This study examines how interactions in class WhatsApp groups impact students' motivation and academic achievements. The research incorporates both qualitative and quantitative analyses to explore associations between various types of interactions and academic performance. Key findings reveal a strong positive correlation between students' motivation and the volume of affective-emotive messages, especially those from teachers. While cognitive-analytic interactions did not significantly predict higher academic achievement, qualitative interviews highlighted the need for more educational content in WhatsApp groups, such as exercises. The study also found a positive, albeit weak, association between classroom climate and interaction patterns. However, an interesting inverse relationship emerged between socioeconomic status and the prevalence of affective-emotive messages. The research emphasizes the importance of incorporating affective-emotive interactions in educational settings and recommends expanding the use of WhatsApp groups as an effective supplementary platform for fostering motivation and improving academic achievements.

As teachers and teacher educators in the United States, we offer this editorial based on our lived experiences with the political, social, and environmental precarities where we live. Among these precarities are our looming U.S. presidential election after the last one included a plot by bad actors to abscond with our State’s electoral votes, our constant struggle for water in a desert state, and our weak overall internet connectivity. We call our wonderings about how we are living in and somehow surviving these times, <i>radical uncertainties</i>. In this editorial, we canvas radical uncertainties related to e-learning about digital literacies, generative text, datafication, and the camera gaze. Alongside these uncertainties, we offer alternative avenues for collective thinking based on Chicana Feminist epistemologies. We intend for readers to consider how local knowing can and should inform e-learning planning and practice.

Minimal guidance or maximal independence? How can teachers achieve that complex balance when teaching mathematics? This pre-and post-test quasi-experimental research study explored the above questions in Grade 10 Financial Mathematics following guided discovery and mathematical modelling frameworks. Fifty-four (54) Grade 10 students at a Government High School in Johannesburg, South Africa, participated in the study. One group of students was taught following guided discovery and modelling learning principles and another group was taught following direct instruction. Students mean scores were compared at the end of the intervention. The main findings revealed that although the overall performance in the post-test was similar in both groups, there was a significant difference in understanding the concept of compound interest in the guided discovery learning group. The research highlights the promise of guided discovery learning and modelling approach over direct instruction, especially on supporting the understanding of difficult concepts in financial mathematics.

This critical overview examines the body of literature on language instructors’ emotion labour, with the aim of providing insights into the aspects of teachers’ work that positively and negatively impact their emotional well-being, as well as possible strategies to help them flourish.  Research in this novel area was divided into three broadly chronological categories for analysis: pioneering studies, qualitative studies with a specific focus, and more methodologically diverse studies. The findings indicated that societal attitudes influenced the institution, resulting in differing levels of pressure or support experienced by the teachers.  Emotion labour was found to stem from teachers’ beliefs conflicting with those held at an institutional level or beyond, as well as from interactions with the learners, and could have positive and/or negative outcomes.  One of the worst possible outcomes is burn-out. Agency, empathy, and reflection were among the strategies to emerge with the potential to neutralise negative outcomes. The article concludes with suggestions for further research.

Reduced student engagement in formal instruction is a problem that pervades classrooms across the educational spectrum. Students have been shown to commonly experience the negative emotions of boredom and inattentiveness (Bunce, Flens, & Neiles, 2010; Mann & Robinson, 2009; Young, Robinson, & Alberts, 2011) as well as vigilance decrement (Grier et al., 2003). Studies have revealed that more than 40% of high-school students usually remain disengaged from learning (Usher and Kober, 2012) and few (as little as 8%) reach a developmental level characterized by intrinsic motivation, attention, and effort (Lawson & Masyn, 2015; Scherrer & Preckel, 2018). Because student interest in the instructional topics and pedagogical activities rapidly decreases or is completely lost, students withdraw their attention from instruction in favor of off-task behaviors such as daydreaming, doodling, or inappropriate use of technology (Adams, 2006; Bugeja, 2007; Fink, 2010; Gilroy, 2004; Nworie & Haughton, 2008). Despite teachers’ best efforts, maintaining high levels of student interest during class time and avoiding disengagement from the learning process constitutes a challenging pedagogical endeavor, particularly in the context of classroom discussions and lectures (Lemke, 1990; Nunn, 1996).

According to Heller and Życiński (1980) the primary regulator of human behaviour is the system of values therefore its development should be in the centre of all educational and upbringing measures. Our focus here is on moral sensitivity understood as the ability of an individual to see social situations from the perspective of moral good and moral evil that represent values embodied in moral norms adopted by the world and internalised by humans as the principles of conduct. The main research question was the following: How morally sensitive are persons with ID and how is their sensitivity associated with the degree of intellectual disability and gender? A non-probability sample 267 of Polish residents aged 16-30 years with mild (58.42%) or moderate (41.58%) intellectual disability was assembled. Men and women were almost in equal proportion. The Moral Sensitivity Inventory (MSI; Otrębski, Sudoł, 2020) has been used to measure the moral sensitivity of people with ID. It consists of 10 illustrated stories presenting typical social situations containing moral dilemmas, and an evaluation form. The tested person’s task is to answer the following question “Who, in this story, did something right or wrong, and what was that?” and to indicate as many moral elements in the story and the picture as they can. The results imply that the study participants had different ability to discern moral good and moral evil. They were more sensitive to the manifestations of good and evil bad associated with Understanding one’s behaviour and its impact on others (more than one-fourth of them had high scores) and less perceptive of those relating to Respect for others’ property and Conformance to principles and norms. The results of the study expand the knowledge of the overall moral sensitivity of persons with intellectual disabilities.

This study aims to examine the relation between spatial ability and creativity in Geometry. Data was collected from 94 ninth graders. Three spatial abilities were investigated: spatial visualization, spatial relations and closure flexibility. As for students' creativity, it was examined through a multiple solution problem in Geometry focusing on three components of creativity: fluency, flexibility, and originality. The results revealed that spatial visualization predicted flexibility and originality while closure flexibility predicted all creativity components. Additionally, it was deduced that auxiliary constructions played an essential role in the problem-solution process. Finally, further study opportunities for the teaching and learning of Geometry are discussed.

The Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey (CLASS) is an instrument to measure student beliefs about physics and learning physics. In this research, Turkish adaptation and psychometric evaluation of the CLASS is discussed. In the first stage, the translation process, which included examination of six experts (four experts in physics education and two experts in English and Turkish languages) for content validity and 13 student interviews for face validity, was described. In the second stage, exploratory (EFA) and confirmatory (CFA) factor analysis results obtained from 1391 freshman students were discussed for construct validty. The EFA yielded three factors that consisted of 20 items, which explained 39.61 % of the total variance. These factors were named as: Problem Solving Effort, Conceptual Understanding, and Personal Interest and Real-World Connection. Based on the CFA results, the three-factor 20-item instrument showed acceptable fit statistics. Compared to the original CLASS, the proposed version with 20-item model was shorter, easier to administer and easier to score, valid and reliable survey, so feasible to use. The overlapping of the constructs (i.e., violation of the unidimensionality) in the original CLASS was a problem, while in the proposed model none of the items were included in more than one construct.

In this study, in which the levels of ethnocentrism of those who teach Turkish as a foreign language were examined in line with various variables, the general survey model within the scope of descriptive research was implemented. The research was carried out with 185 instructors who teach Turkish as a foreign language in various state or private institutions in the 2020-2021 academic year. In order to assess the ethnocentrism level of teachers, a 5-item Likert-type Ethnocentrism Scale, comprised of 20 questions, developed by Neuliep and McCroskey (1997) and which was later adapted to Turkish by Üstün (2011) was used. In the study, it was found that the levels of ethnocentrism of those who teach Turkish as a foreign language differ significantly according to such variables as gender, age, their holding a Turkish teaching certificate for foreigners and to the MA program they graduated from, yet it was also concluded that there was no significant difference according to the other variables as the institution they work for, the department they studied in, whether they know a foreign language, where they teach Turkish, and their intercultural communication competence.