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The preference of preschool children for interactive traditional paper books has long been proved. More novel than traditional interactive books are the Augmented Reality (AR) books, which took a place in the book market for more than a decade now. For this study, we have used the Mosaic approach as a form of participatory research. The main methods used included children's presentations, interviews, observations, photo-taking, and taking part in a voting procedure. Our findings showed that the requirements for using AR books are not yet met by mobile devices that the youngest users have, so their audience is still limited. Even though the AR book seemed to be more promising for engaging children's attention longer, this was not possible because of the constraints imposed by the very delicate screen handling and children expressed their preference for the traditional interactive book.

The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) mission, scheduled for launch in the mid-2030s, is a gravitational wave space observatory designed to detect sources emitting in the millihertz band. LISA is an European Space Agency flagship mission, currently entering the Phase-B development phase. It is expected to help us improve our understanding of our Universe by measuring gravitational wave sources of different types, with some of the sources being at very high redshifts (z ∼ 2 0). On February 23, 2022, we organized the first LISA in Greece Workshop. This Workshop aimed to inform the Greek scientific and tech industry communities about the possibilities of participating in LISA science and the LISA mission, with the support of the Hellenic Space Center. In this White Paper, we summarize the outcomes of the Workshop, the most important aspect of it being the inclusion of 1 5 Greek researchers to the LISA Consortium, raising our total number to 2 2. At the same time, we present a road map with the future steps and actions of the Greek Gravitational Wave community with respect to the LISA mission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relying upon the heuristic presuppositions of behavioral economics, this study seeks to offer an expanded analysis of the public mission mandate of the Greek higher education sector. The examination outlines and parses qualitative evidence issued from the Greek Ministry of Education, and in particular from the hitherto untranslated document "A Strategy for Higher Education in Greece: 2016-2020," in conjunction with a growing body of scholarship on the challenges of cultivating public trust in the Greek social landscape. The discussion negotiates the position of the Greek higher education system as a system of sustainable social prosperity and argues that its operational conditions of financial scarcity may entail broader and inadvertent ramifications, namely, the depletion of cognitive resources and the propagation of narrow mental frames in the pursuit of a public mission.

Context: In the last few decades, the constant and exponential changes in the society's consumption of information have increased the awareness of practitioners from the education and training field, on the need for training programs for the enhancement of critical thinking skills and media literacy among students from Initial Vocational Education and Training (IVET) who are less exposed to intellectual trainings than their peers in traditional education pathways. Approach: With this impetus, the present paper reports the results of a mixed methods study evaluating a training program for such competences. Based on a cognitive psychology theoretical framework, the training program consisted in three main techniques through which trainers can work with students in the classroom. N= 35 trainers from five different countries (i.e., Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands) were instructed about the training techniques and implemented them in their training centres. Then, a total of N= 288 students among these countries were involved in the testing of the training, which took place on a duration average of 5 months. Mixed methods approach was used to evaluate the effectiveness and quality of the training. Notably, prospective statistical analysis evaluated the training's impact of the participating students and compared with a control group. Qualitative interviews examined the training's lived experience with a group of students and trainers. Findings: The quantitative and qualitative analysis of pre/post- measures of critical thinking skills and media literacy of the experimental group, and the comparison with the control group, indicate an increase in these competences and confirm the efficacy of the training intervention. Conclusion: These results inform about the usefulness of the training program cross-culturally and the feasibility of training strategies based on cognitive psychology. Moreover, the paper offers a methodological contribution thanks to the proposition of the mixed methods approach for training programs assessment.

Proof, as a central and integral part of mathematics, is an essential component of mathematical education and is considered as the basic procedure for revealing the truth of mathematical propositions and for teaching productive reasoning as part of human civilization. Is there therefore room for conjectures in mathematics? In this paper after discussing at a theoretical level the concepts of proof and conjecture, both in a paper-and-pencil environment and in a dynamic geometry environment (DGE) as well as how school practice affects them, we fully explain a task involving various mathematical disciplines, which we tackle using elementary mathematics, in a mathematics education context. On the occasion of the Greek educational system we refer to some parameters of the teaching of geometry in school and we propose an activity, within a DGE, that could enable students to be guided in the formulation and exploration of conjectures. Finally, we discuss the teaching implications of this activity and make some suggestions.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the opinions of primary school and high school students regarding the role of humor as a practice in the management of educational communication on the part of the teacher. More specifically, it is investigated whether and to what extent humor affects the students' behavior towards the teacher, the educational process as well as their personality. First, a theoretical approach to the subject is made, in order to highlight the idea that teacher-student pedagogical communication is considered to be the most lively and dynamic part of the educational process, because through it all the messages that signal action, attitude and, in general, teacher's behavior is conveyed. This means that the form of communication chosen by the teacher, either consciously or unconsciously, affects not only his relationship with the student, but also the content and the result of the educational processes. In this case, we have chosen humor as a pedagogical communication practice, given that the research data identify it as an important, effective means between the teacher and the students, the effect of which is particularly beneficial for the educational process, the classroom climate and the relationship between the teacher and the students as well as for the student himself. To implement the purpose of the research, a questionnaire with closed-ended questions was created, which was distributed to primary school and high school students in the first ten days of May 2023 in the city of Ioannina. The findings of the research are considered particularly interesting confirming the majority of the theoretical data that preceded it. The paper ends with conclusions and final remarks.

Higher education informatization (HEI) is an interdisciplinary field that examines the use and integration of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in higher education. This paper provides a bibliometric and visual analysis of the research trends, patterns, and topics in this field. Using the Web of Science database, the authors selected and analyzed 199 SCI and SSCI papers on HEI published from 2000 to 2023 by VOSviewer and CiteSpace software. The results indicate that the publication volume of HEI research has grown significantly in recent years. The author network shows the collaboration and contribution of different researchers and institutions, while the journal network reveals the multidisciplinary nature and scope of the field. The keyword network and the burst keyword analysis identify the main research themes and the emerging hot topics in HEI. The co-citation network of sources illustrates the theoretical and methodological foundations and influences of the field. The paper concludes with some implications and suggestions for future HEI research.

The use of Open Educational Resources (OER) for training in public administration has yet to see a wide adoption globally, mostly due to challenges related to the discovery and reuse of high-quality OER for training purposes. These challenges, combined with the general lack of openness in the public sector, have greatly impacted the penetration of OER in public administration. This paper presents a case study on the use of OER for expanding and enhancing curricular and resource sharing in public administration in Greece. Within this case study, an OER authoring and sharing platform was introduced to the Greek public sector, employing crowdsourcing methods for supporting trainers and trainees in authoring, sharing, reusing and remixing OER. The paper presents the deployment of this platform and the use of OER in the context of training programmes in the Greek public sector and reports on the lessons learned and the impact on public administration. The results of the case study showed that the use of OER was very positively received by civil servants, with a remarkable response, through active participation and engagement that led to the enhancement of existing OER and the co-creation of new ones for public administration.

Parallel support is a Greek type of special education provision aiming at providing additional support to students identified with special educational needs and/or disability in mainstream classrooms. Drawing from quantitative data for the school-year 2018-2019 this paper presents findings on certain characteristics of primary and pre-primary teachers who work in parallel support including gender, educational qualifications, teaching experience and further certifications in braille and/or sign language. In so doing, the paper analyses several shortcomings regarding the staffing of parallel support, especially in relation to teachers' qualifications and teaching experience. Additionally, it reports data on the recruitment procedures of teachers revealing significant delays in the hiring of teachers who work in parallel support. Finally, the paper discusses how the current educational policy creates structural barriers that hinder the educational inclusion of students with special educational needs and/or disability.

Immigrant minority (IM) languages have a significant presence in certain European regions. Nonetheless, these languages are not usually included in the school curriculum. This paper aims to analyse the studies published between 2010 and 2020 considering IM languages in multilingual European education contexts. The method included a search of academic papers published in the databases ERIC, Web of Science and Scopus, which yielded 42 studies. The studies were analysed by considering: (1) the demographic characteristics of the countries where the studies were conducted, (2) the sociolinguistic or psycholinguistic focus of the papers in relation to the European country, and (3) the characteristics of the bi-multilingual education programme including IM languages. The results indicate that: (1) the demographic characteristics of the country are not strictly related to the number of studies published, (2) most studies have a sociolinguistic approach even though many studies analyse both sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic factors, and (3) only seven multilingual education programmes including IM languages were described in these papers. We conclude that there is a lack of research focusing on IM languages in educational settings and discuss how addressing these gaps could create opportunities for building equitable multilingual communities in Europe.

Lately, there has been a rising trend towards integrating sustainability issues and implementing sustainable development (SD) goals into higher education, especially in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) field. This paper presents the challenges of the introduction of education for sustainability in higher education institutions, analyzes how these challenges could be addressed, and records the essential principles that can guide the incorporation of SD education in higher education. At the same time, this paper advocates the concept of sustainability integration into undergraduate ICT curricula and provides indications for developing ICT curricula that integrate sustainability issues. This paper also examines the contribution of education to the environmental awareness of the students at a Greek University while it captures their perceptions regarding the necessity for the inclusion of sustainability in the ICT curricula. The results are based on the processing of two questionnaires (pre-test and post-test data) distributed during two lectures regarding sustainability at a two-week interval. The findings of the study prove that the direct effect of the educational intervention on the intention of the students to engage in sustainability is significant. Furthermore, it is observed that students show a positive attitude towards integrating sustainability issues into their ICT education. In addition, although students had a deficient level of understanding of the concept of SD goals before the intervention, they showed a significant increment in their previous knowledge regarding sustainability and the environmental impact of ICT studies. The research also reveals that the students are not satisfied with the engagement of the university towards sustainability, and they propose various awareness activities to support their engagement with sustainability issues in an inclusive manner.

Purpose: There is a widely held belief that sustainable development (SD) policies are essential for universities to successfully engage in matters related to sustainability, and are an indicator of the extent to which they are active in this field. This paper aims to examine the evidence which currently exists to support this assumption. It surveys a sample of universities in Brazil, Germany, Greece, Portugal, South Africa and the UK and the USA to ascertain the extent to which universities that are active in the field of sustainable development have formal policies on sustainable development, and whether such policies are a pre-condition for successful sustainability efforts. Design/methodology/approach: The study involved 35 universities in seven countries (five universities respectively). A mixed-methods approach has been used, ranging from document analysis, website analysis, questionnaires and interviewing. Findings: Although only 60 per cent of the sampled universities had a policy that specifically addressed SD, this cannot be regarded as an indicator that the remaining 40 per cent are not engaged with substantial actions that address SD. Indeed, all of the universities in the sample, regardless of the existence of a SD formal policy, demonstrated engagement with environmental sustainability policies or procedures in some form or another. This research has been limited by the availability and ability to procure information from the sampled universities. Despite this, it is one of the largest research efforts of this kind ever performed. Research limitations/implications: This research has been limited by the availability and ability to procure information from the sampled universities. Practical implications: The findings provide some valuable insights into the connections between SD policies on the one hand and the practice of sustainable development in higher education institutions on the other. Social implications: Universities with SD policies can contribute to models of economic growth consistent with sustainable development. Originality/value: The study is the one of the largest research efforts of this kind ever performed.

The study investigates secondary students' understanding of "orbital" and "electron cloud" concepts in different quantum contexts (for values of the ?principal quantum number n = 1 and n = 2) on the basis of their verbal and pictorial representations, evaluating also their consistency. Participants, which were 192 12th-grade students from six urban secondary schools of Northern Greece, represented these two concepts through two corresponding tasks of a paper-and-pencil assessment tool, each of which comprised two parts for verbal and pictorial representations, respectively. Results provide evidence that although students struggle to express verbally the orbital and electron cloud concepts, their competences in the corresponding pictorial representations are relatively better, exhibiting inconsistencies between verbal and pictorial representations. Inconsistencies also exist between representations of the orbital and electron cloud concepts, since students appear to have verbally a better understanding of the electron cloud than the orbital, whereas the opposite holds true for their pictorial representations. Comparing verbal and pictorial representations, the pictorial ones appear to be more consistent tools, whereas a quantum context defined by n = 2 seems to be more challenging for students compared to that of n = 1. Furthermore, an analysis of student profiles leads to their categorization in four classes, providing additional relevant information. Implications for science education are also discussed.

This paper presents the findings from a survey conducted on primary students to map their views toward science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education in Greece according to their urban or rural setting and gender. The sample included 281 primary students from different public schools in Attica and 69 primary students from a Greek province. A close-ended questionnaire was digitally distributed to collect the data. The findings revealed that most students, from both settings, consider themselves good at mathematics and science. At the same time, they do not report it to be very likely that they would follow a career that is related either to these subjects or engineering and technology. Regarding their personal skills, most of them stated that they have communication and cooperation skills. Concerning differences between the two settings, there were statistically significant differences in favor of rural students in whether they believed they could improve, both in mathematics and science, their belief that their knowledge in STEM subjects could be useful in their adult life, and their views on the causes and effects of environmental issues. Finally, limited gender differences emerged in favor of the boys' responses regarding future STEM careers. The implications for further research on geographical, gender, and socioeconomic disparities in STEM education are discussed.

This paper argues that engaging students in informal statistical reasoning from early school years is essential for the development of statistical understanding. We investigated if and how children aged six-seven years old identified variation in a table of data and made predictions through the design of a teaching experiment. The classroom teaching experiment was comprised of four 45 minutes lessons addressing the understanding and interpretation of data sets. In order to describe students' informal predictive reasoning, we used the framework of "data lenses". More specifically, we analyzed the different types of answers the students produced as they engaged in predictive reasoning during an interview given before and after the teaching experiment. The participation of students in (classroom) and out-of-school (family) communities of practice was also taken into consideration. Our results demonstrate that the students benefited from their learning experience and developed data understanding.

The objectives of the present study are to investigate both the history of the collection of scientific instruments from the Maraslean Teaching Center (MTC) and the potential for the collection's use in STEM education programs. Although MTC went by a number of different names during its long history, its institutional goal remained the same: training the Greek state's primary school teachers-to-be. To so do, it was necessary to assemble a collection of scientific instruments. The first objective of the paper is to present in detail the gradual enlargement of the collection from the last quarter of the 19th century through to the 1930s, along with the way the instruments were used in science lessons and the central role MTC played in relation to other regional teaching schools in Greece in terms of the distribution, administration, repair and maintenance of the equipment. The second objective is to investigate the role the historical scientific instruments can play not only in the history of science, but also in contemporary science teaching. The findings reveal that the history of laboratory physics education in MTC along with the corresponding collection of the historical scientific instruments can be a fertile ground for implementing STEM education programs. Finally, the findings imply the broader integration of STEM education and history of science in order to promote cultural and procedural aspects of science in student teachers and beyond. Such integration gives rise to broader research on introducing STEM education to cultural embedded environments, such as museums and historically important schools and laboratories, such as MTC.

In this paper, we draw on our recent research to inspect again some of the theoretical perspectives we have been using to analyze data and to characterize teaching-learning in university settings. We focus particularly, within a sociocultural perspective on Activity Theory and the construct the "Teaching Triad," seeking to embed the Triad within an Activity Theory perspective. To achieve this, we relate the Teaching Triad with aspects of the sociocultural setting both in and beyond direct interactions in face-to-face teaching. While this is mainly a theoretical paper, an example is taken from observations of teaching in university lectures in a Greek university to show how these theoretical perspectives have provided insights to the institutional and cultural complexities involved and in what ways the Triad construct has evolved.

In this paper we explore the difficulties undergraduates from Greek Higher Educational Institutions faced during the transition to online learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic. By analyzing qualitative data from an online survey (N = 2093), we were able to identify the barriers undergraduates encountered during this transition and make inferences about the quality of the way online learning was implemented. The most frequently reported barriers include problems that undergraduates perceived as being caused by their lecturers, internet connection issues during an online lecture and the perceived limited social interactions that synchronous environments can afford. The paper argues that the way online learning was implemented by Greek Higher Educational Institutions did not result a meaningful learning experience for undergraduates. Our results are relevant to universities that are either forced in implementing emergency online protocols or wish to support their undergraduates' learning experience.

The aim of this study is to identify the most prolific countries in the field of special education and to discuss the widespread impact of their papers by taking into account the country's h-index. Through a bibliometric analysis, the data were collected in the Web of Science Core Collection category "Education, Special" in the Social Science Citation Index during 2011-2020. The 25 most prolific countries in the field of special education were determined in terms of paper productivity, and it was seen that the leading country was undisputedly the USA (54.42%). Meanwhile, a strong positive correlation was found between the h-index and the number of papers published by the countries (r=0.864). On the other hand, when the ranking in terms of the number of papers was reconfigured by the h-index, it was relatively changed. The possible reasons for this change for the countries with the most changing rankings were discussed by considering some definitive criteria such as the journal quartiles, the percentage of international and domestic, and the percentage of open access papers. This study reports a positive correlation between the quality and quantity in the field of special education for the publications of countries. It has been shown that where the positive correlation deviates, then especially, the journal quartiles, the percentage of international collaboration and the percentage of open access papers have a significant effect. The bibliometric findings may be useful to enrich the discussion about the widespread impact of papers and debate whether the use of h-index is acceptable for cross-national comparisons.

Peer tutoring has been implemented for two academic years (2017-18 and 2018-19) to a course and the internship of a postgraduate program of the Department of Education Sciences in Early Childhood of the Democritus University of Thrace. Until now fourteen students (eight students and six tutors) have been involved to the method. The purpose of this qualitative study is to research the students' difficulties that were faced with the peer tutoring method and the difficulties of the tutors in applying it, as well as the ways in which they were dealt with. Therefore, this research helps to highlight the importance of this method for the academic development of undergraduate and postgraduate students of the particular University Department and helps to collect data that could support the further development of the method itself in the Department. [Paper presented at the ERPA International Congresses on Education (April 10-12, 2020).]

The study aims to understand the foremost challenges in the transition to online teaching and learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study adopts the PRISMA approach to screening the selection of journal articles and review papers according to the research aims and the inclusion criteria. The journal articles and review papers were extracted and stored in Microsoft Excel and Google Scholar, Academic. Microsoft, Semantic Scholar, Elsevier, and Emerald Insight databases searched relevant documents using formulated keywords. A statistical technique was applied using the M.S. Excel analysis tool (PivotTable and an independent t-Test) to analyze data and determine the differences between teachers and students. The review revealed the evidence that the majority of the studies were primarily focused on the individual developing countries and results from other developing countries were not considered. In addition, the foremost challenges in the transition to online teaching and learning during the COVID-19 pandemic were inadequate skills and training, inadequate Internet/Infrastructure, lack of supporting resources and lack of online student engagement and feedback. Finally, the independent t-test reveals there is no statistically significant difference in challenges in the transition to online teaching and learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Both teachers and students encounter similar challenges. The systematic review raised concerns that higher learning needs to effectively implement long term strategies and support teachers and students in getting into online teaching and learning.

The rich repertoire of online practices adopted by educators during the COVID-19 pandemic opened up new perspectives for educational research to consider e-learning post-pandemic. Focusing on teacher education, it is worth considering the practices adopted to inform the development of future curricula that cultivate teaching competencies for e-learning. This paper examines microteaching, a well-established practice realised in teacher education as a learning-to-teach experience. As was the case with other teacher education practices, the forced online transition heavily compromised the vividness of microteaching -a technique inherently connected to face-to-face interaction-. On the other hand, this online relocation can be an opportunity to capitalise on online microteaching as a fulfilling e-learning experience in teacher education. The paper has two parts. In the first part, we conceptualise the potential of microteaching while applying Technology-Enhanced Learning (TEL). The second part reports our experience relocating online a mature technology-enhanced microteaching practice (successfully implemented in face-to-face settings for seven years) due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Our research design utilises two implementations of microteaching practice. One was conducted in a typical face-to-face context pre-pandemic, and another was conducted in an online context during a lockdown imposed by the pandemic. On a first level, collecting qualitative data from both contexts allowed us to observe common TEL-related challenges. On a second level, we focused on identifying challenges distinct at the online context to infer and highlight the implications of the online relocation. These implications relate to (i) the organisational changes, as experienced from the instructor's perspective, (ii) the technologies adopted for applying TEL, and (iii) the challenges that pre-service teachers (PSTs) face in the online environment. Our findings extend the previous research scope on face-to-face microteaching practice. New challenges of relocating technology-enhanced microteaching online include technical difficulties in handling technologies and reduced participation in whole-class discussions. However, challenges that remain relatively unaffected concerning the typical face-to-face practice are (i) the PSTs immersion in the roleplaying character of microteaching, (ii) the misconceptions on the principles and methods of teaching techniques roleplayed, (iii) the adoption of digital tools for applying TEL, (iv) the selection of suitable digital tools, and (v) the burden of time limitation. In conclusion, we argue that these insights reveal an unexplored potential for technology-enhanced microteaching in an online context. We discuss how the implications of shifting microteaching practise online may model future microteaching implementations in teacher education post-pandemic. We support that online microteaching, apart from providing an alternative method when circumstances impose it, should be integrated within the typical teacher education curriculum to cultivate teaching competencies for e-learning.