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For the forty-fifth time, the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) is sponsoring the publication of these Proceedings. Papers published in this volume were presented online and onsite during the annual AECT Convention. The Proceedings of AECT's Convention are published in two volumes. Volume #1 contains papers dealing primarily with research and development topics. Papers dealing with the practice of instructional technology including instruction and training issues are contained in Volume #2. This year, both volumes are included in one document.

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.]

Homeschooling, as a controversial educational practice, raises many questions about its outcomes, which still remain unanswered. The homeschooling population has been growing over the past years, as has interest in this educational paradigm. The increased accessibility and use of emerging information technologies also hold significance in facilitating access to knowledge and contributing to the expansion of this educational trend. In this context, numerous families contemplate homeschooling for several reasons. Yet, the decision to homeschool or not their children is often difficult, as the outcomes are not predictable. Researchers have explored the academic achievements of homeschooling; however, a more significant question remains unanswered: Are homeschoolers happy? This paper aims to provide insight into homeschoolers' perceptions of this matter. Research findings on the life satisfaction of homeschoolers presented here were based on the anonymous responses of an online survey collected between July 2022 and July 2023 from 33 current or former homeschoolers from five countries. This study used the Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) to evaluate the well-being of homeschooled individuals who self-assessed their educational experience as well. The paper also examines the advantages and disadvantages of the educational practice as perceived by homeschoolers themselves in an attempt to provide a picture of the satisfaction of homeschoolers with their educational journey. [For the complete Volume 22 proceedings, see ED656158.]

While research on the impact of a Eurocentric curriculum has often focused on marginalized populations in developing nations, it is paramount that scholars also examine the impact of this curriculum on students in the Global North. To this end, this paper begins by first defining and then critiquing what is often referred to as the "Eurocentric curriculum", and how standard Eurocentric content, such as Eurocentric mathematics and its pedagogical practices may alienate learners from their families, societies, and cultures. It will then suggest an alternative approach, "Ethno-mathematics" introduced by D'Ambrosio (1985), and will apply this concept to educational outcomes in both South Africa and the USA. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of how these cultural imbalances within a school's curriculum, if not corrected, may negatively impact the academic success of all students, particularly the marginalized. [For the complete Volume 22 proceedings, see ED656158.]

Struggles for educational equity in the United States (US) and South Africa (SA), particularly with regard to race, class, and ethnicity, remain significant and have become even more critical during and following the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns. Many scholars have focused on the daily struggles of school-aged children, indicating that millions in each nation are homeless, food insecure, and without health care. Moreover, schools often serve critical social reproduction functions in addition to their primary role of advancing learning by providing feeding schemes, computers and internet connectivity, and, in many cases, essential childcare for workers. Since 2020, the pandemic and lockdowns negatively impacted the education delivery system in both countries by enhancing the socio-economic and digital divides. Both countries struggled to provide equitable access to quality education for all children, regardless of their socio-economic status (SES) or geographic location. Through a comparative lens, we analyze attempts by the US and SA to address racial and economic divides over the past decades, and particularly during the pandemic and its disruptions, to better understand the mechanisms education systems used to address stakeholder inequalities. After a brief overview of the historical paths to greater social and economic equality made by both nations the paper explores the significant roles that race, ethnicity, and SES continue to play in determining access to quality education, especially during times of disruptions such as the recent pandemic. It also asks if the economic divide has become the more powerful and consistent factor determining access to well-resourced schools. The paper concludes by asking if patterns of historical racial and ethnic inequalities are now being replaced by an even greater economic divide that continues to provide patterns of unequitable education for children based on their race, ethnicity, SES, and access to supportive resources. [For the complete Volume 21 proceedings, see ED629259.]

There is no doubt that telecollaboration currently plays an important role in foreign language learning and, not less so, in the field of English for Specific Purposes (ESP). Guth (2020) highlighted how telecollaboration has rapidly evolved in the past years as an innovative approach, and how it has brought together a whole community of academics and researchers interested in the field. In this paper, a brief overview of the various presentations that took place in the EuroCALL Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) Special Interest Group (SIG) Symposium is offered. The paper introduces four projects based on telecollaboration contextualised within an ESP classroom in higher education. The first one focuses on a collaborative debate project using English as a lingua franca; the second elaborates on improving learners' pragmatic skills through telecollaborative roleplays; the third describes an immersive Virtual Exchange (VE) aiming to foster the students' civic and entrepreneurial competence, while enhancing their intercultural communicative competence. The fourth project aimed at improving students' business communication and management skills in English in a multicultural environment. [For the complete volume, "Intelligent CALL, Granular Systems and Learner Data: Short Papers from EUROCALL 2022 (30th, Reykjavik, Iceland, August 17-19, 2022)," see ED624779.]

Virtual Exchange (VE) in second language education refers to a technology-enabled, interactive, intercultural experience that is designed to increase learners' intercultural communicative competence and performance. In this paper the findings of a bilingual (English/Turkish), synchronous video communication project among 31 US and Turkish college students are presented. Thematic analysis was used in this study. The results show that the VE -- to a certain extent and similarly to other research studies -- achieves the learning objectives of not only increased cultural awareness and communicative competence about the target culture and language itself but also the growth of factual knowledge about diverse topics that the students are interested in learning. [For the complete volume, "Intelligent CALL, Granular Systems and Learner Data: Short Papers from EUROCALL 2022 (30th, Reykjavik, Iceland, August 17-19, 2022)," see ED624779.]

Textbooks play an important role in teachers' instructional decisions (Jones & Tarr, 2007), which consequently affects students' learning. This paper reports on a comparison of the elementary mathematics textbooks used in Iran and the United States, the Go-Math textbook. I analyzed topic sequences, frequency of the tasks, and cognitive demands of the fraction task in second and third-grade textbooks, employing the framework developed by Smith and Stein (1998) regarding the Levels of Cognitive Demands (LCD). Findings showed that Iran's textbooks devoted more percentage of pages to fractions in second grade than Go-Math textbooks. LCD of the tasks in second grade in both courtiers were in lower levels. Also, the presentation of the fraction concepts varied in different countries and Go-Math covered more fraction concepts in third grade. Recommendations for future research were offered. [For the complete proceedings, see ED657822.]

Soft skills are key for the successful realisation of individuals in their personal, professional and social life, but scientific research conducted on the soft skills of homeschoolers is still scarce so far. One of the most frequent questions, when homeschooling is discussed concerns the presumed lack of social skills of homeschoolers. A common assumption is that homeschoolers' socialisation is compromised and homeschooled individuals' soft skills development is, therefore, impaired. However, researchers, education specialists, and homeschooling families have differing opinions about this question. Research shows that the concern of social skills deficit comes often from outside the families, although parents usually care the most about their children's wellbeing. Homeschoolers, who were surveyed in the framework of this research did not confirm this assumption either. Therefore, there seems to be a clear need for deeper understanding and further exploration of the soft skills of homeschoolers. This paper aims to present the initial findings, discovered through theoretical study and qualitative and quantitative analysis of the preliminary results of an online survey conducted with homeschoolers from 3 countries aged over 16 years in order to explore the soft skills they develop. [For the complete Volume 21 proceedings, see ED629259.]

This study aimed to reveal general landscape of research on teacher resilience, employing descriptive and bibliometric analyses. Descriptive analyses were performed utilizing Web of Science's internal system, while bibliometric analyses were executed through the VOSviewer program. Web of Science Core Collection was used as a data source. Citation analyses of publications, authors, and journals, as well as co-authorship, co-citation, and common word analyses were conducted. The research reveals a timeline of publications, indicating a notable surge in 2006, and a substantial increase in 2021. The countries with the highest number of publications on teacher resilience, in descending order, are the United States of America (USA), Australia, the United Kingdom (UK), and the People's Republic of China (PRC), according to the research findings. Authors such as Gu, C. Day, S. Beltman, C. Mansfield, and A. Price emerged from the citation analysis. Based on the results from the co-citation analysis, C. Day and Q. Gu were identified as the most frequently co-cited authors. The co-occurrence analysis of keywords highlighted key terms like resilience, teacher education, early career teachers, teacher candidates, professional learning, school leadership, and COVID-19. The findings were contextualized within the existing literature, leading to recommendations for future research. [This paper was published in: "EJER Congress 2023 International Eurasian Educational Research Congress Conference Proceedings," Ani Publishing, 2023, pp. 591-611.]

Augmented reality (AR), a cutting-edge technology, has the potential to change the way students learn by superimposing virtual items and information onto the real environment. Through more immersive and interesting interactions with digital content, AR might help students better understand difficult concepts and boost their drive to learn. As a result of its contribution to student learning, AR has become increasingly appealing to educational researchers. This study aimed to descriptively explore the characteristics of AR studies in education and to qualitatively analyze the most influential ones indexed in the Web of Science (WoS) between 2000 and 2022. A scoping review was conducted to determine the sample of the AR studies in education based on the inclusion criteria. Accordingly, descriptive analyses were conducted to identify the characteristics of the AR studies in education between 2000 and 2022 in terms of publication year, country, affiliations, journals, funding agencies, and citation trends. Then, the research methodologies and implications were found among the most influential AR studies in education between 2000 and 2022 by synthesizing qualitatively. The overall results indicated that AR studies in education have been conducted since 2008, with an increasing number of studies over time. Based on the implications of the most influential studies identified in terms of citation numbers, it was detected that AR has the potential to enhance education and training by providing interactive and engaging environments, linking real-world contexts with digital resources, and promoting efficiency and effectiveness in learning. [This paper was published in: "EJER Congress 2023 International Eurasian Educational Research Congress Conference Proceedings," Ani Publishing, 2023, pp. 273-291.]

The notion that educators are committed to effective facilitation of racial integration in secondary schools has become the keystone in developing a socially just schooling system in South Africa. This paper sets out to determine the role educators play in the transformation of schools towards racial integration, as well as their nature and perception in facilitating racial integration in the truest sense. Findings emanating from this research indicate that the striking down of the policies and educational system of the Apartheid regime has propelled educators from segregated backgrounds into teaching learners from different racially diverse backgrounds. Similarly, most learners for the first time are being taught by racially diverse educators. A qualitative framework is used to investigate firsthand experiences of managing racial integration in relation to educators and school management, and their role in determining successful racial integration in secondary schools in South Africa. The purpose of this paper is to prepare educators with the accumulative knowledge, understanding and tenets of the Critical Race Theory (CRT) on how to create opportunities for decolonising classroom content and practice as well as addressing the weaknesses in previous approaches to racially integrate learners in desegregated schools. [For the complete Volume 20 proceedings, see ED622631.]

Interactive simulations allow students to discover the underlying principles of a scientific phenomenon through their own exploration. Unfortunately, students often struggle to learn effectively in these environments. Classifying students' interaction data in the simulations based on their expected performance has the potential to enable adaptive guidance and consequently improve students' learning. Previous research in this field has mainly focused on a-posteriori analyses or investigations limited to one specific predictive model and simulation. In this paper, we investigate the quality and generalisability of models for an early prediction of conceptual understanding based on clickstream data of students across interactive simulations. We first measure the students' conceptual understanding through their in-task performance. Then, we suggest a novel type of features that, starting from clickstream data, encodes both the state of the simulation and the action performed by the student. We finally propose to feed these features into GRU-based models, with and without attention, for prediction. Experiments on two different simulations and with two different populations show that our proposed models outperform shallow learning baselines and better generalise to different learning environments and populations. The inclusion of attention into the model increases interpretability in terms of effective inquiry. The source code is available on Github. [For the full proceedings, see ED623995.]

Classroom instruction in China and in the United States have sharp differences. Typically, constructivist learning theory shapes American classroom instruction whereas Confucian educational culture shapes Chinese classroom instruction. Furthermore, typically, Chinese classrooms adopt a direct instructional approach whereas American classrooms adopt an indirect instructional approach. Awareness of such differences in classroom instruction informs educators of the educational backgrounds of students coming from different educational environments and cultures, enabling educators to better serve different student populations. Additionally, it is worth noting that educational culture worldwide is converging as indicated by world culture theory. This paper presents different classroom instruction in China and the U.S., and inspires educators to learn from the differences, reflect on their own instruction, and eventually innovate and improve their instruction. [For the full proceedings, see ED628982.]

Computer-mediated social learning contexts have become increasingly popular over the last few years; yet existing models of students' cognitive-affective states have been slower to adopt dyadic interaction data for predictions. Here, we explore the possibility of capitalizing on the inherently social component of collaborative learning by using keystroke log data to make predictions across conversational partners (i.e., using person A's data to make prediction about if person B is mind wandering). Log files from 33 dyads (total N = 66) were used to examine: (a) how mind wandering (defined here as task-unrelated thought) during computer-mediated conversations is related to critical outcomes of the conversation (trust, likability, agreement); (b) if task-unrelated thought can be predicted by the keystrokes of one's partner; and (c) how much data is needed to make predictions by testing various window-sizes of data preceding task-unrelated thought reports. Results indicated a negative relationship between task-unrelated thought and perceptions of the conversation, suggesting that attention is an important factor during computer mediated chat conversations. Finally, in line with our hypothesis, results from mixed effects models showed that one's level of task-unrelated thought was predicted by the keystroke patterns of their conversational partner, but only using small window sizes (5s worth of data). [For the complete proceedings, see ED630829.]

From the standpoint of a MOOC practitioner (i.e., a MOOC provider) instead of a rigorous comparative law researcher, this article attempts to analyze the potential legal issues and risks underlying instruction via MOOCs and compare these legal issues and risks between the small jurisdiction Macao and such major jurisdictions as the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and the European Union. These legal issues and risks so identified concern the three perspectives intellectual property, privacy, and accessibility. Supported by academic literature, statutes, acts, and court cases, this article elaborates on these three perspectives with respect to MOOC providers, quotes the key legal statutes and acts in these three perspectives in the context of MOOC providers, elucidates the statutes' and acts' emphases and the related remedies and penalties for breaches, and probably other details, and compares them across the aforesaid jurisdictions. Some prominent findings are that Macao, the United Kingdom, Australia, and the European Union appear to practice clearly defined and compendious laws to protect privacy whereas the United States' counterparts seem to be circumscribed by, for example, the ages of the individuals to protect. As such, for MOOC providers, the former four jurisdictions sound to be more critical than the latter jurisdiction in the perspective of privacy. As for accessibility, Macao's, the United States', the United Kingdom's, and Australia's laws focus on educational institutions. Nonetheless, whether the majority of MOOC providers can be regarded as such "education institutions" under such laws may likely be disputable. In contrast, the European Union more generically enacts a law on accessibility of digital products and services. Even so, to what extent and how MOOCs are supposed to conform to such a law may arguably still be contingent upon each particular scenario. [For the full proceedings, see ED636095.]

This work addresses the importance of innovation in entrepreneurial and business education to ensure that students develop the ability to make complex decisions and solve complex challenges. The intention was to incorporate the complexity theory in decision-making and problem-solving in business and entrepreneurship. To achieve this, we present the results of the first phase of our project, aiming to scale the levels of complex thinking in university students, discuss the need for business and entrepreneurship students to develop complex thinking competency (including its sub-competencies of critical, systemic, scientific, and innovative thinking) in the complexity of the business environment, analyze the relevance of system elements, apply their inductive and deductive reasoning, and create appropriate and relevant solutions. Our findings suggest that an educational model focused on developing complex thinking and its four sub-competencies can enable entrepreneurs to integrate sustainable development, increase their social engagement and critical thinking, develop their imaginative intelligence and discursive and reflective skills, and thus improve their decision-making and problem-solving processes. In the future, we plan to extend this analysis to the behavior of real-life entrepreneurs. [For the full proceedings, see ED654100.]

TVET is an education and training process with a strong emphasis on industry practises that strives to generate competent workers in particular fields. Cooperation with industry in TVET has the potential to improve the quality and relevance of TVET programmes and equip students with the practical skills and knowledge demanded by employers. Thus, there is a need for a complete bibliometric study of research linked to collaboration between TVET and industry, despite the fact that the number of studies in this field continues to increase. The bibliometric analysis in this research which was extracted from Web of Science database is analyze using VOSviewer. The research conducted a descriptive analysis of the publication number trends, the top authors and leading journals in this field. Next, the researcher also analyzed the co authorship based on authors and countries, research trends, citation and keywords analysis as well as co citation analysis. The article found that most of the articles in this field are published by authors from developed countries where the majority is from the United States. Other than that, the recent research hotspot were also identified indicating the future direction of the research in this field. [For the full proceedings, see ED654100.]

For more than 20 years, traditional medicine of Mexico, the U.S. Southwest and other countries has been taught as a series of academic course at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque in the United States. These courses focus on traditional uses of healing plants and rituals for students in higher education and the community. These courses discuss the incorporation of diverse Hispanic and Indigenous ancestral methods of healing based on experiential learning through a series of traditional medicine classes offered at the University of New Mexico. This pedagogy is a unique approach to the reclaiming of ancestral perspectives into the university curriculum that have an enduring impact in the students enrolled in these courses. This article provides a definition of "curanderismo" and mentions three major historical figures that have impacted traditional medicine in Mexico and the United States. The article also discusses the impact that these classes have on the diverse students at a Hispanic-Serving, Level I Research American university. Finally, we discuss the development of these courses in the university system and how a program has been created that also allows community members and staff in diverse health professions to enroll in the summer face-to-face institute through the Center for Continuing Education. [For the full proceedings, see ED656038.]

This study offers an analysis and comparison of search results from Google concerning the topic of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in two geographically and politically different contexts: the United States and Italy. As new AI systems, tools, and solutions are developed and implemented in each sector of human life on a global scale, certain imaginaries of AI are emerging. These imaginaries constitute the ground for the public understanding, support, and disapproval of certain AI technologies and regulations. As citizens turn into users, Google remains the dominant gatekeeper of information, thus becoming an influential actor in sharping AI imaginaries. The following analysis is a response to the criticism of Google's search results, considering Google as an essential producer and certifier of AI imaginaries for general public. The comparison of search queries conducted in this analysis shows that the sources which Google presents in its search results add to different types of AI imaginaries, consequently influencing public opinion in different, often asymmetrical, ways. [For the full proceedings, see ED654100.]

This study aims to examine the research published in the Web of Science database on Curriculum Alignment using the bibliometric analysis method. A bibliometric analysis of the studies included in the research was conducted on August 10, 2023. The "Web of Science Core Collection" was searched by entering the keyword "Curriculum Alignment." One hundred-five studies were included in the evaluation. VOSviewer package program was used for bibliometric analysis of article data. According to the general data of bibliometric analysis, 105 studies were published in 42 different sources, and the average number of citations per document was 11.21. When the distribution of articles according to publication years is examined, most articles were published in 2021. It was understood that there were more publications on Curriculum Alignment in the journals Chemical Education and Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice. It has been determined that studies on curriculum alignment are concentrated in the United States; The United States was followed by Australia, England, South Africa, Canada, and the People's Republic of China, respectively. It has been determined that topics such as learning outcomes, curriculum mapping, problem-based learning, analytical competencies, in-service teachers, enacted curriculum, curriculum change, collaboration, and assessment design are current issues discussed together with curriculum alignment. A limited number of studies have been conducted on Curriculum Alignment in Turkey. It may be recommended to conduct new studies on the subject. [For the full proceedings, see ED652261.]