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This classroom-based qualitative study explored the effectiveness of the debate learning strategy in female postgraduate education in Saudi Arabia, which is implementing its recent national development plan, Vision 2030. Educational reform is key to its transition to a modernized, knowledge-based economy. The debate format was used to elicit views on educational reforms and necessitated forming and articulating well-reasoned arguments and logic.

At a Saudi Eastern Province university, 13 female postgraduate students (preservice teachers) participated in a student-centered learning environment conducive to debates. Documents prepared for the debate underwent a qualitative content analysis.

Data were readily classified into five categories: educational reforms should meet 21st century skills, achieve educational outcomes, ensure Saudi Arabia’s knowledge-based economy, prioritize the role of the university and recognize the impact of both teachers and curricula. As key players in the nation’s future, participants affirmed the ongoing need for educational innovation and modernization.

While debates are an authentic part of Arabian heritage, they are less utilized in Saudi higher education settings. Findings affirm that debates are a beneficial learning strategy for bolstering future educators’ participation in Saudi Arabia’s educational reform.

Educational institutions in the Middle East are often criticized for using outdated teaching strategies such as lecturing that promote rote learning and memorization skills rather than life skills such as critical thinking, creativity and innovation which are important for students’ education and their future careers. This applied research paper presents an example of using Project-Based Learning (PBL) in Higher Education as a supplement to traditional lecturing and the benefits of using this approach for teaching and learning. A group of 62 female Arab students studying Emirati Studies at a federal higher institution in the UAE were involved in this classroom-based inquiry which took place over a 14-week semester. Data were collected using quantitative and qualitative methods to examine how effective the PBL approach was in engaging learners, in improving their skills and in helping them achieve the course learning outcomes. The results of the study showed that PBL was useful in helping students develop essential 21st century skills such as critical thinking, team work, problem solving, research skills, presentation skills, interpersonal communication skills, negotiation skills, creativity, and innovation. This research project helps to illustrate and provide evidence of how using PBL as a supplement to traditional lecturing can be a catalyst for an effective and efficient process-oriented quality education where students are active individuals managing their own learning and having fun in the process.

The coach−athlete relationship mediates the relationship between sports participation and student-athlete character, health and well-being outcomes. High school athletic administrators (AAs) can provide critical leadership, mentorship and direction for coaches to optimize student-athlete performance and human development. Social and emotional learning (SEL) is an evidence-based approach to developing adult and student competencies for holistic development across the lifespan that has been primarily performed and researched in the classroom. The purpose of this research is to capture the lived experiences of AAs applying a novel SEL-based curriculum (InSideOut Initiative, ISOI) with coaches and student-athletes in high school sports.

Interviews of 10 AAs captured their lived experiences of applying SEL-based leadership and coaching and their perception of its impact on coaches and student-athletes in high school athletics.

AAs described leadership and coaching that are characterized by (1) safety, support and mentorship; (2) skill and support-based behavior modeling; (3) trusting, loving and supportive relationships; (4) self-reflection of values/beliefs and behaviors that impact self, student-athlete and culture; (5) the influence of emotions on the aforementioned; (6) the ability to have a long-term, sustainable impact on student-athletes and (7) alignment with their immediate environmental context.

The data captured in this study suggest that ISOI-trained AAs practice SEL-competent leadership and coaching. Evaluation of the novel application of SEL-based interventions in athletics will be useful to understanding their effects on participant social and emotional competencies and outcomes traditionally associated with classroom-based SEL applications.

Athletic administrator interviews describe an approach to high school sports that requires a reconceptualization of the purpose of athletics. When the high school sport operates as a curriculum, integrated opportunity for its student-athletes and athletic administrator and coach leadership aligns with this overarching philosophy, there may be increased potential for positive youth development.

The results of this research are valuable in demonstrating preliminary evidence of how SEL-based leadership and coaching is applied and impacts adult and student-athletes in a unique sport context.

This paper's twofold purpose is, first, to present ZELPH ['sɛlf], a self-assessment instrument that enables those developing the pedagogy of work-integrating study programmes in higher education (HE) systematically to surface the intended and unintended outcomes of their programme's approach to integrating professional practice into an academic course. Secondly, the paper reports on a small pilot study with programme staff from five different HE institutions in various countries who tested ZELPH.

ZELPH operationalises aspects of key theories on work-integrating learning pedagogy, and thereby enables a simplified depiction of the reality of combining classroom-based and worksite-based learning. Programme staff from Germany, the United Kingdom, France, South Africa and Taiwan applied the instrument to their respective work-integrating study programmes and evaluated its perceived value and feasibility.

The findings suggest that ZELPH offers value as a practical instrument, in particular to those less familiar with developing work-integrating learning pedagogy as well as to those keen to compare programmes across national, cultural and institutional contexts.

ZELPH contributes to addressing the lack of practically applicable instruments to support the design and international benchmarking of work-integrating learning pedagogy in HE.

There is a global concern about the effectiveness of vocational education and training (VET) programmes in developing job-related skills and competencies for real-world environments for disadvantaged and unemployed youths. Experiential learning (EL) is a major component of VET programmes. This article aims to examine the effects of facilitating VET through EL theory to promote youths' skills acquisition. The study looks at the effects of material resources on the use of experiential learning theory (ELT), the types of EL and the contribution of ELT to VET programmes.

The research design mainly entails a qualitative research design and research method to allow the researcher to view the reality as is experienced from the inside out by the trainees and training centre managers on important data for a thorough understanding. The study participants were 512 young trainees who completed different training courses from the VET programmes and 24 centre managers in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa.

The findings reveal that the use of ELT in VET programmes helped the trainees to gain real-world skills, hence contributing to their empowerment in terms of work experience and competence for their future employment. Based on the findings, the study concludes that ELT is an effective instrument to promote VET programmes for disadvantaged and unemployed youths.

The practical and social implications of the findings are that, while disadvantaged youths cannot access and afford higher education, public and private sectors can remedy their situation by providing non-school-based technical and vocational training to help such youths enter the labour market. The findings will motivate the providers of skills development for unemployed youths to use ELT in designing course curricula, planning resources and directing teaching-learning approaches to help trainees to acquire skills and competencies to perform tasks close to real-work situations.

The socio-economic implication of the article is that skills development plays an important role in poverty reduction. Investing in the skills development of citizens is vital to raise the incomes of poor groups and to reduce poverty (ILO, 2018). Although the causes of unemployment have also to do with economic factors in a country, skills development is an essential ingredient in developing capacities for labour market entry and increased income generation of a vulnerable group of people.

The article is significant because the study provides new insights into the use of ELT in VET programmes to improve their effectiveness in developing job-related skills and competencies for real-world environments for disadvantaged and unemployed youths. The study contributes to the body of knowledge by establishing a solid base for the evidence-informed practice of the effects of facilitating the VET programme through ELT to promote skills acquisition for the employment of unemployed and disadvantaged youths.

The extreme measures that have been taken by governments across the globe to minimize the spread of COVID-19 have had significant impacts on almost all the public sectors, especially on the economy and education. This study aims to address the approaches and prospective of online-based training and e-learning for employee learning and development during this COVID-19 crisis.

With an emphasis on the qualitative approach and considering the complex COVID-19 emergency, required data were collected from in-depth interviews to interpret the experiences of the respondents.

The findings suggested that the digital learning ecosystem offered flexibility of time, place and pace, which provided essential convenience during the COVID-19 crisis. From the human resource (HR) perspective, the e-learning culture has enabled the organizations to quickly adopt the new normal, secure sustainable continuity of organizational development and ensure decent work and growth within and across organizations. The adoption of e-learning and flexible working conditions following the setback has enabled the organizations to quickly cope up with the new normal, causing a significant paradigm shift in the organizational culture and corporate sector of Bangladesh.

The study will assist the HR of any organization to contemplate e-learning systems as effective alternative training methods. Also, the study will be suggestive to traverse new dimensions and skillsets for the pedagogues.

This study offers new evidential scenarios regarding the emergence of effective e-learning initiatives and online-based learning programs for developing the workforce to be efficient and productive even in distressful and inconvenient COVID-19 situations.

The purpose of this paper is to examine Conscious Discipline’s (CD) Parenting Education Curriculum (CD PEC), the parenting component of CD’s research-based social and emotional learning program. CD aims to change child behavior by changing how adults understand and manage their own behaviors and emotions. Researchers explored CD PEC’s association with improved parenting skills, parent–child relationships and child behavior and emotion management.

During pre- and post-site visits, parents in four Head Start programs completed the Attentive Parenting Survey (n=25) and interviews (n=19); and 20 staff were also interviewed.

Parents reported that CD PEC shifted their perspectives and practices for managing children’s challenging behaviors, improved parent–child relationships and resulted in decreased child behavior problems.

The study was correlational, based on self-report, and had a small sample with no comparison group.

This study supports CD PEC as a means of shifting parenting practices, relationships and child behavior by focusing on adult social-emotional skills and self-regulation.

This study provides preliminary evidence that addressing the social-emotional needs of adults is a viable step to helping children improve their social skills, emotion regulation and general behavior, which have all been linked to later academic and life success.

The paper studies improvements in parents’ emotion recognition and self-regulation before disciplining their children.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the key aspects and give examples of Essential 4 of the Second Edition of the National Association for Professional Development Schools (NAPDS) Nine Essentials.

The study applied the Unified Theory of Technology Acceptance and Use Theory 2 (UTAUT2) to predict blended learning acceptance by students in universities in Zimbabwe. Blended learning is a heterogeneous mode of teaching and learning that combines face-to-face (F2F) and online modes. Owing to advances in technology, and recently, the advent of pandemics, such as COVID-19, the need for multimodal teaching approaches, such as blended learning, to enhance access to education in universities has become very important.

A quantitative approach that used a structured questionnaire for data collection from a sample of 432 postgraduate students was used. Data validation was done using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The structural equation modelling technique was used for data analysis.

Results showed that out of the seven factors of the UTAUT2, the factors such as performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influences, facilitating conditions and hedonic motivation significantly and positively influenced the behavioural intentions of students in universities to accept blended learning. On the other hand, habit and price value did not significantly influence university students' behavioural intentions to accept the bended learning mode. It was further shown in the study that behavioural intentions significantly influenced the acceptance of blended learning by university students. In light of the above results, it was concluded that the UTAUT2 could be used to predict the acceptance of blended learning by university students.

The main study limitation was that it was only carried out at universities that had information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure challenges owing to the fact that the economic situation in Zimbabwe is depressed. Limited ICT infrastructure in the universities might have had some impact on the nature of behavioural intentions of students to accept blended learning as a learning mode. Further research could be carried out in countries with better economies that are able to fund ICT infrastructures of their universities and to establish whether the results of the current study could either be confirmed, disconfirmed or enriched.

The paper suggests that universities need to increase investment in ICT infrastructure as well as in capacitating students with the necessary ICT skills for the effective use of institutional ICT when learning using the blended learning mode. Without adequate and appropriate ICT infrastructure as well as necessary ICT skills, students may develop low motivation levels and negative attitudes towards blended learning, which may eventually may affect their acceptance of the learning mode.

There is no known study that has been conducted using the UTAUT2 to establish antecedents of behavioural intentions of students to accept blended learning in the context of Zimbabwean universities. This study therefore opens new ground on factors influencing the acceptance of blended learning in the context of Zimbabwean universities. Also, the results showed that habit and price value do not significantly contribute to the behavioural intentions of university students to accept blended learning, which is not consistent with findings of past studies. This inconsistency opens new opportunities for further studies on the conditions under which these two factors can be used to significantly contribute to the development of behavioural intentions of students to accept blended learning.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the ways assemblaging communities work to support, hinder or disrupt literacy pedagogy in one English Language Arts (ELA) classroom. Through an expanded understanding of community based on the concept of assemblage, this paper discusses the ways in which one teacher’s critical literacies instructional practices emerged, configured and ruptured through the assemblaging communities’ that affected her enactment of critical literacies pedagogy. A focus on assemblaging communities recognizes the de/re/territorializing power of the evolving groups of bodies that produce a classroom and pedagogy in particular ways.

Drawing on observational field notes and informal exchanges, this qualitative study uses post-structural and post-human theory to examine the assemblaging communities that produced the enactment of critical literacies pedagogy in a seventh grade ELA classroom. Assemblage theory is used to analyze data to examine the assemblaging communities that de/re/territorialized in Ms T’s teaching in relation to critical literacies pedagogy. This analytical orientation allowed for a nuanced look at communities as evolving, de/re/territorializing formations that, in this study, created tensions for enacting critical literacies pedagogy.

Assemblaging communities are always producing classrooms in particular ways, demonstrating the complexities and realities of enacting literacy pedagogy. Through analysis of the data, the rupture between the assemblaging communities that produced the enactment of critical literacies pedagogy and the assemblaging communities that produced test prep (and altered critical literacies) became apparent. Ruptures like this must be attended to because enacting critical literacies pedagogy is never done neutrally and without attention to the assemblaging communities that are always de/re/territorializing pedagogy, teachers may not be equipped to respond to the unexpected ruptures as well as material realities produced from these.

Educators can use the concept of assemblaging communities for recognizing the territories that shape their literacy pedagogy. By foregrounding assemblaging communities, researchers and educators may be more appropriately equipped to consider the real-time negotiations at play when enacting critical literacies pedagogy in the classroom. Enacting critical literacies pedagogy is never done neutrally, and attention to the assemblaging communities that are always de/re/territorializing pedagogy, teachers may be more equipped to respond to the material realities that are produced through their pedagogical actions.

This study suggests assemblaging communities as a way to productively move forward a perspective on communities that foregrounds the moving bodies that produce communities differently in evolving ways and their de/re/territorializing forces that create material realities for classrooMs Assemblaging communities moves the purpose from defining a community or interpreting what it means to looking at what it does, how it functions and for this study, how assemblaging communities produced critical literacies pedagogy in one classroom.