Education & Pedagogy

The texts that future teachers read in their pre-service training offer a way to understand the teacher education pedagogical field. In this research, we studied 12,193 texts read by prospective teachers in 25 primary teacher education institutions in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay. This approach is a new methodology for the empirical study of the teacher education curriculum. Significant differences emerged across the four fields of knowledge examined: pedagogical knowledge, foundations of educational sciences, content knowledge, and learning sciences. The study shows that authors from the intellectual field of education, theories, and disciplines are totally different in each country. Chilean future teachers read more recent, international, and pedagogical content knowledge oriented texts. Argentine future teachers read mostly Argentine authors, and Uruguay future teachers read older texts, with a mix of authors and a more psychology-based orientation. The article shows that comparative study of the pedagogical field in different countries is a fundamental step to unravelling the importance of context in teacher initial education.

On 8 December 2024, the end of Syria's 54-year-long dictatorship marked a historic political shift, placing education at the centre of reform debates. This paper provides a systematic review of empirical academic and grey literature published between 2011 and 2024 on the impact of the Syrian conflict on pre-university education. Drawing on 51 studies and reports in English and Arabic, the review synthesises findings across six interconnected themes: governance; curricula; attacks on education; teachers; educational quality; and dropout. The analysis demonstrates that conflict not only disrupted schooling but fundamentally reconfigured education governance, policy and implementation across fragmented territories. Interpreted through a cultural political economy framework, the findings reveal education as an arena of power in which competing authorities mobilised curricula and service delivery to assert legitimacy and shape social identities. The paper argues that sustainable reform requires addressing the structural political and economic dynamics embedded within the education system.

The "OECD Review of Digital Education Policy in the Netherlands" offers an independent analysis of strengths and challenges related to digital education in Dutch schools. It was carried out as part of the OECD project Resourcing School Education: Policies for the Digital Transformation of Education and Future-Readiness of Teachers. The report describes and assesses the system from an international perspective and proposes policy options to guide future reforms. The analysis covers primary and secondary education, focussing on digital education policies concerning the following topics: i) governance and system-level strategy, ii) funding and procurement; iii) the EdTech and education materials markets; iv) capacity building and the future roles of teachers, and v) the curriculum framework, assessments and school evaluations. This report aims to inform education authorities and stakeholders in the Netherlands as well as other countries looking to develop a system-level policy environment that enables schools to achieve excellence and equity in the digital age.

This article examines the role of Islamic philosophy within the context of religious and ethics education in Germany. It begins by outlining the legal and institutional foundations of religious education in the German federal education system, highlighting the differences and intersections between confessional religious education and non-confessional ethics or philosophy education. Particular attention is given to the development of Islamic religious education, which remains situated within a field of political tension, shaped by integration discourses, security concerns, and broader European dynamics. Against this backdrop, the article argues that Islamic philosophy holds significant educational potential. Its integration into both religious and ethics education not only challenges Eurocentric epistemologies but also promotes critical thinking, plurality competence, and reflexive engagement with diverse moral and metaphysical traditions. Drawing on historical and contemporary sources, the article further reflects on the marginalisation of Islamic philosophy in Western historiography and advocates for its inclusion as a means of curricular decolonisation and intercultural dialogue.

Environmental education is the solution to the environmental problems caused by technological advancements. Technological advancements make human life easier in many aspect. Today, artificial intelligence is one of the current technological advancements. The purpose of this research is to determine the general trend in studies on the use of artificial intelligence in environmental education, identify gaps in the relevant literature, and explain how current developments in educational technologies impact environmental education. This research is a systematic review. In this research, studies on the use of artificial intelligence in environmental education were systematically compiled to reveal how new developments in artificial intelligence affect the environmental education process. Seventeen studies were included in the review process. This research has two main conclusions. First, artificial intelligence in environmental education is a relatively new and current topic in literature. Second, the use of artificial intelligence tools causes water waste and carbon emissions. Therefore, the conscious use of artificial intelligence is essential for both teachers and students to be aware of it.

This book explores the ways in which educators in media programs at colleges and universities can work toward decolonizing the curriculum and implementing necessary practices of media literacy to help students become more responsible media practitioners. Taking an autoethnographic approach and reflecting on their experiences as a student and educator with an intersectional identity, the author proposes that for media education to instil positive change in the media industry, there must be a more direct objective of decolonizing media education. Looking specifically at how media education programs lack an understanding of how to make their courses more equitable, they propose an ambitious start to decolonize media education: by dismantling current classroom norms and rebuilding from the perspective of performance, as it is connected to the bodies of those in the classroom and the field, we can build a critical media literacy framework to make education equitable. This insightful book will support media educators in higher education, as well as k-12 media educators, instructional designers, and media researchers.

Until recently, institutions of higher education were considered successful if they maintained strong enrollment and provided broad access to students. Today, however, a growing national movement seeks to hold colleges accountable for what happens after students graduate--or fail to graduate. President Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" (OBBA) requires states to evaluate institutions based on post-graduation outcomes. A few leading states already have initiatives that measure the value of higher education through return-on-investment analyses or incentive programs, often called "outcomes-based funding." These initiatives use postgraduation outcomes data to inform decisions on program offerings and funding. Collectively, these efforts are shifting the focus of higher education from inputs to outcomes. ExcelinEd calls the data used for higher education accountability a Return on Investment Analysis. A comprehensive ROI analysis evaluates whether postsecondary programs lead to positive outcomes such as strong wages, continued education or qualified military enlistment. It also tells stakeholders whether those outcomes align with high-demand, high-skill, high-wage occupations in a state's economy.

This article investigates the internationalization of public relations education, by examining public relations education in Australia, its relation with the public relations industry, and its growth in response to international student- and market-led demand. The discussion highlights the tensions within what is essentially an education project driven in part by stakeholders seeking to professionalize the industry and in part by university staff seeking academic legitimacy and disciplinary status for public relations within a rapidly changing higher education sector. Tensions between the local, national, and global contexts of higher education, and academic, industry and market factors are evident. In particular, the process of developing an internationalized curriculum exposes the narrow disciplinarity and weak theoretical foundations of a field, which emerged out of industry practice and is strongly influenced by U.S. scholarship. It is concluded that internationalization of the public relations curriculum offers scholars the possibility to address the ethnocentric values and narratives of their discipline and improve learning outcomes for students. (Contains 5 notes.)

Researchers identified innovative agricultural education programs across the United States. A Delphi study was conducted with the teachers in innovative programs. According to the teachers, innovative programs in 2020 will use hands-on activities and will be run by highly motivated teachers. The purpose of innovative programs in the future will be to utilize the current professional community to teach skills needed in a changing industry and to encourage students to "think outside the box" and challenge themselves. Innovative programs will be hands-on, include problem solving, and critical thinking. The people involved in innovative agricultural education programs in the future are students, innovative agricultural education teachers, school administrators, and professionals in the community with particular skills sets needed in agricultural education. Teachers of selected innovative agricultural education programs did not agree that innovative agricultural education programs should have a global reach or that every student should have a Supervised Agricultural Experience. (Contains 4 tables.)

Studies in the history of physical education show that it was often promoted for socio-political reasons: to stimulate nation-building or increase economic productivity and/or military strength. By contrast, a different kind of motivation has received little attention in historical studies: the importance of physical education for the perfection of the individual, as expressed by the German neohumanistic word "Bildung". This article presents a case study in which the debate on the importance of physical education in the Netherlands in the mid-nineteenth century is examined. Ideas on the importance of Bildung in physical education especially existed within the freethinkers' movement. With arguments derived from their naturalistic worldview, freethinkers contested educational approaches that obstructed the natural development of the child. This case study aims to contribute to a better insight into the history of physical education in the Netherlands and into the diversity of reasons for promoting physical education in the past. (Contains 63 footnotes.)

Derived from the Confucian educational tradition, the term "Tongshi" reflects a contemporary Chinese effort to break away from the former Soviet legacy and forge undergraduate curricula on the basis of a US general education model. In recent years, "Tongshi" education reform has entered the spotlight in Chinese universities as they have sought international recognition. This article examines the cultural dynamics underlying "Tongshi" education reform in Chinese universities, using Renmin University of China (RUC), a well-known university in China, as a case. By exploring curriculum changes before and after the reform and investigating faculty and student attitudes toward "Tongshi" education at RUC, this article shows that although "Tongshi" education exhibits features in common with both a Chinese educational tradition and the Western notion of general education, it is, nonetheless, a created rhetoric in the contemporary discourse of "building world-class universities." (Contains 2 footnotes and 3 tables.)

Today's teachers and administrators must educate students for character. But, teachers are inconsistently prepared for this challenge. This descriptive study examined teachers' sense of efficacy for character education among pre-K-12 teachers based on their type of character education training. The Character Education Efficacy Belief Instrument (CEEBI) was used to collect data at a southwestern school district of more than 61,000 students and more than 3,500 teachers. By employing analyses of variance (ANOVAs), this study examined the relationship between the teachers' Personal Teaching Efficacy (PTE) and General Teaching Efficacy (GTE) scores and the following teacher characteristics: type of institution from which teacher certification was received, school setting, type of character education training received, and years of teaching experience. The results of this study offer opportunities to understand how to prepare teachers to become character educators. The implications of this study on character education, professional development, pre-service training, and future research are explored. (Contains 2 tables.)

Much of the research on social justice and equity in special education has centered on examining the persistent problem of disproportionate representation in special education and the implications of this problem for the educational experiences of learners from diverse backgrounds, particularly African Americans. Yet, outside this ongoing dialogue in special education directed primarily toward disproportionate representation and early advocacy efforts in advancing inclusive practices, the discourse on the intersection of social justice and special education is a fairly new phenomenon. In this paper the authors examine research on special education and charter schools to: (1) document trends in service delivery, quality of instruction, and family engagement; (2) interrogate the intersection of social justice and special education situated within the context of an urban charter school; and (3) make recommendations for leading charter schools with an emphasis on social justice particularly for students with disabilities.

This paper attempts to analyse current developments in education through exploring shifts in the politics of education over time. Rather than looking at education policy in terms of political provenance (left or right) or ideological underpinnings (the state or the market, the public or the private), the paper compares education policies in terms of the domains of social injustice which they address. Based on Nancy Fraser's theorisation of different kinds of social justice, the paper uses examples from England to show how the politics of education have sequentially attempted to address injustices in economic, cultural and political domains. This has resulted in a changing orientation from a politics of redistribution to a politics of recognition and, in recent years, to a politics of representation. This approach reveals the complexity of educational inequalities and the fragility and incomplete nature of strategies to address them. It also provides a fruitful framework for the comparative analysis of the politics of education which can link the detail with the bigger picture. (Contains 2 figures and 4 notes.)

Online learning is changing the educational landscape despite the limited empirical research and conflicting results about its effectiveness to produce student learning. The purpose of this study was to describe the status of online physical education (OLPE) in the United States. Surveys were sent to forty-five high school online physical education teachers and thirty-two were completed, producing a 71% response rate. Three-fourths of the online physical education teachers focused on a fitness curriculum with emphasis on the cognitive domain. Likewise, it was found that almost three-fourths of the OLPE courses did not meet the national guidelines for secondary schools, of 225 min of PE per week. Most of the courses required physical activity three days per week while six courses required no physical activity. Teachers expressed support, hesitation, and even opposition toward online physical education. This study initiates a descriptive database for future research studies regarding online physical education. (Contains 1 table and 1 figure.)