Pedagogy / Pedagogika

Editorial Board and Table of Contents

Vaida Jurgilė — 2025-01-15

Assessing University Students’ Motivation to Choose Distance Learning and the Challenges of Distance Learning

Verena Karlsdóttir — 2025-01-15

Distance education has gained magnitude post-COVID-19, requiring an understanding of learners’ motivations. This study at the University of Akureyri used a mixed- methods approach to identify three key factors: flexibility, educational growth, efficiency. While gender, age, residence, and education level showed no significant impact, having children and employment influenced perceptions. Thematic analysis revealed insights into student prefe- rences, challenges, and recommendations for improving distance learning.

Tracking Perception of the Discovery Learning Model and Motivation to Learn Biology: Impact on Students’ Achievement

Erwinsyah Erwinsyah — 2025-01-15

This study examines the influence of student motivation and educational frameworks on high school biology achievement in Cirebon, Indonesia. It uses questionnaire statements and multivariate regression analysis to explore the relationship between students' perceptions of learning models, motivation, and grades. Effective learning improves student engagement and comprehension. The study's reliable instruments highlight the importance of structured learning and motivation for academic success.

Problem-Based Learning Through Authentic Assessment: Students’ Cognitive and Creative Thinking Abilities

Hilarius Jago Duda — 2024-12-26

Researchers apply the use of a PBL model integrated with authentic assessment. With the aim of knowing the effect of integrated PBL authentic assessment. The research method is experimental research. The sample was students from Senior High School. The data collection instrument is test questions. Descriptive statistical data analysis. The research results revealed that the integrated PBL model of authentic assessment had a significant effect on students' cognitive and creative thinking.

University Success Histories of Autistic Graduates: An Ecological Analysis of Personal and Contextual Factors

Lucía Van der Mel — 2024-12-26

This article aims to understand the personal and contextual factors con- tributing to university retention for autistic graduates. In addition, it examines graduates’ evaluations of their own trajectories, shaped by their reflexive interpretations of university success. To achieve this, the study employs a biographical narrative approach. The results are presented through five polyphonic life histories holistically reflecting their university journeys.

The Building of Mathematical Concepts When Solving Mathematical Tasks in Traditional Way and Using Graphing Calculators

Helder Manuel Martins — 2025-01-15

This article aims to understand how students learn mathematical concepts related to the study of functions and differential calculus using graphing calculators with the computer algebra system (GCC) and traditional methods. With a qualitative methodology, we show that students can make the transition to mathematical meanings of concepts using both processes.

Characteristics of Teachers’ Mattering by Demographic Variables

Justina Budreikaitė — 2025-01-15

The teaching profession is linked to stress and anxiety, yet it also involves a sense of meaningful work and interpersonal relationships. Job satisfaction among teachers is closely tied to a sentiment that their work matters to society. This exploratory study examines demographic differences in mattering perceptions of teachers. Mattering describes the human need to feel important and significant to others. In organizations, mattering enhances employee well being, engagement, performance, and motivation, workplace relationships, and commitment. Addressing mattering can offer insights into improving teachers’ wellbeing and job satisfaction; however, very few studies seek to evaluate demographic differences in mattering perceptions. Thus, this paper aims to investigate demographic characteristics of mattering among teachers. The results indicate mattering perceptions vary based on respondents’ age, gender, and work position. Work experience and individual needs did not show statistically significant differences, which may coincide with agerelated differences or indicate low perceptions of career options available. Despite limitations in generalizability due to sample distribution and size, the study provides practical implications. Customizing motivational initiatives based on demographic differences may help improve organizational culture and inclusivity and tailor them to suit teachers’ preferences and needs better.

Shadow Education: Concept Analysis

Ieva Kačinskaitė-Urbonienė — 2025-01-15

This paper presents the phenomenon of shadow education. The study aimed to analyse and conceptualise the concept of shadow education, to reveal the main characteristics, assumptions, and consequences of the concept, based on the analysis of scientific publications by Lithuanian and foreign authors, using data collection and data analysis methods. Based on Walker and Avant’s (2005) research strategy, it is revealed that shadow education is an interdisciplinary and complex phenomenon, encompassing all paid direct and indirect measures and activities, which are carried out outside of formal education, but within the framework of the formal curriculum. It also identifies the main characteristics of informal education as complementary, private, competitive, dependent on formal curriculum, compensatory, diverse in its forms, intensity, providers: flexible and adaptive; global; unregulated; and considered as an activity. The main prerequisites identified are the desire on the part of parents and children to improve their academic performance, to close learning gaps, to maintain or improve their social position in society, or, on the part of educators, to engage in profitable activities, to change the form of employment. Positive and negative consequences of informal education have been identified in terms of social inequalities, commercialisation of education, family relations, children’s development, and learning support.

Competence Modelling From the Perspective of Complex Systems Theories: A Systematic Literature Review

Karolina Levanaitė — 2025-01-15

This article aims to investigate how the notion of competence is conceptualised and modelled from the point of view of complex systems theories. Although the importance of competences and competency-based education is widely acknowledged, the concept of competence keeps evolving and it remains difficult to define it in today's constantly changing and uncertain VUCA world. Therefore, this study explores how the approach of complex systems, which is increasingly more often applied in educational research, can contribute to the definition of competence. The article presents a systematic review of 21 articles published in various databases in 2000-2023, revealing that from the perspective of complex systems, competence can be conceptualised both at the individual level and at the level of the whole system or organisation; it can follow a functionalist or contextual approach. Based on the research findings, it is assumed that in certain cases competence can be treated as emergence or even as an entire complex system, characterised by such properties as non-linearity, chaos, emergence, feedback loops, etc. Finally, this article reviews the variety of complexity-informed mathematical/computational and theoretical models utilised in the reviewed studies, the application of which opens up new avenues in overall educational research.

Challenges of Remote Learning During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Students’ Experiences in the Perspective of M. Buber’s I-Thou and I-It Interaction

Živilė Advilonienė — 2025-01-15

The quarantine imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a global shift towards remote learning while maintaining the coherence, smoothness, and quality of the study process. Based on the retrospective experiences of students (N-61) studying at college and university (students’ reflections were analysed according to the orientation questions they were asked), the article provides an overview of the challenges experienced during the quarantine period in terms of remote learning through virtual contact. The study revealed several groups of challenges experienced by students: informational, technical, educational, psycho-emotional, health, and ethical, caused by socio-legal constraints. The challenges experienced by the students during the remote learning process are addressed through Buber’s perspective of I-Thou and I-It interaction. The results of the study revealed that for objective reasons, remote learning was primarily oriented towards the I-It model of interaction, focusing on the delivery of information to the students, the technical quality, or the lectures. In many cases, for objective or subjective reasons, video cameras were not used in remote lectures, which hindered the creation of an immediate interaction between the lecturer and the students, based on the model of the I-Thou dialogue. Nevertheless, remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic allowed the development of Buber’s I-Thou interaction, which is based on immediate mutual engagement, assuming favourable conditions.

The Two Lives of a Teacher

Gintarė Gudeliauskė — 2025-01-15

In the article the conception of the intellectual humility of a teacher is revealed when a condition of a dialogue is realized while creating a carnival atmosphere (Bakhtin, 1981; 1984a; 1984b) and searching for potential possibilities to analyse (self-)liberation situations in learning. During the research, the access to critical ethnography has been used, applying critical discourse analysis for data analysis: triadic structure (Fairclough, 2015), revealing the choice of a teacher of two lives, which slows down the process of learning, losing a possibility to grow as a professional. The completed research shows that a teacher, even though he/she admits that he/she does not have to know everything, there are situations when the assumed behaviour of knowing everything is tried to be chosen (aiming for monologism). It does not match with the conception of an intellectually humble teacher (aiming for dialogism). It is worth noting that a teacher can be open to others and, in this way, participate in a dialogue and reconsider his/her beliefs, aiming to find out new aspects. In the interaction with the School Principal, the situations of balancing between behaviour marked with intellectual humility and accepting an indulging position occur. It can be stated that the choice of the two lives of a teacher slows down learning progress.