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The aim of the International Society for Technology, Education, and Science (iHSES) conference is to offer opportunities to share ideas, discuss theoretical and practical issues, and connect with the leaders in the fields of "humanities," "education" and "social sciences." It is organized for: (1) faculty members in all disciplines of humanities, education and social sciences; (2) graduate students; (3) K-12 administrators; (4) teachers; (5) principals; and (6) all interested in education and social sciences. [Individual papers are indexed in ERIC.]

Optometry is becoming more and more interdisciplinary and gives new opportunities for collaborative research due to the accumulative complexity of knowledge and the rapid transformation of the technological capabilities in domains such as information technology, optics, applied engineering, health sciences, and entrepreneurship and management. Therefore, the paper presents a study case of a master organized at the University Politehnica of Bucharest related to the current challenges of optometrist education in Romania. The master program is carried out within the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Mechatronics of the University POLITEHNICA of Bucharest, being organized by the Department of Mechatronics and Precision Mechanics and it falls within the Field of Mechanical Engineering specialization, according to Government decision no. 1609/30.09.2004, published in the Official Gazette of 18.10.2004. Conceived as a continuation of the bachelor's studies, the Advanced Optometry master program ensures the deepening in the field of the Optometry license program. It is an attractive option for the graduates of the Optometry program, accredited for the first time in 2007 and reaccredited in 2011. It ensures the development of scientific research capacities and is a mandatory preparatory basis for doctoral studies. [For the full proceedings, see ED652228.]

Nurses are a vital resource of health care systems, a resource that must be valued, bearing in mind that their work has a role in social indicators of health, and also determines topics such as equality and equity, fairness and justice, which support the kind of societies we all want to live in. In the training process, they learn, in the middle of a team, to plan, to put into practice and evaluate general medical care based on acquired knowledge and skills. Future nurses must not only be prepared to meet the needs of the individual, the family, the community, but also to have confidence in their own intellectual and clinical abilities so that they can work responsibly and autonomously, facing at the same time with increasingly complex requirements of healthcare. The refinement of medical training is subsequently achieved by developing the ability to solve problems, to make decisions, to practice leadership in medical care. The acquisition of leadership skills has been identified as a need in training nurses, both from the researches of internal and international professional bodies and from those of clinical units. By harmonizing this need with public educational policies, the unit of learning outcomes "Leadership and professional communication" was implemented in the professional training standard. This paper aims to gain insight into the relationship between the values of leadership and the development of a good educational policy in training nurses, with a fundamental impact on the provision of health care in an efficient, integrated and safe manner for the patient. [For the full proceedings, see ED654100.]

In many countries, opportunities for higher education are reduced for some under-represented groups in society. One such group are young women from rural and underdeveloped areas who due to traditional, patriarchal lifestyles have much less chance to go to college and get education that their peers from urban areas have much more access to. Online education opens doors for these women, but they still need support and guidance. WINnovators, a 3-year EU Erasmus+ project started in late 2021, has made steps towards providing such support and guidance. It focuses on providing online learning content in different areas of STEM/STEAM and aims at encouraging young women from rural areas to go through such content, develop their entrepreneurial skills, and possibly come up with ideas of how to start their own businesses. Of course, this vision largely contradicts traditional lifestyles. Still, it creates some chance for at least partial leveling with other groups in society. To provide guidance to these women, university students guide them in using the online learning content and taking the learning challenges that eventually lead to raising their awareness of how to break on through to the other side. The paper explains this process and illustrates it by a case study. [For the complete proceedings, see ED655360.]

The performance of any economy is based on scientific knowledge and technological innovation. Consequently, a highly motivated workforce with skills in science and engineering is key to any prosperous economy. Science education has a critical role in providing scientific literacy to students, as well as in training young people to choose careers linked to STEM education. Understanding the science concepts and their application is nowadays challenging for students, due to lack of interest and motivation. "Science is not for me" is, unfortunately, a frequent phrase heard when discussing with young people. It is clear that the way science is taught must be adapted to the student's profile and needs. In this respect, in Romania, the CONNECT project comes to meet this gap by designing and implementing four structured scenarios, embracing the format of Science actions. In order to evaluate the impact of each Science action in terms of students' perceptions and attitudes concerning science, an instrument based on a 5-point Likert scale was developed in the frame of the project partnership. The feedback of 83 students who participated in the Rewilding Science action was collected, being emphasized that students are feeling more confident to solve problems in science and consider that learning science is enjoyable, even learning science is not easy. Although the majority of the respondents would like to do projects with others using science to improve the world, they -- in the same ratio -- would not like to be seen as experts in science. [For the full proceedings, see ED629086.]

Science actions represent specific initiatives and demarches that involve investigation, experimentation, and even research, for raising the interest of the young generation in science, through particular approaches of STEM education. Important topics are promoted to students in various approaches, addressing nowadays problems, answering scientific questions, or trying to make them aware of sensible issues. In this respect, the topic of plastics biodegradability embraced the clothes of a Science action, a format based on the Care-Know-Do model, proposed in the frame of the CONNECT project. Having the view to evaluating the students' interest in science after the implementation of the project-designed science actions, the partnership proposed a 5-point Likert scale instrument. In Romania, 373 students who participated in the Biodegradable Plastics action expressed their feedback, underlining--in an important proportion--their strong confidence in science, being ready to participate in collaborative science projects or benefit from their family support who consider that understanding and knowing science is useful for the entire life. Moreover, the students offered positive feedback related to teachers' ability to emphasize the importance of science for their life and future, but also in society, in general. [For the full proceedings, see ED629086.]

The university admission test comes after the high school graduation exam - the baccalaureate. The baccalaureate results of each candidate must be known by the university admissions committee. They provide information on the degree of intelligence, the skills acquired up to this date, but also the presence of inclinations and skills indispensable to the fulfillment of professional aspirations. The university entrance exam should not be focused only on quantity and quality of knowledge. Besides that, one of the objectives of this exam must be to test the interest in completing the studies through the university level for which he opts, but also the candidate's skills that "offer" him the productive and satisfying course of the entire cycle of higher education, even the perspective of future achievements. To realize that three psychological investigation tools of candidates (tests) can be used, necessary to highlight: (1) personality profile of the candidate; (2) interest profile, motivational; and (3) aptitude profile. The paper proposes a new admission methodology: the data collected through the proposed tests and correlated with the high school graduation data can accept the candidates, as admitted to the profile they opted for, or can redirect them to choose the right path. [For the full proceedings, see ED630948.]

The 21st century is witnessing a growing movement of people from one corner of the world to another, either for business or personal reasons, like never before. These people will be bringing with them their own differences, values, beliefs, and communication styles. Cultures will clash at the workplace, at a party, in the supermarket, in the subway, when dealing with the authorities, and the list can go on. That is why, this paper aims at providing students (i.e. future employees or managers, who will undoubtedly come into contact with different cultures in their future careers) with notions related to intercultural communication, mainly non-verbal communication. The paper also posits that one way of acquiring the intercultural communication competence in the classroom is by providing real-life examples of what such communication means, i.e. through accounts and stories told by expats, who are people who travel and decide to relocate to another country (embracing or not the new culture) mainly for business-related reasons. [For "NORDSCI International Conference Proceedings (Online, October 12-14, 2020). Book 1. Volume 3," see ED616185.]

PhD students are a valuable asset for universities as they are able to perform a varied number of activities. Moving on from their basic role of students, their main focus becomes researching on their theses' topics, however a PhD student life does not happen only between the walls of a library. Sometimes, PhD students perform in a benevolent or mandatory way teaching activities within their universities, which upgrades their status to collaborators of the university. However, this sort of activities bring along serious responsibilities which might require the diminishing of time dedicated for the thesis' writing. This paper's aim is to investigate which are the factors that contribute to the engagement PhD students feel for their work as teachers. According to the found driving elements, we intend to define the levels of engagement teachers-PhD students show and to layer them down in a structured way. As the research work is a complex enough work by itself, adding an activity such as the teaching one in the life of a PhD student might affect the well-run of the PhD program. Hence, a second objective of this paper is to determine if the teaching experience helps the students to cope better with the PhD requirements. Overall, the contributions of this paper can be of important value firstly for the PhD students that want to seek academic career opportunities during their PhD degree. Secondly, the paper can as well as benefit the universities that would like to manage better their PhD students and learn how to integrate them in their organizational teaching charts. Learning about their engagement drivers can lead to designing fitted win-win partnerships between the university and the PhD students that could bring added value for both sides. [For "NORDSCI International Conference Proceedings: Education and Language Edition (Athens, Greece, August 19, 2019). Book 1. Volume 2," see ED603411.]

As a nation strives to meet the challenges posed by globalization, which is an issue of the information economy, its strength relies heavily on its citizens' intellectual prowess and critical thinking skills. Thus, institutions of teacher education play a key role in producing teachers who will be able to meet the needs of the time, with empathy, while promoting critical thinking, creative ability and the value system as a priority. Educating teachers to incorporate soft skills is critical for the profession's success. The term 'soft skills' refers to a wide range of personal and interpersonal attributes that are aimed at transforming the individual as well as society as a whole (Apple, 1996). The purpose of this research is to highlight the degree of preparation of future teachers in four large primary education universities in respective European countries. To achieve this, a mixed-mode technique was used by the researcher (questionnaires and semi-structured interviews) to gather information. The target group came from the teaching staff at the faculties of education in four European countries (Spain, Romania, France and Greece). Ten academics from each nation were handpicked to participate in face-to-face interviews. At the same time, the teaching staff of the teacher training departments participated in a focus group, in groups of 5 people each. The most crucial soft skills in their teaching profession were identified to be social skills. [For the complete Volume 20 proceedings, see ED622631.]

COVID-19 pandemic and post-pandemic had led to the confrontation of higher education system with enormous challenges. That necessitated the urgent transition from face-to-face teaching to online-teaching. The change was an innovation in higher education. A comparative study of digital education based on the survey in 2020-2021 in seven different countries was conducted at Shanghai University. The study was based on grey comprehensive evaluation model. In general, developed countries had high comprehensive evaluation value, while Finland, United States of America, South-Korea and Latvia had relatively low grey correlation coefficient in several certain indicators, leading to a sharp drop in the overall score. Romania ranked last while China ranked second as a developing country as well. The study launched a conclusion that research and development personnel, infrastructure funds and university financial investment in digital education had relatively more obvious effects on improving the innovations and quality of higher education system including the leadership system of universities. [For the full proceedings, see ED639633.]

A need for concerted efforts in devising a more profound socialist education for the younger generation, and a strengthening of ideological ties joining the socialist nations was revealed in conference papers on: (1) the conference's significance (K. Tmej); (2) inaugural address (J. Kuberski); (3) Marxism-Leninism on the task of schools and teachers in building-up communism (M. I. Kondakov); (4) the teacher's role in forming a socialist set of values for children and youth (J. Wolczyk); (5) the teacher's role in the communist education of school children in the German Democratic Republic (G. Neuner); (6) the teacher's task and preparation in the period of building-up socialism in Cuba (M. F. Aranjo); (7) the teacher's work and training in the Hungarian People's Republic (S. Miklosvari); (8) the training of teacher cadres in the period of building-up a mature socialist society (Z. Atanasov); (9) the teacher as the most important factor in educating a new man (N. van Le); (10) the training and further education of educational personnel in the Rumanian Socialist Republic (V. Radulian); (11) theoretical problems of teachers' and educational personnel's lifelong education (K. Cepicka); and (12) Mongolian teachers' struggles to educate man (B. Davaasuren). Short presentations were made on: (1) the school and the teacher's task in personality forming in an advanced socialist society (O. Balaz); (2) forms and methods of training and of further education of educational personnel in an advanced socialist society (J. Jelencik); (3) education towards the teachers' scientific world outlook in the spirit of Marxist-Leninist ideology (J. Matejcik); (4) problems of teachers' further education in Czechoslovakia (K. Tmej); (5) the functional unity of the ideological-political, educational, and professional components in the training and further education of teachers of vocational and practical subjects (M. Klimova); (6) the teacher as educator (M. Hargas); (7) the problems of methodology and methods of research on questions of teacher education in Czechoslovakia (O. Franc); and (8) the personality of the teacher and the profile of graduates trained to teach at the first stage of basic schools in Czechoslovakia (M. Korinek). (CJB)

This paper aims at analyzing and comparing the approach of Task-based language teaching (TBLT) to bachelor students taking classes of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) at two universities in Bulgaria and Romania. The outcomes of the research show that both Bulgarian and Romanian students express their favorable preferences towards using this approach. This is a case study implemented on a local level in two neighboring countries in the region of Southeastern Europe. [For the complete Volume 17 proceedings, see ED596826.]