ABSTRACT: Mathematics plays a vital role in nursing practice, as it supports essential tasks such as medication administration, fluid management, and the accurate interpretation of patient data. However, nursing students often struggle to apply mathematical concepts in clinical settings where quick and accurate decisions are crucial. The study explores a heuristic way to help students become more confident and capable in using mathematics to ensure safe and effective patient care. A learning intervention was conducted among nursing students using specially designed packets incorporating heuristic strategies for understanding clinical mathematics. Data collected before and after the intervention were analyzed to identify meaningful improvements in their skills, with results handled under strict ethical and privacy guidelines. The results showed significant improvements in students’ performance in clinical mathematics after using heuristic-based learning materials. These gains were consistent across key areas such as unit conversion, dosage calculation, fluid balance, and data interpretation. The findings confirm that focused and contextual instruction can meaningfully support nursing students in developing the skills necessary for safe and effective patient care.

ABSTRACT: Despite growing student diversity in U.S. K–12 classrooms, Teachers of Color (TOC) remain severely underrepresented. One way to support TOC is through professional learning within critical affinity groups. Critical affinity groups are spaces where TOC engage in critical pedagogy that addresses systems of oppression in educational spaces through recognition of racial and cultural strengths. This study examines how Women of Color personnel in the Urban Public School district designed a critical affinity program to support the retention and development of the district’s experienced TOC. Using semi-structured interviews, participants’ illuminated how their own lived experiences as former TOC shaped their understanding of the necessity of critical affinity spaces and how these groups support TOC. The Women of Color personnel identified monthly meetings, mentorship, support, and networking, as well as participation in policy-change workshops as the best ways support TOC. The information gained from this study supports using racial affinity groups as professional learning for TOC to offer culturally responsive mentorship and leadership opportunities that provide professional and personal transformation.

ABSTRACT: Teachers are ubiquitously theorized as agents of change capable of both facilitating learning and serving as educational teacher-researchers. The negotiation of teacher-researcher identity has garnered substantial scholarly attention in international discourse. In Vietnam, the majority of existing inquiries have primarily concentrated on tertiary-level English as a Foreign Language (EFL) lecturers, leaving an empirical gap concerning how contextual variables affect this identity reconstruction among other teacher populations. This retrospective narrative inquiry, endeavoring to bridge this gap, explored contextual influences on a Vietnamese high school EFL female teacher’s identity negotiation through her Master’s thesis-conducting experiences. The study adapted Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) Ecological Systems Theory of Human Development as its theoretical framework. Data source included a two-round semi-structured narrative-framed interview with the primary participant, triangulated by an outsider-nominated interview. The data analysis followed Clandinin and Connelly’s (1990, 2022) three-phase narrative analysis of broadening, burrowing, and storying/restorying. Findings unveiled how a four-layered ecological system, including individual, academic, institutional, and socio-cultural factors, aligning with micro-, meso-, exo-, and marco-sytem, respectively, affected such negotiation. The findings further showcased how thesis conducting acted as a catalyst for nurturing epistemological belief transformation, occupational enhancements, and multifaceted identity development as a language teacher. Implications and methodological recommendations were proposed to advise stakeholders to pedagogize their practices and inform future inquiries to expand this study’s findings.

ABSTRACT: For beginner creators, conceptualizing best-selling packaging designs can serve as efficient design training, yet the practical application remains challenging. To bridge this gap, we considered design education utilizing Kansei Engineering methods. This study aims to enhance beginner creators’ packaging design skills through exercises based on Kansei Engineering and to verify the effectiveness of design education. Participants engaged in exercises that involved visualizing Kansei responses to existing ice cream packages, creating original designs, visualizing Kansei responses to their packages, redesigning, and then reading the portfolios. This process showed positive trends in participants’ quantitative responses to items such as “I am interested in a job related to design (p = .017, d = –1.24),” “I am confident in designing packages (p = .004, d = –1.7),” and “I find designing something enjoyable (p = .004, d = –1.73).” Our findings suggest that integrating Kansei visualization into the design education process can empower beginners by enhancing their skills and engagement in packaging design.

ABSTRACT: Kazakhstan’s trilingual education policy and ongoing educational reforms have created unique challenges for teachers, yet systematic research on educator job satisfaction remains limited in post-Soviet contexts. This study addresses critical gaps by examining how Kazakhstan’s specific educational landscape – including language policy disparities, reform pressures, and cultural transitions – influences teacher job satisfaction across demographic and professional variables. Using the Teacher Job Satisfaction Questionnaire (TJSQ) with 383 teachers nationwide, we employed Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory and the Job Demands-Resources Model to analyze satisfaction patterns across grade levels, teaching subjects, academic qualifications, marital status, and teaching language. Results reveal significant disparities: Kazakh-medium teachers report lower responsibility satisfaction than Russian/English-medium teachers (p < 0.001), STEM teachers show higher security and recognition satisfaction than non-STEM teachers (p < 0.001), and unmarried teachers demonstrate greater job satisfaction across multiple dimensions. These findings illuminate how Kazakhstan’s unique socio-cultural and linguistic context mediates traditional job satisfaction factors, necessitating culturally adapted policy interventions. Recommendations include targeted resource equity for Kazakh-medium instruction, differentiated support for primary teachers, and recognition programs addressing cultural values of collective responsibility.

ABSTRACT: The purpose of this study was to investigate practices and problems of secondary school principals’ recruitment and selection in Hawassa City Administration, Sidama National Regional State, Ethiopia. To this end, a convergent parallel design was employed. Teachers were selected by simple random sampling techniques, whereas school leaders and selection committee members were selected by using purposive sampling techniques. Questionnaires, interviews, and document analysis were used to collect data. Both descriptive statistical and non-parametric tests were used to analyze data. In addition to these, qualitative data were analyzed qualitatively and triangulated with quantitative results. The findings of the study revealed that selection criteria were not merit-based and competency-based, screening phase criteria were subjective, attitudinal, and more related to political aspects rather than academic requirements. Moreover, the study showed that incompetency and favoritism of selection panels, and subjectivity and inappropriate implementation of selection tools in the selection process. Besides, the findings of the study revealed that partisan affiliation and non-merit aspects were used as criteria to select principals rather than professional knowledge, skills, and values. Furthermore, the study showed that a lack of clearly defined selection criteria and methods, and transparency problems, implementers’ related problems, and different malpractices affect school principals’ selection. It was concluded that school principals’ selection processes and practices were not implemented as designed, and school principals were assigned based on non-professional and non-merit-based criteria.

ABSTRACT: Despite increasing global attention to learner-centered approaches in environmental education (EE), there is limited research on how preservice teachers in Ghana make sense of problem-based learning (PBL), particularly through the lens of their lived experiences and sociocultural contexts. This study addresses that gap by exploring how one Ghanaian preservice teacher constructs his understanding of PBL and environmental education using Bakhtin’s concepts of Ventriloquism and Voice. Through a dialogic analysis of a semi-structured interview, the study uncovers the multiple voices; personal, institutional, and environmental, that shape his evolving teacher identity and pedagogical vision. The findings reveal how narrative becomes a site for negotiating meaning, expressing professional intentions, and imagining education as a vehicle for environmental and social transformation. This research contributes to a growing body of work using dialogic and narrative frameworks to examine teacher development and highlights the need for more contextually grounded studies in EE and PBL within Ghana’s teacher education system.