This study explores the importance of Freire’s critique of the ‘banking model’ of education and its implications for contemporary challenges such as digitalization, cultural inclusivity, and sustainability. By addressing systemic barriers, Freire’s concepts offer valuable strategies for fostering critical consciousness, cooperative learning, and equitable opportunities. Culturally responsive teaching and sustainability education align with Freirean principles, providing tools to address global issues like inequality and climate change. These approaches recognize students’ real-world experiences, encourage critical thinking, and inspire collective action. The findings demonstrate Freire’s educational strategy as a valuable tool for educators and policymakers. By embracing his principles of dialogue, empowerment, and social justice, education can maintain its vital role in promoting equity, agency, and advancement within society.

The global increase in demand for higher education has intensified competition and led to the marketisation of higher education. It is pertinent to manage service quality because students rely on the service encounter behavior (SEB) of employees when judging service encounters. This research gains insights into the SEB of student-employee in programme administration, which are influenced by situational definitions and situational roles (role expectations and role response), from a dyadic perspective. The critical incident technique is employed to elicit employees’ experiences in service encounters. The outcome of this research offers an SEB guide, identifying situational roles in a range of service encounters.

This paper proposes a resource-capability-based framework of quality management in Higher Education (HE) and empirically tests it against the experience of HE institutes in Pakistan. The paper posits that HE institutions face intensifying global education competition in a world of accelerated globalization, fast pace of technology development, and rapidly growing knowledge. To enhance quality and performance, they need to build higher-order dynamic capabilities of knowledge creation and transfer (KCT) undergirded by orchestrating three sets of resources they own or control: Staff, students, and facilities. The paper hypothesizes how HE institutions can orchestrate the resources to build up dynamic KCT capabilities to enhance quality and performance. To test the hypotheses, the paper collects first-hand data from teaching faculty and administrative staff members of all the public sector universities of Pakistan through a web-based survey. The paper uses SmartPLS version 3 to analyze the collected data and find evidence supporting the hypotheses.

Researchers have been examining educational resources and content to enhance and support the learning experience. As technology continues to transform the way we learn and access information, digital learning materials have become increasingly popular in modern education. This study looked at how different kinds of digital learning materials affected science students’ learning achievement. The moderator variables used were grade level (kindergarten, primary, intermediate, and secondary), subject (biological sciences, general science, and physical sciences), and length of exposure (1 to 3 weeks, 4 to 6 weeks, and 10 to 12 weeks). A total of 14 studies were considered, involving 789 students from kindergarten through secondary school. We found a large corrected overall effect size (g = 1.16) with a 95% confidence interval. Likewise, subgroup analyses revealed a very large effect size for the subject (g = 1.516, p < .025) and length of exposure (g = 1.471, p < .025), while a huge effect size for grade level (g = 2.241, p < .025). It was also found that using digital learning materials and learning achievement in science have a significant positive correlation (tb = 0.51, p < .05). This meta-analysis underscores the highly pursued benefit of using digital learning materials in improving students’ learning achievement. The study suggests that for digital learning materials to be more effective, they should be designed and used in a way that encourages students to interact with each other, include challenges but not as requirements, be of different types, be appealing, and support learning through multiple senses.

The South African Department of Basic Education has launched a phased initiative to transform ordinary mainstream schools into full-service schools (FSS) as part of its strategy for inclusive education. To ensure the success of this initiative, it is crucial to select schools that can equitably address the diverse learning needs of all students while maintaining high standards of instruction, intervention, and support necessary for achieving success in the core curriculum. Despite this, teachers have expressed concerns about the feasibility of the initiative, particularly due to their lack of expertise in supporting students with varied educational needs. This study aimed to assess teachers’ self-efficacy within an education district in South Africa regarding the adoption of inclusive educational practices as required by recent legislation. Using the Theory of Planned Behavior, 165 teachers completed the Teacher Efficacy for Inclusive Practices scale. The results provide valuable insights into how teachers’ self-efficacy and commitment to inclusive education impact their intentions and actions. Participants exhibited a strong sense of confidence in their ability to collaborate effectively with stakeholders and manage student behavior in the classroom. Furthermore, the findings indicate a generally high level of self-efficacy in implementing inclusive instructional practices. However, challenges persist, particularly concerning the support teachers receive for executing inclusive education.

The study investigated the causes and effects of science tutor attrition in the colleges of education in the Northern Zone of Ghana. Three science and mathematics colleges were used for the study. The study adopted a qualitative approach with 9 participants who volunteered to take part. The interview guide was the sole instrument for data collection. The interviews were conducted through face-to-face and phone calls. The recorded conversations were transcribed and categorized into themes. The study found that the science tutor attrition rate was caused by several factors. These factors could be grouped into unmet expectations of the tutors and the general working environment of the colleges. Regarding the effects of attrition, the study found that it has led to overburdening tutors and, consequently, poor quality training of pre-service teachers. The reputation of the affected colleges is also affected. In view of these, the science tutors at the colleges of education are ready to exit for better conditions elsewhere. The study recommended that the staff of the college of education should be given remuneration that is comparable to what is given to the academic staff of other tertiary institutions with equivalent qualifications and ranks. Also, the working environment in the colleges must be tutor-friendly to avoid the frustrations and dissatisfaction expressed by participants.