forced displacement, such an orientation is particularly important, as environmental challenges are deeply entangled with questions of power, inequality, belonging and access to resources (Dryden-Peterson 2024; Dobson et al. 2021).

This study explores the role of ESE in fostering sustainability competences, pro environmental action and social cohesion among refugee and host community learners living in protracted co-settlement contexts in Uganda. While supranational policy makers in the education field such as UNESCO increasingly underscore learning for environmental sustainability, there remains limited empirical research examining how sustainability oriented education is conceptualised (Oe et al. 2022), enacted and experienced within shared refugees-hosts educational spaces. In particular, little is known about how such education operates in contexts of displacement and structural inequality and how it can supports learners’ critical awareness and agency, collective action and negotiated forms of belonging. Conceptually grounded in Freirean critical pedagogy and ecopedagogy, the study positions ESE as both a pedagogical and social process through which learners critically engage with shared environmental challenges, interrogate power relations and construct collective sustainability imaginaries within contexts of protracted displacement settlements (Dryden-Peterson 2024).

Adopting a qualitative case study approach, the research draws on in-depth engagement with approximately 20 participants, including refugee and host-community learners and teachers. This sample size enables an depth and contextual sensitivity required to explore complex pedagogical processes and lived experiences in a resource-constrained and socially diverse research setting, while prioritising analytical rather than statistical generalisation. Through participatory and dialogical ecopedagogical practices, the study examines how learners develop sustainability knowledge, critical-system thinking, collaborative-participatory problem solving and collective agency and how co-learning processes can constitutes a possibility for sustainable co-existence. The research hope to broaden debates on inclusion, educational purpose and sustainability in contexts of forced displacement, while also critically illuminating the structural constraints and tensions that shape educational practice under conditions of scarcity and structural inequality.

This paper addresses a central challenge in sustainability education: the gap between environmental awareness and environmental action among students. Despite students knowing about the climate crisis and sustainability, they often fail to translate this knowledge into meaningful behavioral change. While campaigns targeting sustainability have increased, individual carbon footprints remain high, demonstrating that knowledge alone is insufficient to drive behavioral change. A worrying discrepancy remains between environmental awareness and behavioral change. The research question guiding this study is: Why do students from different educational levels (Vocational, Applied Sciences, and University) fail to commit to sustainability, despite being aware of the climate crisis?

The theoretical framework integrates insights from environmental psychology and critical pedagogy. Concepts such as cognitive dissonance, eco-anxiety, tokenism, comfort, and responsibility shifting are used to explain why awareness does not automatically result in action. The study employs a mixed-methods approach to identify the cognitive and structural barriers preventing students from acting. The research population included students from three distinct educational levels within the Dutch education system: Vocational, Applied Sciences, and University. This allows for a comparative analysis of how educational background and pedagogical orientations influence sustainability mindsets. Data was collected through a quantitative survey (N=69) using a 5-point Likert scale, followed by semi-structured interviews (N=7) to triangulate findings and provide qualitative depth.

The results reveal that the primary barrier to action is not climate skepticism, but a profound feeling of powerlessness. The data shows a common belief that personal sacrifice is meaningless if others do not act too. However, the study also identifies differences in how this inaction manifests across different educational contexts.

This research identifies a specific paradox: the belief that individual action is futile in the face of global environmental challenges. University students demonstrated the highest levels of eco-anxiety and theoretical awareness but paradoxically reported deep feelings of paralysis. Their inaction is driven by an over-exposure to the scale of the problem without accompanying practical skills, leading to a reliance on the government to fix the problem. Conversely, Vocational and Applied Sciences students exhibited a form of distancing, arguing that environmental issues are either the responsibility of future generations or will be solved by technological innovation rather than behavioral change. In particular, Vocational students highlighted the unaffordability of sustainable choices as a major barrier.

The findings suggest that current educational models are effectively transferring factual knowledge, leading to awareness, but failing to create agency. The study concludes that this knowledge-action gap is sustained by a pedagogical focus on the severity of the crisis rather than the importance of individual influence. These findings have significant implications for educational policy, suggesting that without addressing the psychological barrier of personal insignificance, action may never happen.

While empirically grounded in the Netherlands, the study has strong European and international relevance. The paradox of inaction reflects broader dynamics present across European education systems, where sustainability is increasingly integrated into curricula yet struggles to generate behavioral change. By focusing on students’ perceived lack of impact, this research contributes to international debates on how education can move beyond awareness-raising towards empowering learners as active participants in collective sustainability transitions.

Climate change, one of the most critical issues of our time, has transcended being merely an environmental problem and has become a multi-dimensional crisis involving ethics, politics, and education. To respond to the urgent needs created by this crisis, climate change education must be redesigned with an inclusive, holistic, flexible, and locally sensitive approach (Lautensach et al., 2025). Indeed, the need for radical change and action, long emphasized by the scientific community, has reached a critical point today (Lackner et al., 2025). In this transformation process, teachers are undoubtedly the key actors who will both guide strategic design and ensure the development of action-oriented individuals (Tang, 2025). However, the effective transfer of complex scientific and social strategies into the classroom environment primarily depends on the academic qualifications and pedagogical preparation levels of the teachers who will manage these processes (Moshou & Drinia, 2023).

Despite the critical role of teachers, the current literature points to a fundamental structural gap regarding the effectiveness of educational processes. Studies show that individuals' theoretical knowledge (literacy) about climate change does not always translate into concrete actions or behavioral intentions; a disconnect, defined in the literature as the knowledge-action gap, exists at this point (Knutti, 2019). There is increasing evidence that the emotional connection individuals form with climate change influences their climate actions, making it necessary to investigate the emotional mechanisms in the process of literacy evolving into behavioral intentions. This highlights the growing importance of holistic models that address cognitive, affective, and behavioral components in climate pedagogy (Olsen et al., 2024). In this context, the research. This study aims to examine, through Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), the direct impact of pre-service teachers' environmental literacy on their behavioral intentions to mitigate climate change, and how this relationship is indirectly shaped through hope, one of the ecological emotions.

Theoretical background

The theoretical basis of this study is the Head–Heart–Hand (HHH) model developed by Sipos, Battisti, and Grimm (2008). This model represents a holistic approach that simultaneously addresses individuals' cognitive learning processes (Head), their capacity for affective connection and meaning-making (Heart), and their ability to translate these acquisitions into action (Hand). The HHH model conceptualizes learning not merely as a process limited to information acquisition, but as a transformative learning process in which information is internalized through emotions and gains meaning through action (Olsen et al., 2024). In this respect, the model aligns with theoretical views that, particularly in complex and multifaceted problem areas involving uncertainty, emotional burden, and ethical responsibility, such as climate change, learning should be evaluated not only in terms of cognitive components but also in terms of emotional and behavioral components (Tsevreni et al., 2025).

In this context, the environmental literacy construct examined in the study corresponds to the cognitive dimension (Head) of the HHH model; the ecological hope variable corresponds to the affective dimension (Heart); and the behavioral intention to mitigate climate change corresponds to the action-oriented dimension (Hand). The study aims to test the structural validity of the HHH model in a sample of prospective teachers by examining the direct and indirect relationships between these three constructs. The SEM analyses to be conducted within this scope are expected to contribute to the empirical foundations of the model and to highlight the need to address the cognitive, affective, and behavioral components of climate change education holistically.

This doctoral study examines economy as it is enacted in the mundane practices of everyday life in early childhood education and care (ECEC), with a particular focus on the work of centre directors in Finland. Drawing on feminist political economy (FPE), the study approaches ECEC as female-dominated work that is commonly framed as a burden on the public economy, thereby obscuring its socially and economically productive dimensions (Bakker, 2020). From this perspective, economy is not understood as a singular or abstract system but as multiple, relational, and embedded in everyday practices. It materializes through the entangled relations of human and non-human actors, emphasizing their interconnectedness and mutual constitution (Collard & Dempsey, 2020). Accordingly, social practices and material–affective phenomena—such as tears, facial expressions, or shivers on the skin—are conceptualized as integral to economic life rather than as peripheral or private experiences (Moura & Bispo, 2018).

The dissertation mobilizes the concept of economization to examine how economic logics are applied to areas of life typically considered non-economic, such as education and care (Çalişkan & Callon, 2009; Spring, 2015). Focusing on local-level public austerity policies in Finnish ECEC, the study explores what it means to live and work in an economy-dominated society where the authority to define and speak about economic matters is predominantly assigned to economists, who are largely men (Elomäki et al., 2019). This focus enables an analysis of how economic rationalities shape governance, leadership practices, and professional subjectivities in ECEC.

Methodologically and theoretically, the study draws on assemblage thinking (Deleuze & Guattari, 1988; DeLanda, 2006) to trace the rhizome-like nature of economization. Assemblage provides a conceptual tool for examining how economization emerges through shifting relations between human agency, political rationalities, governing techniques, and material elements. In this dissertation, economization is understood as constituted through the interplay of municipal policies, legislation, curricula, information technologies, administrative systems, and affective forces such as stress, joy, and exhaustion (Çalişkan & Callon, 2009).

The empirical analysis begins by identifying economization as a key phenomenon in ECEC through an examination of sociomaterial assemblages that take shape when centre directors speak about their work. The analyses focus on directors’ everyday doings, connecting their accounts to municipal policy documents, legislative frameworks, and ECEC governing tools. This approach sheds light on why economization has become a dominant feature of contemporary ECEC. The study then examines the materialities through which economic austerity is enacted and sustained in ECEC, demonstrating how these materialities become infrastructural over time as policies, governing tools, and human and non-human actors connect and interact.

Finally, the dissertation moves beyond policy and organizational analyses to explore the affective dimensions of economization. By analysing my own embodied and visceral experiences as ECEC centre director, the study investigates what economy does in and through the human body (Massumi, 2002). This analysis highlights how compliance with austerity policies is produced not only through rational calculation but also through affective, bodily, and relational processes.

The overall contribution of the dissertation lies in conceptualizing economization as a constitutive force in Finnish ECEC, explicating how it is assembled and examining what it produces at institutional, organizational, and embodied levels. In the integrative chapter, the three articles are brought together as an assemblage of economization, each representing a layer that moves from individual experience to institutional governance. Collectively, the studies deepen understanding of how economization unfolds in practice and why it is so difficult to identify ruptures that might enable alternative ways of acting within ECEC.

This study is situated within research on the platformisation of education and examines how everyday work practices of teachers in a Swedish upper-secondary school are reconfigured over time following the procurement and implementation of a uniform, municipality-wide learning management system (LMS). The study is located within a period of ongoing change in the digital infrastructure of Swedish education. Over the past decade, digitalisation has unfolded through shifting national strategies, the incorporation of GDPR into everyday administration, and the COVID-19 pandemic as a systemic stress test. More recently, curriculum revisions, public debates on screen use, and rapid introduction of generative AI (GenAI) into classrooms have added further pressure to established digital arrangements. GenAI, in particular, constitutes a key domain where tensions between professional-pedagogical judgement and managerial or data-driven logics become visible. Together, these developments underscore digitalisation as an ongoing and everchanging process.

Against this backdrop, the study focuses on what happens after a platform has moved beyond initial implementation and become a taken-for-granted part of everyday school practice. While much research on educational platforms concentrates on moments of introduction or policy design, less attention has been paid to how platform infrastructures are stabilised, adjusted, or contested over time as they become embedded in teachers’ professional routines. The study therefore directs attention to how earlier sociotechnical configurations, involving both platform arrangements and teachers’ work practices, are reworked as the LMS becomes part of the school’s infrastructural landscape.

The empirical setting is the Swedish education system, which can be described as highly decentralised, with responsibility for organising and governing education being distributed across municipalities and independent organisers. This governance structure affords considerable autonomy at school and teacher level and has historically allowed substantial freedom in shaping educational practice. Against this background, the municipal introduction of a shared, municipality-wide digital platform represents a new form of coordination, making Sweden an analytically productive context for examining how platform infrastructures intersect with professional judgement and institutional expectations over time.

Aim of the study

The aim of the study is to examine how teachers’ everyday work practices are reconfigured over time in relation to the continued use of a municipality-wide LMS, focusing on how the platform becomes embedded in daily work and how established pedagogical, administrative, and communicative practices are stabilised, adjusted, or challenged.

Research questions

The study is guided by the overarching research question: How does platformisation meet institutional logics in educational contexts?

This is operationalised through three research questions:

1. How does platformisation reconfigure institutional logics in everyday educational practice over time?
2. How do teachers and other school staff navigate competing institutional logics as the LMS has become taken for granted and generative AI tools are introduced into existing platform infrastructures?
3. How are institutional logics renegotiated over time through changes in platform use, data practices, and policy expectations related to digitalisation and education?

Theoretical framing

The theoretical framework combines infrastructure studies with an institutional logics perspective (Friedland & Alford, 1991; Thornton et al., 2012). Adopting an STS-informed platformisation lens, the study examines how platforms organise everyday educational activities and how institutional expectations are enacted in practice (Latour, 2005). This enables attention to how platform features shape practical reasoning, responsibility, and forms of visibility (Bowker & Star, 2008; Hartong & Decuypere, 2023).

The institutional logics perspective provides a complementary account of how historically embedded norms, values, and accountability arrangements shape organisational practices and professional legitimacy (Thornton et al., 2012). In platformised education, institutional logics are translated and hybridised through sociotechnical arrangements, particularly in tensions between professional-pedagogical judgement (Freidson, 2001) and managerial or data-oriented logics emphasising standardisation and comparability (Williamson, 2017).

Early career teachers face significant challenges as they transition from pre-service to in-service teaching (Johnson et al. 2014). Many experience ‘practice shock’ (Kelchtermans. 2019, p. 89), involving high levels of stress and burnout. Across education systems worldwide, induction programs are recognised as vital for supporting early career teachers through this ‘critical phase’ (Kearney, 2014, p. 5). Induction supports early career teacher resilience, effectiveness and retention (Mansfield & Gu, 2019), which is particularly important when considering how high levels of early career teacher attrition are contributing to the current context of widespread teacher shortages (Sullivan et al., 2019).

In countries such as Australia, national induction guidelines aim to provide consistent induction support to early career teachers within a federated education system. The Guidelines for the Induction of Early Career Teachers into the Profession (AITSL, 2023) can be used to ‘underpin the development of programs and practices to support early career teachers’ (p. 4). They focus on the retention of early career teachers, with a strong focus on wellbeing (Rowe et al., 2025). The guidelines outline a range of different supports, such as workplace and community orientation, professional practices, and relationships, which are intended to increase early career teacher retention due to the growing challenge of global teacher shortages (AITSL, 2023).

However, these guidelines are interpreted differently across states and territories, as jurisdictions develop their own policies in response to local priorities and workforce challenges. Policy is often reshaped as it moves between national and local systems (Ball et al., 2012), through a process of recontextualisation during which, as Bowe et al. (2017) note, policies are removed from their original context and reassembled within new settings where they are influenced by local priorities. As a result, national policy designed to support early career teachers can produce diverse ideas of what induction support should entail, who is eligible to receive it, and ultimately, which early career teachers are included or excluded.

Using critical policy analysis, we consider the effectiveness of local policy documents by drawing on the Conceptual Framework for Early Career Teacher Induction (Sullivan et al., 2025, under review). This framework, informed by a critical human resource development perspective, has reconceptualised the structure of teacher induction by identifying three key elements: induction, onboarding, and professional learning. In contrast to current approaches, this framework provides a critical view on what kind of support should be offered and what inequalities currently exist around induction.

Previous research has shown that the national guidelines assume stable, continuous employment in a single school, benefitting teachers with secure positions while marginalising those employed casually or on short-term contracts (Rowe et al., 2025). For teachers employed insecurely, induction is largely reduced to onboarding, with limited access to ongoing socialisation or professional learning. In our study, we use the conceptual framework to critically examine how policies adhere to or depart from the three key elements of induction and how this affects which early career teachers are supported.

Therefore, this study investigates how early career teacher induction is conceptualised within state-level education policy in four Australian states and territories: New South Wales, the Northern Territory, South Australia and Victoria. We critically examine how national induction policy is recontextualised across different levels of governance, and in doing so, we show how induction policy can change within a devolved education system, with relevance for other countries which organise induction policy across federal and state levels.

The research is guided by the following questions:

1. In what ways do local policy documents define the induction of early career teachers?
2. How are national induction policy guidelines recontextualised within these local policy documents?

Human Cultural Evolution Theory (HCET) has developed during the past 50 years. By explaining how people form and manage groups (Boyer, 2020), HCET provides a biological, evolutionary basis for the conservative and adaptive patterns of political and sociological understandings relating to the field of education.

This paper will introduce HCET, then address the following research questions (RQ).

RQ1. How does HCET inform the work of Anyon, Beck and Durkheim?

RQ2. What are the implications of HCET for curriculum innovation, inquiry and transmissive pedagogies?

RQ3. What are the consequences for failing to consider human attributes based on cultural evolution in education governance structures?

In complex social species, such as primates, cetaceans and several families of birds, innovations by individuals are occasionally transferred to others, a phenomenon that requires a capacity for observational learning. However, adding a variation to a learnt behaviour pattern is much less common than its maintenance, explaining why cumulative cultural evolution is a rare phenomenon (Boyd & Richerson, 1996). Among living complex, social species, humans are extreme outliers in their capacity for cooperation and communication (Tomasello, 2014). These attributes have resulted in the complete dependence of every human society on its culture (Henrich, 2017, p. 318).

Natural selection operates on ideas (memes) as much as on genes (Richerson & Boyd, 2008). In humans, cultural factors are hypothesised to have acted as important synergistic drivers for a range of physical traits, particularly those associated with communication. An important example are eyes with visible whites (sclera), a feature that enables gaze to be tracked and the mental states of others to be deduced (Boyer, 2020, p. 22; Rozov, 2025; Skoyles, 2023); a skill that is evident from infancy (Butterworth, 2004; Messer, 2004; Woodward, 2003).

The speed of cultural accumulation in humans, particularly during the past 150 years, has provoked attention to the role of culturally inherited cognitive mechanisms in social learning. A suggested progression, acting over millions of years, is imitation, language, mindreading (or theory-of-mind) for teaching, metacognition and normative cognition (Birch & Heyes, 2021, p. 1). These mechanisms are cultural because they recruit learners and therefore bypass genetic selection. They are all processes that are familiar to educational and psychological contexts.

Cultures are maintained by ‘in-group’ biases towards shared perspectives (e.g., moral, economic, political) signalled to others (e.g., by dress, accent or gesture) and reenforced by ‘coalitional recruitment’, which can be as subtle as a look (gaze) (Boyer, 2020, p. 54). These group traits, like the phenotype of an individual, also confer evolutionary ‘fitness’. In HCET, the social dynamics of human societies (Turchin, 2016) is explained by ‘multi-level selection’ (Kendal et al., 2009; Turchin, 2016; Walker et al., 2021), which involve separate (often conflicting) advantages of complying with ‘group norms’ or acting individually.

Social learning, evident in transmissive pedagogies, conserves the status quo of group norms, but does not contribute to cumulative cultural knowledge. Like the genetically analogous concept of asexual reproduction, which does not contribute to variation, but is a ‘low cost’, efficient means of reproduction in stable environments. Asocial learning (i.e., individual learning), generally promoted in education by using inquiry pedagogies, risks being irrelevant, so is generally ‘high cost’, although asocial learners may experience an ‘exclusive pay-off’ in a changed environment (Kendal et al., 2009, p. 210).

Multi-level selection explains the challenges of introducing innovation to schooling, from radical curriculums (Lingard & McGregor, 2014), subject integration (Termaat, 2023; Venville et al., 2008; Wallace et al., 2007), or frameworks that foster thinking, (Dickson et al., 2020a, 2020b; Johnson & Boon, 2023; Leat, 1999; Millar, 2022). Each example is likely to oppose the cultural ‘norm’ of +past practice.

Ecosystems are complex systems composed of hierarchically organized subsystems embedded within larger networks of interactions (Jin et al., 2019; Schizas, Papatheodorou, & Stamou, 2019). This complexity not only leads students to demonstrate fragmented and compartmentalized knowledge (Eilam, 2011) but also creates difficulties in developing a systemic understanding of ecosystems and causal relationships (Grotzer & Basca, 2003). For example, students often struggle to explain concepts that require a higher level of systems thinking beyond simple cause-and-effect relationships and involve understanding the indirect and dynamic relationships within ecosystems, such as carrying capacity, exponential growth, and feedback loops (Jin et al., 2019). While indirect relationships are central to understanding complex ecological systems, they are usually not directly observable; therefore, students tend to focus on simple linear direct relationships (Mambrey et al., 2020). Predator–prey interactions, for instance, are usually interpreted in terms of direct population changes; that is, a decrease in prey population leads to a decrease in predator populations but misses the indirect relationships. Accordingly, understanding ecosystems requires a systems-thinking approach that holistically addresses nonlinear relationships, feedback loops, and interactions among system components (Grotzer & Basca, 2003). Systems thinking encompasses learners’ ability to understand biological systems by recognizing their key characteristics and applying discipline-specific concepts to explain interdependencies within ecosystems, including the influences of human activities (Gilissen, Knippels, & van Joolingen, 2020; Jin et al., 2019). In the context of this study, systems thinking is defined as learners’ ability to use discipline-specific concepts to describe interdependency in ecosystems, including the influence of human activity (Jin et al. 2019). Although complex systems operate according to their principles and cannot be entirely managed by humans, human activities can influence and, in some cases, disturb natural systems (Riess & Mischo, 2010).

Building on this perspective, the purpose of science education has been redefined as preparing accountable, conscious individuals who can reason about complex systems. In fact, the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS, 2013; NRC, 2013) address the concept of “Systems and System Models” as a cross-cutting concept and ‘Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, and Dynamics’ as a Disciplinary Core Ideas in life sciences. The Next Generation Science Standards (2013) also note that human activities have significantly impacted the biosphere, in some cases causing habitat loss and species extinction. Similarly, the recently revised Turkish Science Education Curriculum emphasizes the importance of complex systems, systems thinking, and systems literacy (MoNE, 2024, p. 55). To this end, educating future citizens to engage with complex global environmental challenges shaped by human-environment interactions requires teachers to possess high-level systems thinking skills. Accordingly, this study aims to clarify future science teachers’ understanding of ecosystem dynamics and the influence of humans on those dynamics through the lens of systems thinking.

Teacher noticing is widely recognized as central to responsive teaching (Sherin & van Es, 2009; Jacobs et al., 2010), yet science education research has often described what teachers attend to more than how they interpret student thinking in discipline-specific ways (Chan et al., 2021; Amador & Weston, 2024). This gap is especially consequential in conceptually dense topics such as heat and temperature, where students’ ideas are frequently shaped by everyday language and experience and where partially correct explanations can coexist with persistent conceptual confusions. Teachers’ interpretive stances therefore matter because they shape whether students’ utterances are treated as resources for scientific sense-making or positioned mainly as errors to be corrected (Coffey et al., 2011).

Building on conceptualizations that distinguish attending, interpreting, and deciding how to respond (Jacobs et al., 2010; Barnhart & van Es, 2015), this study focuses on the interpreting facet and examines qualitative variation in physics teachers’ meaning-making about student conceptual knowledge and reasoning. Rather than classifying teacher noticing with broad evaluative labels, the study aims to make interpretive pathways visible and describable by identifying patterns in what teachers treat as salient, what they take as evidence, and how they warrant claims about students’ thinking. The study is grounded in a view of noticing as professional vision (Goodwin, 1994) and knowledge-based reasoning. Accordingly, even when teachers respond to the same student knowledge or reasoning in a shared stimulus, they can differ in what they treat as evidence and in how they justify their interpretations.

Empirically, the study uses a shared instructional stimulus in which all participants respond to the same hypothetical classroom dialogue on heat and temperature. This design enables systematic comparison of interpretive stances under a common condition while still approximating classroom discourse and the kinds of student ideas teachers regularly encounter. The focal content domain includes heat, temperature, and internal energy, along with internationally documented conceptual difficulties and reasoning patterns. Although the data are situated in one national context, the domain and its learning challenges have been widely reported across countries, supporting the broader relevance of the interpretive patterns identified.

Research question: What are the qualitative variations in physics teachers’ interpretations of students’ conceptual knowledge and reasoning when prompted by a hypothetical classroom dialogue on heat and temperature?

The intended contribution is a transferable analytic lens that maps variation in teachers’ interpretive orientations and clarifies how different interpretations are constructed. By rendering interpretive work more explicit, the study provides a basis for teacher education discussions about analyzing student thinking in science and for future work examining how interpretive orientations relate to subsequent instructional moves and to students’ opportunities for scientific sense-making.

Mathematics education in primary schools provides a crucial foundation for students’ long-term academic development, with teacher-related factors playing a decisive role in shaping both achievement and motivation (Niemi et al., 2025). Teachers’ instructional practices are among the most influential school-based determinants of learning and motivation (Hattie, 2023). In mathematics classrooms, effective teaching extends beyond the delivery of content to encompass how teachers structure learning processes, foster motivation, and create emotionally supportive relationships with students (Desmet et al., 2023). Recent research highlights that the cognitive, motivational, and relational dimensions of teaching jointly contribute to students’ academic achievement, engagement, and well-being (Yang et al., 2021).

Instructional practices in mathematics can be located along a continuum from structured, teacher-directed approaches that ensure clarity and organisation, to student-oriented and agency-supportive practices that promote exploration, autonomy, and ownership of learning (Lee et al., 2026). Motivationally supportive practices— particularly competence support and utility enhancement—help students perceive mathematics as both achievable and meaningful, thereby increasing engagement and persistence (Niemi et al., 2025).

Beyond instructional strategies, the emotional and relational quality of teacher–student relationships (STRs) is a critical determinant of motivation and engagement (Longakit et al., 2025). Supportive relationships characterised by warmth, trust, and responsiveness have been shown to enhance students’ intrinsic motivation and emotional well-being (Desmet et al., 2023). Teacher emotional support has a particularly strong effect during the primary years, predicting both academic motivation and engagement through mechanisms such as self-efficacy and behavioural involvement (Yang et al., 2021). Teachers’ emotional intelligence and their ability to express genuine, appropriately regulated emotions play an essential role in maintaining these positive interactions and in creating psychologically safe classroom climates (Longakit et al., 2025). Despite this extensive body of evidence, teachers vary considerably in how they integrate cognitive, motivational, and emotional dimensions in their classroom practices (Kasa et al., 2024).

Estonia provides a particularly valuable context for exploring such diversity. Although teachers enjoy high professional autonomy and perform strongly in international assessments such as PISA and TIMSS (Eisenschmidt et al., 2025), empirical studies reveal wide variation in classroom practices (Leijen & Pedaste, 2018). The coexistence of class teachers (generalists) and subject-specialist mathematics teachers adds further heterogeneity to instructional approaches (Tuul et al., 2015). While national policy promotes student-centred and competence-based learning, many classrooms still exhibit a blend of traditional and reform-oriented features (Leijen & Pedaste, 2018). Thus, although Estonia’s overall student achievement is high, little is known about which types of teachers and teaching profiles contribute most effectively to students’ performance and motivation in mathematics.

This paper, which forms part of a doctoral project on mathematics teachers’ beliefs and practices in Estonia, employs a person-centred approach—specifically Latent Profile Analysis (LPA)—to identify distinct profiles of primary mathematics teachers based on their instructional practices, motivational support, and teacher–student relationships. The study further examines how these teacher profiles relate to students’ mathematics achievement and motivation.

Research questions

1. What latent profiles of primary mathematics teachers can be identified based on their instructional, motivational, and relational practices?
2. How are these teacher profiles associated with students’ mathematics achievement and motivation?

In the twenty-first century, individuals are increasingly encountering genetic-related issues all around the world due to technological advances, societal demands, and political factors (Aivelo & Uitto, 2021; Cebesoy & Öztekin, 2016). As science education is being renewed to meet the needs of the century, genetics-related issues are also being taken into consideration within the scope of science courses. Genetics-related issues can be viewed as an umbrella term encompassing various issues, such as genetic testing, cloning, gene therapy, and genetically modified foods (Lederman et al., 2014). The applications of genetic engineering, which affect societies in various ways, are discussed in different perspectives, such as ethical, political, and religious perspectives (Arslan, 2020).

Genetic determinism is the belief that genes alone determine phenotypes, often underestimating the roles of environmental and epigenetic factors (Bruu-Carver et al., 2017). This misconception is common in genetics education (Aivelo & Uitto, 2021; Tornabene et al., 2020). Current scientific models highlight the complex interactions between multiple genes, epigenetics, and environmental influences, shifting from a deterministic to a probabilistic understanding (Bruu-Carver et al., 2017). However, studies on individuals' beliefs regarding genetic determinism are limited (Cebesoy & Karışan, 2019; Gericke et al., 2017; Stern et al., 2020), prompting researchers to explore pre-service science teachers' (PSTs') beliefs about genetic determinism.

Additionally, the rapid production of information in the genomics field makes it imperative for citizens to develop informed attitudes and make informed decisions on genetic-related issues. This presents a significant challenge for science educators, who must closely follow scientific developments, keep their content knowledge up-to-date, and adapt to new technological innovations (van der Zande et al., 2012). The science education literature includes studies that focus on specific dimensions related to genetics, such as content knowledge of genetic topics (van der Zande et al., 2011) and informal reasoning (Sadler & Zeidler, 2004). Also, when dealing with socio-scientific issues like modern genetic applications, it is necessary to consider not only individuals' knowledge levels but also their attitudes and their decision-making. There have been studies that explore individuals' attitudes towards genetic issues and their decision-making in various scenarios, such as modern genetic applications and biotechnological advancements (Cebesoy & Rundgren, 2023; Soğukpınar & Karışan, 2020). This research takes a comprehensive look at genetic determinism, knowledge, attitudes, and decision-making. Additionally, the current mixed-methods study aims to compare quantitative and qualitative data regarding PSTs attitudes toward modern genetic applications. PSTs were chosen as the focus of this research because they will play a critical role in teaching future science and biology courses.

Within the scope of this study, answers were sought to five research questions.

RQ1: What are PSTs’ beliefs in genetic determinism?

RO2: What are the PSTs’ knowledge about the complexity of gene-environment interactions and modern genetics and genomics?

RQ3: What are the PSTs’ attitudes toward applications of modern genetics and genomics (gene therapy, genetic testing, prenatal genetic testing and personalised medicine-pharmacogenomics cases)?

RQ4: How do PSTs' reasoning behind their decisions regarding modern genetic applications in terms of the SEE-SEP model?

RQ5: To what extent and in what ways do qualitative findings explain the quantitative results regarding PSTs’ attitudes toward modern genetic applications?

The recent adoption and phased implementation of the Primary Curriculum Framework (2025) and its associated subject specifications represent a key stage in the ongoing development of primary education in Ireland. This study explores the implementation of the reform in practice, examining the integration of Arts Education (Drama, Music and Art) within Social and Environmental Education (SEE), which comprises the subjects of History and Geography. The study is positioned at a critical juncture where the “Knowing and Acting” of educational reform meets the pragmatic realities of the classroom. The Primary Curriculum Framework (2025) emphasises holistic development and creative agency, while also reducing the mandated minimum time allocation for dedicated Arts Education in Stages 3 and 4 (3rd to 6th Class) in order to accommodate an expanded curriculum.

This research explores how arts integration, through the use of creative pedagogies, offers a robust solution to this temporal constraint. By repositioning the arts as the primary vehicle for understanding SEE, rather than as isolated subjects, the research tests a model in which teacher–student collaboration and innovation blur traditional subject boundaries. Drawing on Irish and international literature, the study responds to a recognised policy–practice gap in arts integration, where curriculum intentions are frequently challenged by limited time, variable teacher expertise and the absence of shared integration frameworks.

Pending ethical approval, the study will involve an 8-week pedagogical design cycle across all four curriculum stages (Junior Infants to 6th Class), commencing in Autumn 2026, and will focus on teachers’ professional judgement and experiences of arts integration. Central to this cycle is the utilisation of the arts to facilitate learning in a playful and exploratory manner. This playfulness is theorised not as a lack of rigour, but as a pedagogical stance characterised by “possibility thinking” (Craft, 2005), metaphor and embodied exploration. Such an approach aligns directly with the aims of the Primary Curriculum Framework (2025), which envisions a curriculum where agency is nurtured through engaging and imaginative experiences.

Through a pragmatist lens, the research focuses on teachers’ perceptions of effective practice during the initial term of the new Arts Education and SEE Specifications rollout. The pedagogical cycle utilises Drama for perspective taking, Music to evoke a sense of place and Art to represent social and environmental change. Data will be collected through surveys, structured reflection, classroom observation and teacher interviews, providing insight into how creative pedagogies are enacted in classrooms. The research evaluates how these multi-modal approaches allow for the grasp of complex social and environmental systems, by centring the creative pedagogies employed by teachers at the centre of teaching and learning.

Drawing on findings emerging from the literature review, early analysis highlights that while arts integration supports conceptual connection and engagement, implementation can become tokenistic without teacher agency, planning time and shared pedagogical models. Anticipated outcomes suggest that this integrated model can help bridge the implementation gap between policy documentation and classroom practice by enhancing teacher confidence and professional agency. Following a detailed literature review, preliminary indications suggest that the playful and aesthetic qualities of the arts support classroom practices that help students connect ideas across disciplines. Furthermore, the study expects to demonstrate that arts integration optimises the limited time available in Stages 3 and 4 of the Primary Curriculum Framework (2025), effectively restoring creative space through pedagogical efficiency. As an emerging researcher, the author seeks to contribute evidence on how creative arts practices can translate policy into classroom action, providing timely insights for teachers, school leaders and curriculum designers, contributing to the successful realisation of Ireland’s new educational vision for primary education.

European research on art education increasingly emphasises creativity, aesthetic experience, inclusion, and digital transformation as central dimensions of higher education (Bamford, 2006; Winner, Goldstein, & Vincent-Lancrin, 2013). In parallel, artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as a powerful yet contested force in education, raising critical questions regarding creativity, authorship, and the role of technology in artistic and pedagogical practices (Holmes et al., 2019). Despite growing interest in AI in education, its potential as an arts-based pedagogical mediator remains underexplored within art education research.

Music occupies a significant position within European traditions of art education due to its embodied, emotional, and multimodal nature (Bresler, 2007). In foreign language education, songs have been shown to support vocabulary acquisition, listening comprehension, pronunciation, and affective engagement (Ludke, Ferreira, & Overy, 2014). From a sociocultural perspective, musical activities can lower affective filters and promote meaningful participation in language learning (Krashen, 1985). However, instructors in multilingual higher education contexts frequently encounter limitations when attempting to integrate music into language curricula, as existing songs rarely align with CEFR-based learning objectives or specific linguistic content.

Recent advances in generative AI offer new opportunities to address these challenges. AI tools such as ChatGPT, Suno, and Udio enable the creation of original songs tailored to pedagogical goals, learner levels, and curricular requirements. From an art education perspective, such tools invite reconsideration of creative agency and human–AI collaboration within post-digital learning environments (Knochel & Patton, 2015).

Although the empirical study was conducted in Kazakhstan, it is conceptually framed within European educational and art education discourses. Kazakhstan represents a multilingual higher education context comparable to many European systems in terms of language diversity, digitalisation, and competency-based curricula. The study therefore addresses shared European challenges and contributes transferable insights to research on arts-based pedagogy in higher education.

Within a European context marked by anti-trans – and more broadly anti-gender – mobilizations (Kuhar & Paternotte, 2017), this paper examines how “gender and sexuality issues” are being taken up within French schools. While a form of “moral panic” (Cohen, 1972) emerged as early as the 2010s following the alleged introduction of so-called “gender theory” into school textbooks (Gallot & Pasquier, 2018), recent years have witnessed a clear resurgence of these controversies. In particular, 2021 saw the publication of the French ministerial circular “For Better Consideration of Issues Related to Gender Identity in Schools”. This policy text, intended to frame the inclusion of trans pupils, has indeed raised concerns – if not outright resistance – among some education professionals (Alessandrin, 2022). More recently, the rollout in 2025 of the “Affective, Relational and Sexuality Education” program (EVARS) appears likewise to have rekindled this “fear of gender” (Butler, 2024) within schools. But what kinds of fears are encapsulated by these “gender and sexuality issues”? International scholarly literature offers valuable insights, documenting a wide range of resistances to gender and sexuality issues in school contexts (Meyer, 2010). Within the French-speaking academic field, research has likewise proliferated, highlighting the persistence of heteronormativity (Richard, 2019) and “cis-schooling” across primary and secondary education in France. At the same time, more recent studies shed light on initiatives aimed at deconstructing the cis-heteronormative model (Flores Espinola et al., 2024). Building on this body of work, the present paper seeks to investigate the introduction of “new” gender and sexuality issues within a specific socio-political context shaped by unprecedented anti-trans and anti-gender social movements. More specifically, it proposes a cross-analysis of two policy “devices,” understood here as heterogeneous assemblages combining prescriptions, materials and practices (Foucault, 1977): on the one hand, the 2021 circular on gender identity in schools, and on the other, the implementation of the EVARS program. This analytical choice is not incidental; rather, it aims to reflect more broadly on how gender and sexuality issues are being institutionally constructed within the field of education and training. To this end, the concept of “new” educational problems (Moignard, 2018) is mobilized. Such an approach helps to clarify what is actually being called into question by education professionals in France, while also contributing to scholarly debates beyond the Francophone context.

Proposal Information

Gender awareness is often shaped through formal curricula and institutionalized forms of education. However, everyday experiences beyond the classroom, particularly those involving mobility and cultural transition, also play a crucial role in how individuals learn, negotiate, and reconfigure their gendered understandings. This study explores how international students’ travel experiences function as an informal yet powerful site of gender learning, where gender norms are encountered, questioned, and reinterpreted across cultural contexts.

As international students move between their home societies, host institutions, and travel destinations, they are exposed to diverse and sometimes contradictory gender regimes. These encounters frequently disrupt taken-for-granted assumptions about gender roles, expectations, and identities, prompting processes of reflexivity and re-learning. Rather than viewing gender learning as a planned pedagogical outcome, this study conceptualizes it as an emergent and situated process embedded in mobility, everyday practices, and social interaction.

Guided by an interpretive qualitative approach, the study addresses the following exploratory research questions:

1. How do international students’ cross-cultural travel experiences contribute to the development of gender awareness beyond formal education?
2. How do international students negotiate, perform, and reflect upon their gendered identities while navigating different cultural and social contexts?
3. In what ways can mobility and travel be understood as informal sites of gender learning and re-socialization?

The primary objective of the study is to examine how gender consciousness is produced and transformed through cross-cultural mobility. Focusing on the lived experiences of international students studying in Taiwan, the research aims to illuminate how gender learning occurs through informal, incidental, and embodied encounters rather than through explicit gender education curricula.

Conceptually, the study draws on theories of informal learning, particularly Schugurensky’s (2000) framework of self-directed learning and socialization occurring outside institutional settings, which distinguishes between intentional and incidental learning processes as part of everyday experience. This perspective is complemented by feminist theories of gender socialization, which emphasize that gender learning is continuous, relational, and deeply embedded in everyday life. Feminist Geography and Critical Mobility Studies further inform the analysis by foregrounding mobility as a gendered and power-laden process rather than a neutral act of movement. The concept of the “Third Space” is employed to examine how international students navigate the tension between home and host cultural norms, creating liminal spaces in which dominant gender assumptions may be unsettled and reconfigured. Together, these perspectives frame gender learning as an ongoing, informal educational process shaped through mobility and cultural encounter.

Intersectionality is a central concept in contemporary feminist thought (Crenshaw, 1989), but its high level of theoretical abstraction has historically made it difficult to incorporate into early educational stages, especially within formal education contexts. This paper presents a pedagogical experience developed with sixth-grade students (ages 11–12) in the Spanish education system in a rural context, whose objective was to work on the concept of intersectionality through participatory methodologies and experiential learning, integrated into a broader Comprehensive Sexual Education (CSE) program.

The proposal stems from a dual question: on one hand, how to make a complex and relatively new concept comprehensible to students in preadolescence; on the other, why participatory methodologies –widely used in non-formal education spaces– remain marginal or exceptional in formal schooling, despite their transformative potential to carry out meaningful learning processes (Gallardo-López y Muñoz, 2021). From this perspective, the work questions the historical separation between formal and non-formal education, as well as the pedagogical assumptions that have legitimised this division (Ríos-Ramírez, 2023).

The experience is based on the design and implementation of a playful, embodied activity structured in two successive rounds. First, students are asked to “embody” characters with different social positions, genders, origins, abilities, and family contexts, confronting situations that reveal structural inequalities. Through movement in space, participants experience in a situated way –but with a certain emotional distance– how different dimensions of identity can interact. In the second round, a methodological shift is introduced: participants stop representing a character and position themselves as themselves. The situations presented are then adapted to their age, context, and possible experiences, so that they can recognise how social axes also intersect in their own reality.

This transition from “embodied character” to “myself” is the pedagogical core of the proposed activity. In this activity, students move from passive listeners to putting their bodies into educational practice, generating a connection between theoretical concepts and sensations, emotions, and affectivities (Freire, 1970). This bodily and emotional dimension is key to the internalisation of content, fostering meaningful (un)learning that goes beyond mere cognitive transmission. The experience shows how students not only understand the concept of intersectionality, but are also able to develop empathetic, critical, and reflective responses to the situations of inequality (re)presented.

During the activity, moments of collective reflection open up through which complex notions about sexualities, gender, discrimination, privileges, and oppression, among others, are internalised, thus connected with previous CSE knowledge.

This paper argues that this type of proposal, applied in contexts where a climate of trust and group cohesion already exists, allows for addressing “intense” theoretical content that often remains beyond the reach of those who are not previously politicised or mobilised. Likewise, it argues that experience contributes to dismantling deeply rooted meritocratic discourses in traditional education, promoting critical awareness of how social categories can intervene and influence life trajectories.

Once a formative space for future researchers and a relatively protected space for the curiosity-driven pursuit of deep knowledge and mastery (Deem, 2020) (aligned with Mode 1 of knowledge production), doctoral education (DE) has been increasingly shifting its focus and reconfiguring its characteristics (Magalhães & Veiga, 2018; Sarrico, 2022).

At the beginning of the XXI century, within the scope of the Bologna Process, higher education institutions were pressured to demonstrate DE’s value in more tangible, quantifiable terms, and called upon to play a more active role in driving economic growth and innovation. To respond to the growing demands for relevance (Kyvik & Olsen, 2012) for enabling technological development and cutting-edge innovation (Jung, 2022), transnational policy discourse began influencing Higher Educations’ dynamic and the concept and design of DE (Magalhães & Veiga, 2017). As the ‘knowledge triangle’ doctoral education-research-innovation (Maassen & Stensaker, 2011; Veiga, 2023) nexus became embedded in national and institutional strategies (Magalhães & Veiga, 2018), the purpose of STEM[1] DE was reshaped to incorporate innovation-oriented goals. This provoked changes in the characteristics of the traditional model of the doctorate (Cardoso, 2024; Kehm, 2006; Nerad, 2020). In the scope of Mode 2 of knowledge production, it reconfigured to a project-based (Ylijoki, 2016) model, often accompanied by stronger ties to externally/privately funded research projects, in collaboration with industry partners (Santos & Patrício, 2020), and a growing emphasis on producing tangible outcomes (e.g. prototypes, patents, innovations with commercial value).

As DE became driven by globalisation and internationalisation, interconnected global challenges (such as sustainability and digital transformation) were placed on funding agendas and research priorities (Heitor, 2025; Letta, 2024). DE became expected to shift its focus on solving immediate context-specific problems towards focusing on integrating knowledge into complex, dynamic, interconnected ecosystems more aligned with Mode 3 of knowledge production (Carayannis et al., 2016).

Given the current ‘’new complex of uncertainty’’ (Heitor, 2025; Nowotny et al., 2001) shaped by geopolitical tensions, the call for strengthening the link between the knowledge triangle components to promote European competitiveness and sovereignty, as well as addressing global common challenges (e.g. Letta, 2024; Draghi, 2024; Heitor, 2024; Niinisto, 2024) became imperative. As such, a hybrid, adaptive, and evolving Mode 3 of knowledge production (Machado et al., 2024; Smith & Leydesdorff, 2022) is gaining traction, expanding the purposes of DE towards greater societal responsiveness and global responsibility. However, this shift does not replace Mode 2 logics; rather, it appears to coexist with (and in some cases intensify) expectations related to competitiveness, innovation and strategic utility. These tensions increasingly permeate STEM DE given this fields’ connection to dual-use knowledge, defence-related technologies and strategic innovation.

From a theoretical perspective, these dynamics are unfolding in what has been conceptualised as a shift (CDE-EUA, 2022; Heitor, 2025) towards Mode 3 of knowledge production. While DE has been analysed through the lenses of Mode 1 and Mode 2 knowledge production, given the current social, economic and political dynamics, it is worthwhile to analyse how Mode 3 conditions are reconfiguring the purposes and the characteristics of DE, particularly in STEM fields.

Against this background, this paper seeks to examine how the purpose and characteristics of STEM doctoral education are being reconfigured under the shift to Mode 3 knowledge production?

[1] STEM-science, technology, engineering, mathematics

With the continuous expansion of higher education and the rapid transformation of labor market structures, the proportion of non-traditional doctoral students has been steadily increasing. PhD students following a non-linear pathway represent a typical subgroup. Unlike those on a linear pathway, non-linear pathway students are those who experience a gap between completing their previous level of higher education and enrolling in a doctoral program (Zhuchkova & Terentev, 2023). In this study, We define them as PhD students who had formal working experience prior to enrolling in a PhD program. It is worth noting that, although this group of students constitutes a considerable proportion of the doctoral population (Offerman, 2011), the existing doctoral training system has long been designed around students with continuous educational trajectories[ (Gardner, 2008). Institutional structures, training schedules, and evaluation standards generally assume that doctoral entrants have followed an uninterrupted academic path prior to enrollment (Marine, 2020). This raises a critical question: to what extent can a training paradigm based on continuity effectively meet the academic development needs of students with non-linear educational trajectories?

Unfortunately, despite growing scholarly interest in non-linear educational trajectories among non-traditional doctoral students, research on this group's doctoral learning experiences and academic development remains severely limited. Existing studies have largely relied on qualitative approaches, using illustrative cases to document the academic trajectories and growth stories of students with non-linear pathways (Burgess et al., 2025; Jiménez & Escalante, 2017). Zhuchkova and Terentev ( 2023) made an initial attempt to compare publication outcomes between non-linear and linear pathway students. However, it should be noted that this study relied solely on chi-square tests to compare proportion differences, without controlling for potential confounding factors. Consequently, it is difficult to determine whether observed differences are attributable to the non-linear pathway itself rather than to other factors. These limitations underscore the need for a systematic and rigorous analysis of the academic development of students with non-linear educational trajectories, including cross-disciplinary variations, to provide more robust theoretical and policy insights.

In order to fill this gap, we utilize a large-scale dataset of 12,140 Chinese doctoral students and introduces Entropy Balancing to mitigate potential selection bias. By achieving covariates balance across personal characteristics and prior educational experiences, we establish a rigorous counterfactual framework to estimate the net effect of non-linear PhD pathway on students’ academic development.

Specifically, this study aims to answer the following research questions:

RQ1: What are the typical educational backgrounds and individual characteristics of students who pursue a non-linear PhD pathway?

RQ2: What is the effect of a non-linear path on PhD students’ academic development?

RQ3: To what extent do these effects vary across disciplines?

The objectives are threefold: (1) To characterize the students who pursue non-linear PhD pathways by examining their educational backgrounds and individual characteristics, thereby identifying the key factors associated with non-linear doctoral trajectories. (2) To quantify the effect of non-linear PhD pathways on academic development using a rigorous counterfactual framework. (3)To explore disciplinary differences in these effects to reveal how the impacts of non-linear pathways may vary across diverse academic contexts.

The findings contribute to the international literature on doctoral education by extending the analysis of PhD trajectories beyond linear pathways. Using evidence from China, it demonstrates how non-linear doctoral pathways shape PhD students’ academic development in ways that are both contextually embedded and internationally relevant. By foregrounding disciplinary heterogeneity, the study offers comparative insights that speak to the diversity of doctoral training systems globally. The study thus provides evidence relevant not only to national policy contexts but also to broader international debates on flexible doctoral training and diversified academic pathways.

In recent decades, research exploring new paradigms of learning in the university context has proliferated, particularly through qualitative and postqualitative approaches in educational research. These perspectives have proven relevant for investigating how learning is given meaning, how it affects, and how it transforms people in higher education, shifting the focus from institutional frameworks toward biographical approaches that intertwine learning and identity across life trajectories (Biesta, 2008; Hernández-Hernández, 2023).

The importance of research aimed at rethinking university academic training through individuals’ life trajectories highlights the relevance of the affective turn in contemporary conceptions of learning. From this onto-epistemological perspective, affects are understood as forces with their own autonomy in the generation of knowledge, beyond their confinement to discourse (Massumi, 2002). As changes or shifts that emerge in encounters between bodies (Colman, 2010), affects precede individuality and place relationality at the center of learning. Learning, from this standpoint, is always a relational process in which we co-constitute ourselves through relationships (Barad, 2007), assuming the situated and partial nature of knowledge (Haraway, 1988).

Within the framework of university teacher education, this approach makes it possible to position affects not only as a dimension of learning, but as a central axis for rethinking research in academia and the relationship it establishes with students.

This research is part of the Master’s Final Project in Visual Arts and Education, completed during the 2023–2024 academic year at the University of Barcelona. The starting point consisted of exploring imaginaries of art and education among students enrolled in the Bachelor’s Degree in Early Childhood Education at the same university, with an emphasis on their learning trajectories, within the context of a pedagogical transformation process of a compulsory course in visual arts education in which the author was the instructor.

The research considered artistic practices as forms of interpreting the world and generating narratives, with a specific capacity to mobilize affects and enable meaningful learning. In this sense, it aligns with the understanding of the arts as practices sensitive to the expressiveness of the subject and open to inquiring into the qualities of life that affect what we know and how we live (Barone & Eisner, 2011). As Marina Garcés points out, the arts are, above all, practices of the threshold (Garcés, 2013), from which it becomes possible to question how we look at our surroundings, how we are affected, and, consequently, how we learn.

From this paradigm, artistic experience is conceived as inherently pedagogical and transformative, and as facilitating a form of learning that validates the experience of the “we" (Aguirre, 2006). This approach connects with contributions such as those of Sheikh (2009), who points to the need to shift academia from a model centered on the reproduction of knowledge toward the configuration of spaces for experience and thought, and those of Rogoff (2008), who proposes understanding fallibility as a form of knowledge production. In this context, it is increasingly necessary to explore educational paradigms that unfold relationships of proximity and pedagogical formats sensitive to affects within the university (Riera-Retamero & Hernández-Hernández, 2020). Artistic practices can thus become triggers for transformation and open spaces for reflection sensitive to becoming (Hernández-Hernández & Revelles Benavente, 2019; Atkinson, 2015).

From this perspective, the article not only analyzes affects as the content of the research, but also shows how the research process itself becomes an affective space that allows for rethinking the relationship between academia and students in university teacher education.

In European education and policy research, quantitative textual analysis (QTA) has been increasingly used to examine institutional and policy documents at scale, particularly within European Union governance and comparative strategy research (Bunea & Ibenskas, 2015). Existing European studies demonstrate how computational and text-oriented approaches enable systematic comparison of strategic discourses across institutions and national contexts (e.g. Bunea & Ibenskas, 2015). Universities increasingly rely on formal strategy documents to articulate institutional identities, priorities, and future orientations. These documents function simultaneously as texts that project imagined futures and as processes shaped by negotiations among stakeholders and competing institutional logics. While higher education research has paid growing attention to strategic governance, the methodological toolkit used to study university strategies has remained largely qualitative approaches. This creates limitations when scholars seek to analyse large collections of strategic documents or to conduct systematic cross-institutional or comparative research.

The aim of this work-in-progress study is to explore the potential of QTA as a methodological approach for higher education strategy research. Rather than presenting a completed empirical study, we present QTA as a complementary methodological approach and reflect on its opportunities and limitations when applied to the analysis of university strategy documents. The contribution is explicitly exploratory and methodological in nature, positioning the paper as a laboratory space for methodological experimentation and conceptual clarification. A synopsis of this research (originally titled “Introducing Quantitative Textual Analysis in Higher Education Strategy Research: Opportunities, Advantages, and Limitations”) has been accepted for publication in the volume of book series Theory and Method in Higher Education Research published by Emerald Publishing Limited. The study is guided by the following research questions:

1. How can Quantitative Textual Analysis be used to systematically examine large collections of university strategy documents?
2. What kinds of patterns, and tendencies become visible through QTA that may remain less apparent in qualitative analysis alone?
3. What methodological advantages and limitations arise when QTA is applied to the study of higher education strategies?

Conceptually, the study builds on the understanding of university strategies as both meaningful artefacts and steering instruments (Stensaker et al., 2024). Strategy documents are treated not merely as neutral representations of institutional intentions but as sites of meaning-making through which universities communicate priorities, values, and imagined futures (Stensaker & Hermansen, 2025). In this sense, the study aligns with research on strategic governance and institutional sense-making in higher education, while responding to calls for greater methodological pluralism in the field (Wells et al., 2015).

From a theoretical perspective, the study draws on insights from computational text analysis developed in political science and the digital humanities, where text is treated as data capable of revealing latent structures, framing dynamics, and patterns of emphasis across large corpora (Grimmer & Stewart, 2013). QTA is approached not as a replacement for close reading or qualitative interpretation, but as a way to amplify human analytical capacity by enabling systematic discovery, measurement, and comparison across texts.

The empirical focus of the illustrative example is Finnish universities` strategy documents. This context is used not to produce generalizable findings, but to demonstrate how QTA procedures can be applied within a European higher education system. The European dimension of the research lies both in this contextual grounding and in the broader relevance of QTA for comparative studies of higher education strategies across national systems.

By framing QTA as a methodological complement to established qualitative approaches, it seeks to contribute to ongoing methodological discussions in higher education research and aims to open space for future comparative analyses of how universities linguistically construct priorities, responsibilities, and futures within changing European and global contexts.

Amid rising doctoral populations and limited growth in post-PhD employment opportunities outside academia, doctoral graduates face intense positional competition. The competitive pressures are amplified in high-participation higher education (HE) systems such as China, where institutional reputation plays a significant role in structuring the labor market queue. As such, doctoral candidates are placed within a hierarchy based on both individual and institutional competitiveness in comparison to others. While foreign credentials were once deemed to offer inherent advantages within this framework, the increasing influx of overseas graduates has rendered the assumed distinctions less clear-cut. Existing research on international student mobility in the Chinese context is predominantly focused on graduates returning from high-prestige institutions in English-speaking countries, wherein the domestic conversion of their foreign credentials usually occurs in a relatively straightforward manner based on clear reputational statuses embedded in global institutional hierarchies.

This paper presents a contrasting case of Finnish-educated Chinese doctoral returnees. Despite being widely recognized for their long-held traditions and high-quality education, Finnish higher education institutions (HEIs) often fall outside dominant mobility narratives such that their reputational status is not readily defined in the Chinese context. Based on interviews with Chinese Social Science and Humanities (SSH) doctoral students at Finnish universities who are nearing completion and preparing to enter the Chinese non-academic labor market, this paper taps into their experiences of navigating the domestic hierarchy competition. Specifically, the paper asks: How do these soon-to-be returnees position themselves within the domestic setting where the reputational status of their host universities lacks clear definition?

The theoretical foundation of this paper is grounded in Bourdieu’s conceptual triad of field, capital, and habitus, which together articulate how individuals interpret and traverse social spaces using recognized resources. Additionally, the paper draws insights from an earlier study indicating that institutional reputation functions both as an objective structure framing Chinese doctoral graduates’ perceptions of labor market opportunities and constraints and as an embodied emotional structure that engenders corresponding feelings through which graduates interpret their relative competitiveness. Hence, the role of habitus is foregrounded as an affectively-loaded mechanism that undergirds the rationale for how individuals perceive, evaluate, and respond to structural conditions.

The preliminary findings identify a shared perception of ambiguity regarding the domestic recognition of Finnish universities. In addressing this ambiguity, participants engage in narrative, affective, and moral work that constitute the strategic positioning practices aimed at translating their credentials into recognizable and meaningful terms within established logics of institutional hierarchy at home. Rather than a pre-given attribute that travels intact across borders, this paper suggests that institutional reputation emerges as an outcome of negotiation informed by emotional dispositions associated with both internalized understandings of domestic structuring orders and embodied experiences of Finnish institutional dynamics.

The focus of this paper on Finnish-educated Chinese doctoral returnees – whose credentials are acquired in a non-mainstream yet internationally distinctive HE system – addresses a persistent gap within existing literature, where the domestic employability prospects of overseas graduates returning from less prominent, non-English-speaking destinations remain poorly explored. In doing so, this paper also serves as an exemplifying case that sheds light on the afterlife of European credentials in a non-European labor market, offering insights into the conditions of positional ambiguity under which institutional reputation is defined and mobilized. By highlighting the context-dependent nature of credential valuation, the paper raises critical questions about the global politics of knowledge authority in terms of whose education remains visible in the context of transnational graduate mobility.

Parental involvement in higher education has become increasingly visible, with parents playing an active role in students’ academic choices, career planning, and everyday decision-making through frequent communication and sustained emotional and financial investment (Lowe & Dotterer, 2018; Boneva & Rauh, 2018). College-related matters such as course registration, academic progress, health concerns, and interpersonal relationships are often negotiated within the family rather than solely by students themselves (Mulcahy, 2019).

However, research on parental involvement among international students in higher education remains relatively limited. Where such studies do exist, they have largely focused on school-level education or contexts in which parents and students are geographically proximate. For example, Yuen and Cheung (2014) examined Malaysian cross-border students in Singapore and found that parental involvement played an authoritative role in shaping students’ achievement orientations, echoing findings from broader studies on educational engagement (Hamilton et al., 2011). These studies, however, do not fully capture the experiences of international higher education students whose parents remain physically distant, nor do they account for how parental involvement is negotiated across national borders under conditions of heightened uncertainty.

Recent scholarship has begun to highlight the distinctive challenges faced by international families navigating higher education systems from a distance. Studies have shown how international parents engage with unfamiliar institutional, cultural, and linguistic contexts, often relying on digital communication to remain involved in their children’s lives abroad (Gil et al., 2023). At the same time, reviews of recent literature suggest that parental involvement continues to shape students’ engagement and motivation in diverse and transnational learning contexts (Yang, 2023), while emerging work points to the role of parental support in sustaining students’ academic motivation and emotional commitment in digitally mediated environments (Shebani et al., 2025). These insights underline the need to examine parental involvement as a relational and transnational process rather than a purely individual or culturally bounded practice.

Against this backdrop, this study focuses on Chinese international students in the UK during and following the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic intensified parental concerns around safety, mobility, and future prospects, while also amplifying reliance on digital communication and transnational family coordination. This study aims to explore how parental involvement influenced Chinese international students’ academic and everyday experiences during this period, and how such involvement was negotiated when parents remained in China while students pursued higher education in the UK. It is guided by the following research questions:

(1) How do Chinese international students in the UK experience and negotiate parental involvement during the COVID-19 pandemic?

(2) What social, cultural, and contextual factors shape parental involvement in the academic lives of Chinese international students?

The study adopts a poststructuralist framework that conceptualises identity as fluid, relational, and dynamically constructed through social interaction (Norton, 2013; Baxter, 2016). Within this framework, agency is understood as a socially and culturally mediated capacity to act (Ahearn, 2001), rather than an individual attribute exercised in isolation. As Pavlenko (2002) argues, agency is co-constructed and shaped by broader social constraints, making it particularly relevant for examining how international students respond to parental expectations within transnational contexts. Identity and agency are therefore examined together, acknowledging individuals’ capacity to make choices and pursue personal goals while remaining embedded in relational and structural conditions (Duff, 2012). Drawing on this perspective, the study explores how Chinese international students contest, accommodate, and negotiate parental involvement in their academic trajectories (Darvin & Norton, 2021), conceptualising identity as a “site of struggle” (Duff, 2012, p. 412) between familial influence, cultural values, and students’ own sense of agency.

Current socioeconomic challenges and societal trends have fundamentally reshaped the transition to adulthood. In the European context, the stable employment pathways that supported previous generations have been disrupted by macroeconomic volatility, technological advances, and shifting societal values. The discrepancy between academic investment and employment outcomes has had a considerable impact on the priorities of young people, with many now perceiving fundamental "social citizenship" rights, such as stable housing, financial autonomy, and starting a family, as distant aspirational goals rather than guaranteed expectations (Nada et al. 2022; Santos et al. 2025; OECD 2025).

In this context, the theoretical concepts of aspirations and expectations are particularly relevant. Aspirations are defined as idealistic hopes and dreams (Chavira et al. 2016) that originate in society’s cultural sphere (Khattab 2015). Conversely, expectations are predicated on a pragmatic evaluation of what young adults perceive to be feasibly achievable (Boxer et al. 2011), informed by personal circumstances and societal constraints (Behtoui 2017). These future-oriented cognitions significantly predict various academic and occupational outcomes (e.g., grades, educational attainment, motivational levels, occupational prestige), thereby influencing an individual's life trajectory and societal development (Agboola 2025; Valls 2022).

A substantial body of research has explored various factors influencing these aspirations and expectations. At the individual level, cognitive-person variables such as academic self-regulation and psychological traits such as self-efficacy are strong drivers of future goals (Carroll 2009; Zahara et al. 2025). The family background, including factors such as family income, parental education, and especially parental expectations, provides a fundamental contextual foundation for adolescent’s future plans. Secure parental attachment and supportive parent-child communication enhanceacademic motivation and perceived competence (O’Donnell et al. 2025; Santos et al. 2025). In the school dimension, positive experiences in the classroom and school yard in both curricular and extracurricular activities positively influence academic aspirations. Additionally, enriching social relationships and a sense of belonging significantly impact the desire to continue studying (Zava et al. 2022; Katsantonis 2024).

While individual, family and school factors have been extensively documented, a significant gap remains in the systematic integration of broader economic forces and societal shifts on aspirations and expectations. This understanding is crucial in the development of policies that foster and preserve the capacity to aspire, rather than forcing young people to lower their expectations in response to challenging times.

Therefore, this review aims to provide a systematic overview of the factors that shape educational and occupational aspirations and expectations of adolescents, as identified in the recent literature. To achieve this objective, Ecological Systems Theory (Bronfenbrenner 1979) is adopted as a multi-level theoretical framework. It facilitates a comprehensive analysis of influences across the individual (e.g., self-efficacy), the microsystem (e.g., teachers), the mesosystem (e.g., interaction of parents and teachers), the exosystem (e.g., mass media, local governments), the macrosystem (e.g., social conditions), and the chronosystem (e.g., rise of AI, COVID-19-pandemic). By employing this multi-level lens, the research will provide a structured overview of relevant factors, explicitly accounting for changes in the macro- and chronosystem over the past decade. This systematic approach will contribute to scholarly discussions about youth transitions and enhance our understanding of how young adults’ horizons of possibility are structured. The overarching research questions guiding this review are: (1) What factors does the recent literature identify as shaping the educational and occupational aspirations and expectations of adolescents? (2) What role do current socioeconomic challenges and societal trends play in shaping the educational and occupational aspirations and expectations of adolescents?

Limited resources and demographic developments are posing increasing challenges for formal and non-formal education infrastructures in European municipalities. In a 2025 survey, 90% of the mayors of German cities surveyed rated the budgetary situation of their municipality as “poor” to “very poor” (Deutscher Städtetag, 2025). At the same time, demographic trends are leading to a labor shortage across Europe. The German "baby boomer" generation will reach retirement age by 2036 (Deschmeier & Schäfer, 2024). Additionally, digitalization is leading to powerful transformations in various industries, sectors, states, and societies through wider social, political, and economic dynamics (Williamson et al., 2024). These developments are particularly evident in medium-sized towns, where they encounter already limited financial, technical, and human resources, yet remain underrepresented in research on educational and social transformation processes (Förster et al., 2024).

The linking of learning spaces in the form of cooperation between formal and non-formal educational institutions could be one way of responding to these developments by creating synergies, coordinating provision, and adapting to current local problems. The objective of this study is to discover how formal and non-formal educational actors conceptualize and justify collaborations under conditions of limited resources and which municipality-specific conditions shape the sustainability of cooperative arrangements.

Within the framework of local self-government, German municipalities traditionally perform central administrative tasks in the areas of education and social services by providing child and youth welfare services, adult education centers, and libraries. Although local authorities bear approximately half of the costs per pupil per school year for the provision and maintenance of buildings, they have only limited influence on the structure and quality of the education offered. This has been changing since the beginning of the 21st century, partly due to Germany's poor performance in the PISA study. Since then, numerous federal and state municipal education programs, such as “Lernende Regionen” (learning regions) and “Lernen vor Ort” (local education management initiatives) have strengthened the role of local authorities (BMBF, 2022).

The programs described each have different focuses and, despite structural and financial links, are autonomous in nature. They should be seen as a response to the increasing key role played by local authorities in shaping educational institutions and as a hub for education policy, which is credited with contributing to holistic educational landscapes, greater educational equity, more successful educational biographies, and the fight against local educational disadvantage and discrimination (Brüggemann et al., 2023).

At the same time as these developments, ever more far-reaching development processes are leading to individuals demanding ever new knowledge in the use of digital technology and the skills required in an increasingly complex society, such as systematic thinking, responsible action, creativity, and innovation (WGBU, 2019). This has led to an increase in the importance of non-formal educational opportunities, which enable independent action, self-organization, and abstraction, thereby counteracting the risk of social inequality being reproduced through the “digital divide” (Kersting, 2025). Despite this increasing relevance, non-formal education programs are not treated equally to formal education in terms of educational monitoring, credit transfer, validation of acquired skills, and availability of longitudinal data, which makes it difficult to recognize non-formal knowledge. Historically, schools in Germany have been weakly embedded in local educational networks (Baumheier & Warsewa, 2009).

The dissertation therefore takes a critical and reflective perspective on cooperation between formal and non-formal educational programs in order to do justice to the claim that education is a shared social responsibility. The focus is on medium-sized urban structures that face particular challenges in times of transformative developments relevant across European contexts.

Research Question:

- What skills and behaviours of students/employees do the strategies of employers and stakeholders seek to produce through University Technical Colleges?’

University Technical Colleges (UTCs) represent a distinctive model within the education system in England, combining academic and vocational provision for students aged 14–19, with some institutions extending entry from age 11. Designed as all-ability, mixed-sex state-funded academies, UTCs specialise in technical and vocational education and training (TVET), such as engineering, biomedical science, computing, and creative technologies, while also delivering core academic subjects, including mathematics, English, and science (UTC website, 2019; NFER, 2017). The model is underpinned by partnerships with local universities and employers, as well as oversight from the Baker Dearing Trust (BDT), with the stated aim of bridging skills gaps in regional economies and fostering employability. UTCs emphasise project-based learning, extended school hours, and the development of transferable skills such as teamwork, communication, and problem-solving, positioning students as “work-ready” graduates.

There have been several policy reforms that have contributed to the development of vocational education programmes. TVET is a complex field that aims to equip individuals with the necessary skills and knowledge to meet the labour market’s demands and contribute to human capital development. TVET has undergone significant changes in England and government policies restrict individual choices by determining the vocational orientation of the available curriculum. TVET is seen by policymakers, business leaders, academics and governments as having a pivotal role in the transition from school to waged labour for young people (Avis and Atkins, 2017) and UTCs are a part of this.

Previous research into UTCs has investigated the experiences of young people in TVET, with regards to gender and class (Bathmaker and Ingram, 2014), curriculum delivery (Dale, 2016), UTCs leaders’ perceptions (Gomery, 2019), as well as reports evaluating the UTC model (NFER, 2017; McCrone et al., 2019). However, there has been little research into trying to understand how UTCs shape students skills and behaviours and their relationship with employer sponsors and stakeholders. There has been plenty of public criticism of the UTC model in the educational/wider media, with concerns voiced in relation to their viability, cost and performance.

The theoretical framework draws on Marx, Bourdieu, and Reay. This combined framework supports how UTCs simultaneously produce labour-power for contemporary capitalism while reproducing existing social inequalities. These frameworks enable an analysis of how power, class, and culture intersect to shape the ways in which labour is valued, disciplined, and marginalised within UTCs, particularly in relation to employer sponsors and wider stakeholders.

From a Marxist perspective, TVET, can be understood as functioning to reproduce capitalist labour relations by preparing students for participation in the labour process. Bourdieusian theory extends this by demonstrating how habitus and unequal distributions of economic, cultural, social, and symbolic capital shape skills and dispositions that are recognised and rewarded. Reay’s work further foregrounds how these processes are experienced unevenly, particularly by working-class students, reinforcing stratification rather than promoting social justice. Within a marketised education system, these dynamics are intensified rather than transformed, as employer influence and economic priorities become increasingly embedded in curricula. Integrating these frameworks therefore provides a critical foundation for analysing how UTCs shape students’ skills and behaviours and contribute to the ongoing reproduction of labour-power and inequality.

This study examines the mediating role of perceived decent work in the association between satisfaction with the dual-career lifestyle and general psychological well-being. Dual-career couples, defined as couples in which both partners pursue sustained and meaningful professional careers, have become increasingly prevalent due to rising educational attainment, the globalization of labor markets, and the expansion of women’s participation in paid employment (Byron, 2005; Christie, 2012). While dual-career arrangements may provide economic stability and opportunities for self-realization, they can also intensify role strain, work–family conflict, and emotional demands, thereby posing risks to psychological well-being (Frone et al., 1997; Neault & Pickerell, 2005; Abele & Volmer, 2011).

Within career counseling and vocational psychology, work is conceptualized as a central life domain shaping identity development, relational functioning, and overall life satisfaction (Brown & Lent, 2016; Blustein, 2019; Savickas, 2013). From this standpoint, well-being extends beyond job satisfaction and reflects the extent to which work is meaningfully integrated with broader life roles and personal values (Lent & Brown, 2013; Diener et al., 2018). Accordingly, satisfaction with the dual-career lifestyle can be understood as a relational evaluation of how couples manage and coordinate their professional and personal responsibilities (Aytar & Babanoğlu, 2023).

Relational theories further illuminate the evaluative nature of dual-career satisfaction. The Investment Model proposes that relationship satisfaction and commitment are shaped by perceived rewards, costs, investments, and the quality of alternatives (Rusbult et al., 1998; Agnew et al., 2019). Similarly, Social Exchange Theory emphasizes evaluations of reciprocity and fairness in the distribution of resources and responsibilities (Thibaut & Kelley, 1959; Cook & Rice, 2006). In dual-career relationships, perceptions of fairness regarding work-related sacrifices, time allocation, and emotional support are therefore central to both relational satisfaction and general well-being (Carlson et al., 2009; Greenhaus & Powell, 2017).

The Psychology of Working Theory (PWT) provides a comprehensive framework for understanding how work conditions influence psychological well-being through the fulfillment of basic needs for survival, social connection, and self-determination (Duffy et al., 2016; Blustein et al., 2019). From this perspective, access to decent work represents a fundamental psychological resource rather than merely an economic condition (Blustein, 2019). Decent work is experienced psychologically through perceptions of safety, fair compensation, access to healthcare, adequate rest, and alignment between organizational practices and personal values (Duffy et al., 2017).

The International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Decent Work Framework provides a strong European and international policy context by defining decent work in terms of employment security, rights at work, social protection, and social dialogue (International Labour Organization [ILO], 2019). Although originally articulated at a structural level, these dimensions have been linked to psychologically meaningful experiences of predictability, fairness, and agency at work (Di Fabio & Blustein, 2016; Ferraro et al., 2016). Integrating the ILO framework with PWT connects macro-level labor standards with micro-level psychological experiences of work quality, situating dual-career well-being within broader European and international debates on labor conditions and social sustainability.

From a conceptual perspective, perceived decent work is expected to function as a mediating mechanism through which satisfaction with the dual-career lifestyle is translated into general psychological well-being. Dual-career satisfaction reflects relational evaluations shaped by investment and exchange processes, whereas decent work represents the quality of structural and psychological work conditions that enable couples to sustain these relational dynamics over time (Duffy et al., 2016; ILO, 2019). General well-being is conceptualized as a holistic evaluation of psychological functioning and life satisfaction (Diener et al., 2018; Longo et al., 2018). Taken together, the proposed mediation model integrates career counseling, relational theories, and labor psychology within a coherent and internationally relevant theoretical framework.

Bring a Laptop

Many students experience difficulties when interpreting statistical graphs that are not easily identifiable from written answers alone. As a result, these misinterpretations may remain unnoticed in traditional assessment formats. Eye-tracking research offers a way to complement such data sources by providing additional insight into how students visually engage with graphs while reasoning. Recent studies (Abt et al., 2025; Boels et al., 2025; Schreiter & Vogel, 2025) have shown that students’ conceptions and difficulties when interpreting statistical graphs are reflected in their gaze behaviour. By combining gaze data with students’ verbal explanations, eye-tracking vignettes make it possible to analyse how students attend to and integrate different elements of a graph when constructing an interpretation. In this way, the combination of visual and verbal data can support a more fine-grained understanding of students’ reasoning processes (Dvir & Ben-Zvi, 2023). However, such process-oriented data are rarely translated into formats that are meaningful and usable for teacher education.

The Eye Teach Stats project addresses this gap by developing eye-tracking vignettes that combine students’ answers, verbal explanations, and eye-movement data to support teachers in diagnosing students’ misinterpretations. These vignettes present authentic scenes from educational practice and offer opportunities for analysis and reflection without the pressure to act (Rutsch et al., 2018). They are designed to support the development of teachers’ diagnostic competence by focusing on how students’ systematic errors and underlying conceptual difficulties can be identified and interpreted when working with statistical graphs.

This workshop introduces teacher educators and researchers to the use of eye-tracking vignettes as a tool to support teachers in diagnosing and dealing with misinterpretations of statistical graphs (i.e., dotplots, case-value plots, histograms, and boxplots) by taking a practice-oriented approach in which participants engage directly with eye-tracking vignettes to explore students’ reasoning processes. In the workshop, participants will first be introduced to the background of eye-tracking research in statistical graphs and its relevance for understanding students’ reasoning in the context of statistical graphs.

The focus is not on technical aspects, but on how eye-movement data can be interpreted and used as a resource for professional learning. Participants will then work collaboratively with an example vignette. They will identify patterns in students’ reasoning and possible misinterpretations and discuss how these insights can inform instructional decisions. Finally, participants will connect their experiences with eye-tracking vignettes to their own contexts in teaching, teacher education, or research by reflecting on how eye-tracking vignettes can be integrated into their own practice and considering how this approach can be used across domains, such as mathematics and science, to explore students’ reasoning in different contexts. By the end of the workshop, participants will be familiar with the structure and use of eye-tracking vignettes, gain experience in analysing students’ reasoning using multiple data sources, and consider how this approach can be integrated into their own teaching, teacher education, or research contexts.

The primary objective of this workshop is to explore how data from IEA’s International Computer and Information Literacy Study (ICILS) can be used for research on how well students are prepared for study, work, and life in a digital world. The workshop will put emphasis on how data related to computer and information literacy could provide further insights for policy and practice.

This course will introduce participants to ICILS 2023. Its database is publicly available and provides a rich source for research related to students’ capabilities to engage with nowadays opportunities and challenges of the digital world. In 2023, 27 European education systems participated in the study. As ICILS 2023 was the third cycle of the study since its start in 2013, there is also potential to look into trends over time.

The course will include an overview of ICILS, covering background, conceptual framework, design and some key findings. Participants will be introduced to the survey instruments, database, access paths to data sources, technical documentation, analysis guides, and software tools. They will also learn about available variables such as students’ computer and information literacy, their computational thinking capabilities, opportunities to learn about the digital world at school, the students’ home context, as well as class- and school-level learning contexts.

With this information, participants will formulate and discuss research questions that can be addressed with ICILS data. The instructors will be available to mentor the development of research ideas and design as well as to answer data related and technical questions. Research questions from individual attendants will be presented to all participants to provide opportunities to share ideas.

No prior knowledge about ICILS or any international large-scale assessments is required. Basic knowledge about statistical analysis is not required but is an advantage. A laptop with the IEA IDB Analyzer and statistical software (SPSS or R/RStudio) installed is required if participants want to work on the analyses in the hands-on part of the workshop.

*** Bring a laptop *** Pre-registration

This workshop proposes an interactive BarCamp-style session aimed at stimulating collaboration and idea development around emerging research on inclusive education. The session is designed to create a participatory space where researchers can share early-stage ideas, explore common research interests, and identify opportunities for future collaboration. Participants are welcome to join the workshop either as idea pitchers or as collaborators/respondents. Pitching an idea is optional; active contribution to the discussions is equally valued.

The main objective of the workshop is to support the development of new research initiatives by bringing together researchers who are interested in inclusive education. By creating structured opportunities for discussion and exchange, the workshop aims to facilitate the refinement of research ideas, the identification of shared questions and themes, and the exploration of potential collaborative projects.

Prior to the session, participants will be invited to submit short descriptions of research ideas or project proposals related to inclusive education. During the workshop, these ideas will be briefly presented through short pitches (approximately one minute each). Following the pitches, participants will use a placemat-based selection method (through a collective voting process) to collectively identify a number of ideas that will be explored in greater depth.

The workshop will then move into two rounds of small-group discussions. In the first round, participants will join a group centred around one of the selected ideas and discuss possible research questions, methodological approaches, and opportunities for collaboration. After this discussion, groups will briefly report back in plenary, sharing key insights and potential directions for further development.

Participants will then select ideas for a second round of discussions. During this round, participants may join a different group, allowing ideas to be further developed through new perspectives and combinations of expertise. The session will conclude with a final plenary reflection in which groups present the outcomes of their discussions and identify possible next steps for collaborative research. The aim is not to form full consortia during the workshop, but rather to refine ideas, identify shared interests, and explore small, feasible next-step collaborations.

Through this iterative process of pitching, selecting, discussing and reflecting, the workshop aims to support the collective development of innovative research ideas and strengthen connections between researchers interested in inclusive education.

We invite the ECER Community to explore the practice materials developed through the Horizon Europe project AECED – Aesthetic and Embodied Learning for Democracy-as-Becoming (aeced.org). Partners from six European countries have contributed to this project and explored the potential of democracy-as-becoming within institutionalised learning settings. Together, we have explored methods that engage all the senses across different educational settings.
In our Mini-Workshop we intend to introduce the framework, guides and practice companions as resources for learning experience based approaches to democracy -as – becoming.
The material maybe used in courses with HE students for Teacher Training and is suitable for training professionals in further education settings. It may be used in your own practice contexts or consultancy settings or contribute to professional training for democratizing our institutions.
We will offer insights into what works in exploring aesthetic and embodied approaches in any classroom setting, introduce embodied and dance-based approaches used in the AECED project and show the impact of embodied approaches. We may see, what collegues from 6 european countries have been exploring with students, principals and schools. Moreover we may experiment with novel methodologies, such as the Pattern Language of the Commoning Card Deck.
We invite all interested colleagues from all networks to explore the potential of democracy-as-becoming within our institutionalised educational settings.
In order to offer the best fit to your interest, we will provide different parallel session opportunities for different contexts and interests.
We will be happy to respond to any requests and expressions of interest aimed at addressing the urgent need to democratize our educational institutions and to build strong democratic foundations in response to right-wing shifts we observe in many of our European countries.
Please join, bring a friend, and contribute – happy to stay in touch!

This workshop will take the form of a study visit to Kölvi-toiminta, a preventive youth work centre in Tampere run by Pakolaisnuorten tuki ry. Kölvi works with young people from migrant and refugee backgrounds and offers a community-based space for support, participation, belonging and guidance. The visit will provide participants with an opportunity to learn about local youth work practices in Tampere and to reflect on the connections between educational research, social inclusion and practice.

The objectives of the workshop are:

To introduce participants to a local youth work initiative in Tampere; To explore how preventive youth work supports young people from migrant and refugee backgrounds; To discuss the role of non-formal and community-based education in addressing inequality and exclusion; To create dialogue between educational researchers and practitioners.

https://kolvi.fi/en/kolvi-activity/

Work Discussion is a psychoanalytic oriented method which is used for the analysis and reflection of interactions and relationships in educational and other psychosocial work settings with a particular focus on emotions and their regulation. Developed at the Tavistock Clinic in London, the Work Discussion method consists of written reports describing work situations. These reports are presented and discussed in small groups during regular meetings led by experienced seminar leaders. The primary task is to develop a deep understanding of the close relationship between the conscious and unconscious aspects of internal and external processes, as well as their impact on the dynamics of work situations with a special focus on emotions and their regulation.

Work Discussion is used in the context of research and in the context of training (or further education), enabling professionals to take a deep understanding of work dynamics into account when acting in their roles (for example as teachers, social workers, counsellors ect.).

Participants of this workshop will have the opportunity to learn about the practical use of the Work Discussion method and its theoretical background. In the first part of the workshop, the chairpersons will outline the basic principles of the method and its theoretical background. Particular emphasis will be placed on the influence of emotions (feelings, affects), the importance of the containment of emotional processes and group dynamics. Participants will then have the opportunity to take part in a work discussion seminar, which will be simulated during the second part of the workshop. In the third part of the workshop, participants will share and discuss their impressions and experiences. The chairpersons will also discuss how educational researchers at the University of Vienna are investigating the learning processes that are initiated and supported by Work Discussion.

The workshop will consist of a quick guided practice tour through the opening stages of a research data project using MAXQDA. Main features and tasks will be practiced in detail, including importing or generating new data (automatic transcription included), creating and applying codes (i.e. manual, automatic and AI assisted coding) performing searches and queries, writing memos, retrieving selected coded data segments, analyzing data, and reporting results using some of the special features available (e.g. summaries, QTT, reports, visual tools). The main goal of this workshop is to provide an overview of the data analysis process relying on MAXQDA assistance, a state-of-the-art software package for qualitative and mixed-methods research. Upon completing the session, workshop participants will identify important options available for tackling their own research projects, namely in terms computational support and upfront AI integration.

A key concern for any research network is to qualify notions of research quality, also elucidating conceptions of criticality, originality and significance. In the context of the ECER conference, research quality turns specific and concrete in the submission and review process ending with acceptance or rejection. In that process certain criteria are mobilized, supposedly accommodating the diversity of research approaches and methodological considerations that constitute a research field.

At this workshop, that also serves as an opening event for Network 30 at ECER 2026, we will address notions of research quality in environmental and sustainability education research. We invite the participants to identify, share and discuss main concerns that stand out as vital to adhere to in the identification of quality in ESE research.

The workshop will be carried out with two group discussions, bringing up vital issues and concerns within the network. They will be divided by two ignite talks. In the first group discussion the participants will be asked to consider what they think counts as quality in ESE research. While many criteria are obvious, some may appear to be more decisive than others. They are encouraged to bring in examples from their research field in an open exploratory talk. We will also draw on processes that act to monitor quality, such as peer reviews, state-led quality review processes and the assessment of PhD theses/dissertations. Such examples also demonstrate how research quality also is a notion connected with ideology and power relations.

The workshop then open up for two ignite talks. The first is addressing the tension between criticality and care in review processes, also emphasizing the ethical responsibility of the review process. The second ignite talk is discussing challenges of accommodating the plurality of methodological approaches distinguishing environmental and sustainability education research. A particular concern is here to review emerging methodologies (Art-based research, post-human approaches etc.). What counts as ’rigour’ in evolving paradigms?

The final group discussion connects with the ignite talks, continuing the reflections on quality by suggesting some central concerns that the groups agree or/and disagree upon.

The workshop ends with a final plenary summing up the concerns brought up by the groups.

In this workshop we will address the question of how to review theoretical and conceptual frameworks underlying research in didactics and make them explicit.

What kind of “glasses” do we have on while studying teaching and learning, and how does this affect what we “see”? How can we become aware of this and elaborate upon it when communicating our didactical research? How do we refer to different theoretical framework in didactical research and make our own theoretical position more explicit within these references?

Using the approach of peer review, we will collectively explore different perspectives and make the connection with existing didactical traditions and currents in different countries (Hallitzky et al. 2016, Hudson/Meyer 2011, Ligozat et al. 2023) by focusing together on a selection of concrete cases. We also refer to research about theoretical frameworks in other disciplines (e.g., Kumar et al 2025).

The organizer of the workshop, the network 27, aims at bringing together educational researchers from the diverse traditions in relation to didactics, teaching and learning, for different subject-specific domains, in Europe and beyond. Reflection on the diverse perspectives didactical research can take in different countries lies at the heart of the dynamics of this network as a Europe-wide meeting place for researchers in didactics. For this reason, making the theoretical and conceptual framework underlying your own research explicit and elaborating upon it is very relevant for participation in the network dynamics and activities.

Building on participants’ reflections on their own perspectives in didactic research and drawing on theoretical research methods in educational sciences — particularly in international comparative research on teaching, learning, and didactics — we will explore how to acknowledge the diversity of possible underlying frameworks in didactics and to make these frameworks comprehensible to researchers from different national and cultural traditions in didactic research, thereby facilitating international exchange within our network.

***Important: please bring a laptop ***

This workshop will explore the importance of understanding and including race and gender as we re-imagine Education Research for Social Change in a European context. Illustrations of the diverse ways in which gender, race and class intersect will be provided. The presenter will give examples of what happens when gender, race, class and their intersections are not acknowledged in research.

Workshop Objectives:

• To explore how a researcher’s perspective shapes their research focus and the analysis of their data
• To raise awareness of the risk of bias in the interpretation of findings, taking account of the impact of lived experience
• To sensitise researchers to the complexity of intersectionality and the many layers of positionality which have the potential to distort research results.

By the end of this session, participants will be better able to:

• Identify and eliminate the propensity for personal perspectives to influence the interpretation of research data.

Participants will have the opportunity to reflect on their positionality. They will be invited to apply these concepts to their own research contexts, merging these with their background knowledge about gender, race, class and their intersections.

In the course of our discussions, we will analyse the challenges in using demographic data sets which focus on single characteristics such as gender and race. We will consider the impact of an itemised approach to data and how this can be circumvented to adopt an intersectional lens which more accurately represents the complex reality of diverse individuals.

Evidence syntheses, systematic reviews or meta-analyses in educational research are an important publication format for summing up existing knowledge, synthesizing research and making knowledge visible to research communities. Knowledge on systematic review methods like the literature search process is not as widespread as it should be (Gusenbauer & Haddaway, 2020). Emerging researchers particularly face challenges when they are confronted with a systematic review task for the first time. According to the systematic review process, the exhaustive literature search is one essential step to determine the totality of documents and should be performed very carefully to not overlook relevant publications and exclude them unintentionally (Booth et al., 2022; Levay & Craven, 2019). Factors for a successful literature search include the choice of databases and the elaboration of search terms. Transforming the research question expressed in natural language into a machine-understandable search requires knowledge about operators and syntax. Strategies like the Building blocks strategy, Citation pearl growing (Efthimiadis, 1996) or Berry picking (Bates, 1989) do help researchers develop an appropriate search concept. Researchers as content experts in education — a field characterized by its transdisciplinary and cross-national/international dimension — are used to working out thematic concepts and descriptions. However, finding the right database(s) in the plenty of traditional online search systems (Gusenbauer, 2022) and the growing AI search landscape is challenging. AI search tools based on machine learning (ML) or large language models (LLM) offer promising options for an augmented and semantically rich literature retrieval. However, it is to examine if and how those new functionalities (see Lahrsow, 2025; Da Silva Cardoso et al., 2024; Parisi & Sutton, 2024) can be integrated into the individual search strategy to accelerate the process of a target-oriented and systematic search.

EERA and the Local Organizers of ECER 2026 would like to formally welcome you to ECER 2026, Tampere “Knowing and Acting: The changing conditions and potentials of education research”.

ECER is a joint collaboration, organised by the Tampere University and EERA.

In recent years, undesired loneliness has gained increasing attention as a major social and
public health concern across Europe and other global contexts. Once predominantly
associated with older age, loneliness is now recognised as a multidimensional phenomenon
affecting individuals across the life course, including children, adolescents, adults and older
people. Social fragmentation, demographic changes, digitalisation, increased mobility and
the weakening of traditional community structures have intensified experiences of social
disconnection, raising urgent questions about social cohesion, well-being and shared
responsibility.
This doctoral research addresses undesired loneliness as a social and educational
challenge, understood not merely as an individual emotional experience but as a relational
phenomenon shaped by cultural, structural and contextual factors. The central research
question guiding the study is: How is undesired loneliness experienced and understood
across different stages of the life course, and what socio-educational approaches can
contribute to addressing it from a relational and community-based perspective?
The main objective of the research is to explore the socio-educational dimensions of
undesired loneliness and to analyse how educational frameworks can contribute to its
understanding and future intervention. Specifically, the study aims to clarify the conceptual
distinctions between loneliness and social isolation, examine the factors associated with
loneliness across different age groups, and identify educational perspectives that may inform
preventive and community-oriented responses to loneliness.
Loneliness is conceptualised as a subjective experience resulting from a perceived
discrepancy between desired and actual social relationships, influenced by cultural norms,
social expectations and relational quality. The study engages with socio-ecological
approaches to loneliness, considering individual, interpersonal, community and societal
levels, and pays particular attention to the role of stigma, inequality and digital
transformations in shaping experiences of disconnection.
The research responds to growing policy and academic interest in loneliness as a cross-
national issue affecting social cohesion and well-being. By situating loneliness within broader social and educational contexts, the study seeks to contribute to ongoing debates on how
education and community-based initiatives can play a role in addressing relational
vulnerabilities and strengthening social bonds across diverse populations.

Lundy’s (2007) model for conceptualising Article 12 of the UNCRC has been hugely influential in research. It argues that “Space, Voice, Audience and Influence” are required for the fulfilment of children’s participation rights and forms the basis for many research projects on this topic.

This research project introduces a post-humanist theoretical approach to the research of children’s participation rights in UK schools, considering the explicit incorporation of the matter with which children interact at school, and by which they express themselves, to be an essential component of understanding how agency is produced. The addition of a relational-materialist perspective to the child-led, participatory, standard in modern social research of childhood encourages work which takes a nuanced perspective on agency and treats it as a starting point for understanding children’s social worlds, rather than a terminus (Prout, 2000). Child-led participatory research since Lundy’s (2007) model was devised often relies on attempts to give children platforms to express themselves which are separate from the daily interactions in which their participation rights are facilitated or inhibited. Children’s utterances in research encounters are often presented as the result of a capacity for agency inhered in the individual human, pre-existing the interactions in which they are housed (Jackson, 2003). The human agent who “knows who she is, says what she means and means what she says” is rejected in new materialist conceptions of voice, including those which research children’s voices in learning institutions (Maclure, 2009, no pagination; Harvey et al., 2021).

This perspective on social research, as well as other duties in the UNCRC such as the principle of ‘Evolving Capacities’ (Article 5) call for an expansion of Lundy’s (2007) model which encourages the participation of children without reliance on their ‘voices’ as conceived thus far, or on specialised participatory spaces (Varadan, 2019). By combining a rights-based approach with post-humanist social research in this project, the tenets of childhood studies and rights respecting research can be upheld, namely those which impel a duty to provide opportunity for active and agentive participation in research, while tempering these principles with the troubling of traditional humanist conceptions of matter and of the mind-body dualism in which voice “lingers close to the true and the real… seen almost as a mirror to the soul” (Alderson, 2012; James and Prout, 2015; Mazzei and Jackson, 2017, pgs.1090 & 1091).

I will present the methodology for this study, its early findings and its potential impact on understanding the enactment of participation rights in schools, as well as on theories of rights as they are applied to children. By demonstrating the affective force of the materials with which children interact in schools on the formation and expression of their views, I will argue that Lundy’s (2007) model for participation rights should explicitly address the material component of autonomy rights, encouraging a duty among researchers and educators to facilitate every-day, relational and co-produced agentic participation,outside of devoted participatory activities which are limited in their impact and accessibility. The value of increasing the accessibility of agentic participation can also be seen in the opportunities to promote “voice” in a way that is not dependent on language, increasing opportunities for international co-production and for easier engagement in UK schools by those for whom English is not their primary language.

The theme of “Controversial Topics in Children’s Rights and Education” in the main conference seeks to challenge established assumptions in research. This presentation may facilitate similar discussion in the emerging researcher’s conference about how children’s rights may be researched as co-produced, challenging the relied upon model of participatory research in the field of childhood studies.

The global context of the crisis of democracy has been recorded in recent reports by various international organizations (IDEA, 2024; 2025, Nord et al., 2025). Thus, the 2025 Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) report notes that the world has fewer democracies than autocracies for the first time in more than 20 years, with three out of four people living under authoritarian rule. Furthermore, it is reported that current average democratic levels are on par with those of 1985, with Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and South Asia being the most affected by a “wave of autocratization,” although there is also democratic weakening in Latin America, Western Europe, and North America. Likewise, the decline in freedom of expression in 44 countries during 2024 (Nord et al., 2025) is alarming, which is validated by the 2025 IDEA report that identifies freedom of the press and expression as the most affected rights in at least 25% of the countries participating in the study (IDEA, 2025).

Faced with this landscape of democratic uncertainty, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has developed guidelines and recommendations for school communities to strengthen democratic and civic education (UNESCO, 2019). Specifically, one of the focuses is the implementation of education for global citizenship, within the framework of the 2030 agenda, which promotes a culture of democracy, human rights, peace, and non-violence (UNESCO, 2023). Thus, the main aim is for students to value human dignity, cooperation, and dialogue, with a focus on developing knowledge, skills, and attitudes that foster tolerance, empathy, and respect for the diversity of cultures and opinions. Achieving this goal requires teachers who are strongly committed to the exercise of democracy and citizenship education.

Likewise, various studies have highlighted the importance of teachers' beliefs regarding teaching and learning processes, as well as pedagogical and didactic decision-making (Estévez-Nenninger et al., 2014). In this sense, what teachers believe and mean has a direct impact on their daily practices and, as a correlate, on student learning (Trigwell & Prosser, 1991). Similarly, what teachers do—or teach—would be a direct consequence of what they actually think. This is where the importance of investigating the ideas and beliefs that teachers express about democracy lies: it allows us to better understand the practices and possibilities of approaching democratic education in schools in line with the urgency represented by the current context of democratic fragility.

This presentation is based on the initial results of doctoral research that seeks to understand the conceptions of democracy and democratic education expressed by teachers of various subjects and school levels in two regions of Chile. On this occasion, the findings to be presented and discussed relate to the conceptions of democracy held by the participating teachers, specifically their definitions, characteristics, and diagnosis in the context of democratic fragility. Some preliminary results show that teachers conceive of democracy from political perspectives linked to the exercise of participation and choice in various areas of social life, with an emphasis on decision-making. Likewise, the diagnosis of a democratic crisis linked to hate speech on social media, disappointment, and mistrust of society due to political corruption, among other issues, is highlighted.

Despite the long history of the studies on the nature of science (NOS), debates continue about what exactly the NOS means, and which approach should be used to learn and teach it. Among the various approaches proposed in science education literature, the Reconceptualized Family Resemblance Approach (RFN) has gained increasing attention. RFN addresses NOS in a holistic and inclusive way and integrates science under two interconnected systems: the cognitive-epistemic and the socio-cultural systems.

The adaptation of Ludwig Wittgenstein's theory of ‘family similarity’ (1953) to NOS (Irzık & Nola, 2011; 2014) is forming the basis for RFN. By claiming that, science is presented as being more grounded in real-life practice; encompassing different scientific disciplines as a whole, like members of the same family; and expressing science not only as a science of experiments but also as a social, cultural, historical, politic, financial and institutional activity. The adaptation of this theory into education led to the birth of Family Resemblance Approach to Nature of Science, namely RFN (Erduran & Dagher, 2014).

While the literature on RFN frequently addresses theoretical frameworks, instrument development, informal science education, and curriculum analyses across diverse contexts such as Italy, Turkiye, Ireland, US, Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea, empirical studies focusing on educational interventions remain limited. As highlighted in a recent review by Cheung and Erduran (2023), such intervention studies have largely concentrated on pre-service teachers and students. Research on in-service teachers, by contrast, has primarily been confined to assessing their understanding of NOS and examining lesson plans. As a result, the practical implementation of RFN in real classroom settings with practicing teachers and real students remains underexplored.

Given the aforementioned gap and the fact that incorporating and imparting scientific knowledge of teachers into understanding the world is one of the ultimate aims of teacher professional development programs, examining in-service teachers’ learning experiences and challenges during RFN implementation will inform future researchers, the design of professional development programs, and instructional practices. Moreover, the researchers’ reflexivity about this specific case of teachers may offer valuable implications for policymakers and practitioners seeking to improve NOS implementation strategies.

The current study aims to document in-service science teachers’ learning during the implementation of a teacher professional development program based on RFN. Also, it highlights the researchers’ learning journey focusing on teachers’ challenges and reflective insights. This study is guided by the following research questions:

1. Which challenges did in-service science teachers encounter when planning and implementing lessons through a teacher professional development program based on RFN?
2. What forms of learning emerged for in-service teachers as they engaged with and responded to these challenges?

Digital game-based learning (DGBL) has emerged as a promising innovation in language education, offering interactive, immersive, and student-centered alternatives to traditional instruction. DGBL can enhance motivation, cognitive skills, and language proficiency while fostering critical thinking, problem-solving, and collaboration. Although research on DGBL is growing globally, gaps remain in understanding students’ attitudes toward its use, perceived effectiveness, and self-efficacy, particularly in multilingual higher education contexts (Hung et al., 2018; Kim et al., 2024). Kazakhstan provides a unique setting for investigating these dimensions due to its trilingual education policy (Kazakh, Russian, English) and the strategic importance of English for global communication, trade, and higher education access (Imanova et al., 2025). Furthermore, gender differences in gaming experiences and cultural norms may influence students’ perceptions of DGBL, highlighting the need for context-sensitive investigation (Konstantinov et al., 2024).

This study examines Kazakhstani university students’ motivation, perceived effectiveness, and self-efficacy in using DGBL for English language learning. It further explores how demographic factors (gender, mother tongue, level of study) and behavioral factors (gaming habits, English use) relate to these outcomes. The study is guided by the following questions:

1. How do students perceive DGBL in terms of motivation, perceived effectiveness, and self-efficacy for English learning?

2. Are there differences in these perceptions based on demographics such as gender, mother tongue, or level of study?

3. How do prior experiences with formal English education and engagement with digital games influence motivation, perceived effectiveness, and self-efficacy?

4. Does frequency of English use and gameplay correlate with students’ attitudes toward DGBL?

5. How are students’ beliefs about English language improvement through games associated with their motivation, perceived effectiveness, and self-efficacy?

This study is guided by Self-Determination Theory (Deci & Ryan, 1985), which conceptualizes motivation along intrinsic and extrinsic dimensions, and emphasizes autonomy, competence, and relatedness—key factors in DGBL engagement. Sociocultural theory (Vygotsky, 1978) complements this framework by highlighting collaborative learning and the social construction of knowledge within immersive game environments. Together, these frameworks allow for analysis of both the psychological and social dimensions of student-centered digital learning, while situating learning within a multilingual, culturally specific context.

Although situated in Kazakhstan, this study addresses broader European and international concerns: the integration of digital technologies in higher education, the equity and inclusivity of digital learning tools, and the role of student motivation and self-efficacy in effective language acquisition. Findings can inform DGBL strategies across multilingual and multicultural settings, offering evidence-based guidance for educators, policymakers, and game designers seeking to implement digital learning innovations in higher education globally.

By examining how students perceive, engage with, and are affected by digital game-based learning, this study explores the changing conditions and potentials of educational knowledge production in the digital era. It addresses the societal and educational implications of technology-mediated learning, the role of student-centered knowledge, and how academic research can inform policy and practice—directly reflecting ECER’s theme, “Knowing and Acting: The changing conditions and potentials of education research.”

L2 writing is one of the most demanding activities learners engage in, drawing on their linguistic resources (Hyland, 2003), and learners are required to establish control over these resources to construct a sophisticated and coherent written discourse. As Housen and Kuiken (2009) indicated, proficiency in writing is grounded in complexity, accuracy and fluency, the CAF framework, but complexity has been given greater importance, as it is regarded as the metric for learners’ development of linguistic resources and their responsiveness to particular communicative needs (Bulté & Housen, 2012).

Linguistic complexity is a multidimensional construct comprising lexical, syntactic, morphological, and discourse-level components. Given their theoretical relevance and methodological soundness, lexical and syntactic complexity have been more salient in the literature as these have more standardised analytical frameworks and are more informative in languages with limited morphology. Lexical complexity comprises three dimensions, lexical diversity, lexical density, and lexical sophistication, which encompass different aspects of lexical use (Bulté & Housen, 2012). Syntactic complexity, being a multidimensional construct, comprises the variety, sophistication, and range of the grammatical structures in a text (Lu, 2010).

These dimensions of linguistic complexity have also become salient in discussions of Generative AI texts, as they are applicable to AI-generated texts. Hence, the emergence of Generative AI has introduced a new point of comparison for L2 writing performance since its incorporation into L2 writing classrooms has become more prominent. Generative AI models can generate written texts that demonstrate considerable grammaticality, lexical sophistication, etc., attributes that are mostly linked to higher proficiency in academic writing. Several studies (Chen, 2025; Fredrick & Craven, 2025; Sun & Li, 2025; Mizumoto, 2024; Zindela, 2023) compared L2 students’ and AI-generated texts in their studies, the findings of which disclosed that AI-generated texts exhibit higher lexical diversity but similar syntactic complexity, with more formulaic structures and different rhetoric and agency. There is a growing body of literature that has compared AI-generated and student-authored written texts, yet the comparisons have primarily focused on accuracy, and thus overall performance or concentrated only on specific dimensions of linguistic complexity, such as only lexical diversity, etc. Therefore, a comparison between human-authored L2 writing and AI-generated texts, from a multidimensional perspective, on both syntactic and lexical complexity remains underresearched in the field of L2 writing.

Thus, the present study investigates differences in syntactic and lexical complexity between AI-generated and human-authored opinion essays and whether these syntactic and lexical indices can be utilised to model the patterns of similarity and difference between the two. The following research question will be addressed in this study:

1. Are there statistically significant lexical and syntactic complexity indices between human-authored and AI-generated opinion essays?

   1. If yes, can these indices be used to model the lexical and syntactic complexity patterns of human-authored and AI-generated opinion essays?

Adopting a quantitative, corpus-based approach, two corpora consisting of 223 human-authored and 223 AI-generated opinion essays will be compared using 25 lexical complexity indices and 14 syntactic complexity indices proposed by Lu (2012). Accordingly, the present study is anticipated to provide theoretical, pedagogical, and policy-level implications for researchers in the field, teachers, and policymakers in AI literacy and education. At the theoretical level, it is expected to expand L2 writing and the CAF research by utilizing AI-generated texts as a comparative reference point. At the pedagogical and policy levels, the findings are expected to inform the shift from product-oriented evaluation to process-oriented instruction, where instructors are given a way to infer the learners’ use of writing supports and could implement support systems accordingly, that foregrounds rhetorical awareness, authorial voice, and idea construction, in line with UNESCO's (2024) AI competency framework for students.

Learner agency is a concept central to higher education (Klemenčič, 2023) and foreign language (FL) education (Mercer, 2011). For learners to play an agentic role in their personal goal pursuit, self-efficacy beliefs, or “individuals’ judgments of their capabilities to learn or perform courses of action at designated levels” (Schunk & Pajares, 2010, p.668), contribute to their personal agency through engaging in self-regulated processes, including goal setting, self-monitoring progress, self-evaluations, and effective use of strategies (Zimmerman, 2000, p.87).
While these beliefs have been shown to partly influence learning, task performance, and motivation across domains in education (Schunk & DiBenedetto, 2015), they cannot be understood in isolation. Recent FL motivation research has re-emphasized the role of contextual aspects of learning experiences in which self-efficacy mainly stems from successful engagement in activities that are personally valued, challenging, and authentic (Graham, 2022). The extent to which learners perceive value in activities is related the likelihood for them to initiate self-regulation (Usher & Schunk, 2017, p. 28). On the other hand, motivation researchers in the context of learning languages other than English (LOTEs) have suggested a strong positive relationship between learners’ personalized reasons for FL study, and higher levels of FL proficiency (Dörnyei & Al-Hoorie, 2017, p.465). Understanding self-efficacy from the perspective of FL learners’ personally meaningful reasons may shed light on the worrying decline of interest and investment in LOTE degree programmes, in both the Netherlands and internationally (NRC, 2024; Lusin et al., 2023).
Given the roles of self-efficacy and task value in FL learners’ personal goal pursuits, the paper examines the retrospective narratives of three graduates from a Chinese as a FL (CFL) degree program at a Dutch University. Narrative data not only provide rich contexts from learners’ perspectives but also allow us to examine the qualitative elements in the dynamic processes of learners’ self-evaluations of their FL competence, which may shift as they encounter new situations. Our analysis focused on the key experiences in which self-efficacy, self-regulation, and personal meaning emerged. Our findings implied that authenticity emerged as a central contextual dimension in participants’ key experiences and their most valued goal: speaking fluency. On the one hand, authentic information inferred from such key experiences appeared to prompt participants for meaningful self-evaluations of their speaking self-efficacy. When feedback inferred from these experiences was not perceived as authentic, undesirable emotions related to a sense of awkwardness emerged in their narratives. On the other hand, participants’ interpretations of task value appeared to depend on the level of perceived authenticity in social interactions using Chinese as a tool for communication. It seems that some personally valued experiences were interpreted as more worthwhile because participants attributed their usefulness in relation to their personal goal. By examining the qualitative aspects of self-efficacy and task value, the paper aims to contribute to discussion and inform future FL pedagogical approaches in fostering learner agency.

Increasing migration and forced displacement have transformed the demographic composition of schools across Europe, intensifying challenges related to social justice, inclusion, and intercultural relations. Newcomer students, particularly those from marginalised or stigmatised migrant groups, are at heightened risk of bias-based bullying and peer exclusion. Such exclusion undermines not only individual well-being but also schools’ commitments to inclusive education and democratic participation. Within this context, understanding how students respond as bystanders to intergroup exclusion is critical for developing educational strategies that promote social justice in diverse school settings.

This study addresses the following research question: How do descriptive peer group norms shape children’s and adolescents’ bystander responses to the intergroup exclusion of migrant peers, and how do these processes vary by age and different migrant groups? Specifically, the research examines exclusion involving Syrian and Ukrainian peers, two groups that have occupied distinct social, political, and media positions within European societies in recent years. By focusing on these groups, the study foregrounds the role of broader societal discourses in shaping peer dynamics within schools. This study contributes to emerging research on bystander processes in diverse school contexts by experimentally examining how peer norms interact with the social status of different migrant groups.

The study is grounded in a social–developmental and intercultural education framework, drawing particularly on the developmental intergroup perspective. This perspective conceptualises exclusion as a moral and social phenomenon shaped by group membership, power relations, and perceived norms within peer groups. From this viewpoint, bystander behaviour is not solely an individual choice but a socially negotiated action influenced by peer expectations, school norms, and wider societal narratives about inclusion and belonging. As children develop into adolescence, they become increasingly sensitive to group norms and social hierarchies, which may constrain their willingness to challenge injustice even when inclusive norms are present.

Peer group norms are central to social justice and inclusive education because they regulate what is perceived as acceptable or risky behaviour within peer cultures. Descriptive norms, beliefs about what most peers do, can either legitimise exclusion or support inclusive action. However, these norms may not operate uniformly across contexts or target groups. In societies marked by unequal power relations between migrant groups, inclusive norms may be interpreted differently depending on the perceived status of the excluded peer.

Although this study is based in the United Kingdom, its contribution is explicitly European and international in scope. Schools across Europe face comparable challenges related to migration, forced displacement, and the integration of diverse student populations. The findings therefore speak to broader debates within European educational research on social justice, intercultural education, and inclusive schooling. By linking peer norms, developmental processes, and group-based inequalities, the study contributes knowledge that is relevant for educators, policymakers, and researchers seeking to translate principles of social justice into everyday school practices.

Educational inequity remains a persistent challenge even in high-performing and equity-oriented education systems such as those in the Nordic countries. Socioeconomic status continues to be one of the strongest predictors of student achievement, including in mathematics (Sirin, 2005; OECD, 2024). However, some disadvantaged students demonstrate high levels of academic achievement despite structural constraints, a phenomenon conceptualised as academic resilience (Masten, 2001; Rutter, 2012)

Previous research indicates that both teaching practices and school climate play crucial roles in shaping students’ learning opportunities and outcomes. Teaching practices that emphasise cognitive activation, feedback, and structured instruction have been associated with improved achievement and equity (OECD, 2019). Similarly, positive school climates characterised by supportive relationships, safety, and a sense of belonging are linked to higher academic engagement and performance (Thapa et al., 2013; Wang & Degol, 2016).

Despite growing evidence, less is known about how teaching practices and school climate jointly support disadvantaged students in Nordic contexts, particularly in mathematics. Using PISA 2022 data, this study addresses this gap by examining how pedagogical and institutional factors contribute to the academic resilience of disadvantaged students in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden.

The study aims to identify key pedagogical and school-level factors that support disadvantaged students’ academic success. Specifically, it seeks to analyse patterns of teaching practices and school climate in Nordic schools, examine their relationships with disadvantaged students’ achievement in mathematics, and compare cross-national similarities and differences. By doing so, the study contributes to ongoing discussions on educational equity and resilience in comparative education.

The research questions of the study are as follows:

(1) How are mathematics teacher behaviours in mathematics and science associated with the achievement of disadvantaged students in Nordic countries?

(2) How does school climate relate to academic resilience among disadvantaged students?

(3) How do mathematics teacher behaviours and school climate interact in supporting disadvantaged students across Nordic education systems?

Cross-Cultural Kids (CCKs) (Van Reken, 2002) is not a new concept when it comes to the effects of migration upon youth development, including some well-recognised, life-long lasting side effects (Crossman & Wells, 2022). Yet, only since 2017 have Lithuanian schools have experienced a sustained increase in the enrolment of, including returning Lithuanian students following Brexit or the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as refugee children arriving amid recent political conflicts in the neighbouring European political landscape. Despite the growing presence of these students, whose educational pathways and personal lives have been profoundly shaped by transnational mobility, the Lithuanian education system has yet to establish a coherent framework to support their integration. Existing institutional responses remain fragmented and tend to prioritise linguistic assimilation over broader psychosocial, cultural, and identity-related dimensions of schooling. Urgency to conceptualise cross-cultural diversity as an educational asset rather than a deficit in the Lithuanian context not only goes along Culturally Responsive Teaching (Gay, 2018), but emphasis the need to adopt a humanistic and ethical pedagogical approach (Forrester et al., 2020) to promote inclusive education for all students. As school populations become increasingly diverse, there is an urgent need to develop and examine forms of cross-cultural transitional care (CCTC) that address the complex linguistic, cultural, and identity-related challenges faced by CCKs (Mahoney & Barron, 2020).

As part of a wider research project, this paper presents results from observations and informal conversations recorded during the process of conducting interventions with the narrative tool of “TARMAC” at school with CCKs of Lithuania. While not being the original intention of the research design, and is seen as serendipitous findings, "happy accidents" or chance discoveries (Robson & McCartan, 2016) where unexpected but beneficial discoveries that occur while searching for something else.

Today's education systems have transformed into a dynamic structure where different cultural identities, languages, beliefs and life practices coexist. Multiculturalism, at the heart of this transformation, is no longer merely a policy or programme concept, but has become an ontological component of education. However, the multi-layered nature of the concept makes it difficult to agree on a common definition. Academic definitions often fail to adequately reflect individuals' perceptions, concerns, and expectations. At this point, metaphors offer a powerful and direct tool for understanding how people perceive the world.

In individuals' processes of understanding and making sense of abstract and complex phenomena, metaphors are not merely ordinary tools of comparison but serve a fundamental cognitive function. As Lakoff and Johnson (1980) state in their theoretical framework, metaphors are not just figures of speech that embellish our language but are cognitive maps that structure our ways of thinking, our perceptions, and even our actions. In this context, metaphors serve as analytical mirrors that reveal the "implicit beliefs" that lie deep within educational stakeholders, beliefs that may not be directly expressible in words.

Increasing metaphorical studies in educational sciences have shown their effectiveness in revealing individuals’ conceptual frameworks regarding a concept. Understanding how a concept with sociological and pedagogical dimensions, such as multiculturalism, is interpreted in the context of teacher education is of critical importance. This is because the image of multiculturalism in the minds of teachers and teacher educators is indicative of the attitude they will adopt towards differences in the classroom, the level of empathy they will develop, and the inclusive educational practices they will implement. If an educator imagines this concept as "chaos," they will try to manage diversity in the classroom as a crisis; if they see it as a "mosaic," they will argue that each piece is a value that must be preserved.

Multiculturalism is an indispensable understanding for social harmony, based on accepting individual differences such as age, gender, belief, language, race, and sexual orientation as riches and living in harmony within the same geography (APA, 2002; Banks, 2008). This approach is particularly vital in educational processes because the cognitive and personality development of students from different cultural backgrounds is directly influenced by their unique identities. As Kağıtçıbaşı and Cemalcılar (2017) emphasize, individuals' behaviors in communication processes are a reflection of their own cultural values. Therefore, adopting a multicultural structure is an academic and social necessity for achieving social peace and making education inclusive.

A review of the literature reveals that studies on multiculturalism include the analysis of teaching staff's conceptual perceptions through metaphors (Aydın and Tonbuloğlu, 2016), the integration of multicultural education into the curriculum (Babayiğit et al., 2025), and the collection of in-depth views on the subject (Hong, 2017; Suri and Chandra, 2021), and determining stakeholder attitudes (Kimzan and Arıkan, 2018; Solehuddin and Budiman, 2019; Djonko-Moore et al., 2018). Based on the existing theoretical framework, this study aims to discover how teacher candidates and teacher educators, who are the most fundamental stakeholders in the teacher education ecosystem, conceptualize multiculturalism through mental images. The main originality of the study lies in bringing both groups together on the same analytical plane to offer a comparative perspective on multiculturalism, thereby deciphering the conceptual harmony between the mindsets of those who design the program and the candidates who are shaped by it. This approach, which also aligns with the goals of inclusivity and democratic competence in the European Education Area (EEA), makes the link between theoretical idealism and practical reality visible, thereby providing a multi-layered and original contribution to global teacher education discussions.

The internet is an essential information resource for adolescents. As it includes both reliable information and misinformation, adolescents need sufficient credibility evaluation skills to rely on trustworthy sources for learning and decision-making. However, research has shown that many students’ ability to evaluate source information is far from optimal, and that these skills vary considerably (e.g., Hämäläinen, 2023). Because of this variation, students need individualized support to develop their evaluation skills.

Source evaluation skills refer to readers’ abilities to use available information about a source (e.g., author, publisher) to make inferences about its expertise and benevolence (Bråten et al., 2025). Expertise refers to a source’s competence and experience on the topic at hand, whereas benevolence refers to the extent to which a source intends to serve the readers’ best interests without pursuing any personal or financial gains (Barzilai & Chinn, 2025). Previous research shows that adolescent readers struggle with recognizing the commercial bias (Kiili et al., 2018) and discerning the trustworthy sources from untrustworthy ones (Marten & Stadtler, 2025).

Feedback – information that is intended to modify learner’s thinking, behavior, or improve learning (Shute, 2008) – plays a crucial role in effective learning (Mertens et al., 2022; Van Der Kleij et al., 2015). Feedback can be provided by a person in a face-to-face setting or delivered through computer-based systems. Computerized feedback enables the implementation of individualized, adaptive feedback (Van Der Kleij et al., 2015), which is particularly beneficial when learners’ knowledge or skills vary substantially, as is often the case with source evaluation skills.

Three common forms of task-related computerized feedback include knowledge of results (i.e., the correctness of the response), knowledge of the correct response, and elaborative feedback (i.e., an explanation of why a given answer is correct or incorrect, often including some advice how to proceed) (Mertens et al., 2022; Van Der Kleij et al., 2015). Among these, elaborative feedback is the most complex form (Shute, 2008) and is often accompanied by the other two other forms of feedback (Van Der Kleij et al., 2015). Two meta-analysis show that elaborative feedback is most efficient, especially in supporting high-order learning outcomes (Mertens et al., 2022; Van Der Kleij et al., 2015).

In addition to performance-based feedback, computerized feedback can be designed by using a growth mindset approach (Ostrow et al., 2014). A growth mindset is the belief that human capacities, such as intellectual abilities, can be developed through practice and the use of new strategies (Yeager & Dweck, 2012). Feedback aligned with this approach reinforces the idea that skills, such as credibility evaluation, can be cultivated over time through practice and learning. Feedback can also be designed to consider students’ self-efficacy beliefs by offering mastery or vicarious experiences (Bandura, 1997), especially for those who have low confidence in their skills. Such feedback aims to strengthen students’ beliefs in their ability to succeed, fostering engagement.

While several intervention studies have been designed to support students’ source evaluation skills (e.g., Marten & Stadtler, 2025), none have focused on providing adaptive feedback that considers both cognitive and motivational factors. Therefore, the purpose of the present study is to develop and test the efficacy of computerized, adaptive feedback to enhance students’ source evaluation skills. Designed adaptive feedback considers students’ evaluation performance and self-efficacy beliefs, while also fostering a growth mindset. To understand the baseline of students’ source evaluation skills, we examine to what extent students are able to discern the expertise and benevolence of expert and non-expert sources before the intervention, and whether students differ in their ability to discern between these aspects of evaluation.

Across Europe and internationally, schools are increasingly introducing smartphone bans in response to concerns about declining student attention, well-being, and social interaction [1][2]. Although such bans are often presented as effective solutions to digital distraction, existing research highlights the importance of contextual, psychological, and organisational factors [3]. This study examines the implementation and impact of a school-wide smartphone ban through an action research approach, focusing on how the policy is experienced by different stakeholders within the school community.

The study addresses the following research question:

How does a school-wide smartphone ban influence students’ engagement, behaviour, emotional well-being, and social interaction, and how is this policy perceived by students, teachers, parents, curators, and school psychologists?

The research was conducted in a secondary school context with students in Grades 7–9 and involved five stakeholder groups: students, subject teachers, parents, school curators (class mentors responsible for collecting smartphones and mediating communication), and school psychologists. Including curators and psychologists enabled deeper insight into the organisational and emotional dimensions of policy implementation.

The objectives of the study were to:

• examine perceived effects of the smartphone ban on engagement, discipline, and social interaction;
• explore emotional and psychological responses to restricted smartphone access;
• identify tensions and misalignments in stakeholder perceptions;
• inform the development of a transparent and supportive school policy.

The study is theoretically informed by socio-cultural perspectives on learning and well-being, with particular attention to self-regulation, student agency, and digital well-being [4]. Smartphones are conceptualised not merely as distractions but as elements embedded in students’ emotional security and everyday practices. Psychological observations draw on the concept of FOMO (fear of missing out) to explain adaptive anxiety and transitional resistance during early stages of policy implementation [5][6].

Positioned within European debates on technology regulation in education, including UNESCO and European Commission perspectives, the study contributes to international discussions on balancing regulation, autonomy, and student well-being in schools [1][2].

Scaffolding Self-Regulated Learning in Elementary Education:
A Design-Based Research Study with Fourth Grade Students

Self-regulated learning (SRL), involving learners’ ability to plan, monitor, and reflect on their learning, is widely recognized as essential for academic success. Although research shows that elementary students are capable of engaging in SRL, classroom practices often provide limited explicit support, leaving students to regulate their learning without clear guidance.

This design-based research study examines how scaffolded supports for self-regulated learning can be designed, implemented, and refined in fourth-grade Turkish reading comprehension lessons. Grounded in sociocultural and constructivist perspectives and cyclical models of SRL, the study employs three iterative design cycles that gradually shift responsibility from teacher-supported scaffolding to student independence.

Conducted over one academic year in two fourth-grade classrooms with 50 students and two teachers, the study integrates scaffolded self-regulated learning tools and routines into regular Turkish reading instruction. Classroom observations, student artifacts, adapted self-report measures, and teacher interviews are used to examine learning processes and inform iterative redesign, with the aim of fostering students’ engagement in self-regulated reading comprehension.

Research Questions

1. How do fourth-grade students engage in planning, monitoring, and reflection processes during learning activities supported by scaffolded SRL interventions?
2. How does the gradual fading of scaffolds appear to shape students’ independent use and articulation of SRL strategies across iterative design cycles?
3. In what ways do students’ SRL behaviors and learning-related engagement appear to change over the course of the intervention?

Design Goals

The study aims to iteratively develop scaffolded supports that foster fourth-grade students’ self-regulated learning by making planning, monitoring, and reflection processes explicit and gradually internalized within authentic classroom contexts.

Theoretical Framework

Every child is born with the capacity to self-regulate and this capacity for self-regulation develops with age. Although biological factors like temperament and predisposed reactivity underpin the development of self-regulation in children (Berk, Mann, & Ogan, 2006; Bodrova & Leong, 2007), early experiences play an important role on this development (Boekaerts, 1997). Research on self-regulated learning emerged more than two decades ago to answer the question of how students become masters of their own learning processes (Zimmerman, 2008). However, over the last decade, various indications have been found for suggesting traces of self-regulated learning earlier than expected. Studies in laboratory settings and studies based on children’s self-report data have been underestimating young children’s abilities (Whitebread et al., 2007). Studies in which children have been observed in their natural settings and/or while performing familiar tasks showed that young children can and do engage in self-regulated learning (Annevirta & Vauras, 2006; Istomina, 1975; Perry, 1998; Perry et al., 2004; Robson, 2010; Sperling, Walls, & Hill, 2000; Whitebread & Coltman, 2010; Whitebread et al., 2007). Prior studies have emphasized that students’ SRL should be supported as early as possible (Perry, 1998; Perry & VandeKamp, 2000), suggesting that a focus on SRL skill development at the elementary school level is needed. During this period, children have not yet fully developed the studying habits and beliefs about their own abilities that might hinder future SRL (Dignath & Büttner, 2008). Moreover, SRL may be easier to learn in elementary education because it allows for more gradual practice in a less complex and demanding context than secondary education (Meneghetti et al., 2007). The advantage of training children how to self-regulate their learning in the beginning of their schooling is that during these first crucial years, students set up learning and self-efficacy attitudes (Whitebread, 2000) which are easier to change than when students have already developed disadvantageous learning styles and learning behaviour (Hattie et al., 1996).

With the deep penetration of internet technology, mobile phone addiction has emerged as a global public health challenge, profoundly impacting college students who are digital natives. In China, the staggering number of 1.105 billion mobile internet users (China Internet Network Information Center, 2025) underscores the urgency of this issue. Compared to other demographics, college students face unique pressures from academic competition, career prospects, and social adaptation. They enjoy considerable autonomy over their time, yet experience diminished external behavioral constraints, making them a high-risk group for mobile phone addiction. Investigating the psychosocial mechanisms underlying this addiction is therefore crucial for fostering their personal development and the nation's future talent pool.

Parenting, a key environmental factor in individual development, continues to exert influence during the transition to young adulthood in college. Research framed by Self-Determination Theory posits that parenting shapes behavior by satisfying or thwarting three basic psychological needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness (Deci & Ryan, 2012). Specifically, parental autonomy support, which involves encouraging independent choice and self-expression, is widely regarded as a protective factor that fulfills autonomy needs and enhances intrinsic motivation, with studies showing it reduces internet addiction risk (Liu et al., 2021). Conversely, parental psychological control, which intrudes into a child’s psychological world via guilt induction or love withdrawal, and it is consistently linked to higher adolescent mobile phone addiction (Yan et al., 2020; Huang et al., 2025), likely by thwarting autonomy and inducing reactance (Barber, 1996). Parental behavioral control, however, which is typically understood as a process of establishing rules and monitoring behavior, shows a negative association with problematic internet use (Li et al., 2013).

Nevertheless, existing studies often examine single parenting dimensions in isolation, overlooking their synergistic effects and combined patterns in real-world families. Person-centered approaches like Latent Profile Analysis (LPA) offer a novel perspective. For instance, one study focusing on physical education teachers identified profiles such as High Autonomy Support-Low Psychological Control among adolescents (Soenens, Vansteenkiste, & Sierens, 2007). Although scholars have begun exploring the joint effects of autonomy support and psychological control (Costa et al., 2016; Deng et al., 2021), research integrating autonomy support, psychological control, and behavioral control to uncover holistic parenting profiles among university students remains scarce. Critically, the perceived stress experienced by college students may serve as a key boundary condition. High stress may increase the propensity to use mobile phones as an escape from reality. Thus, stress could amplify the association between maladaptive parenting profiles and mobile phone addiction.

In summary, integrating SDT and a stress-coping perspective, this study innovatively employs LPA to:

1) Identify latent parenting profiles based on parental autonomy support, psychological control, and behavioral control among Chinese university students;

2) Compare differences in mobile phone addiction levels across these profiles;

3) Test whether perceived stress moderates the aforementioned relationship.

The findings are expected to move beyond examining isolated variables, offering a holistic perspective and providing crucial evidence for developing targeted prevention and intervention strategies for at-risk students from diverse familial backgrounds.

In the context of overlapping global crises, particularly climate change and related sustainability challenges, educational research is increasingly concerned with how knowledge translates into meaningful action. Education is widely attributed to a decisive role in empowering leaners to contribute to a more sustainable world. Vocational education and training (VET), in particular, is attributed considerable potential in this regard due to its strong practical orientation, its close connection to the world of work and the economy (Slopinksi et al., 2020). In Switzerland, VET is predominantly organized as a dual system, in which apprentices acquire practical skills in training companies alongside theoretical knowledge at vocational schools, complemented by occupation-specific intercompany courses (SERI, 2026). However, if VET aims to empower apprentices to develop sustainability awareness and encourage action there is a need to go beyond the transmission of operational skills or subject-specific declarative knowledge, and instead systematically address goal conflicts, ambivalences, and contradictions inherent in professional practice (Fischer et al., 2020). There is little research on the development of sustainability awareness in vocational education and training, and the present contribution therefore focuses on this issue.

Sustainability awareness historically emerged from the concept of environmental awareness and refers to an individual’s recognition of the transgression of natural planetary boundaries and the resulting threat to the living conditions of both present and future generations (Michelsen et al., 2015). This understanding encompasses both the cognitive and the emotional–affective dimensions. In addition, sustainability awareness includes a conative dimension, which reflects individuals’ perception of their ability to actively contribute to change (Franzen, 2023). Only the interaction of all three dimensions leads to a comprehensive form of sustainability awareness.
Adolescents’ sustainability awareness is shaped by influences both outside and within educational contexts (Holfelder, 2018; Wendt & Görgen, 2017). Youth studies indicate that sustainability awareness among young adults is generally high, however, adolescents in VET tend to adopt a more pragmatic approach and show greater distance from sustainability issues compared to peers with an academic background (Holfelder, 2018). Apprentices already bring this emotionally distanced approach with them when they enter VET, as a result of their socialization and their prior encounters with sustainability (Pettig & Singer-Brodowski, 2025). Depending on apprentices` experiences VET, these emotions may be reinforced, remain stable, or be transformed.

Sustainability challenges are particularly permeated by emotions due to their complexity and inherent goal conflicts and contradictions (Grund & Singer-Brodowski, 2020). Moreover, emotions constitute a core element of transformative learning processes, as profound changes in one’s self- or worldview are often accompanied by experiences of emotional discomfort (Grund et al., 2024). When individuals experience negative emotions such as anger or sadness in response to climate change, this may increase their willingness to engage actively and to take action themselves (Trott, 2022). Perceived opportunities for action can also contribute to improved emotional regulation. However, emotions have so far been largely neglected in VET research on sustainability, underscoring the relevance of examining this topic in greater depth (Grund et al., 2024).

Therefore, this contribution examines the development of vocational sustainability awareness within VET, with a particular focus on its emotional–affective component. It explores which emotions are articulated by apprentices in the context of sustainability-related issues in VET and analyzes the role these emotions play in the emergence and further development of sustainability awareness. In addition, the study investigates the influence of apprentices’ experiences in vocational contexts on these emotional processes. The main research question underlying this contribution is: What kind of emotions regarding sustainability do apprentices experience in their educational and vocational contexts, and what role do emotions play in the development of vocational sustainability awareness?

The contemporary landscape of Vocational Education and Training (VET) is increasingly defined by its capacity to serve as a catalyst for "sustainable competitiveness, social fairness, and resilience". As articulated by the Council of the European Union (2020), modern VET systems must transcend traditional classroom boundaries to ensure educational and training outcomes align seamlessly with the dynamic requirements of the global labour market. In this context, Spain’s Organic Law 3/2022 represents a structural shift toward a more flexible, accessible, and inclusive model designed to promote lifelong learning and professional qualification. A primary innovation of this reform is the elevation of work-based learning through Intensive Dual VET, where students spend between 50% and 70% of their training within a company under an apprenticeship contract, effectively transitioning from a traditional student role to that of a "worker-learner".

The phenomenon of "Early Leaving from Education and Training" (ELET) has been viewed as an individual failure; however, modern institutional perspectives now interpret it as a systemic indicator of a lack of synchronicity between the educational offer and student’s expectations (Böhn & Deutscher, 2022; Cedefop, 2016; de Graaf & van Zenderen, 2013; Psifidou et al., 2021). Within the European Quality Assurance in VET (EQAVET) framework, completion rates serve as a core indicator of institutional health, shifting the focus toward the quality of the training provided. Academic literature suggests that dropping out is not a static event but a progressive process resulting from the intersect of various factors over time (Böhn & Deutscher, 2022; Bosset et al., 2022; Findeisen et al., 2022; Krötz & Deutscher, 2022; Krötz, 2024; Schmid, 2017), subjectively interpreted by the individual (Krötz & Deutscher, 2022).

Research identifies two critical stages in this process. First, pre-enrolment factors such as prior academic performance (Böhn & Deutscher, 2022; Bosset et al., 2022; Michaelis & Richter, 2022), socioeconomic status, and parental education levels significantly influence the transition to VET. When students are unable to access their preferred programs due to limited places, the risk of disengagement increases exponentially. Second, the "quality of fit" during training—both at the educational institution and within the company—is a primary determinant of retention. Adverse conditions, such as excessive workloads or tasks misaligned with the professional profile, act as strong predictors of dropout. Conversely, strong interpersonal relationships with mentors and the perceived utility of the curriculum promote successful pathways (Böhn & Deutscher, 2022; Fix et al., 2019; Krötz & Deutscher, 2022).

The urgency of this reform is particularly evident in Spain, which faces persistent challenges regarding youth unemployment and high ELET rates. The Balearic Islands present a critical case study, as regional data often reflects higher dropout rates than the national average. In response, the research project "Completion and Dropout Pathways in Intensive Dual VET" seeks to analyse the factors influencing these outcomes over a four-year period.

The primary objectives of the study are to evaluate the longitudinal processes of completion and dropout and to develop actionable, evidence-based proposals to foster educational success. By monitoring a cohort of 450 students, the research aims to define specific student profiles and categorise students’ pathways based on engagement and satisfaction. Ultimately, this project intends to provide a comprehensive understanding of how the Intensive Dual VET can serve as a robust dropout prevention mechanism, reframing VET from a purely classroom-based model into a viable and sustainable career pathway.

The shift towards a knowledge economy has intensified demand for more complex technical competencies and renewed attention to skills formation, including VET’s role in supporting productivity and economic transformation (World Economic Forum, 2016; OECD, 2021; Kovalchuk et al., 2022). Employer involvement is widely seen as key to strengthening the relevance of VET and its alignment with labour-market needs (Huddleston and Laczik, 2018; Haybi-Barak and Shoshana, 2020). Yet, while policy and institutional debates widely acknowledge the importance of employer engagement, we know less about how employers publicly justify and position their engagement, especially in contexts shaped by state steering and policy mobilisation.

This paper focuses on VET in China, where higher vocational education has been elevated within national development and education reform agendas (Xu, 2020; Xue and Li, 2022). This repositioning has unfolded alongside China’s transition towards “high-quality development” and industrial upgrading, increasing expectations for a more highly skilled technical workforce (Pan and Yang, 2024; Wang, 2024). Labour market evidence suggests persistent skills mismatch and shortages, reinforcing policy attention to strengthening skills development (Tan, 2020). At the same time, concerns persist about the responsiveness and quality of higher vocational education, often attributed to weak linkages between education providers and employers (Ma and Guo, 2018; Zhuang, 2018). National reforms have increasingly framed industry–VET partnership as a strategy for improving training relevance, graduate employability, and the contribution of VET to wider economic priorities (Xue and Li, 2022; Shi, 2024). In this setting, employers are expected to become active partners in workplace learning, curriculum alignment, and skills certification.

The paper asks: How do employers justify and position their engagement in higher vocational education in China? It further examines patterned variation across employer types. Here, “employers” refers to enterprise organisations (firms) that report their engagement with higher vocational institutions. The study aims to (1) identify recurring justificatory themes in employer-authored accounts; (2) examine how these narratives vary across employer types, using sector, region, and firm size as key comparative dimensions; and (3) relate observed justificatory logics to broader questions about how responsibilities, authority, and resources in skills formation are organised.

The analysis is guided by the political economy of skill formation, which shifts attention from whether firms are willing to invest to how skill systems allocate responsibilities for providing, financing, regulating, and certifying training across the state, education providers, enterprises, and intermediary bodies (Hall and Soskice, 2001; Busemeyer and Trampusch, 2012). Historical institutionalist accounts emphasise that skill formation arrangements are politically contested and structured around settlements over who provides training, who pays for it, and who holds authority over standards and certification (Thelen, 2004). Building on these insights, the paper reads employer narratives through PESF questions—who is presented as responsible for provision, who is portrayed as bearing costs and risks, and who is positioned as having authority over standards and certification—linking organisational justification to system-level governance debates (Busemeyer and Trampusch, 2012; Bonoli and Emmenegger, 2022). While much of this scholarship is grounded in European cases, its organising questions can be extended to contexts with different forms of state steering and employer organisation (Oliver, Yu and Buchanan, 2019).

Empirically grounded in China, the paper contributes to European and international dialogue on employer engagement in VET by extending political economy questions about responsibility allocation, legitimacy, and governance into a large, state-steered skills regime. Methodologically, it shows how large-scale employer-authored texts can be analysed systematically to examine patterns and variation in employer narratives of engagement.

At the conference, the paper will present the completed analysis, including cross-group comparisons and implications for research on employer engagement and the governance of skill formation.

In the sociology of childhood, understandings of the child and childhood are viewed as historically and culturally contingent (Alanen, 2009; Prout & James, 1997). Childhood institutions, as central determinants of modern childhood (Kampmann, 2004), function as arenas in which childhood and children are produced and negotiated (Leonard, 2019). In this paper, I engage in scientific debate on how a child as a social and cultural category is produced in the context of early childhood education and care (ECEC) institution (Dahlberg, 1999; Leonard, 2016). The theoretical basis of my research is on new institutionalism and its discursively oriented branch, discursive institutionalism (DI), which conceptualize institutions as social orders that both produce their actors and are continuously shaped by them (Powell & DiMaggio, 1991; Schmidt, 2008). Institutions contain assumptions about what is desirable, expected, or normal, and these assumptions guide the forms of agency made possible within them. DI highlights how culturally shared ways of speaking and discourses constitute institutional logics and shape actors’ possibilities (Schmidt 2008).

From this perspective, children can be seen as institutional actors whose identities are discursively constructed and negotiated in ECEC settings. Alasuutari and Markström (2011) found that discussions of early education plans in ECEC centres emphasized social skills as key expectations for “normal” children, constructed through generational and gendered norms. Examining Finnish ECEC plan forms, Alasuutari and Karila (2010) showed that children were depicted through family contexts and personality traits but not as actors. Franck and Nilsen (2015) observed that ideals of the competent child and early intervention practices created positions of deviance for some children in ECEC settings. Heiskanen, Alasuutari, and Vehkakoski (2018) demonstrated how pedagogical documents positioned children with special needs in ways that emphasized their difficulties, interpreting children according to developmental ideals and institutional expectations (Heiskanen, Alasuutari & Vehkakoski, 2015). These studies indicate that discursive practices in ECEC rely on assumptions about what constitutes a “normal” or ideal child, thereby guiding institutional expectations, actions, and decisions. Consequently, institutional “truths” about the child become context-bound while remaining open to continuous negotiation (James & Prout, 1997).

However, existing research has largely examined discursive constructions of children within centre-based ECEC activities. In my research, I extend this examination to include other forms of ECEC as well. Family day care has long been a form of ECEC alongside centre-based provision in many European countries (Mooney & Statham, 2003), yet research on it has focused mainly on professionalization (e.g. Bauters & Vandenbroeck, 2017) and quality issues (e.g. Zheng & Yu, 2023). Far less attention has been paid to how family day care as an institutional form shapes constructions of children and childhood. My aim is to fill this research gap by studying the both forms of ECEC side-by-side and the discourses concerning children in these settings. To do this, I use the case of Finland, which provides a fruitful research context. In Finnish ECEC family daycare plays an important role alongside centre-based provision. Both forms are governed by uniform legislation and a national curriculum and serve as full-time ECEC options for families with young children (Finnish National Agency for Education, 2018). By analysing discourses across these Finnish institutional settings, my study broadens the understanding of how diverse ECEC contexts contribute to the construction of childhood.

My research questions are:

1. What kinds of discourses structure talk concerning children in centre-based ECEC and family daycare in Finnish ECEC?
2. How is a child constructed within these discourses?

This study examines how ostracism takes shape in the everyday life of toddlers (children under three years old) in ECEC settings, focusing on how moments of exclusion are produced and what forms they take. Ostracism typically refers to being ignored or excluded, whether intentionally or unintentionally, often without explanation or overt negative reactions (Williams, 2007; 2001). It´s commonly understood as a process in which person experiences a series of reactions that unfold over time as they are overlooked and left out (Williams, 2007). Ostracism is common, affects all age groups, and has serious consequences for individuals affected by it (Lei Y et al., 2024; Timeo et al., 2019). Previous research shows that ostracism is detrimental to self-esteem, well-being, and fulfilment of basic needs, leading to experiences of loneliness and exclusion (Williams, 2001). The study is guided by the following research question: What kinds of sociomaterial elements produce situations of not-noticing in the everyday life of toddlers in ECEC?

Ostracism has been studied through the experiences of people of different ages and using a variety of methods, such as surveys, self-assessments, and interviews, particularly among adults and young people. Despite its relevance, research on the mechanisms of ostracism remains limited (see Kiuru et al., 2024), and studies focusing on children under the age of three in ECEC settings are especially scarce. For example, study by Woodward and colleagues (2023) shows that children aged 4-6 negatively evaluate peers who excluded others and are less willing to engage with them. Zheng and colleagues (2024) study demonstrated that threats to basic psychological needs due to ostracism begin to emerge around ages 8-10, while mood-related effects are observable as early as 6-8-years. Notably, even a brief re-inclusion was shown to mitigate these negative effects. Quadrelli and colleagues (2023) on the other hand studied the reactions of one-year-old babies to ostracism and suggest that even very young children may be sensitive to ostracism. Although previous studies highlight the developmental relevance of ostracism, they have paid less attention to how exclusion manifests in everyday life in ECEC settings, particularly among toddlers.

In research literature, the phenomenon at the center of this study is typically described through the concepts of ostracism in social psychology and exclusion in sociology and psychology. In this study, the term exclusion is used to refer to these earlier conceptualizations, specifically as a situational phenomenon. Furthermore, the sociomaterial approach made visible an additional form of exclusion, which is in this study conceptualized as not-noticing. Sociomaterial theory (DeLanda, 2016; Orlikowski, 2007) makes it possible to examine this perspective that has received limited attention in previous studies - how spaces, people, institutional practices in ECEC, material arrangements, and on the other hand toddler´s typical ways of communicating nonverbally may together produce situations of exclusion. So, this study aims to address that gap by examining how exclusion is situationally produced through temporary arrangements of people, spaces, objects, and practices (see Suchman, 2007), including institutional responsibilities and obligations and rules that shape participation and exclusion in those everyday situations (Paananen & Grieshaber 2024). In other words, the premise of this study is that exclusion is not only socially produced; it emerges in entanglement with the material environment.

By focusing on children under three years of age, that has received little attention in previous ostracism research, this study contributes to understanding how exclusion may affect individuals already in early childhood. It also highlights how ECEC across Europe could ensure and support children´s equal opportunities to be heard and seen. This perspective is crucial for ongoing European and international efforts to strengthen equitable ECEC.

Everyday preschool life unfolds within spaces shaped by the relations of those immersed in them. These spaces are not neutral settings, but carriers of meanings continuously produced and negotiated by the participants through everyday activities and engagements.

In research on human–environment relations, a distinction is commonly made between space and place. Drawing on humanistic geography, space is understood as openness characterised by physical movement, while place refers to those parts of space that have been endowed with meaning, value and subjectivity through lived experience (Tuan, 1977). From this perspective, places are not defined solely by their physical properties, but by the meanings and interpretations that emerge through everyday practices and relations.

Within educational research, place is approached as a relational and socially constructed phenomenon that is integral to educational experience rather than as a purely physical setting. Place-conscious perspectives emphasise that educational processes are always situated and that places both shape, and are shaped by, the practices, emotions and relations unfolding within them (Gruenewald, 2003; Schroder, 2006).

More recent perspectives extend these approaches by questioning their anthropocentric assumptions and by attending to more-than-human dimensions of educational situations. Informed by actor–network theory (Latour, 2010), education is increasingly understood as a network of relations involving human and more-than-human actors, including material objects, spatial arrangements and everyday practices. From this viewpoint, place becomes an active participant in educational processes rather than a passive backdrop.

Building on these perspectives, place-conscious perspectives intersect with insights from embodied and multimodal theories of cognition, which emphasise that meaning-making is grounded in bodily action, sensory engagement and situated interaction with the environment. From this viewpoint, children’s engagements with place are not primarily articulated through verbal reflection, but emerge through movement, gesture, rhythm, touch and interaction with material elements of their surroundings. Multisensory experience thus constitutes a fundamental mode through which young children perceive, express and communicate meanings of place, particularly in early childhood settings where cognition, action and perception remain closely intertwined.

The methodological focus on the Mosaic Approach and Child-Led Tours carries an international and inclusive potential. By relying on embodied, multisensory and multimodal forms of communication rather than verbal language alone, the research design enables the participation of children from diverse linguistic, cultural and educational environments

Accordingly, the presentation explores selected empirical moments from an ongoing qualitative study with children aged 3-6. The guiding research question asks:
How are meanings of place communicated and made accessible through children’s embodied and multisensory forms of engagement in preschool settings?
Rather than offering a comprehensive account of children’s relations with place, the focus is on illustrating how meanings emerge and are shared through multisensory communication within the research process.

My doctoral dissertation develops utopian research in early childhood education (ECE) as a pathway for planetary citizenship. It addresses how utopia, understood as the imaginary reconstitution of society (Levitas, 2013), can make children’s complex environmental relations visible while opening space for unlearning harmful societal logics that reproduce ecological degradation and climate change. I define capitalist realism (Fisher, 2009) and intertwined coloniality (of power/knowledge/being/nature, de la Hoz et al., 2024) as sustaining forces behind the polycrisis and place these as explicit objects of pedagogical unlearning (McLeod et al., 2020; Azoulay, 2019; Zembylas, 2024).

A planetary perspective on citizenship examines humans’ multifaceted entanglements with societal life and the biosphere, as well as the lifelong formation of global agency and environmental stewardship. Conceptually, the study advances a planetary ethics of co‑responsibility (da Silva, 2011); a shift from individualized responsibility toward relational entanglements between human and non‑human worlds. A decolonizing approach to planetary ethics foregrounds not only this shared responsibility, but also understanding of historical justice, ecological interconnectedness and the imagination of decolonial futurities. Within this frame, utopia functions as a critical counter‑image of the present (Lakkala, 2020), oriented by a “desire for a better being” (Levitas, 2010, 9), thereby combining social critique and political imagination. In the context of ECE, utopian methodology becomes a child‑centered, playful means for imagining the world as we know it otherwise, and building capacities for environmental stewardship.

The project examines (1) the way small children (aged 5–6) articulate environmental relations and ideals of environmental agency in their lived societies; and (2) utopia’s pedagogical potential for unsettling unsustainable environmental relations and opening space for the re-imagination of these relations. The overall aim is to cultivate children’s political imagination and planetary understanding in critical environmental and sustainability education (ESE) by unsettling dominant narratives and unlearning colonial‑capitalist onto-epistemologies.

Research questions.

1. Theoretical: What does political imagination with 5–6‑year‑olds contribute to research on unlearning – specifically, unlearning capitalist realism and coloniality?
2. Methodological: How can children’s environmental relations and ideals of environmental agency be studied in an ethical and child‑centered manner amid the complex and politicized reality of the polycrisis?
3. Practical: Which research‑informed pedagogical practices are translatable to everyday ECE to both support planetary understanding and agency (learning) and dismantle unsustainable environmental relations (unlearning)?

Framing the ECE setting as a legitimate site of political subjectivity and utopian research, the project reconceives children not only as knowers of their immediate surroundings but also as political actors capable of utopian thinking. Although research on children’s political views has been conducted before, this tradition has largely focused on children’s understanding and views of societal phenomena in their existing forms – not on what society could be (Jost et al., 2022).

Critical examination of human-centered ways of thinking has become topical as complex crises challenge sustainable development. In education research, attention has begun to be paid to relationships and living with multispecies companions. However, recent initiatives to include relational ontology and multispecies insights in educational discourses have mostly focused on animal relations, while plant companions have hardly been taken as an explicit focus (e.g. Tammi et al., 2023). In this presentation I examine the relationships between plants and children in the context of Finnish early childhood education and care (henceforth ECEC). The presentation is based on ongoing doctoral research, which is situated in the intersections of early childhood education, multispecies studies, and critical plant studies. My objective is to critically examine how plants and children relate to each other in educational practices by asking 1) In what ways cultural, historical, and material aspects are present in plant-child encounters? and 2) What kind of histories bring plants and children together in urban multispecies landscapes?

I ground the theoretical background of the research in posthumanist and feminist new materialist literature. I take the standpoint of relational ontologies to see how the relationship between plants and children can be seen through disorienting focus from the child and moving it to plant-child relations. Multispecies approach allows me to emphasize the entanglements of human and other-than-human in various assemblages (van Dooren et al., 2016; Tammi et al., 2023) and critical plant studies to address plants as relational agentic beings (Lawrence, 2022). I view children and plants as participants in landscape assemblages (Tsing, 2017, 2020), that is, gatherings of human and nonhuman becomings in their mutual world-making or worlding (Haraway, 2007). The concept of worlding is used in decentering the ideas of individual identity and self-forming autopoiesis, and in moving towards the idea of becoming-with in sympoiesis: life is interdependent and collaborative co-making, shared becoming with (Haraway, 2007, 2016). Conducting postqualitative inquiry, I orientate my thinking and practices with theory and concepts and read the data through multiple theoretical insights diffractively (see Jackson & Mazzei, 2023; Lenz Taguchi & St. Pierre, 2017; Mazzei, 2014; St. Pierre, 2021).

In this presentation, I will focus on the empirical phase of the research, in which plant-child relations are mapped using multispecies ethnography. I will highlight perspectives on how history, culture, and materiality are present in plant-child encounters and how they bring plants and children together in the diverse landscapes of cities. I will explore what happens when the priority in encounters is not the child but the plant, how to consider plants in diverse encounters, and what questions does conducting multispecies ethnography with plants raise. I will present observations from ethnographic data, reflecting them on selected theoretical frameworks. Inspired by the bag-lady storytelling practice described by Haraway (2004), I present the expected outcomes of this study as narrative vignettes.

The presentation offers insights of how to conduct multispecies inquiry with plants. It also challenges us to think about ECEC environmental and sustainability education from more-than-human point of view. This research has implications beyond the Finnish context. Relational more-than-human perspectives are not prevalent in European educational contexts, which are mostly built on humanities and natural sciences. However, there is a need to review our place in nature as part of a more-than-human world. This presentation may open space for dialogue among researchers and practitioners on how plant-child relations can be (re)considered in education.

The term flourishing refers to the experience of living a fulfilling life, rooted in positive relationships, a sense of competence, and a feeling of meaning and purpose. To capture this construct, Diener et al. (2010) developed the Flourishing Scale (FS), and the questionnaire is designed to evaluate psychological and social well-being. Moreover, the emerging concept of flourishing is also examined through the integration of both hedonic (subjective well-being) and eudaimonic (psychological well-being) perspectives. This integration highlights flourishing as a state of high hedonic and eudaimonic well-being, representing a harmonious blend of feeling good and functioning effectively. In this regard, some scholars define flourishing as the idea of “living the good life” and reflect a condition where “all aspects of a person’s life are positive,” leading to comprehensive human well-being (Huppert & So, 2013; Keyes, 2002; Seligman, 2012).

Its theoretical roots can be traced back to classical philosophy. Flourishing is now widely recognized as a key indicator of well-being, and its theoretical foundation is linked to Aristotle’s philosophy. Aristotle conceptualized flourishing as ‘living well’, emphasizing virtuous activity which is not limited to moral excellences but includes cognitive excellences, practical wisdom, and understanding (Aristotle, 1999; Symons & VanderWeele, 2024). This notion has significantly influenced positive psychology over recent decades, particularly in the framework proposed by Peterson and Seligman (2004), which focuses on character strengths and virtues. Similarly, Ryff (1989) articulates her approach to well-being through six dimensions: autonomy, environmental mastery, personal growth, positive relations with others, purpose in life, and self-acceptance. Building on these contributions, Keyes et al. (2002) developed a framework of flourishing based on an analysis of the European Social Survey, conceptualizing flourishing as “feeling good and functioning effectively”. Keyes (2003, 2005, 2007) further operationalized flourishing as a combination of emotional, psychological, and social well-being.

Following the positive psychology paradigm, Seligman (2011) posits that flourishing arises from five pillars of the PERMA well-being model (positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment). Huppert and So (2013) later expanded this conceptualization by linking flourishing to a broader set of attributes, including competence, emotional stability, engagement, meaning, optimism, positive emotions, positive relationships, resilience, self-esteem, and vitality. Building on this growing body of research, Diener’s flourishing concept of prosperity draws on multiple sources. It incorporates humanistic approaches, psychological needs, and earlier theories related to well-being (Diener et al., 2010). The eight-item flourishing scale (FS) combines the well-being dimensions essential to positive functioning from Ryff’s (1989) eudaimonic theory and Ryan and Deci’s (2001) self-determination theory. Overall, the major conceptualization of flourishing is rooted in the Aristotelian perspective, positive psychology paradigm, different well-being perspectives, and self-determination theory.

The research aims to enhance the scientific application of the FS in Myanmar Teacher Education through translation, cultural adaptation, psychometric validation, and qualitative insights. The integration of quantitative data and qualitative insights would contribute to the holistic definitions of flourishing in the Teacher Education sector, suggesting future well-being and flourishing research nationally and internationally.

Research Hypothesis 1: The instrument FS is expected to: (a) demonstrate reliability and (b) exhibit convergent and factorial validity, thereby establishing construct validity in the Myanmar education setting.

Research Hypothesis 2: The FS is expected to positively correlate with SWLS and CD-RISC 25, and negatively with PHQ-4.

Research Hypothesis 3: The FS measurement models exhibit an adequate fit across demographic factors, including gender, age, and the type of Education Degree College.

Research Question 1: How do Myanmar student teachers conceptualize the notion of flourishing within the context of their personal and professional development?

Research Question 2: What life experiences contribute to Myanmar student teachers’ flourishing during the teacher education journey?

Teachers are increasingly expected to identify, respond to, and support student mental health and wellbeing. This expectation has intensified in the context of global concern about youth mental health and teacher shortages, yet teachers consistently report feeling underprepared, undersupported, and overwhelmed by these responsibilities. These pressures contribute to stress, burnout, and attrition, exacerbating the global teacher crisis and undermining efforts to create safe, inclusive, and thriving learning environments (OECD, 2020; UNESCO & International Task Force on Teachers for Education 2030, 2024).

Research on mental health and wellbeing in education, teacher wellbeing, and mental health literacy has expanded rapidly. However, existing studies typically focus on isolated elements such as knowledge, confidence, attitudes, or specific programmes, rather than on a coherent, theory-informed construct of teacher readiness to support student mental health and wellbeing. The term “readiness” is often used implicitly, rarely defined, and seldom anchored in robust psychological or implementation theories. This fragmentation limits the field’s capacity to accumulate knowledge, design coherent interventions, and inform policy and teacher education.

This PhD project addresses this gap by developing and testing a conceptual and measurement model of teacher readiness to support student mental health and wellbeing. The overarching aim is to articulate, operationalise, and empirically examine the key dimensions of readiness, and the relationships between teacher characteristics, contextual factors, and readiness-related outcomes.

The project is structured in three phases. Phase 1 employed a systematic–narrative hybrid review to map and synthesise interdisciplinary literature on teacher roles in student mental health, drawing from education, psychology, health, and implementation science. This review identified substantial conceptual diversity in how mental health, wellbeing, and related constructs are defined, and revealed that readiness is rarely treated as a multidimensional construct.

Phase 2 used a qualitative survey of 400 practising teachers across Australia to foreground teachers’ lived experiences, language, and perspectives. These data were used to refine and extend the initial conceptual model, clarify the ways in which attitudes, beliefs, and professional identity may mediate readiness, and ensure that the emerging model reflected classroom realities rather than idealised depictions of practice.

Phase 3, which is the primary focus of this presentation, involves the development and validation of a quantitative survey instrument designed to operationalise the conceptual model and test its structure. The instrument integrates established measures (e.g., mental health literacy, wellbeing literacy) with newly developed scales targeting readiness-specific domains that are not currently captured in the literature.

Across all phases, the project is informed by theoretical perspectives including the theory of planned behaviour (Ajzen, 1971) and organisational readiness frameworks, which provide lenses for understanding how motivation, capability, and contextual support interact to shape teacher readiness. The emerging model positions readiness as multidimensional, encompassing knowledge and skills, attitudes and beliefs, motivation and self-efficacy, interpersonal capabilities, structural and contextual enablers, emotional and personal wellbeing or capacity, professional identity, and teachers’ broader sense of self.

The presentation will outline the conceptual model, detail the survey development and validation process, and report emerging psychometric results. Additionally, methodological limitations and implications for further research will be discussed.

Workforce sustainability in early childhood education and care (ECE) is most often examined through the lens of turnover (Kangas et al., 2021; Sirvio et al., 2023; Ahola & Valkonen, 2024; Sirvio et al., under review). While this body of research has generated critical insights into structural pressures and workforce instability, an exclusive focus on leaving risks obscuring the experiences of ECE teachers who remain in the profession despite ongoing challenges. This article, drawing on the third sub-study of a doctoral project, shifts attention from turnover to retention by examining why experienced ECE teachers continue their professional engagement. It foregrounds the conditions and meanings that enable long-term commitment within a Finnish ECE context characterised by emotional labour, ethical complexity, and institutional constraint (Sirvio et al. 2023).

The study is theoretically informed by the intersecting concepts of moral resilience and belonging. Together, these frameworks conceptualise retention as an active, relational, and institutionally mediated practice rather than a passive response to limited alternatives. Moral resilience provides a lens for understanding how teachers sustain ethical commitments over time. Moral resilience refers to the capacity to sustain or restore moral integrity in the face of ethical adversity, complexity, and distress (Rushton, 2016, 2018; Young & Rushton, 2017). For experienced ECE teachers who stay, moral resilience is not a fixed trait but a dynamic process that is continually renegotiated through everyday practice (Young & Rushton, 2017; Melasalmi et al., 2022). It involves navigating ethical tensions, emotional labour, and institutional constraints, with leadership practices playing a role in shaping the conditions under which teachers are able to maintain a sense of professional integrity (Garrett & Gibbs, 2025).

Belonging further explains why some experienced teachers sustain long-term attachment to the profession. Belonging encompasses feelings of recognition, inclusion, and connection within professional, organisational, and relational contexts (Yuval-Davis, 2006, 2011). Empirical research in Finland and internationally highlights collaborative work practices, interpersonal trust, collegial relationships, supportive leadership, shared professional values, and alignment with educational philosophies as key facilitators of belonging (Hakkarainen & Kivistö, 2020; Allen et al., 2025; Melzak et al., 2025; Zhang et al., 2025). A qualitative review by Sirkko et al. (2022) further demonstrates that belonging is strengthened when staff experience trust, collaboration, and low hierarchical distance, while unclear roles and marginalisation undermine belonging and increase burnout risk.

In ECE contexts, belonging is cultivated through structured induction, mentoring, and peer support (Doan, 2024). Place-based and culturally responsive approaches that recognise local contexts and validate diverse identities further enhance teachers’ sense of connection and inclusion (Chan & Ritchie, 2025). Personal experiences, cultural sensitivity, and awareness of local communities strengthen engagement and commitment (Juutinen & Kess, 2019). At the same time, structural conditions such as income adequacy, workload, and work–family conflict also shape organisational commitment and turnover intentions, underscoring that belonging is embedded within material working conditions (Li & Chen, 2025).

By foregrounding retention rather than leaving, this article outlines moral resilience and belonging as conceptual lenses that may help understand workforce sustainability in ECE. The study does not assume these frameworks will fully explain teachers’ experiences; rather, they provide a way to consider the relational, ethical, and institutional factors that could influence long-term professional engagement. Future analysis of the empirical data will reveal how experienced teachers themselves describe and navigate these dynamics in practice.

Since the 1990s, international aid organisations, including those from Europe, have increasingly shaped literacy education reforms in low- and middle-income countries through the promotion of ‘evidence-based’ and comparative policy approaches. These reforms often prioritise school-based interventions and measurable learning outcomes while overlooking the broader socio-cultural contexts of education (Niño-Zarazúa 2016). This donor-driven orientation has generated sustained critiques regarding aid effectiveness, sustainability, and the relevance of externally driven education policies for addressing locally grounded challenges (Silova et al. 2025). These concerns are particularly salient for European education research, given the prominent role of European donors, policy frameworks, and intellectual traditions in global education governance and policy transfer.

Central to these critiques are debates about the politics of knowledge production in education policy, especially given that when early literacy reforms encounter political and socio-cultural plurality they adopt reductionist approaches (Jackson et al. 2025) rooted in Western epistemological dominance (Silova et al., 2025). Scholars argue that such approaches marginalise Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) by framing policy problems and solutions in ways that privilege Western knowledge while rendering Indigenous epistemologies invisible or irrelevant (Mignolo 2009; Huaman 2022). Rather than focusing exclusively on literacy outcomes, this scholarship calls for closer examination of policy processes, assumptions, and practices that sustain epistemic hierarchies.

Responding to the limited empirical research on the politics of knowledge production in early literacy policy (Hackett et al. 2020), this paper presents a qualitative case study of the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) early literacy initiatives in Zambia (2011 to 2013). The study examines how USAID engaged the Ministry of Education (MOE) during the policy process and how this engagement laid the groundwork for the adoption of Early Grade Reading (EGR) policies. The analysis is guided by three research questions: (1) What were the EGR policies promoted by USAID in Zambia? (2) What strategies did USAID use to soften decision makers in support of these policies? and (3) How were Indigenous Knowledge Systems silenced within the policy process?

The study adopts a critical policy perspective that foregrounds power relations, knowledge hierarchies, and policy entrepreneurship. Drawing on Nakata’s (2007) concept of the Cultural Interface and Kingdon’s (2014) Multiple Streams Approach, the paper analyses how donor-driven interventions operate within complex policy environments characterised by intersecting Indigenous and Western knowledge systems. Particular attention is paid to ‘softening-up’ strategies used by policy entrepreneurs to shape problem definitions, promote actionable policy ideas, build coalitions, and marginalise alternative forms of knowledge.

By analysing USAID’s role in Zambia’s early literacy policy process, this paper contributes to European and international education policy debates on aid effectiveness, policy transfer, and the decolonisation of education research. It highlights how well-intentioned literacy reforms can reproduce epistemic inequalities by excluding Indigenous Knowledge Systems from meaningful participation in policy design and decision making. The paper argues that addressing global literacy challenges requires greater attention to policy processes and stronger recognition of Indigenous knowledge as a legitimate and valuable component of education reform.

In recent decades, multilingual education has been widely promoted as a policy response to globalisation, knowledge-economy demands, and increased linguistic diversity. Kazakhstan’s trilingual education policy—designed to institutionalise Kazakh as the state language, Russian as the language of interethnic communication, and English as the language of global integration—represents one of the most ambitious education policy reforms in the field of language governance in post-Soviet contexts. Introduced as part of a broader modernisation agenda, the policy sought to transform secondary education by introducing English-medium instruction (EMI), particularly in STEM subjects, while maintaining bilingual instruction in Kazakh and Russian (Nazarbayev, 2007; Karabassova, 2018). Despite strong political endorsement and extensive piloting, the reform was effectively paused by the late 2010s, raising critical questions about why a strategically central policy failed to achieve its intended outcomes.

Conceptually, the paper is situated within education policy studies and is informed by a micro–meso–macro analytical framework (Dale, 1999), which enables examination of how centrally designed reforms (macro level) are mediated within institutional settings such as schools and local authorities (meso level) and ultimately enacted in professional practice at classroom level (micro level). Drawing on an in-depth critical analysis of peer-reviewed literature, government policy documents, evaluation reports, and empirical studies of school- and teacher-level responses, the study situates Kazakhstan’s experience within international debates on policy enactment, English-medium instruction, and multilingual education reform (Hornberger & Johnson, 2007; Braun et al., 2011; Johnson, 2013).

The paper is guided by three research questions:

1. How was the trilingual education policy conceptualised and justified within Kazakhstan’s secondary education reform agenda?
2. How did teachers and schools interpret and respond to the introduction of English-medium instruction in policy enactment at the level of professional practice?
3. What structural and institutional conditions constrained the effective enactment of the policy across mainstream secondary schools?

Analytically, the study adopts a policy enactment perspective that foregrounds the interaction between policy texts, institutional contexts, and professional agency within policy enactment (Braun et al., 2011). This approach enables a critical examination of how globally circulating models—such as CLIL and EMI—were transferred into Kazakhstan’s education system with limited adaptation to local linguistic ecologies, teacher preparedness, and resource disparities (Coyle et al., 2010; Cenoz et al., 2014). Particular attention is paid to teachers as key policy actors who actively negotiate reform demands in response to classroom realities, student proficiency levels, and workload pressures (Menken & García, 2010; Karabassova, 2022).

The analysis demonstrates that although the trilingual policy was coherent at the level of political discourse, its implementation was undermined by multiple interconnected factors. These included uneven teacher English proficiency, an overreliance on short-term training programmes, insufficient emphasis on pedagogical integration of content and language, and stark inequalities between elite pilot institutions and mainstream public schools, particularly in rural areas (Goodman & Karabassova, 2018; Karabassova, 2020). In many classrooms, limited student preparedness constrained meaningful engagement with subject content, leading to extensive code-switching and pedagogical simplification (Zhumanova et al., 2016; Imanova et al., 2025). As a result, trilingualism frequently functioned symbolically rather than substantively, weakening both subject learning and language development.

By placing Kazakhstan’s experience in comparative perspective, this paper contributes to international scholarship on education policy and the politics of reform by illustrating the risks of rapid, top-down initiatives and uncritical policy borrowing. It argues that sustainable multilingual education requires phased implementation, strong institutional mediation, and sustained investment in teacher development rather than ambitious timelines and symbolic targets.

Europeanisation of education constitutes a dynamic process in which supranational frameworks, policy discourses, and strategic initiatives shape national educational governance (Lawn & Grek, 2012). The European Digital Education Action Plan (DEAP-2021-2027) as pillar of the European Education Area (EEA) establish objectives related to digital skills, innovation, inclusion, and equity, structuring multi-level governance arrangements that connect national priorities with European strategies while interacting with institutional capacities, historical legacies, and sociomaterial infrastructures (European Commission, 2020; Radaelli, 2003).

In Greece, digital education policy is mediated through institutional actors that translate European priorities into national curricula, strategic plans, and digital infrastructures. The Institute of Educational Policy (ΙΕP) plays a key role in curricular development, educational innovation, and participation in European digital initiatives, including the adoption of frameworks such as DigCompEdu and SELFIE for Teachers (European Commission, 2020). Complementing this role, the Institute of Technology and Research in Education (CTI-ΙΤΥΕ “Διόφαντος”) operates as the technological arm of the Ministry of Education, overseeing the development and maintenance of digital platforms, ICT infrastructures, and large-scale systems such as the Greek School Network, which are central to the implementation of digital education policies.

This institutional configuration reflects broader shifts in Greek educational policy making, where European policy priorities are operationalised through national agencies and technological instruments. Over the last decades, national policy has progressively moved from an emphasis on democratisation and social integration toward modernisation agendas aligned with European discourses on performance, efficiency, and competitiveness (Sifakakis, Tsatsaroni, Sarakinioti, & Kourou, 2016).

Recent literature on education governance frames policy making not as a set of isolated institutional decisions, but as a process unfolding through heterogeneous networks of actors, including state agencies, expert bodies, policy instruments, and digital infrastructures (Landri, 2020). Building on this, Landri (2018) shows how digital governance in education can be mapped through “cartographies” that make visible the connections between institutional actors, technological infrastructures, and policy tools. Such cartographies illuminate how European frameworks are interpreted, adapted, and stabilised within national contexts, providing a lens to explore the relational and infrastructural dimensions of digital education governance. In this landscape, European policies, technological platforms, and regulatory frameworks do not operate in isolation; they intersect with national institutions, shaping priorities, coordination mechanisms, and patterns of participation in ways that are both structured and contingent (Decuypere, Grimaldi & Landri, 2021).

The study is guided by two research questions. First, which actors and policy initiatives define the landscape of digital education in Greece, and how have these actors, policies, institutional arrangements, and priorities evolved in recent years? Second, how do Greek digital education policies correspond to and integrate with overarching European digital education strategies and frameworks? These questions position digital education as a central element of Europeanisation while considering the complexities of alignment and adaptation in national contexts.

The theoretical framework integrates Europeanisation theory, Actor-Network Theory (ANT), and cartography. Europeanisation theory illuminates how European policies are translated, negotiated, and embedded within national systems (Edenhofer & Kowarsch, 2015; Landri, 2018; Radaelli, 2003). ANT frames governance as the product of heterogeneous networks of human and non-human actors-including ministries, agencies, policy documents, and technological tools-that together co-produce policy enactment (Latour, 2005; Law, 1992). Governance is characterised by a dynamic interaction among actors, who operate within networks and topologies that span local, national, and global levels (Landri, 2020). Cartography provides methodological instruments to map these networks systematically, visualise relational dynamics, and identify hierarchies, policy priorities, and influential actors (Cruz-López et al., 2022; Liebman & Paulston, 1994).

The growing influence of artificial intelligence (AI) on everyday life and professional contexts has increased the awareness of the need for AI-related competences (European Parliament and Council, 2024). This need is reinforced by European recommendations calling for enhanced awareness, training, and educational initiatives in schools (Council of Europe & Commissioner for Human Rights, 2019). For such initiatives to be successful, teachers themselves must possess adequate AI-related competences, which in turn require integration into curricula and the development of suitable measurement methods (Hattie, 2023). Initial initiatives aiming to strengthen AI competences among teachers indicate that the availability of a clear competence model, including all relevant dimensions for teaching and learning with and about AI, is highly beneficial (Seyferth-Zapf et al., 2025).

Many existing models and assessments build on the TPACK framework (Mishra & Koehler, 2006), which focuses on the interplay of technological knowledge and purposeful use, content knowledge, and pedagogical knowledge required for effective teaching. However, the pedagogical dimension, particularly regarding teaching about AI, often remains underrepresented. Current AI-related competence models are either targeted broadly at “non-experts” (Laupichler et al., 2023) and therefore lack pedagogical specificity, or they are tailored to teachers but remain strongly oriented toward technical aspects of using AI, only implicitly addressing the demands of teaching about AI (Celik, 2023).

Additionally, existing models and assessments employ heterogeneous terminology and partially inconsistent definitions of what constitutes competence. To address this, the competence definition by Weinert (2001) is adopted as a theoretically robust foundation. Weinert conceptualises competence as a combination of cognitive abilities and skills, together with motivational, volitional, and social dispositions that enable individuals to successfully manage relevant tasks. This conceptualisation provides a well‑established and internationally recognisable basis for examining AI-related teacher competences. Following this understanding, the present study refers to competence, rather than literacy or competency, in line with Weinert‘s (2001) definition.

Based on this conceptual foundation and the identified gap, the lack of a comprehensive model covering all relevant competence dimensions, the aim of this study is to identify, systematise and integrate these dimensions into a coherent AI‑related competence model for teachers and then operationalise it. Accordingly, the study addresses the following research questions:

- Which existing competence models for AI-related competences exist, and what are their strengths and weaknesses regarding pedagogical, technological, and ethical requirements?

- Which specific competences do teachers need in the context of AI, and how can these AI-related competences be defined?

- How should a comprehensive competence model be designed to capture all relevant requirements related to AI for teachers?

- Which methodological approaches and operationalisation strategies are suitable for establishing such a competence model in a theoretically grounded and empirically validated manner?

The resulting model is intended to provide guidance for teacher education, curriculum development and school improvement. By combining European relevance, theoretical clarity and empirical rigour, the project contributes to a coordinated European dialogue on professional AI competences in education.

Artificial intelligence (AI) technology has been increasingly integrated into K-12 education, offering a novel pathway for optimizing instructional practices and improving students' academic performance (Wang et al., 2023). This transformative trend is particularly prominent in science education, where AI tools unlock revolutionary potential for teaching complex scientific concepts, delivering personalized learning, and conducting interdisciplinary scientific inquiry (Erduran, 2023). This imposes higher demands on science teachers: they are required to not only possess the professional competence to lead AI-driven instructional innovation, but also acutely perceive and effectively address various ethical issues that emerge continuously in AI-enabled teaching practices.

In particular, for early career science teachers (ECSTs) in their first three years of appointment, this shift presents both opportunities and challenges, as their core responsibilities entail adapting to technological disruption while establishing foundational professional competencies (Barrett, 2025). ECSTs must not only rapidly master AI-based teaching tools and methodologies to align with evolving instructional requirements, but also navigate the reshaping of professional roles and competency challenges brought about by technological transformation (H et al., 2025). Their AI readiness serves as a pivotal underpinning for addressing the aforementioned pressures.

Against this backdrop, job satisfaction among ECSTs has grown in significance and merits special attention. Neglecting the interactive relationship between AI readiness and job satisfaction will not only directly dampen ECSTs' initiative to proactively integrate AI into teaching and undermine the implementation effectiveness of AI-enabled education, but also adversely affect their career development trajectories. Crucially, low job satisfaction may lead to early career attrition. Surveys indicate that the natural attrition rate of early career teachers (ECTs) has exceeded 30% in some European countries in recent years (OECD, 2021) — a phenomenon that directly reflects their low job satisfaction and thus jeopardizes the stability and sustainable development of the teaching workforce.

While existing research has examined the association between AI readiness and job satisfaction, it lacks empirical evidence in non-Western contexts. In particular, few studies have systematically explored the mechanism through which four-dimensional AI readiness influences job satisfaction among ECSTs in China. Currently, China's Ministry of Education, Ministry of Science and Technology, and other relevant departments have issued a series of policies to promote and support the full integration of AI into K-12 science education (Ministry of Education et al., 2025). This policy context further underscores the urgency of investigating the practical predicaments faced by this teacher cohort.

Drawing on the scale developed by Karaca et al. (2021) and the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), this study adopts the localized framework proposed by Wang et al. (2023), which defines AI readiness as teachers' state of preparedness across the cognitive, ability, vision, and ethical dimensions in the context of AI implementation in educational settings. This study aims to investigate ECSTs' AI readiness and its impact on job satisfaction against the backdrop of AI-enabled science education. Clarifying the inherent correlation between the two is essentially the key to addressing the dilemma of the escalation of technological requirements and the imbalance in teachers' professional adaptation, and it holds great significance for safeguarding the professional growth of ECSTs and laying a solid foundation for the development of the science teaching workforce in the AI era.

Background and Rationale

The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into teacher education has attracted increasing attention from scholars and policymakers worldwide, intensifying calls to define and evaluate teachers’ competencies for an AI-rich educational landscape (Zhai & Nehm, 2023). Within teacher education, a growing body of work has sought to conceptualise teachers’ capabilities to use AI tools effectively, ethically, and pedagogically. Building on the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework, recent scholarship has proposed AI-TPACK by incorporating AI-related dimensions into teachers’ professional knowledge base (Celik, 2023; Ning et al., 2024). Correspondingly, researchers have developed and validated self-report AI-TPACK scales to capture pre- and in-service teachers’ perceived readiness to integrate AI into teaching (Ning et al., 2024), and these instruments are increasingly adopted in empirical studies as a basis for competency evaluation (Karatas & Atac, 2025; Xu et al., 2025).

However, reliance on self-report instruments raises enduring validity concerns, particularly when the target competency involves complex, design-based practice rather than general dispositions or confidence (Akyuz, 2018). This challenge becomes especially salient with generative AI (GenAI), which can support multimodal science teaching—an area where teachers must coordinate multimodal resources (e.g., text, image, audio, animation) to foster conceptual understanding (Kress, 2001; Nielsen & Yeo, 2022). These conditions make it crucial to examine whether self-reported AI-TPACK aligns with demonstrated competence in authentic, AI-supported multimodal design tasks.

Research context

To examine this measurement gap in an authentic teacher-education setting, this study is situated in a pre-service science teacher education course where participants completed an AI-supported multimodal design task. Specifically, pre-service teachers used generative AI to support the creation of web-based animations and interactive representations intended to teach abstract scientific concepts. The same cohort also completed a widely used AI-TPACK self-report questionnaire, enabling a direct comparison between perceived competence and demonstrated performance within a shared instructional context.

Empirically, the study draws on 116 GenAI-assisted multimodal assignments, which were evaluated using a TPACK-aligned performance rubric across the seven TPACK dimensions, and these scores were matched with participants’ questionnaire responses. To contextualise and interpret patterns of convergence and divergence, we further conducted six focus group interviews with 24 pre-service teachers, exploring how they perceived AI’s role in science teaching and how they evaluated their own capabilities when working with AI-supported design tasks.

Research Questions:

RQ1: To what extent do pre-service science teachers’ AI-TPACK self-reports align with performance-based TPACK scores derived from an AI-supported multimodal design task?

RQ2: What patterns of misalignment emerge across the seven TPACK dimensions?

RQ3: How can the observed misalignment be interpreted in terms of construct validity?

Theoretical Framework

This study integrates TPACK (Mishra & Koehler, 2006) with Kane’s (2013) argument-based validation to examine the meaning and limits of AI-TPACK self-report scores in an AI-supported multimodal design context. TPACK specifies the competence domain of interest—teachers’ integrated use of content, pedagogy, and technology knowledge (CK, PK, TK) and their intersections in designing multimodal science representations. Kane’s framework then examines the use of AI-TPACK questionnaires as a validity claim. First, we examine relations to other measures by comparing self-report scores with rubric-based performance scores from an AI-supported multimodal design task. Second, we use qualitative data as response-process evidence to explain why self-reports misalign with task performance and to refine defensible score interpretations.

International Implications

Globally, AI-TPACK self-report scales are increasingly used to monitor teacher readiness and evaluate AI-focused teacher education. Using data from China—a major, fast-evolving AI-in-education context—this study provides internationally relevant validity evidence. It cautions against relying solely on self-reports when benchmarking teacher competence and supports combining questionnaires with performance-based assessment for cross-country comparisons.

This paper assesses motivation to adult education and training in the Czech Republic, utilising the newest empirical evidence on work-related (proactive and reactive) and non-work-related (social and personal) reasons for participation.

Motivation is one of the key concepts in adult education and training research (Houle, 1961; Boeren, 2016; Alfaifi, 2024), as it allows us to understand why some adults engage in organise learning activities while others do not participate in them (Gorges & Kandler, 2012; Gorges, 2016). Since the 1960s, research has consistently aimed to identify the reasons behind participation and to develop typologies that reflect the various motives (Houle, 1961; Boshier, 1971, 1977; Boeren & Holford, 2016).

Despite a broad conceptualisation of motivation, empirical research has most often examined motivation through predefined categorical frameworks, particularly the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation (Ryan & Deci, 2019, 2020; Pihlainen et al., 2022). However, it has not examined whether participation in adult education and training is initiated in response to a specific change or problem, or whether it represents a proactive, continuous investment in the future.

In this presentation, participation in adult education and training is interpreted through the analytical distinction between reactive and proactive reasons for participation in work-related organised learning. Reactive participation refers to engagement, which is motivated primarily as a response to an immediate change, disruption, or externally imposed demand, most commonly related to employment conditions, job requirements, or institutional obligations. In contrast, proactive participation denotes engagement in adult education and training, that is oriented towards long-term personal or professional development, and is characterised by anticipatory behaviour, continuity, and a forward-looking investment in competencies and identity formation (Dweck, 2016).

By distinguishing between reactive and proactive participation, this study seeks to move beyond what can be described as a static categorisation of reasons for participation. Previous survey-based research has often relied on simplified and predefined categories of motivation, such as the dichotomy between job-related and personal reasons, or between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, thereby treating motivational factors as isolated and fixed attributes. At the same time, participation has been frequently measured through a basic yes–no indicator, despite being the outcome of a more complex underlying decision-making process (Boeren, 2016). Moreover, these approaches typically capture motivations at a single point in time, offering limited possibilities to examine how different reasons interact with each other or how participation is shaped by life events, situational changes, or future-oriented considerations.

To cover non-work-related participation motives, this paper analyses two types motives - personal and social. This distinction follows established approaches in adult education and training research that differentiate between individually and socially oriented non-work-related motives (Houle, 1961; Boshier, 1971, 1977).

On this basis, the following research questions are formulated:

RQ1: What types of reasons for participating in formal and non-formal education can be identified in terms of reactive and proactive participation logic?

RQ2: How do the sociodemographic and occupational characteristics of adults (i.e., age, gender, educational attainment, employment and occupational status) relate to reactive and proactive participation in formal education?

RQ3: How do the sociodemographic and occupational characteristics of adults (i.e., age, gender, educational attainment, employment and occupational status) relate to reactive and proactive participation in non-formal education?

RQ4: How are non-work-related personal and social motives for participation in formal education distributed across sociodemographic groups (age, gender, and educational attainment)?

RQ5: How are non-work-related personal and social motives for participation in non-formal education distributed across sociodemographic groups (age, gender, and educational attainment)?

The study analyses PPE(1) course plans in music teacher education to examine how they reflect principles of inclusive education, treating them as expressions of formal curricular priorities. Drawing on Haug’s multidimensional model, inclusion is understood as more than physical placement; it involves horizontal dimensions—fellowship, participation, democratisation and benefit—and vertical dimensions spanning policy, institutions, teachers and pupils. Because PPE course plans occupy a formal position within this chain, they reveal how programmes articulate and prioritise inclusion. This aligns with international scholarship that describes inclusion as a broad, contested concept concerned with all students’ access, acceptance, participation, and achievement.

Norwegian educational policy has, for decades, promoted inclusive schooling for all pupils (Nes et al., 2018). This commitment is firmly embedded in the Norwegian Education Act, which establishes equity, inclusion, and adapted education as fundamental principles of the education system (The Education Act, 2023). Inclusion as an overarching principle is further specified and operationalised through the national curriculum framework. For example, in the core curriculum, which has the status of a legally binding regulation adopted pursuant to the Education Act, schools are required to develop inclusive communities in which diversity is recognised as a resource and in which all pupils are ensured equitable opportunities for learning, participation, and a sense of belonging (Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training, 2017, chapter 3.1).

The national framework plan governing Practical Pedagogical Education further requires teacher education programmes to prepare future teachers to differentiate instruction, adapt their teaching to the national curriculum, and foster inclusive and motivating learning environments in accordance with prevailing legal and curricular frameworks (Regulations on the framework plan for Practical‑Pedagogical Education, 2025).

Despite this robust legislative and curricular framework, inclusion remains a broadly formulated and weakly operationalised concept in Norwegian educational policy, and no shared understanding of how inclusive principles are to be enacted in educational practice has been established (Næss et al., 2024). Analyses of national curricula show that inclusion is most frequently associated with overarching values such as diversity, participation, and democracy, offering limited guidance for professional judgement and pedagogical enactment (Faldet et al., 2022). Research has documented a substantial gap between inclusive policy ambitions and school‑level realities, with a significant proportion of pupils with special educational needs continuing to receive education outside mainstream classroom (Nes et al., 2018; Næss et al., 2024).

Analyses of curriculum frameworks within music education indicate that macro‑level policy discourses of diversity and inclusion are predominantly articulated at a normative level, with limited structural or pedagogical specification, thereby placing significant interpretive responsibility on educators and teacher education programmes (Ellefsen & Karlsen, 2020; Borgen et al., 2026).

The formal articulation of inclusion in course plans is relevant because teacher education is expected to contribute to future teachers’ professional readiness. including the professional judgement needed to interpret diverse classroom situations. Inclusive teaching cannot be reduced to procedures or value statements but requires discretionary decision‑making. Curriculum theory further positions course plans within the formal curriculum, which signals institutional priorities even if it does not represent practice directly. Attention to the null curriculum highlights how omissions or vague formulations also shape understandings of inclusion. Finally, newer curriculum theory views course plans as narrative constructions of the future music teacher, making it necessary to analyse not only whether inclusion is mentioned but what professional story about inclusion is being told.

The research question for this study is:

How do PPE music teacher education course plans reflect the principle of inclusive education? Document analysis.

[1] in Norwegian PPU, praktisk pedagogisk utdanning.

Friendship tends to be associated with discourses of positivity, belonging, etc. It is something parents, teachers, peers and the surrounding world uncritically think of as a perfect safe harbor saving us from ‘loneliness’ and describing a state of non-violence. Studies however show that in about 25% of emotional and or physical violence cases this happens in friendships (Bouchard et al., 2018).

I am currently writing my PhD as a part of the MEND project situated in the faculty of education and psychology in the University of Oulu. The aim of the research in MEND is to create knowledge on the ways friendship violence amongst Finnish youth becomes normalised and silenced. The main focus is on everyday school life as well as the narrative stories of young people.

In my doctoral research I will specifically dive into this topic from the perspective of gender studies and educational sciences. I am interested in the ways heteronormativity and gender normativity are discursively produced in children’s friendships. Finnish queer youth still face heteronormative violence in school life and elsewhere (Lehtonen, 2023). I study friendship as a pedagogical phenomenon and ask what kind of a role do subject positions and power play in this relationship that can be both interactive and unilateral. Heteronormative gender and sexuality I see, in a Butlerian and Foucauldian way, become produced in discursive-performative repetitions and affects twisted in power.

This presentation covers my first article in which I will study Finnish text books as well as equality and diversity plans through the lens of critical discourse analysis. I use project data collected within the broader project, including educational policy documents, textbooks, ethnography and interviews. In this article I focus on documents and textbooks.

My research question is as follows:

1. What kinds of subject positions does social-emotional learning in school produce for children?

Social-emotional learning (abbrev. SEL) has been generally defined as a process through which children build skills for recognizing, understanding and managing emotions, feeling and showing empathy, developing healthy identities as well as maintaining supportive and positive relationships (Jagers et. al, 2018; Weissberg et. al, 2017). SEL has garnered praise and research has shown many positive outcomes e.g. in students’ social behavior and attitudes towards self and others (Durlak et. al, 2011) as well as reducing bullying (Espelage et. al, 2015).

The aims of SEL have widely been recognized as positive. However, also critical points of view have increasingly surfaced among educational research. One key critique has been the fact that SEL does not seem to serve students in intersectional minorities (Camangian & Cariaga, 2021; Cipriano & McCarthy, 2023). This, in part, is why I view critical analysis of SEL, amongst many others, extremely important. When practiced productively, I argue that social-emotional learning implements could be beneficial to overall school safety. I argue that to implement anti-oppressive applications into SEL, should ensuring the production of different subject positions be one of the main approaches. According to Davies and Harré (1990, 48) “a subject position incorporates both a conceptual repertoire and a location for persons within the structure of rights for those that use that repertoire”. By this they mean that a person sees and makes sense of the world through the concepts and discourses that are produced in and provided by the subject position they have taken.

Short‑term international mobility has become an increasingly significant component of European teacher education, offering students opportunities to develop intercultural competence, pedagogical awareness, and emerging professional identity within a condensed but intensive learning environment. While long‑term mobility has been widely studied, the professional learning potential of short‑duration programmes remains less explored, particularly in relation to reflective learning and collaborative knowledge construction. This study addresses this gap by examining how participation in a one‑week FORTHEM short‑term mobility programme in Finland influenced the professional development of 17 education students from various European countries.

The FORTHEM Alliance, funded through the European Universities Initiative, aims to strengthen cross‑border collaboration, mobility, and innovation in higher education. Within this framework, short‑term mobility programmes are designed to provide students with immersive intercultural experiences, exposure to diverse pedagogical approaches, and opportunities to engage in collaborative tasks with peers from different cultural and educational backgrounds. The mobility week examined in this study took place in Finland and focused on contemporary pedagogical practices, reflective learning, and collaborative inquiry. Students participated in school visits, workshops, group projects, and structured reflection activities, all of which were intended to deepen their understanding of teaching and learning in an international context.

The theoretical framework draws on research on professional identity development in teacher education, intercultural learning, and reflective practice. Professional identity is understood as a dynamic and socially constructed process shaped by experiences, interactions, and opportunities for reflection. International mobility has been shown to support this development by challenging students’ assumptions, broadening their pedagogical perspectives, and fostering a sense of belonging to a wider European educational community. Reflective learning, meanwhile, provides a mechanism through which students interpret and make meaning of their experiences, enabling them to connect new insights to their emerging professional selves. This study positions short‑term mobility as a context where these processes intersect: intercultural encounters, collaborative tasks, and exposure to unfamiliar pedagogical approaches create fertile ground for reflection and identity negotiation.

Our research question study is: How do students describe their professional development after participating in a one‑week international short‑term mobility programme? The data consist of participants’ written post‑mobility reflections and additional material collected during the mobility week. Through qualitative thematic analysis, the study examines how students made sense of intercultural interactions, collaborative learning, and pedagogical observations, and how these experiences contributed to their professional growth.

The European dimension is central to this study. The participants represent multiple countries and educational traditions. By analysing how students learn with and from one another, the study contributes to ongoing discussions about the role of internationalisation in shaping the future of teacher education in Europe. It highlights how short‑term mobility can function as a meaningful pedagogical space where students develop intercultural competence, expand their pedagogical repertoires, and strengthen their sense of professional identity within a European framework.

Teaching is one of the most challenging professions; thus, preschool teachers experience many different things in the workplace due to the nature of their work (Johnson et al., 2005; Davis & Dunn, 2018; Fu et al., 2010; Seaman & Giles, 2021, as cited in Levine Brown et al., 2023). Because early childhood teachers perform emotionally and physically demanding work throughout the day, these educators are dealing with behavioral challenges and resolving conflicts and they are seen as caregivers. They work collaboratively with colleagues and families. Additionally, they manage the emotions of individuals within their organization, including children, administrators, families, and colleagues (Purper et al., 2023). Thus, interactions with children, colleagues, and parents throughout the day can give rise to a variety of emotions (Humphries et al., 2018; Sanders-Smith et al., 2020). Teachers' emotional experiences vary, and their experiences tend to be negative, especially when dealing with adverse situations in the classroom (de Ruiter et al., 2020). Considering the emotional challenges of teachers, the concept of resilience becomes prominent. The term resilience refers to the ability to adapt positively to stress, trauma, and life challenges (Vella & Pai, 2019). The presence of high emotional demands, and the expectation that teachers will constantly be supportive and resolve challenging behaviors, leads them to build good relationships with parents (Vatou et al., 2021; Purper et al., 2023). The expectation that teachers will manage challenging situations in addition to supporting basic skills can be overwhelming for them (Purper et al., 2023). Both individual and contextual factors can contribute to resilience. An optimistic and hopeful character allows for a positive approach to challenges and factors such as a supportive workplace environment and shared vision can enhance a teacher's resilience (Wang et al., 2023; Vatou, 2025). Based on Bronfenbrenner's (1994) “Microsystem” model in Ecological Systems Theory, this research will present how teachers make sense of their emotional challenges and resilience within an art-based research framework. Art-based research is defined as the systematic use of the art process in research, the emergence of different forms of artistic expression, and a way of understanding and examining participants' experiences (McNiff, 2008). In art-based research, aesthetic tools and designs are used to enrich the research process (Barone & Eisner, 2012). Art-based research enables the naming of narratives and the uncovering of teachers' stories related to emotional challenges. Art-based research focuses on the subject and meaning-making by bridging the gap between art-making and verbal narrative (Akimenko, 2018). Thus, this research will investigate how teachers express their emotional challenges and resilience through an art-based research methodology and will focus on their narratives.

Research questions are:

● How do teachers construct art-based narratives and symbolic representations to make sense of emotional challenges in their professional lives?

● How do teachers narrate the experiences of emotional challenges in terms of resilience?

The purpose is to present a reflection on the potential of art education to promote resistance to hate speech and intolerance, problematizing the influence of digital content on interpersonal relationships.

The present text is based on a literature review supporting a pedagogical experience to be carried out in the context of the doctorate in art education.

School violence is a concerning reality and one of great complexity, being a risk factor for students’ physical and mental health, as it implies serious problems of self-esteem, self-confidence and socialization (Santos and Ramos, 2026, pp. 18; 27). It should be a priority commitment of society and school in particular, to implement strategies promoting healthy and citizenship relationships, in activities that foster responsibility, respect and confidence/trust (Rodrigues, 2023, p. XLIII; Santos and Ramos, 2026, p.24).

The digital is part of our daily lives, essential to our social relationships with multiple benefits, it is mostly made of images that until a decade ago reached us mainly through cinema, television and exhibitions. Currently, and at high speed, they come to us through social networks and are consumed without critical criteria (Charréu, 2016 pp.276-277; Mirzoef, 1999 pp. 23-25). Through these images, frequently manipulated, we discover the capacity to transmit messages, contributing to build a world vision, sometimes distorted (Acaso, 2007, p. 11; Acaso and Megías, 2022, pp. 31-32).

In recent years, the significant increase in the use of digital devices by children and adolescents is concerning, the consumption of these contents mostly involves harmful aspects, such as violence. The excess of this use can interfere in the neuronal system influencing the processing of emotional regulation such as social acceptance or rejection, anxiety or depression. The artificial worlds of social networks work as a stimulant, due to the high degree of excitability caused, acting quickly in the centre of emotions, and can produce psychological dependance more easily. Special attention is therefore needed for the negative impacts on the physical and psychosocial health (Choi et. al., 2025, p.1; Cury, 2024, pp.81-82; Desmurget, 2021, pp. 262-265; 290; Tsang et. al.,2023, pp. 1-2).

Project work aims to promote the critical thinking and research, establishing connections between experiences, informations, knowledge and know-how. This modality perspectives different learning possibilities, ways of thinking and power relations, through the bonds created between teachers, students and communities (Hernández and Anguita, 2023, pp.73-75). Teaching critical thinking is not an easy task, there is a tendency towards a more passive posture. Nevertheless, the stimulating thing is that teachers and students may, together and at the same time, share ideas, building, therefore, a learning community (Hooks, 2023, pp.20-21). The concept of disobedience is linked here, since the curriculum is approached differently, challenging established forms of knowledge and also modes of knowing, offering new ways of thinking and acting (Atkinson, 2018, pp. 194-195).

Through collaborative artistic projects, it is intended that theme of violence in school, and the digital influence, may be thought critically by everyone and put into perspective. Converging with the concept of Art Thinking, in which art must align with critical questions and world issues through projects, awakening the curiosity to question everyday topics (Acaso, 2009 pp. 118-119; Acaso and Megías, 2017, p. 29, 68-69). This way, we will be exploring the potential of art education in resisting intolerance and violence, which is part of an increasingly dominant discourse.

This article aims to reflect on how the practices of welcoming a new visual arts teacher in Portuguese public schools promote exclusionary narratives that are naturalised through language. That being said, based on the author's memory of her first teaching placement, the aim is to analyse how, in this first contact that the teacher has with their new professional context, they are presented with a normative discourse regarding their role in the school machinery (Varela & Alves-Uria, 1992), presupposing an adaptation to this place and a nullification of everything that may be foreign to it.

At the beginning of the text, the author shares her firsthand experience as a new visual art teacher in a Portuguese public school, through her memories, recounting the entire ritual involving entering the school building, her introduction at the reception, the office and the management of the public institution, accompanied by a description of the different verbal and physical interactions of the various agents who were part of that moment. This description raises questions about how the teacher is addressed and affected during this ritual, exploring the feeling of strangeness fuelled by the idea of not belonging in that space or feeling ostracised. Based on this questioning of the boundary between the person outside that environment and the agents who are part of it, the concept of stranger is constructed.

The idea of strangeness is conceived from a position between places, which is formalised through a movement from the outside to the inside, that is, a feeling of strangeness empowered by the unfamiliarity of the languages with which the subject is confronted and subsequently materialised in their body, reflecting on their mode of action within the school space. In this case, the stranger becomes the teacher who is external to the school they wish to integrate into and, to this end, begins to naturalise the discourses and practices presented to them in this first moment of contact with the terrain. However, what possibilities emerge from the moment the teacher remains in this place of strangeness, in turn deviating from the normativity imposed by that space?

By considering these possibilities based on the author's experiences, the text draws attention to ways of doing and saying, that is, behaviours, verbal and non- verbal actions, understanding how these languages structure discourses of power that naturalise hegemonic practices among school agents, which reinforce exclusionary and discriminatory discourses within the school environment and systems. These ways of doing and saying are named through the interactions that the author recounts, exploring from these modes the way in which expectations regarding her place as a visual arts teacher are presented to her. These expectations are framed by the ways in which they address her, taking into account her way of acting as a foreign body, which compromises the construction of the figure of the teacher as a representative of the Portuguese state.

After framing how these ways of doing and saying construct a discourse on the figure of the visual arts teacher, a claim is made for strangeness as a form of resistance to the naturalisation and reproduction of practices by visual arts teachers in public schools. This claim defends the need for a constant strangeness of the teaching subject in the school space, as well as their practices and languages, with the aim of constructing a critical action within the school that promotes an inclusive school space of constant learning for all agents involved, through constant questioning of what is considered normal and what is considered strange.

For decades, sociological theory has emphasized a shift toward fluidity and rapid transformation, highlighting the need for forms of thinking, learning, and relating that engage complexity rather than simplistic static essentialism (Bauman, 2011; Morin, 2000). The condition of liquid modernity described by Bauman (2000) situates contemporary education within a social landscape defined by instability, uncertainty, and the erosion of stable reference points. A condition intensified by social acceleration, which compresses time, privileges immediacy, and undermines reflection and sustained engagement (Rosa, 2013). Yet, despite this long-acquired awareness, formal education has changed little: curricula remain standardized (Aoki, 1993, 2005; Apple, 1979; Pinar, 2011; Macintyre Latta, 2013; Osberg & Biesta, 2008), often rigid and impermeable to contextual shifts or emergent conditions, knowledge fragmented (Morin, 2000), relationships hierarchical (Foucault, 1995; Freire, 1970, 1994; hooks, 1994, 2003; McLaren, 2009), and assessment oriented toward control and measurable outcomes. Rather than embracing uncertainty as a constitutive condition of learning, educational systems tend to deny it.

This enduring misalignment between contemporary social conditions and educational practices opens a conceptual fracture. Instead of attempting to resolve this tension by restoring stability or refining existing models, this study proposes to inhabit it, engaging uncertainty as a generative condition for teaching, learning, agency, and communitarian meaning-making. Improvisation is what allows to linger in this fracture. Improvisation is not confined to artistic practice but is understood as a form of knowledge, a relational mode of action, and a political practice that unfolds in real time (Lewis & Piekut, 2016). It involves risk-taking, deep listening, and a willingness to be affected and transformed through interaction (Caines & Heble, 2015). As such, it carries a clear educational and political potential. Contrary to the entrenched tendency of education to prepare students for a “predictable and orderly future,” improvisation in teaching and learning is not occasional but structural, embedded in the very dynamics of engaging with a fast-moving and uncertain present. Knowledge itself grows along a path that is never linear nor entirely foreseeable, but marked by detours, trials, and mistakes (Dewey, 1934). As Ingold (2010) emphasizes, learning does not consist of following fixed instructions but of engaging with others, observing, experimenting, and participating in shared practice, with a capacity to bend and re-invent.

Building on this perspective, the study frames improvisation through the metaphor of Education as Jazz (Santi & Zorzi, 2016). Here, jazz is not considered as a musical genre, but as an educational lens that highlights learning as a creative, relational, and deeply formative process, where improvisation guides engagement, exaptation (Gould & Vrba, 1982), and co-construction of knowledge.

While the role of improvisation in education has already been widely explored across general educational contexts (Aoki, 1993; Cappa & Negro, 2006; Gershon, 2006, 2017; Holdhus et al., 2016; Sorensen, 2022; Santi, 2010; Tomlinson & Germundson, 2007; Zorzi, 2020), this study extends existing studies by approaching improvisation through the lived experiences of jazz musicians and improvisers. Their practices are not treated as models to be transferred, but as situated forms of knowledge capable of illuminating alternative ways of thinking about teaching, learning, and curriculum. Within this framework, the research is guided by the following questions: (RQ1) Are there defining elements of a jazz approach in education, and if so, what are they according to jazz musicians and improvisers? (RQ2) How, and in what ways, can a jazz-inspired educational approach contribute to the development of a curricular framework?

Educational inequality remains a central concern in European education systems, particularly in countries characterized by early selection and strong socioeconomic stratification. While family socioeconomic status (SES) is consistently estimated to be a significant correlate of achievement and attainment (see e.g. Liu et al., 2022), recent causal and quasi-experimental evidence suggests that SES has only weak effects on learning rates once children enter school (Song et al., 2025). This discrepancy raises a key theoretical question: if family SES does not substantially shape learning trajectories directly, do SES-related effects manifest through other, indirect channels?

One possible explanation points to the role of educational contexts, especially the socioeconomic composition (SEC) of schools and classrooms. Socioeconomic stratification can influence learning environments through multiple indirect pathways, including peer interactions (Cooc & Kim, 2017), teaching quality (Varga, 2009), teacher expectations (Gentrup et al., 2024), and parental involvement (Barg, 2019).

Since Coleman et al. (1966), SEC has repeatedly been found to predict student achievement over and above individual socioeconomic status, with meta-analytic SEC-achievement correlations far exceeding the SES-achievement correlation levels (Liu et al., 2022). Whether these compositional patterns mark real effects remains debated: observed associations may reflect genuine compositional influence, a statistical artifact of aggregation that disappears once individual SES and prior achievement are adequately controlled, or mean prior ability for which SEC merely serves as a proxy (Marks, 2015; Sciffer et al., 2022).

What unites both sides of this debate is the assumption that classroom composition is adequately summarised by its mean SES. However, this collapses two distinct features, a class's mean level and the shape of its SES distribution, into a single indicator. Moving beyond these mean-based measures, we introduce SES-distributional representativeness (SES-DR): a distribution-sensitive indicator capturing how closely a classroom's SES distribution resembles that of the wider student population, operationalised as one minus the Kolmogorov-Smirnov distance between the two distributions, residualised on mean class SES. Applied alongside class-mean SES to longitudinal data, it lets us ask whether a classroom's average socioeconomic level, or the breadth of its socioeconomic mix is more important for childern's skill development.

The study addresses two research questions:

1. Do class-mean SES and SES-DR predict reading development between Grades 3 and 8, net of individual SES?

2. Do the associations between class mean SES, SES-DR, and reading growth differ between lower-SES and higher-SES students?

From a theoretical perspective, mean classroom SES and SES-DR can be interpreted as complementary indicators capturing different dimensions of the same contextual effect within the Sen–Bourdieu–Bernstein framework (Hart, 2012; Dimopoulos & Koutsampelas, 2024): they capture the volume and distribution of economic, social, and cultural capital available in the classroom.

The European and international relevance of the study is twofold. First, Hungary represents an extreme but informative case within Europe, as international assessments consistently rank it among the most socioeconomically stratified education systems in the OECD (OECD, 2019). Second, the analytic framework and the SES-DR indicator are portable to other national contexts and international large-scale assessments. By focusing on distribution-sensitive measures of classroom composition, the study contributes to the debate on whether and how socioeconomic mixing can support equity and skill development for low-SES children without high developmental costs for higher-SES children.

This paper examines how ability grouping policies are enacted in everyday English as a Second Language (ESL) classroom practice, with a particular focus on teachers’ instructional decision-making, professional agency, and ethical reasoning. While ability grouping and mixed-ability instruction have been extensively debated in terms of student outcomes, much of this research has focused on system-level effects or achievement data. Comparatively little attention has been paid to how teachers experience, interpret, and negotiate grouping structures in their day-to-day pedagogical work. This gap is especially significant in linguistically diverse and high-stakes educational contexts, where language education functions as a key mechanism of selection and access. The present study addresses this gap by foregrounding teachers as central actors in the enactment of grouping policy.

The study is guided by the following research question: How do different grouping structures (ability grouping and mixed-ability instruction) shape ESL teachers’ instructional decision-making, professional agency, and ethical reasoning in junior high school classrooms? Rather than evaluating grouping models in terms of effectiveness or attainment, the study adopts a qualitative, teacher-centered perspective to explore how grouping policies are lived and negotiated at the classroom level. It examines how teachers adapt differentiation practices, how they perceive the social and emotional implications of grouping for students, and how grouping arrangements influence their sense of professional autonomy, responsibility, and workload.

The theoretical framework integrates perspectives from the sociology of education, sociocultural theories of language learning, and research on teacher agency and policy enactment. At the structural level, the study draws on sociological research that conceptualizes ability grouping and tracking as mechanisms of educational stratification. From this perspective, grouping is understood not merely as a pedagogical strategy, but as a policy instrument that structures access to curriculum, expectations, and educational trajectories. Comparative research across European education systems has shown that early grouping arrangements often reproduce social, linguistic, and socioeconomic inequalities, particularly in subjects such as language education that function as gatekeepers to further educational opportunities. This lens situates ESL grouping within broader European debates on equity, inclusion, and institutional differentiation.

At the pedagogical level, the study is informed by sociocultural theories of language learning, which conceptualize learning as socially mediated and interaction-driven. Language development is understood as emerging through participation in meaningful communicative practices, peer interaction, and access to diverse linguistic resources. These perspectives have strongly influenced European approaches to inclusive and heterogeneous language classrooms. At the same time, they highlight the pedagogical tensions teachers face when attempting to sustain inclusive participation while maintaining appropriate levels of cognitive and linguistic challenge for learners with diverse profiles.

Finally, the study draws on scholarship on teacher agency and policy enactment, which conceptualizes teachers as active interpreters and mediators of educational policy rather than passive implementers. Teacher agency is understood as relational and structurally conditioned, shaped by institutional arrangements, accountability regimes, and professional cultures. This perspective is particularly relevant in European contexts where teachers are increasingly expected to reconcile inclusive policy discourses with performance-oriented assessment systems. By foregrounding teachers’ ethical reasoning and professional judgment, the study illuminates how grouping policies redistribute pedagogical responsibility and emotional labor across different instructional models.

Although empirically situated in Israeli junior high schools, the study is analytically framed as a critical comparative case. The Israeli context shares key characteristics with many European systems, including early ability grouping, high-stakes language assessment, and increasing linguistic and cultural diversity. By examining teachers’ lived experiences across contrasting grouping structures, the study offers conceptually transferable insights into how grouping policies shape classroom practice, teacher agency, and educational equity, contributing directly to European and international discussions central to ECER.

Topic

This proposal is part of a broader doctoral dissertation examining children’s engagement in language-oriented play pedagogy in early childhood education. Situated within Nordic traditions of play pedagogy, it focuses on 6- to 7-year-old children and investigates how cultural features of play, defined as narratives, roles, objects, and cultural symbols, support children’s engagement. Engagement is the central phenomenon under study, conceptualized as active, embodied, and sustained participation, while language-oriented objectives, such as sound awareness and letter recognition, are embedded within play narratives as meaningful story components that children interact with.

The study will employ a novel, child-led, play-pedagogy-based method to examine how cultural features foster children’s engagement in language-oriented play pedagogy. Cultural features structure participation by providing tangible and symbolic resources that children use to communicate and co-construct play. Examining these features shows how engagement emerges within a socially and culturally organized context and how Nordic play traditions balance curricular language-oriented objectives with children’s agency. This analysis clarifies how culturally structured play fosters engagement and informs both theory and practice in play-based pedagogy.

Research Question

How do the cultural features of play pedagogy promote children’s engagement in language-oriented play pedagogy?

Objective

The objective of this study is to investigate how cultural features of play pedagogy provide social, cultural, and material resources that foster children’s engagement in language-oriented play pedagogy. Engagement is examined across three dimensions:

• Active participation: initiative-taking, problem-solving related to language-oriented objectives, and contributions to the play narrative.
• Embodiment in dialogue: expressed through speech, gesture, posture, gaze, and movement.
• Sustained participation: reflected in ongoing involvement, shared attention, and narrative continuity.

The study will investigate how cultural features actively mediate and scaffold engagement, and will employ a novel, child-led play-pedagogy method consisting of six narrative-based play sessions. It will explore how engagement is enacted and sustained when children interact with narrative components containing language-oriented objectives.

Conceptual and Theoretical Framework

The study is grounded in sociocultural theory (Bodrova & Leong, 2024; Rogoff, 2016; Vygotsky, 1978) and complemented by an enactive perspective on language, particularly Di Paolo’s concept of linguistic bodies (Di Paolo et al., 2018).

From a sociocultural perspective, engagement arises through participation in culturally meaningful activities, where children collaboratively explore language-oriented objectives within shared play narratives (Hakkarainen, 2008; Zuckerman, 2017). Additionally, the enactive perspective emphasizes that engagement is enacted through coordinated verbal and bodily actions, including gestures, posture, gaze, facial expressions, and vocal qualities (Di Paolo et al., 2018).

Together, these perspectives provide a holistic framework for understanding engagement as a socially, culturally, and embodied phenomenon emerging through interaction with others and with material environments.

Cultural Features in Play Pedagogy and Engagement

Drawing on Nordic traditions of play pedagogy, Lindqvist’s (1995) concept of playworlds emphasizes adults and children playing together to co-construct imaginary worlds. Hakkarainen (2008) expands this by incorporating problem-solving within play narratives. Narratives are collaboratively developed through characters that integrate problem-solving and language-oriented objectives embedded in the play narrative (Hakkarainen, 2008; Zuckerman, 2017).

Cultural features, defined as narratives, roles, objects, and symbols, structure participation and meaning-making in play. Meaningful narratives, such as familiar fairy tales, guide action and sustain engagement by creating dramatic tension and exploring fundamental conflicts, including fear–security and power–equality (Hakkarainen & Bredikyte, 2013).

Roles enable children to adopt and negotiate culturally meaningful positions. Objects and cultural symbols, such as a map with mysterious letters that invite interpretation, serve as mediational tools anchoring attention, supporting symbolic transformation, and fostering language use (Lindqvist, 1995; Zuckerman, 2017). These features scaffold dialogue, problem-solving, and participation in play. From an enactive perspective, they provide affordances linking action and interaction, shaping how children participate and sustain engagement (Di Paolo et al., 2018; Sparaci & Gallagher, 2023).

Context of the study

Teacher educators are pivotal to the quality of future teachers (Loughran, 2006; Murray et al., 2011; White et al., 2020). Consequently, research on teacher educator identity has expanded, highlighting a complex and challenging becoming process (Berry & Forgasz, 2016). However, this scholarship predominantly focuses on practitioner-pathway teacher educators transitioning from schools to universities (Murray & Male, 2005; O'Brien & Furlong, 2015), paying far less attention to academic-pathway entrants like PhD graduates (Newberry, 2014; Yuan, 2020). This gap is critical given a global trend of recruiting teacher educators for their academic qualifications (Liang et al., 2025; Newberry, 2014; Yuan, 2016, 2020). While some studies have begun to examine identity construction during doctoral education (Murphy et al., 2014; Tucker & Adams, 2023), little is known about the complexities of prospective teacher educator identity development among doctoral students who have little or no formal school teaching experience. This study addresses this by examining the first author's experience. Situated as a doctoral student on the curriculum team for a self-study program for teacher educators, the first author experienced a liminal space, generating significant identity tensions regarding legitimacy of teacher educator identity. Using liminality as an analytical lens (Turner, 1969), this autoethnography explores this ambiguous identity development.

Theoretical framework

Developing from the work of van Gennep (1960), Turner (1969) used liminality to refer simultaneously to one phase of the multistep transition process effected through a rite of passage, the place within which that transition takes place, and the state of being experienced by the person making the transition (Cook-Sather, 2006). Turner (1969) used "betwixt and between" to capture the essence of his theory of liminality. The place within which the transition unfolds is an "in-between" place that bridges "what is" and "what can or will be" (Turner, 1981, p. 159). The state in which the initiand finds himself or herself during this transition is "ambiguous, neither here nor there" (Turner, 1974, p. 232). Liminality is thus transformed from a linear and concentrated process, bounded by simple notions of time and space, to one which is complex, multifaceted and flexible, but which still affords an opportunity for deep change and reorientation (Wood, 2012). Furthermore, liminality has been quite often used to explain and discuss the transition within the context of teacher education. Although teaching practicum/internship has often been conceptualized as a liminal period during which pre-service teachers transition from students to teachers (Cook-Sather, 2006; Hallaran et al., 2025; McCaw, 2021; Pierce, 2007; Wilkins et al., 2012; Wood, 2012), scant attention was paid to teacher educator identity. In the present study, we adopt the theory of liminality to further illuminate the dynamic nature of prospective teacher educator identity development. The specific context of this study—where the first author, as a doctoral student, contributed to a training program for teacher educators—constitutes a liminal space that highly aligns with the theory, embodying the "betwixt and between" characteristic.

Consequently, the central question guiding this study is: How does a teacher education doctoral student navigate and construct the prospective teacher educator identity in a liminal space? The study can contribute to the limited knowledge of the process of prospective teacher educator identity construction, particularly for those candidates without prior teaching experience, and offer practical insights for the preparation of teacher educators.

Across many education systems, teacher education has become a key site of contemporary governance. Internationally, schooling systems are increasingly organised through performance metrics, standards frameworks, and audit cultures that seek to render educational practice visible, comparable, and accountable (Ball, 2003; Lingard, 2011). Teacher education sits centrally within these shifts. In Australia, accreditation requirements, Professional Standards for Teachers, and performance-based assessments are coordinated through national regulatory organisations such as the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL, 2011). These policy infrastructures define what counts as quality teaching, legitimate evidence, and professional readiness. They also align teacher preparation with broader regimes of governance-by-numbers, where professional trust is increasingly mediated through indicators and compliance structures (Lingard & Lewis, 2017; Mockler, 2013). Across many education systems, teacher education is therefore increasingly governed by performance-based accountability, professional standards, and accreditation regimes, shaping how teachers come to experience, narrate, and perform professionalism across their preparation and early careers.

In Australia, final-year Teacher Performance Assessments have become high-stakes gatekeeping instruments. They define what counts as readiness to teach. They also shape how professional competence is narrated, displayed, and judged. These mechanisms are designed to assure quality and public trust. Yet they do more than measure practice. They privilege forms of evidence, authorise specific professional identities, and offer to structure what can legitimately be said, done, and valued in teaching (Ball, 2003; Lingard, 2011; Mockler, 2013). What they make visible matters, as well as what they push to the margins. Following Biesta’s (2015) critique of the evidentiary turn, this research work begins from the concern that contemporary accountability regimes risk narrowing professional judgement to system-recognised performance. Professional judgement, understood here as the capacity to discern what a situation calls for and to act responsibly amid uncertainty, depends on practical wisdom, ethical deliberation, and responsiveness to context (Kemmis et al., 2014). These dimensions of practice do not sit easily alongside assessment systems that prioritise standardised indicators and auditable artefacts.

At the same time, teachers enter classrooms shaped by relational demands, social complexity, and unpredictable learning environments. Research on teacher identity and agency reminds us that good teaching is inseparable from personal commitment, vulnerability, and relational work (Kelchtermans, 2009; Palmer, 2017; Mockler, 2011). Yet policy and accreditation discourses continue to privilege what can be standardised and measured. A misalignment emerges between what research suggests teachers need to flourish professionally and what institutional systems recognise as evidence of effectiveness.

This research adopts a critical-normative orientation and does not claim neutral description of teacher education systems. Instead, it examines how accountability arrangements shape professional becoming and asks how alternative conditions might better sustain professional judgement, ethical agency, and democratic responsibility in teacher education.

From an early age, children learn from their parents and within an environment that is shaped by them. Parents usually influence what toys and objects are in the home, what topics are discussed at dinner, how children spend their free time, and what developmental paths are even considered for their offspring. Parents are not neutral, but influence their children based on their own interests, values, and preferences – including familiarity and affinity for STEM-related content. We assume that family influences and experiences have a lasting effect and even in adolescence are linked to whether young people consider themselves to be STEM persons. Our research seeks to uncover, to what extent and how parents´ value beliefs regarding STEM shape their children´s identification with STEM.

STEM identity is a powerful concept for the explanation of persistence and choices in STEM. It emerges from the personal identification as a STEM person, together with recognition from others (Carlone & Johnson, 2007; Vincent-Ruz & Schunn, 2018). Experiences relevant to the development of a STEM identity can be gained as early as childhood as shown in research from the U.S. (Cohen et al., 2021; Dou et al., 2019). That family background is still relevant even in adolescence, showed Pfeuffer et al., (2025) with data from Germany: Adolescents from families that reported STEM occupations for their parents reported higher STEM identity values than adolescents of the control group .

The idea of a shared identity reflects in the term family habitus that captures shared dispositions within a family (Archer et al., 2012). Our first research question aims to determine whether and to what extent parental value beliefs regarding STEM impact adolescents´ identification with STEM:

RQ1: Do mothers´ and father´s value beliefs predict adolescents’ STEM Identity?

Our second set of research questions aims to identify mechanisms. We draw conceptually on science capital, that is a theoretical tool to capture one´s cultural, social and economic resources that matter for access to and participation in science (Archer et al., 2015). Parents' values, knowledge and dispositions towards science are one facet of science capital alongside other dimensions (DeWitt et al., 2016; Jones, et al., 2021). In our study, we seek to analyse whether parents´ value beliefs shape adolescents´ equipment with further dimensions of science capital. In this way, we want to find out, to what extent relevant aspects of STEM educational participation are related to the parental home and its attitude towards STEM.

RQ2a: Does the relationship between parents' STEM background and higher identification with STEM result from increased STEM activities?

RQ2b: Does the relationship between parents' STEM background and higher identification with STEM result from increased social capital?

RQ2c: Does the relationship between parents' STEM background and higher identification with STEM result from increased individual value beliefs?

Finally, building on theoretical reasoning on gendered socialization in families (Eccles, 2015), child-specific value beliefs or parents´ endorsed gender stereotypes might reflect in the upbringing of children and therefore shape girls´ and boys´ STEM activities, STEM-related social surrounding and individual value beliefs regarding STEM differently.

RQ3: Does the expected relationships regarding parents´ value beliefs, hypothesized mechanisms and STEM identity account for both boys and girls?