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As HE professional educators in Social Sciences, we teach a curriculum which foregrounds inequalities. This includes inequalities related to diverse social groups and differences of race, class, gender, disability and sexuality, underpinned by global approaches. Learners are asked to reconsider the social world through a critical lens with perhaps very different explanations of inequalities and the (re)production of power. This paper illuminates early considerations arising from primary research of those teaching moments described as 'difficult' by our participants. The difficulty created for the teacher/student partnership is often experienced by us through the resistance by students who often cannot imagine a world view beyond their own. They can believe their way of knowing themselves in the world is how the world is for everyone. The critical educator recognises that in any given moment they are required to consciously manage the pedagogical illuminations of structural inequalities and individual agency. These difficult moments produce struggle for the student who is learning and pedagogical challenges for the lecturer. This paper captures a snapshot of some of the experiences of educators teaching diversity across a range of subject areas. We also reflect on the potential for professional development and possibilities for embedding best practice in preparing academic staff to deal with difficult moments.

Social entrepreneurship is a research topic that has received great attention from academics especially in recent years. However, the results in the literature are far from univocal, for example, there is no clear conceptual delimitation of the term, and it is often analyzed using the same theoretical models of traditional entrepreneurship. With the present study, we have attempted to overcome this problem by analyzing different antecedents, closer to the social and emotional universe, and detached from a male-centric and traditional vision of entrepreneurship, with the aim of understanding social entrepreneurial intentions in higher education. Results obtained from a sample of 962 college students showed that prior experience with social problems (PESP) and empathy (EMP) have a significant and positive impact on social entrepreneurial intention (SEI). Furthermore, social self-efficacy (SES-E), moral obligation (MO), and perceived social support (PSS), in addition to directly influencing SEI, mediated the relationship between PESP-SEI, and the relationship between EMP-SEI. More interestingly, gender (male vs female), but not the different type of study (social sciences vs economics and business sciences), moderated the relationship between EMP-SEI to the benefit of women. Given the importance of social entrepreneurship as an alternative solution to the current economic crisis, these are important results because, on the one hand, they make it possible to overcome the male-female gap that characterizes traditional entrepreneurship, on the other, they underline the need to introduce different constructs closer to the social and emotional sphere into entrepreneurship education programs.

Cambodian upper secondary education is divided into two tracks: science and social science. Students make their track selection in grade 10 and begin their enrollment in grade 11. The enrollment in the science track has witnessed a steep decline from 96% in 2014 to 34% in 2020, while the enrollment in the social science track has seen a remarkable surge from 4% in 2014 to 66% in 2020. This tendency poses a significant challenge to the government's endeavors aimed at promoting workforces in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. This survey study aimed to examine factors influencing students to leave science-track classes. The survey was administered to 696 grade-12 students from 20 upper secondary schools. The two-level hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) was used for data analysis. The findings revealed that at the individual level, age, ease of national examination, high passing rates, preference for good grades, expense on private tutoring, STEM major choices at the territory level, attitudes toward science, parental advice, and family income significantly influenced students' decision to opt for social science track over science track. At the school level, school location was a significant predictor of track choices. The findings were discussed with practical implications to improve enrollment in the science track at Cambodian upper secondary schools.

This study aims to explore the experience and training of pre-service and in-service teachers (n = 470) using visual diagrams. For this purpose, they answered a questionnaire regarding their training and experience with them throughout their entire education. The results show that teachers' experience with visual diagrams was very limited at all educational stages and subjects. They consider them valuable for learning, but they have received little instruction on diagrams, copying existing materials rather than producing original ones. They mainly produced their own visual diagrams in Natural and Social Sciences. They also produced other type of diagrams (mainly quantitative and verbal) in non-STEM subjects. The results indicate a need to provide teachers with training and opportunities to practice with visual diagrams, and to make them competent to use them in their teaching to increase their didactic use with their students throughout the educational system.

The scientific literature reveals the impact of applying game-based videos and gamification on undergraduates' learning. This work proposes, within an online context, using these educational strategies to make students the active protagonists of their learning. Therefore, this paper aims to analyze the students' perception of the effectiveness of the application of game-based videos (within a flipped classroom framework) and gamification to improve knowledge and competencies. The study was conducted for four months with pre-service teachers (n = 190) in an online Social Sciences course. The students were provided with the lesson plan and filled in an ad hoc questionnaire using a quasi-experimental design in an ecological environment. The results indicate a positive impact in all the assessed aspects after implementing the innovative experience. Utilizing a different teaching style, one with the student as the protagonist of the learning process plus the improvement of learning shows significantly positive educational results. These preliminary findings enhance the development of pre-service teacher training and a student-centered teaching--learning process. Consequently, guidelines are provided to advance innovative educational experiences in online higher education.

Globally, scholarships for international higher education play a critical role in human capital development. While substantial research has documented the benefits such scholarships provide for individuals, their impact on the creation of pathways for social change remains under-researched. This paper bridges this gap by examining the extent to which a government scholarship for international education has created pathways for social change in Kazakhstan. Data were collected through interviews with 67 scholarship alumni. Drawing on Dassin et al.'s (2018) framework for pathways to social change, the findings reveal that international education fosters social change in Kazakhstan in four ways. First, the scholarship program develops local talent and builds agents of change. Second, it widens access to international education, particularly for individuals from marginalized communities, who would otherwise lack access owing to their scarce financial resources. Third, the program develops alumni's cosmopolitan and intercultural competencies and strengthens international collaborations. Finally, it creates associations and groups through which alumni can collectively contribute to society. The findings highlight that while the interviewed alumni foster strong patriotic feelings and are determined to contribute to the prosperity of their country, underdeveloped industries, economic volatility, and top-down bureaucracy in workplaces limit their potential contributions to social changes. These findings may help policymakers and administrators to reconsider and improve on the design and structure of scholarship programs.

A series of studies have identified gender bias in teaching evaluations in higher education--with women being evaluated lower than men. However, other recent studies indicate that gender bias is not present across all contexts. Our study adds to the understanding of the role of gender in teaching evaluations by focusing on a Danish university--a national context with relatively high educational gender equality and support for egalitarian gender norms. Crucially, the study pays systematic attention to the role of students' gender in explaining evaluation outcomes. In a quantitative analysis of 125,000 evaluations in the social sciences at a Danish university, we identify a same-gender affinity. While there is no overall gender bias in the evaluations, students evaluate a teacher of their own gender best. To understand the mechanisms behind this pattern, we analyze comments provided by students in teaching evaluations and 20 interviews with students. Students are generally more positive in their descriptions of a teacher of their own gender. Moreover, we identify gendered patterns in the perceptions of teachers as well as in the aspects of teachers' behavior and characteristics appreciated by students.

Given the increasing popularity of the science-fiction genre, its capacity for worldbuilding and its long-durée vision, coupled with both the difficulty of discussing issues of migration in today's world as something more than a problem of the present and the necessity to go beyond this presentism, the author argues that science-fiction films provide an excellent tool for peace education inside and outside the classroom in general and to address migration in particular. This article discusses the why and how of using science fiction films for peace education, which the author claims is not necessarily taught in the classroom or special programs but should also be seen as part of lifelong learning/continuous education.

To participate fully in the global knowledge economy, all countries require strong research and innovation eco-systems. This crucially depends on the efficiency of doctoral education and training. We examined the trajectory of doctoral education in Uganda over the past four decades focusing on number of doctoral awards and equity in regard to sex, STEM versus Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, and private versus public providers. We collected data from all institutions providing doctoral education in Uganda through comprehensive review of documents. Our analysis of data revealed low capacity for doctoral education in Uganda. There was under production of doctorates depicted by the low number of doctoral awards; and inequalities in regard to sex, STEM versus Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, and the public versus private providers. We argue that the trends in equity and number of doctoral awards translate into low number of researchers per million inhabitants, low number of researchers engaged in research and development (R&D), and gender disparity in researchers' participation in R&D. We conclude that the low number and inequalities in doctoral awards have deterring implications to the attainment of national development goals. We proffer desired trajectories for the future of doctoral education and training in Uganda.

Multiple perspectives on geographical thinking are lacking in the teaching of climate change in school geography. This study establishes an epistemic model through a co-construction design to support geography teachers' curriculum making with respect to climate change. We developed the preliminary model with four main geographical perspectives, including natural scientific, humanistic, social scientific, and posthuman perspectives, by drawing on studies in academic geography. Based on interviews with nine geography education researchers who have been involved in the GeoCapabilities project, we examined the educational potentials of multiple geographical perspectives in developing student's capabilities to react to climate change.

Both challenges and opportunities are inherent with a growth in Chinese international students in UK Higher Education. However, teachers from the West may not understand the differences in Chinese educational practices, which can lead to negative stereotyping of these students as passive and problematic. This paper rejects this deficit perspective, focusing on the views of Chinese students as to what might need to change about the UK teaching and campus environment to improve their learning experience. Two focus groups were held with Chinese social science Masters' students in a UK university. Some of their key requests included to reduce class sizes; to provide more guidance around study skills; to offer more timely and accessible information; to provide a more flexible range of services and learning support; and to create more social time with staff and other students. The discussions particularly brought out the importance of 'relational pedagogy'. These requirements will need more staff time and institutional flexibility which will necessitate adequate funding. The authors conclude that, despite Chinese students' significant contribution to the local economy and to University finances, there does not seem to be a commensurate investment in protecting their wellbeing and ensuring they receive a quality education. We consider it is important to listen to and act on the students' suggestions outlined here if UK Higher Education is to remain the destination of choice for many Chinese and other international students.

Policy makers increasingly call on higher education to prepare learners for challenges such as global health emergencies or ecological crises. These can be understood as 'wicked problems', which are unbounded, complex and resist simplistic definition. Wicked problems involve stakeholders with incompatible value positions and attempted solutions can result in unforeseen outcomes. How academics stay committed to teaching about such challenging topics -- despite the many difficulties of contemporary higher education -- is an under-researched area. In this study, we interviewed academics who were deeply engaged with teaching about wicked problems. We drew on the concepts of landscapes of practice, boundary work and academic identities to make sense of the teachers' persistence and practices in this space. We conclude with advice for policy makers on how to support academics in this work.

University students' collaborative learning, particularly groupwork, has been more often investigated in Western settings than in countries that have borrowed this Western pedagogy. This qualitative study re-examines Chinese university students' groupwork responses regarding their expectations, attitudes, perceptions, and behaviors. Their responses, the findings revealed, could be conceptualized as strategic navigation resulting from students, as rational and pragmatic learners, negotiating and navigating the interplay among multiple cultures of learning brought by policies, teachers, and the labor market. The study supplements the literature on collaborative learning and borrowed pedagogy and reflects university policymakers' and teachers' need to rethink making student groupwork truly collaborative.

Student dropout is a major concern in studies investigating retention strategies in higher education. This study identifies which variables are important to predict student dropout, using academic data from 3583 first-year students on the Business Administration (BA) degree at the University of Barcelona (Spain). The results indicate that two variables, the percentage of subjects failed and not attended in the first semester, demonstrate significant predictive power. This has been corroborated with an additional sample of 10,784 students from three-degree programs (Law, BA, and Economics) at the Complutense University of Madrid (Spain), to assess the robustness of the results. Three different algorithms have also been utilized: neural networks, random forest, and logit. In the specific case of neural networks, the NeuralSens methodology has been employed, which is based on the use of sensitivities, allowing for its interpretation. The outcomes are highly consistent in all cases: both a simple model (logit) and more sophisticated ones (neural networks and random forest) exhibit high accuracy (correctly predicted values) and sensitivity (correctly predicted dropouts). In test set average values of 77% and 69% have been respectively achieved. In this regard, a noteworthy point is that only academic data from the university itself was used to develop the models. This ensures that there's no dependence on other personal or organizational variables, which can often be difficult to access.

In the past decade, moderated mediation analysis has been extensively and increasingly employed in social and behavioral sciences. With its widespread use, it is particularly important to ensure the moderated mediation analysis will not bring spurious results. Spurious effects have been studied in both mediation and moderation analysis, but this issue remains unexplored in moderated mediation analysis. To fill this gap, we examined the conditions under which a spurious moderated mediation effect in a dual stage moderated mediation model might occur. Specifically, with a hypothetical example and three theorems, we illustrated how the index of moderated moderated mediation may conclude a moderated mediation effect which does not actually exist. As a remedy to rule out the spurious results, we proposed two methods which are simple and easy to implement. Based on the simulation results, we offer researchers some practical guidelines to apply the methods in empirical research.

Scholars assert that, worldwide, doctoral provision is increasingly characterised by accelerated scales of production, competitive funding, centralised administration, and interdisciplinary, cohort-based training. The situation in the UK appears to mirror this picture but scholars have long noted that national settings mediate the forms that broader trends take. We therefore examined the case of the UK's social science doctorates, which have seen both marked growth and a range of policy changes, to explore the potential extent of alignment with these trends. Invoking institutional isomorphism, a conceptual framework which asserts how convergence can be driven by different factors, we interviewed senior staff at a range of UK HEIs to examine the activities and underlying rationales behind their social science doctoral provision. We were able to establish that, while there is a degree of isomorphism around their social science doctorates, this is a complex and uneven situation because different kinds of HEIs are subject to a varying combination of simultaneous and often conflicting forces. Our analysis highlights not only how the relationship between national policies and higher education culture can be fraught, but also how organisations' individual positioning and history has implications for how they are able to act in policy contexts.

In this paper, we utilize the concepts of "racial knowledge" and "subjective understanding" to demonstrate how the metaphor of surrogacy encodes a racialized discourse via the epistemic authority of social science research. Taken together, we demonstrate how the pervasive use of surrogacy as a metaphor reflects the subjective understanding of Black male teachers produced through the racial knowledge of social science discourse. We argue that the metaphor of surrogacy has become so unquestioningly ubiquitous throughout education and popular culture that it has become the default conceptual framework regarding all reforms for Black young men and boys.

Virtual Reality (VR) is a computer-generated environment with noteworthy didactic applications in different educational levels and areas of knowledge. The study of the perceptions of the agents involved about the use of VR in lectures is a fruitful line of research because it has implications in terms of the measures to be taken to improve the training and competence of professors in its use. In this paper, a quantitative, descriptive, and correlational research is carried out on the assessments of a sample of 1638 Latin American university professors on both (i) the didactic use of VR and (ii) the influence of the professors' area of knowledge on these assessments. For this purpose, a validated questionnaire was used, the responses to which were subjected to statistical analysis. As a result, it was found that the ratings of VR are very high, but professors believe that their digital skills for its use are insufficient. In addition, the professors' area of knowledge significantly influences their ratings, being higher in the areas of knowledge in which professors have a better self-concept of their digital skills. Furthermore, gender gaps have also been identified in the answers given, which behave differently according to the area of knowledge. Finally, some conclusions, implications, and recommendations are drawn from the results obtained.

Espousing Indigenous Research Methods including Kîyokêwin/Visiting, beadwork as an embodied pedagogical and research practice, and storytelling, this article explores the authors' experiences working in senior academic leadership positions to support indigenization at the Royal Military College of Canada. The authors consent to learn in public and discuss opportunities for role-modeling individual leadership in institutional contexts and for building small 'safe enough' spaces that generate energy and momentum that have the possibility of supporting broader-scale indigenization efforts. The authors understand the call to indigenize education as a non-negotiable imperative, and argue that it is an ethical responsibility for all who live in Canada to engage intentionally in concrete acts of reconciliation - in (re)building relationships with Indigenous Peoples.

Educational research acknowledges the significant challenges faced by racialized minority students at school. This interview-based study examines the experiences of racialized minority students in Flanders, the Dutch-speaking region in Belgium, regarding a social science curriculum that addresses the power dynamics and privilege involved in perpetuating ethnic inequality in Flemish education. The study aims to develop typologies of students' responses to this curriculum. First, the fighters, thinkers and bees demonstrate diverse reactions to the curriculum. However, all students agree on the necessity of the curriculum for both racialized minority and majority students. Second, the interviews demonstrate that racialized minority students in Flanders possess a wealth of undervalued capitals. Contrary to conservative assumptions, the study finds no evidence that teaching about structural racialized inequalities causes division and impedes the agency of racialized minority students. The article concludes by emphasizing the implications of these student experiences for teaching practices.

This article analyses performance-based research evaluation for the higher education sector in a postcolonial context through a Foucauldian lens. Using Hong Kong as an example, this paper examines the formulation of and receptions towards the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). It is argued that Hong Kong academics, especially those working in the humanities and social sciences, associate the key concepts of 'world-leading' and 'internationally excellent' research in the RAE framework with Western knowledge that undermines local and regional research. They respond to RAE in four main ways: pragmatic compliance; refusal to conform to the demands of RAE; adoption of a dualistic strategy by publishing internationally and locally; and re-imagining of research assessment coupled with the promotion of indigenous knowledge. Two significant implications are highlighted in this article. First, the preservation of a research evaluation mechanism inherited from a colonial government perpetuates and entrenches external control and dominance in the former colony. Secondly, there is a need to re-construct the research appraisal apparatus as well as advance indigenous and hybrid knowledge in a postcolonial educational landscape.

A multi-section coordinated math for social sciences course at a Hispanic-Serving Institution went through a major revision which included the addition of many resources. One resource was educational songs, including a lyric video on the three possible outcomes when solving a system of linear equations. The learning objective associated with this topic is one where learning (if not also teaching) may fall short, thus motivating a creative way to increase engagement. We discuss results from anonymous surveys of students and instructors to assess this educational song's potential to support student engagement (and hopefully learning), contextualized with qualitative data such as classroom observation. Recommendations for future assessment and class use are provided.

This article provides a conceptual reformulation of Merton's scientific ethos widely known by the acronym CUDOS (i.e. communism, universalism, disinterestedness and organised scepticism). While Merton perceived the threat to the autonomy of science as coming from "outside" the walls of academe, mainly in the form of nationalism and racism, the subsequent rise of neoliberalism and global market forces means that the scientific ethos is being undermined largely from "within" the university itself, leading to the DECAY (i.e. differentialism, egoism, capitalism and advocacy) of CUDOS. The STEM-ification of the humanities and social sciences academic community has led to the rise of a post-academic ethos. This manifests itself in professional pragmatism with academics facing both ways at the same time by remaining largely committed to Mertonian norms in theory but needing to adapt to the performative demands of DECAY as a new set of institutional norms that prevails in practice.

Engineering students require nontechnical skill sets to combat the 21st century's complex engineering challenges in addition to possessing technical skills. To provide multidisciplinary experience to undergraduate engineering students and to study the formation of engineers, a research team at West Virginia University offered a multidisciplinary course in two academic semesters. In this course, engineering students collaborated with students from social science disciplines to solve a complex, open-ended transportation engineering problem. Focus group sessions were conducted among the participating engineering students at the end of both semesters to document their experiences and perceptions of the cross-disciplinary course. This study applied unsupervised machine learning-based text mining approaches to extract students' relevant experiences and perceptions from the focus group text data. From the analysis, four clusters were identified, where engineering students highlighted their awareness/understanding of the cross-disciplinary majors, appreciation of the cross-disciplinary majors, and communication and collaboration issues in the group presentation and report writing tasks. Engineering students initially perceived challenges in working with cross-disciplinary majors that eased as the semester progressed. Students acknowledged their lack of nontechnical skills as engineers. They appreciated the ideas the social science students provided, which helped them improve their problem-solving skills and become more productive. Students also highlighted several improvements for the future offerings of the course (e.g., more focused and concise communication among professors and peers) and suggested possible approaches to resolve the concerns. The findings of this research provide an in-depth understanding of the potential of multidisciplinary courses in the engineering curriculum and ways to enhance the experiences of participating engineering students in such offerings in the future.

In the last decade, major progresses have been made and the flipped learning has been increasingly implemented in diverse educational settings to enhance the physical, cognitive, personal and social abilities of students as well as to improve their learning outcomes. The advantages and challenges of flipped learning have been explored and quantified in terms of students learning. Despite the popularity of the flipped learning research, there is a lack of empirical evidence to review the knowledge of the concept more systematically, and flipped learning is not well known in a social sciences and humanities at the university setting. The study purpose is to investigate the positive effectiveness of implementing the flipped learning in social science and humanities settings. The analysis included filtering from a large number of publications to 21 primary studies published between 2015-2021. The result indicates a positive impact on students learning outcomes such as academic, personal, social and cognitive skills. The result also revealed that English language was the main focused filed in the employment of flipped learning compared to others. In addition, it was seen that the majority of the flipped learning studies included first year's students as the study level. Meanwhile, the most significant challenges encountered by students and instructors is the activities design depending on the technology being used and limited resources and time. The results revealed that the flipped learning is an effective approach in promoting positive outcomes and the needed century skills. Collaborative research amongst countries on the effect of flipped learning in the future studies to produce more complete findings.

In Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), learners can post both text comments and overall ratings regarding the courses. There is growing interest in assessing the consistency of online reviews and the determinants of learner satisfaction. This study analyses the disconfirmation effect between textual review topics and the determinants of learner satisfaction in MOOCs. The MOOCs are categorised under three disciplines - Social Science, Technical Science, and Humanities & Natural Science. A crawler was employed to collect the corpus, extracting 93,679 reviews of 5,214 online courses from a Chinese university MOOC platform (icourse163.org). Textual analytics was used in the topic extraction. The empirical results suggest a strong disconfirmation effect between textual reviews and the determinants of learner satisfaction, i.e., not all textual review topics affect the overall learner satisfaction. Compared with positive reviews, negative (and neutral) reviews have a stronger disconfirmation effect. Further, the antecedents of learner attention are course-discipline specific. The disconfirmation effect is course-discipline dependent, with the most prominent for Technical Science courses, and the least for Humanities & Natural Science courses. This study provides a framework to guide platform managers and course instructors in better course delivery and enhancing overall learner satisfaction.

For many researchers in the social sciences, including those in applied linguistics, the term ethics evokes the bureaucratic process of fulfilling the requirements of an ethics review board (e.g., in the US, an Institutional Review Board, or IRB) as a preliminary step in conducting human subjects research. The expansion of ethics review boards into the social sciences in the early 2000s has led applied linguistics as a field to experience what Haggerty (2004) termed ethics creep, a simultaneous expansion and intensification of external regulation of research activities. The aims of these ethical review boards are: (a) to evaluate the types and risk of harm to participants as a result of research activities, (b) ensure that participants can give informed consent to be part of the research activities, and (c) provide oversight on researcher procedures to maintain participant anonymity/confidentiality (Haggerty, 2004).

Mixed methods approaches are increasing advocated for researching complex problems in the social sciences, but they are not widely used by postgraduate students of public management. This article describes a study where qualitative and quantitative methods lecturers worked collaboratively to design and teach both methodology courses in an integrated way to encourage public management master's students to see the two methods as complementary, and thus possibly be more open to consider using the mixed methods approach in their research. A multi-method research design was used in this study. Students' prior studies of qualitative and quantitative research methodology were not found to predict their summative course marks significantly on qualitative and quantitative components, respectively, but initial cognitive competence in the study of statistics correlates with summative performance in the quantitative component. Qualitative and quantitative summative scores correlate strongly, with those students with higher qualitative and higher quantitative summative scores tending to score higher on a task where they reflect on the value of both approaches to their own proposed research. However, students with lower scores, who comprise the majority of the sample, are not able to demonstrate appreciation of the possibilities or status of applying both methodologies to their own research. They tend to misunderstand foundational concepts when applied to their research design and/or show limited ability to apply their understanding to design their own work accurately or in a workable way. This study suggests that, where postgraduate students have prior limited exposure to research methods, improving the quality of student research and their engagement with mixed methods may require more mastery of both methods and methodologies than the scope and pacing of taught master's programmes usually allow.

The current study aimed to understand the trend in the community of inquiry that many researchers have been working on for over 20 years. Within the scope of this aim, 102 studies were reviewed with regards to some variables: most preferred keywords and words in abstract, year of publication, authors, journals, geographical distribution, academic disciplines, research methods, course delivery methods, participant type, and references. The findings demonstrate that the articles reviewed were from 216 authors in 20 countries. Most of the studies were from the Social Sciences field, and the continent with the most studies was North America. Quantitative research methods were mostly preferred in the studies, and the study group of a great of majority the studies were higher education students. Finally, various recommendations were made for future research after determining gaps that exist in the current literature.

In massive open online courses (MOOCs), recommendation relationships present a collection of associations that imply a new form of integration, such as an interdisciplinary synergy among diverse disciplines. This study took a computer science approach, using the susceptible-infected (SI) model to simulate the process of learners accessing courses within networks of MOOC offerings, and emphasized the potential effects of a network structure. The current low rate of access suggests that a ceiling effect influences learners' access to learning online, given that there are thousands of courses freely available. Interdisciplinary networks were created by adding recommended courses into four disciplinary networks. The diversity of interdisciplinarity was measured by three attributes, namely variety, balance, and disparity. The results attest to interesting changes in how the diversity of interdisciplinary knowledge grows. Particularly remarkable is the degree to which the diversity of interdisciplinarity increased when new recommended courses were first added. However, changing diversity implied that neighbouring disciplines were more likely to come to the forefront to attach to the interdisciplinarity of MOOC offerings, and that the pace of synergy among disparate disciplines slowed as time passed. In the absence of domain experts, expert knowledge is not sufficient to support interdisciplinary curriculum design. More evidence-based analytics studies showing how interdisciplinarity evolves in course offerings could help us to better design online courses that prepare learners with 21st-century skills.

In this paper, we seek to understand how to foster an inclusive learning community in a social science remote course. Through student feedback, our retrospective reflections on our course design and teaching, and a literature review of effective strategies that promote inclusive learning environments, we highlight the importance of embedding meaningful interactions and carefully scaffolded motivation, engagement, and management strategies in online learning settings. We draw upon a tree metaphor to describe a process-oriented approach to fostering an inclusive learning community that illuminates the instructional conditions and practices necessary for a transformative learning experience in remote contexts.

Purpose: Academics are at the forefront of criticisms about so-called "fake news" considered to undermine evidence-based approaches to the understanding of complex social, political, and economic issues. However, universities contribute to the production of fake news through the legitimization of measures that promote student performativity rewarding their academic non-achievements. This conceptual article will seek to illustrate how this can occur via the writing of methodology chapters by postgraduate students. Design/Approach/Methods: This article provides a critical analysis of the writing of methodology chapters in dissertations and theses in postgraduate education in the social sciences. In so doing, it applies the concept of performativity to student learning. Findings: It is argued that the pressures on students to comply with the requirements of emotional performativity in respect to ideology and method in close-up, qualitative research can lead to fake learning. This phenomenon may be exemplified by reference to a number of practices, namely, phony positionality, methodolatry, ethical cleansing, participatory posturing, and symbolic citation. Originality/Value: This article provides an illustration of the concept of student performativity. It demonstrates that emotional performativity plays a significant role in the way in which students are required to comply with expectations that give rise to inauthenticity in learning.

This paper explores the effective online teaching practices and activities used for an asynchronous online learning environment. During the 15-week semester, students had various opportunities to learn rigorous content while utilizing various technological tools. The course, called "How People Learn," offered diverse and exciting readings to students interested in education as a social science. We felt that the course design helped students learn effectively in the asynchronous online environment. The same course was taught online by two different instructors, yet the course outcomes were very similar. Our paper outlines the course's design and purposeful creation of active learning activities in the asynchronous online setting. At the end of the article, we recommend a series of technological tools applicable for use in similar asynchronous online courses.

Students' learning experiences shape their perceptions of effective learning practices, and these perceptions affect the effort and approaches students engage in when in a learning environment. The type of learning environment students engage with may vary across disciplines, therefore students' perceptions may be domain-specific. Data for this study were students' discipline-specific perceptions of effective course structures and activities for chemistry and humanities and their general epistemic beliefs. The responses (N = 532) across three courses were grouped as either constructivist or instructivist learning approaches and then reported as a ratio. A step-wise regression was used to determine domain-specific differences in the students' responses, and the association to epistemic beliefs and perceptions of learning. Results revealed disciplinary differences in students' perceptions of learning. Understanding students' perceptions of learning have implications for students' future enrollment, effort towards learning, and approaches to learning within different courses.

In general, history is a construction of the past that should use models, methods, and concepts of other social sciences to explain the changes or events throughout human life and civilization. Thus, the assumption that history should be explained from a broader perspective of social sciences and the deep analysis of social theory has transformed the need for an interdisciplinary approach in history education. In the quest for an advanced learning approach to history education, this article proposes integrative learning as an approach that could meet the need for the integration of various perspectives and theories from social science disciplines in learning history. Constructively explained through a systematic literature review of related studies oriented towards history, interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, and integrative learning, this article works on the possibility of integration encompassing four steps, namely establishing a purpose, understanding and leveraging disciplinary insights, leveraging integration, and critical stance. Despite the lack of empirical research, integrative learning is a promising concept that could improve the method of fostering high-order thinking skills in history education.

A socio-scientific issue is one of the learning techniques used today, which uses various scientific sources to make students think scientifically to conduct a dialogue and discuss solving a problem. Various problems in socio-scientific are controversial, requiring reasoning, and ethical evaluation in the decision-making process. A conflict between chemical reason and students' social point of view will cause students' different assessments and attitudes towards the socio-scientific issue. This study is a research and development (R&D) that focuses on the instrument's validity with the factor analysis technique to assess attitudes towards the socioscientific issue in chemistry learning. CFA and EFA analysis found five factors in the tool: anxiety, interests, likes, benefits, confidence, validity, and reliability. The total reliability coefficient is 0.853. Of the eight instrument feasibility analysis requirements, seven instruments were declared fit to meet construct validity.

Crowdsourcing is an important tool for collecting spatio-temporal data, which has various applications in education. The objectives of this study were to develop and test a laboratory exercise on soil erosion by water and field data crowdsourcing in an online introductory soil science course (FNR 2040: Soil Information Systems) at Clemson University. Students from different STEM disciplines (wildlife biology, forestry, and environmental and natural resources) participated in the study in the fall of 2021. They completed a sequence of self-contained digital teaching modules or reusable learning objects (RLOs), which are often used in online learning. The exercise included a field exercise and learning module to teach students about different types of water-based soil erosion as well as field data collection and crowdsourcing tools. As a result of this exercise, student familiarity with crowdsourcing was effectively increased, as shown by the post-assessment survey with a +31.2% increase in the "moderately familiar" category and a +28.3% increase in the "extremely familiar" category. The online quiz contained ten questions and was taken by 56 students with an average score of 9.5 (out of 10). A post-assessment survey found that most of the students indicated that the laboratory was an effective learning experience about field data crowdsourcing using a GPS-enabled cellphone application. Detailed students' comments indicated enjoyment of learning (e.g., data collection, learning about different technologies), the value of multimedia (e.g., ArcGIS Survey123, cellphone), the flexibility of learning (e.g., field work), the content applicability (e.g., actual field examples of erosion by water), and criticism (e.g., technical issues). A word cloud derived from students' comments about their laboratory exercise experience indicated the most frequent words used by students, such as "erosion", "enjoyed", and "different", among others. Incorporating a learning module and field exercise using modern data collection technology into an undergraduate soil science education course enabled students to understand the value and methods for leveraging cellphone-based field collection methods to crowdsource data for environmental assessment. Practical recommendations for planning and executing future crowdsourcing exercises were developed using the current study as an example.

The impact of hate speech, both on a personal and social level, has increased due to social media. This has made it the focus of interest of numerous scientific journals, which increases the visibility of this global problem. The aim of this research is to analyse the basic descriptive metrics of the scientific production on hate speech and social media, as well as to explore the interdisciplinarity of these approaches. A bibliometric study has been carried out on the basis of the works indexed in the Scopus database related to the binomial 'hate speech' and 'social media' over a period of 20 years (2001 to 2020). The metrics used show that it is from 2017 onwards when this topic begins to arouse greater interest among researchers and that they constitute a sufficient indicator to consider the topic as one of interest to the scientific community. The joint research between both concepts raises its quality levels from a strictly metric point of view. 'Computer Science' and 'Social Sciences' are the two areas that clearly define the scientific production on this subject. The inversion of percentages in terms of the areas of origin of the works and citations in these two areas, is evidence of this interdisciplinarity. The indicators obtained show the relevance and transcendence of a social problem in the face of which proactive measures must be implemented.

This design case introduces a design and development process of theories from environmental psychology, humanities, and social sciences as heuristic thinking devices to measure human-centered design solutions. The pedagogical review of the traditional studio design process revealed obstacles as students translated their research and program to the development of the design. They created the latter without applying their theoretical understanding of research conducted on the human-environment relationship. Given this challenge, the authors evolved a revised design method utilizing theories to afford an empathetic design response. Students in two interior design studios adopted this approach to develop hypotheses for the design problem, and later the theories informed guidelines for cultivating a more empathetic design response. Project analysis by authors, and reflection statements from the students, capture the value of theory as thinking devices to assist directly in their work by improving their position and power, prompting a more imaginative and generative ideation process. The role of this design case is to acknowledge the role of theory as a heuristic device in order to generate, develop, and support the advancement of interior design as a discipline through interaction, mediation, and discourse.

This paper provides a reflection on the way changes taking place in doctoral education are being perceived and internalized by doctoral students. The Doctoral perceptions are analyzed through Ph.D. candidates' motivations to enroll in the program and to their levels of satisfaction with the supervision experience. Comparisons between national and international students, as well as differences according to doctoral programs' scientific areas, i.e., between students enrolled in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) and in Social Sciences, Languages and Humanities (SSLH) are established. Based on a case study developed in a Portuguese university, conclusions point to the dominance of a romanticized, traditional view of doctoral education, with the academic profession at its core. This view is mostly shared by international students and those from SSLH scientific areas. In turn, national Ph.D. candidates and those from STEM areas have incorporated a more instrumental view of doctoral education, aiming for training participants to professions outside academia.

Traditional houses are part of the culture of every country. Indonesia is a country that has a variety of traditional houses. The traditional Banyuwangi house is known as the "Using" house. This house can be explored in terms of ethnomathematics and used as part of learning mathematics. This research is focused on knowing and describing mathematics learning that integrates the ethnomathematics of "Using" house, thematic, and connected models. The research was also conducted to determine the effectiveness of the learning that has been carried out. The results showed that the use of the "Using" house in ethnomathematical-thematic-connected-based mathematics learning: (1) could be done using the trivium concept (literacy, matheracy, and technoracy); (2) can be done thematically by integrating four subjects (Indonesian, social sciences, fine arts, and mathematics); (3) can be connected by integrating two mathematical concepts (two-dimensional geometry and arithmetic); (4) through seven phases of learning; and (5) effective because 80% of students can solve problems as expected.

The climate emergency mandates a refocusing of society and education on the relationship between humans and the more-than-human world. Emerging from decades of social constructionism that openly promoted climate science denial, social and educational theorising now engages with new materialist philosophies and the agency of matter. Physicist Karen Barad's book Meeting the Universe Halfway, cited over 13,000 times, offers an ontological foundation for new materialism based on her idiosyncratic application of quantum physics. While critically reviewing Barad, I found myself unexpectedly "sliding back down" into the terrain of my physicist pastime, rereading quantum mechanics in depth. I reflect here on how this "ontological detour" empowered me to "climb up a ladder" towards the theoretical foundation for my PhD project in climate change education. I argue that ontological grounding and cross-disciplinary engagement are vital for advancing research and gaining perspectives through lateral connections.

This study aims to determine the effect of the geographical inquiry learning model with the SETS approach on complex problem-solving abilities. The hypothesis in this study consists of H0 (There is no difference in the effect of the geographical inquiry learning model with the SETS approach on the students' CPS abilities) and H1 (There is a difference in the effect of the geographical inquiry learning model with the SETS approach on the students' CPS abilities). The research used quasiexperimental research with a pre-posttest control group design and Independent Sample T-Test from the results of the N-Gain Score as data analysis. The population in this study was the Class XI Social Sciences in high school level in the odd semester of the 2021/2022 academic year at MAN Kota Batu, Indonesia, using a purposive sampling technique. The research subjects consisted of 70 students (35 students in the experimental group and 35 in the control group). The research was carried out in the study of Geography, with the subject matter of Environmental Impact Analysis. The results of the Sig (2-tailed) showed a score of 0.000 < 0.05. The experimental class had an average score of 85.06 for CPS abilities, higher than the control class's 71.2. According to the findings, the geographical inquiry learning model with the SETS approach greatly impacts CPS abilities. This research proves that the geographical inquiry learning model with the SETS approach positively affects complex problem-solving abilities following the 21st-century learning objectives.

This study aims to analyze and describe the response patterns of school exam participants based on the person fit method. This research is a quantitative study with a focus on research on social science elementary school examinations as many as 15 multiple choice items and 137 participant answer sheets. Data collection techniques were carried out with documentation by collecting the participants' exam results and then being scored based on the answer key. The data analysis technique used is statistical person fit analysis with the Rasch Model. Data were analyzed using the R Program with the package latent trait model (ltm). The results showed that as many as 93 or about 67.9% of examinees detected fit or were categorized as having rational response patterns and as many as 44 examinees or around 32.1% of examinees were detected as not fit or categorized as having irrational response patterns. Based on the results of the study, it was concluded that most elementary school exam participants had a response pattern that was fit (had a rational response pattern).

Although there are numerous studies and discussions about the concept of value, it is claimed to lack an objective basis. The concept of value is difficult to define from a single perspective because it relates to many disciplines, especially the social sciences. Philosophy, sociology, psychology, religious sciences, anthropology, and historical sciences have attributed different meanings to the concept of value. However, the fact that the concept of value is related to human behavior has been a common point in all disciplines of social sciences. Values are essential in terms of social sciences because they interpret human behavior (Ulusoy & Dilmaç, 2016). Therefore, this study aimed to determine what academics thought about the core values lost in society and what kind of solutions they offered to that problem. The sample consisted of 16 academics from Van Yuzuncu Yil University/Turkey. The sample consisted of 12 men and 4 women. The study adopted a qualitative research design. Data were collected using a semi-structured interview questionnaire consisting of open-ended questions. The data were analyzed using descriptive analysis. The findings focused on participants' views of the concept of values, the values lost in society, values problems, and solutions to the lost values.

The study of academic achievement continues to be one of the "star" topics in the field of education today because of its great importance as an indicator for assessing educational quality and has therefore been studied from various perspectives. In this regard, the aim of this study was to study which dimensions of self-concept (behavioral, intellectual, physical, lack of anxiety, social or popularity and subjective happiness-life satisfaction) predict performance in each core subjects (Spanish Language and Literature, Mathematics, Natural Sciences, Social Sciences and First Foreign Language (English)). For this purpose, a sample of 116 students from the last cycle of Primary Education (10-12 years) was selected by accessibility and administered a multidimensional Self-Concept Scale. The data were analyzed using the multiple linear regression technique, evaluating the Root Mean Squared Error, statistical power and effect size in all of them. The main results show that intellectual self-concept is the most important predictor of academic achievement (p<0.05). Therefore, schools should be aware of the importance of fostering confidence and expectations of success in students' academic tasks.

Education is a fundamental tool to make a country's society equitable, just, and respectful of the environment. As primary education is compulsory for a country's population, it allows building knowledge and skills to promote sustainable development, in this sense, it is necessary to examine whether the primary education curricular bases offer learning opportunities and contexts for students at this stage to develop their awareness, knowledge and skills in a sustainable way. The qualitative methodology was used, specifically, the content analysis to analyze the 24 Chilean primary programs of Mathematics, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences under the cognitive domain of "Education for sustainable development" (ESD) and in terms of their learning objectives with the sustainability development goals (SDGs). The results show that an interdisciplinary stochastic education in the context of the curricular learning of Social Sciences and Natural Sciences provides learning opportunities to develop ESD at the different levels that make up primary education. It is observed that the Natural Sciences and Social Sciences curricula at all levels of primary education lead to ESD are being developed in an interdisciplinary manner (with these two subjects and stochastic themes).

At the dawn of the 21st century--when your author, who is now an educator, was in college--the United States was the sole global superpower. But the world changed with the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, as well as other events that remade the world in which current students now study. As an educator, I can explain that the structure of the world, termed "world orders," can subsist of underlying world "sub-orders," and "suborder traits" which even underlie them historically, and how students can outline them. In this way, while political-economic history looks to be constantly repeating itself, with the alignment of "traits" changing, what is considered "modern" and how we go about teaching it in history, political, and economic courses is the research aim of this article. Unlike the historian, whose job it is to identify such "traits," the social scientist should attempt to measure their importance; as educators, we need to point this difference out to students. These new ideas come from an educator with a background in both history and the social sciences. The article summarizes the current world order and concludes with a discussion of what "future" world orders might be, based on sub-orders, while offering ideas for educators to use for students, many of whom will be future scholars, on how to measure which world orders and "sub-orders" are generationally and empirically "modern."