This paper explores Chinese teachers' perceptions of teaching quality in music education, grounded in my doctoral research on teachers' implementation of recent policy reforms and their views on creativity within the context of twenty-first-century music education in China.

The research is guided by a comparative analysis of Western and Eastern theories of creativity, contrasting Csikszentmihalyi's Systemic Model of Creativity (1996) and Craft's Model of Possibility Thinking (2000) with Eastern perspectives, particularly the integration of fine art, truth, goodness, and beauty, as discussed by Rudowicz (2004). Eisner's (2017) framework of educational criticism and connoisseurship further informs the research methodology and analysis.

An interpretivist qualitative approach was employed, involving three rounds of non-participant observations and semi-structured interviews with six participants—three primary school music teachers and three piano teachers.

Findings reveal that these Chinese music teachers recognise the vital role of music education in fostering creativity through quality teaching. Their perceptions of teaching quality are deeply rooted in a holistic understanding that integrates aesthetic education with cultural and educational values. They highlighted the importance of quality in music education as a means to address challenges, including the limited scope of traditional teaching methods focused on technique and knowledge acquisition, alongside the pressures of examinations and the workload these create.

This research contributes to the conference theme of Characteristics of Quality Teaching by examining the impact of traditional and contemporary teaching practices, alongside systemic pressures, on teaching quality in Chinese music education. It also addresses Curriculum Design for Equitable Teaching by exploring how creativity can be integrated within the existing educational framework.

This paper presents findings from a project exploring music education's role in supporting phonological awareness and literacy development in learners at two Glasgow primary schools. Delivered from August 2023 to June 2024 as part of the Youth Music Initiative (YMI), the project aimed to enhance phonological awareness through regular music instruction, focusing on pupils residing in areas of high deprivation and those for whom English is an Additional Language (EAL).

The project drew on Hallam's (2015) research on music's cognitive benefits for language processing, alongside Glasgow City Council's social justice initiatives, which emphasise inclusive education in addressing literacy gaps in disadvantaged communities.

The project involved fortnightly music lessons for Primary 1 pupils, delivered by YMI tutors who provided modelled lessons and resources for teachers. Phonological awareness assessments were conducted at the start and end of the year and were supplemented by classroom observations and pupil-learning conversations. Data were also collected from teachers, EAL specialists, and YMI tutors to evidence impact and is presented in video format.

The analysis revealed significant improvements in phonological awareness. In Primary School 1, 90% of children had gaps in phonological awareness at the start of the year, which reduced to 25% by June, with a 54% increase in average scores. Primary School 2 saw a 43% improvement, with 95% of pupils progressing. These gains were especially marked for those living in disadvantaged communities and EAL pupils, suggesting that the music programme effectively addressed literacy gaps in these groups.

This project demonstrates music education's potential to promote equitable teaching practices and close attainment gaps in literacy. By supporting diverse learners, particularly those living in poverty, with additional needs or language barriers, the music programme illustrates how innovative teaching approaches can contribute to educational equity and inclusion, aligning with the conference’s focus on socially just classrooms.

1. Research Aim: Globally, education systems are focused on understanding what constitutes quality teaching and its impact on student outcomes. While much attention has been given to pre-service teacher development, governments are now emphasising the need for ongoing professional learning to improve teaching quality, retention, career progression, and system-wide innovation. This literature review provides a synthesis of research evidence on the impacts of teacher professional learning and ongoing investment in professional learning by governments. This review approaches questions of value and worth from a holistic perspective, focussing on the impacts of quality professional learning on students, teachers, and education systems.

2. Theoretical Framework: The paper combines foundational theories of professional learning with research on evidence-informed policymaking to examine how governments and system leaders use research to shape professional learning strategies. This dual focus provides a generative lens for analysing the design, implementation, and impact of professional learning across diverse educational contexts.

3. Methods: The paper is based on a scoping review of global policy and research literature on teacher professional learning. It surveys key studies from various education systems, including OECD nations, identifying trends, gaps, and the impacts of professional learning.

4. Findings: The paper provides evidence that quality professional learning has strong positive impacts on students, teachers, and education systems. It highlights five primary reasons for investing in teacher professional learning: 1. Strengthening quality teaching and improving student learning; 2. Supporting career progression and leadership development; 3. Bolstering retention and job satisfaction; 4. Fostering collaboration and networked learning; 5. Driving system-wide innovation and improvement.

5. Relevance to Conference Theme: The paper strongly aligns with conference themes by emphasising the critical role of professional learning in fostering equitable and high-quality teaching. Professional learning empowers teachers to offer rich educational experiences for students, making it a crucial investment tool for governments.

The evaluation of effectiveness is still to be considered the weak link in teachers' professional learning: it mainly focuses on the satisfaction of teachers (outcomes), not on the change of knowledge, behavior (output) and organizational and actual practice (impact). Teachers' professional learning is a complex and non-linear process, whose cause-effect relationships are difficult to define. The teachers' professional learning evaluation requires comprehensive models of the complex, situated and contextual nature, open to transformative and critical hypotheses of professionalism itself.

The design, methodology and results of a training-investigation conducted in 2024 at the University of Bergamo and aimed at monitoring/evaluating the professional learning of teachers are presented. The study involved 200 teachers enrolled in the secondary school teaching qualification program within the course on school evaluation processes. The research question concerned the effectiveness of the professional learning experience in developing transformative and critical attitudes. It followed a mixed embedded design. The quantitative data were collected through a pre-post intervention 'ad hoc' questionnaire and analyzed with correlational statistical techniques; the qualitative data were collected through documentary reports (tools specifically designed for assessing student learning) and analyzed using MAXQDA software.

The results indicate that the professional learning experience has modified some knowledge and behaviors (output) of teachers: it favored a composite knowledge of school assessment and stimulated less routine and more original methods of intervention. It also had a fair impact on the school organizations to which it belongs given the on-site adoption of the evaluation tools designed during the process (impact).

The study offers some remarks at the debate on professional learning, from a systemic and transformative, non-linear perspective. It helps to discuss on presumed concepts of 'quality' and 'efficiency' of teaching and professional development and to redefine the role of teachers as empowered of development, not mere gears in a mechanism.

Research Aim: This study investigates the impact of marketisation and commodification in UK higher education on the curriculum, specifically focusing on gender inequality and the marginalization of working-class women. It advocates for a socially just curriculum through Itinerant Curriculum Theory (ICT).

Theoretical framework: Combining critical pedagogy (Freire, 1996), socialist feminist theory (Fraser, 2013), and ICT (Paraskeva, 2016), this research addresses power dynamics and the effects of current curriculum choices on gender and class intersectionality. ICT addresses the world’s endless epistemological diversity and advocates for social, cognitive, and intergenerational justice through non-derivative relevant pedagogical approaches.

Methods: This conceptual piece employs critical hermeneutical qualitative tools (Denzin and Lincoln, 2000; Lather, 2008; Kincheloe, 2011) alongside anti-colonial, decolonial, and Indigenous interpretative platforms (Smith, 1999; Darder, 2019) to excavate the evolution of higher education policies and their impact on curriculum design. Critical analysis systematically examines and evaluates underlying assumptions, power dynamics, and implications, ensuring well-founded changes that address gender inequality.

Findings: The study reveals that a commercialised curriculum, emphasising marketable skills, fails to meet the needs of working-class women and neglects socio-economic and cultural contexts. Undervaluing critical thinking, social justice, and cultural awareness perpetuates patriarchal biases and reinforces social hierarchies. Continuous curriculum evaluation and adaptation is essential for evolving student and societal needs. An Itinerant Curriculum framework would promote social justice, challenge inequalities, and empower all students, particularly working-class women.

Relevance to Conference theme and specific strand: Given current economic, environmental, and demographic challenges facing humanity, it is crucial to keep working on a theory that addresses the world’s onto-epistemological perspectives, needs, and desires. Paraskeva’s ‘itinerant curriculum theory’ challenges educational institutions’ epistemicidal nature, paving the way for equitable curriculum design and classroom.

The GEPEFERS research group has been dedicated to combating social injustices. Our discussions—based on the works Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom (hooks, 2017) and Black Women Physical Education Teachers (Venâncio; Nobrega, 2020)—have generated new connections for us to think and act towards an anti-sexist and anti-racist education. The objective was to describe strategies to confront racist practices in the daily lives of students during physical education classes. We used (auto)biographical narrative (Passeggi; Souza, 2010), based on the experiences of a Black teacher-researcher working in elementary education in the public school system of São Paulo’s capital. She confronts situations of (un)conscious racist practices that are naturalized (Almeida, 2020; hooks, 2017). This account presents one of these actions where a pale 9th-grade student called her classmate “black” in a harsh and pejorative tone. The teacher-researcher, upon hearing such a comment, decided to intervene, using the situation to generate reflections on how our actions can be laden with inequities. We must educate ourselves about ethnic-racial relations, raising awareness that words, actions, and omissions impact others and, above all, that racism is a crime under current legislation. The student acknowledged the incident and apologized to her classmate. In conclusion, we reveal the urgency of raising society’s awareness of the racisms that persist, their structural causes, and the consequences for those who practice and suffer from them. GEPEFERS has been a means for teacher-researchers to encourage each other to confront discrimination based on their own life stories, building an education that provokes critical thinking and challenges the status quo of society, as all education has political foundations.

This paper explores how veteran teachers conceptualize an expanded notion of student safety, particularly for students with marginalized identities within U.S. religious private schooling contexts. Drawing on a synthesis of critical literature on the concept of “safe spaces” in education (Flensner & Von der Lippe, 2019; Barrett, 2010), this study examines the evolving discourse around expanded notions of student safety and how it intersects with religious school climate and regional political and dynamics. It addresses the ways teachers conceptualize these complexities, balancing the need for psychological and emotional safety with the politics of the teaching context. This study is drawn from a larger project involving 10 veteran educators in private Catholic K-12 schools across six U.S. states who participated in group discussions and individual interviews with researchers over the course of an academic year. These discussions reckoned with institutionalized forms of racism, ableism, and anti-LGBTQ views present in American Catholic school practices and enabled by the specific legal context and culture of the United States. Through an analysis of teacher reflections and collaborative discussions, educators articulated the development and selection of culture-setting strategies that establish their classrooms as sanctuary spaces and expand equitable cultures and practices. The findings suggest that teacher conceptions of student safety serve as a pedagogical bulwark against the “invisible curriculum” of school policy—unspoken norms and rules that often perpetuate inequality. Teachers, by fostering expanded notions of safety, resist these hidden forces and create more equitable learning environments. Additionally, the research identifies evidence of school cultures that purposefully obfuscate discussions of racism, ableism, and LGBTQ+ marginalization. This obfuscation paradoxically creates a demand for sanctuary spaces where these difficult conversations can occur. Teachers, in response, develop culture-setting practices that create spaces where students can safely engage in transformative discussions about power, identity, and justice.

The policy landscape concerning First Nations students in Australia has been increasingly focused on improving educational outcomes, school retention and completion, and student wellbeing. In NSW, this has seen greater attention toward the importance of quality teaching practices that integrate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives and pedagogies across the curriculum. For the intended improvements to be realised, effective policy and quality teaching must advance in tandem.

Teachers implementing the Aboriginal Education Policy (AEP) face a tension between complying with policy mandates, confidently employing quality teaching practices for First Nations students, and striving for authenticity in their approach. Teacher disconnection from policy design, lack of confidence in policy decision-making, fear of making errors in policy enactment, and the system's prioritisation of policy compliance all contribute to this tension. Additionally, the perception that policy is separate from quality teaching threatens the smooth integration of quality, equitable teaching practices.

Grounded in the understanding that both principals and teachers are crucial policy actors, this study utilises Ball’s (2003; 2005) toolbox approach to explore how teachers interpret and enact policies promoting equity and cultural understanding, with a particular focus on the AEP. Using qualitative methods including interviews and document analysis, this research investigates teachers’ perspectives on their roles as policy actors and their efforts to authentically integrate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives and pedagogies into their teaching practices.

While educators acknowledge the import of building genuine relationships with students and communities, and engaging in culturally responsive teaching, they often find it challenging to exercise agency and autonomy in policy enactment within a performance and metrics-driven environment. There is an urgent need to reform and reframe policy and policy enactment as a dynamic, context-dependent process that is synonymous with quality teaching. Only then will equitable educational opportunities for all students be possible.

Aim

This study examined undergraduate elementary education teacher candidates’ interrogation of student engagement as a strategy for addressing educational inequality through the structure of Professional Learning Community (PLC) seminars. PLCs are a context where TCs develop knowledge and skill needed to support student learning through the application of equitable teaching practices.

Framework

PLCs are oriented toward a humanizing pedagogy where “educational practice requires the existence of ‘subjects’, who while teaching, learn. And who in learning also teach” (Friere, 1998, p. 67). This orientation prioritizes theory in practice and is concerned with pointing TCs toward teaching for equity. Grounded in the theoretical lens of communities of practice (CoP), PLC seminars focus on socialization, learning, and individual/collective identity development of teacher candidates (Wenger, 1998).

Methods

Data comes from reading guides and exit tickets collected during PLC seminars. This data was analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2019). After identifying patterns and coding the data, themes were generated and defined. These served as analytic lenses framing our sense-making.

Findings

TCs’ latent notions of student engagement were disrupted; TCs operationalized the relationship between theory and practice; TCs envisioned their growth as a process of stitching at the edge of theory and practice. Themes point to teacher candidates’ adoption of an inquiry stance toward student engagement as central to providing students with access to rich learning.

Relevance

PLCs are an effective context in which TCs developed a unifying perspective of student engagement that is agentic for students from diverse backgrounds and circumstances. Key pedagogies of disruption, operationalization of, and the stitching together of theory and practice have the potential to cut across all areas of teacher education and novice teacher learning thereby preparing teacher candidates as they develop quality equitable teaching practices that impact student learning.

The teaching placement, a widely accepted element in teacher education programmes worldwide, presents persistent problems around equity and inclusion for student teachers. Placements, with established hierarchies, mean student teachers are peripherally positioned as novices (Baize 2023; Rosehart et al. 2022) with implications for their professional agency development (Heikonen et al. 2020). This international research project aimed to understand student teachers’ development of professional agency when COVID-19 interrupted their placements and when previous ways of understanding how to teach and how to educate student teachers became insufficient when schools moved online. We used historical socio-cultural theory to conceptualize the pandemic as a societal rupture at the phylogenetic level which also disrupted the ontogenetic (practice) and microgenetic (individual) levels of the social practice of teaching and learning to teach.

For this small qualitative study, semi-structured interviews were piloted, amended, then conducted with student teachers whose schools closed during placement. Using inductive and deductive thematic analysis, with both data-driven and theory-driven codes (Fereday and Muir-Cochrane 2006), we identified how disruption to traditional hierarchies in teacher education created generative spaces to develop student teachers’ professional agency by positioning student teachers on a more equal footing to experienced teachers, especially when their digital expertise assisted the pivot to teaching online.

This study gives a fully developed theorization of teacher education as a social practice and responds to calls for teacher education to foster agile and adaptable future teachers (Kidd and Murray 2022; la Velle 2022). Our findings led us to question the enduring deficit positioning of student teachers. Instead, we suggest a strength-based approach that is cognizant of what student teachers bring into teaching is necessary to foster high quality teacher education and highlight adaptive learning environments and inclusive practices for developing student teachers’ professional agency to intentionally create adaptable future educators.

This paper focuses on Florida’s House Bill 1647: K-12 Education (HB 1467), also known as the Curriculum Transparency Bill. The exploration of different interpretations of educational policy among elementary English Language Arts school teachers of grades 3-5 in Florida, United States, and the impact these interpretations have had on their pedagogical choices was explored. This qualitative case study investigates the varying interpretations of HB 1467 within its real-life context. Data collection methods include in-field observations, semi-structured interviews, and analysis of policy-related documents. This study ascribes to Karl Weick’s (1995) Sensemaking Theory, which connects individuals’ psychological and sociological ideas to make sense of the world around them. Karl Weick emphasized that sensemaking is the ongoing process through which people give meaning to events and experiences to understand them and take necessary action. Teachers collaborate with their peers in education by sharing ideas, insights, and experiences to improve their practices, reduce ambiguity, and adapt to change. How teachers make sense of educational policies determines their pedagogical choices, but what happens when there are many interpretations of the same educational policy? Teachers’ sensemaking of this policy has led to practical and pedagogical variances in classrooms across Florida. This has prompted many teachers to remove classroom libraries, resulting in learning inequities among students across the state. This policy has created a whirlwind of emotions, reactions, and interpretations. Implementing educational policies often leads to diverse interpretations and practices among educators. This study aims to reconcile these tensions by proposing a new educational social contract. This contract, which emphasizes collaboration, equity, and innovation, offers a beacon of hope for the future of education in Florida. It is urgent, as it will help ensure that all students receive a high-quality education, regardless of the specific pedagogical choices made by teachers.

Understanding the intersectional experiences of autistic trans and non-binary students in educational settings fosters inclusive and supportive environments. Research indicates a significant portion of the autistic community and the trans and non-binary communities in Ireland feel excluded within educational contexts. This study investigates and foregrounds the lived educational experiences of autistic trans and non-binary students in the Republic of Ireland (RoI). Positioned within a qualitative phenomenological participatory paradigm, four participants who are autistic and gender-diverse were recruited to participate in the study. In depth semi-structured interviews explored participants’ experiences. Data collection, interpretation and analysis were guided by an anti-oppressive framework, which centred IPA and concepts from CAS, Queer Theory (QT) and intersectionality. This framework supported the exploration of the complex dynamics of culture, power, identity, inclusion, exclusion, belonging, and flourishing which shaped participants’ experiences within school environments.

The study’s findings underscore the importance of recognising and challenging the ableist and transphobic norms that underpin the structures, policies and practices of education contexts. Comprehensive changes at all three levels are needed to ensure that students feel safe, supported, visible, included, and respected in these contexts.

This study contributes to educational discourse by amplifying the voices of trans and non-binary autistic people and reporting their experiences within educational contexts. Participants in sharing their experiences provide important insights into how educational contexts can be made more equitable, inclusive, and supportive. Recommendations from the study include robust anti-bullying policies with a specific focus on transphobia and ableism, curricular changes to increase the visibility of both trans and autistic identity, the provision of training for management, staff and peers and a commitment to move away from tokenistic approaches and meaningfully include student voice. This study serves as a foundational step toward greater understanding, and inclusivity of autistic trans and non-binary people in educational contexts.

Research aim: A pilot study which aimed to develop and evaluate a ‘decolonise yourself’ toolkit for supporting social psychologists to reflect on their research and teaching, considering a decolonizing perspective, will be presented.

Theoretical framework: Decolonising the curriculum and pedagogy has been a key priority for higher education, in recent years, in several countries around the world. Various resources have been created with suggestions from indigenous scholars for Western-oriented and colonialised -minded colleagues and institutions. However, some research has shown resistance and unease among academics to decolonialise their research and teaching practices. One form of resistance might coincide with ‘dominionization’, such as ‘the entrenched ownership of expertise that maintains westernised academic privilege over decolonisation efforts’. Other academics might be willing to decolonise their work but might feel insecure regarding the effectiveness of their efforts and the quality of the outcomes.

Regarding the specific context of psychology some reflection has emerged within community, clinical and school psychology, while self-reflection on teaching practices in social psychology in relation to decolonisation are still needed.

Methods: A self-decolonising toolkit was developed from material collected interviewing ten social psychologists from, and educated in, indigenous and colonised academic environments. The self-decolonising toolkit was then developed and assessed by ten academics teaching social psychology in higher education in Western countries.

Findings: the self-colonising toolkit helped to reflect on one's own teaching practice in social psychology and focus on specific short-term and broader long-term objectives to decolonise the curriculum. Further studies should explore the self-decolonising toolkit’s longitudinal effects and its adaptability to other disciplines.

Relevance to the conference theme and specific strand: self-decolonisation of academics is an important step to decolonise the curriculum in higher education. This study is relevant for the ‘curriculum design for equitable teaching’ and ‘equity and inclusion in teacher education’ conference strands.

Research has long demonstrated that Black people’s experiences with state-run schooling in Canada are racializing and antiblack (Black Learners Advisory Committee 1994; Lewis 1992; Williams 1997). Yet there is a long tradition of Black communities advocating for the transformation of public schooling and implementing community-based programs to complement, supplement, and sometimes challenge, state schooling.

This paper presents preliminary findings from a funded research project, asking: “How have Black community supplementary educational initiatives (BCSEs) exercised agency and resistance in addressing schooling issues?,” and meeting the related objective to produce a critical account of the political visions informing BCSE programs, attending to gender, class, and local context.

The paper uses a Black Studies framework, which identifies contemporary antiblackness as the “afterlife of slavery” inherent to Western nation-states and as casting Black communities outside of Western constructions of the Human (Hartman, 2007; Wynter, 2003). It also, importantly, considers the fugitive, sometimes contradictory, ways that Black communities forge BlackLife amid this antiblack weather (Harney & Moten, 2013; Sharpe, 2016; Walcott & Abdillahi, 2019). It uses a Critical Discourse Analysis of in-depth interviews with BCSE organizers.

Preliminary findings address the discursive formations through which BCSE leaders, who are 1^st to 1.5 generation immigrants in a small Canadian city, understand their BCSE initiatives. I explore how participants’ narratives embrace both Black liberal and radical imaginations, while also weaving in and out of dominant readings of Black students’ realities, constructing them against the experiences of longer-standing Black communities in nearby megacities.

This paper aligns with the conference theme, questioning what it means to support student learning with equitable teaching practices, and envisioning options not limited to the antiblack Western nation-state and its institutions. It engages directly with the strand around reconciling tensions for a new social contract in education by examining the contradictions within BCSE work.

The present study is a multiple case study involving four in-service teachers. Utilizing semi-structured interviews and the analysis of diary material as methodological tools, and drawing on the transformational learning theory (Kokkos 2005:75), the study attempts to capture paths for improving the teaching of History. According to this theory, understanding and interpretation generate new symbolic patterns that are added to pre-existing ones and form the individual's cognitive load. The cognitive load of the participants is considered to be their previously established attitude towards the History lesson. The transformation we aim to document focuses on capturing reflections on previous teaching practices, perceived obstacles, the actions planned to overcome them, and the formulation of new proposals. The change in attitude is expressed through the recognition of the obstacles posed by the new situation and the planning of actions to overcome them, leading to the formulation of new proposals that support the improvement of History teaching.

Thematic analysis based on the aforementioned theory, revealed four different cases of the transformation of teaching that improves the quality of the History teaching. Two of them involve the transformation of teaching practices in History and specifically highlight the value of providing cognitive supports to pupils for pictures’ and sources handling as well as engaging pupils in the assessment process and enriching the subject's thematic content. The last two improvement proposals, emphasize the need for teacher collaboration through informal processes of mutual professional development and the recognition and utilization of pupil diversity through role rotation in inquiry-based communities.

In agreement with the conference’s definitions for Teaching quality, the participants recognize the quality in History teaching in terms of focusing on re-shaping the content and the learning environments, and they consider their own professional development within an environment of acceptance and collaboration as a necessary condition for this.

Holocaust education is central to ensuring that children and young people learn about the genocide during the Second World War in which millions of Jews perished. In many education systems this is marked on a particular day in the school year known as Holocaust Memorial Day. Curriculum materials provide resources for teachers to plan lessons from and, until recent years, holocaust survivors has been able to share their personal narratives of struggle and survival. As the time lengthens from one of the most horrific periods in world history and the number of survivors diminish, perserving personal accounts and learning from them in the contemporary world is ever more important.

This paper reports on a collaborative project in Scotland to develop a set of educational resources that teachers could use to lead lessons about Scottish missionary, Jane Haining, who died in Auschwitz concentration camp. As matron of a school in Budapest, Jane Haining did not distinguish between the children in her charge, seeking to protect them and offer refuge as the persecution of Jews escalated. While honouring the memory of Jane Haining, the project focuses on learning about values and their relevance and application for children and young people, for them, and the world around them. The paper begins by outlining the underpinning pedagogical foundations for project and how these were agreed by a range of stakeholders. The impact of the project for teachers and pupils / students will then be discussed, drawing from evaluation evidence and learning outputs. The final part of the paper explores implications and next steps and considers how projects of this type contribute to 'quality teaching for a more equitable world.'

This research aimed to explore student-teachers’ understanding and perceptions of the factors involved in designing an environment for quality learning and teaching, and to identify common elements, ideas, or specificities in their perceptions. The research was conducted during a teaching session of the elective course Stimulating Environment for Teaching and Learning, which was enrolled by second-year students (N=25) at the Faculty of Teacher Education, University of Rijeka, Croatia. Based on the modern educational paradigm and socio-constructivist theory, the process of learning and teaching is understood as a dynamic, holistic, developmental category in which designing an environment adapted to students’ needs encourages active and collaborative learning, individualization, and differentiation (Čepić & Pejić Papak, 2021). Using a qualitative approach, students’ written papers on the elements of the spatial environment aimed at stimulating student activity were analyzed. Thematic analysis was conducted starting with text analysis, development of main topical categories, followed by two coding processes and category-based analysis. Our findings indicate that students emphasize the importance of teacher competence in modernizing the learning and teaching process and adapting teaching methods to different learning styles and individual needs. They underscore the significance of collaborative relationships and the creation of a supportive atmosphere in the classroom. The spatial environment of the classroom is recognized as a key factor in providing a pleasant, safe, and adaptable space that encourages student activity and creativity. Specificities in students’ perceptions are manifested in varying emphases on teacher competence, collaborative relationships, and classroom atmosphere. This paper provides useful insights into understanding the possibilities and limitations of the elements of the spatial environment from the students’ perspective and underscores the importance of comprehensive student-teacher training to foster a dynamic, responsive, and equitable educational environment for quality learning and teaching in which every student can develop and progress according to their abilities.

Research Aims

This research investigates interdisciplinary curriculum practices in secondary schools in Scotland. Global policies such as The 2030 Agenda for sustainable development (UN, 2015) emphasise the need for young people to be fully engaged in their learning, acquire key skills and knowledge by applying their learning within real life contexts. Within Scotland this is reflected in Curriculum for Excellence where Interdisciplinary Learning (IDL) is cited as one of the four contexts for learning. However, some studies suggest that a serious implementation gap exists and many teachers remain unsure about how to incorporate IDL into their own practice. (Harvie, 2018; Graham, 2019).

In this study, Glasgow City Council and the University of Glasgow partnered to conduct a research study in three secondary schools which were identified as have good practice in IDL. The study aimed to identify practical approaches schools took to implement IDL and the impact this work had on pupils, teachers and the wider school community.

Theoretical Framework

Harvie’s (2020) model of IDL was used as a theoretical framework to underpin the research. This framework was used to inform the questions that were asked during the focus group discussions, analyse the data and present the findings.

Methodology

This was a small-scale qualitative study which adopted a pragmatic constructivist approach. Three focus groups were conducted in each of the three participating secondary schools. Focus groups comprised of members of each school’s Senior Leadership Team, class teachers and pupils.

Findings

The study found benefits for students, teachers and the wider school community. These included cognitive advancement for students in the disciplinary areas, the development of students’ social, interpersonal and transferrable skills, improved relationships between teachers and pupils and increased teacher confidence in terms of curriculum design.

Relevance to the Conference theme and specific strand

Curriculum design for equitable teaching.

This project aims to better understand how faculty members co-construct a shared understanding and collective agreement on how UDL aligned strategies should be operationalized in a teacher preparation program. A growing number of students with dis/abilities are entering higher education institutions (HEI; Fleming et al., 2017; Hartsoe & Barclay, 2017; Madaus et al., 2021)’ therefore, it is essential higher education faculty have the knowledge, skills, and dispositions to effectively teach students with dis/abilities. This is an equity imperative, as students with dis/abilties are graduating at lower rates than their non-disabled peers (Lightfoot et al., 2018). Consequently, higher education faculty need to implement instruction designed to increase accessibility and learning for all students. I propose Universal Design for Learning (UDL) as an effective framework to support students with dis/abilities in higher education (King-Sears et al., 2023). Further, higher education faculty need to feel empowered to use inclusive instructional strategies which may disrupt previous norms of university-level instruction. In this Mixed Methods Action Research (MMAR), participants engaged in three asynchronous professional development sessions to build their foundational knowledge of UDL. These short online sessions emphasized practical ways for UDL aligned strategies to be implemented in higher education classrooms. Participants learned about multiple means of learner engagement; multiple means of representing information; and multiple means for learners to take action and express themselves. Additionally, participants co-developed an Innovation Configuration (IC) map to explicitly define acceptable instructional strategies for integrating UDL. Data was collected through a pre/post inventory, session transcripts, and participant interviews. Initial findings show that through this collaborative process, HEI faculty developed the knowledge, skills, and disposition needed to operationalize UDL practices. This presentation will address the sub-theme “equity and inclusion in teacher education” by sharing the lessons learned throughout this process.