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This study aims to explore how educational leaders in South Korea adopted equity mindsets and how they organized changes to support students' deeper learning during COVID-19.

The authors developed a comprehensive framework of Equity Leadership for Deeper Learning, by revising the existing model of Darling-Hammond and Darling-Hammond (2022) and synthesizing equity leadership literature. Drawing upon this framework, this study analyzed data collected from individual interviews and a focus group with school and district administrators in the K-12 Korean education system.

The participants prioritized an equity stance of their leadership by critically understanding socio-political conditions, challenging unjust policies, and envisioning the big picture of equity-centered education. This led them to operationalize equity leadership in practice and create a more inclusive and supportive environment for student-centered deeper learning. District leaders established well-resourced systems by creating/developing instructional resources and making policies more useful. School leaders promoted quality teaching by strengthening access, developing student-centered curricula, and establishing individualized programs for more equitable deeper learning.

This study builds on scholarship of deeper learning and equity leadership by adding evidence from Korean educational leaders during COVID-19. First, the findings highlight the significance of leaders' equity mindsets in creating a safe and inclusive environment for deeper learning. This study further suggests that sharing an equity stance as a collective norm at the system level, spanning across districts and schools is important, which is instrumental to scale up innovation and reform initiatives. Second, this research also extends comparative, culturally informed perspectives to understand educational leadership. Most contemporary leadership theories originated from and are informed by Western and English-speaking contexts despite being widely applied to other contexts across the culture. This study's analysis underscores the importance of contextualizing leadership practices within the socio-historical contexts that influence how education systems are established and operate.

Leaders' adopting equity mindsets, utilizing bureaucratic resources in creative ways and implementing a school-wide quality curriculum are crucial to supporting students' deeper learning. District leaders can leverage existing vertical and horizontal networks to effectively communicate with teachers and local communities to establish well-recourced systems. As deeper learning is timeless and requires high levels of student engagement, school leaders' efforts to establish school-wide curricula is critical to facilitate deeper learning for students.

The study provides a nuanced understanding of how equity focused leaders responded to difficulties caused by the pandemic and strategized to support students' deeper learning. Existing studies tend to prioritize teacher effects on student learning, positing leadership effects as secondary or indirect. Alternatively, the authors argue that, without leadership supporting an inclusive environment, resourceful systems and student-centered school culture, deeper learning cannot be fully achieved in equitable ways.

To meet the needs of under-resourced, rural schools where teacher attrition is high, this case study examined how a school–university partnership strengthened teacher and leader abilities to support deeper learning for students.

This research focused on a 17-year collaborative partnership between one rural school district and a university research and outreach organization to develop deeper learning experiences for students through shared and supportive leadership and learning of teachers and leaders. The researchers utilized documents, field notes and interviews with administrators to validate the data.

The study’s findings suggest that participation in authentic, researched-based professional development through the partnership improved the skills of leaders and teachers to support deeper learning for students. This partnership heightened teacher and leader capacity to promote and support continued change and sustainability.

This case study explored how one university center collaboratively engaged with a district by sharing research and strategies to support the development of leaders and teachers to create deeper learning for students. Through these experiences, the district evolved its deeper learning system and improved its organizational effectiveness, leadership development and learning for all.

Engaging students in an active, self-directed approach to learning about leadership is best accomplished through personalized self-awareness, reflection, and connection to real-time, practical applications/examples through experiential learning. This is especially challenging for students whose cultural backgrounds, language, and/or educational preparation/training predispose them to more passively “receive knowledge” in an unquestioning, unexamined manner, without critical thinking. At the University of Greenwich Business School, a final year course has been re-imagined as personalized leadership development integrated with learning technology. Our teaching team is taking advantage of an interactive virtual simulation (vLeader) to engage Chinese students who otherwise might not participate fully in the expected manner of a Westernized learning environment. This chapter outlines our integrated approach to support and engage these students in learning outcomes for continuing success in their lives, careers, and leadership opportunities.

This study of 65 elementary school teacher candidates enrolled in social studies methods classes examined attitudes toward currently contentious curriculum issues before and after participation in a practicum experience teaching an arts-integrated unit on Africa. These curriculum issues included arts-integrated project-based learning versus narrower skill-based lessons; the importance of creativity, leadership, organizational, and affective skills; and student-centered versus teacher-centered instruction. Attitudes were measured by teacher candidates placing themselves on each of ten continuums between endpoints representing opposing curriculum approaches and responding to open-ended questions. Statistically significant pre-post differences with medium effect sizes occurred on three of the continuums indicating that teacher candidates now placed greater value on arts-integrated curricula to teach social studies content; recognized that choice motivates students; and expressed more enjoyment of planning complex, long-term, student-centered projects. They recognized deep conceptual learning and engagement of elementary school students during the student-centered arts-integrated lessons but noted that the time and effort of complex project work were barriers to implementation. Social studies methods teachers need to involve teacher candidates in field experiences that offer authentic arts- integrated student-centered project work to allow them to adopt curriculum stances not experienced as elementary school students.

This research aims to examine the educational philosophy of teachers in classrooms. Teachers' educational philosophy influences the power balance, course content function, student and teacher roles, responsibility for learning and assessment purposes and processes. The research also analyzes whether gender, qualification, specialization and experience significantly influence classroom educational philosophies.

The study utilized a quantitative research design, utilizing data from 193 teachers working in a public higher education institution in the Sultanate of Oman. The study utilized a survey method to solicit data from the respondents. Besides utilizing descriptive statistics such as mean and standard deviation, the study used analysis of variance (ANOVA) and t-test to test the hypotheses.

Analysis revealed an instructional strategy's preference, including elements of both teacher-centered and student-centered educational philosophies. Elements of progressivism, constructivism, reconstructivism and perennialism are more relevant in the teacher's instructional design. The results show no significant differences in teachers' pedagogical philosophy that exist based on gender, specialization and experience. However, teachers' age significantly influences their educational philosophy preferences.

This research centers on a public higher education institution in the Sultanate of Oman, with a particular focus on the Department of Business Studies. This resarch delimits its discussion on teachers' chosen educational philosophy. Other possible factors may also impact student retention and effective teaching and learning.

This research offers valuable insights to academicians, higher education administrators, and policymakers. Specifically, this research emphasizes the significance of employing a blended approach, which incorporates both student-centered and teacher-centered educational philosophies, to enhance student engagement, retention, and effective teaching and learning.

This research emphasizes the importance of educators' adoption of a blended educational philosophy in promoting student retention and engagement within higher education institutions. To achieve desirable outcomes, policymakers in higher education must ascertain which educational philosophy is most effective in the classroom. Additionally, ensuring congruence between preferred educational philosophy and teachers’  instructional practices is vital in facilitating effective teaching and learning.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first of its kind among teachers in higher education in the Sultanate of Oman. The outcome of this study helps detail the specific strategies teachers deploy and categorize into various educational philosophies.

Although student-centered learning (SCL) has been encouraged for decades in higher education, to what level instructors are practicing SCL strategies remains in question. The purpose of this paper is to investigate a university faculty’s understanding and perceptions of SCL, along with current instructional practices in Qatar.

A mixed-method research design was employed including quantitative data from a survey of faculty reporting their current instructional practices and qualitative data on how these instructors define SCL and perceive their current practices via interviews with 12 instructors. Participants of the study are mainly from science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) field.

Study results show that these instructors have rather inclusive definitions of SCL, which range from lectures to student interactions via problem-based teamwork. However, a gap between the instructors’ perceptions and their actual practices was identified. Although student activities are generally perceived as effective teaching strategies, the interactions observed were mainly in the form of student–content or student-teacher, while student–student interactions were limited. Prevailing assessment methods are summative, while formative assessment is rarely practiced. Faculty attributed this lack of alignment between how SCL could and should be practiced and the reality to external factors, including students’ lack of maturity and motivation due to the Middle Eastern culture, and institutional constraints such as class time and size.

The study is limited in a few ways. First regarding methodological justification the data methods chosen in this study were mainly focused on the faculty’s self-reporting. Second the limited number of participants restricts this study’s generalizability because the survey was administered in a volunteer-based manner and the limited number of interview participants makes it difficult to establish clear patterns. Third, researching faculty members raises concerns in the given context wherein extensive faculty assessments are regularly conducted.

A list of recommendations is provided here as inspiration for institutional support and faculty development activities. First, faculty need deep understanding of SCL through experiences as learners so that they can become true believers and implementers. Second, autonomy is needed for faculty to adopt appropriate assessment methods that are aligned with their pedagogical objectives and delivery methods. Input on how faculty can adapt instructional innovation to tailor it to the local context is very important for its long-term effectiveness (Hora and Ferrare, 2014). Third, an inclusive approach to faculty evaluation by encouraging faculty from STEM backgrounds to be engaged in research on their instructional practice will not only sustain the practice of innovative pedagogy but will also enrich the research profiles of STEM faculty and their institutes.

The faculty’s understanding and perceptions of implementing student-centered approaches were closely linked to their prior experiences – experiencing SCL as a learner may better shape the understanding and guide the practice of SCL as an instructor.

SCL is not a new topic; however, the reality of its practice is constrained to certain social and cultural contexts. This study contributes with original and valuable insights into the gap between ideology and reality in implementation of SCL in a Middle Eastern context.

Using student-centered teaching methods presents a great challenge to many new middle and high school history teachers. Having experienced mostly teacher-centered instructional approaches (such as lectures and teacher-led discussions) in secondary school and college classes, they begin student teaching with few models for how to teach using less traditional forms of instruction. This paper discusses “Ideas, Issues, and Insights,” a strategy for prospective history teachers, as they explore the use of student-centered teaching methods with middle and high school students. It analyzes written reflection papers where history teacher candidates identify their ideas for three student-centered instructional methods — small group work, primary source analysis, and historical role-plays and simulations — as well as issues that arise when these student-centered methods are implemented in the classroom. As history teacher candidates respond to their ideas and issues, they generate insights about how they can best use student-centered teaching methods in their future classrooms. The first-person perspectives of history teacher candidates are highlighted to show how college students in one university-based teacher preparation program think about their student teaching experiences and their choice of instructional methods to use with students.

This study aims to investigate the role of professors as gatekeepers for sustainable development competencies (SDC) in disciplinary study programs. It aims to understand which factors are crucial for professors to integrate SDC into their teaching, their basic understanding of SDC, the actual degree of SDC integration and how suitable they perceive student-centered teaching strategies for teaching SDC.

The results are based on the qualitative content analysis of interviews with 16 professors after they participated in a didactic training program focused on combining student-centered teaching strategies with SDC.

Psychological factors, like the attribution of responsibility, value orientations and cost-benefit considerations, are not the only reasons for integrating SDC into a course, as disciplinary requirements play their role. When teaching SDC, professors focus on systems-thinking, strategic and normative competencies. They consider student-centered teaching strategies especially suitable to teach systems-thinking and interpersonal competencies.

Promoting changes toward teaching SDC may best be done by supporting professors’ intrinsic motivations: by fulfilling the need for growth in teaching skills, activating values and creating an environment in which everybody feels responsible for teaching SDC.

Teaching SDC with student-centered teaching strategies is relevant even in study programs that show little relation to sustainability issues. professors are experts in their field, but not necessarily in the field of sustainability. Understanding how such professors might include sustainable development competency development in their syllabi can widen the influence of SDC on higher education.

The purpose of this research is to investigate how secondary school teachers adaptively make use of the classroom learning environment. The approach illustrates the intimate relationship between teaching style, learning style and the adaptive use of space as well as the preferences for different learning environments.

A multi method study approach was used to carry out the research. Two main methods were used in the study. In the first method, trainee teachers recorded spatial observations (mapping). Maps of the chemistry classrooms were produced. The observers marked all fixed, semi‐fixed and flexible elements in the classroom space. The second method involved two questionnaires. The first questionnaire (Principles of Adult Learning Scale (PALS)) was used to identify and describe teachers' teaching styles. The second questionnaire (Questionnaire of the Classrooms' Physical Properties) was used by trainee teachers acting as observers. It consists of a set of items that enable the evaluation of classroom quality related to specific physical properties. Research data were collected from ten secondary schools (upper level of the Polish secondary schools) in five cities located in South‐West part of Poland.

The results suggest that the traditional row and column classroom seating arrangement was dominant. It was found that teaching styles could be identified determined using factors identified using the PALS scale. Teachers generally perceived their own learning environment as more teacher‐centered or more student‐centered. Their teaching styles were combinations of student‐centered and teacher‐centered activity.

The research has practical significance in that it had developed a questionnaire that can be used by students and teachers to monitor the quality of physical classrooms environments and provide guidelines for the improvement of learning spaces.

The application of the multi‐method described in this study creates possibilities for a deeper understanding of secondary school classroom environments. A structured data collection system was valuable for the trainee teachers. They acquired a useful knowledge of classroom management and how to create effective learning environments, during the professional practice period. Trainee teachers gain awareness that would enable them to make changes to the classroom environment as an adaptive resource.