Tahani Z. Aldahdouh

The study examines Finnish adolescents′ evolving technology use and security practices across two survey waves conducted in 2018 and 2020. Adopting a longitudinal trend perspective, the study explores how adolescents′ engagement with digital devices, services, and security‐related behaviors evolved over time, without attributing observed changes to a single external cause. The data were collected via online questionnaires from N = 280 adolescents aged 15–19. Descriptive statistics and chi‐square tests with Bonferroni corrections were used to examine differences between the two measurement waves. The findings indicate notable shifts in technology use patterns, with increased use of the internet, especially for communication via email and video calling apps. Meanwhile, social media use and audio calls remained unchanged. Security practices showed mixed patterns. Improvements were observed in password management and browsing habits, whereas a significant decrease in antivirus software use was observed. The findings underscore the need for continued monitoring of adolescent digital behavior and for integrating security education within everyday technology use rather than treating it as a standalone domain.

This study investigates teachers’ professional practices during the delivery of a transnational professional development programme by one Finnish university for a cluster of Brazilian private universities. The objective is to identify local instructors’ patterns of teaching (teachers’ personal-professional qualities), which are conceptualised as approaches to teaching and self-efficacy beliefs, as well as participation in professional development practices (professional cultures and professional development activities). An online questionnaire was sent to the teaching staff of five universities and 201 responses were received and analysed. The most important explanatory aspect was self-efficacy beliefs, which formed the basis for categorising teachers into meaningful clusters. The findings illuminated significant disparities among these clusters concerning their teaching approaches and engagement in professional development activities. Additionally, the results indicated that teachers who had participated in the transnational pedagogical programme were more committed to experimenting in teaching and participating in research-focused and formal professional development activities than those who had not. Plausible explanations for these results and directions for future research are discussed.

This study, set against the backdrop of the recent genocide in Gaza (October 2023–January 2025), investigates the motivations driving university students, graduates and academics to independently enrol in an initiative offering free access to onlinecourses through platforms such as Coursera, edX and DataCamp. This study adopted self-determination theory as the conceptual framework. A convergent mixed-methods design was employed, and all participants in the initiative were invited to complete a brief online questionnaire incorporating the situational motivation scale and open-ended questions. A total of 503 responses were collected: 138 participants completed one or more courses, 78 indicated ongoing enrolments, 92 did not complete any courses and 195 did not specify their status. The results of the quantitative analysis highlighted that the participants were mainly driven by autonomous internal motivation, and the thematic analysis of the qualitative data further highlighted this motivation, identifying six key categories: career-related, war-related, belief-related, personality-related, social and affectional motivations. War-related and belief-related motivations set this study apart from prior work in the field. The findings provide critical insights into how educational initiatives can support learners in extreme circumstances in alignment with Sustainable Development Goal 4. Implications for education policy and practice in conflict zones, along with avenues for future research, are discussed.

What we know about the development of online teaching expertise during the COVID-19 pandemic is scarce. Current research has concentrated primarily on the obstacles encountered by university teachers, leaving a significant gap in our understanding of the strategies they employ not only to survive but to flourish in online teaching. Furthermore, there is a significant bias toward Western perspectives in existing research and it remains unclear whether Western theories of expertise development are relevant in deprived, fragile, and conflict-affected contexts. The current study set out to explore how university teachers developed their online teaching expertise during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Palestinian context. Narrative episode interviews were conducted with 16 university teachers working at a Palestinian higher education institution in Gaza city. Thematic analysis revealed five themes of online teaching expertise development: domain, mechanisms, motives, consequences, and emotions. Implications for practitioners and administrators are discussed together with future research directions.

The purpose of this study was to understand the factors behind university teachers’ ability to implement instructional changes during the COVID-19 pandemic. An online questionnaire comprised of open-ended and Likert-scale questions was administered to teachers at a Finnish university in April 2020. The sample consisted of 378 university teachers who were categorised into four groups based on their digital innovativeness and the extent to which they implemented changes to adapt their teaching practices to COVID-19 restrictions: Avoider Survival Adapters, Avoider Ambitious Adapters, Embracer Survival Adapters, and Embracer Ambitious Adapters. We examined the association between the teacher groups and their learning patterns and background characteristics. The findings showed that Embracer Ambitious Adapters have significantly more meaning-oriented and application-oriented learning patterns than Embracer Survival Adapters, though Avoider Survival Adapters have more problematic learning patterns. Furthermore, the results indicated that pedagogical training and having more teaching experience helped innovative teachers embrace more changes in their teaching practices during the COVID-19 pandemic. In terms of discipline, the results showed that teachers working in hard disciplines (e.g., physics) were more likely to belong to the Embracer Survival Adapters group, while teachers working in soft disciplines (e.g., history) were more likely to belong to the Embracer Ambitious Adapters group. Possible interpretations of these findings and perspectives for further research are discussed.

The aim of this study is to explore the extent to which a transnational pedagogical training affected university teachers' approaches to teaching, as well as their efficacy beliefs and cultural perceptions, and to examine how such training could stimulate teachers' pedagogical-development processes beyond the specific context. An explanatory sequential mixed-methods design was adopted for the study. Quantitative data were collected through an online self-reported questionnaire from two-independent samples, both before (n = 119) and after (n = 110) the training. Qualitative data were collected after the training through episodic narrative interviews with five teachers. The quantitative and qualitative findings indicate contradictory aspects of the teaching approach and perceived culture. While the questionnaire responses highlighted the dominance of teacher-centred teaching approaches and an individualistic culture, a thematic analysis of the interview data showed that teachers experienced pedagogical development as (1) increasing student engagement, (2) improving their own teaching practices, (3) a community activity and (4) an institutionalised process. The design of the current research may have limited the authors’ potential to deeply investigate the effect of the transnational pedagogical training, as only snapshots of the teachers' perceptions were elicited. Future studies might consider a within-subject longitudinal design to thoroughly follow teachers' trajectories in learning and development over time. The research findings suggest that transnational pedagogical training initiatives are to be promoted amidst these uncertain times. Even though the focus of the study was not to explore the teachers' perceptions of teaching development during the pandemic, the current results imply that the mentioned training helped teachers in tailoring their pedagogical practices to suit the unexpected online teaching settings. The study adds to the relatively new literature on the perceived effect of transnational pedagogical training initiatives. This study’s findings contribute to the body of knowledge related to pedagogical development in fragile and conflict-affected contexts.