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This paper discusses key themes of the 15th biennial conference of the Association for Language Awareness (2020), with a focus on increasing digital engagement in language education. The COVID-19 pandemic occasioned an abrupt transition to emergency remote language teaching and learning (ERLTL) worldwide. The ALA 2020 conference was also affected by this transition; originally planned as a located conference in Geelong, Australia, it was eventually held online, a first in ALA's conference history. The current paper engages with contemporary debates of language teaching and learning in two ways. Firstly, it traces recent discussions by presenting key findings from five papers given at the conference, and secondly, via a scoping review of literature focusing on critical lessons from the pandemic regarding language teaching and learning. The review captures recent research from the Australasian region. Key debates identified in the literature include the needs of teachers and learners during the transition to online learning, and how student engagement was affected. The literatures highlight that both educators and students have been developing new practices in teaching and learning resulting from the shift to online and blended modes, which may continue to shape language education and new pedagogies in the future.

Introduction: We report an investigation on collaboration practices in research papers published in the most prestigious English-medium astrophysics journals. Method: We propose an evaluation method based on three numerical indicators to study and compare, in absolute terms, three different types of collaboration (international, national and local) and authors' mobility on the basis of co-authorship. Analysis: We analysed 300 randomly selected research papers in three different time periods and used the student's t-test to determine whether the paired two-sample differences observed were statistically significant or not. Results: International collaboration is more common than national and local collaboration. International, national and local authors' mobility and intra-national collaboration do not seriously affect the indicators of the principal levels of collaboration. International collaboration and authors' mobility are more relevant for authors publishing in European journals, whereas national and intra-national collaboration and national mobility are more important for authors publishing in US journals. Conclusions: We explain the observed differences and patterns in terms of the specific scope of each journal and the socio-economic and political situation in both geographic contexts (Europe and the USA). Our study provides a global picture of collaboration practices in astrophysics and its possible application to many other sciences and fields would undoubtedly help bring into focus the really big issues for overall research management and policy.

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.

The major analytical research question addressed in this paper is: What are Thailand's strengths and weaknesses as an international education hub for students from the Asian region? The key descriptive research question is: What is the nature of the educational experience of Asian students in Thailand? The two major research methodologies of the study are mixed research methods and comparative case studies, with the use of in-depth interviews of influential experts, surveys, and an autoethnography. In terms of major findings, there has been a dramatic growth of Asian students at Thai universities during the past two decades. Thailand's major advantages relate to low costs, location, quality campus facilities, and a welcoming attitude toward outsiders, while major disadvantages are the quality of many of Thailand's international programs often related to low English language capabilities. The paper concludes by presenting a creative new architecture for thinking about Asian study abroad in Thailand.

In this work, a bibliometric analysis of the investigations of the last 54 years focused on the teaching of topology and its applications in the learning of other areas of knowledge was carried out. The articles that appear in the SCOPUS database were taken into account under the search criteria of the words topology and teaching, connected with the Boolean expression AND in the search field ABS. As a result, 329 articles were obtained which, based on the PRISMA methodology, were reduced to 74 papers. In them publication trends, impact of publications, citation frequencies, among others, were compared. In addition, its use was identified for learning topology at different levels of training, areas of knowledge where this discipline is most applied and strategies used to teach these applications.

For over two decades now, the application of Citizen Science to Education has been evolving, and fundamental topics, such as the drivers of motivation to participate in Citizen Science projects, are still under discussion. Some recent developments, though, like the use of Artificial Intelligence to support data collection and validation, seem to point to a clear-cut divergence from the mainstream research path. The objective of this paper is to summarise the development trajectory of research on Citizen Science in Education so far, and then shed light on its future development, to help researchers direct their efforts towards the most promising open questions in this field. We achieved these objectives by using the lens of the Affordance-Actualisation theory and the Main Path Analysis method.

This article maps the scientific production and the contents associated with the sustainable development goals and their integration with universities during the past 21 years. Although many of the topics related to sustainable development goals (SDGs) have been addressed in different studies for decades, it is since 2015 onwards that they gained greater prominence due to the inclusion of higher education as an important actor in the fulfillment of the 2030 agenda and the United Nations SDGs. For the purpose of this paper, a bibliometric analysis of 871 papers, 535 documents in Scopus, and 336 in Web of Science (WoS) from 1998 to 2019 was performed, and the Bibliometrix analysis tool was used. The objective of this mapping is to answer the following research question: Is the integration of the Sustainable Development Goals and Universities a field of study? An analysis of the network of collaborators and trend topics in Scopus and WoS allows us to identify the concurrence and relationships of some keywords, such as sustainable development, sustainability and planning, and some background words, such as humans and global health. In another analysis, the word "higher education" is related to change. This article suggests that the integration of the Sustainable Development Goals in Universities is becoming a field of study under exploration, with a peak of production in 2016 and that has remained stable in the last three years, but thanks to the leading role assigned to Universities, intellectual production should increase in the following years.

Seamless learning has a significance that has been increasing in recent years, and an increasing number of studies on the subject in the literature draws attention. This study aimed to examine the research on seamless learning between 1996 and 2020 with the bibliometric analysis method. The Scopus database was used in the collection of the data. After various screening processes, a total of 389 publications were included in the analysis. Descriptive analysis and bibliometric analysis were used in the analysis of the data. The distribution of publications by years, types of publications, sources, and languages were analyzed in the research. Additionally, visual maps were created with analyses of co-author, cocitation, and co-word. At the end of the study, it was seen that there has been an increase in the number of publications from the past to the present, articles and papers were predominant, and that most of the studies were carried out in English. As a result of bibliometric analysis, it was concluded that the most efficient countries in seamless learning were the United Kingdom, the United States, and Singapore. Also, it has been determined that the National Institute of Education, Center for International Education and Exchange, and Kyushu University institutions are dominant. The most frequently mentioned authors cited in studies in many different fields are M. Sharples, L.-H. Wong, and H. Ogata. According to the co-word analysis, the keywords seamless learning, mobile learning, ubiquitous learning, and mobile-assisted language learning stand out in the field of seamless learning.

Academic libraries, apart from their main function, which is to provide information services to academic communities, may also perform a number of social roles in the broad meaning of the term. Accordingly, they now tend to serve as the third place offering inclusion and animation activities to academic as well as local communities (including potential students) and to groups in risk of social exclusion (immigrants, persons with disabilities, senior citizens, etc.) or in need of various kinds of care and support. However, for libraries to be able to fulfil those tasks, they need properly trained staff who not only have the required competencies but also the right social attitudes. The paper presents an analysis of the social attitudes of academic librarians from twenty countries across the world as compared to the personnel of other types of libraries. The level of individual social capital, activity in social networks, aspirations in life and social and civic engagement were investigated. It was noted that the respondents tend to undervalue the importance of the work done by libraries for local communities. At the same time, the research showed that academic librarians have a somewhat lower level of individual social capital and trust than public librarians and less extensive social networks. Nonetheless, they are open to relationships with others, which enables them to engage in various social projects.

Purpose: This paper aimed to examine moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) levels in physical education. Method: A review of reviews was conducted in accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines. The screening process, data extraction, assessment of the risk of bias, and analysis of the results were carried out independently by two reviewers. A total of eight systematic reviews from six databases, which included 224 studies, involving more than 80,000 students (elementary, middle, and high school), enrolled in more than 450 schools worldwide were unpacked. Results: Students fail to meet the 50% recommendation of MVPA lesson time, irrespective of country, school stage, gender, or MVPA measures. Physical education-based interventions increased students' MVPA during lessons (range 14.3%-24%) compared with control groups. Conclusion: Physical education is uniquely positioned to provide physical activity opportunities for students, but teachers must target the provision of adequate MVPA levels, which is not currently happening.

This paper reports preliminary findings on students enrolled in a massive open online course, who were also assigned to work in groups. Part of a larger study on the effect of groups on retention and completion in MOOCs, the paper provides students' demographics (i.e., location, gender, education level, and employment status), and motivation for taking the course. Findings show that women outnumbered men and that students mostly enrolled into the course because of a friend. Indeed, research on MOOCs demonstrates that men outnumber women and that educational pursuit and professional development are the main motivators for taking MOOCs. Yet, this paper shows that when group work is included in a MOOC, women participate more. Furthermore, for students assigned to groups in a MOOC, friends are the principal incentive for enrolling into the course. These results are discussed in light of previous research, and implications for teaching and learning in online environments addressed.

This paper presents a compilation of personal reflections from 66 contributors on the impact of, and responses to, COVID-19 in accounting education in 45 different countries around the world. It reveals a commonality of issues, and a variability in responses, many positive outcomes, including the creation of opportunities to realign learning and teaching strategies away from the comfort of traditional formats, but many more that are negative, primarily relating to the impact on faculty and student health and well-being, and the accompanying stress. It identifies issues that need to be addressed in the recovery and redesign stages of the management of this crisis, and it sets a new research agenda for studies in accounting education.

A significant distinguishing characteristic of the International Classroom Lexicon Project was the documentation of classroom pedagogical practices of mathematics teachers in the original languages of ten communities. These lexicons provide us with an opportunity to compare identified teacher practices within these communities. In this paper, we explore the challenges of conducting a cross-lexicon comparison to explore the possibility of moving towards an international lexicon by focusing on the Australian, Chilean, Czech and French lexicons. We focus on two clusters of terms, namely, those related to assessment and those related to mathematics. Inspired by theories and studies related to networking and boundary crossing, strategies were conceived and tested in order to accomplish the following objectives: to support a meticulous and comprehensive comparison of the lexical items; to classify the complexity of similarity of lexical items; and to reveal connections amongst the four lexicons in a bid towards developing an international lexicon. This analysis has the potential to contribute significantly to the study and promotion of mathematics teachers' reflective practice and highlights the cultural underpinning of the way classroom practices are perceived.

Education is the core of the factors that improved people for a better lifestyle and increases the level of society' development. Quality education is one of the most vital goals of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) due to actualizing these factors. Using relational network data envelopment analysis (DEA), which have three interrelated substages, this current paper computes the educational economy efficiency of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries bearing in mind the characteristics related to SDGs. The contribution of our study is the use of a novel approach to computing the educational economy efficiency using relational network DEA with GAMS. Even though some interesting differences reveal in the efficiency of the countries, the findings show that countries with high-efficiency scores are clustered around countries like Latvia, Slovenia, and Korea.

In the construction of "Double First-class" universities, how to establish an evaluation system of universities' scientific and technological innovation capacity with Chinese characteristics and international standards will determine the direction and level of improvement of Chinese university?s technological innovation capacity. The system of scientific and technological innovation in university is a complex system, and the existing evaluation index and evaluation system may be difficult to meet the actual needs of the national construction of "Double First-class" universities in the new situation, so the evaluation index should be a breakthrough and innovation. This paper probes into the existing problems in the evaluation system of scientific research in China, systematically investigate the common and different features of scientific research evaluation in Britain, America, France and Australia, puts forward the new connotation of the structure dimension of Chinese universities 'scientific and technological innovation capacity, and points out the basic criterion of constructing the evaluation system of university scientific and technological innovation capacity: First, design of indicators should reflect the development trend of the world, and reflect the cultural characteristics and historical background of Chinese universities. Second, it is necessary to according to the "world standard", reflect the value orientation and practice standard of Chinese university construction. Third, taking differentiated design and establishing a classification evaluation standard. Fourth, the evaluative dimension should reflect the diversification of the evaluation's content, especially considering to optimize overall scientific research ecology.

Scientific expertise and outcomes often give rise to controversy. An educational response that equips students to take part in socioscientific discussions is the teaching of Socially Acute Questions (SAQs). Students engaging with SAQs need to engage with socio scientific reasoning, which involves reasoning with evidence from a variety of fields other than science, including values, economics, local and global perspectives, governance issues, and a variety of stakeholder perspectives. This paper describes research in which tertiary students from France and Australia engaging with sustainability SAQs reasoned responses in wikis. In previous analyses (Authors, 2013), we have developed a six-dimensional framework of socio scientific sustainability reasoning (S3R). In this paper, we describe the development of an interactional reasoning framework that captures the quality of reasoning in the online discussions that led to specific improvement in S3R. The framework draws on and extends the discourse framework of Mercer, and Habermas' three worlds of validity of arguments to identify first that a particular category--integrated exploratory talk--is associated with improvement in S3R, and that this almost exclusively involves exchanges drawing on personal and social evidence claims as well as technical. We explore the implications for supporting collaborative decision making in socio scientific issues, for democratic participation and for post normal science education.

Approximately a third of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) items in the core domains (math, reading, and science) are constructed-response items and require human coding (scoring). This process is time-consuming, expensive, and prone to error as often (a) humans code inconsistently, and (b) coding reliability in international large-scale assessments varies across items and countries. The shift in PISA 2015 from paper- to computer-based assessment digitized all responses and associated coding, thus providing opportunities to introduce technology and analytical methods to improve data processing and analyses in future cycles. In this computer-based setting, this research explains the framework and approach for improving the accuracy and efficiency of the coding process in constructed-response items for future PISA cycles. In the pilot study associated with this research, we demonstrate how the proposed machine-supported coding system can be utilized using sample reading items from the PISA 2015 cycle.

The subject of computer science (CS) and computer science education (CSE) has relatively recently arisen as a subject for inclusion within the compulsory school curriculum. Up to this present time, a major focus of technologies in the school curriculum has in many countries been on applications of existing technologies into subject practice (both software such as office applications, and hardware such as robots and sensors). Through uses of these applications, information and communications technologies (ICT) have focused on activities to support subject and topic learning (across wide age and subject ranges). Very recently, discussions for including computers in the curriculum have shifted to a much greater focus on computing and CS, more concerned with uses of and development of programming, together with fundamental principles of problem-solving and creativity. This paper takes a policy analysis approach; it considers evidence of current implementation of CSE in school curricula, the six main arguments for wider-scale introduction of the subject, the implications for researchers, schools, teachers and learners, the state of current discussions in a range of countries, and evidence of outcomes of CSE in compulsory curricula. The paper concludes by raising key questions for the future from a policy analysis perspective.

This paper presents an exploratory analysis of the funding mechanisms for higher education across sixteen countries which builds upon existing work on educational institutions, educational outcomes, and welfare regimes. We focus upon the current financing dilemma within the Irish higher education system, seeking potential solutions within an international comparison. Our quantitative analysis identifies four clusters of countries: the Nordic, Continental-Europe, Mediterranean and English-Speaking; all of which are strongly correlated to economic and structural characteristics based on welfare state literature. Each education regime is associated with institutional, economic, and political factors. Our analysis presents evidence that Ireland does not possess the characteristics of a country that could benefit from an income-contingent lending structure to fund university education due to inherent sovereign characteristics. Further, Ireland could be better served through the introduction of free fee structures such as that found in Norway and Scotland or through the generation of state-sponsored lending facilities through private institutions like those already in place in Finland, Germany, and Sweden.

The management of self-directed learning is especially critical for massive open online course (MOOC) learners. This mixed-method study investigated MOOC instructors' strategies to facilitate learners' self-management skills for SDL. The study used three data sources: (a) an online survey with 198 MOOC instructors; (b) semi-structured interviews with 22 participants (the primary data source); and (c) document reviews of 22 MOOCs. The quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, and the qualitative data were analyzed using content analysis. The study findings indicate that MOOC instructors facilitated learners' self-management skills from four perspectives: the enactment of learning goals (e.g., explanations and appreciation of students' learning goals); time management (e.g., providing time frames, progress indicators, and short learning units); management of resources and support (e.g., flexible learning resources, peer assessments, and accessibilities); and navigation (e.g., clear organization and video tutorials on navigating the MOOC). The paper discusses the implications for researchers and practitioners.

Diaspora vloggers--migrants who produce video blogs in the language of their home countries for a transnational diaspora community--have been a largely overlooked group in the studies of social media. This paper focuses on the unique role of Chinese diaspora vloggers during an unprecedented global event--the COVID-19 pandemic. Using manual keyword search (e.g., "zhaijia riji," "faguo yiqing") and chance sampling (i.e., following platform recommendation), we collected 26 videos (07:44:30) from six Chinese YouTube micro-influencers (1-100k followers) located in Germany, the US, Australia, France, Italy, and Korea. Drawing on theories of narrative and stance-taking, we analyzed how these diaspora vloggers relate their experience during the COVID-19 pandemic. Results show that vloggers display both universal (e.g., fears) and culturally specific (e.g., mask-wearing) feelings, and invite their viewers to co-construe the emotional experience (e.g., the pronoun "ni" and address term "dajia"). Moreover, through different ways of "being Chinese", vloggers orient their discourse to a unique audience--transnational Chinese-speaking diaspora. Our findings point to the emergence of a new form of migrant identity in the age of social media and highlight the importance of understanding such identities in delivering public health information in global emergencies such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

Cross-border higher education institutions are considered a main way to fulfill the educational internalization in Mainland China; to some extent they represent the attitude of entering the international market. In this paper, the history, status quo, and future of Chinese-foreign cooperatively-run schools are analyzed and discussed. Cross-border higher education institutions in Mainland China have experienced the process from accidental and disorder to a systematic and quality orientation.

This paper presents a bibliometric analysis of highly cited articles published in the Web of Science category "Education and Educational Research" in the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI). A total of 2091 journal articles published in this category and cited more than 100 times up to the end of the year 2016 were retrieved as highly cited articles. Distributions of highly cited articles per publication year, journals, institutions and countries were analysed, as well as the citation life cycle of the top-cited articles. The USA, its institutions and researchers are the absolute leaders in the category of Education and Educational Research according to the results of the conducted analysis.

This paper derives efficiency scores for around 8,500 schools in 30 countries, using Programme for International Student Assessment 2012 data and a nonparametric approach called data envelopment analysis as method. On average, achievement scores of schools can be increased by 27%, holding inputs constant. Efficiency scores vary considerably both between and within countries; the role of managerial efficiency and structural differences due to operating in different contexts (countries) is disentangled. Subsequently, a number of school-level factors are found to be correlated with efficiency scores and indicate potential directions for improving educational results. Heterogeneity of such characteristics across countries and along the distribution of efficiency is explored.