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This quasi-experimental study aimed to investigate the effect of polite corrective feedback (CF) on Iranian EFL learners' immediate and delayed grammatical accuracy. The participants included a convenient sample of 60 intermediate male/female EFL learners (four 15-member groups) selected from a private language institute in Tabriz. After the researcher ensured the homogeneity of the participants, a researcher-made multiple-choice pre-test on present and past English tenses was administered. Later, the first and second experimental groups were treated with +Polite Explicit Feedback (in the form of elicitations) and +Polite Implicit CF (in the form of recasts), respectively while the control groups were provided with -Polite Feedback of the same forms. Following the assessment of the learners' oral grammatical accuracy immediately after the treatment (uptake), a multiple-choice post-test was administered two weeks after the immediate post-test to assess their delayed recall. The independent samples t-test and ANCOVA conducted on the pre-test, immediate learning scores, and delayed post-test scores indicated that, although polite CF in both groups had a significant effect on learners' grammatical accuracy, +Polite Explicit Feedback had a more significant effect on participants' performance than -Polite Explicit Feedback and +Polite Implicit Feedback. The results underscore the significance of integrating politeness element into CF discourse, bearing implications for educational planners, materials developers, and EFL instructors.

Students who are educated by schools in rural areas experienced challenges around the world even before the COVID-19 pandemic, such as lack of resources and inadequate infrastructure (Çiftçi & Cin, 2018; Dube, 2020). The COVID-19 pandemic drew attention to the inequities of the conditions facing students in rural areas (EDC, 2020). These unique challenges were evident for those serving low-incidence disability populations, such as those children with visual impairment. There are unique challenges in providing support to students and their families with visual impairments in rural areas of the country. Those challenges included need for additional supports in technology, internet infrastructure, funding, and full access to accessible materials. Concerns over the health and well-being of teachers and students with visual impairments were also expressed as concerns but was not unique for teachers of students with visual impairments in rural areas.

In this article we report on an exploration of leadership and context for the improvement of quality education in South African socioeconomic-deprived school contexts viewed through Hellinger's contextual theory, open systems theory, Bronfenbrenner's ecology of human development, and Bourdieu's theory of field, habitus and power. A post positivistic approach allowed for a quantitative research design which employed an interpretivist lens to use the theory and the context to interpret the numbers. A self-designed questionnaire was used for the data collection. We analysed the data by means of the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) analysis program and evaluated using a Likert scale. In the study reported on here, the mean scores -- sorted from the highest, which means the most important factor, to the lowest -- are presented. The findings reveal that low teacher professionalism and non-compliance to the regulations, contextual factors outside the schools (teenage pregnancy, vandalism), learners' circumstantial challenges, high accountability by the department without considering schools' contextual factors, and a lack of parental involvement in the teaching-learning process were among the biggest challenges for principals to influence quality education.

Educator leaders play a vital role in fostering educators' and students' mental health and wellbeing. Through qualitative research, this paper provides insights from eight education leaders working in State Schools in Malta on their perceptions of, and experiences in, the promotion and support of mental health and wellbeing among educators and students. The objective of the study is to examine how mental health and wellbeing are being promoted, addressed, and supported in schools. Eight semi-structured interviews were conducted with education leaders followed by a reflexive thematic analysis. Four themes emerged from the data, namely school philosophy, ethos, and leadership; mental health and wellbeing in schools; loss and grief; and COVID-19 and its impact on mental health and wellbeing in schools The findings suggest the need for more proactive and supportive considerations of mental health and wellbeing in schools in Malta, along with the implementation and evaluation of mental health and wellbeing whole-school projects in schools.

This article describes a piloted approach to responsive lesson planning and lesson reflection that centers the motivation of both teachers and students in public school settings. Anchored in the African philosophical approach of Sankofa and Self-Determination Theory, the tools and practices described encourage strategic reflection while considering the basic psychological needs of both children and adults. Special Education teachers in Washington, DC employed a Lesson Internalization co-planning tool and found it aligned the paired teachers and filled gaps in the social-emotional and support needs for their students not captured by traditional lesson planning formats. General education teachers in the Bronx utilizing a responsive post-lesson reflection tool were able to adeptly pinpoint problem areas in delivered lessons, identify differences in causes of struggles between different sections of students, and even replace a traditional approach to behavior intervention for a student. Crucially, the practices were found to be fully internalizable and did not unduly add to the planning or reflection workload or time commitment for the teachers. The successes found in these pilots suggest the potential for a broader application of motivation-centered approaches in other aspects of school including conflict resolution, teacher evaluation, coaching, hiring practices, and professional development.

This literature review explores the effectiveness of self-regulated learning (SRL) practices in public school classrooms as a means of improving student engagement, motivation, and academic success. Data was gathered from a collection of peer-reviewed articles on varying topics as they relate to self-regulated learning and student engagement, specifically the concepts of student choice, intrinsic motivation, self-efficacy, and authentic learning. Overall findings indicate that classrooms focused on supporting students' self-regulated learning processes enhance students' levels of engagement.

This study investigates the application of the fuzzy logic method for scoring open-ended items, specifically comparing its effectiveness against traditional scoring methods. Utilizing the fuzzy TOPSIS method within the mathematics domain, this research established seven criteria for evaluating open-ended responses, developed in consultation with three experts. Due to constraints imposed by the pandemic, the study did not proceed with a real-world application; instead, it simulated data for 25 students to compare the rankings derived from traditional and fuzzy logic methods using the MS Excel program. The research produced three distinct rankings using the conventional method and analyzed the correlation between these rankings and those generated by the fuzzy TOPSIS method, employing the Spearman rank correlation coefficient. The findings reveal a significantly positive correlation between the rankings obtained through traditional methods and those acquired via the fuzzy logic approach, suggesting the latter's potential as an effective alternative for evaluating open-ended responses.

Waste, a byproduct of human activity, can cause environmental pollution if released without proper processing. It can accumulate in piles, disturbing natural beauty and emitting unpleasant odors. The aim of this research is to from the students to care about the environment by learning with the Bubble Wrap Recycling Project, Used Plastic and Patchwork. The method of this project is a structured experiment. Common waste includes bubble wrap, plastic, and rags from the convection industry. A student project in an environmental science course involved recycling these materials into sitting pillows. Three variants were tested: 10% bubble wrap, 10% plastic waste, 80% patchwork, 15% bubble wrap, 15% plastic waste, 70% rags, and 20% bubble wrap, 20% plastic waste, 60% rags. The pillow's comfort was measured using a Linkert scale of 1-5. The results showed that the pillow measures 40cm. Recycling is a way to promote environmental care and awareness. Cooperation from educational agents, such as supervisors, leaders, and lecturers, is needed to increase students' environmental awareness. This includes examples of good environmental actions in daily routines, such as disposing of waste and implementing 3R practices.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced the education sector to transition from traditional classroom settings to online and blended learning formats. MOOCs have emerged as a potential alternative to traditional classroom instruction, providing students with access to high-quality education from leading universities. This case study examines the preferences and views of school students on the integration of MOOCs in the performance tasks of EFL courses. The study was conducted in Türkiye during the 2020-2021 school year, and a total of 110 K-12 students participated. Both qualitative and quantitative data were collected. Statistical analysis was used to analyse the quantitative data, while descriptive and content analysis was used for the qualitative data. The study found that integrating MOOCs in K-12 EFL classes had a positive impact on students' motivation and engagement levels. Using MOOCs as performance tasks increased students' awareness of global issues and improved their research and analytical skills. Additionally, the results showed that MOOCs have the potential to enhance language learning outcomes in K-12 EFL courses. The findings of this study can guide researchers and practitioners in the theoretical and practical aspects of online and blended learning in K-12 education.

The lecture technique still dominates in biology education, and there are not enough hands-on, interactive, creative, and problem-solving learning activities to encourage students to apply their problem-solving skills. The purpose of this study is to examine how the problem-based learning (PBL) model and students' metacognition skills affect their ability to solve environmental pollution issues. A total of 60 X MIPA students from SMA Muhammadiyah 16 Jakarta comprised the total sample of the research, collected using the quasi-experimental approach. For the study, two groups were utilized: the experimental group (X MIPA 1) and the control group (X MIPA 2). A 2 x 2 factorial design with a pretest-posttest control group was employed for the investigation. The instruments used in the study were classified as tests or non-tests. The test instrument is an essay designed to collect data on problem-solving ability and metacognition ability, while the non-test instruments are student worksheets that refer to the PBL stage, and the observation sheet is designed for instructors and students. Data analysis using ANCOVA with a significance level of 0.000 < [alpha] = 0.05 indicates that H0 was rejected. The interaction between the PBL learning model and students' metacognition skills also has an impact on their capacity to address environmental pollution-related issues.

Designing effective literacy interventions is a primary topic of importance in educational law, research, and practice (IDEA, 2004; International Dyslexia Association, 2020). The purpose of this article is to examine inclusive approaches to literacy instruction and reading comprehension for students with autism that in turn supports instructional access within inclusive general education classrooms. This conceptual framework for this article is teaching for: a) inclusive mindset and pedagogy, rooted in social justice and with a presumption of competence for all learners and b) disability studies in education to welcome innate student variation and understand the structural elements that lead to marginalization in schooling. As applied to this article, these conceptual frameworks help in understanding how space can be made to widen the literacy instructional access for students with autism within inclusive general education. The connection between inclusive strategies and examples of practice connected to Universal Design for Learning principles are explored and connects these with effective and evidence-based practices for students with autism in the research. Expanding access to literacy experiences for students with autism ensures this research to practice praxis in inclusive general education classrooms.

As a formative assessment procedure, self-assessment aims to converge learners' and teachers' views in assessment. Hence, reducing the perceptual mismatches between the learners' and the teachers' assessments would positively affect the learning process. For this aim, the present study investigated to what extent the learners' assessment of their writing before and after being provided with a list of rating criteria, agrees with that of their teachers. Therefore, a body of six EFL writing teachers and 27 EFL learners participated in this study. The learners were asked to rate their writing before and after receiving the rating criteria developed by the researchers. The teachers also rated the students' writings following the same criteria. The obtained results showed a significant difference between the students' scores on the first and second assessment occasions. The teachers' and the students' assessments on the second time also were found to significantly correlate. Moreover, the analysis of the students' comments showed that while they rated their writing on some limited aspects of writing in the first rating occasion, they assessed their essays using more components in the second assessment phase. Overall, the findings revealed that providing the learners with rating criteria would not only reduce the perceptual mismatches between the students' and the teachers' assessment but promote a more democratic classroom assessment. The findings of the study reduce the complexity of self-assessment practice by narrowing the perceptual gap between the students and the teachers.

Literary discussions are widely utilized in education, yet their profound impact on students' comprehension requires in-depth exploration. This paper delves into the influence of literary discussions on student comprehension and examines how these discussions can enhance students' understanding and analytical skills. Through literature reviews and case analyses, this study investigates teaching strategies, student engagement levels, classroom ambiance, and other factors involved in literary discussions, revealing the potential mechanisms through which literary discussions influence student comprehension. The paper explores variations in the application of literary discussions across different types of literary works (novels, poetry, drama, etc.) and their relationship with students' creative thinking. Finally, the paper provides recommendations to assist educators in effectively utilizing literary discussions to enhance students' comprehension skills. Students must have the opportunity to discuss literature in ways that provoke deep thought and meaning from each work they encounter. Therefore, English Language Arts teachers and instructors must be creative in finding unique ways in which they encourage their students to experience and respond to literature. This paper discusses a variety of strategies to implement in virtual and in-person classrooms, such as Socratic seminar, Teacher-led as a facilitator, Teacher-led as a promoter of diverse perspectives, Using student-generated discussion questions whole class, Using student-generated discussion questions in small groups, Using Close-ended questions, Using Open-ended questions, Inquiry-based, Making real-world connections to the literature, Literature Circles. These literary discussion strategies can be used for both fiction and nonfiction literature.

The rapid development of artificial intelligence and large language models (LLMs) has led to significant advancements in applying machine learning techniques across diverse disciplines, including educational science research. This study investigates the potential of LLMs like ChatGPT for qualitative data analysis, focusing on open, axial, selective coding, theme or pattern identification, and inter-rater reliability. Our findings indicate promising capabilities of ChatGPT in open coding, demonstrating accurate categorization of qualitative data. However, axial coding posed challenges due to the model's limited understanding, which was partially addressed by refining prompts based on ChatGPT's interpretation. ChatGPT also showed competence in selective coding and theme or pattern identification, providing additional insights. For inter-rater reliability, ChatGPT's performance varied across datasets, with improvements observed when providing contextual information. It is important to note the limitations and variability of LLMs such as ChatGPT, which is in public beta and subject to potential limitations in usage and reliability. Our study demonstrates ChatGPT's potential for coding and inter-rater reliability. Improved results are achieved with refined prompts and utilising ChatGPT's own definitions. The adoption of LLMs for qualitative analysis requires further exploration, including addressing algorithmic bias and the potential for inaccurate responses. Validation techniques are crucial in mitigating these risks.

Scholarship on international students shows that despite university policies designed to create a welcoming atmosphere, international students still face social challenges. This paper applies the capabilities approach to reveal mechanisms that facilitate or constrain the social inclusion of married international graduate students. For married international graduate students, the personal factors (their level of study and marital status) bring with structural factors (e.g., visa policies, healthcare policies, cultural and linguistic barriers), which in combination lead to social exclusion. With one university case study, including original survey and interview data, we unpack these intertwined processes and find that married graduate students' social relation and network patterns significantly differ from single graduate students and undergraduate students. They are less likely to attend campus events, interact with their colleagues, and interact with friends from other countries. As such, we challenge the conventional wisdom that access to higher education alone leads to social inclusion.

Bayesian Knowledge Tracing (BKT) is a popular interpretable computational model in the educational mining community that can infer a student's knowledge state and predict future performance based on practice history, enabling tutoring systems to adaptively select exercises to match the student's competency level. Existing BKT implementations do not scale to large datasets and are difficult to extend and improve in terms of prediction accuracy. On the other hand, uninterpretable neural network (NN) student models, such as Deep Knowledge Tracing, enjoy the speed and modeling flexibility of popular computational frameworks (e.g., PyTorch, Tensorflow, etc.), making them easy to develop and extend. To bridge this gap, we develop a collection of BKT recurrent neural network (RNN) cells that are much faster than brute-force implementations and are within an order of magnitude of a fast, fine-tuned but inflexible C++ implementation. We leverage our implementation's modeling flexibility to create two novel extensions of BKT that significantly boost its performance. The first merges item response theory (IRT) and BKT by modeling multidimensional problem difficulties and student abilities without fitting student-specific parameters, allowing the model to easily generalize to new students in a principled way. The second extension discovers the discrete assignment matrix of problems to knowledge components (KCs) via stochastic neural network techniques and supports further guidance via problem input features and an auxiliary loss objective. Both extensions are learned in an end-to-end fashion; that is, problem difficulties, student abilities, and assignments to knowledge components are jointly learned with BKT parameters. In synthetic experiments, the skill discovery model can partially recover the true generating problem-KC assignment matrix while achieving high accuracy, even in some cases where the true KCs are structured unfavorably (interleaving sequences). On a real dataset where problem content is available, the skill discovery model matches BKT with expert-provided skills, despite using fewer KCs. On seven out of eight real-world datasets, our novel extensions achieve prediction performance that is within 0.04 AUC-ROC points of state-of-the-art models. We conclude by showing visualizations of the parameters and inferences to demonstrate the interpretability of our BKT RNN models on a real-life dataset.

Recent advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) have brought society closer to the long-held dream of creating machines to help with both common and complex tasks and functions. From recommending movies to detecting disease in its earliest stages, AI has become an aspect of daily life many people accept without scrutiny. Despite its functionality and promise, AI has inherent security risks that users should understand and programmers must be trained to address. The ICE (integrity, confidentiality, and equity) cybersecurity labs developed by a team of cybersecurity researchers addresses these vulnerabilities to AI models through a series of hands-on, inquiry-based labs. Through experimenting with and manipulating data models, students can experience firsthand how adversarial samples and bias can degrade the integrity, confidentiality, and equity of deep learning neural networks, as well as implement security measures to mitigate these vulnerabilities. This article addresses the pedagogical approach underpinning the ICE labs, and discusses both sample activities and technological considerations for teachers who want to implement these labs with their students.

Over the last several decades, the opioid crisis has had an increasing impact on the educational environment of schools. The role that principals and superintendents have in leading schools that have been affected by opioids has been mostly overlooked in the research. The present study was conducted in Ohio, a state with areas that have some of the highest death rates due to opioid-related incidents in the nation. Purpose: This study collected data on the perspectives and perceptions of school leaders in Ohio to better understand how principals and superintendents frame their decisions regarding the opioid crisis. Design: We analyze data collected from a survey of 217 Ohio school leaders (n = 164 principals and n = 53 superintendents). The survey required principals and superintendents to rate their perception of the opioid crisis in their schools based on their socioeconomic status, school typology as rural or non-rural, and school location within or outside the Appalachian region. Results: Findings emphasize that opioids remain a factor negatively impacting schools of varying typologies, economic levels, and geographical locations.

Recently, promoting inclusive education has become the central initiative for governments worldwide. The Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework has been developed to address students' differences and meet their learning needs. Although some literature has examined the effectiveness of the UDL framework in teaching practices, little research has explored teachers' and students' beliefs toward the UDL framework. This study used a scoping review methodology to locate previous studies about teachers' and students' beliefs regarding the UDL framework published in peer-reviewed journals in the past 10 years (2014-2023). The data analysis conceptualized three themes and indicated that most teachers and students held positive beliefs toward the UDL framework and thought that the UDL framework could support inclusive practices. However, some barriers, such as teachers' misconceptions, inflexible curriculum, and inadequate professionals, influenced teachers' implementation of the UDL framework. The implications for future research and the recommendations for teachers' practices and professional development are also provided.

A concern across many vocational education systems is the high dropout rate from their programs. This problem is likely to be exacerbated at time of low unemployment rates when employers are less demanding about the certification of skills at the time of employment. This qualitative study examines the factors associated with students leaving early from Initial Vocational Education and Training (IVET) institutions in Estonia. The study analyses the challenges and potential risk factors of IVET early leaving from both the students and staff members points of view. The research participants were 20 Estonian IVET students and 12 staff members from various vocational schools. The study highlights the complex interplay of students' challenges and emphasises the importance of addressing them to promote retention and success in vocational education and training programmes. The study employs the Self-Determination Theory, more specifically, the conceptual frame of basic psychological needs to interpret the data. The results of the research indicate that students at risk are mainly shaped by their primary school experience prior to vocational school, with teachers and peers as the main influencers.

Contribution: Longitudinal video reflections are a unique approach to assessing student learning in study abroad. This study utilizes this method to understand the experiences of ten engineering students. The results show how their learning experiences changed over time and how the students connected these experiences to culture and engineering. Background: Study abroad research has demonstrated that students learn through a variety of experiences while abroad, but this research has been limited by narrow assessments, limited longitudinal data, and a lack of connection to engineering. This study uses longitudinal video reflections to explore student experiences in study abroad programs in a holistic way, capturing a wide range of learning outcomes over time. Research Questions: What types of significant experiences do engineering students abroad discuss in weekly reflection videos? How do engineering students abroad connect their significant experiences to engineering? Methodology: The critical incident technique (CIT) was used to collect video reflections from ten students for 14 weeks during a semester abroad. Their experiences were characterized using CIT methods and tracked shifts in incident types over time. The results show which types of experiences resulted in students reflecting deeply about cultural learning and engineering learning. Findings: The experiences students described in their videos shifted from a focus on communication and environmental factors early on to more cross-cultural comparison later in the program. Certain types of incidents resulted in cultural reflection, while others led to engineering learning. Communication incidents often served as a connecting point between engineering and cultural learning.

The poor academic performance and literacy level of deaf learners in Namibia are a major concern, and it is necessary to understand the center of the situation. Even though deaf learners can become proficient readers and writers, the challenge remains in finding an appropriate instructional approach to attain these results. This presents an even greater challenge, as deaf learners not only differ from their hearing peers, but also significantly differ from one another in terms of their various familial and social contexts, language use, and overall holistic development. The Bilingual-Bicultural approach is considered a good approach for teaching deaf learners, and it offers them the chance to become biliterate; therefore this study explored the impact of a Bilingual-Bicultural literacy program on 41 d/hh learners (age = 7-13 yrs). Through a one-group pre-test post-test design, a group of participants were pre-evaluated, followed by an intervention and post-evaluation. The intervention's main goal was to implement practical teaching strategies using a Bilingual-Bicultural teaching approach that can reduce the delay and gap in language learning and literacy for deaf learners. Results from t-tests calculated to determine the statistical significance of the pre and post-test with regard to the total scores and all the sub-tests for NSL as well as Written English skills indicated significant results (p<0.05). The study offers insight into the psychology of teaching deaf learners while also advancing the theory and application of the Bilingual-Bicultural approach. Additionally, it promotes debate of the best practices for ensuring that deaf learners receive a quality education and full participation in society.

Prior to the emergence of the coronavirus disease in 2019 (COVID-19), studies revealed lower involvement of fathers in the education of learners who are Deaf and Hard of hearing (LDHH). Although research evidence reveals that work structure and other commitments may be responsible for fathers' limited involvement in the education of their children, there is limited research evidence on the involvement of fathers of LDHH in remote education during the COVID-19 lockdowns. Based on the perceptions of mothers of LDHH, this study therefore explored fathers' involvement in the remote education of their LDHH. Hinged on the Theory of Planned Behaviour, two research questions were raised and answered in the study. Eight mothers of LDHH from KwaZulu-Natal province in South Africa participated in this qualitative study. Data was gathered via a semi-structured telephonic interview, and the collected data was analysed thematically. The findings revealed that: (1) the involvement of fathers in the remote education of LDHH saw a fair increase during the lockdowns when compared to the pre-COVID-19 era; (2) father-child communication approaches, technical devices needed for remote learning, and ability to intervene promptly when technical glitches arises were factors that influenced the perceptions of the fathers' involvement in the remote education of LDHH during the lockdowns. Based on the findings, appropriate recommendations were made for policy and practice.