Journal of International Education and Practice

Reimagining Education Through the Metaverse: Trends, Challenges, and Innovations on Emerging Trends and Future Directions

Sat, 07 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0800

The Metaverse, conceptualized as the convergence of digital virtuality and physical reality, is emerging as a powerful medium with the potential to transform education. Through immersive, multisensory, and interactive environments, it enables new forms of learner engagement that extend beyond traditional classroom boundaries. This systematic review synthesizes evidence from 98 peer-reviewed studies published between 2010 and 2023, retrieved from both international and domestic databases. Employing the PRISMA methodology, the review critically examines current applications of Metaverse technologies in education, their reported outcomes, and the challenges that hinder widespread implementation. Findings reveal that the Metaverse enhances remote and hybrid learning, supports personalized and experiential instruction, and expands access to non-formal and distance education. It further promotes collaboration, creativity, and situated learning experiences that align with twenty-first-century skill development. Nevertheless, significant barriers remain. These include the high cost of technological infrastructure, unresolved concerns about data security and ethical use, and limited teacher readiness to design and facilitate immersive environments. The review contributes to the literature by clarifying how the Metaverse is currently integrated into education, identifying critical obstacles to adoption, and highlighting gaps related to sustainability, accessibility, and long-term learning outcomes. These insights provide a foundation for informed policy development, curriculum innovation, and future research aimed at the responsible and equitable integration of Metaverse technologies into educational practice.

A Case Study of School Counselors-in-Training Addressing Diversity in Child Maltreatment

Wed, 09 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0800

School counselors-in-training are required to develop attitudes, knowledge, and skills throughout their training programs to address child maltreatment. Diversity might influence how school counselors-in-training acquire this information. This study examines how school counselors-in-training address cultural considerations in child maltreatment. We utilized a multiple case study to interview three school counselors-in-training who were completing their internship. We identified five themes and four sub-themes from the data. The five themes were (a) context, (b) awareness, (c) perceptions and beliefs, (d) training development, and (e) family support. The results provided context to how school counselors-in-training consider cultural differences in addressing child maltreatment.

An Empirical Study of Print Awareness and Foundational Concept Development in Early Childhood

Anastasia Mouratoglou, Isaak Papadopoulos — Sat, 14 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0800

This study investigates the relationship between print awareness and the development of early mathematical concepts in preschool-aged children, emphasizing the pedagogical potential of fairy tales as an integrated instructional tool. Grounded in emergent literacy and early numeracy theory, the research examines how interactive storytelling, specifically, the reading of The Three Little Pigs, can be used to assess foundational skills such as letter and word recognition, text navigation, counting, ordering, classification, and basic arithmetic. A semi-structured interview methodology was employed with a sample of 50 children aged 4 to 5 years from a kindergarten in Edessa, Greece. Data were collected through a specially designed questionnaire embedded within the storytelling session. Descriptive and inferential statistical analyses revealed that while children demonstrated moderate proficiency in counting and symbol recognition, significant gaps were observed in book handling, number recitation, and computation processes. No statistically significant gender differences were identified. The findings underscore the need for targeted, developmentally appropriate interventions that bridge literacy and numeracy domains in early education. The study advocates for the strategic use of story-based learning to support dual-domain skill acquisition and highlights key practices, such as interactive dialogue, visual aids, and mathematically enriched narratives, that can enhance early learning outcomes.

A Pilot Survey of Perceived Competence of Pre-Service School Practitioners in Inclusive Education for Students with Special Needs

Mon, 21 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0800

Inclusive education provides a learning environment that enriches learning of all students. Attitudes about inclusive education are essential to its implementation (Sharma et al., 2021;^[18] Wray et al., 2022).^[²¹^] Therefore, school practitioners need training to advance their attitudes, knowledge, skills, and actions (Sharma et al., 2021;^[18] Wray et al., 2022).^[21] This study examines the pre-service school practitioners' training and perceived competence in inclusive education for students with special needs. We developed a survey aimed to gain insight into training and perceived competence. Survey results related to training suggest that teacher education and special education majors might benefit from additional training in universal design for learning, co-teaching, and flexible grouping, where school counselor majors might need more training in all categories of inclusive education. Survey results related to perceived competence results suggest that most pre-service school practitioners perceived themselves to be very capable of implementing inclusive educational practices.

From Virtual Exchange to Local Action: Advancing Global Citizenship Education through Transnational Telecollaborative Projects in Latin America

Marina Falasca — Fri, 13 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0800

This study investigates how transnational telecollaborative projects can advance Global Citizenship Education (GCE) in Latin American secondary schools by linking virtual exchange with locally grounded civic action. Using a mixed-methods case study design, the research examines two projects developed through a six-week teacher training program in Argentina, implemented with partner schools in Peru and Mexico. Data were collected through pre- and post-project surveys, teacher reflections, student-created digital artifacts, and reflective discussions, and analyzed using descriptive statistics and thematic coding guided by UNESCO’s GCE competency framework, with triangulation across sources to ensure reliability. Findings indicate that in the inequality project (Argentina–Peru), 87% of students reported increased awareness of how discrimination operates across cultural contexts, while 91% expressed stronger commitment to ethical digital behavior. In the climate action project (Argentina–Mexico), 73% of participants adopted new sustainability practices and reported greater confidence using English for authentic intercultural communication. Across both initiatives, 85% of students indicated feeling more responsible for contributing to social or environmental change, while teachers reported professional growth in digital pedagogy, project-based learning, and intercultural facilitation. The results highlight the transformative potential of transnational telecollaboration in developing the cognitive, socio-emotional, and behavioral competencies essential to Global Citizenship Education (GCE). They also show that low-cost, technology-enabled models can overcome barriers to traditional exchange and offer scalable, inclusive strategies for action-oriented global learning in underrepresented contexts.