This paper demonstrates that recurrent difficulties students encounter in learning subject-matter knowledge can be traced, in part, to assumptions about how students best learn knowledge that significantly shape instructional approaches. First, I review the significant influence of empiricist epistemological assumptions on education, covering…

This book traces the motivational dynamics embedded within lifelong foreign language learning trajectories, examining the factors which generate and sustain motivation throughout a learner's life. Embracing a complexity approach, it views motivation as a long-term individual process that evolves along a narrative continuum, developing over the…

As China's higher education shifts toward connotative development, graduate education must prioritize quality enhancement and structural optimization. This study examines how interdisciplinary courses promote connotative development by integrating scaffolding theory and symbolic interaction theory, investigating their impact on cognitive growth…

Microlearning is gaining ground in the higher education domain. Despite this trend, there is a lack of evidence of effectiveness when a large number of microlearning units are grouped to form a macrolearning programme. The purpose of this paper is to explore how and why a macrolearning affects students' self-efficacy. The originality of this paper…

Games play a very important role in promoting incidental learning and help in exploring both the conscious and subconscious processes such as insight of a learner. Digital Game-Based Learning and assessments are now an integral part of educational practices. When designed effectively digital games can take the learners from the stage of…

With the rapid development of information technology, the internet has emerged as a pivotal driving force in reshaping higher education paradigms. This paper delves into clustering algorithms and proposes an enhanced version, exploring how this enhanced clustering algorithm can be applied to blended teaching of digital electronic technology…

The Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework has gained widespread recognition as a theoretical model for understanding student learning in online environments. Despite its prevalence, CoI has been critiqued for its limited emphasis on learners' proactive roles in self-regulating their own learning. To address this, researchers have suggested…

This text critically examines traditional methodologies for teaching grammar in the context of Portuguese as a Foreign Language (PFL). It proposes an alternative, eclectic approach, which can be used in any foreign language. Drawing on evidence from research and pedagogical practices, it highlights areas for improvement in current approaches, such…

I propose a model of the scholarship of teaching and learning that builds on and at the same time extends previous work. This article revisits the idea of inquiry as a collaborative social practice enriched by critical reflection and critical self-reflection on assumptions, making a case that among the various functions of inquiry (e.g.,…

Goals are central to understanding how students learn a second language. Much of the existing research on goals in the field of language learning has focused exclusively on achievement goals, particularly mastery and performance goals. However, exclusively focusing on achievement goals precludes language researchers from exploring other important…

If maximal exposure were the key to success in language learning, then adult learners at the university level would be doomed to fail. Not only are they presumably too old to learn additional languages effectively, but target language (TL) input appears to be insufficient, especially when other languages are allowed in class. Nevertheless,…

Blended learning, integrating online and in-person components, has been increasingly adopted in higher education to enhance students' learning experience and outcomes. While the advantages of blended learning are well-evidenced, research has primarily focused on the online pre-learning component, neglecting the significance of in-class activities.…

Non-interactive teaching, in which students explain previously learned content to a non-present peer, is a generative learning activity that has gained increasing attention in recent years. While meta-analyses indicate small-to-moderate benefits, findings have been inconsistent, suggesting that its effectiveness depends on contextual factors.…

Aptitude-treatment interaction (ATI) research is of both theoretical and practical interest to second language (L2) learning, since it provides insights into the processes linking learner-internal individual difference factors and learner-external contextual variables including instructional approach--variables that jointly determine L2 outcomes.…

This study systematically analysed, evaluated and synthesised published studies on 21stcentury skills and science achievement among secondary school students. By scouring 17 well-known online journal databases, 684 related studies were found. After the three-stage screening process, only 17 research papers were included in the study, which were…