{"title":"‘It opened a new teaching space for me’: Transforming higher education practice through digital education","authors":"Jelena Popov , Magda Pischetola , Giacomo Poderi , Jeppe Kilberg Møller","doi":"10.1016/j.lcsi.2025.100922","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.lcsi.2025.100922","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In-service teachers' professional development (PD) courses on digital education tend to be based on a restrictive idea of ‘knowledge transfer’ presupposing an application of course content into practice through a top-down and linear approach. In this paper, we adopt a broader conceptual perspective to examine the learning outcomes of an online/hybrid PD course developed through a design-based research project between 2020 and 2023 and attended by 98 participants from four Higher Education institutions in Denmark. We draw on the cultural-historical activity theory concepts of ‘recontextualisation’ and ‘construction/instantiation’ of the object of activity to analyse interviews with course participants (<em>n</em> = 15). The main findings reveal how the teachers engaged with the resources they encountered in the course to reshape their teaching practices by personalising these resources and adapting them to situated concerns. We identified three types of resources (knowledge, tools, and networks) that the teachers <em>recontextualised</em> to achieve transformation of their practices. This transformation happened in two ways: by reconstructing and remediating problem spaces in teaching, and by bringing about concrete solutions to both existing and newly formulated challenges. In this process, peer feedback and collective discussions were essential elements of the teachers' learning process. In conclusion we discuss the broader relevance of our findings for designing and evaluating online and hybrid digital education PD courses.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":46850,"journal":{"name":"Learning Culture and Social Interaction","volume":"53 ","pages":"Article 100922"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144595487","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Exploring the development of pre-service teachers' epistemic agency in Chinese University knowledge building community","authors":"Fuying Zhou , Shaoming Chai , Zhenhai He , Han Wu","doi":"10.1016/j.lcsi.2025.100904","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.lcsi.2025.100904","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Epistemic agency, the capacity to effectively engage with knowledge and understand its nature, is crucial for successful learning and problem-solving in today's complex world. This study explores the non-linear development of epistemic agency among pre-service teachers engaged in principle-based Knowledge Building (KB) activities on the Knowledge Forum (KF) platform within a Chinese university setting. By analyzing interaction data, notes, and reflective reports from 38 participants, the findings reveal a positive correlation between the development of epistemic agency and strategies for handling cognitive conflicts. The research highlights a transition from reliance on authoritative knowledge to confidence in personal KB, and from simplistic understanding of problems to critical thinking about complex issues. These insights provide empirical support for the design of teacher education curricula, emphasizing the importance of creating opportunities for pre-service teachers to manage cognitive conflicts, thereby fostering their growth in epistemic agency.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":46850,"journal":{"name":"Learning Culture and Social Interaction","volume":"52 ","pages":"Article 100904"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143738491","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Kerstin Danckwardt-Lillieström, Maria Andrée, Carl-Johan Rundgren
{"title":"Travelling through time in a process drama on plastic pollution – temporality in teaching about the complexity of wicked problems","authors":"Kerstin Danckwardt-Lillieström, Maria Andrée, Carl-Johan Rundgren","doi":"10.1016/j.lcsi.2025.100906","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.lcsi.2025.100906","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The understanding of sustainability issues and preparedness to take action towards a sustainable future involves abilities to navigate between past, present, and future. This paper explores how the use of imaginary transitions in time – in the form of <em>historying</em>, and <em>futuring</em> in process drama – may afford student understanding of the wicked problem of plastics. The study draws on a design-based research study on process drama in upper-secondary school chemistry teaching which was conducted in collaboration with two teachers. During the process drama, the students and teachers travel in time to explore the uses of plastic; the motives and needs for using plastic as well as the consequences of plastic use in the form of plastic pollution today and in the future. The collected data consist of video- and audio recordings, which were analysed through qualitative content analysis that discerned how the students connected the temporalities, and which dimensions of the plastic problem were made visible in the temporal movements in the process drama. Our findings indicate that the temporal transitions made visible several dimensions of the plastic issue, and contributed to adding layers of complexity to the issue of plastics.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":46850,"journal":{"name":"Learning Culture and Social Interaction","volume":"52 ","pages":"Article 100906"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143828744","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Revealing student processes in a mathematics classroom: An in-depth instrumental case study","authors":"Ali Bicer , Fay Quiroz , Tugce Aldemir","doi":"10.1016/j.lcsi.2025.100905","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.lcsi.2025.100905","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper explores the creative processes that emerge in an elementary mathematics classroom and examines how the teacher incorporates creativity-directed practices. Using an instrumental case study approach, we analyzed the dynamics of creative engagement in mathematics lessons, considering whether this engagement occurred at the individual, collective, or both levels. The findings revealed that students had opportunities for creative involvement in both independent and collaborative settings. While the teacher's general instructional practices supported creative thinking, some challenges became evident. In particular, the teacher's limited understanding of how to foster creativity in mathematics posed obstacles to students' creative engagement. These findings highlight the need for professional development focused on mathematics-specific instructional strategies that help teachers better support students' creative thinking.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":46850,"journal":{"name":"Learning Culture and Social Interaction","volume":"52 ","pages":"Article 100905"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143759032","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Shepherding the emotion: Embodied socialization of emotion in pediatric dental interactions","authors":"Julia Katila , Enhua Guo , Asta Cekaite","doi":"10.1016/j.lcsi.2025.100895","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.lcsi.2025.100895","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In this study, we use video analysis of embodied interactions to examine the emergence of what we term <em>emotion socialization choreographies</em>—structured, embodied interactions that shape a patient's emotional displays and experiences. Our data comprise video recordings of authentic interactions from Chinese and Finnish pediatric appointments, involving patients aged six to 12 years, their caregiver(s), and healthcare professionals. We focus on the dynamics of embodied interaction and embedded emotion socialization, particularly in instances where patients exhibit a negative emotional response—such as crying—during dental procedures. Our findings reveal that through emotion socialization choreographies, the patient's body is guided by various tactile and verbal actions that influence how patients are expected to feel and express emotions to align with institutional behavior norms and allow dental procedures to proceed. We suggest that these moments are critical, as children are implicitly taught whether their emotional experiences and expressions are valued, through acts that either permit and validate or control and suppress them. Such orientations toward bodies and affective experiences at a micro-interactional level also impact how and what kinds of bodies and affective expressions are perceived as normatively appropriate in broader contexts.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":46850,"journal":{"name":"Learning Culture and Social Interaction","volume":"52 ","pages":"Article 100895"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143562758","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Rose Amazan , Sara Weuffen , Shanna Langdon , Tracy L. Durksen
{"title":"Communities of practice in supporting collective sense-making for culturally nourishing schooling","authors":"Rose Amazan , Sara Weuffen , Shanna Langdon , Tracy L. Durksen","doi":"10.1016/j.lcsi.2025.100896","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.lcsi.2025.100896","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper discusses the Culturally Nourishing Schooling Project (CNS) professional learning conversations (PLCs), which aim to support educators<span><span><sup>1</sup></span></span> in building collective thinking that promotes reform-minded teaching. Across one school year, educators at eight schools in the project voluntarily took part in a series of six or more PLCs with Aboriginal cultural mentors, Aboriginal staff, and project researchers to discuss contemporary scholarship around what it means to be a culturally responsive teacher. Using an established Communities of Practice framework, our qualitative analysis of these conversations illustrates the power of relationality in fostering collective sociopolitical awareness as a strategy to improve the educational experience of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":46850,"journal":{"name":"Learning Culture and Social Interaction","volume":"52 ","pages":"Article 100896"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143592760","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Exploring the collective agency of postgraduate students in an academic study group: A social network perspective","authors":"Xiaodan Zhang , Yu Zhang","doi":"10.1016/j.lcsi.2025.100908","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.lcsi.2025.100908","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The pivotal role of agency in learning has been widely acknowledged. Whether learners can actively utilize social and cultural resources to facilitate the learning process is of great importance, particularly in the development of academic competence. However, scant attention has been paid to unveiling the social dimension of agency and thus the concept of collective agency. To fill this gap, the current study employed a social network analysis (SNA) approach, which centers on social relationships manifested in social interactions to explore the emergence and advancement of collective agency in an academic study group of postgraduate students at a Chinese university. We collected data on students' social interactions through questionnaires and qualitative interviews. The findings reveal that the participants were engaged in multi-layered interactions embedded in instrumental, expressive, and projective social relationships. These relationships served as affordances for them to make agentic choices and actions collectively, which significantly enhanced their academic growth. Finally, we propose a multi-layered model to better understand the fluctuations of collective agency, with a specific focus on the distinctive Chinese group learning style. The findings contribute to awareness of the role of social interactions in fostering collective agency during the pursuit of academic excellence.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":46850,"journal":{"name":"Learning Culture and Social Interaction","volume":"52 ","pages":"Article 100908"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143917319","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Siak Bie Soh , Melissa Ling Lee Wong , Shin Pyng Wong
{"title":"Intercultural learning and mutual adaptation through social interaction: Perspectives from Malaysian hosts and Korean international students","authors":"Siak Bie Soh , Melissa Ling Lee Wong , Shin Pyng Wong","doi":"10.1016/j.lcsi.2025.100907","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.lcsi.2025.100907","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study examines learning and adaptation in a short-term intercultural mobility programme in Malaysia from a non-Western perspective, focusing on Malaysian hosts and Korean international students. Qualitative analysis of interviews and group observations reveals that participants developed cultural knowledge, perceived positive personal qualities, engaged in intercultural socialisation through technology-mediated communication and navigated intra-group collectivist barriers in host-international student interactions. Findings extend Kim's cross-cultural adaptation theory and Wenger's Social Learning Theory by emphasising the dynamic, iterative nature of intercultural adaptation, where both host and international students engage in reciprocal, co-constructed learning. The study challenges the conventional focus on visitor adaptation and highlights how hosts in the dominant culture also acculturate, leading to a more mutual negotiation of cultural norms. These insights offer practical implications for higher education policies and practices, particularly in short-term mobility programs, to foster inclusive, dynamic intercultural learning that enhances meaningful cross-cultural interactions.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":46850,"journal":{"name":"Learning Culture and Social Interaction","volume":"52 ","pages":"Article 100907"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143863780","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Lynn Dittrich , Toril Aagaard , Astrid Camilla Wiig
{"title":"Highlighting practices and dialogic moves: Investigating simulation-based learning in online teacher education","authors":"Lynn Dittrich , Toril Aagaard , Astrid Camilla Wiig","doi":"10.1016/j.lcsi.2025.100889","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.lcsi.2025.100889","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The aim of this study is to examine the potential of simulations for supporting professional learning opportunities in teacher education. Specifically, we investigate how students enact and analyse core practices in a simulated setting when teaching fractions at the fifth-grade level. The data consists of 160 minutes of video footage in which fifteen pre-service teachers at a Norwegian university either practised teaching in a simulation or served as peer observers. Analytically, we apply interaction analysis to the data to explore how the students engaged in both specific and general core practices. The findings show that simulation training including debriefing facilitates the enactment and critical analyses of various core practices such as creating a productive learning environment and strategically redirecting off-task behaviour. Additionally, the findings show that the pedagogical potential of simulation-based learning lies in the interaction that unfolds between the participants namely, the support of the interactor who scaffolds enactment and the educator who facilitates the students' reflective analysis of teaching through specific dialogic moves. Simulation-based learning is thus suggested as an appropriate supplement for training pre-service teachers, preparing them for future professional work.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":46850,"journal":{"name":"Learning Culture and Social Interaction","volume":"51 ","pages":"Article 100889"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143175523","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Teaching and learning argumentative writing as critical thinking in an EFL composition classroom","authors":"Qian Wang , George E. Newell","doi":"10.1016/j.lcsi.2025.100891","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.lcsi.2025.100891","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Despite the valuable contributions of research on teaching pre-set structures of argumentative writing to foster understanding of argumentation in English as Foreign Language (EFL) contexts, structural approaches alone may not provide students with the necessary flexibility as writers, readers, and thinkers. One response to this challenge is to employ critical thinking, which involves an approach to teaching and learning argumentative writing that encourages students to take critical positions in their writing, supported by relevant and cogent evidence. This study examines how an EFL teacher interprets and integrates critical thinking into argumentative writing instruction. Grounded in a theoretical framework that views argumentation from a social perspective, this study considers the social practices and interactional dimensions involved in learning to read and write. Through microethnographic discourse analysis, the study demonstrates how the instructor views critical thinking as the process of identifying and solving problem in argumentative writing and how the teacher employs targeted questions, peer discussions, and inquiry-based analysis to help students learn to argue. These findings may have important implications for argumentative writing pedagogy and writing teacher education in EFL settings, emphasizing the significance of integrating critical thinking skills into instruction to enhance students' ability to engage effectively in argumentation.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":46850,"journal":{"name":"Learning Culture and Social Interaction","volume":"51 ","pages":"Article 100891"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143177689","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}