Aylin Kirişçi Sarıkaya

Focusing on the potential of a negotiated or co-constructed curriculum approach, this study investigates how curriculum and learner voice are conceptualized in adult education research within the Turkish context. Drawing on a critical review of nine Web of Science-indexed studies conducted in Türkiye, the study examines how learner roles and curriculum design are framed, as well as the extent to which negotiation components are present. The results show that curriculum is predominantly framed as a predetermined, structured entity arranged around institutional goals and established programs. The reviewed studies lack explicit references to co-construction or negotiation. Ultimately, the chapter frames curriculum co-construction not as a mere instructional technique, but as a situated practice of resistance that directly questions top-down institutional authority and expands democratic agency among adult learners.

Purpose: This study aims to examine the relationships among teachers' participation in professional development (PD), total weekly working hours, peer collaboration (PC), stakeholder feedback, and principal leadership (PL) across three non-Western contexts, namely Macau, Malaysia, and Brazil. Design/methodology/approach: Using PISA 2022 teacher questionnaire data from 11,518 teachers in Macau, Malaysia, and Brazil, the study employed descriptive statistics and mediation analyses to examine how PL and teachers' total working hours were associated with participation in PD through peer collaboration and stakeholder feedback. Findings: The mediation analyses showed that peer collaboration and stakeholder feedback significantly mediated the relationships between PL and teachers' total working hours and participation in PD across all three contexts. However, the mediation patterns differed across countries. Both mediators showed partial mediation in Macau and Brazil. In Malaysia, the relationship between PL and participation in PD was fully mediated by peer collaboration and stakeholder feedback, whereas the relationship between total working hours and participation in PD remained partially mediated. The indirect effects were statistically significant but small in magnitude, suggesting that collaboration and feedback function as modest relational mechanisms rather than strong predictors of PD participation. Research limitations/implications: The study is limited to three countries/economies and therefore has limited generalizability. Consequently, it should be acknowledged that the generalizability of the findings is limited to countries with high, average, and below-average performance in PISA. Practical implications: The findings offer several practical implications for policymaking, school leadership, and PD design. The findings offer several important implications for policymakers, practitioners, and those designing PD programs. Although teachers spending too much time on lesson preparation or student assessments increases their learning impact on students, having too many working hours can create professional fatigue and reduce their motivation. Policymakers should consider strategies to optimize teachers' time use. Second, the study highlights the importance of structured teacher collaboration in fostering effective PL. Social implications: The study shows and emphasizes that PL has a very central role in teachers’ PD and PC. Effective leadership has direct and mediated effects on teachers’ PD engagement, particularly via facilitating stakeholder feedback and PC. Accordingly, there is a need for leadership development programs. Principals should be equipped to cultivate a school culture that prioritizes professional dialogue, shared learning, and continuous feedback. Finally, the different results across these three economies reveal the importance of context and local educational environments in PD strategies. For example, stakeholders' feedback mediates the relationship in Malaysia, but it serves as a partial mediator in Macau and Brazil. Therefore, national education systems must shape PD programs according to the contextual needs and local conditions. Originality/value: This study offers a comparative empirical contribution by examining how leadership, workload, collaboration, feedback, and participation in PD are configured across three under-researched non-Western contexts. Rather than claiming theoretical novelty, the study shows that similar school- and teacher-level conditions are associated with participation in PD through different relational pathways in Macau, Malaysia, and Brazil.

This study aimed to explore how school administrators construct and interpret their professional identity through values, beliefs, knowledge, understandings, experiences, and wisdom. As a basic qualitative research design, the study exhibited the lived experiences of school administrators and how their leadership practices were shaped. A total of 13 school administrators, including principals and vice principals, working in schools at different educational levels, were selected through purposeful sampling to reflect maximum variation. The data were collected using semi-structured interviews. An abductive coding approach guided the analysis, which allowed the integration of emergent insights within the theoretical framework. The findings revealed five main themes that define professional identity: values and attitudes, beliefs, knowledge and skills, understandings, and experience and wisdom. Based on coded segments, subthemes were categorized under each theme. School administrators generally emphasized justice, democratic attitudes, experiential learning, situational awareness, and the role of personal and professional experiences as critical in their leadership identities. This research contributes to the literature on educational leadership by offering a deeper understanding of how school leaders make sense of their professional roles. The findings proved that professional identity is not static and is influenced by reflective practices, contextual awareness, and ongoing interactions between internal and external elements.

This study aimed to identify, synthesize, and critically analyze the existing scholarly sources on teachers’ learning agility (TLA) within K–12 education. First, the characteristics of the eligible sources on TLA were descriptively explored. Then, the outcomes and implications of these studies were qualitatively analyzed. The findings highlighted that studies have been conducted since 2019, and the topic is a contemporary and emerging area of inquiry. All the eligible studies were conducted in the Asian context. The studies covered the academic fields of general education, educational technology, and lifelong learning, and this highlighted the interdisciplinary nature of the concept. Although learning agility was the central concept across all studies, there was no consensus on a shared theoretical framework. The outcomes of the publications associated learning agility with positive educational and professional outcomes, and the implications reinforced the importance of TLA as a crucial, context-sensitive, and multifaceted 21st-century competency. Finally, the study suggested the need for further research to contribute theoretical clarity, explore underrepresented contexts, and provide practical strategies for fostering TLA.

This research aims to explore and compare descriptive context‐specific characteristics and workplace outcomes of the studies on teachers' emotion regulation (TER) at primary education (PE) and secondary education (SE) levels. A systematic review with a mapping approach was employed on NVivo 14 to provide a thorough overview of TER studies in the literature indexed in the Web of Science at PE and SE levels. Accordingly, 20 TER studies in PE and 31 in SE were identified to be reviewed systematically. Descriptive findings suggested a rise in TER studies. Quantitative methods were dominantly employed, and the majority were conducted in China. The conceptual focus of the studies highlighted two key areas: emotion regulation and emotional labour. The primary research focus was found to be affective factors in the workplace. The findings of conceptual analyses on the workplace outcomes revealed five themes at both levels, namely, leadership and management, organisational climate and support, cultural and diversity considerations, teacher development, and classroom and interaction dynamics consisting of similar and distinctive codes.

This study aimed to identify the perspectives of post-graduate students on online learning in the field of educational sciences utilizing Bloom’s revised taxonomy specified for the cognitive domain to qualitatively explore the factors affecting lower-order thinking skills (LOTS) including remembering, understanding, and applying as well as higher-order thinking skills (HOTS) composed of analyzing, evaluating, and creating. The participants for this investigation were comprised of 20 post-graduate students who had enrolled in at least one online course within the field of educational sciences in Türkiye during the academic year 2022-2023. The collected data from interviews were analyzed by adopting the “directed qualitative content analysis” (DQICA) and using the MAXQDA 2020. The results of the DQICA revealed three themes with the connected codes and categories; namely, factors for (1) abilities, (2) inabilities, and (3) expectations aligning with the LOTS and HOTS of Bloom’s revised taxonomy. Overall, the findings suggest that the design and management of online learning environments play a crucial role in facilitating both LOTS and HOTS in higher education.

Digital learning platforms and virtual classrooms are growing more widespread, so virtual classroom management is gaining more importance to ensure student engagement, involvement, and achievements in an online learning environment. The research examines virtual classroom management dynamics and explores the factors that render teachers’ virtual classroom management practices, strategies, and expectations in this regard. The study is a phenomenological research, and data was collected through open-ended questions with 22 lower secondary school teachers working in Istanbul. The findings were gathered under four themes: virtual classroom management process, professional development, opportunities and challenges of virtual classrooms, and solutions to virtual classroom management problems. These results highlight the significance of engagement and motivation toward virtual classrooms and propound teachers' digital competencies and classroom management skills as two fundamental factors in fostering students' engagement in virtual classrooms.

This research aims to systematically review the distributed leadership studies with phenomenological designs in educational contexts to investigate their descriptive indicators, the characteristics of phenomenological research designs, their research focus, and outcomes. A systematic review approach was employed in this study to identify, evaluate, and summarize research evidence within the scope of the research questions. Of 39 publications extracted from Web of Science, Scopus, and Educational Resources Information Center, nine documents were included in the review upon implementing the inclusion and exclusion criteria. According to the results, the studies ranged from 2011 to 2024, and the majority were conducted in Turkey and the USA at the K-12 level in separate or combined designs. Regarding phenomenological design, the studies varied in treating phenomenology and reflecting diverse perspectives. For instance, a notable number of studies utilized the purposive sampling method to select participants. However, most of them differed in their analysis techniques. As for their research focus and outcomes, it was detected that the eligible studies generally focused on influencing factors, elements, and experiences about distributed leadership, and significant results were revealed through phenomenological lenses.