Living Labs provide stakeholders with authentic and spontaneous environments in which innovations and technologies can be developed. This paper highlights the use of Living Labs as an educational teaching and learning environment. We give four current examples of practice and present a conceptual framework for pedagogic design and development of…

Within an international context, the role Online Learning Environments (OLEs) play in offering students opportunities to engage with other students to co-create positive experiences is complex. This paper examines the engagement facilitated by an OLE between students at a UK university and its Chinese partner. Findings show that OLEs can…

Purpose: This short article takes the play and passion of children's literacy as its focal point. Rather than orienting reading and writing around what should be taught or how children should respond and understand written text, in this short reflective essay we aim to explore the play and passion inherent in children's literacy practices. We do…

Action learning is one of the most effective leadership development interventions [Day, Fleenor, Atwater, Sturm, and McKee. 2014. "Advances in Leader and Leadership Development: A Review of 25 Years of Research and Theory." The Leadership Quarterly 25 (1): 63-82; Pauleen. 2003. "Leadership in a Global Virtual Team: An Action…

This article brings climate communication approaches to transformational climate learning by critically evaluating an experimental climate communication retreat that brought 20 young adults from across Europe together in Austria to co-create climate communications as a constitutive dimension of climate action. Structured around the…

The move away from transmission-based lecturing toward a more student-centred active learning approach is well evidenced in STEM higher education. However, the examination of active learning has generally remained confined to formal timetabled contexts, with assumptions made that students independently manage the transition between timetabled and…

Hybrid approaches to teaching, where there is a proportion of online (asynchronous or synchronous) teaching as well as face-to-face synchronous teaching, were adopted almost ubiquitously by UK higher education institutions throughout the 2020/2021 academic year amidst disruption caused by national and international COVID-19 restrictions. One…

This study investigates Mandarin Chinese learners' motivation in a Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) program in a British secondary school from the perspective of learning environment, learner engagement, and learner identities. Fifteen pupils who are learning Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) have been interviewed individually or…

A growing evidence base has demonstrated the value of Forest School as an outdoor learning approach which supports a range of benefits including improved physical, social and mental wellbeing, increased confidence and self-esteem and the development of problem-solving skills. However, critics of Forest School have argued that a lack of theoretical…

Although Chinese has become one of the most influential second/foreign languages in the world, teaching Chinese as a foreign/second language (CSL/CFL) abroad faces great challenges. M-learning and mobile-assisted language learning (MALL) display great advantages to facilitate second language learning, including CSL/CFL. However, most research was…

It is often asserted that to facilitate student engagement, encourage participation and create optimal learning environments, the classroom should be a safe space. In this paper, we explore the idea that 'safety' is at odds with the very nature of academic enquiry. Using data from a qualitative study with staff at a UK University, we illustrate…

Background Study: Technology-supported learning environments, act as significant observational and enabling indicators for evaluating and encouraging the digital revolution of education, are of vital importance in current educational research. Keeping track of the dynamics of technology-supported learning environment research allows for the…

This paper examines the interplay of creativity, education, and the expressive arts. We begin by presenting a narrative literature review focusing on the use of artistic tools to promote creativity, self-expressiveness, and meaningful aspects of emotional and social learning. This review reveals strong connections between the different components…

Within the context of a dynamic higher education environment, demands for flexibility and technological advances present additional challenges for lecturers who are required to simultaneously develop their own praxis whilst encouraging students to engage with new and/or advanced digital tools. This paper focuses on a case study conducted at a…

Both challenges and opportunities are inherent with a growth in Chinese international students in UK Higher Education. However, teachers from the West may not understand the differences in Chinese educational practices, which can lead to negative stereotyping of these students as passive and problematic. This paper rejects this deficit…