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This study aims to advance the understanding on individual variations in PhD candidates’ personal interest in their doctorate and supervisory and research community support, and several individual and structural attributes potentially having an impact on the profiles.

The authors explored the interrelationship between personal interest – social support profiles, and nationality, gender, research group and study status and the risk of dropping out. A total of 768 PhD candidates from a research-intensive university in Finland responded to a modified version of the cross-cultural doctoral experience survey. Latent profile analysis was used to explore the individual variations in PhD candidates’ interest and support from the supervisor and research community.

Three distinctive PhD interest-social support profiles were detected; the high interest–high support profile (74.4%, n = 570), the high interest–moderate support profile (18.2%, n = 140) and the moderate interest–moderate support profile (7.4%, n = 56). The profiles exhibited high to moderate levels of research, development and instrumental interest. Individuals in the high interest–moderate support and in the moderate interest–moderate support profiles were more prone to consider dropping out from their PhD than in the high interest–high support profile.

The results indicate that by cultivating PhD candidates’ interest and providing sufficient supervisory and the research community offers a means for preventing candidates from discontinuing their doctorate. Hence, building a supportive learning environment that cultivates a PhD candidate’s personal interest is likely to reduce high dropout rates among the candidates.

This study aims to determine how school-based management (SBM) capacity developed through international cooperation functioned to overcome challenges during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in Nepal.

The research structure was designed based on the success case method. The researchers conducted a questionnaire survey of head teachers to understand schools’ responses during the COVID-19 pandemic period, identified likely success-case schools, held workshops at the likely success-case schools and conducted in-depth interviews with head teachers and school management committee (SMC) members to understand how SBM functioned and contributed to the success cases.

Storytelling from the success-case schools provided reliable evidence that the localised approaches of SBM are effective for planning and implementing suitable responses at school. The reviews of the head teachers showed that both head teachers and teachers had strong leadership and understood the importance of collaboration with teachers, SMC members, Parent Teacher Association (PTA), guardians and students. Although the research could not show clear evidence of a causal relationship between their achievement and Japan’s project input, the success-case schools clearly benefited from the head teachers’ appropriate execution of SBM with their strong leadership as well as the collaborative efforts of the stakeholders.

The research tries to clarify the influence of the effects of SBM capacity development projects by analysing the changes of head teachers and teachers through the storytelling aspect of the success case method with in-depth consideration of actual school responses during the emergency period of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This paper aims to develop indicators of happiness in learning of the Thai open university (TOU)'s undergraduate students.

Sampling for the study was comprised of two groups. Group I comprised eight lecturers who are experts in their disciplines and six students who were purposively sampled. The focus group was used to validate the appropriateness of the indicators. In Group II, 332 students were engaged in a multistage sampling process. The responses were analyzed using descriptive statistics, coefficient correlation, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA).

The indicators of happiness in learning of undergraduate students of TOU were classified in six categories. These included satisfaction with learning environment (five indicators), learning anxiety (five indicators), satisfaction with learning (five indicators), enthusiasm to learn (six indicators), self-satisfaction (six indicators) and readiness to learn (seven indicators). The six categories explained happiness in learning of undergraduate students of TOU at the 65% and fit empirical data.

The TOU can use the indicators for the assessment of happiness in learning of its students as well as guidelines for the improvement of its student learning environments.

There have been very few studies on indicators of happiness in learning of TOU students. Most were done at the basic education level. This study disclosed the six factors affecting happiness in learning of TOU students; therefore, it should inspire and draw attention of many in the field of higher education distance learning.

Policy makers, professional associations and scholars continue to advocate for the integration of enhanced clinical experiences for future teachers’ preparation. These recommendations reflect the growing recognition that few events in preservice teachers’ education are more significant than their experiences in the classrooms of veteran peers. Aware of the fact that the field of teacher education needs examples of effective clinical experiences, the authors examined the “critical, project-based” (CPB) model, employing Photovoice activities in a dropout prevention course in a secondary education partner school at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper aims to discuss the aforementioned objective.

Aware that the field of teacher education needs examples of effective clinical experiences, the authors examined the CPB model, employing Photovoice activities in a dropout prevention course in a secondary education partner school at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. In this article they detail a practitioner research examination that explores the experiences of 12 preservice middle/high school teachers, reporting on these individuals’ considerations of general pedagogies, writing instruction strategies and teaching personas.

Results suggest that preservice teachers might best identify pedagogical practices that are consistent with their nascent teaching identities via experiences that occur in school-university partnerships in which future teachers are positioned as pedagogues.

This manuscript explores the use of the “CPB” clinical experience model, identifying the impacts of this approach for preparing future teachers.

Adolescent pregnancy stands as a societal challenge, compelling young individuals to prematurely discontinue their education. Conversely, an expansion of high school education can potentially diminish rates of adolescent pregnancy, given that educational attainment stands as the foremost risk factor influencing sexual initiation, the use of contraceptive methods during initial sexual encounters and fertility. The aim of this paper is to analyze the impact of the implementation of the public educational policy introducing full-time schools (FTS) for high schools in the state of Ceará, Brazil, on early pregnancy rates.

Using the difference-in-differences method with multiple time periods, we measured the average effect of this staggered treatment on the treated municipalities.

The main result indicates a reduction of 0.849 percentage points in the teenage pregnancy rate. Concerning dynamic effects, the establishment of FTS in treated municipalities results in a 1.183–1.953 percentage point decrease in teenage pregnancy rates, depending on the timing of exposure. We explored heterogeneous effects within socioeconomically vulnerable municipalities, yet discerned no impact on this group. Rigorous tests confirm the robustness of the results.

This paper aims to contribute to: (1) the consolidation of research on the subject, given the absence of such research in Brazil to the best of our knowledge; (2) the advancement and analysis of evidence-based public policy and (3) the utilization of novel longitudinal data and methodology to evaluate adolescent pregnancy rates.

This research explores the impact of the locally grown strategies for learning support, as a positive deviance (PD) study, during the COVID-19 pandemic in rural Uganda.

The researchers employed a randomized control trial (RCT) as an original design whereby 50 schools received a full package of SMS and WhatsApp peer groups of head teachers, 50 schools received SMS only and another 50 served as a control group. As an analytical method, this study adopted a difference-in-difference (DID) model to analyze the impact of the radio talk shows promoted through SMS followed by discussion among WhatsApp peer groups. The data collected in June 2021 and February 2022 were used due to the COVID-19-related data limitation of the baseline survey collected in 2019.

The authors found that the local radio talk shows as a PD intervention had a humble impact on preventing pupils’ dropout during the school closures for two years in Uganda. However, the authors did not obtain a significant result on the impact of the PD intervention on pedagogical support or learning outcomes at the school level. The authors also found that the pupils have significantly dropped their level of proficiencies in literacy and numeracy during the pandemic.

The findings could be of value for the leaders, educators and policymakers to understand the most recent update of learning situation in Uganda and the potential impact of locally grown strategies for learning which does not require external inputs.

With issues like increasing student dropout rates, low productivity and compromised quality, research in higher education is faced with a number of paralyzing challenges in India. This study aims to locate the role of toxic academic supervision in relation to decreased quality of research.

Following a sequential mixed method design, the research begins with a quantitative analysis, which is then followed by an in-depth qualitative exploration.

The results of mediation analysis in this study reveal that students who experience toxic research supervision have a weak sense of identification and are also poor at self-disclosure, which results in increased distress and reduced engagement and productivity. Moreover, identification and self-disclosure have also been found to partially mediate the relationship between toxic supervision and distress. Furthermore, a thematic analysis of this study provides a detailed behavioral profile of toxic academic supervisors and highlights the consequences of such supervision with regard to students' well-being and productivity.

In terms of theoretical contributions, the study provides evidence that the concept of toxic leadership has applicability outside of the organizational context; in the educational sphere as well and that the toxic leadership scale can be successfully used to assess the severity of toxic supervision within the academic domain, and corrective actions can be taken to mitigate the effect of such supervisory style on students.

The study not only highlights the repercussions of toxicity in academia and higher education but also provides a detailed and in-depth description of the personality traits and behavioral idiosyncrasies of toxic supervisors, which can help in the early identification of toxic tendencies and can enable us to mitigate and prevent toxicity from the academic space and to ensure a conducive environment for students in higher education. Overall, the present research has important implications for researchers, academicians as well as policymakers.

The study is the first of its kind in terms of both, objective and methodology.

This study aims to analyze to what extent distance education is feasible and efficient with the limited technological infrastructure in Egypt. The study answers this question from the perspective of households' preparedness level regarding possessing information and communication technologies (ICTs). In addition, it assesses whether the pattern of students' ICT ownership is influenced by disability- and socioeconomic-based inequality in education and whether the pattern of ICT ownership exacerbates such biases.

A three-stage probit model with double sample selection (PMDSS) was applied to estimate the factors likely to influence ICT possession, considering the selection process for school enrollment and education continuation. The authors utilized nationally representative data from the Egypt Labor Market Panel Survey 2018.

About 40% of students aged 12–25 did not have ICTs. Most socioeconomically poor households, particularly those living in Upper Egypt, were the least likely to obtain ICTs and rely on distance education. In addition, female students, particularly those with disabilities, had the lowest chance of benefitting from distance learning.

The persistent structural deprivation of school enrollment and educational progression has led to the positive selection of well-off children in education, which is extended to ICT possession and internet use. Without addressing these structural biases, the study suggests that distance education will likely exacerbate educational inequalities.

The study analyzed the extent to which Egyptian families were prepared in 2018 regarding ICT possessions for distance education for their children, particularly those with disabilities. Furthermore, it investigated whether access to distance learning was influenced by disability- and socioeconomic-based inequalities in education.

This study experimentally aims to determine the degree of influence that mindfulness training exerts on learning capacity at the university level and contrasts it with previous observational or relational studies that have shown contradictory results.

A quasi-experiment was carried out to measure the variation of six academic learning abilities – a) self-efficacy, b) organization of and attention to studies, c) stress control due to time pressure and the environment, d) involvement with college activity, e) emotional satisfaction, and f) class communication – which together comprise the research questionnaire called the college learning effectiveness inventory (CLEI). The CLEI questionnaire was administered before and after the participants were trained in the mindfulness technique. The study was conducted in Ecuador, and the participants were selected from among the graduate students of a local university.

The learning ability measured by the CLEI was improved by a statistically significant margin in the two groups.

The treatment groups consisted of graduate students who did not have opportunities for full-time activities on campus, as they were limited to attending regular classes at specific times, usually at night. The dropout rate was 14% due to inconveniences caused by the pandemic. These conditions could have affected the study results both positively and negatively. In addition, the pandemic limited academic interactions, which are required to evaluate the learning results after applying the research instrument. This limitation was especially critical for people who had experienced online classes only.

Offering graduate students the opportunity to learn about and adopt a mindfulness practice helps to improve their academic outcomes, as reflected through the statistical measurement of the CLEI indicator.

This study is especially relevant within the context of sanitary conditions due to the pandemic and the intensive use of technology for managing academic interactions, both of which have replaced physical contact between participants.

The main contributions of this study are related to the determination of the practical effects of mindfulness training in postgraduate university settings and the identification of the mechanisms involving participants' reflecting upon, learning and understanding the importance of perfecting their soft skills to facilitate their learning processes and face today's uncertain environments.

本研究採用實驗方法、來釐定正念認知對在大學水平上的學習能力的影響程度，並對比於以往顯示了相互矛盾的研究結果的觀察性研究或關係研究。

研究人員進行準實驗、來量度六個學術學習能力的變化。這六個學習能力為：(一) 自我效能, (二) 學習的組織能力和注意力，(三) 控制因時間壓力和環境因素而產生的壓力, (四) 大學活動的參與，(五) 情緒方面的滿足、及 (六) 課堂之溝通。這六個學習能力合起來就構成本研究的調查問卷，我們稱之為大學學習效能清單。問卷調查工作分別於研究參與者接受正念認知技巧訓練之前及之後進行。本研究是在厄瓜多爾進行的，而參與者則選自當地一間大學的研究生。

研究結果顯示、根據大學學習效能清單的測量，有關的兩個組別均顯示明顯數據差額範圍上的學習能力提昇。

若為研究生提供學習正念認知技巧的機會，並讓他們應用這技巧，他們的學習成果將會得到提昇，這正是透過數據上量度有關的大學學習效能清單指標所顯示的現象。

本研究的結果，就現時的衛生狀況而言特具意義。這是由於大流行病的發生，以及在管理學術互動上大量使用應用技術，參與者之間的身體接觸也不需要了。

本研究的主要貢獻為、研究結果確認了在大學研究院的學習環境裡，正念認知的培訓是有其實用效果的;研究亦找出了參與者應如何有效地反省思考和學習提昇其軟技能的方法，並了解其重要性，以能增強他們的學習能力，以及更能應對今天不明確的環境。

This study investigates the acceptance of mobile phone technology in Tanzanian small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) using the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) with a special focus on service quality.

The conceptual framework was designed by extending the TAM with an additional construct, service quality, before testing a model in a survey of 155 respondents and analysing using Smart PLS 4.

Service quality was found to be among the significant factors in the acceptance of mobile phone technology among SME employees.

This implies that the higher the quality of service offered, the more employees accept and use mobile phone technology in their duties and improve the productivity of SMEs.

The aspects of quality of mobile phone technology usage such as call dropouts, network quality, speed, etc., must be improved significantly.

The Mobile Network Operators and Regulators must understand that employees are offered the most accurate and reliable mobile phone services for its usefulness to be realised.

The originality is a modified version of a TAM that accommodates service quality that has been tested in the Tanzanian context.