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Post-COVID-19, public K–12 schools are still facing the consequences of the years of interrupted learning. Schools serving minoritized students are particularly at risk for facing challenges with academics, behavior and student social emotional health. The university counseling programs are in positions to build capacity in urban schools while also supporting counselors-in-training through service-learning opportunities.

The following conceptual manuscript demonstrates how counselor education counseling programs and public schools can harness the capacity-building benefits of university–school partnerships. While prevalent in fields like special education, counselor educators have yet to heed the hall to participate in mutually beneficial partnership programs.

Using the multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS) and the components of the university–school partnerships, counselor educators and school stakeholders can work together to support student mental health, school staff well-being and counselor-in-training competence.

The benefits and opportunities within the university–school partnerships are well documented. However, few researchers have described a model to support partnerships between the university counseling programs and urban elementary schools. We provide a best practice model using the principles of university–school partnerships and a school’s existing MTSS framework.

Many countries are looking for ways to enable students to engage more effectively with PhD study. This paper aims to consider the effects of explicit discipline-specific research skill development embedded in multiple semesters of an undergraduate degree on PhD preparedness.

This case study of one Bachelor of Health Science programme determined the effectiveness of the implementation of a conceptual model, the Researcher Skill Development framework, across the undergraduate degree programme. Data were gathered through interviews of 9 academic staff and 14 students in their fourth year of undergraduate study, which is a research-focused year.

All students and academics stated the benefits of the use of the Researcher Skill Development framework in undergraduate study including: deepening metacognition of research processes; assisting students toward acting and thinking like researchers; and the research-capacity building of the school. While all academics and all but one student recommended that the framework be used early in the degree programme, a number of interviewees specified problems with the existing implementation of the framework.

While the results are not generalisable, the approach is worth studying in other degree programme-wide contexts to determine its broader capacity to enable students to be more research ready for PhD study when compared to current practice.

When adapted to the context, whole-of-degree research skill development may enable developing countries to have more students and developed countries to better prepared students commencing PhD studies.

No studies currently provide results for explicit research skill development across a degree programme, or of the benefits of this approach for PhD preparation.

During any crisis situation like a pandemic, war or natural disaster, online/blended learning could meet the academic needs of the learners in a bigger way. The use of information and communication technology (ICT)-based technologies has converted the entire teaching pedagogy to a learner centred pedagogy, following which the skills of using technology are to be seen as the most essential qualifications on the part of both the teachers/educators and learners. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to understand the perceptions of the teachers and learners regarding the use of online/blended learning modes in teaching learning transactions. Another purpose of the paper being to find out the prospects and challenges of providing online/blended learning in a country like India, particularly during and in post-Covid-19 situations.

The academic analytics approach was used for the study. A structured questionnaire was designed in Google Forms covering the perceptions of the teachers and learners in different Indian universities and colleges regarding online/blended services and analysis was done using Google Analytics. Further, analysis of the data received had been done by using simple statistical tool like percentage.

Blended learning could be the solution for providing education in the context of the 21st century India. However, unlike in case of the conventional education, open education has widened the scope of learning adhering to the motto – “Bring your own device” to learn. The extensive use of open educational resources, massive open online courses, social media and meeting apps during the Covid-19 lockdown, has opened up the minds of the knowledge-hungry people, further enabling them to receive the necessary educational inputs, training and skills even during the current pandemic situation. This is going to have a big impact in the ways of educational transactions in the days to come.

The discussions in the paper are limited to a study of representative states of India, and it is a general study only. The sample size was limited to only 120 as the response rate was significantly low compared to the number of addressees to whom the questionnaire was sent.

This study will help in understanding the present state of online/blended learning in a country like India. The use of online learning was no doubt intensified by the sudden outbreak of the Covid-19 Pandemic. However, the study will also help in preparing a roadmap, at the policy level, regarding the beneficial use of online/blended teaching learning models both by the teachers and learners during any future crisis-like situations in a country like India.

Through this paper, a new social constructivism has been visualised to know the acceptability of online/blended learning opportunities on the part of the teachers and learners across India. If that social constructivism can actually be realised through the benefits of online learning, India might emerge as one of the important leaders of education in the coming days. To that extent, the Covid-19 pandemic can be seen as a blessing in disguise.

It is important to examine the perceptions of both teachers and learners on the use of online learning in their regular curriculum transactions most particularly when the whole world is facing the brunt of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has adversely affected millions of learners across the world. The paper is original because it explores the current state of online/blended learning in a developing country like India to provide a practical and realistic vision of a new way of learning in the post-Covid-19 situations.

Shared understandings of curriculum reform within and between the levels of the educational system are suggested to be crucial for the reform to take root. The purpose of this paper is to explore variation in perceived curriculum coherence and school impact among state- and district-level stakeholders.

The participants (n=666) included state- and district-level stakeholders involved in a national curriculum reform in Finland. Latent profile analysis was employed to identify profiles based on participants’ perceptions of the core curriculum’s coherence and the reform’s impact on school development.

Two profiles were identified: high coherence and impact, and lower consistency of the intended direction and impact. State-level stakeholders had higher odds of belonging to the high coherence and impact profile than their district-level counterparts.

The results imply that more attention needs to be paid in developing a shared and coherent understanding particularly of the intended direction of the core curriculum as well as the reform’s effects on school-level development among state- and district-level stakeholders.

The study contributes to the literature on curriculum reform by shedding light on the variation in perceived curriculum coherence and school impact of those responsible for a large-scale national curriculum reform process at different levels of the educational system.

In the present study, we assessed how school improvement consultants, as part of a six-year model project conducted in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, were perceived by school leaders and how they defined their role(s), tasks and working methods as external consultants at the beginning of the project.

Our analyses are based on a mixed-methods approach, involving a standardized online survey of school leaders and 18 guideline-based interviews with school improvement consultants, which were conducted at the beginning of the model project. The interviews were analyzed using qualitative content analysis and typifying structuring of the interview material.

Our results based on the quantitative survey data showed that the school administrators generally rated the collaboration with the external consultants as not very positive. Furthermore, our qualitative findings showed that the school improvement consultants in the model project faced resistance to their coaching efforts, which may be attributed to the obligatory nature of their work on the project. In general, the consulting process appeared to be little differentiated according to the school principals' perceptions of the school needs, with the consultants mainly proceeding as they also do in other coaching processes.

This study contributes to our understanding of coaching in improvement activities among schools serving disadvantaged communities by offering insights into the role(s) and working methods of external school improvement consultants.