Engaging Student Teachers in Reflective Practice Through Photovoice

Many educators regard the practice of pedagogical reflection as a prime motivator in the professional growth of teachers. This idea has spurred the realization of the practice of reflection since the early stages of the university's teacher education program. Several scholars have developed their ideas regarding excellent practices in reflection throughout the years. They presented methodologies, concepts, and ways to construct the course of reflection from non-reflective to critical reflective by identifying the reflective thought process and underpinning the degrees of reflection. These ideas would also allow educators to create evaluations for reflective practice. However, this sound theoretical framework is frequently riddled with flaws that linger to the present time, particularly about the extent to which such activity will provide noteworthy growth for teachers, as well as the legitimacy of its reflexivity itself. This paper tries to revisit the origin of the concept, the development, and pinpoint the persistent issues. This, hopefully, would enable us to seek the deeper insight into the dynamics of reflective practice in teacher education program.

The article focuses on reflective practice in teacher education, the use of video recordings of student teachers' reflections on the lessons that they teach, and a Post Graduate Certificate in Education course that was developed at the University of Ulster by the author. The pilot study of teaching practices allowed students to choose either posting their reflections online in written or video-diary form. The advantages and disadvantages of using video clips and webcams and the novelty value of technology are discussed.

The paper addresses the interconnectedness of theory and practice in initial teacher education, in teacher development and in educational reform. Focusing on the role of the teacher as it is reconceptualised within the international movement to reconstruct schools and schooling, the rationale for new kinds of teacher‐education programmes is outlined. A programme for the education of reflective professionals is described, where, within a community of inquiry, prospective teachers construct a professional knowledge in teaching that is uniquely theirs, and come to new understandings of themselves as professionals, of the students they teach and of the educational landscapes within which they live. Following this, a new vision of teacher education and teacher development is proposed which links personal and professional reform to the reform of schools and schooling, within communities of inquiry where teachers and students learn together, and collaborate to reform their own understandings, and the cultures and contexts in which they live. Reform is imagined here as a creative process involving conceptual reform for students and for teachers, who are also engaged in the curricular, cultural and structural reform of the places in which they live and learn.

Unemployment is a significant macroeconomic issue that affects not only economic development but also the social and psychological well-being of individuals and families. In Vietnam, growing attention has been given to the potential disparity in unemployment rates between men and women, as such differences may reflect structural inequalities in the labor market. This study applies the ARIMA (AutoRegressive Integrated Moving Average) model to forecast gender-specific unemployment rates using official data from 2011 to 2023. The results reveal that although there are fluctuations in unemployment rates for both genders throughout the observed period, the differences are relatively small and not statistically significant. Nonetheless, even minor disparities may suggest the existence of unequal access to employment opportunities, particularly for women in certain regions or sectors. Based on these findings, the report proposes several policy recommendations aimed at fostering a more inclusive labor market. These include expanding access to vocational education and skills development programs for women, implementing gender-sensitive employment policies, and encouraging both public and private sectors to adopt equitable recruitment practices. Furthermore, the enhancement of labor market monitoring systems and the continued use of forecasting tools like ARIMA can support policymakers in anticipating changes and designing timely, data-driven responses. Overall, this study contributes to a deeper understanding of gender-related employment trends in Vietnam and provides practical insights for government agencies, researchers, and policy planners working to promote equal labor market participation and reduce unemployment across all segments of the population. Received: 23 September 2024 | Revised: 18 March 2025 | Accepted: 4 September 2025 Conflicts of Interest The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest to this work. Data Availability Statement Data are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. Author Contribution Statement Quang Phung Duy: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing — review & editing, Supervision, Project administration. Huyen Linh Nguyen: Methodology, Formal analysis, Investigation, Data curation, Writing — original draft, Writing — review & editing, Project administration. Tra My Dinh Thi: Software, Validation, Formal analysis, Data curation, Writing — original draft, Writing — review & editing, Project administration. Ha Anh Ta Thi: Investigation, Writing — original draft, Writing — review & editing, Visualization, Project administration. Phuong Thuy Nguyen: Investigation, Resources, Data curation, Writing — original draft, Writing — review & editing, Project administration. Trung Kien Hoang: Investigation, Resources, Writing — original draft, Writing — review & editing, Project administration.

Reflective Practice in Teacher Education: Issues, Challenges, and Considerations

This paper describes the process followed by a group of four primary and secondary teacher educators at a university in Sydney, Australia, to develop a collective understanding of the nature and value of reflective practice. The project developed a framework and set of indicators to assess the quality of pre-service teachers’ reflective writing and provide targeted feedback to support their ability to reflect on classroom practice. The process of developing the framework highlights the value of collaborative coding and collegial discussion as methods for establishing common understanding and shared practice of reflective writing in teacher education.

Simulation-based learning (SBL) is a promising tool for enhancing reflective practice in teacher education. This study addresses a gap in the literature concerning the role of video in SBL for improving preservice teachers’ (PSTs) reflective abilities. It examines PSTs’ perceptions of video use in SBL and key technological features that contribute to their learning. A qualitative case study was conducted with 35 PSTs in clinical simulations. Data from reflections and portfolios were thematically analysed, revealing three main themes: (1) using video for learning and development, (2) emotional aspects of video use, and (3) technological features supporting learning. The findings align with deliberate practice theory, highlighting structured, goal-oriented practice with feedback. The study underscores video’s potential to deepen reflective practices, foster professional growth, and create a holistic learning experience. Challenges related to SBL, including stress and group dynamics, are discussed, providing insights for designing effective video-enhanced simulations.

As a native of Western Canada, I returned "home" to the University ofAlberta to do doctoral studies with Ted Aoki. I had begun my teaching career in the late 1960s as a secondary school history teacher in the province of Newfoundland. I recall becoming superficially aware of interpretive and critical research paradigms during my brief sojourn

Literature on teacher learning has shown links between being a self-regulated learner, reflecting effectively on one’s own practice, and being described as an “adaptive expert”. For instance, the metacognitive skills needed for effective reflection on teaching practice are seen as critically important to developing adaptive expertise in the context of the highly complex classroom environment. Similarly, self-regulated learning is often defined, at least in part, in terms of using metacognitive skill to adapt one’s approach to complex learning situations or problems. Although there is rich literature on reflective practice in teacher education, less is known about measuring teachers’ self-regulated learning or the relationship between self-regulated learning and teacher reflections. This research examines reflective practice and self-regulated learning through pre-service teachers’ written reflections. The study makes a novel adaptation of a rubric designed to evaluate teacher education candidates’ reflections to measure self-regulated learning. Findings suggest that the rubric could also be useful in understanding the self-regulated practices of teacher education candidates.

As a challenge to social and material inequities in the opportunities and outcomes of U.S. public schooling for students of color, more teachers are being prepared to teach with culturally responsive and sustaining pedagogies (Ladson-Billings, 1995; Paris, 2012). As teachers in mainstream, English-medium classrooms encounter more linguistic diversity, they must also be prepared to teach with linguistically sustaining pedagogies, such as translanguaging pedagogy (García, Johnson, & Seltzer, 2017). The objective of the present study is to explore one example of how translanguaging pedagogy can be integrated into an English-medium teacher education curriculum. This paper analyzes a case study of effective instruction, student learning, and reflective practice in teacher education, examining how undergraduate Education Studies majors in a linguistic justice course define translanguaging as a pedagogical framework and negotiate it in conversation with monolingual orientations. Through thematic analysis of qualitative data, including student work, course artifacts, and reflection surveys, this study demonstrates how a group of future teachers developed translingual awareness through specific course activities. This study ultimately highlights both the challenges and successes of promoting translingual awareness in traditionally “monolingual” teacher education, and provides concrete steps towards preparing all teachers to teach with culturally and linguistically sustaining pedagogies.

Lesson Study (LS) is a methodology that enables student teachers (STs) to gain insights into their pupils' learning processes during their practicum, thereby improving their instructional practices and supporting their professional learning throughout teacher education. However, "time" has emerged as a critical factor for the successful implementation of LS, particularly within the context of a one-year university-based initial teacher education program. To address this challenge, an integrated LS model was designed and implemented within the curriculum, specifically in relation to a thesis component and the practicum experience. This model was evaluated with a focus on professional learning, with the aim of fine-tuning the conditional input factors necessary for its effectiveness. The conceptual framework of Kager guided this evaluation, identifying input factors across three levels: compositional (team level), structural (LS process level), and contextual (organizational level). STs were consulted through questionnaires, individual interviews, and focus group discussions to explore which factors at these three levels either enhanced or hindered their professional learning. In addition, a document analysis of the thesis projects was conducted to triangulate the findings. The results indicate that the three levels interact and mutually influence each other. At the compositional level, interpersonal dynamics—such as trust, dysfunctional collaboration skills, and open communication—as well as limited teaching experience, prior knowledge, and group composition, were found to impede professional learning. At the structural level, STs reported time pressure due to the duration of the entire LS cycle, and some LS groups failed to make sufficient use of the provided tools and support, suggesting a limited understanding of LS. At the contextual level, misalignments in support systems created difficulties for STs in navigating and planning the LS process. This study sheds light on the complex interplay between team composition, contextual support, and structural guidance in the implementation of LS within a one-year university teacher education program. It further provides practical recommendations for improving the integration of LS into the curriculum in order to enhance STs' professional learning and overall engagement with the LS process. Received: 21 April 2025 | Revised: 25 June 2025 | Accepted: 10 October 2025 Conflicts of Interest The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest to this work. Data Availability Statement The data that support the findings of this study, as well as the measurement instruments used, are openly available in Figshare at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.30149167 Author Contribution Statement Iris Willems: Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal analysis, Investigation, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing, Visualization, Project administration. Wouter Schelfhout: Writing - review & editing. Elke Struyf: Writing - review & editing, Supervision.

This article outlines approaches that are being adopted to encourage students training to be teachers on a Postgraduate Certificate of Education (PGCE) course to reflect upon their teaching. It takes the form of a special case designed to nurture good practice in Teacher Education. Applications for those working in higher education are discussed. A distinction has been made between reflection and reflexivity (Ashmore, 1989; Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992). It was found that engaging students in reflexivity can have benefits in terms of classroom effectiveness and reflective writing can play an enhancing role in this process. It was found that many students were judged to have exhibited reflexivity in their teaching and in their written work. Ways in which the emphasis on reflective practice has led to the development of classroom skills were identified.

We appreciate the attention to our article and the thoughtful comments provided. This study was intended as a first step toward exploring a novel approach to keloid treatment rather than relying solely on conventional conservative options. Regarding the small sample size, our aim was to assess feasibility and preliminary efficacy in a pilot setting. At the time, there was limited scientific background supporting this combination, and based on prior experience, we anticipated challenges in convincing patients to try the novel procedure. For this reason, we preferred to conduct a smaller study rather than abandon the idea, viewing it as a starting point for future work. The limited sample size was clearly acknowledged in our discussion. We agree that reporting effect sizes would have strengthened interpretation, and this is an important consideration for subsequent studies. When designing the trial, the literature on hyaluronidase in keloid treatment was minimal. To our knowledge, the only relevant research was by Goyal et al. [1], which evaluated the triple combination of steroid, 5-FU, and hyaluronidase. We adopted this as the reference for our comparison. We acknowledge that this design does not allow isolation of hyaluronidase's independent effect and explicitly noted this in our discussion. As for blinding, participants became aware of their allocation because of the presence or absence of lidocaine in the injections. Before enrollment, they were informed of the components in each group. Since lidocaine substantially reduces procedural pain, its absence or presence inevitably revealed the group. We prioritized minimizing patient discomfort over complete blinding. To reduce bias in objective measures, a blinded dermatologist documented outcomes. Nevertheless, we recognize that subjective measures such as pain and pruritus may be influenced by perception, and some degree of bias is inevitable. In future studies, standardizing the amount or route of anesthetic administration may help minimize this effect. The short follow-up period was another deliberate choice. In interventional scar studies, long-term follow-up is crucial; however, with a small cohort, the risk of missing data from patient dropout was considerable. We therefore opted for a shorter follow-up to ensure complete data collection, which we achieved. We recognize the limitations noted in the letter—including small sample size, short follow-up, partial blinding, and potential confounding from multiple agents in the intervention group—and we reflected these in our discussion. Our aim was not to draw definitive conclusions, but to highlight the possible promising role of hyaluronidase in keloid management. We hope this pilot study will encourage larger, more rigorous trials to validate and expand on our findings, and we appreciate the shared commitment to advancing research in this field. Ala Ehsani: data curation, investigation, formal analysis. Fatemeh Lotfi: investigation, formal analysis, data curation, writing – original draft, writing – review and editing. Alireza Firooz: conceptualization, supervision, project administration, writing – review and editing. Amirhoushang Ehsani: conceptualization, writing – review and editing, project administration, supervision. Zahra Razavi: methodology, formal analysis, supervision, validation, writing – original draft. Mahshid Sadat Ansari: methodology, validation, formal analysis, supervision, writing – review and editing. Pedram Nourmohammadpour: conceptualization, supervision, writing – review and editing. Fatemeh Sima: data curation, formal analysis, methodology. Mina Koohian Mohammadabadi: data curation, methodology, writing – original draft. Amirhossein Rahimnia: conceptualization, investigation, methodology, project administration, writing – original draft, writing – review and editing. All authors have read and approved the final version of the manuscript. The authors received no specific funding for this work. The authors declare no conflicts of interest. The lead author Amirhossein Rahimnia affirms that this manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study being reported; that no important aspects of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned (and, if relevant, registered) have been explained. The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. The corresponding author had full access to all of the data in the original study and takes complete responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis.

Tomatoes are one of the most widely grown horticultural crops but are highly susceptible to leaf diseases that could significantly affect yield and quality. Early and accurate disease detection is necessary to enhance crop productivity and food security. The present study presents a deep learning system for automatic tomato leaf disease classification using a weighted ensemble of EfficientNetV2 models. Seven variants of EfficientNetV2 (B0-B3, S, M, and L) were fine-tuned on an augmented version of the filtered PlantVillage dataset. To improve feature visibility under varying lighting conditions, images were preprocessed using contrast-limited adaptive histogram equalization. Five optimization algorithms, which include Adam, Adamax, AdamW, Nadam, and RMSProp, were tested to assess their impact on model convergence and generalization. Among individual models, Adam-optimized EfficientNetV2L performed the best in accuracy with a measure of 99.50%. For classifiability resilience improvement, 16 ensemble configurations (eight unweighted and eight weighted ensembles using different combinations of EfficientNetV2-S, M, and L variants and five optimizers) were explored, with the best weights discovered using brute-force grid search. The best-performing weighted ensemble achieved 99.89% in accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-score, which was evaluated on a held-out test set not used during training or validation, demonstrating its strong generalizability. The proposed framework offers a scalable and reliable solution for early tomato disease detection with significant potential for real-time plant health monitoring in precision agriculture. Received: 10 September 2025 | Revised: 22 December 2025 | Accepted: 6 February 2026 Conflicts of InterestThe authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest to this work. Data Availability Statement Data are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. Author Contribution Statement Aliyu Tetengi Ibrahim: Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal analysis, Writing – original draft. Ibrahim Hayatu Hassan: Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal analysis, Resources, Data curation, Writing – original draft. Mohammed Abdullahi: Validation, Formal analysis, Resources, Data curation, Writing – review & editing, Visualization. Abeer Rashad Mirdad: Conceptualization, Software, Validation, Investigation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing, Supervision, Project administration. Muhammad I. Khan: Methodology, Validation, Investigation, Resources, Data curation, Writing – review & editing, Visualization, Project administration. Saeed Ali Bahaj: Conceptualization, Software, Writing – original draft. Fatima Khan Nayer: Investigation, Visualization, Supervision, Project administration.

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is a strain whose resistance against existing antibiotics is a serious threat to life. MRSA causes mild skin infections, invasive infections, newborn infections, and surgical patient infections that can lead to death. MRSA quickly develops resistance to new treatments, contributing to the global antimicrobial resistance pandemic. In Uganda, MRSA is now resistant to commonly used antibiotics like ceftriaxone, cefixime, levofloxacin, ciprofloxacin, and chloramphenicol, thus a need to explore new antibiotics to treat diseases caused by MRSA. Its resistance against these drugs continues to worry the health sector, given that in the past two decades, very few drugs successfully entered the market. This is because the well-known traditional experimental drug development and testing process is lengthy and slow and requires huge investments. In this study, we performed virtual screening to discover potential compounds that have antibacterial activity against MRSA. We conducted an extensive literature search and found 180 compounds with antibacterial activity against MRSA. On further screening, only 21 out of 180 compounds were common in Uganda. Thereafter, we conducted both virtual toxicity and molecular docking on the identified 21 compounds. PES12 had score values below the acceptable physicochemical properties considered for toxicity analysis. The molecular docking analysis between the interaction of 21 compounds with two macromolecular targets of MRSA, namely, nitrocefin acyl-Penicillin binding protein 2a (1MWS) and SeMet Penicillin binding protein 2a (1MWR), showed binding energy ranging from −2.7 and −18.6 kcal/mol. Compound PES01 has an excellent binding affinity value of −18.6 kcal/mol, which is far greater than that of known drugs (−6.9 to 8.7 kcal/mol) for treating infection due to MRSA. This study's findings could inform the development of new and more potential antibiotics; however, there is a need to conduct animal studies and clinical trials to understand the effectiveness of the identified 21 compounds. Received: 29 April 2025 | Revised: 23 June 2025 | Accepted: 22 July 2025 Conflicts of Interest The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest to this work. Data Availability Statement The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in Ressource Parisienne en BioInformatique Structurale (RPBS) at https://bioserv.rpbs.univ-paris-diderot.fr/services.html and in PreADMET at https://preadmet.webservice.bmdrc.org/. Author Contribution Statement Simon Kawuma: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Validation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Data curation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing, Visualization, Project administration. David Sabiiti Bamutura: Methodology, Software, Data curation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing, Visualization. Izath Nura: Investigation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. Daniel Zziwa Ashiraf: Investigation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. Joel Bazira: Methodology, Validation, Resources, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing, Supervision, Project administration, Funding acquisition.