Educational Research

Background: Access to higher education in rural areas has been a recurring theme of debates and government inquiries in many countries in recent decades. Previous research is relatively unequivocal regarding the importance of higher education for regional or national development, identifying the local presence of highly educated individuals in a municipality as crucial for its prosperity and development. Purpose: This study aims to contribute to the development of scientific knowledge regarding linguistic discursive representations by rurally located prospective university students in Sweden, of the conditions for further study at university level. Method: A total of 23 qualitative interviews and/or discussion groups were held with 34 prospective university students in three rural municipalities in Sweden. Data were collected and analyzed to answer the research question: How do prospective university students in rural areas describe the conditions for further study at the university level? Findings: Prospective university students created and reproduced a series of linguistic representations in two discursive categories: (1) proximity/distance to study; and (2) education offerings. In the first category, narratives related to the physical distance to study; commuting by public transport or private car; and moving to the home city of a higher education institution. In the second category, narratives focused around the importance of location; remote learning; and doubts about pursuing higher education and/or making the right choice. Conclusion: Linguistic representations in both categories were tense, balancing depictions of conflict and consensus. This balancing act represents a linguistic means of creating and recreating cohesion, involvement, integration, participation, unity, and normality in the discourse and can be interpreted as a form of social pedagogical recognition that is important for the individual’s success in the context that the narratives reflect.

Background: Early childhood education and care (ECEC) centres have historically been overlooked and undervalued globally.However, recent economic investments and numerous changes have significantly impacted the role of ECEC centre leaders and their requirements. Moreover, recent research on educational leadership highlights its importance for both child development and employee well-being, as well as for maintaining pedagogical quality. Despite this recognition, ECEC centre leaders still lack systematic leadership education and adequate working structures. Purpose: This study aimed to review research evidence to under-stand how Finnish ECEC centre leaders position themselves within the realm of leadership as a profession. Specifically, the focus was on identifying the key components of leader competence. Method: We conducted a narrative structural analysis, following the framework developed by using data from 20 short writings by ECEC centre leaders. Four types of narrative were constructed to capture the essence of ECEC centre leaders’ competence.Subsequently, these narrative types were analysed using levels of narrative positioning to gain insights into how these different narratives relate to leadership as a profession. Findings: Through this two-step narrative analysis, we identified four types of narratives among ECEC centre leaders: professional leader, contextual leader, teacher leader, and leader persona. The findings underscore the importance of pedagogical understanding and competence as central themes in the narratives of ECEC centre leaders. However, a comprehensive understanding of general leadership competence as a learnable practice was not consistently evident across the narrative types. Conclusion: The reflection on these findings suggests that ECEC leadership as a profession is still an emerging phenomenon. Moving forward, there is a need for systematic leadership education and the development of functional leadership structures to clarify the concept of leadership as a shared practice and to ensure its effective implementation in ECEC centres.

Background: In the wake of the COVID-19 school closures during 2020, there was much concern about the transition back to in-person classroom teaching and learning, given the many safety protocols in place that could make it more difficult for teachers to connect with students. Purpose: This small-scale case study from the USA sought to gain insight into teachers' experiences of building and maintaining relationships with students during the return to in-person schooling in the 2020-2021 school year and consider implications for teaching and learning beyond the pandemic. Method: An interview protocol that stimulated discussion about relationships and involved diagram creation was used. This allowed the experiences of two teachers to be explored, in depth, through the lens of emotional closeness. Both teachers were interviewed at four points during the school year. Data were analysed qualitatively. Findings: Through close analysis of the data, the two teachers' experiences of forming and maintaining relationships with students emerged. Findings resonated with some previous research on teacher student relationship formation and also drew attention to the nuanced changes of habit on the part of the teacher that were required in terms of initiation and engagement. Conclusion: The study highlights the significance of teachers' adaptive expertise, which can often be overlooked in daily practice. More broadly, it suggests a need for teacher education to place emphasis on the development of relationship skills, for the benefit of teachers and students alike.

Background: Specialists working in school settings provide crucial psychological and pedagogical support to students, teachers and other members of the school community. As the roles played by psychologists, educators, speech therapists and other specialists vary internationally, more needs to be understood about their lived experiences and perceptions of working in particular school systems. Purpose: This study, undertaken in Poland, sought to explore specialists' experiences of supporting teachers in schools and capture their perceptions of their roles. Method: A total of 30 online semi-structured interviews were conducted with psychologists, educators, and speech therapists who were working as specialists in schools. The data were analysed qualitatively, using a two-stage coding procedure based on a grounded theory approach. Findings: Through in-depth analysis of rich interview data, three thematic areas emerged: (1) specialists' collaboration with teachers; (2) specialists' tasks to support teachers in their work with students; and (3) changes that might assist specialists in better supporting teachers. Their tasks included meeting with students' parents and other institutions outside the school, conducting interventions, collaborating with teachers and managing documentation. The specialists believed that there were insufficient numbers of them working in their institutions to meet all the needs of students, teachers and parents. Conclusions: The study highlights the significance and potential of collaboration between specialists and teachers in fostering stu-dents' development, and the need for resources to ensure that appropriate support can be provided.

Background: Many education systems internationally expect schools to participate in continuous instructional improvement programmes. One tool used within these processes is the structured, rubric-based classroom observation, focused on the evaluation of teaching. Such observations are a common feature of formative evaluation systems, teacher coaching programmes, within-school teacher collaborative structures, and other local, regional or national frameworks. However, a question arises as to how rubric-based observations may better support teacher learning and development. Purpose and sources: Drawing on existing theoretical arguments and empirical work, this paper seeks to contribute to discussion about rubric-based classroom observation and its relationship with teacher learning and instructional improvement. Main arguments: Observation rubrics can be regarded as summaries of a community’s understanding of good instruction. When generated in a way that makes this understanding accessible to teachers in the context of their own practice, they have the potential to place the rubric’s, and teachers’, understandings of good teaching ‘in conversation’ with each other. This could provide valuable opportunities for teachers to refine and expand their understandings of good instruction. Embedding rubric-based observations in school structures can, thus, facilitate continuous improvement efforts by better supporting teacher self-reflection, feedback, and collaboration. However, many uses of observation within school contexts tend to prioritise the rubric’s, rather than teachers’, understanding of good teaching. This risks turning observations from tools of learning into tools of judgement, disrupting the pathway through which they might support teacher learning and instructional improvement. Conclusion: Our discussion draws attention to the potential benefits yielded and the challenges that may occur in using rubric-based observations to support teacher learning. It highlights factors that need consideration in efforts to leverage rubric-based observations to better promote continuous teacher learning, ultimately positively influencing student learning.

Background: Parents’ roles in their children’s education are significant in terms of outcomes for the child. As research on parental involvement in children’s education has often been conducted in high-income countries, there is a deep need for more research on parental involvement in contexts of disadvantage. Purpose: Set in the context of socioeconomically disadvantaged communities in rural Pakistan, this study sought to explore parents’ lived experiences of their involvement in their children’s education and gain insight into the barriers they encountered in assisting their children’s learning. Methods: A qualitative research design was employed. In total, 12 parents (6 mothers and 6 fathers) of school-age children in rural Pakistan were interviewed about their views on involvement with their children’s education. Data were analysed thematically, using a narrative inquiry approach. Findings: Through in-depth analysis of the data, two distinct narratives of parental involvement were identified: (1) a narrative of hope and trust-building, indicating parents’ confidence in state schools and their striving for a better future for their children, and (2) a narrative of dissatisfaction and inequality, reflecting frustration arising from factors including parents’ socioeconomic situations, concerns about schools and the influence of local societal norms. It was evident that, despite hardship, the parents wanted their children to be educated and regarded education as a path to improving prospects. Conclusions: The findings broaden understanding of parents’ involvement in their children’s education within socioeconomically disadvantaged rural communities by revealing and highlighting the diverse, often context-related barriers the parents encountered.

Background: A wide variety of information and communication technologies (ICTs) is increasingly embedded into numerous facets of everyday life. Young people, in particular, are often viewed as eager and skilful users of new ICTs who have various educational and leisure-related purposes for ICT use. Although school and home lives have traditionally been viewed as separate, ICT use has blurred the lines between these environments. This study focuses attention on the negotiation of this ‘grey zone’ within the school setting, in terms of teachers’ practices around students’ online interactions. Purpose: This study sought to gain insight into teachers’ perceptions of the challenges related to students’ online interactions and how these become visible in the school context. This included exploring strategies identified by teachers in efforts to surmount difficulties. Methods: Data collection involved semi-structured interviews with 15 teachers in Finland working in primary and/or lower secondary education. The transcribed data were analysed qualitatively, using a thematic approach. Findings: According to the teachers, there were significant challenges associated with young people’s online interactions that affected their students and the flow of school life, such as online conflicts and dysfunctional behaviour in messaging groups. Although teachers found that the boundaries and the obscurity of their roles made it difficult to address some situations, they nonetheless identified strategies to overcome challenges, often including collaboration with students and parents. Conclusions: The study highlights how students’ online interactions can affect the ways that teachers view themselves and their roles as educators. Given the pace with which ICT, and young people’s use of it evolves, the study suggests that there is a need for frequently reviewed guidelines or practices that help clarify the roles of different actors in relation to the realities of students’ ICT use.

Background: The research interview is a valuable tool for collecting data in qualitative studies. All education researchers, whether novice or experienced, need to prepare carefully when planning to conduct interviews. Thus, how best to assist newer researchers to acquire interviewing skills for the purpose of collecting research data remains an important question. Mock, or ‘practice’, interviews can offer opportunities for such researchers to become more familiar with the methodological processes involved in interviewing, so that they can start to build necessary skills prior to carrying out interviews in the field. Purpose: Set in the context of nursing education, the research sought to describe the use of an online mock interview protocol as a researcher’s training tool and consider key lessons learnt from this process. Method: In this qualitative study, seven purposively selected participants from a university in Australia were involved in a mock interview process. A video conferencing platform was utilised as an online environment for the interviews. Findings: Analysis of the procedure indicated the ways in which carrying out the mock interviews supported the researcher’s preparation for qualitative interviewing and facilitated the development of good practice for conducting interviews in a virtual environment. Processes included undertaking a rigorous training needs analysis, optimising technical preparedness for the mock interviews, and practising how to ask interview questions in a suitable way. The experience involved learning lessons around self-evaluation, mental readiness, retrieving rich data and troubleshooting technical issues. Conclusion: The research highlights the extent to which successful interviewing depends on the quality of pre-interview preparation on the part of the researcher. Conducting mock interviews prior to online qualitative research could help support less experienced researchers in areas of research including nursing education. Integration of mock interview protocols into curricula for educational research purposes could help provide research students with opportunities to strengthen their skills.

Background: Studies indicate that access to nature may increase general human health and wellbeing. As a learning environment, the outdoors can also positively influence children’s personal and social growth, healthy development, wellbeing and learning abil- ities. To maximise the potential offered by outdoor learning, it is necessary to gain deeper understanding of its implementation, particularly in early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings. Purpose: This review study sought to explore a small subset of relevant literature in detail, in order to identify and describe the noted benefits and challenges of implementing outdoor learning in early childhood. Method: A narrative synthesis was undertaken. In total, 20 studies from 10 different countries on learning outdoors during ECEC were selected for in-depth analysis and synthesis. The benefits and challenges of outdoor learning implementation in ECEC were identified and categorised using thematic analysis. Findings: The analysis yielded a detailed description of the opportunities, preconditions and resources for outdoor learning. Six data- driven categories emerged (i) children’s holistic development; (ii) health and wellbeing; (iii) multimodal, hands-on learning opportunities; (iv) experiences in and of nature; (v) teachers as mediators; and (vi) the organisation of outdoor learning. Overall, these categories suggested that three main elements need to be considered when planning and implementing outdoor learning: as well as providing experiences in and of nature for children, outdoor learning may benefit the holistic wellbeing and well-rounded development of children and can offer multimodal, hands-on learning opportunities. According to the analysis, one of the main challenges related to teachers’ understanding and knowledge around organising and implementing outdoor learning opportunities for young children. Conclusion: In addition to highlighting the compelling potential benefits of outdoor learning in ECEC, the study findings draw attention to the need for teachers to be supported in developing the required competences to implement outdoor learning. In parti- cular, introducing multimodal outdoor learning into educational practice necessitates pre- and in-service teacher education and professional development.