This study aims to reveal the astronomy-related self-efficacy beliefs of pre-service teachers studying science education, primary school education, and social studies education programmes. The study is conducted using the survey design, a quantitative research method. The study sample consists of 322 pre-service teachers in their third or fourth year of a science education, primary school education, or social studies education programme at a university in Turkey’s Central Anatolia Region during the 2016 fall semester. The Astronomy Teaching Self-Efficacy Belief Scale developed by Güneş was used as the data collection tool. SPSS 22 was used to analyse the data, and the analyses benefited from descriptive and inferential statistics. Based on the findings, the pre-service teachers’ total scores for astronomy self-efficacy showed no significant difference in terms of certain variables (i.e., gender, age, year, and having taken a previous astronomy course). However, significant differences were found regarding self-efficacy scores in terms of the programme and having taken part in astronomy and sky-gazing activity. Concerning the obtained results, the following suggestions can be made: pre-service teachers should be actively involved during the astronomy course, and their classroom management experiences should be promoted to improve their astronomy self-efficacy belief levels.

In this century, the value of information has become more significant; reflecting this change, focus has shifted to preparing pupils for the functional use of reading. Therefore, the latest international assessments of reading literacy are set up to address this kind of knowledge. Significant numbers of individuals are performing below the minimum level in these assessments in Hungary, signalling lower capacity for participation in the community. When attempting to eliminate functional illiteracy, it is crucial to analyse the present support system, and the efficiency of recognising reading problems in the early stages, in order to improve the provision of education systematically. When examining the probable causes of the struggle to comprehend texts, one of the prerequisites of understanding written language is appropriate decoding. This research focuses on investigating the access to intervention programmes of 5th-grade children with poor reading skills. The speed and accuracy of the aloud reading of 957 pupils attending mainstream classrooms were measured and compared to the data regarding the participation in rehabilitation programmes. The most relevant finding of the research was that only less than half of the children with poor reading skills receive help to improve their performance; 55% of slow readers and 60% of non-accurate readers were left without support, even though their performance is significantly worse than that of their peers. This finding indicates the need to revise the screening system and necessitates more extensive and less diagnosis-based access to intervention programmes.

When the Covid-19 pandemic started in March 2020, the educational process had to be redesigned to meet current needs. At the Faculty of Education of the University of Ljubljana, pre-service engineering and technology teachers (3rd and 4th years of undergraduate two-subject teachers’ study programme) are obliged to complete a teaching practice in educational institutions and submit a teaching practice diary. Due to the closure of primary schools, the teaching practice was transformed to distance/online practice. This empirical study examines a recently developed intuitive model for distance learning, which took place during the teaching practice. Teaching practice diaries served as an instrument for gathering data. The sample size encompasses 56 lesson plan activities for the compulsory primary school Design and Technology subject for students aged 12–15 years at 15 primary schools in different parts of Slovenia carried out during online teaching practice by 11 pre-service technology teachers in the 2019/2020 and 2020/2021 academic years. The research methodology is focused on lesson-type determination and model elements analysis in lesson plan making and implementation activity. Distance learning model elements are evaluated with regard to online/offline learning tools from e-learning platforms to engineering education field-specific tools (e.g., technical drawings and electric circuits). Online teaching practice was as new for pre-service technology teachers and teacher-mentors as online learning was new for students. The advantages and disadvantages are highlighted. Furthermore, the distance learning model from the first Covid-19 wave teaching practice was adapted to challenge the second Covid-19 wave. The pandemic has enabled the rise of blended learning, which has been gaining focus in secondary and higher education levels in recent years; however, it encountered obstacles when entering the primary school domain. How to encompass blended learning into the evolved distance learning model will be shown.

This paper explores the role of home economics education in the 21st century. It commences with an explanation of the disruption to the five predicted future global megatrends – globalisation, urbanisation, digitisation, cybersecurity, sustainability – as a consequence of the global Covid-19 pandemic. The place of megatrends framing home economics is explored by presenting a textual analysis of a literacy publication created as an acceleration point for framing the next one hundred years of home economics and underpinned by global megatrends, published prior to the pandemic. Using the Voyant Tool, visualisations of the book Creating Home Economics Futures: The Next 100 Years are presented and compared to other key literary documents informing the field. The paper then turns to the ways in which education and learning have led to the repositioning of home economics as a field and home economics literacy as the key strategy for ensuring the field continues to remain relevant into the future. Priority areas for education include food literacy; individual, family and community well-being; and the reconstitution of the place of the home.

Distance learning is one of the means of education used in various levels, from primary school to college. However, distance learning in architectural education differs from other disciplines, as architectural education is design-based with predominantly applied courses. As the spring semester of the 2019/20 academic year had to continue online due to the Covid-19 pandemic and it remained uncertain whether or when face-to-face (FtF) education will start till the end of the term, the necessity to focus on online education suddenly raised in architectural faculties. This study aims to start a discussion on how to proceed with online architectural education, focusing on quality, defining the fundamentals, and proposing suggestions within this scope. In order to achieve this aim, research on the evaluation of the existing distance learning platforms of universities, the differences between the implementations of theoretical and applied courses, the advantages and disadvantages of the process are made. For this purpose, a comprehensive literature review on universities that provide fully online, hybrid and conventional (FtF) education throughout the world is conducted, given and discussed in the paper. After the research on ongoing processes, a case study to determine the experiences, opinions and approaches of students and academic staff with the scope of emergency remote teaching is designed and conducted. Together with the findings of the review and the case study, the challenges, strengths and opportunities of online architectural education are discussed and evaluated with a focus on maintaining and raising the quality of the education. In conclusion, suggestions and proposals are made and presented to be applied and developed in architecture faculties’ future online education experiences.

A study was conducted using a correlational screening model to determine the mediating effect of altruism in the relationship between empathic tendencies, the nature relatedness and environmental consciousness. The participants of the study, selected via random cluster sampling design, are composed of 305 pre-school teachers working in pre-schools and kindergartens in a city located in Turkey’s Aegean region. The ‘Empathic Tendency Scale’, ‘Altruism Scale’, ‘Nature Relatedness Scale’, and ‘Environmental Consciousness Scale’ were used as data collection tools. The analyses of the sub-purposes were carried out using the PROCESS macro (Model 4) developed by Andrew Hayes using the SPSS infrastructure. When the study results were examined, the indirect effects of the empathic tendency on nature relatedness and environmental consciousness were found to be significant. Thus, altruism was the mediator for the relationship between the empathic tendency and nature relatedness (β=.13, 95% BCA CI [.08; .19]) and for the relationship between emphatic tendency and environmental consciousness (β=.36, %95 BCA CI [.18; .57]).

The pandemic has disrupted students’ lives, learning, and well-being worldwide and exacerbated existing disparities in education. Countries have unevenly followed policy recommendations to ensure education by non-governmental agencies, and in some cases, political and economic ideology has directly influenced the decisions taken, Spain being a case in point. The instructions and regulations published in April 2020 in Spain are analysed and compared in order to regulate the end of the school year, its evaluation, and the start of the new year, given the situation of suspension of classes during and the confinement of the Spanish population decreed due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The 20 documents published by the Autonomous Communities of Spain are subjected to critical discourse analysis. Their approaches and the aspects they highlight or ignore are examined to identify the different models of education that each region defends in times of crisis. There are significant differences between conservative and progressive regions, the latter being more inclined to implement the recommendations of non-governmental organisations.

This paper advances our understanding of how schools can become change agents capable of transforming local practice to address the challenges arising from the Covid-19 pandemic. It presents a novel application of cultural-historical activity theory to reinterpret evidence on widespread learning loss and increasing educational inequities resulting from the pandemic, and to identify scalable transformative learning opportunities through reframing the crisis as a double stimulation. By reviewing evidence of the emerging educational landscape, we first develop a picture of the new ‘problem space’ upon which schools must act. We develop a problem space map to serve as the first stimulus to articulate local challenges. Integrating this problem space with research on professional change, we identify conceptual tools to capture learning gaps and implement pedagogic interventions at scale, in order to enhance schools’ agency in directly addressing the crisis. These tools can act as the second stimulus, enabling educators to address local challenges. We conclude by discussing the Covid-19 educational crisis as a unique stimulus for professional learning and outline the potential for durable shifts in educational thinking and practice beyond the pandemic. We argue that this unprecedented historic disruption can be harnessed as a transformative professional learning opportunity. In particular, we consider how research on professional change offers local, scalable interventions and tools that can support educators in preventing the new insights from ‘slipping away’ post-pandemic. Utilising the notions of boundaries and tool-mediated professional change, we examine the ways in which this disruption generates opportunities to envision alternative futures for equitable learning in school.


 
 
 
 This article argues that what is most at risk in schooling during a global pandemic, or other similar broad challenges to normal functioning, are those elements that might be considered the less traditional and so the most progressive. After setting out some general background common to the challenge faced by schools and school teachers, this argument is exemplified through the case of school science education. Two particular aspects are considered: one related to pedagogy (responding to learners’ alternative conceptions or ‘misconceptions’) and one related to curriculum (teaching about the nature of science). These are considered ‘progressive’ features in the sense that they have widely been championed as ways of improving and reforming science education across a wide range of national contexts but can be understood to have faced resistance both in the sense of being opposed by ‘reactionary’ stakeholders and in terms of the level of support for teacher adoption. It is argued that at a time when the education system is placed under extreme stress, such progressive elements are at particular risk as teachers and administrators may view them as ‘extras’ rather than ‘core’ features of practice and/or as reflecting more ‘difficult’ educational objectives that may need to be de-prioritised (and so neglected) for the time being. In that sense, they are fragile aspects of practice that lack the resilience of more established, and thus robust, features. It is concluded that where progressive elements are especially valued, they need to become sufficiently embedded in custom and practice to no longer be viewed as luxuries but rather to be recognised as core elements of good teaching to be protected and maintained during a period of emergency.