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The European Universities Initiative (EUI), created by the European Commission in 2017, is a recent novel phenomenon within the European Union policy toolkit that explicitly targets the development of transnational cooperation in higher education (HE). To date, the EUI counts 44 European university alliances, involving around 340 HE institutions. In this paper, we argue that the EUI can be seen as a case of a transnational institution building process representing a potentially significant structural reform for European higher education. Anchored in new institutionalism, we explore the regulative, normative, and cultural-cognitive dimensions of the EUI. Methodologically, this study analyzes the perspectives of European policy actors (n = 4), a set of policy documents (n = 13) and the mission statements of the EUI's partnerships funded before 2022 (n = 41). The results show that the EUI emerges as the 'next level of cooperation' in European HE since it aims to transform European cooperation (regulative dimension), to create and diffuse a new model for European HE following a challenge-based approach (normative dimension), and to work as a way to reinforce and institutionalize European and global scripts for European HE (cultural-cognitive dimension).

As humanity reaches the 5.0 industrial revolution, education plays a critical role in boosting the quality of human resources. This paper reports bibliometric research on emerging TiP during 1993-2022 in the educational field to analyse its development on any level of education during the last three decades. This study employed a Scopus database. The findings are that the trend of TiP publication in educational fields has tended to increase every year during the past three decades and conference paper became the most published document type, the USA is the country which produces the most publications; "Students" being the most occurrences keyword and total link strength. The publication of the TiP is ranked to the Quartile 1, which implies that a publication with the cited performance is a publication with credibility because the publisher has a good reputation. Researchers can find the topics most relevant to other metadata sources such as Web of Science, Publish, and Perish.

Adapting teacher education programs to societal changes is a current issue, especially when viewed through the European frameworks driving transformative reforms. The paper reports how European frameworks and other initiatives in higher education and teacher education aim to support the transformation of teacher education programmes. Multiple European-level interventions have engendered shifts in the conceptual understanding and orientation of initial teacher education programmes across numerous contexts within Europe. The purpose of this paper was to examine the shift of teacher education programmes into competence-based in Kosovo, the youngest country in Europe, in the context of European frameworks as an impetus for transition. This qualitative research is a part of a broader study that involves analysing study programmes, conducting interviews with teacher educators and management staff, and holding focus groups with student-teachers. The goal is to explore the path of contextualizing European-inspired programme reforms in more detail. The findings show that Kosovo is shifting to a competence-based approach to align with EU integration, incorporating European principles for programme improvement. However, the study reveals a notable focus on maintaining programmes' tradition. This leads to tensions and contradictions regarding programme tradition, EU integration goals, and actual implementation.The results provide valuable insights into the significance of educational context and the tacit knowledge of teacher educators and other stakeholders during programme reforms within the context of European initiatives.

The importance of enhancing social and emotional skills in educational settings has gained prominence, with many countries and organizations embracing the Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) framework to equip individuals with the tools needed for shaping a self-identity, emotional regulation, goal achievement, empathy, nurturing relationships, and responsible decision-making and overall well-being. In this paper, we aim to connect the globally acknowledged Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning SEL framework with international policies that underscore the importance of social and emotional skills in the school context. To accomplish this goal, we first provide a brief overview of the key components of the SEL framework. Subsequently, we explore two significant educational policies within the European context. The first policy is the World Health Organization Health Promoting Schools initiative. We present its objectives, a WHO-affiliated program example, the promoted and assessed competencies of students, and its results, connecting its framework with the CASEL SEL approach. The second focus is the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Study on Social and Emotional Skills, describing its developmental process and the assessment framework. Finally, we describe the alignment of SEL with these European educational policies and illustrate their role in advancing and improving the evaluation of SEL initiatives in educational environments.

This paper examines literacy as a sociocultural, personal and human practice dependent on and derived through relationships between people, settings and culture. Drawing on a recent empirical research study that combines learner, teacher and author perspectives [Curtin (2023) "Reading and Writing Pathways Through Children's and Young Adult Literature: Exploring Literacy, Identity and Story with Authors and Readers." Routledge], I explore how children's literature may be used to develop meaningful and authentic literacy pedagogies in the primary classroom. The research methodology for this study employed interviews with sixteen international and award-winning children's literature authors. This paper presents one author's interview from the study in detail in an effort to illustrate the importance of identity and personal resonance in literacy learning. To this end, funds of knowledge [Moll, Amanti, Neff, and Gonzalez. (1992). "Funds of Knowledge for Teaching: Using a Qualitative Approach to Connect Homes and Classrooms." "Theory Into Practice" 31 (2): 132-141. https://doi.org/10.1080/00405849209543534] and light and dark [Zipin (2009). "Dark Funds of Knowledge, Deep Funds of Pedagogy: Exploring Boundaries Between Lifeworlds and Schools." "Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education" 30 (3): 317-331. https://doi.org/10.1080/01596300903037044] pedagogical approaches are applied in a discussion of genre study using (auto) biographical text in the primary classroom. Identity affirming and culturally resonant pedagogies developed seek to engage learners in literacy as a human practice. The paper concludes by considering key insights and ways forward.

The importance of Digital Competence in teacher education has increased in recent years resulting in a range of digital competency frameworks aimed at guiding national and regional governments in their integration of digital competence in teacher education. The discourses and assumptions underpinning digital competence frameworks are discussed in this paper using two influential supra-national competency frameworks, the UNESCO ICT Competency Framework for Teachers and the DigCompEdu, as examples. The theoretical reflection argues that several influences have shaped the current discourse. These influences include the rise of teacher performance and competency frameworks, the tradition of ranking teachers' levels of technology use and the techno-centric education discourses that align technology use with constructivist practices. Through this theoretical reflection, the paper raises questions about their use in, and implications for, teacher education arguing that, while such frameworks provide helpful guidance for policy makers and teacher educators, they may stifle teachers' professional autonomy and straight-jacket technology use in a linear and deterministic manner.

This paper presents an overview of approaches and proposals to improve the integration of migrant children in schools in Spain and it is linked to the European research project Migrant Children and Communities in a Transforming Europe (MiCREATE). It focuses on a part of the research in which stakeholders were interviewed. Based on the needs of migrant children and practices already implemented in Spain, experts from different fields problematised and proposed improvements in current policies and practices in education. The main conclusions indicate that a more holistic and transversal approach to the inclusion of migrants is needed, as well as better coordination between institutions in different contexts and areas of action. This implies rethinking inclusive practices and involving children's families and taking their environment into consideration, as well as supporting educational practices that foster a sense of belonging among migrant children and their families in schools, the community, and society. Finally, the paper highlights the importance of gathering data from stakeholders in different fields of expertise and areas of action in order to obtain a more complex and insightful overview of the phenomenon under study.

The political, social, and institutional environments in which contemporary universities operate have changed rather dramatically over the past two decades in ways that threaten the resilience of the academic core, both in its ability to map knowledge comprehensively and also to maintain a balance between the branches of the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. This paper traces historical changes (2003-2019) in the academic core of two "flagship" research-intensive universities located in Northern Europe. The results show that some branches of the academic core are undergoing dynamic processes of program churn that make them resilient. Furthermore, the data show that this resilience is enabled in large part by bridging different branches of knowledge by establishing what we term interbranch programs. In addition to the abovementioned findings, the paper links ongoing discussions regarding change in HE systems and institutions to the literature on organizational resilience, and it advances insights for a possible future theory of how adaptation plays out in the academic core over time.

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.

This study reviews the literature published on job crafting using bibliometric techniques. It utilizes the papers published on the topic from 1990 to 2023, retrieved from the Scopus database. The purpose of the paper is to draw the intellectual, conceptual and social structure of the field of research on job crafting. It uses the bibliometric method to review the literature on "job crafting." The findings of the study reveal both the micro and macro aspect of the research published so far such as Europe is the epicenter of research on the topic, while experiments and questionnaires a popular choice in methods adopted. This review gives a unique view of the past and outlines a number of future directions for research on the topic and it will be of interest to existing scholars in the field as well as doctoral students who might be interested in the topic.

Applying qualitative methods, this paper examines the burgeoning of quality assurance databases, processes and networks of actors in the field of higher education in Europe. Our main argument is that there has been a move from the Bologna Process being the near singular focus for European-level coordination and harmonisation of higher education, towards the making of a much more diverse and complex quality assurance and evaluation infrastructure. This infrastructure involves a range of distinct but interdependent actors and processes and contains explicit and implicit interlinkages with the production of wider policy agendas, such as the rise of the European Education Area. The aim of this paper is to analyse the growth and complexity of Quality Assurance (QA) in higher education (HE) in Europe, as a way of understanding the multifaceted and continuously developing process of Europeanisation.

Purpose: This paper aims to look at the implementation of project-funded research governance and its potential to induce organisational learning on responsible research and innovation (RRI). This paper analysed what types of organisational learning and change can take place within organisations of an Europe-funded project and to what extent. This paper examined whether and how change occurs and how it is shaped and co-produced with other orderings. Design/methodology/approach: The paper is based on materials and evidence collected while working on the internal evaluation of a Horizon 2020-funded project. Analysis of the results of the mixed methods evaluation design was used to characterise occurrences of organisational learning and change. Findings: The authors identified different forms of learning (single-loop learning, double-loop learning, reflexive and reflective learning and situational learning). The extent of learning that could lead to long-lasting organisational change was limited. This was due to the project-based and organisational design, the key-based definition of RRI and the indeterminacy of what constitutes learning and change -- both at the level of funding and performing the project. For organisational change to occur, the authors argue for governance mechanisms based on reflexive learning that consider a range of structural conditions and measures. Originality/value: Organisational learning plays an important role in change processes, which has so far been given too little consideration concerning the governance and implementation of RRI through project-based funding. The authors argue for a restructuring of governance and funding mechanisms to create more space for reflexivity and learning.

This paper discusses a sustained effort to introduce and make richer educational development opportunities for colleagues in Slovakia: a community that has common experiences, needs, expectations, access to opportunity and social interactions that follow mutual interest. In this paper, I reflect on the challenges and lessons learnt over two decades while I worked with teachers, educational developers and students taking a community-based, transformation-oriented, and needs-based approach. Over time, this resulted in expanding the community and offering it a broader range of services. The article concludes with four recommendations for those taking community-based approach, including cultivating trust and nurturing hope within the community.

The literature review has clearly indicated that the scale and characteristics of demand for Geography Earth and Environmental Sciences experts across different countries is unknown. Therefore, there is an urgent need to investigate this issue. This paper presents the results of research on the real demand for GEES specialists. In the paper, real demand is expressed by job vacancies (N = 17 378) published in six European countries over a period of 18 months. To analyse such an extensive body of text data, we used data mining techniques such as: SVD, inter-factor correlation analysis, word frequency analysis and word significance indicators, which allowed us to recognise similarities and differences in the size and structure of demand for these specialists in specific groups of countries. Employers from the UK and Ireland offered the most comprehensive range of positions whereas the expectations of Polish employers were the least diverse. Word frequency analyses for each occupation group demonstrated which components of GEES experts' knowledge and skills are considered universal on the labour market and which are subject to substantial regional variations. Moreover, word significance analyses allowed us to identify the occupations where a wider range of general skill areas was required and the positions for which primarily geographic skills were in demand.

Playwork is a recognised profession in the United Kingdom (UK) and is currently a growing area of interest internationally. However, debates about the nature and purpose of playwork have raged in the playwork field since the profession was invented in the early adventure playgrounds. This study is the first to capture data about what the now international playwork workforce understands to be the purpose of playwork. The International Playwork Census (IPC) was an online survey which asked participants from 19 different countries about their knowledge and experience of playwork. This paper reports on one question from the IPC: what is the purpose of playwork? A thematic analysis was undertaken from 193 responses on what was considered "the purpose of playwork" and three themes emerged: Facilitate and Provide for children's play; Support and Advocate. This paper describes how these three themes reflect both the historical change in understandings of the purpose of playwork and how different understandings of playwork are developed through the experience of practitioners working in range of different contexts.

Autism spectrum disorder is a complex neurological disorder characterized by impairments in communication and social interaction, limited patterns of behavior, interests and activities. Given the different forms of autism spectrum disorder and the fact that no two people are the same, an individual approach to each individual is required. Musical ability is one of the special talents that a child with an autism spectrum disorder can have. Such a child should be allowed to practice music. As a therapy, music therapy has proven to be effective in working with children with autism spectrum disorder, i.e. it has a positive effect on communication, vocalization, joint attention, eye contact, concentration, cooperation, cognitive functions, social skills, etc. This paper presents the observations obtained through the study case. The aim of the research was to show the behavior of students with autism spectrum disorder in the Music culture class and the impact of music therapy on their behavior. For the purposes of the research, two interviews were conducted, i.e. with a teaching assistant who worked with a student with an autism spectrum disorder and with the student's parents. The case study showed that the student has a developed musical ability, that he participates actively, with reserved attention, only in the Music culture classes, and that music therapy helped him in his expression and speech. It is essential to give these kids the tools they need to further develop their musical abilities. It will contribute to children with autism spectrum disorder feeling safe, happy, and accepted in their environment.

Nearly all multidimensional models of communication competence have pragmatic competence at their core. Proper assessment of second language (L2) pragmatics makes many demands on L2 teachers, both in terms of understanding the construct and in language test development. Therefore, being assessment literate helps teachers in developing effective tests geared toward educational outcomes. Despite the importance of assessment literacy (AL) for pragmatics, the field is still under-researched. Mindful of this fact and the significance of pragmatics in L2 learning and assessment, this study adopted the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) model of pragmatic competence to examine Iranian L2 teachers' AL for L2 pragmatics and linked the results to the Sociocultural Theory (SCT) for formulating theory-informed answers to the problems in the teachers' assessment of L2 pragmatics. Group interviews were run with 67 participants and then qualitative and quantitative content analyses were performed. The paper discusses the identified problems in the assessment of L2 pragmatics and offers recommendations for raising L2 teachers' AL for L2 pragmatics.

This paper analyses the role of libraries in the development of Open Educational Resources (OER) and, more specifically, the impact and level of implementation of UNESCO's (2019) OER Recommendation in Higher Education libraries. This study, the result of a joint undertaking between a national R&D project and SPARC Europe, is based on an online survey, disseminated amongst the European Network of Open Education Librarians (ENOEL) and uses a descriptive research methodology. The results highlight the implementation actions being taken by university libraries (n = 136) in each of the five areas of action of UNESCO's Recommendation. We find that the main contributions are being made in the areas of capacity building and Open Education policies, but that considerable work has yet to be done in terms of promoting inclusiveness and the sustainability of OER. Thus, the full implementation of UNESCO's recommendation requires a greater commitment on the part of librarians to joint actions undertaken via international networks and projects, as well as greater institutional commitment and the building of interdepartmental alliances.

This paper analyses the potential of micro-credentials in adult education through upcoming EU policies and initiatives, bearing in mind the increasing use of online learning platforms globally. Understanding national and international approaches to micro-credentials allows undergraduate programmes and teaching practices to flourish in economically less developed countries. The Republic of Serbia welcomes new approaches in the search for acceptable models of distance learning and equality in the labour market.

This paper reports the findings of a bibliometric analysis using VOSviewer on 392 Scopus database documents published from 2003 to 2022, aiming to understand the global landscape of the e-learning field and to identify the most prominent authors, institutions, countries and reference publications, as well as the research topics that have recently received the most attention in students' readiness for e-learning in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). The findings indicate that there has been an upward trend in e-learning readiness among students in HEIs over time. Among the countries studied, the United States, Taiwan, Australia, and Malaysia were found to have the most effective approaches to addressing students' readiness for e-learning. The most highly cited author in this field is M-L. Hung. Based on the citations, the most recognised journal in this field was "Computers and Education" and the universities that were most persuasive were two Taiwan universities in the first position. The data also revealed relatively low levels of collaboration among authors, institutions and nations regarding students' readiness for e-learning.

This paper examines the interplay of creativity, education, and the expressive arts. We begin by presenting a narrative literature review focusing on the use of artistic tools to promote creativity, self-expressiveness, and meaningful aspects of emotional and social learning. This review reveals strong connections between the different components of this interplay, and a special attention is given to the use of arts to promoting creativity and meaningful learning. We then propose the Empowering Creative Education Model (ECEM), which aims to provide a practical framework for employing artistic tools in each of the model's four developmental circles: I, Us, Educational and Community. Each of the four circles includes unique aspects of personal development.

Work-integrated learning (WIL) has been suggested as a potentially beneficial addition to modern doctoral education. However, there is little research outlining the specificities of WIL aimed at PhD students. This paper explores the range of WIL opportunities available to PhD students through a review of secondary data. The findings indicate that WIL opportunities are non-homogenous and vary widely across their structure and implementation. Patterns emerge to indicate that WIL opportunities tend to be optional, paid, short-term, focused on horizontal learning development, and provide opportunities for boundary crossing outside of academia. These findings imply that WIL has the potential to complement doctoral education by providing opportunities to experience cross-sector or cross-discipline learning and development. However, higher education institutes might consider becoming more involved in the design and implementation of WIL for PhD students. Additional research is required to understand how WIL opportunities fit into doctoral education and to evaluate existing WIL opportunities.

In this paper, we present an activity to introduce the idea of public-key cryptography and to make pre-service STEM teachers explore fundamental informatics and mathematical concepts and methods. We follow the Theory of Didactical Situations within the Didactical Engineering methodology (both widely used in mathematics education research) to design and analyse a didactical situation about asymmetric cryptography using graphs. Following the phases of Didactical Engineering, after the preliminary analysis of the content, the constraints and conditions of the teaching context, we conceived and analysed the situation a priori, with a particular focus on the milieu (the set of elements students can interact with) and on the choices for the didactical variables. We discuss their impact on the problem-solving strategies the participants need to elaborate to decrypt an encrypted message. We implemented our situation and collected qualitative data. We then analysed a posteriori the different strategies that participants used. The comparison of the a posteriori analysis with the a priori analysis showed the learning potential of the activity. To elaborate on different problem-solving strategies, the participants need to explore and understand several concepts and methods from mathematics, informatics, and the frontier of the two disciplines, also moving between different semiotic registers.

This paper reports on a model for participatory curriculum development that builds on a 'connected learning communities' (CLC) approach. We describe and analyse the trajectory of six CLC-cases using a framework informed by Social Practice Theory (SPT). The activities we report on took place during the first pilot year (2020-2021) of a transnational University Alliance involving six European universities. Data were drawn from document analysis, direct observations and ongoing dialogue with students and staff involved in the CLCs. Our findings illustrate the affordances of building on existing practice for curriculum development in international contexts and point out the importance of well-equipped collaborative environments that encourage critical analysis and active experimentation. We found that the CLC model and SPT framework are helpful contributions in the field of curriculum development and argue that connected curriculum-making approaches help shape versatile environments that can effectively transform and enhance educational provisions, experiences and outcomes.

European countries differ widely in terms of vocational education and training (VET) tradition and the delivery of VET at the upper secondary level. A statistical approach to build a classification of VET systems in Europe is presented in the present article on the grounds of the size of the vocational enrollment, on the one hand, and the percentage of vocational enrollment in programs in which work and school are combined, on the other hand. Twenty-two European countries with full available information are considered in the study: 18 European Union (EU) countries, three Schengen Area (non-EU) countries (Iceland, Norway, and Switzerland), and the UK (non-EU state outside Schengen). Cluster analysis is a quantitative form of classification. The country groupings emerging from the K-means analysis performed in this paper allow us to distinguish mainly between vocational-oriented countries with high vocational specificity (e.g. Germany, Switzerland, and Austria), highly vocational-oriented countries with traditionally school-based VET programs (e.g. the Czech Republic and Slovakia), and less vocationally-oriented countries (general education-oriented countries such as Estonia and Spain).

This paper describes the collaborative development of an agenda for research on e-assessment in undergraduate mathematics. We built on an established approach to develop the agenda from the contributions of 22 mathematics education researchers, university teachers and learning technologists interested in this topic. The resulting set of 55 research questions are grouped into 5 broad themes: errors and feedback, student interactions with e-assessment, design and implementation choices, affordances offered by e-assessment tools, and mathematical skills. This agenda gives a framework for a programme of research aligned with practical concerns that will contribute to both theoretical and practical development.

Living and working through the challenges of a pandemic offered a unique research opportunity to engage with some core questions about what really matters in Religious Education (RE) in countries across Europe. The "What COVID Reveals to Religious Education Specialists" research project sought to provide a reflective space for RE specialists, drawn from the board members of the European Forum for Teachers of Religious Education (EFTRE), to consider their experiences of RE during the COVID-19 pandemic and to begin to articulate what they might want in the future for RE in light of their experiences. Areas explored in the online qualitative survey included: challenging questions and issues, social unrest, student-teacher relationships, learning scenarios, valued dimensions in RE, opportunities for the future, and 'ideal' RE. Respondents were from sixteen of the twenty-two countries present on the EFTRE Board, offering their individual perspectives from Western, Northern, Central and Southern Europe. Using the tool ATLAS.ti, an inductive analytical approach was employed; a number of key group 'themes' emerged from the responses, which provided a basis for further analysis. This paper will present some of the main findings in dialogue with the focusing research stimulus question: "What does COVID-19 reveal to RE specialists about their subject?" The project is a European collaboration involving researchers from Austria, Germany, Hungary, Ireland and Wales.

Text and data mining activities -- that is, the automated processing of digital materials to uncover new knowledge -- have become more frequent in all areas of scientific research. Because they require a massive use of copyrighted work, there are evident conflicts with copyright legislation. Countries at the forefront of research and development have begun to address this issue. This paper presents the basic aspects of legislation applicable to text and data mining activities. It offers a detailed comparative analysis of the norms of the main jurisdictions that have regulated them to date, highlighting in each case the positive and negative aspects. An adequate knowledge of these laws is not only important for researchers but also important for the academic librarians who provide advice and support in these matters.

In an increasing context of internationalisation, the European Commission announced in 2019 the creation of the first seventeen 'European Universities' (EUnis), a Pan-European consortium of higher education institutions designed to promote European values, cooperation and identity. Against this backdrop, this paper aims to examine the ways in which these newly created EUnis construct their views of linguistic diversity and multilingualism. The research used as a case study the example of UNA EUROPA, an alliance of eight leading universities with eight different languages. Drawing mainly on content analysis combined with a discourse analysis approach, three data sources - the project proposal for the EU Commission, the UNA EUROPA website documents, and a research interview with one of its representatives - were examined to look into the ways in which languages and multilingualism are conceptualised. Findings reveal that linguistic diversity and multilingualism are given different degrees of visibility in the three sets of data examined and that utilitarian objectives seem to predominate over identity ones. It is expected that these findings will help unveil the ways in which language issues are problematised or not in the agenda of these newly created transnational universities.

In this paper, we introduce "Integrity Games" (https://integgame.eu/)--a freely available, gamified online teaching tool on academic integrity. In addition, we present results from a randomized controlled experiment measuring the learning outcomes from playing "Integrity Games." "Integrity Games" engages students in reflections on realistic and relevant academic integrity issues that lie in the grey zone between good practice and misconduct. Thereby, it aims to (1) motivate students to learn more about academic integrity, (2) increase their awareness of the grey-zone issues, and (3) increase their awareness of misconduct. To achieve these aims, the tool presents four gamified cases that lead students through an engaging narrative. The experiment to measure learning outcomes was conducted in three European countries, and included N = 257 participants from across natural science, social science and the humanities. We show that the participants enjoyed playing "Integrity Games," and that it increased their sensitivity to grey-zone issues and misconduct. However, the increases identified were similar to those achieved by the participants in the control group reading a non-gamified text. We end by discussing the value of gamification in online academic integrity training in light of these results.

Literature presents evidence of the exponential rise of distributed leadership both as a focus of research and as leadership development in education in the twenty first century (Hairon, S., and J. W. Goh. 2015. "Pursuing the Elusive Construct of Distributed Leadership: Is the Search Over?" "Educational Management Administration & Leadership" 43 (5): 693-718; Hall, D. 2013. "The Strange Case of the Emergence of Distributed Leadership in Schools in England." "Educational Review" 65: 467-487), in addition to the growing criticism of the theory's dominance and its 'acquired taken-for-granted status' (Lumby, J. 2016. "Distributed Leadership as Fashion or fad." "Management in Education" 30 (4): 161-167). This paper thus seeks to provide a systematic review of the literature on distributed leadership published between 2010 and 2022 through a methodical collection, documentation, scrutiny, and critical analysis of the research publications. The review seeks to identify trends in distributed leadership knowledge production according to the study type/purpose, topical foci, methodological approach, focus group, and geographic distribution via a narrative synthesis approach (Oplatka, I., and K. Arar. 2017. "The Research on Educational Leadership and Management in the Arab World Since the 1990s: A Systematic Review." "Review of Education" 5 (3): 267-307).

The "object lesson" is a particular teaching method that was widespread in Europe and the westernised world during the nineteenth century, which was variously adapted according to national contexts under the name of "Anschauungsunterricht, leçon de choses, lezione di cose, and lección de cosas." Based on the intuitive (sometimes known as natural) method, it established itself as a direct product of Pestalozzi's pedagogy, although its genealogy has been reconstructed differently from country to country. This makes it an interesting case of translation and transformation in education or, perhaps, simply an example of "maquillage" motivated by revanchism. The aim, in general, is to introduce abstract ideas to infant and primary school pupils through the observation of concrete objects. The leading theorists (the early followers of Pestalozzi in Germany and England, the educationalist Marie Pape-Carpentier in France, the Italian and Spanish positivists, etc.), gave it, in most cases, the form of a maternal conversation, where adults and children prompt each other with questions and answers. Many school programmes have given it a place in the curriculum, others have maintained it in freer and more spontaneous forms. This paper offers, on the basis of the most recent literature, an analysis of the different national traditions, using the main pedagogical dictionaries published in Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Discourses of global education, citizenship and competence have been characterising the higher education literature in recent years. The COVID-19 pandemic has both heightened the relevance of global citizenship education and presented new challenges as educators and students continue to grapple with the lasting impact and implications. This paper presents the findings of a research study which looked at the perceived learning outcomes of a "virtual exchange" project which addressed issues relevant to global citizenship, involving students in European and Southern Mediterranean countries in online dialogue programmes. The study used quantitative and qualitative approaches to the analysis of responses to open survey questions using the quantitative tool IRAMUTEQ (Sbalchiero & Tuzzi, 2016) and focus groups. Participants perceived that their learning was happening above all through their encounters and discussions with people from different backgrounds. They reported learning to listen actively and carefully, to accept and/or respect different opinions and experiences. The findings open up possibilities for how higher education institutions might engage students in online transnational and global learning experiences--which can contribute to thinking about renewing education and societies in a post-pandemic world.

Purpose: This systematic review paper aims to examine extant empirical research involving educational technology during COVID-19 to provide an aggregated analysis of how the pandemic has influenced educational technology research. Design/methodology/approach: Using a Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis systematic review and an integrative review methodology, 50 primary research studies were selected from ten top-ranked educational research journals. These studies were reviewed regarding research purposes, methodologies, instruments, educational level, geographical distribution, and findings of the studies. Findings: The findings reveal four emerging themes--influencing factors, effectiveness, challenges and teachers. The majority of the studies focused on higher education. Quantitative research design based on a questionnaire was the most adopted method of investigation by researchers. Research limitations/implications: Search parameters focused on the top 10 journals in the field of educational technology. Although this provides a level of quality, it narrowed the search. Practical implications: For practitioners and researchers, this study provides a summary of the field to better understand what knowledge we have gained on the use of educational technology to enable a more agile, knowledgeable response to education in future emergencies. Originality/value: This systematic review is unique in examining how the pandemic has influenced educational technology research. It also provides insight into gaps in the research that future researchers can use as a springboard to enable a more knowledge and a more agile approach to future emergencies.

This paper provides an alternative lens of viewing digital technologies and networked spaces in outdoor intercultural learning, by introducing the Taoist philosophy of Ziran (nature) and Wuwei (inaction). The application of digital technology to outdoor learning has become prevailing and triggered critical debates and discussions among scholars and practitioners. The majority of the perspectives are, however, oriented in Western ideologies, and very rarely has any research considered this issue in the context of outdoor intercultural learning. A mini-ethnographic study was conducted to reconcile the nature-technology dichotomy during an EU-exchange sail-training voyage. Methodological implications are provided for conducting fieldwork in outdoor learning research, in line with the Ziran-Wuwei principles. The findings suggest that educators and facilitators follow the dialectical, relational, and contextual orientations to manage the (non)use of digital devices to maximise learners' outdoor experiential engagement and reflections.

Across the world, numerous students are being bullied at school. Bullying is often caused by a power imbalance between students. Therefore, identifying potential sources of such a power imbalance can prevent school bullying from happening. Based on the labelling theory, we expect that grade retention can lead to such a power imbalance and, therefore, increase the likelihood of being bullied at school. Hence, this study examines the association between grade retention and self-reported victimisation. We also expect that retainees will be less likely to become a victim of school bullying in schools and countries with a high number of other retainees. If true, this would signal a moderating effect of both school- and country retention composition on the association between grade retention and victimisation. The contextualised impact of grade retention upon victimisation is assessed by cross-national multilevel analyses on PISA2018 data (25 countries; 8,039 schools; 159,412 students). Overall, our findings indicate that being retained in primary and/or secondary education is associated with higher levels of victimisation, while retainees suffer from more victimisation in countries with a low number of other retainees. In contrast to our expectations, however, we did not find such a moderation effect of school retention composition.

During an assignment as a change leader of a complex IT change program within a Dutch public government organization, I used action learning to develop and support the desired changes and to tackle the complex problems that usually accompany such a change program. During this action learning project, I took the role of facilitator and I devised and presented the initial conceptual tools and their application to two action learning sets. Subsequently, after proposing the idea of ??applying action learning to problem solving, the program team members including the senior managers, were prepared to apply action learning as an integral part of the IT program. We formed two action learning sets, with around 10 persons in each set. One set consisted of diverse and multidisciplinary subject matter experts, and external IT suppliers who participated as program team members. Another set was made up of managers of delivering departments, who would take the lead in adopting the solutions developed by the software development and implementation program. To shape the action learning approaches and processes within the sets during the lifetime of the change program, I developed, and we used, seven instruments (MALS) based on progressive insights, and applied them within the sets for process, quality, and improvement based on progressive insight. This paper describes the seven instruments and explains how they were used within the project.

Educational Technology (EdTech) plays a significant role in enabling learners with disabilities to access learning at school and reduce educational and social exclusion. It also enables them to enjoy the benefits of a full school curriculum and to participate in activities in different educational arrangements. The purpose of this review was to address the existing evidence of how EdTech is being used to support learners with disabilities in order to inform future research and policymaking. It sought to contribute to an evidence base of ways to reduce barriers to learning drawing on a systematic methodology to gather evidence pertaining to access to EdTech for primary school learners with disabilities aged 6-12 years. After a thorough examination of the literature, the final sample comprised 51 published articles (43 peer-review and 8 conference papers). The review revealed examples of positive outcomes of EdTech interventions being used, particularly in special schools; however, the evidence of their efficacy is weak. The use of EdTech for learners with disabilities in low- and middle-income countries requires further, robust and long-term research that considers the involvement of learners, pedagogy and curriculum design in order to understand its impact on improving educational experiences of children with disabilities.

Creativity represents a young and promising academic field of research. Over the last 20 years, creativity publications have been steadily increasing in number. Of the 20 most all-time prolific creativity scholars in the European Union (EU), only one has retired. The present paper aims at mapping the EU creativity research. We analyzed over 12,000 Web of Science records dated back to 1968 until December 2020, using two bibliometric tools, SciMAT and VOSviewer. The descriptive analysis lists the most prolific authors and journals on the creativity area, the most cited articles, as well as the authors', institutions', countries', and research areas' bibliometric networks. Moreover, this study presents a thematic analysis and an evolution map of the themes based on keywords. The EU scholars were found to establish collaborations based on geographical, cultural, and, maybe, idiomatic proximity. Engineering, computer science, and education & educational research are the most interconnected areas of research. Innovation, performance, creative cities, the neuroscientific study of creativity, and emotions are relevant topics in the area. A broader concept of the creative and collaborative economy, the impact of technology on developing creativity, and the study of the brain with neuroscientific tools may become promising lines for future research.

This study examines the perspectives and experiences of older lifelong participants in outdoor education/recreation. 32 participants, women (11) and men (21), aged 60-84 provided narratives of their lifelong engagements in the outdoors in nature-based activities. They were invited to write freely on their early experiences and their current engagements in the outdoors. The purpose was to explore and understand why and how serious lifelong older participants continued with their outdoor activities. This paper considers participants' current embodied engagements. The evidence suggests that as they age, their bodies become less able to deal with discomfort. Yet, the participants, as a consequence of their lifelong knowledge and experience, manage injuries and ill-health, choosing to adapt in various ways to enable their continued engagement/enjoyment in being active in nature. The study stresses the significance of lifelong engagement in the outdoors and the necessity for opportunities for outdoor nature-based experiences throughout the lifespan.

Although education is arguably one of the most central institutions in contemporary European societies, only recently scholars have started to study opinions that relate to the perceived legitimacy of education among the public at large. This paper contributes to this emerging literature. Based on data from the most recent wave of the European Quality of Life Survey (N = 23,073; 30 countries) we assess what individual- and country-level factors predict citizens' satisfaction with educational quality and the perceived fairness of/corruption in education. At the individual level, we find that indicators of one's material vs. educational position are inversely related to the perceived quality, fairness, and corruption of the education system. At the macro level, it turns out that in countries that perform better on PISA tests the perceived educational quality is higher and the perceived corruption lower. In the conclusion we elaborate on the implications of our findings.

This paper analyses whether using analogies to integrate knowledge from other scientific areas increases the level of accounting knowledge. We defined two sets of analogies, one between the physical states of water and the economic and cash flows, and another between the concepts of stock, flow and feedback that were taken from the System Dynamics field and the financial statements. An experimental study was conducted with students from a European university, who participated in an accounting revision class. The grades of the students who attended the revision class using the analogies were higher than of those who did not attend this class. These findings reinforce the power of analogies as a useful tool and validate the benefits of integrating knowledge from other areas in accounting education.

This paper seeks to analyze the development of rural tourism in Europe and the tourist specifics of countries with renowned destinations, focusing on the impact of COVID-19 from 2019 to 2022 and its influence on tourism trends. By utilizing data and documentation from the pandemic period, we aim to identify emerging trends in Europe and evaluate the sector's ability to recover to pre-pandemic levels. The analysis and conclusions are inevitably shaped by the COVID-19 pandemic period, with its effects compared against specified parameters. The statistical analysis, utilizing specific indices, shows that the pandemic had a negative impact on tourism activities, resulting in significant declines and underscoring the sector's vulnerability during crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper investigates the existence of an optimal point of the cash conversion cycle (CCC) and its components, which minimizes firms’ stock risk. Methodology: This study applies fixed effect models to a sample of firms listed in Euronext exchanges, from 2011 to 2019. Stock risk is proxied by the standard deviation of stock returns. The quadratic function of the CCC and its components (days sales outstanding – DSO, days sales inventory – DSI, and days payable outstanding – DPO) is applied to capture an optimal point of the working capital management (WCM). Results: Results show the existence of a U-shaped relation between WCM and stock risk, suggesting the existence of an optimal CCC and DSI point that minimizes stock risk Originality: To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper that explores the existence of an optimal CCC point and also an optimal point of its components (DSO, DSI, and DPO), which minimizes stock risk. This paper is also the first to assess the impact of WCM on stock risk of firms listed in European stock exchanges. The results are also relevant to managers, shareholders, and investors since they demonstrate that firms can minimize the risk of their stocks by practicing an optimal WCM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last decade, there have been numerous studies on the rise, characteristics, and consequences of the emergence of populist parties in Western liberal democracies. However, most analyses of European populist parties have focused on the right-wing populist parties. Although some scholars have made valuable efforts to understand left-wing populism in Europe, these studies have paid attention to their ideological-organizational idiosyncrasies or the characteristics of their electoral bases. This paper aims to fill the gap in the economic and political contexts in which Radical Left Populist Parties have achieved significant electoral results putting into practice a fsQCA analysis and examining their uneven electoral performance in Europe. Following some previous work applying QCA techniques, this paper tests the theory on the importance of economic and political factors. Findings indicate that the electoral performance of radical left populism cannot be explained in a univocal way, highlighting the crucial role of equifinality in understanding this political phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the social structure of individual autonomy in Europe. Drawing on the capability approach and human empowerment theory, it investigates how individuals' sense of autonomy is structured by individual means and conversion factors as well as economic, cultural, and institutional context conditions. Using data from the European Social Survey and the European Quality of Life Survey, these relationships are analyzed for 107,070 individuals in 18 European countries and four points in time between 2006 and 2016. Multilevel analyses reveal financial security, health, and social connectedness as the most important drivers of individuals' sense of autonomy. On the macro level, national wealth, civil liberties, and an emancipative value climate are all found to be positively linked to individuals' sense of autonomy, albeit weakly. Considering the value individuals attach to leading an autonomous life and the beneficial effects autonomy has been shown to have on people's well-being, these findings shed first light on the unequal distribution of autonomy and autonomy resources on the individual and macro levels. Concluding, the paper highlights the potential for future research and policy implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Europe accounts for 51% of international tourist arrivals and the tourism industry provides about 10% of workplaces in Europe. Tourism will be impacted by climate change in a diverse number of ways. At the same time, tourism is also a significant contributor of greenhouse gas emissions. The aim of this article is, therefore, to provide an assessment of climate and carbon risks for the European tourism industry based on a systematic literature review. Climate risk is the dominant category with 313 papers (74%), while 110 papers (26%) were on carbon risks. The following gaps were identified: geographical gaps, especially in countries of the former Soviet Union and former Yugoslavia; a lack of coherent studies on national tourism's and its sub-sectors' emissions; research addressing how climate policies might affect tourism demand; assessments of the integrated carbon and climate risks; lack of evidence on the link between tourism climate indicators and tourism demand; lack of climate change and tourism studies addressing policy and institutional tools for adaptation and implementation of adaptation measures in destinations; and research on rising sea levels and coastal erosion and its impacts on tourism destinations and demand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The performance of tax administrations (TAs) is usually described as their capacity to complete activities with the minimum of resources engaged. Accordingly, tax administration performance is a multifaceted phenomenon, and measuring and benchmarking its performance against other countries or regions remains a puzzle for researchers and practitioners. This paper introduces a new approach for measuring tax administration performance using the Composite I-Distance Indicator (CIDI) based on 11 individual performance measures from 35 European tax administrations over two consecutive years (2018–2019). For the given scores of tax administrations, we conducted a correlation analysis with (a) tax evasion loss and (b) the fiscal deficit of countries in which these tax administrations operate, aiming to assess the strength of the statistical relationship between these variables. The study highlights Denmark and the Netherlands as exemplary models for tax administration, with "Revenue Collection" being identified as a crucial driver of excellence and "Operational Performance" (such as "e-filing" and "on-time filing") forming critical aspects of TA efficiency. Also, the study finds a negative correlation between tax avoidance and tax administration performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Water scarcity is a growing concern across the globe due to climate change and demands for increased economic development. This paper analyses the relationship between economic development and freshwater abstraction in order to investigate its European impact. The analysis focuses on a total of 19 European countries, including 18 EU member states and one candidate, from 2007 to 2018. Using a panel dataset, the impact of a diverse selection of indicators of economic development (per capita GDP, the Human Development Index - HDI, water productivity and volume of international trade) on freshwater abstraction, our analysis finds that all explanatory variables are significant for cross-country variations except for international trade. To maintain scope, the analysis is limited to economic-development indicators themselves, excluding the effects of climate change and the availability of water resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the connection between climate change and energy security in Europe and provides empirical evidence that these issues are the two faces of the same coin. Using a panel of 39 European countries during the period 1980–2020, the empirical analysis presented in this paper indicates that increasing the share of nuclear, renewables, and other nonhydrocarbon energy and improving energy efficiency could lead to a significant reduction in carbon emissions and improve energy security throughout Europe. Accordingly, policies and reforms aimed at shifting away from hydrocarbons and increasing energy efficiency in distribution and consumption are key to mitigating climate change, reducing energy dependence, and minimizing exposure to energy price volatility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]