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The development of critical thinking skills forms an important part of many higher education courses and has become increasingly visible in syllabi and assessment criteria. Yet, in spite of this, students often struggle to understand what it is and to demonstrate it in their work. This paper aims to explore how students understand the term critical thinking and to identify some of the key factors which influence this. An in-depth case study was conducted with four first-year undergraduate students in the education faculty of a university in England. Data were collected through thematic interviews and stimulated recall interviews. Key findings highlight that students believe strongly in the importance of developing critical thinking skills, yet while they can speak relatively easily about more abstract definitions of the term, they often find it difficult to do and to identify in their own work. Findings suggest that their conceptualizations are influenced by their prior educational experiences and vary according to discipline. Implications for pedagogy include the need for explicit guidance on critical thinking, the provision of substantial opportunities for practice, and the need to engage in dialogue across disciplines to highlight opportunities for promoting connection-making and transfer between different contexts.

Background: Indigenous Peoples in Canada bear a disproportionate burden of disease and experience poorer health outcomes as compared to non-Indigenous populations within Canada; these conditions are said to be mediated and exacerbated by pervasive and uninterrupted anti-Indigenous racism. Third and fourth-year medical students at a Canadian medical school were asked to reflect on their experiences working with Indigenous patients in clinical settings, and how their preclinical Indigenous health curriculum impacted these experiences. Method: Phenomenology was used, guided by Goffman's theory of social stigma. Eleven undergraduate medical students were recruited using purposeful sampling. Semi-structured phone interviews were conducted to gain an in-depth understanding of the participants' experiences. Interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim. Data were analyzed using the four main processes for phenomenological analysis. Results: Four main themes emerged from students' descriptions of clinical experiences involving Indigenous patients: 1) students describe how their Indigenous patients encounter the health care system and their own lack of cultural sensitivity in this context; 2) racism was evident in students' clinical interactions with Indigenous patients, but students do not always perceive these biases nor the impact of this on patient care; 3) identifying the impact of racism on care is complicated by situational clinical encounters; and 4) practicality of preclinical Indigenous health education is desired by students to prepare them for working with Indigenous patients in the clinical setting. Conclusions: In their clinical experiences, students witness racism against Indigenous peoples yet are unprepared to stand up against it. Findings highlight the importance of enhancing undergraduate medical training to allow students to better understand the unique experiences and perspectives of Indigenous patients. The results support the need for ongoing Indigenous health education, to foster culturally sensitive experiences while learning about Indigenous patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent upsurge of supplementary education has brought something attention-grabbing to the mediascape in China -- educational ethos, inclusive of pedagogies and teaching ideals, is being widely marketed and increasingly used as a benchmark of 'quality' in education. This study explores the ways in which educational ethos in China is advertised by companies providing supplementary English education for elementary school students (SEEE), and investigates how mainstream teachers perceive the influence of the ethos on mainstream schooling. Ethos was first mapped out through investigation of 10 leading SEEE companies' websites, and 6 mainstream teachers were subsequently interviewed. A schematic paradigm was created to capture advertised ethos which indicates bottom-up educational development towards more interactive and practical English education in China. Interview findings identify three key levels of influence on mainstream schooling: (1) institutional, including accelerating pedagogical reforms; (2) interpersonal, such as increasing teacher--parent tension, and; (3) individual views on language education.

It is natural to assume the languages classroom to be a key site for the construction of learners' linguistic and multilingual identities. Yet, an underlying assumption exists that this will occur regardless of whether teachers explicitly raise learners' awareness about the nature of language and how language is implicated in their lived experience. We argue, therefore, that a new dimension of languages pedagogy is necessary in order for learners to understand their own and others' linguistic repertoires (whether learned in school, at home or in the community) and so to recognise their agency in being able to claim a multilingual identity. In this paper, we present a rationale for and explore the effect of an innovative programme of participative multilingual identity education which was implemented by teachers in languages classrooms across four secondary schools in England over the course of one academic year. Data were collected through questionnaires administered before and after the intervention and sought to trace the formation of students' multilingual identity. Evidence from this study suggests that while more traditional interventions focusing on raising awareness about the benefits of languages can be beneficial, effects can be enhanced by an additional 'identity' element, i.e. actively promoting reflexivity.

Language education has long been considered a female domain across many countries, with girls outnumbering and outperforming boys. The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to examine the nature and structure of gender stereotypes favouring girls among EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teachers. In the quantitative strand, 60 teachers from six Chinese high schools rated typical boys' and girls' affect, achievement and aptitude regarding English in a questionnaire. Meanwhile, in the qualitative strand, another 20 teachers participated in semi-structured interviews about their perceptions of language learners. In both strands, girls were rated more enthusiastic, higher achieving and somewhat more gifted than boys, albeit with descending effect sizes and increasing contention. Additionally, the stereotypical additive connection between affect and achievement appeared stronger than that between aptitude and achievement. The findings highlight the need to tackle gender stereotyping for educators, researchers and policymakers aimed at improving boys' engagement in language learning.

Multilingual identity is an area ripe for further exploration within the existing extensive body of identity research. In this paper we make a case for a conceptual framework that defines multilingual identity formation in terms of learners' active involvement, and proposes the classroom as the hitherto underused site for participative identity (re)negotiation. After reviewing three key theoretical perspectives on identity (the psychosocial, sociocultural and poststructural) for points of intersection and difference, we propose a new framework for a multi-theoretical approach to the conceptualisation and investigation of multilingual identity. This places it at the nexus of (a) individual psychological development, (b), the relational and social, and (c) the historical and contextual. Arguing that a participative perspective can take the field forward, we present a theorised model for classroom practice that provides a structure within which individual learners of a foreign language might explore, with reference to a range of sociolinguistic knowledge, the extent of their current linguistic repertoire. In addition, they are asked to explicitly consider their identity and identifications and offered the agency to (re)negotiate these in terms of multilingual identity, the development of which may be important for investment in language learning.

With the global prevalence of diabetes increasing, more people of reproductive age are experiencing hyperglycaemic pregnancies. Maternal Type 1 (T1DM) or Type 2 (T2DM) diabetes mellitus, and gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) are associated with maternal cardiovascular and metabolic complications. Pregnancies complicated by maternal diabetes also increase the risk of short- and long-term health complications for the offspring, including altered fetal growth and the onset of T2DM and cardiometabolic diseases throughout life. Despite advanced methods for improving maternal glucose control, the prevalence of adverse maternal and offspring outcomes associated with maternal diabetes remains high. The placenta is a key organ at the maternal-fetal interface that regulates fetal growth and development. In pregnancies complicated by maternal diabetes, altered placental development and function has been linked to adverse outcomes in both mother and fetus. Emerging evidence suggests that microRNAs (miRNAs) are key molecules involved in mediating these changes. In this review, we describe the role of miRNAs in normal pregnancy and discuss how miRNA dysregulation in the placenta and maternal circulation is associated with suboptimal placental development and pregnancy outcomes in individuals with maternal diabetes. We also discuss evidence demonstrating that miRNA dysregulation may affect the long-term health of mothers and their offspring. As such, miRNAs are potential candidates as biomarkers and therapeutic targets in diabetic pregnancies at risk of adverse outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analysis of progression in spoken English by newcomer migrant-background learners has traditionally oscillated between formal assessment of oral proficiency and ethnographic description of naturally occurring peer discourse. This paper reports on data gathered from a longitudinal study of newly arrived students with English as an additional language (EAL) in secondary schools in England. The corpus examined consists of semi-structured interviews with 22 students of different L1 backgrounds, each interviewed twice within a 12-month interval. Findings reveal marked improvement in comprehension with greatly reduced reliance on interpreters and clarification requests; limited range in use of verb tense, with heavy reliance on the present tense; areas of improvement in communicative function of speech mainly limited to conjecture, likes and dislikes, and expressions of feeling. Progression in the use of reported speech was limited for the group as a whole but where it was used it shed light on the individual's language development and into their views on their social experiences in their new environment. We argue that there is an urgent need for EAL practitioners and researchers to measure language development along similar lines in order to ground future policy-making in evidential knowledge of patterns of development in oral expression in English.

While the importance of considering the wide variation among language learners has been brought to the forefront in recent years, the impact of such individual differences on the process of second or foreign language writing has been largely neglected. This paper aims to explore the ways in which individual students develop and transfer strategies within and between foreign language (FL) and first language (L1) writing. A two-phase intervention of strategy-based instruction was conducted primarily in the FL German classroom, and later also in the L1 English classroom of a Year 9 (age 13-14) class in a secondary school in England. This paper draws on in-depth qualitative data from writing tasks and stimulated recall interviews. A range of students' trajectories through the intervention were evaluated and four distinct writer 'profiles' were identified: the strategic writer, the experimenter, the struggling writer and the multilingual writer. Both the development and transfer of strategies for these students were shown to be influenced by a complex and dynamic range of factors such as the learner's proficiency level, their level of metacognitive engagement with the task, their attitude towards writing and their strategic use of other languages in their repertoire.

In an increasingly multilingual world, the question of how to improve foreign language speaking skills of pupils in British schools is of paramount importance to language teachers and policy-makers today. This paper examines how an explicit focus on metacognitive strategy use within secondary school foreign language lessons impacts pupils' confidence and proficiency in speaking. The small-scale action research study was conducted with a class of five Year 12 (age 16-17) Advanced Level learners of French in a secondary school in England. While all of the pupils generally achieved well in the reading, writing and listening aspects of the course, they performed considerably less well in speaking tasks. The primary aim of this study was therefore to introduce the students to a range of metacognitive learning strategies with a view to improving their confidence and proficiency in speaking. Data were collected from questionnaires, interviews, strategy checklists and assessment marks collected both before and after a six-week period of strategy instruction. The findings indicate that the use of learning strategies seems to have had a positive impact on pupils' confidence and proficiency in speaking and after the intervention the participants reported an increase in how much they both valued and used a range of metacognitive strategies.

This paper aims to define the knowledge base of teaching in linguistically diverse secondary schools in England. Based on extensive interviews with the teachers across two schools, the paper identifies a range of good practices centred on flexibility and differentiation. These include diversifying teaching resources by using bilingual materials and dialogic tasks, as well as making adjustments to teaching by simplifying input and including cultural references. These practices are characterised by "a situated child-centred approach" which is underpinned by 10 core principles of multilingual classroom pedagogy for English as an additional language. Implications for education policy and practice are also discussed.

Multilingualism is highly prevalent in schools around the world. Yet, the relationship between multilingualism and academic attainment is not well understood. Where research on this topic exists, it has predominantly focused on how home language background impacts on academic success, lacking in a broader view of multilingualism which extends beyond home languages and also considers the identity component of being multilingual. This paper explores the relationship between multilingualism, multilingual identity and academic attainment. Using school-reported and student-reported data from five secondary schools in Southeast England, we disentangle the complexity of multilingualism in schools by contrasting self- and other-ascriptions of multilingualism, as well as investigating indicators of "multilingualism" and "multilingual identity." Our findings reveal meaningful differences between how students are identified and identify themselves as "multilingual," and foregrounds "multilingual identity" as a potentially more meaningful indicator for understanding academic attainment than multilingualism indicators traditionally used in United Kingdom schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Medical students experience high rates of anxiety; frequent examinations are one contributing source. Students may perceive the observed structured clinical examinations (OSCEs) as particularly stressful. Strategies to reduce anxiety during OSCEs have not been described. We sought to implement and evaluate a simple, in-the-moment intervention aimed at reducing students' OSCE-related anxiety by making stress-reducing activities available during break stations during a summative pediatric OSCE. Three break stations were included in an end-of-rotation, summative OSCE. Students were block-randomized to either control group with standard break stations, or intervention group with stress-reducing activities available in the break room. All participants completed the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) before and after the OSCE, and a short questionnaire after OSCE completion. Third-year medical students have high levels of stress before and after OSCEs. More than half of students in the intervention group felt their anxiety improved with activities. While the inclusion of stress-reducing activities in break stations did not impact exam performance, some students subjectively felt their performance improved. If OSCE break stations are logistically required, they can be employed to allow students to briefly relax during a high-stress exam without negatively impacting performance. Next steps include exploration of opportunities for integration of stress-reducing activities during OSCEs with other learner groups, and identification of other stress-inducing aspects of medical training to provide similar opportunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]