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How can education systems improve? A systematic literature review

  • Published: 07 April 2022
  • Volume 24 , pages 479–499, ( 2023 )

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  • Ignacio Barrenechea   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-4673-3862 1 ,
  • Jason Beech 2 &
  • Axel Rivas 1  

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Understanding what contributes to improving a system will help us tackle the problems in education systems that usually fail disproportionately in providing quality education for all, especially for the most disadvantage sectors of the population. This paper presents the results of a qualitative systematic literature review aimed at providing a comprehensive overview of what education research can say about the factors that promote education systems’ improvement. This literature is emerging as a topic of empirical research that merges comparative education and school effectiveness studies as standardized assessments make it possible to compare results across systems and time. To examine and synthesize the papers included in this review we followed a thematic analysis approach. We identify, analyze, and report patterns in the papers included in this systematic review. From the coding process, four drivers for system improvement emerged: (1) system-wide approaches; (2) human capital; (3) governance and macro–micro level bridges; and (4) availability of resources.

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Barrenechea, I., Beech, J. & Rivas, A. How can education systems improve? A systematic literature review. J Educ Change 24 , 479–499 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10833-022-09453-7

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Research and trends in STEM education: a systematic review of journal publications

  • Yeping Li 1 ,
  • Ke Wang 2 ,
  • Yu Xiao 1 &
  • Jeffrey E. Froyd 3  

International Journal of STEM Education volume  7 , Article number:  11 ( 2020 ) Cite this article

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With the rapid increase in the number of scholarly publications on STEM education in recent years, reviews of the status and trends in STEM education research internationally support the development of the field. For this review, we conducted a systematic analysis of 798 articles in STEM education published between 2000 and the end of 2018 in 36 journals to get an overview about developments in STEM education scholarship. We examined those selected journal publications both quantitatively and qualitatively, including the number of articles published, journals in which the articles were published, authorship nationality, and research topic and methods over the years. The results show that research in STEM education is increasing in importance internationally and that the identity of STEM education journals is becoming clearer over time.

Introduction

A recent review of 144 publications in the International Journal of STEM Education ( IJ - STEM ) showed how scholarship in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education developed between August 2014 and the end of 2018 through the lens of one journal (Li, Froyd, & Wang, 2019 ). The review of articles published in only one journal over a short period of time prompted the need to review the status and trends in STEM education research internationally by analyzing articles published in a wider range of journals over a longer period of time.

With global recognition of the growing importance of STEM education, we have witnessed the urgent need to support research and scholarship in STEM education (Li, 2014 , 2018a ). Researchers and educators have responded to this on-going call and published their scholarly work through many different publication outlets including journals, books, and conference proceedings. A simple Google search with the term “STEM,” “STEM education,” or “STEM education research” all returned more than 450,000,000 items. Such voluminous information shows the rapidly evolving and vibrant field of STEM education and sheds light on the volume of STEM education research. In any field, it is important to know and understand the status and trends in scholarship for the field to develop and be appropriately supported. This applies to STEM education.

Conducting systematic reviews to explore the status and trends in specific disciplines is common in educational research. For example, researchers surveyed the historical development of research in mathematics education (Kilpatrick, 1992 ) and studied patterns in technology usage in mathematics education (Bray & Tangney, 2017 ; Sokolowski, Li, & Willson, 2015 ). In science education, Tsai and his colleagues have conducted a sequence of reviews of journal articles to synthesize research trends in every 5 years since 1998 (i.e., 1998–2002, 2003–2007, 2008–2012, and 2013–2017), based on publications in three main science education journals including, Science Education , the International Journal of Science Education , and the Journal of Research in Science Teaching (e.g., Lin, Lin, Potvin, & Tsai, 2019 ; Tsai & Wen, 2005 ). Erduran, Ozdem, and Park ( 2015 ) reviewed argumentation in science education research from 1998 to 2014 and Minner, Levy, and Century ( 2010 ) reviewed inquiry-based science instruction between 1984 and 2002. There are also many literature reviews and syntheses in engineering and technology education (e.g., Borrego, Foster, & Froyd, 2015 ; Xu, Williams, Gu, & Zhang, 2019 ). All of these reviews have been well received in different fields of traditional disciplinary education as they critically appraise and summarize the state-of-art of relevant research in a field in general or with a specific focus. Both types of reviews have been conducted with different methods for identifying, collecting, and analyzing relevant publications, and they differ in terms of review aim and topic scope, time period, and ways of literature selection. In this review, we systematically analyze journal publications in STEM education research to overview STEM education scholarship development broadly and globally.

The complexity and ambiguity of examining the status and trends in STEM education research

A review of research development in a field is relatively straight forward, when the field is mature and its scope can be well defined. Unlike discipline-based education research (DBER, National Research Council, 2012 ), STEM education is not a well-defined field. Conducting a comprehensive literature review of STEM education research require careful thought and clearly specified scope to tackle the complexity naturally associated with STEM education. In the following sub-sections, we provide some further discussion.

Diverse perspectives about STEM and STEM education

STEM education as explicated by the term does not have a long history. The interest in helping students learn across STEM fields can be traced back to the 1990s when the US National Science Foundation (NSF) formally included engineering and technology with science and mathematics in undergraduate and K-12 school education (e.g., National Science Foundation, 1998 ). It coined the acronym SMET (science, mathematics, engineering, and technology) that was subsequently used by other agencies including the US Congress (e.g., United States Congress House Committee on Science, 1998 ). NSF also coined the acronym STEM to replace SMET (e.g., Christenson, 2011 ; Chute, 2009 ) and it has become the acronym of choice. However, a consensus has not been reached on the disciplines included within STEM.

To clarify its intent, NSF published a list of approved fields it considered under the umbrella of STEM (see http://bit.ly/2Bk1Yp5 ). The list not only includes disciplines widely considered under the STEM tent (called “core” disciplines, such as physics, chemistry, and materials research), but also includes disciplines in psychology and social sciences (e.g., political science, economics). However, NSF’s list of STEM fields is inconsistent with other federal agencies. Gonzalez and Kuenzi ( 2012 ) noted that at least two US agencies, the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, use a narrower definition that excludes social sciences. Researchers also view integration across different disciplines of STEM differently using various terms such as, multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary (Vasquez, Sneider, & Comer, 2013 ). These are only two examples of the ambiguity and complexity in describing and specifying what constitutes STEM.

Multiple perspectives about the meaning of STEM education adds further complexity to determining the extent to which scholarly activity can be categorized as STEM education. For example, STEM education can be viewed with a broad and inclusive perspective to include education in the individual disciplines of STEM, i.e., science education, technology education, engineering education, and mathematics education, as well as interdisciplinary or cross-disciplinary combinations of the individual STEM disciplines (English, 2016 ; Li, 2014 ). On the other hand, STEM education can be viewed by others as referring only to interdisciplinary or cross-disciplinary combinations of the individual STEM disciplines (Honey, Pearson, & Schweingruber, 2014 ; Johnson, Peters-Burton, & Moore, 2015 ; Kelley & Knowles, 2016 ; Li, 2018a ). These multiple perspectives allow scholars to publish articles in a vast array and diverse journals, as long as journals are willing to take the position as connected with STEM education. At the same time, however, the situation presents considerable challenges for researchers intending to locate, identify, and classify publications as STEM education research. To tackle such challenges, we tried to find out what we can learn from prior reviews related to STEM education.

Guidance from prior reviews related to STEM education

A search for reviews of STEM education research found multiple reviews that could suggest approaches for identifying publications (e.g., Brown, 2012 ; Henderson, Beach, & Finkelstein, 2011 ; Kim, Sinatra, & Seyranian, 2018 ; Margot & Kettler, 2019 ; Minichiello, Hood, & Harkness, 2018 ; Mizell & Brown, 2016 ; Thibaut et al., 2018 ; Wu & Rau, 2019 ). The review conducted by Brown ( 2012 ) examined the research base of STEM education. He addressed the complexity and ambiguity by confining the review with publications in eight journals, two in each individual discipline, one academic research journal (e.g., the Journal of Research in Science Teaching ) and one practitioner journal (e.g., Science Teacher ). Journals were selected based on suggestions from some faculty members and K-12 teachers. Out of 1100 articles published in these eight journals from January 1, 2007, to October 1, 2010, Brown located 60 articles that authors self-identified as connected to STEM education. He found that the vast majority of these 60 articles focused on issues beyond an individual discipline and there was a research base forming for STEM education. In a follow-up study, Mizell and Brown ( 2016 ) reviewed articles published from January 2013 to October 2015 in the same eight journals plus two additional journals. Mizell and Brown used the same criteria to identify and include articles that authors self-identified as connected to STEM education, i.e., if the authors included STEM in the title or author-supplied keywords. In comparison to Brown’s findings, they found that many more STEM articles were published in a shorter time period and by scholars from many more different academic institutions. Taking together, both Brown ( 2012 ) and Mizell and Brown ( 2016 ) tended to suggest that STEM education mainly consists of interdisciplinary or cross-disciplinary combinations of the individual STEM disciplines, but their approach consisted of selecting a limited number of individual discipline-based journals and then selecting articles that authors self-identified as connected to STEM education.

In contrast to reviews on STEM education, in general, other reviews focused on specific issues in STEM education (e.g., Henderson et al., 2011 ; Kim et al., 2018 ; Margot & Kettler, 2019 ; Minichiello et al., 2018 ; Schreffler, Vasquez III, Chini, & James, 2019 ; Thibaut et al., 2018 ; Wu & Rau, 2019 ). For example, the review by Henderson et al. ( 2011 ) focused on instructional change in undergraduate STEM courses based on 191 conceptual and empirical journal articles published between 1995 and 2008. Margot and Kettler ( 2019 ) focused on what is known about teachers’ values, beliefs, perceived barriers, and needed support related to STEM education based on 25 empirical journal articles published between 2000 and 2016. The focus of these reviews allowed the researchers to limit the number of articles considered, and they typically used keyword searches of selected databases to identify articles on STEM education. Some researchers used this approach to identify publications from journals only (e.g., Henderson et al., 2011 ; Margot & Kettler, 2019 ; Schreffler et al., 2019 ), and others selected and reviewed publications beyond journals (e.g., Minichiello et al., 2018 ; Thibaut et al., 2018 ; Wu & Rau, 2019 ).

The discussion in this section suggests possible reasons contributing to the absence of a general literature review of STEM education research and development: (1) diverse perspectives in existence about STEM and STEM education that contribute to the difficulty of specifying a scope of literature review, (2) its short but rapid development history in comparison to other discipline-based education (e.g., science education), and (3) difficulties in deciding how to establish the scope of the literature review. With respect to the third reason, prior reviews have used one of two approaches to identify and select articles: (a) identifying specific journals first and then searching and selecting specific articles from these journals (e.g., Brown, 2012 ; Erduran et al., 2015 ; Mizell & Brown, 2016 ) and (b) conducting selected database searches with keywords based on a specific focus (e.g., Margot & Kettler, 2019 ; Thibaut et al., 2018 ). However, neither the first approach of selecting a limited number of individual discipline-based journals nor the second approach of selecting a specific focus for the review leads to an approach that provides a general overview of STEM education scholarship development based on existing journal publications.

Current review

Two issues were identified in setting the scope for this review.

What time period should be considered?

What publications will be selected for review?

Time period

We start with the easy one first. As discussed above, the acronym STEM did exist until the early 2000s. Although the existence of the acronym does not generate scholarship on student learning in STEM disciplines, it is symbolic and helps focus attention to efforts in STEM education. Since we want to examine the status and trends in STEM education, it is reasonable to start with the year 2000. Then, we can use the acronym of STEM as an identifier in locating specific research articles in a way as done by others (e.g., Brown, 2012 ; Mizell & Brown, 2016 ). We chose the end of 2018 as the end of the time period for our review that began during 2019.

Focusing on publications beyond individual discipline-based journals

As mentioned before, scholars responded to the call for scholarship development in STEM education with publications that appeared in various outlets and diverse languages, including journals, books, and conference proceedings. However, journal publications are typically credited and valued as one of the most important outlets for research exchange (e.g., Erduran et al., 2015 ; Henderson et al., 2011 ; Lin et al., 2019 ; Xu et al., 2019 ). Thus, in this review, we will also focus on articles published in journals in English.

The discourse above on the complexity and ambiguity regarding STEM education suggests that scholars may publish their research in a wide range of journals beyond individual discipline-based journals. To search and select articles from a wide range of journals, we thought about the approach of searching selected databases with keywords as other scholars used in reviewing STEM education with a specific focus. However, existing journals in STEM education do not have a long history. In fact, IJ-STEM is the first journal in STEM education that has just been accepted into the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) (Li, 2019a ). Publications in many STEM education journals are practically not available in several important and popular databases, such as the Web of Science and Scopus. Moreover, some journals in STEM education were not normalized due to a journal’s name change or irregular publication schedule. For example, the Journal of STEM Education was named as Journal of SMET Education when it started in 2000 in a print format, and the journal’s name was not changed until 2003, Vol 4 (3 and 4), and also went fully on-line starting 2004 (Raju & Sankar, 2003 ). A simple Google Scholar search with keywords will not be able to provide accurate information, unless you visit the journal’s website to check all publications over the years. Those added complexities prevented us from taking the database search as a viable approach. Thus, we decided to identify journals first and then search and select articles from these journals. Further details about the approach are provided in the “ Method ” section.

Research questions

Given a broader range of journals and a longer period of time to be covered in this review, we can examine some of the same questions as the IJ-STEM review (Li, Froyd, & Wang, 2019 ), but we do not have access to data on readership, articles accessed, or articles cited for the other journals selected for this review. Specifically, we are interested in addressing the following six research questions:

What were the status and trends in STEM education research from 2000 to the end of 2018 based on journal publications?

What were the patterns of publications in STEM education research across different journals?

Which countries or regions, based on the countries or regions in which authors were located, contributed to journal publications in STEM education?

What were the patterns of single-author and multiple-author publications in STEM education?

What main topics had emerged in STEM education research based on the journal publications?

What research methods did authors tend to use in conducting STEM education research?

Based on the above discussion, we developed the methods for this literature review to follow careful sequential steps to identify journals first and then identify and select STEM education research articles published in these journals from January 2000 to the end of 2018. The methods should allow us to obtain a comprehensive overview about the status and trends of STEM education research based on a systematic analysis of related publications from a broad range of journals and over a longer period of time.

Identifying journals

We used the following three steps to search and identify journals for inclusion:

We assumed articles on research in STEM education have been published in journals that involve more than one traditional discipline. Thus, we used Google to search and identify all education journals with their titles containing either two, three, or all four disciplines of STEM. For example, we did Google search of all the different combinations of three areas of science, mathematics, technology Footnote 1 , and engineering as contained in a journal’s title. In addition, we also searched possible journals containing the word STEAM in the title.

Since STEM education may be viewed as encompassing discipline-based education research, articles on STEM education research may have been published in traditional discipline-based education journals, such as the Journal of Research in Science Teaching . However, there are too many such journals. Yale’s Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning has listed 16 journals that publish articles spanning across undergraduate STEM education disciplines (see https://poorvucenter.yale.edu/FacultyResources/STEMjournals ). Thus, we selected from the list some individual discipline-based education research journals, and also added a few more common ones such as the Journal of Engineering Education .

Since articles on research in STEM education have appeared in some general education research journals, especially those well-established ones. Thus, we identified and selected a few of those journals that we noticed some publications in STEM education research.

Following the above three steps, we identified 45 journals (see Table  1 ).

Identifying articles

In this review, we will not discuss or define the meaning of STEM education. We used the acronym STEM (or STEAM, or written as the phrase of “science, technology, engineering, and mathematics”) as a term in our search of publication titles and/or abstracts. To identify and select articles for review, we searched all items published in those 45 journals and selected only those articles that author(s) self-identified with the acronym STEM (or STEAM, or written as the phrase of “science, technology, engineering, and mathematics”) in the title and/or abstract. We excluded publications in the sections of practices, letters to editors, corrections, and (guest) editorials. Our search found 798 publications that authors self-identified as in STEM education, identified from 36 journals. The remaining 9 journals either did not have publications that met our search terms or published in another language other than English (see the two separate lists in Table 1 ).

Data analysis

To address research question 3, we analyzed authorship to examine which countries/regions contributed to STEM education research over the years. Because each publication may have either one or multiple authors, we used two different methods to analyze authorship nationality that have been recognized as valuable from our review of IJ-STEM publications (Li, Froyd, & Wang, 2019 ). The first method considers only the corresponding author’s (or the first author, if no specific indication is given about the corresponding author) nationality and his/her first institution affiliation, if multiple institution affiliations are listed. Method 2 considers every author of a publication, using the following formula (Howard, Cole, & Maxwell, 1987 ) to quantitatively assign and estimate each author’s contribution to a publication (and thus associated institution’s productivity), when multiple authors are included in a publication. As an example, each publication is given one credit point. For the publication co-authored by two, the first author would be given 0.6 and the second author 0.4 credit point. For an article contributed jointly by three authors, the three authors would be credited with scores of 0.47, 0.32, and 0.21, respectively.

After calculating all the scores for each author of each paper, we added all the credit scores together in terms of each author’s country/region. For brevity, we present only the top 10 countries/regions in terms of their total credit scores calculated using these two different methods, respectively.

To address research question 5, we used the same seven topic categories identified and used in our review of IJ-STEM publications (Li, Froyd, & Wang, 2019 ). We tested coding 100 articles first to ensure the feasibility. Through test-coding and discussions, we found seven topic categories could be used to examine and classify all 798 items.

K-12 teaching, teacher, and teacher education in STEM (including both pre-service and in-service teacher education)

Post-secondary teacher and teaching in STEM (including faculty development, etc.)

K-12 STEM learner, learning, and learning environment

Post-secondary STEM learner, learning, and learning environments (excluding pre-service teacher education)

Policy, curriculum, evaluation, and assessment in STEM (including literature review about a field in general)

Culture and social and gender issues in STEM education

History, epistemology, and perspectives about STEM and STEM education

To address research question 6, we coded all 798 publications in terms of (1) qualitative methods, (2) quantitative methods, (3) mixed methods, and (4) non-empirical studies (including theoretical or conceptual papers, and literature reviews). We assigned each publication to only one research topic and one method, following the process used in the IJ-STEM review (Li, Froyd, & Wang, 2019 ). When there was more than one topic or method that could have been used for a publication, a decision was made in choosing and assigning a topic or a method. The agreement between two coders for all 798 publications was 89.5%. When topic and method coding discrepancies occurred, a final decision was reached after discussion.

Results and discussion

In the following sections, we report findings as corresponding to each of the six research questions.

The status and trends of journal publications in STEM education research from 2000 to 2018

Figure  1 shows the number of publications per year. As Fig.  1 shows, the number of publications increased each year beginning in 2010. There are noticeable jumps from 2015 to 2016 and from 2017 to 2018. The result shows that research in STEM education had grown significantly since 2010, and the most recent large number of STEM education publications also suggests that STEM education research gained its own recognition by many different journals for publication as a hot and important topic area.

figure 1

The distribution of STEM education publications over the years

Among the 798 articles, there were 549 articles with the word “STEM” (or STEAM, or written with the phrase of “science, technology, engineering, and mathematics”) included in the article’s title or both title and abstract and 249 articles without such identifiers included in the title but abstract only. The results suggest that many scholars tended to include STEM in the publications’ titles to highlight their research in or about STEM education. Figure  2 shows the number of publications per year where publications are distinguished depending on whether they used the term STEM in the title or only in the abstract. The number of publications in both categories had significant increases since 2010. Use of the acronym STEM in the title was growing at a faster rate than using the acronym only in the abstract.

figure 2

The trends of STEM education publications with vs. without STEM included in the title

Not all the publications that used the acronym STEM in the title and/or abstract reported on a study involving all four STEM areas. For each publication, we further examined the number of the four areas involved in the reported study.

Figure  3 presents the number of publications categorized by the number of the four areas involved in the study, breaking down the distribution of these 798 publications in terms of the content scope being focused on. Studies involving all four STEM areas are the most numerous with 488 (61.2%) publications, followed by involving one area (141, 17.7%), then studies involving both STEM and non-STEM (84, 10.5%), and finally studies involving two or three areas of STEM (72, 9%; 13, 1.6%; respectively). Publications that used the acronym STEAM in either the title or abstract were classified as involving both STEM and non-STEM. For example, both of the following publications were included in this category.

Dika and D’Amico ( 2016 ). “Early experiences and integration in the persistence of first-generation college students in STEM and non-STEM majors.” Journal of Research in Science Teaching , 53 (3), 368–383. (Note: this article focused on early experience in both STEM and Non-STEM majors.)

Sochacka, Guyotte, and Walther ( 2016 ). “Learning together: A collaborative autoethnographic exploration of STEAM (STEM+ the Arts) education.” Journal of Engineering Education , 105 (1), 15–42. (Note: this article focused on STEAM (both STEM and Arts).)

figure 3

Publication distribution in terms of content scope being focused on. (Note: 1=single subject of STEM, 2=two subjects of STEM, 3=three subjects of STEM, 4=four subjects of STEM, 5=topics related to both STEM and non-STEM)

Figure  4 presents the number of publications per year in each of the five categories described earlier (category 1, one area of STEM; category 2, two areas of STEM; category 3, three areas of STEM; category 4, four areas of STEM; category 5, STEM and non-STEM). The category that had grown most rapidly since 2010 is the one involving all four areas. Recent growth in the number of publications in category 1 likely reflected growing interest of traditional individual disciplinary based educators in developing and sharing multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary scholarship in STEM education, as what was noted recently by Li and Schoenfeld ( 2019 ) with publications in IJ-STEM.

figure 4

Publication distribution in terms of content scope being focused on over the years

Patterns of publications across different journals

Among the 36 journals that published STEM education articles, two are general education research journals (referred to as “subject-0”), 12 with their titles containing one discipline of STEM (“subject-1”), eight with journal’s titles covering two disciplines of STEM (“subject-2”), six covering three disciplines of STEM (“subject-3”), seven containing the word STEM (“subject-4”), and one in STEAM education (“subject-5”).

Table  2 shows that both subject-0 and subject-1 journals were usually mature journals with a long history, and they were all traditional subscription-based journals, except the Journal of Pre - College Engineering Education Research , a subject-1 journal established in 2011 that provided open access (OA). In comparison to subject-0 and subject-1 journals, subject-2 and subject-3 journals were relatively newer but still had quite many years of history on average. There are also some more journals in these two categories that provided OA. Subject-4 and subject-5 journals had a short history, and most provided OA. The results show that well-established journals had tended to focus on individual disciplines or education research in general. Multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary education journals were started some years later, followed by the recent establishment of several STEM or STEAM journals.

Table 2 also shows that subject-1, subject-2, and subject-4 journals published approximately a quarter each of the publications. The number of publications in subject-1 journals is interested, because we selected a relatively limited number of journals in this category. There are many other journals in the subject-1 category (as well as subject-0 journals) that we did not select, and thus it is very likely that we did not include some STEM education articles published in subject-0 or subject-1 journals that we did not include in our study.

Figure  5 shows the number of publications per year in each of the five categories described earlier (subject-0 through subject-5). The number of publications per year in subject-5 and subject-0 journals did not change much over the time period of the study. On the other hand, the number of publications per year in subject-4 (all 4 areas), subject-1 (single area), and subject-2 journals were all over 40 by the end of the study period. The number of publications per year in subject-3 journals increased but remained less than 30. At first sight, it may be a bit surprising that the number of publications in STEM education per year in subject-1 journals increased much faster than those in subject-2 journals over the past few years. However, as Table 2 indicates these journals had long been established with great reputations, and scholars would like to publish their research in such journals. In contrast to the trend in subject-1 journals, the trend in subject-4 journals suggests that STEM education journals collectively started to gain its own identity for publishing and sharing STEM education research.

figure 5

STEM education publication distribution across different journal categories over the years. (Note: 0=subject-0; 1=subject-1; 2=subject-2; 3=subject-3; 4=subject-4; 5=subject-5)

Figure  6 shows the number of STEM education publications in each journal where the bars are color-coded (yellow, subject-0; light blue, subject-1; green, subject-2; purple, subject-3; dark blue, subject-4; and black, subject-5). There is no clear pattern shown in terms of the overall number of STEM education publications across categories or journals, but very much individual journal-based performance. The result indicates that the number of STEM education publications might heavily rely on the individual journal’s willingness and capability of attracting STEM education research work and thus suggests the potential value of examining individual journal’s performance.

figure 6

Publication distribution across all 36 individual journals across different categories with the same color-coded for journals in the same subject category

The top five journals in terms of the number of STEM education publications are Journal of Science Education and Technology (80 publications, journal number 25 in Fig.  6 ), Journal of STEM Education (65 publications, journal number 26), International Journal of STEM Education (64 publications, journal number 17), International Journal of Engineering Education (54 publications, journal number 12), and School Science and Mathematics (41 publications, journal number 31). Among these five journals, two journals are specifically on STEM education (J26, J17), two on two subjects of STEM (J25, J31), and one on one subject of STEM (J12).

Figure  7 shows the number of STEM education publications per year in each of these top five journals. As expected, based on earlier trends, the number of publications per year increased over the study period. The largest increase was in the International Journal of STEM Education (J17) that was established in 2014. As the other four journals were all established in or before 2000, J17’s short history further suggests its outstanding performance in attracting and publishing STEM education articles since 2014 (Li, 2018b ; Li, Froyd, & Wang, 2019 ). The increase was consistent with the journal’s recognition as the first STEM education journal for inclusion in SSCI starting in 2019 (Li, 2019a ).

figure 7

Publication distribution of selected five journals over the years. (Note: J12: International Journal of Engineering Education; J17: International Journal of STEM Education; J25: Journal of Science Education and Technology; J26: Journal of STEM Education; J31: School Science and Mathematics)

Top 10 countries/regions where scholars contributed journal publications in STEM education

Table  3 shows top countries/regions in terms of the number of publications, where the country/region was established by the authorship using the two different methods presented above. About 75% (depending on the method) of contributions were made by authors from the USA, followed by Australia, Canada, Taiwan, and UK. Only Africa as a continent was not represented among the top 10 countries/regions. The results are relatively consistent with patterns reported in the IJ-STEM study (Li, Froyd, & Wang, 2019 )

Further examination of Table 3 reveals that the two methods provide not only fairly consistent results but also yield some differences. For example, Israel and Germany had more publication credit if only the corresponding author was considered, but South Korea and Turkey had more publication credit when co-authors were considered. The results in Table 3 show that each method has value when analyzing and comparing publications by country/region or institution based on authorship.

Recognizing that, as shown in Fig. 1 , the number of publications per year increased rapidly since 2010, Table  4 shows the number of publications by country/region over a 10-year period (2009–2018) and Table 5 shows the number of publications by country/region over a 5-year period (2014–2018). The ranks in Tables  3 , 4 , and 5 are fairly consistent, but that would be expected since the larger numbers of publications in STEM education had occurred in recent years. At the same time, it is interesting to note in Table 5 some changes over the recent several years with Malaysia, but not Israel, entering the top 10 list when either method was used to calculate author's credit.

Patterns of single-author and multiple-author publications in STEM education

Since STEM education differs from traditional individual disciplinary education, we are interested in determining how common joint co-authorship with collaborations was in STEM education articles. Figure  8 shows that joint co-authorship was very common among these 798 STEM education publications, with 83.7% publications with two or more co-authors. Publications with two, three, or at least five co-authors were highest, with 204, 181, and 157 publications, respectively.

figure 8

Number of publications with single or different joint authorship. (Note: 1=single author; 2=two co-authors; 3=three co-authors; 4=four co-authors; 5=five or more co-authors)

Figure  9 shows the number of publications per year using the joint authorship categories in Fig.  8 . Each category shows an increase consistent with the increase shown in Fig. 1 for all 798 publications. By the end of the time period, the number of publications with two, three, or at least five co-authors was the largest, which might suggest an increase in collaborations in STEM education research.

figure 9

Publication distribution with single or different joint authorship over the years. (Note: 1=single author; 2=two co-authors; 3=three co-authors; 4=four co-authors; 5=five or more co-authors)

Co-authors can be from the same or different countries/regions. Figure  10 shows the number of publications per year by single authors (no collaboration), co-authors from the same country (collaboration in a country/region), and co-authors from different countries (collaboration across countries/regions). Each year the largest number of publications was by co-authors from the same country, and the number increased dramatically during the period of the study. Although the number of publications in the other two categories increased, the numbers of publications were noticeably fewer than the number of publications by co-authors from the same country.

figure 10

Publication distribution in authorship across different categories in terms of collaboration over the years

Published articles by research topics

Figure  11 shows the number of publications in each of the seven topic categories. The topic category of goals, policy, curriculum, evaluation, and assessment had almost half of publications (375, 47%). Literature reviews were included in this topic category, as providing an overview assessment of education and research development in a topic area or a field. Sample publications included in this category are listed as follows:

DeCoito ( 2016 ). “STEM education in Canada: A knowledge synthesis.” Canadian Journal of Science , Mathematics and Technology Education , 16 (2), 114–128. (Note: this article provides a national overview of STEM initiatives and programs, including success, criteria for effective programs and current research in STEM education.)

Ring-Whalen, Dare, Roehrig, Titu, and Crotty ( 2018 ). “From conception to curricula: The role of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics in integrated STEM units.” International Journal of Education in Mathematics Science and Technology , 6 (4), 343–362. (Note: this article investigates the conceptions of integrated STEM education held by in-service science teachers through the use of photo-elicitation interviews and examines how those conceptions were reflected in teacher-created integrated STEM curricula.)

Schwab et al. ( 2018 ). “A summer STEM outreach program run by graduate students: Successes, challenges, and recommendations for implementation.” Journal of Research in STEM Education , 4 (2), 117–129. (Note: the article details the organization and scope of the Foundation in Science and Mathematics Program and evaluates this program.)

figure 11

Frequencies of publications’ research topic distributions. (Note: 1=K-12 teaching, teacher and teacher education; 2=Post-secondary teacher and teaching; 3=K-12 STEM learner, learning, and learning environment; 4=Post-secondary STEM learner, learning, and learning environments; 5=Goals and policy, curriculum, evaluation, and assessment (including literature review); 6=Culture, social, and gender issues; 7=History, philosophy, Epistemology, and nature of STEM and STEM education)

The topic with the second most publications was “K-12 teaching, teacher and teacher education” (103, 12.9%), followed closely by “K-12 learner, learning, and learning environment” (97, 12.2%). The results likely suggest the research community had a broad interest in both teaching and learning in K-12 STEM education. The top three topics were the same in the IJ-STEM review (Li, Froyd, & Wang, 2019 ).

Figure  11 also shows there was a virtual tie between two topics with the fourth most cumulative publications, “post-secondary STEM learner & learning” (76, 9.5%) and “culture, social, and gender issues in STEM” (78, 9.8%), such as STEM identity, students’ career choices in STEM, and inclusion. This result is different from the IJ-STEM review (Li, Froyd, & Wang, 2019 ), where “post-secondary STEM teacher & teaching” and “post-secondary STEM learner & learning” were tied as the fourth most common topics. This difference is likely due to the scope of journals and the length of the time period being reviewed.

Figure  12 shows the number of publications per year in each topic category. As expected from the results in Fig.  11 the number of publications in topic category 5 (goals, policy, curriculum, evaluation, and assessment) was the largest each year. The numbers of publications in topic category 3 (K-12 learner, learning, and learning environment), 1 (K-12 teaching, teacher, and teacher education), 6 (culture, social, and gender issues in STEM), and 4 (post-secondary STEM learner and learning) were also increasing. Although Fig.  11 shows the number of publications in topic category 1 was slightly more than the number of publications in topic category 3 (see Fig.  11 ), the number of publications in topic category 3 was increasing more rapidly in recent years than its counterpart in topic category 1. This may suggest a more rapidly growing interest in K-12 STEM learner, learning, and learning environment. The numbers of publications in topic categories 2 and 7 were not increasing, but the number of publications in IJ-STEM in topic category 2 was notable (Li, Froyd, & Wang, 2019 ). It will be interesting to follow trends in the seven topic categories in the future.

figure 12

Publication distributions in terms of research topics over the years

Published articles by research methods

Figure  13 shows the number of publications per year by research methods in empirical studies. Publications with non-empirical studies are shown in a separate category. Although the number of publications in each of the four categories increased during the study period, there were many more publications presenting empirical studies than those without. For those with empirical studies, the number of publications using quantitative methods increased most rapidly in recent years, followed by qualitative and then mixed methods. Although there were quite many publications with non-empirical studies (e.g., theoretical or conceptual papers, literature reviews) during the study period, the increase of the number of publications in this category was noticeably less than empirical studies.

figure 13

Publication distributions in terms of research methods over the years. (Note: 1=qualitative, 2=quantitative, 3=mixed, 4=Non-empirical)

Concluding remarks

The systematic analysis of publications that were considered to be in STEM education in 36 selected journals shows tremendous growth in scholarship in this field from 2000 to 2018, especially over the past 10 years. Our analysis indicates that STEM education research has been increasingly recognized as an important topic area and studies were being published across many different journals. Scholars still hold diverse perspectives about how research is designated as STEM education; however, authors have been increasingly distinguishing their articles with STEM, STEAM, or related words in the titles, abstracts, and lists of keywords during the past 10 years. Moreover, our systematic analysis shows a dramatic increase in the number of publications in STEM education journals in recent years, which indicates that these journals have been collectively developing their own professional identity. In addition, the International Journal of STEM Education has become the first STEM education journal to be accepted in SSCI in 2019 (Li, 2019a ). The achievement may mark an important milestone as STEM education journals develop their own identity for publishing and sharing STEM education research.

Consistent with our previous reviews (Li, Froyd, & Wang, 2019 ; Li, Wang, & Xiao, 2019 ), the vast majority of publications in STEM education research were contributed by authors from the USA, where STEM and STEAM education originated, followed by Australia, Canada, and Taiwan. At the same time, authors in some countries/regions in Asia were becoming very active in the field over the past several years. This trend is consistent with findings from the IJ-STEM review (Li, Froyd, & Wang, 2019 ). We certainly hope that STEM education scholarship continues its development across all five continents to support educational initiatives and programs in STEM worldwide.

Our analysis has shown that collaboration, as indicated by publications with multiple authors, has been very common among STEM education scholars, as that is often how STEM education distinguishes itself from the traditional individual disciplinary based education. Currently, most collaborations occurred among authors from the same country/region, although collaborations across cross-countries/regions were slowly increasing.

With the rapid changes in STEM education internationally (Li, 2019b ), it is often difficult for researchers to get an overall sense about possible hot topics in STEM education especially when STEM education publications appeared in a vast array of journals across different fields. Our systematic analysis of publications has shown that studies in the topic category of goals, policy, curriculum, evaluation, and assessment have been the most prevalent, by far. Our analysis also suggests that the research community had a broad interest in both teaching and learning in K-12 STEM education. These top three topic categories are the same as in the IJ-STEM review (Li, Froyd, & Wang, 2019 ). Work in STEM education will continue to evolve and it will be interesting to review the trends in another 5 years.

Encouraged by our recent IJ-STEM review, we began this review with an ambitious goal to provide an overview of the status and trends of STEM education research. In a way, this systematic review allowed us to achieve our initial goal with a larger scope of journal selection over a much longer period of publication time. At the same time, there are still limitations, such as the decision to limit the number of journals from which we would identify publications for analysis. We understand that there are many publications on STEM education research that were not included in our review. Also, we only identified publications in journals. Although this is one of the most important outlets for scholars to share their research work, future reviews could examine publications on STEM education research in other venues such as books, conference proceedings, and grant proposals.

Availability of data and materials

The data and materials used and analyzed for the report are publicly available at the various journal websites.

Journals containing the word "computers" or "ICT" appeared automatically when searching with the word "technology". Thus, the word of "computers" or "ICT" was taken as equivalent to "technology" if appeared in a journal's name.

Abbreviations

Information and Communications Technology

International Journal of STEM Education

Kindergarten–Grade 12

Science, Mathematics, Engineering, and Technology

Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics

Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics

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How to Write an Abstract | Steps & Examples

Published on February 28, 2019 by Shona McCombes . Revised on July 18, 2023 by Eoghan Ryan.

How to Write an Abstract

An abstract is a short summary of a longer work (such as a thesis ,  dissertation or research paper ). The abstract concisely reports the aims and outcomes of your research, so that readers know exactly what your paper is about.

Although the structure may vary slightly depending on your discipline, your abstract should describe the purpose of your work, the methods you’ve used, and the conclusions you’ve drawn.

One common way to structure your abstract is to use the IMRaD structure. This stands for:

  • Introduction

Abstracts are usually around 100–300 words, but there’s often a strict word limit, so make sure to check the relevant requirements.

In a dissertation or thesis , include the abstract on a separate page, after the title page and acknowledgements but before the table of contents .

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Table of contents

Abstract example, when to write an abstract, step 1: introduction, step 2: methods, step 3: results, step 4: discussion, tips for writing an abstract, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about abstracts.

Hover over the different parts of the abstract to see how it is constructed.

This paper examines the role of silent movies as a mode of shared experience in the US during the early twentieth century. At this time, high immigration rates resulted in a significant percentage of non-English-speaking citizens. These immigrants faced numerous economic and social obstacles, including exclusion from public entertainment and modes of discourse (newspapers, theater, radio).

Incorporating evidence from reviews, personal correspondence, and diaries, this study demonstrates that silent films were an affordable and inclusive source of entertainment. It argues for the accessible economic and representational nature of early cinema. These concerns are particularly evident in the low price of admission and in the democratic nature of the actors’ exaggerated gestures, which allowed the plots and action to be easily grasped by a diverse audience despite language barriers.

Keywords: silent movies, immigration, public discourse, entertainment, early cinema, language barriers.

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You will almost always have to include an abstract when:

  • Completing a thesis or dissertation
  • Submitting a research paper to an academic journal
  • Writing a book or research proposal
  • Applying for research grants

It’s easiest to write your abstract last, right before the proofreading stage, because it’s a summary of the work you’ve already done. Your abstract should:

  • Be a self-contained text, not an excerpt from your paper
  • Be fully understandable on its own
  • Reflect the structure of your larger work

Start by clearly defining the purpose of your research. What practical or theoretical problem does the research respond to, or what research question did you aim to answer?

You can include some brief context on the social or academic relevance of your dissertation topic , but don’t go into detailed background information. If your abstract uses specialized terms that would be unfamiliar to the average academic reader or that have various different meanings, give a concise definition.

After identifying the problem, state the objective of your research. Use verbs like “investigate,” “test,” “analyze,” or “evaluate” to describe exactly what you set out to do.

This part of the abstract can be written in the present or past simple tense  but should never refer to the future, as the research is already complete.

  • This study will investigate the relationship between coffee consumption and productivity.
  • This study investigates the relationship between coffee consumption and productivity.

Next, indicate the research methods that you used to answer your question. This part should be a straightforward description of what you did in one or two sentences. It is usually written in the past simple tense, as it refers to completed actions.

  • Structured interviews will be conducted with 25 participants.
  • Structured interviews were conducted with 25 participants.

Don’t evaluate validity or obstacles here — the goal is not to give an account of the methodology’s strengths and weaknesses, but to give the reader a quick insight into the overall approach and procedures you used.

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Next, summarize the main research results . This part of the abstract can be in the present or past simple tense.

  • Our analysis has shown a strong correlation between coffee consumption and productivity.
  • Our analysis shows a strong correlation between coffee consumption and productivity.
  • Our analysis showed a strong correlation between coffee consumption and productivity.

Depending on how long and complex your research is, you may not be able to include all results here. Try to highlight only the most important findings that will allow the reader to understand your conclusions.

Finally, you should discuss the main conclusions of your research : what is your answer to the problem or question? The reader should finish with a clear understanding of the central point that your research has proved or argued. Conclusions are usually written in the present simple tense.

  • We concluded that coffee consumption increases productivity.
  • We conclude that coffee consumption increases productivity.

If there are important limitations to your research (for example, related to your sample size or methods), you should mention them briefly in the abstract. This allows the reader to accurately assess the credibility and generalizability of your research.

If your aim was to solve a practical problem, your discussion might include recommendations for implementation. If relevant, you can briefly make suggestions for further research.

If your paper will be published, you might have to add a list of keywords at the end of the abstract. These keywords should reference the most important elements of the research to help potential readers find your paper during their own literature searches.

Be aware that some publication manuals, such as APA Style , have specific formatting requirements for these keywords.

It can be a real challenge to condense your whole work into just a couple of hundred words, but the abstract will be the first (and sometimes only) part that people read, so it’s important to get it right. These strategies can help you get started.

Read other abstracts

The best way to learn the conventions of writing an abstract in your discipline is to read other people’s. You probably already read lots of journal article abstracts while conducting your literature review —try using them as a framework for structure and style.

You can also find lots of dissertation abstract examples in thesis and dissertation databases .

Reverse outline

Not all abstracts will contain precisely the same elements. For longer works, you can write your abstract through a process of reverse outlining.

For each chapter or section, list keywords and draft one to two sentences that summarize the central point or argument. This will give you a framework of your abstract’s structure. Next, revise the sentences to make connections and show how the argument develops.

Write clearly and concisely

A good abstract is short but impactful, so make sure every word counts. Each sentence should clearly communicate one main point.

To keep your abstract or summary short and clear:

  • Avoid passive sentences: Passive constructions are often unnecessarily long. You can easily make them shorter and clearer by using the active voice.
  • Avoid long sentences: Substitute longer expressions for concise expressions or single words (e.g., “In order to” for “To”).
  • Avoid obscure jargon: The abstract should be understandable to readers who are not familiar with your topic.
  • Avoid repetition and filler words: Replace nouns with pronouns when possible and eliminate unnecessary words.
  • Avoid detailed descriptions: An abstract is not expected to provide detailed definitions, background information, or discussions of other scholars’ work. Instead, include this information in the body of your thesis or paper.

If you’re struggling to edit down to the required length, you can get help from expert editors with Scribbr’s professional proofreading services or use the paraphrasing tool .

Check your formatting

If you are writing a thesis or dissertation or submitting to a journal, there are often specific formatting requirements for the abstract—make sure to check the guidelines and format your work correctly. For APA research papers you can follow the APA abstract format .

Checklist: Abstract

The word count is within the required length, or a maximum of one page.

The abstract appears after the title page and acknowledgements and before the table of contents .

I have clearly stated my research problem and objectives.

I have briefly described my methodology .

I have summarized the most important results .

I have stated my main conclusions .

I have mentioned any important limitations and recommendations.

The abstract can be understood by someone without prior knowledge of the topic.

You've written a great abstract! Use the other checklists to continue improving your thesis or dissertation.

If you want to know more about AI for academic writing, AI tools, or research bias, make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

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An abstract is a concise summary of an academic text (such as a journal article or dissertation ). It serves two main purposes:

  • To help potential readers determine the relevance of your paper for their own research.
  • To communicate your key findings to those who don’t have time to read the whole paper.

Abstracts are often indexed along with keywords on academic databases, so they make your work more easily findable. Since the abstract is the first thing any reader sees, it’s important that it clearly and accurately summarizes the contents of your paper.

An abstract for a thesis or dissertation is usually around 200–300 words. There’s often a strict word limit, so make sure to check your university’s requirements.

The abstract is the very last thing you write. You should only write it after your research is complete, so that you can accurately summarize the entirety of your thesis , dissertation or research paper .

Avoid citing sources in your abstract . There are two reasons for this:

  • The abstract should focus on your original research, not on the work of others.
  • The abstract should be self-contained and fully understandable without reference to other sources.

There are some circumstances where you might need to mention other sources in an abstract: for example, if your research responds directly to another study or focuses on the work of a single theorist. In general, though, don’t include citations unless absolutely necessary.

The abstract appears on its own page in the thesis or dissertation , after the title page and acknowledgements but before the table of contents .

Cite this Scribbr article

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McCombes, S. (2023, July 18). How to Write an Abstract | Steps & Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved February 25, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/dissertation/abstract/

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International Review of Education: Call for abstracts

Submit your abstract for the International Review of Education special issue  'Philosophical, ethical and pedagogical perspectives on global citizenship education: : A critical examination with educators from South to North' by 10 April 2024.

Global citizenship education (GCE) is a call to foster values and knowledge that, potentially at least, enable learners to become and be informed, engaging and responsible global citizens. The emergence of GCE as a pedagogical framework is particularly timely in today's interconnected world. GCE offers a promising avenue to address the challenges posed by political upheavals, social injustices, economic inequalities, and environmental (un)sustainability, all of which have been exacerbated by the global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic (Bosio, Waghid, Papastephanou & McLaren, 2023; Bosio, Torres & Gaudelli, 2023; Bosio & Waghid, 2023; 2022; Giroux & Bosio, 2021).

However, limited attention has been given to how educators in diverse regions across the Global South and the Global North perceive and implement GCE within their curricula and classrooms; even more so when considering its application beyond the confines of formal education, specifically adult education and lifelong learning (e.g. community centres, workplace training, voluntary or non-governmental organizations, online courses and webinars, and outreach programmes). This gap in exploration is significant, particularly given the inherent nature of lifelong learning, where education extends into diverse settings and throughout one's lifetime.

Hence, the  International Review of Education – Journal of Lifelong Learning ( IRE ) invites papers for a special issue on “Philosophical, ethical and pedagogical perspectives of global citizenship education: A critical examination with educators from South to North” aimed at exploring contributions that shed light on whether and how GCE can be employed as a pedagogical approach not only within the boundaries of formal education but also in various settings, including non-formal and informal ones, adult education, and lifelong learning. From this perspective, this special issue examines GCE that moves beyond merely instilling students with a basic sense of interconnectedness and expanding their cultural awareness – important as these aspects are – by enabling them to ethically and critically situate the discourse in the context of globalization (Torres & Bosio, 2020; Veugelers & Bosio, 2021). Our understanding of critical GCE is constituted by acknowledging the powerful influence of societal ideologies in spelling out concepts of global citizenship and GCE, notions of engagement and social transformation, a resource-, not deficit-oriented recognition of others in their 'otherness’, and responsible action that integrates actions, knowledge, and cultural frameworks of humans both in the Global South and Global North (Schreiber-Barsch, 2018).

In light of this, this special issue invites contributions from scholars representing a diverse regional mix, spanning continents and cultural contexts, to ensure a comprehensive exploration of GCE. It welcomes both theoretical and empirical perspectives that investigate how educators, situated in both the Global South and Global North, perceive the ethical, critical, moral, but also decolonial, and Indigenous values and knowledge of GCE, and how their pedagogy adapts to it.

Specifically, we ask:

  • What philosophical and pedagogical approaches do educators, including those engaged in formal/non-formal education, adult education and lifelong learning, employ to promote ethical, critical and moral knowledge and values in GCE? If not emphasizing ethical, critical, and moral knowledge and values, what other knowledge and values in GCE do they prioritize?
  • What is the role of ethical, critical, moral, decolonial, and Indigenous knowledge and values of GCE in addressing pressing local and global challenges, including political turmoil, social injustices, economic disparities, and environmental sustainability?
  • What challenges are encountered by educators, including those engaged in formal/non-formal education, adult education, and lifelong learning environments, when integrating ethical, critical, and moral perspectives into their GCE practices, along with strategies to overcome these challenges?
  • What potential future directions or advancements are foreseeable or desirable in incorporating ethical, critical and moral visions into GCE, with a specific focus on the evolving global challenges, such as those arising from the post-COVID-19 pandemic world.

Submissions are welcome that address all levels of education. We particularly encourage papers that, within the context of GCE, focus on lifelong learning, adult education, community-based learning and citizenship. This includes both formal settings (e.g., classrooms and formal curricula) and non-formal settings (e.g. community centres, workplace training, adult education programmes, NGOs, online courses, webinars, and outreach programmes).

Abstracts for the special issue should range from 200 to 300 words. Each proposal should include the names, affiliations and email contacts of the authors, along with a provisional title. Please submit abstracts by 10 April 2024 to the Executive Editor of IRE , Paul Stanistreet:  [email protected]  

Authors will receive notification whether their abstracts have been accepted by 25 May 2024 . Manuscripts are due by 25 November 2024 . This special issue is expected to be published in late 2025.

References  

Bosio, E., Torres C.A., & Gaudelli W. (2023). Exploring values and knowledge in global citizenship education: Theoretical and empirical insights from scholars worldwide. Prospects,  53:3.   https://link.springer.com/journal/11125/volumes-and-issues/53-3

Bosio, E., Waghid, Y., Papastephanou, M., & McLaren, P. (2023). Guest Editorial: Critical and Creative Practices of Global Citizenship Education in the Digital Age of Information and Communication Technologies. Journal of Creative Communications .  https://doi.org/10.1177/09732586231211397

Bosio, E., & Waghid Y. (2023). Global Citizenship Education as a Living Ethical Philosophy for Social Justice. Citizenship Teaching & Learning , 18:2, pp. 151–58,  https://doi.org/10.1386/ctl_00117_2

Bosio, E., & Waghid Y. (Eds.) (2022). Global Citizenship Education in the Global South: Educators’ Perceptions and Practices . BRILL. Series: Moral Development and Citizenship Education.  https://brill.com/view/title/63195

Giroux, H. A., & Bosio, E. (2021). Critical Pedagogy and Global Citizenship Education. In Emiliano Bosio (Ed.), Conversations on Global Citizenship Education: Perspectives on Research, Teaching, and Learning in Higher Education (pp. 1–10). Routledge: New York.  https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780429346897-1/critical-pedagogy-global-citizenship-education-henry-giroux-emiliano-bosio  

Schreiber-Barsch, S. (2018). Global Citizenship Education and Globalism. In I. Davies, L.-C. Ho, D. Kiwan, C. L. Peck, A. Peterson, E. Sant & Y. Waghid (Eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Global Citizenship and Education (pp. 113–131). London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Torres C.A., & Bosio, E. (2020). Global Citizenship Education at the crossroads: globalization, global commons, common good and critical consciousness. Prospects , 48, pp. 99–113.  https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11125-019-09458-w

Veugelers. W., & Bosio, E. (2021). Linking moral and social-political perspectives in global citizenship education: A conversation with Wiel Veugelers. Prospects , 53, pp. 181–194.  https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11125-021-09576-4

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Six Online Activities to Help Students Cope With COVID-19 , by Lea Waters: These well-being practices can help students feel connected and resilient during the pandemic.

Help Students Process COVID-19 Emotions With This Lesson Plan , by Maurice Elias: Music and the arts can help students transition back to school this year.

How to Teach Online So All Students Feel Like They Belong , by Becki Cohn-Vargas and Kathe Gogolewski: Educators can foster belonging and inclusion for all students, even online.

How Teachers Can Help Students With Special Needs Navigate Distance Learning , by Rebecca Branstetter: Kids with disabilities are often shortchanged by pandemic classroom conditions. Here are three tips for educators to boost their engagement and connection.

How to Reduce the Stress of Homeschooling on Everyone , by Rebecca Branstetter: A school psychologist offers advice to parents on how to support their child during school closures.

Three Ways to Help Your Kids Succeed at Distance Learning , by Christine Carter: How can parents support their children at the start of an uncertain school year?

How Schools Are Meeting Social-Emotional Needs During the Pandemic , by Frances Messano, Jason Atwood, and Stacey Childress: A new report looks at how schools have been grappling with the challenges imposed by COVID-19.

Six Ways to Help Your Students Make Sense of a Divisive Election , by Julie Halterman: The election is over, but many young people will need help understanding what just happened.

Train Your Brain to Be Kinder (video), by Jane Park: Boost your kindness by sending kind thoughts to someone you love—and to someone you don’t get along with—with a little guidance from these students.

From Othering to Belonging (podcast): We speak with john a. powell, director of the Othering & Belonging Institute, about racial justice, well-being, and widening our circles of human connection and concern.

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Writing an Abstract for Your Research Paper

Definition and Purpose of Abstracts

An abstract is a short summary of your (published or unpublished) research paper, usually about a paragraph (c. 6-7 sentences, 150-250 words) long. A well-written abstract serves multiple purposes:

  • an abstract lets readers get the gist or essence of your paper or article quickly, in order to decide whether to read the full paper;
  • an abstract prepares readers to follow the detailed information, analyses, and arguments in your full paper;
  • and, later, an abstract helps readers remember key points from your paper.

It’s also worth remembering that search engines and bibliographic databases use abstracts, as well as the title, to identify key terms for indexing your published paper. So what you include in your abstract and in your title are crucial for helping other researchers find your paper or article.

If you are writing an abstract for a course paper, your professor may give you specific guidelines for what to include and how to organize your abstract. Similarly, academic journals often have specific requirements for abstracts. So in addition to following the advice on this page, you should be sure to look for and follow any guidelines from the course or journal you’re writing for.

The Contents of an Abstract

Abstracts contain most of the following kinds of information in brief form. The body of your paper will, of course, develop and explain these ideas much more fully. As you will see in the samples below, the proportion of your abstract that you devote to each kind of information—and the sequence of that information—will vary, depending on the nature and genre of the paper that you are summarizing in your abstract. And in some cases, some of this information is implied, rather than stated explicitly. The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association , which is widely used in the social sciences, gives specific guidelines for what to include in the abstract for different kinds of papers—for empirical studies, literature reviews or meta-analyses, theoretical papers, methodological papers, and case studies.

Here are the typical kinds of information found in most abstracts:

  • the context or background information for your research; the general topic under study; the specific topic of your research
  • the central questions or statement of the problem your research addresses
  • what’s already known about this question, what previous research has done or shown
  • the main reason(s) , the exigency, the rationale , the goals for your research—Why is it important to address these questions? Are you, for example, examining a new topic? Why is that topic worth examining? Are you filling a gap in previous research? Applying new methods to take a fresh look at existing ideas or data? Resolving a dispute within the literature in your field? . . .
  • your research and/or analytical methods
  • your main findings , results , or arguments
  • the significance or implications of your findings or arguments.

Your abstract should be intelligible on its own, without a reader’s having to read your entire paper. And in an abstract, you usually do not cite references—most of your abstract will describe what you have studied in your research and what you have found and what you argue in your paper. In the body of your paper, you will cite the specific literature that informs your research.

When to Write Your Abstract

Although you might be tempted to write your abstract first because it will appear as the very first part of your paper, it’s a good idea to wait to write your abstract until after you’ve drafted your full paper, so that you know what you’re summarizing.

What follows are some sample abstracts in published papers or articles, all written by faculty at UW-Madison who come from a variety of disciplines. We have annotated these samples to help you see the work that these authors are doing within their abstracts.

Choosing Verb Tenses within Your Abstract

The social science sample (Sample 1) below uses the present tense to describe general facts and interpretations that have been and are currently true, including the prevailing explanation for the social phenomenon under study. That abstract also uses the present tense to describe the methods, the findings, the arguments, and the implications of the findings from their new research study. The authors use the past tense to describe previous research.

The humanities sample (Sample 2) below uses the past tense to describe completed events in the past (the texts created in the pulp fiction industry in the 1970s and 80s) and uses the present tense to describe what is happening in those texts, to explain the significance or meaning of those texts, and to describe the arguments presented in the article.

The science samples (Samples 3 and 4) below use the past tense to describe what previous research studies have done and the research the authors have conducted, the methods they have followed, and what they have found. In their rationale or justification for their research (what remains to be done), they use the present tense. They also use the present tense to introduce their study (in Sample 3, “Here we report . . .”) and to explain the significance of their study (In Sample 3, This reprogramming . . . “provides a scalable cell source for. . .”).

Sample Abstract 1

From the social sciences.

Reporting new findings about the reasons for increasing economic homogamy among spouses

Gonalons-Pons, Pilar, and Christine R. Schwartz. “Trends in Economic Homogamy: Changes in Assortative Mating or the Division of Labor in Marriage?” Demography , vol. 54, no. 3, 2017, pp. 985-1005.

“The growing economic resemblance of spouses has contributed to rising inequality by increasing the number of couples in which there are two high- or two low-earning partners. [Annotation for the previous sentence: The first sentence introduces the topic under study (the “economic resemblance of spouses”). This sentence also implies the question underlying this research study: what are the various causes—and the interrelationships among them—for this trend?] The dominant explanation for this trend is increased assortative mating. Previous research has primarily relied on cross-sectional data and thus has been unable to disentangle changes in assortative mating from changes in the division of spouses’ paid labor—a potentially key mechanism given the dramatic rise in wives’ labor supply. [Annotation for the previous two sentences: These next two sentences explain what previous research has demonstrated. By pointing out the limitations in the methods that were used in previous studies, they also provide a rationale for new research.] We use data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) to decompose the increase in the correlation between spouses’ earnings and its contribution to inequality between 1970 and 2013 into parts due to (a) changes in assortative mating, and (b) changes in the division of paid labor. [Annotation for the previous sentence: The data, research and analytical methods used in this new study.] Contrary to what has often been assumed, the rise of economic homogamy and its contribution to inequality is largely attributable to changes in the division of paid labor rather than changes in sorting on earnings or earnings potential. Our findings indicate that the rise of economic homogamy cannot be explained by hypotheses centered on meeting and matching opportunities, and they show where in this process inequality is generated and where it is not.” (p. 985) [Annotation for the previous two sentences: The major findings from and implications and significance of this study.]

Sample Abstract 2

From the humanities.

Analyzing underground pulp fiction publications in Tanzania, this article makes an argument about the cultural significance of those publications

Emily Callaci. “Street Textuality: Socialism, Masculinity, and Urban Belonging in Tanzania’s Pulp Fiction Publishing Industry, 1975-1985.” Comparative Studies in Society and History , vol. 59, no. 1, 2017, pp. 183-210.

“From the mid-1970s through the mid-1980s, a network of young urban migrant men created an underground pulp fiction publishing industry in the city of Dar es Salaam. [Annotation for the previous sentence: The first sentence introduces the context for this research and announces the topic under study.] As texts that were produced in the underground economy of a city whose trajectory was increasingly charted outside of formalized planning and investment, these novellas reveal more than their narrative content alone. These texts were active components in the urban social worlds of the young men who produced them. They reveal a mode of urbanism otherwise obscured by narratives of decolonization, in which urban belonging was constituted less by national citizenship than by the construction of social networks, economic connections, and the crafting of reputations. This article argues that pulp fiction novellas of socialist era Dar es Salaam are artifacts of emergent forms of male sociability and mobility. In printing fictional stories about urban life on pilfered paper and ink, and distributing their texts through informal channels, these writers not only described urban communities, reputations, and networks, but also actually created them.” (p. 210) [Annotation for the previous sentences: The remaining sentences in this abstract interweave other essential information for an abstract for this article. The implied research questions: What do these texts mean? What is their historical and cultural significance, produced at this time, in this location, by these authors? The argument and the significance of this analysis in microcosm: these texts “reveal a mode or urbanism otherwise obscured . . .”; and “This article argues that pulp fiction novellas. . . .” This section also implies what previous historical research has obscured. And through the details in its argumentative claims, this section of the abstract implies the kinds of methods the author has used to interpret the novellas and the concepts under study (e.g., male sociability and mobility, urban communities, reputations, network. . . ).]

Sample Abstract/Summary 3

From the sciences.

Reporting a new method for reprogramming adult mouse fibroblasts into induced cardiac progenitor cells

Lalit, Pratik A., Max R. Salick, Daryl O. Nelson, Jayne M. Squirrell, Christina M. Shafer, Neel G. Patel, Imaan Saeed, Eric G. Schmuck, Yogananda S. Markandeya, Rachel Wong, Martin R. Lea, Kevin W. Eliceiri, Timothy A. Hacker, Wendy C. Crone, Michael Kyba, Daniel J. Garry, Ron Stewart, James A. Thomson, Karen M. Downs, Gary E. Lyons, and Timothy J. Kamp. “Lineage Reprogramming of Fibroblasts into Proliferative Induced Cardiac Progenitor Cells by Defined Factors.” Cell Stem Cell , vol. 18, 2016, pp. 354-367.

“Several studies have reported reprogramming of fibroblasts into induced cardiomyocytes; however, reprogramming into proliferative induced cardiac progenitor cells (iCPCs) remains to be accomplished. [Annotation for the previous sentence: The first sentence announces the topic under study, summarizes what’s already known or been accomplished in previous research, and signals the rationale and goals are for the new research and the problem that the new research solves: How can researchers reprogram fibroblasts into iCPCs?] Here we report that a combination of 11 or 5 cardiac factors along with canonical Wnt and JAK/STAT signaling reprogrammed adult mouse cardiac, lung, and tail tip fibroblasts into iCPCs. The iCPCs were cardiac mesoderm-restricted progenitors that could be expanded extensively while maintaining multipo-tency to differentiate into cardiomyocytes, smooth muscle cells, and endothelial cells in vitro. Moreover, iCPCs injected into the cardiac crescent of mouse embryos differentiated into cardiomyocytes. iCPCs transplanted into the post-myocardial infarction mouse heart improved survival and differentiated into cardiomyocytes, smooth muscle cells, and endothelial cells. [Annotation for the previous four sentences: The methods the researchers developed to achieve their goal and a description of the results.] Lineage reprogramming of adult somatic cells into iCPCs provides a scalable cell source for drug discovery, disease modeling, and cardiac regenerative therapy.” (p. 354) [Annotation for the previous sentence: The significance or implications—for drug discovery, disease modeling, and therapy—of this reprogramming of adult somatic cells into iCPCs.]

Sample Abstract 4, a Structured Abstract

Reporting results about the effectiveness of antibiotic therapy in managing acute bacterial sinusitis, from a rigorously controlled study

Note: This journal requires authors to organize their abstract into four specific sections, with strict word limits. Because the headings for this structured abstract are self-explanatory, we have chosen not to add annotations to this sample abstract.

Wald, Ellen R., David Nash, and Jens Eickhoff. “Effectiveness of Amoxicillin/Clavulanate Potassium in the Treatment of Acute Bacterial Sinusitis in Children.” Pediatrics , vol. 124, no. 1, 2009, pp. 9-15.

“OBJECTIVE: The role of antibiotic therapy in managing acute bacterial sinusitis (ABS) in children is controversial. The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of high-dose amoxicillin/potassium clavulanate in the treatment of children diagnosed with ABS.

METHODS : This was a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study. Children 1 to 10 years of age with a clinical presentation compatible with ABS were eligible for participation. Patients were stratified according to age (<6 or ≥6 years) and clinical severity and randomly assigned to receive either amoxicillin (90 mg/kg) with potassium clavulanate (6.4 mg/kg) or placebo. A symptom survey was performed on days 0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 10, 20, and 30. Patients were examined on day 14. Children’s conditions were rated as cured, improved, or failed according to scoring rules.

RESULTS: Two thousand one hundred thirty-five children with respiratory complaints were screened for enrollment; 139 (6.5%) had ABS. Fifty-eight patients were enrolled, and 56 were randomly assigned. The mean age was 6630 months. Fifty (89%) patients presented with persistent symptoms, and 6 (11%) presented with nonpersistent symptoms. In 24 (43%) children, the illness was classified as mild, whereas in the remaining 32 (57%) children it was severe. Of the 28 children who received the antibiotic, 14 (50%) were cured, 4 (14%) were improved, 4(14%) experienced treatment failure, and 6 (21%) withdrew. Of the 28children who received placebo, 4 (14%) were cured, 5 (18%) improved, and 19 (68%) experienced treatment failure. Children receiving the antibiotic were more likely to be cured (50% vs 14%) and less likely to have treatment failure (14% vs 68%) than children receiving the placebo.

CONCLUSIONS : ABS is a common complication of viral upper respiratory infections. Amoxicillin/potassium clavulanate results in significantly more cures and fewer failures than placebo, according to parental report of time to resolution.” (9)

Some Excellent Advice about Writing Abstracts for Basic Science Research Papers, by Professor Adriano Aguzzi from the Institute of Neuropathology at the University of Zurich:

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How technology is reinventing education

Stanford Graduate School of Education Dean Dan Schwartz and other education scholars weigh in on what's next for some of the technology trends taking center stage in the classroom.

abstract article about education

Image credit: Claire Scully

New advances in technology are upending education, from the recent debut of new artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots like ChatGPT to the growing accessibility of virtual-reality tools that expand the boundaries of the classroom. For educators, at the heart of it all is the hope that every learner gets an equal chance to develop the skills they need to succeed. But that promise is not without its pitfalls.

“Technology is a game-changer for education – it offers the prospect of universal access to high-quality learning experiences, and it creates fundamentally new ways of teaching,” said Dan Schwartz, dean of Stanford Graduate School of Education (GSE), who is also a professor of educational technology at the GSE and faculty director of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning . “But there are a lot of ways we teach that aren’t great, and a big fear with AI in particular is that we just get more efficient at teaching badly. This is a moment to pay attention, to do things differently.”

For K-12 schools, this year also marks the end of the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funding program, which has provided pandemic recovery funds that many districts used to invest in educational software and systems. With these funds running out in September 2024, schools are trying to determine their best use of technology as they face the prospect of diminishing resources.

Here, Schwartz and other Stanford education scholars weigh in on some of the technology trends taking center stage in the classroom this year.

AI in the classroom

In 2023, the big story in technology and education was generative AI, following the introduction of ChatGPT and other chatbots that produce text seemingly written by a human in response to a question or prompt. Educators immediately worried that students would use the chatbot to cheat by trying to pass its writing off as their own. As schools move to adopt policies around students’ use of the tool, many are also beginning to explore potential opportunities – for example, to generate reading assignments or coach students during the writing process.

AI can also help automate tasks like grading and lesson planning, freeing teachers to do the human work that drew them into the profession in the first place, said Victor Lee, an associate professor at the GSE and faculty lead for the AI + Education initiative at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning. “I’m heartened to see some movement toward creating AI tools that make teachers’ lives better – not to replace them, but to give them the time to do the work that only teachers are able to do,” he said. “I hope to see more on that front.”

He also emphasized the need to teach students now to begin questioning and critiquing the development and use of AI. “AI is not going away,” said Lee, who is also director of CRAFT (Classroom-Ready Resources about AI for Teaching), which provides free resources to help teach AI literacy to high school students across subject areas. “We need to teach students how to understand and think critically about this technology.”

Immersive environments

The use of immersive technologies like augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality is also expected to surge in the classroom, especially as new high-profile devices integrating these realities hit the marketplace in 2024.

The educational possibilities now go beyond putting on a headset and experiencing life in a distant location. With new technologies, students can create their own local interactive 360-degree scenarios, using just a cell phone or inexpensive camera and simple online tools.

“This is an area that’s really going to explode over the next couple of years,” said Kristen Pilner Blair, director of research for the Digital Learning initiative at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning, which runs a program exploring the use of virtual field trips to promote learning. “Students can learn about the effects of climate change, say, by virtually experiencing the impact on a particular environment. But they can also become creators, documenting and sharing immersive media that shows the effects where they live.”

Integrating AI into virtual simulations could also soon take the experience to another level, Schwartz said. “If your VR experience brings me to a redwood tree, you could have a window pop up that allows me to ask questions about the tree, and AI can deliver the answers.”

Gamification

Another trend expected to intensify this year is the gamification of learning activities, often featuring dynamic videos with interactive elements to engage and hold students’ attention.

“Gamification is a good motivator, because one key aspect is reward, which is very powerful,” said Schwartz. The downside? Rewards are specific to the activity at hand, which may not extend to learning more generally. “If I get rewarded for doing math in a space-age video game, it doesn’t mean I’m going to be motivated to do math anywhere else.”

Gamification sometimes tries to make “chocolate-covered broccoli,” Schwartz said, by adding art and rewards to make speeded response tasks involving single-answer, factual questions more fun. He hopes to see more creative play patterns that give students points for rethinking an approach or adapting their strategy, rather than only rewarding them for quickly producing a correct response.

Data-gathering and analysis

The growing use of technology in schools is producing massive amounts of data on students’ activities in the classroom and online. “We’re now able to capture moment-to-moment data, every keystroke a kid makes,” said Schwartz – data that can reveal areas of struggle and different learning opportunities, from solving a math problem to approaching a writing assignment.

But outside of research settings, he said, that type of granular data – now owned by tech companies – is more likely used to refine the design of the software than to provide teachers with actionable information.

The promise of personalized learning is being able to generate content aligned with students’ interests and skill levels, and making lessons more accessible for multilingual learners and students with disabilities. Realizing that promise requires that educators can make sense of the data that’s being collected, said Schwartz – and while advances in AI are making it easier to identify patterns and findings, the data also needs to be in a system and form educators can access and analyze for decision-making. Developing a usable infrastructure for that data, Schwartz said, is an important next step.

With the accumulation of student data comes privacy concerns: How is the data being collected? Are there regulations or guidelines around its use in decision-making? What steps are being taken to prevent unauthorized access? In 2023 K-12 schools experienced a rise in cyberattacks, underscoring the need to implement strong systems to safeguard student data.

Technology is “requiring people to check their assumptions about education,” said Schwartz, noting that AI in particular is very efficient at replicating biases and automating the way things have been done in the past, including poor models of instruction. “But it’s also opening up new possibilities for students producing material, and for being able to identify children who are not average so we can customize toward them. It’s an opportunity to think of entirely new ways of teaching – this is the path I hope to see.”

More From Forbes

The growing discontent with american education.

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A tidal wave of discontent is beginning to wash over American education.

There is a growing discontent with American education. You can sense it swelling like a big wave, evidenced in a mix of troubling stats and trends from waning public perceptions of education to significant declines in enrollment and attendance. Students aren’t just talking about their discontent with education but walking it, too.

Enrollment in U.S. colleges and universities peaked in 2010 and has been on a steady decline since and more than a quarter of students in K-12 schools are now chronically absent . Certainly, many factors are at play here ranging from mental health issues and a pandemic hangover to technological disruption and a series of education policy debacles. But the ultimate culprit of our discontent may be the hardest of all to acknowledge and address. The brutal reality is that education isn’t exciting, engaging or relevant for far too many students.

It sounds harsh to say and even more difficult to write, but ‘exciting,’ ‘engaging’ and ‘relevant’ are not words often used to describe education. When asking students, parents or employers, we are more likely to hear descriptors such as ‘boring,’ ‘outdated,’ and ‘disconnected from the real world.’ Indeed, only 26% of U.S. adults who have experienced higher education strongly agree their coursework is relevant to their work and day-to-day life . And a mere 13% of K-12 students give their school an “A” grade on “making them excited about learning.”

One of the many outcomes of students who find little excitement or relevance in what they are learning is not just declining attendance but also employers of all shapes and sizes who say they can’t find the talent they are looking for. With nearly 10 million open jobs in the U.S. and a mere 11% of business leaders strongly agreeing graduates are well-prepared for work , we cannot afford to have an education discontent crisis.

While we have spent the better part of the last three decades focused on improving students’ standardized test scores, we’ve made effectively zero progress against this goal . The most heralded solution in recent memory for improving schools was ‘Common Core’ - which took a decade to roll-out and then faced repeal and backlash leading to no measurable result. And as we put more emphasis on ‘academic standards,’ we let students’ real world work experience atrophy as the least-working generation in U.S. history . At the higher ed level, less than a third of our graduates complete a work-integrated learning experience (such as an internship or a semester-long project) as part of their degree.

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How does school remain relevant when it provides such little exposure to the real world of work? How does school compete with the engaging and addictive content found in modern-day media, video games and bite-size-length mediums such as X, TikTok, and YouTube shorts? How does school remain up to date amidst the fastest-moving technological and social changes in history? Unfortunately, there are no easy fixes to the great discontent with education. But we can start by establishing a new, fundamental goal for education.

Our aim should be to make education more engaging and relevant. This sounds so simplistic. Yet this has never been a stated goal of any education policy reform in the past half century. If we were to make this our driving goal, we would need to put much more emphasis on the art and science of teaching and learning and on the integration of learning and work. And we would need new ‘north stars’ or metrics for which to aim.

We have national institutes for all sorts of important national priorities. But we don’t have one for teaching and learning. We have a U.S. Department of Education and a Department of Labor as wholly separate entities - yet nothing that aims to integrate learning and work. The average U.S. student takes 112 mandatory standardized tests across their K-12 education, yet we have no national measures of student engagement, exposure to experiential education or work-integrated learning.

Where there’s a will, there’s a way. And the will is developing in the rising swell of discontent with American education.

Brandon Busteed

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Introduction

Special education is the process by which students with special needs receive education via the process of addressing their differences while integrating them as much as possible in the typical educational environment of their peers. Success, measured as self-sufficiency, academic achievement, and future contributions to the community, may not be achieved if students with special needs do not receive this additional help. In the United States and many other countries, children who have special educational needs are entitled by law to receive services and accommodations that will help them perform to the best of their abilities and reach their academic potential. [1] [2]

Special needs can include learning disabilities, speech and language impairments, autism spectrum disorders, cognitive impairments, emotional and behavioral disorders, physical disabilities like cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophies, sensory impairments like vision or hearing, chronic medical illnesses, and any condition that affects optimal education. Whenever possible, the needs of these students should be met in the same environment where other peers learn. Only when progress is lacking in this mainstream setting, then a different classroom placement can be selected for their education. This new setting may include fewer students in the classroom, more teachers, or a higher level of support. The process of moving a child from the typical classroom or educational setting to a specially structured one is gradual. Emphasis should focus on finding the balance of meeting the students' educational needs in the least restrictive environment. [3]

Background History

Beginning in 1975 the All Handicapped Children Act (PL 94-142), and later evolving into the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA,1990), No Child Left Behind, and most recently the IDEA improvement act 2004, federal laws in the United States have ruled that public schools must provide free, appropriate public education (FAPE) to students with disabilities. Any person between 3 to 21 years of age suspected of having a disability is entitled to a comprehensive, interprofessional evaluation, and if eligible, to an individualized learning plan, and monitoring over time, showing the achievement of adequate progress. Part C of the law includes the educational services provided to children from birth to 3 years in a program called Early Intervention Program (EIP).  [4]

Role of the Medical Provider

The medical provider has an indirect but important role in supporting the education of their patients. This role includes early identification of students who struggle in school, encouraging families to ask the schools for help, supporting them through the process, providing medical documentation when necessary, and becoming involved in advocacy efforts at the individual and community level.

Issues of Concern

Common Terms Used in Special Education

  • General education: Standard curriculum without any special arrangements or modifications
  • Mainstreaming: The environment in which students typically receive their education; the same as general education. Teachers accommodate the curriculum for group instruction.
  • Response To Intervention ( RTI ):  Initial interventions used by general education teachers in a regular classroom to help struggling students, those who are falling behind. This process is put in place and monitored to see how much the student benefits from it before more formal evaluations that may lead to an Individual Education Plan (IEP).
  • Individualized Education Program (IEP): Legally binding document by which the public school system, after an interprofessional evaluation, identifies the educational needs of a student the intervention that will help achieve this goal and the method for monitoring of progress.
  • Individuals with Disabilities Education Act ( IDEA ): Federal law that requires public schools to provide special education services for children ages 3 to 21 who meet specific eligibility criteria
  • Free Appropriate Public Education ( FAPE): The educational right of students with disabilities to be educated at public expense, and make adequate progress.
  • Remediation: Interventions given to help the student who has fallen behind academically for whatever reason, to catch up. The student may or may not have special needs, or their special needs may not have been identified.
  • Accommodations: Include all the adaptations that will improve the student's academic success, like extra time for assignments or exams, use of technology, or adaptive equipment.
  • 504 modifications/accommodations: Adaptations, modifications, or accommodations to the curriculum based on a medical diagnosis. It is usually used when the student doesn't qualify for an IEP. It will provide many similar interventions and support.
  • Related services: Interventions that are not strictly educational but will help the student benefit from the overall educational support that he/she is receiving. May include counseling, occupational therapy, physical therapy, speech and language therapy, transportation, among others.
  • EIP (Early Intervention Program): Educational services provided to children from birth to 3 years old who either have a significant developmental delay or who are at risk for a delay.
  • CPSE (Committee for Preschool Special Education): Educational services provided to children 3 to 5 years old with educational needs.
  • CSE (Committee for Special Education): Educational services for children 5 to 18 or 21 who have academic needs. 

Evaluation Process

The process of providing educational interventions tailored to the individual needs of students consists of multiple steps. The process begins with the identification of students' educational needs. Educators are mandated to recognize students who struggle and those whose needs are not being met. After identifying a struggling student, the family must consent to the evaluation. These students then receive an RTI. In this part of the process, a personalized set of interventions is designed and put in place. The response to these interventions is monitored over a pre-determined period. If the student can catch up with the rest of the class, no further evaluation is necessary at this time. However, if there is no progress, then an interprofessional evaluation is done by the school assessment team. As a result of the evaluation, a decision will be made if the student has needs that will make him/her eligible for an IEP. The student that meets the criteria to qualify is eligible for the services. The degree of delays or educational needs that make students eligible for services varies by state and local legislation. The individual needs of the student, how to address these weaknesses, how to monitor progress, and clear goals for achievement over time are put together into a document called the IEP. This process includes procedural safeguards that ensure the rights of the children and their families, as well as a due process if there is no provision of these services. [5]

After an IEP is put in place, and the additional educational support starts, the student's progress is followed over time. Extra help usually begins in the general classroom setting. After a period, if the student does not make adequate progress and further support is necessary, then the student is placed in a more structured educational environment. This educational setting can be in an inclusive or collaborative team classroom, where students with and without IEPs are educated together by a teacher in cooperation with a special education teacher, or in smaller classrooms, sometimes called self-contained classes, where all the students have special needs. In some cases, adequate placement may be in a different school out of their home school district.

A similar process exists for preschool-age children. Preschool children, 3 to 5 years old, are provided with educational services by the Committee for Preschool Special education, following an interprofessional evaluation that determines their eligibility. Children younger than three years old receive services by Early Intervention, part C of the IDEA. Children with their families undergo evaluation by a comprehensive, interprofessional, and family-centered assessment. An Individualized Family Service Plan (IFSP) will then be developed.

Similarly, this plan includes educational goals. And it states how their educational needs will be addressed. It will also include ways to measure the child's progress and plans to transition the child to preschool services if the continuation of services is needed.

Clinical Significance

Early identification and proper remediation of developmental delays in young children and learning difficulties in older students have lifelong benefits. Students will achieve higher academic levels and financial independence. Many studies have shown that students with unidentified educational needs experience negative labeling, like being called lazy or dumb. They experience feelings of frustration, shame, and can develop anxiety, poor self-esteem, a higher rate of substance abuse, school dropout, and juvenile delinquency.  [6] [7] [8]

Special education programs are put in place for those students who are mentally, physically, socially, and/or emotionally delayed. This aspect of "delay," categorized broadly as a developmental delay, signify an aspect of the child's overall development (physical, cognitive, scholastic skills) that place them behind their peers. Due to these special requirements, students' needs cannot be met within the traditional classroom environment. [9]

Other Issues

504 Modifications

When a student has a medical diagnosis but is not eligible for special education, schools can make accommodations or adaptations to provide support under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA). For example, if academically, they are at grade level but have a medical condition (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) that prevents them from performing to the best of their potential. Under this provision, there cannot be discrimination against people with disabilities, and equal opportunities must be available. For school purposes, this means that “reasonable accommodations” must be made to compensate for the deficits due to the medical condition of the individual, including modifications for participation in the classroom, testing, transportation, and childcare.

Gifted Education

Children who are performing above the expected and are considered gifted and talented may need specialized teaching, but this is usually not included in special education. Gifted students are not eligible for an IEP. [10]

Enhancing Healthcare Team Outcomes

Students with special educational needs due to medical conditions need optimal health care. Optimizing medical care for those students will improve their educational outcomes. Routine assessment and long-term planning and treatment are essential components of health care and eventually educational outcome. Technology has played an increasingly important role in the health care and learning process of special needs students. Diversity of tools and devices became available to improve the function of impaired body systems like hearing, sensing, visualizing, vocalizing, ambulating, and writing or communicating. Learning, in general, has also made important forward steps using technology. Availability of advanced audio-visual devices and learning objects, fast and highly efficient communication devices and routes, distant education concepts and tools, and the needed expertise gave a new meaning and set up new higher goals of education. 

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Disclosure: Anthonella Benitez Ojeda declares no relevant financial relationships with ineligible companies.

Disclosure: Paola Carugno declares no relevant financial relationships with ineligible companies.

This book is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ ), which permits others to distribute the work, provided that the article is not altered or used commercially. You are not required to obtain permission to distribute this article, provided that you credit the author and journal.

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Paying attention to attention: a program evaluation of faculty-delivered mindfulness-based attention training to optimize wellness and professionalism in medical students

  • Chloe Zimmerman Gunsilius 1 , 2 , 3 ,
  • Malena M. Price 4 ,
  • Scott L. Rogers 5 ,
  • Ellen Flynn 6 , 7 &
  • Amishi P. Jha 4  

BMC Medical Education volume  24 , Article number:  182 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

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As physician distress rises, medical schools must provide programs to counter such distress at the earliest stages of training. Mindfulness training (MT) is one intervention that can alleviate stress during medical school. However, framing MT around wellness alone misses the opportunity to connect core cognitive and psychological capacities strengthened by MT to professional goals and skill acquisition inherent to successful medical training. Here, we highlight how the attentional components of MT align with students’ goals of becoming attending physicians while promoting academic, psychological, and interpersonal flourishing. MT courses that focus on strengthening attentional capacities can intuitively link academic and professional development with wellness, appealing to a wide array of students.

We iteratively recontextualized an existing short-form mindfulness training program for high-stress pre-professionals, known as Mindfulness Based Attention Training (MBAT), to the medical school context (MBAT-Rx). MBAT-Rx was offered by physician trainers to first-year medical students at Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University as a tool for improving study habits and focus in addition to the development of both self-care and patient care strategies. MBAT-Rx consists of weekly, two-hour sessions over four weeks, with 10–15 min of daily mindfulness practice between sessions. At the end of the four weeks, students submitted voluntary program evaluation responses detailing their experience of the program.

Optional program evaluation responses ( n  = 67) highlight that students found the program to be useful for their academic success and ability to pay attention, their interpersonal relationships, and their psychological health. By framing MT as an opportunity to boost core attentional capacities and connecting this to professional and academic goals in addition to wellness, MBAT-Rx appealed to a wide variety of students.

Conclusions

Our ongoing work suggests that framing MT as both a professional development and wellness promotion tool, taught by physicians themselves, and structured around students’ time demands, may be a successful model for medical schools looking to increase the impact of their mindfulness offerings. Such programs are needed to equip medical students to navigate the demands of a challenging healthcare training landscape.

Peer Review reports

Medicine is facing a crisis of distress within its workforce. Medical professionals are at elevated risk for burnout compared to other US working adults [ 1 ]. This risk has been further heightened recently by the extraordinary demands placed on physicians during the COVID-19 pandemic [ 2 ]. Physician distress often has professional consequences, as medical errors are more likely to be committed by physicians who self-report a higher burden of burnout symptoms [ 3 , 4 , 5 ]. In addition, patient satisfaction and trust are eroded by negative interpersonal interactions with disgruntled medical professionals [ 6 ]. Together, these performance and interpersonal challenges form a noxious feedback loop and further heighten physician distress, as evidenced by high depression and anxiety levels and increased risk of suicide among physicians, residents, and medical students [ 5 , 7 , 8 ].

The precursors of physician distress can be traced back to the earliest stages of medical education and training. Although trainees begin medical school with psychological health profiles on par with age-matched members of the general population [ 9 ], their profiles significantly diverge over subsequent years, driven primarily by increases in rates of depression and suicidal ideation [ 8 , 10 ]. Such findings lead to an obvious question: How can future physicians be best trained to navigate the competing psychological, interpersonal, and professional stressors inherent within the medical field, while maintaining optimal wellness and professional conduct?

In recent years, mindfulness training (MT) programs aiming to improve student wellness have become more readily available at medical schools [ 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 ]. Mindfulness is often defined as “moment-to-moment, non-judgmental awareness, cultivated by paying attention in a specific way… as non-reactively, as nonjudgmentally, and as open-heartedly as possible” [ 16 ]. One manualized, frequently-offered, MT program, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), has been shown to benefit medical students’, residents’, and physicians’ mental and emotional health [ 13 ]. Findings demonstrate that MBSR significantly dampens depression, anxiety, fatigue, stress, and burnout symptoms, while increasing prosocial emotions such as empathy and compassion [ 12 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 ].

Central features of mindfulness practice emphasize the ability to pay attention, nonjudgmentally, in the present moment [ 16 ]. Such abilities are essential to the developing physician ’s professional goals. For example, one must learn how to pay attention nonjudgmentally to whatever a patient discloses, while also attending to the demands of comprehensively documenting this disclosure, accessing previous knowledge to formulate a diagnosis and treatment plan, and working within the dynamics of an integrated healthcare team. Developing the capacity to hold these competing sources of information in mind, without unnecessary rumination or distraction, is an important cognitive skill all future physicians must develop. When properly contextualized to the goals of medical training, MT may thus directly influence professional development. Prior findings within the psychology literature suggest that motivation to engage in behaviors is higher when these behaviors satisfy multiple goals simultaneously rather than a single goal [ 22 ]. In line with these findings, MT courses framed to include superordinate academic and professional goals, versus psychological and interpersonal well-being alone, may have greater appeal for medical students.

The medical training environment places significant cognitive demands on medical trainees, as they master didactic material, technical skill acquisition, and patient care. These cognitive demands impact trainees on multiple levels: psychological, interpersonal, and professional. Importantly, medical students report that academic performance is highly valued and considered relevant to their psychological well-being over time. They also consistently report that intensive academic demands are a significant barrier to their wellness [ 23 ]. Attention and associated executive functions are critical for successful academic performance as well as professional success as “Attending” Physicians [ 24 , 25 ]. Attentional lapses are known to correspond with psychological health challenges, [ 26 ] and increase medical errors in medical trainees [ 27 ]. Without intervention, attentional lapses have been previously linked to performance errors [ 28 ]. Within the medical context, such lapses may contribute to instances of patient harm.

Mindfulness practice explicitly engages attention. Attentional processes and the psychological, interpersonal, and professional domains they affect are highly vulnerable to degradation amidst the ongoing stressors [ 29 ] common to medical education [ 30 ]. Empirical studies investigating the effects of MBSR, or a related program, Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) among medical students, indicate that MT may improve attentional outcomes [ 31 ], problem-focused coping [ 32 ], and the ability to manage the challenging workload demanded by medical education [ 33 ]. A growing body of research indicates that MT is also highly effective for improving attentional performance across other high-demand professional training settings including among soldiers during pre-deployment intervals [ 34 ], university football players during pre-season training, [ 35 ] and undergraduates during the academic semester [ 36 ]. For this reason, attentional processes represent an important target for intervention in any prolonged high-stress cohort. Practices that preserve attentional functioning may have a multifaceted impact on academic success, professional development, and psychological health alike.

Despite MT’s demonstrated ability to benefit functions critical for success in medical training, many practical barriers pose challenges to effective implementation within medical schools. Two primary challenges, time demands and contextualization, may hamper medical students’ engagement with MT.

First, issues of time demands: MT offered to medical trainees should fit within the small pockets of time medical students have outside of their daily responsibilities. The popular MBSR program requires participation in an 8-week class with 2 to 2.5-h weekly class meetings, as well as 45-min daily “homework” practices that must be completed out-of-class [ 37 ]. This program requires a time commitment that is often infeasible for medical students’ schedules, limiting participation. Fewer and shorter weekly meetings with reduced minutes of daily practice may achieve greater participation among trainees. However, too few training hours spaced too far apart in time may not offer any real benefit to participants, as evidenced by a recent study that demonstrated the null effects of a novel, short-form mindfulness program for pediatric residents on burnout, empathy, or overall mindfulness [ 38 ]. For maximum impact, short-form MT programs must tightly balance scheduling demands with sufficient mindfulness practice exposure at the ideal time in medical education.

Second, issues of contextualization : MT should be contextualized for professional and educational goals, in addition to psychological and wellness improvements [ 12 , 39 ]. While MBSR has been shown to benefit wellness outcomes in medical trainees, this program is frequently not offered by trainers who are embedded within the medical context, and thus, they may not be privy to the specific challenges medical students face. Short-form mindfulness programs specifically contextualized to the medical training setting and taught by physicians with medical education context familiarity may have greater impact on students’ practice engagement.

Here, we describe our implementation of a 4-week Mindfulness-Based Attention Training (MBAT) course for first-year medical students at the Warren Alpert School of Medicine of Brown University. MBAT is a short-form MT program developed to address the challenges of time pressure and context specificity inherent in high-stress professions [ 34 , 40 ]. MBAT explicitly focuses on the use of mindfulness practices to develop core capacities of attention. Core themes highlight how attention is affected by stress, and its role in psychological health, academic success, and professional development. The program requires a two-hour session with a trainer for each of the four weeks of the course. Participants are encouraged to complete 15 min of out-of-class MT practices daily, for a minimum of 3–5 days per week. This program additionally employs a train-the-trainer (TTT) dissemination model in which context-familiar trainers are rapidly trained to deliver the program to their respective workplaces. To date, the core MBAT program has been adapted for a variety of occupational settings [ 41 , 42 ].

Development of MBAT to preserve attentional and psychological capacities in high-stress professional training environments

A distinguishing and central feature of MBAT is its emphasis on the use of domain-contextualized mindfulness instruction and practices to promote attentional functioning necessary for specific professional training environments, while also supporting optimal psychological health. MBAT explicitly aligns learning and professional goals with wellness training. This alignment may increase receptivity and interest from a broader range of participants in medical education settings. That is, some medical students may resist participating in an MT program because of skepticism regarding the wellness components in the traditional framing of mindfulness. Yet, these same students may be receptive to participating if the program is framed as a way to improve learning a skill that could bolster their professional performance [ 23 ]. By framing MT as a route by which to improve learning or skill acquisition, MBAT may appeal to a wider array of trainees and professionals committed to improving their occupational performance.

The content and delivery of MBAT has been extensively tested and refined in a variety of high-stress professional environments including active-duty military personnel [ 34 , 40 , 43 ], and first responders [ 41 ]. Research results indicate that MBAT participation yields significant improvement in these populations on functional domains related to attention [ 40 ] and related executive control functions, such as working memory [ 44 ], psychological health [ 41 ], and professional goals [ 42 ]. Notably, the core content and practices remain the same during delivery to different high-stress populations, but program contextualization is adapted to the specifics of that population (for contextualization to medical student training, see Table  1 ). This feature helps to generate early awareness amongst participants of how the course is relevant to their professional and personal goals, thereby maximizing engagement with course content.

To facilitate ease of course delivery, each 2-hour class follows the same structure. Two specific themes are highlighted during each class session, with one hour dedicated to each theme (see Table  1 for specific themes in each class). To structure the hour, dedicated MBAT-Rx training cards are distributed at the start of each hour. The trainer begins by leading a short 3–5 mindfulness practice to help students settle in and refocus. The trainer then briefly introduces the theme of the hour using representative quotes presented on the training card. These quotes help facilitate a short 5–10-min discussion where students identify ways they have noticed that theme show up for them in medical training. After this discussion, students are directed to a short series of 3–5 questions which prompt them to consider their own reactions and reflections related to that theme. After a period of 5–10 min to quietly consider and write out responses to those questions, a trainer-led group discussion follows. This discussion is meant to be an exploration of students’ own insights and direct experience and serves as a way to introduce the upcoming mindfulness practice. The trainer then leads the students in a 15–20-min mindfulness practice which is targeted toward the theme of the prior discussions. The hour-long session concludes with a final 5–10-min debriefing session tied to their direct experience with the mindfulness practice they just completed. The second hour follows the same structure, using a new training card dedicated to the explicit theme for that hour.

Over the course of the two hours, participants will have engaged in approximately 40–50 min of explicit mindfulness practice. This training structure reinforces the importance of mindfulness practice, boosts students’ direct familiarity with practice, and provides an opportunity for the trainer to respond to any practice-related questions to ensure that students feel comfortable engaging in practice before doing it at home.

At the end of the two-hour session, participants are given a final training card to take home that summarizes the themes of the day and lists out the home practices to complete before the next class. Home practices for each week include the mindfulness practice that was first introduced and experienced during that class. Students are able to keep all training cards as reference material, and are encouraged to look back over them as needed to solidify insights.

Training physicians to facilitate MBAT-Rx via the Train-the-Trainer (TTT) practicum

Another critical component of MBAT’s framing is the employment of context-familiar trainers who are able to relate the content of the MBAT program to the demands of individuals’ professions. Given recent evidence that delivery of MT via context-familiar vs unfamiliar trainers is a best practice for effective delivery of MT [ 34 ], medical school faculty may be best-positioned to deliver MT to medical students. In prior studies, context-familiar trainers received a 10- to 12-week MBAT trainer practicum in which they gained foundational knowledge of mindfulness concepts and practices and developed proficiency in delivering contextualized programs to their specific group. Individuals who have received MBAT delivered by a trainer who participated in this TTT model have been receptive to their mindfulness trainer [ 40 ], and have reported benefitting from the training [ 42 ].

MBAT’s development within professional training environments, focus on one's capacity to pay attention as foundational for professional development and psychological health, as well as the train-the-trainer dissemination model made it uniquely suited for the demands of the medical education environment. For this reason, in the current project, MBAT was contextualized for the medical school environment, and referred to as MBAT-RX.

Four medical school faculty members who are community-based physicians across four separate medical specialties, completed the TTT program. This program was organized around issues commonly faced in medical training. Having four trainers provided flexibility of delivery year-round, further increasing the feasibility for student participation. Physician faculty trainers were carefully selected to ensure that they were not concurrently involved in academic or clinical evaluation of first-year medical students. This consideration helped facilitate an environment of openness and ease among students. They could freely discuss difficulties without fear it may influence evaluation of their performance in other environments.

Delivery of MBAT-Rx

Initial delivery of MBAT-Rx to medical students by trainers was offered in the Spring of 2018 to first-year medical students. This specific interval was chosen to provide students sufficient time to acclimate to the demands of medical school. Yet, it was also early enough in medical training to advantage their use of MBAT-related skills throughout their future education. Each year, students were first introduced to the course through an optional 20-min lunch time information session, where course instructors detailed the purpose and structure of the MBAT program. This session was advertised to the entire first year medical school class of around 140 students per year. Approximately 70 students from each class voluntarily signed up for the information session each year, indicating a high interest in this program across the medical school classes.

A total of 105 students enrolled in MBAT-Rx courses between 2018 and 2023. In 2018, the course was delivered twice, once early in the Spring Semester (February), and one later in the Spring Semester (April). Each of these courses had 15 students enroll, with approximately 7 students completing the program feedback in each course. Student feedback indicated that participants preferred the MBAT-Rx course offered earlier in the semester, as they were able to use the skills throughout the semester. To be responsive to this feedback, subsequent MBAT-Rx delivery was conducted in January or February, and it was only offered once per year. Between 2019–2023, 20–30 students enrolled in MBAT-Rx and 10–15 students completed the optional program evaluation responses each year, which resulted in 67 total students who provided feedback between 2018–2023. Since this was a program evaluation project and not a research study, no demographic information was collected.

While 2018 and 2019 cohorts experienced in-person training, a virtual format was required in 2020 and 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In-person delivery was resumed in 2022 and 2023. Remote and in-person delivery platforms resulted in similar enrollment numbers and program evaluation completion rates (10–15 students/year). Anecdotally, trainers felt that course discussions reached a deeper level during in-person years and underscored the importance of in-person training. In line with this feedback, once pandemic restrictions were lifted, the in-person format was resumed.

Medical education is a dynamic environment that continuously exposes students to novel programs aimed at improving their educational experience. Often, these programs are one-off experiences, and it can be difficult to understand the extent to which students feel the program benefitted their overall learning experiences. Program evaluations can therefore be useful to ascertain how valuable participants found the program by allowing them to provide feedback. This feedback can then be used to generate insights regarding aspects of the course that participants found more versus less useful, to guide program modifications before subsequent program delivery [ 45 , 46 ].

The program evaluation of MBAT-Rx was conducted to glean program specific feedback versus advancing generalizable knowledge. While program evaluations are indeed informative, unlike formal research, they do not empirically investigate a research question, and therefore, research conclusions may not be made from findings derived from these evaluations [ 46 ]. Relatedly, the present program evaluation does not test a specific research question. The summary findings provided herein are intended to inform and improve future programs of short-form MT offered at medical schools. Before drawing empirical conclusions regarding MBAT in the medical school context, formal research of this program will need to be conducted.

With both remote and in-person delivery, MBAT-Rx is typically offered to class sizes of 20–30 students but can also scale to larger class sizes. The structure of the course, core themes, contextualization of the themes within medicine, and home practice assignments are detailed in Table  1 .

Students’ voluntary program evaluation responses indicated that they felt that MBAT-Rx addressed aspects of their life relevant to attention, psychological health, interpersonal function, and professionalism (see Fig.  1 for graphs and quotes).

figure 1

Student Experiences in MBAT-Rx across Functional Domains. Program evaluation of n  = 67 students completing MBAT-Rx are presented in relation to ( A ) Impact on attention, ( B ) Impact on psychological health, ( C ) Impact on Interpersonal relationships, and ( D ) Impact on professional development. Representative quotes by students that speak to each domain are included to illustrate the subjective experience in the course. All responses to program evaluation questions were collected after the final MBAT-Rx class meeting

Program evaluation responses also indicated that MBAT-Rx successfully addresses the two main structural challenges of time demands and contextualization. In terms of time demands, students reported they were able to meet the time requirements for the weekly class meeting, as well as incorporate the daily practice requirements into their daily schedules, with the majority (82%) indicating that they completed the home practices from a few times a week to every day (Fig.  2 b). It is important to note that while the majority of students (61%) reported that it was not difficult to participate in the overall MBAT-Rx program (Fig.  2 a), 36% of students reported they did not find it easy to incorporate mindfulness into daily life (Fig.  2 b). This indicates that students were able to complete the allotted home practice time (10-15 minutes), but did not necessarily find it easy to do so. Because the broader MT literature reports that greater practice engagement corresponds with greater benefits for participants [ 40 ], trainers consistently emphasized the importance of finding the time to do home practice even when it feels difficult. They checked in with students each week about it to provide motivation and support. This attention to practice engagement may be one reason why the majority of students reported completing the home practice at least a few times a week, despite finding it difficult to do so (Fig.  2 b).

figure 2

Student Perception of MBAT-Rx’s Time Demands. A The majority of n  = 67 students in MBAT-Rx did not feel that the MBAT-Rx program was difficult to participant in. B Students reported a range of experiences in how easy it was to incorporate daily mindfulness practice, but the majority of participants (82%) reported practice at least a few times a week, despite the fact that 36% report finding mindfulness practice difficult to incorporate into daily life. All responses to program evaluation questions were collected after the final MBAT-Rx course

In terms of contextualization, students reported that the program was relevant to their goals in medicine and felt the knowledge and skills they gained would improve their performance in medicine (Fig.  1 d, and  3 ).

figure 3

Student Perception of MBAT-Rx’s Contextualization to Medicine. A The majority of n  = 67 students completing MBAT-Rx felt the program was relevant to the medical school context. B Students strongly felt that the physician faculty trainers were effective at relating the material to the medical context. All responses to program evaluation questions were collected after the final MBAT-Rx class meeting

The train-the-trainer program was crucial for contextualizing MBAT-Rx to the medical school context and simultaneously meeting trainees’ goals across functional domains (Fig.  3 ). Students responded extraordinarily well to the physician faculty trainers. Students’ typical interactions with faculty in their first year of medical school primarily entails evaluation, leaving little room for informal discussion and mentorship. Given this, some students expressed appreciation for the opportunity to engage with their faculty trainers and openly discussing their difficulties and triumphs of medical training. The small group format and conversations guided by the trainers and the MBAT-Rx training cards further fostered a sense of camaraderie and facilitated a supportive environment amongst peers, which can be difficult to achieve in wellness programs for medical students.

While our initial pilot implementation of MBAT-Rx only examined voluntary program evaluation responses, participants broadly indicated that MBAT-Rx may not only surmount the barriers commonly faced by MT programs in medical training environments, but they also found the program helpful for improving their attention, psychological, interpersonal, and professional functions. Their responses indicated that MBAT-Rx’s framing may successfully utilize mindfulness practices to link academic, professional, and personal flourishing. Future systematic research involving objectively indexed MT-related neurocognitive performance changes, as well as psychological health changes indexed via self-report, relative to controls, is necessary (see Jha et al., 2007) [ 31 ]. Additionally, systematic investigations of the impact of MT on objective measures of medical school performance (e.g., exam grades or standardized patient physical exams, OSCEs) may be important for linking participation in MBAT-Rx to metrics of academic and professional development that students value. Such work could underscore if and how the practice of mindfulness is both protective of wellness and cognitive health throughout high-stress pre-professional training, while also bolstering professional development.

It is important that MT programs are understood as one approach among many to counter medical students' distress and facilitate professional development. Mindfulness interventions alone cannot eradicate the institutional challenges endemic to medical education that pose detrimental consequences on medical students’ personal and professional lives. Structural changes that foster an optimal learning environment are necessary to promote medical student flourishing (e.g., pass/fail grading, implementation of duty hour restrictions, regulation of 24-h call shifts, etc.) [ 39 , 47 ]. MT may represent one step towards promoting such changes, as it allows students to become aware of their circumstances with steadiness versus reactivity, and attend to thoughts and emotions in a way that can elicit the most effective actions and long-term change.

While the program feedback presented here suggests the utility of short-form mindfulness programs such as MBAT-Rx, there are a number of notable limitations. First and foremost, due to this simple program evaluation format, we did not collect comprehensive demographic information from participants. We, therefore, cannot gain meaningful insights into factors that may differ between those who decided to enroll versus those who did not, and secondarily into those who completed the program and program evaluations versus those who did not. Of a medical school class size around 140, approximately 70 students voluntarily attend the MBAT-RX info session, indicating a high degree of student interest in the course content. However, only 20–30 students typically enrolled in MBAT-Rx per year, which is a relatively low percentage of total students. Course scheduling may have influenced this. MBAT-Rx was offered one day a week, which could have conflicted with other events, and precluded more students from participating. One solution to this going forward is to offer multiple simultaneous sessions of MBAT-Rx on different days/times to maximize the number of students who can enroll.

Another major limitation is that we did not track engagement with home practices. Students were sent MP3 recordings of the weekly mindfulness practice after each class. Future research studies should track participants’ engagement with mindfulness practices. This would allow researchers to ascertain the amount of practice necessary to confer salutary effects on a particular outcome. Delivery of recordings via a smartphone application, with daily notification reminders, could be another way of both tracking practice engagement and also encouraging formation of a daily practice habit. The program evaluation indicated that some students struggled to incorporate mindfulness into their daily lives. Future research should investigate the extent to which this perceived difficulty influences students’ engagement with mindfulness practices.

One major drawback of the feedback format was that it did not include long-term follow-up questions to assess continued engagement with mindfulness practices after course completion. Importantly, at the end of the course, students were encouraged to continue their practice by seeking out weekly drop-in mindfulness offerings hosted by students at the medical school, or setting up a “buddy-system” with classmates to hold each other accountable. Tracking the extent to which students utilize these suggestions and the effect of such continued engagement on measures of interest, will be important for establishing the impact of MT on medical students over time.

The generally positive feedback of MBAT-RX presented here is meant to motivate future research to understand the impact of short-form MT on the cognitive, emotional, and professional development of medical students. Research measures of interest could assess effects on academic performance such as exam scores, or on clinical assessments of patient care via OSCE assessments. Established measures of attentional, psychological, or interpersonal health, as well as stress, resilience, and burnout may be additionally important. Neurocognitive effects could be assessed with EEG or MRI during laboratory-based tasks. It will be very important to systematically assess such effects against classmate controls who do not engage in MBAT-Rx and to include plans for long-term follow-up.

Overall, our implementation of MBAT-Rx to medical students in their first year suggests this short-form MT program can integrate seamlessly into the existing structure of medical education and is well-adapted to the medical context. While student feedback indicated that MBAT-Rx did address wellness domains, it is notable that it also appeared to improve core competencies relevant to the educational goals of becoming an attending physician. We focused specifically on delivery of MBAT-Rx to first-year medical students to foster protective/preventive skill training at the outset of medical training. MBAT-Rx can be easily adapted to later delivery in medical school or residency that focuses more on trainees’ experiences during the intense clinical years. Future work can explore the offering of additional “booster” sessions to promote mindfulness practice along the continuum of medical education as well.

As medical schools continuously refine medical curricula to promote the highest quality of medical education, we argue that mindfulness offerings have a valuable role to play not only in addressing and preventing distress during training, but also, in nourishing a professional identity that takes into account the whole person. By contextualizing mindfulness offerings to the specific goals of each stage of medical education, MBAT-Rx appeals to a wide range of medical students. In offering mindfulness courses at convenient times within training, schools can more effectively engage a wide array of students. Future efforts to incorporate MT into medical curricula or wellness initiatives may thus benefit from using MBAT-Rx or similar programs that emphasize and employ the principles of contextualization, and time efficient delivery by physician faculty trainers.

Availability of data and materials

No datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.

Abbreviations

Mindfulness Based Attention Training

Mindfulness Based Attention Training - medical student context

Mindfulness Training

Train-the-Trainer dissemination model

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Acknowledgements

We wish to thank Mariah Stump, MD, MPH and Elizabeth Toll, MD for taking part in the Train-the-Trainer program and acting as physician MBAT trainers. We thank members of the Alpert Medical School Administration who have supported the use of MBAT in the medical school curriculum and worked with us to ensure ongoing delivery of MBAT including Dr. Allen Tunkel, MD, PHD, Dr. Star Hampton, MD, Dr. Jordan White, MD, MPH, Dr. Luba DuMenco, MD, Dr. Thais Mather, PhD, Dr. Roxanne Vrees, MD, Kelly Holder, PhD, and Emily Green, PhD, Chelsea Reyes, and AngelMarie VanGyzen. We would also like to thank research assistants Helen Ding, Samuel Fredericks, Nikisha Vajghiani, MD, and Heba Heleem, MD for their help with delivering and setting up the courses and earlier versions of the program.

The contextualization of the existing MBAT program to the medical school experience was made possible due to generous funding to Brown University/Alpert Medical School by the Berkman-Landis Family Fund. We thank the Mindfulness Center at Brown University and the Brown University Office of the Vice President of Research Internal Seed Grant number GR300093 for funds that enabled the delivery of the Train-the-Trainer program and costs associated with MBAT delivery. CZG’s effort was supported by grant number F30AT012306 from the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health.

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Contributions

All authors discussed initial ideas for the framing of the manuscript. EF and CZG were trained in the delivery of MBAT by SR and APJ, and helped to contextualize it to the medical context. EF delivered the MBAT-RX courses. CZG compiled and organized the program evaluation responses and generated the figures. CZG and MMP drafted the initial manuscript, with extensive input from APJ. All authors read, provided comments, and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Chloe Zimmerman Gunsilius .

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Ethics approval and consent to participate.

The MBAT-Rx course offering constituted a curricular activity at the medical school. We did not collect any information related to participant demographics, questionnaires, or any research-related measure. We simply offered a voluntary feedback survey at the end of the course that participants could anonymously answer regarding specific questions related to the MBAT-Rx course delivery. We consulted with the Brown University IRB to determine whether simply offering the course to medical students with this feedback form met the regulatory definition of “Research” requiring IRB approval. According to Brown University IRB policy ( https://www.brown.edu/research/sites/research/files/HSR%20Determination%20Chart.pdf ), our program evaluation did not meet the regulatory criteria for “Research”. This is because the program evaluation presented here was not designed to be a systematic investigation that was hypothesis driven, and was not designed to develop or contribute to generalizable knowledge. The goal was simply to see specific feedback from MBAT-Rx participants at Brown about what factors they found useful in the delivery and experience of the program so we could better refine our delivery of this program and understand its utility for students, prior to undertaking future research efforts that may lead to generalizable knowledge, for which we have secured separate IRB approval.

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Competing interests

Amishi Jha and Scott Rogers are co-developers and copyright holders of the Mindfulness-Based Attention Training program materials. All other authors declare no competing interests.

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Gunsilius, C.Z., Price, M.M., Rogers, S.L. et al. Paying attention to attention: a program evaluation of faculty-delivered mindfulness-based attention training to optimize wellness and professionalism in medical students. BMC Med Educ 24 , 182 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-024-05119-5

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-024-05119-5

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Intravenous push antibiotics in the emergency department: education and implementation.

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Rachel E Brady, Elizabeth L Giordullo, Charles A Harvey, Nicholas D Krabacher, Alyssa M Penick, Intravenous push antibiotics in the emergency department: Education and implementation, American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy , 2024;, zxae039, https://doi.org/10.1093/ajhp/zxae039

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Intravenous push antibiotics can serve as an alternative to intravenous piggyback antibiotics while providing the same pharmacodynamics and adverse effect profile, easing shortage pressures and decreasing order to administration time, as well as representing a potential cost savings. The purpose of this study was to determine whether intravenous push antibiotics could decrease the time from an order to the start of administration compared to piggyback antibiotics in emergency departments. This study also measured the cost savings of antibiotic preparation and administration and assessed nursing satisfaction when using intravenous push antibiotics.

Sample instances of use of intravenous push and piggyback antibiotics were identified. Patients were included if they were 18 years of age or older and received at least a single dose of intravenous push or piggyback ceftriaxone, cefepime, cefazolin, or meropenem in one of the institution’s emergency departments. The primary outcome of the study was to compare the time from the order to the start of administration of intravenous push vs piggyback antibiotics. The secondary outcome was to compare the cost of antibiotic preparation for the 2 methods.

The intravenous push and piggyback groups each had 43 patients. The time from the order to the start of administration decreased from 74 (interquartile range, 29-114) minutes in the piggyback group to 31 (interquartile range, 21-52) minutes in the push group ( P = 0.003). When the estimated monthly cost savings for ceftriaxone, cefepime, and meropenem were added together, across the emergency departments, an estimated $227,930.88 is saved per year when using intravenous push antibiotics.

Intravenous push antibiotics decrease the time from ordering to the start of administration and result in significant cost savings.

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  27. Paying attention to attention: a program evaluation of faculty

    Background As physician distress rises, medical schools must provide programs to counter such distress at the earliest stages of training. Mindfulness training (MT) is one intervention that can alleviate stress during medical school. However, framing MT around wellness alone misses the opportunity to connect core cognitive and psychological capacities strengthened by MT to professional goals ...

  28. Journal of Education: Sage Journals

    Journal of Education 0.5 5-Year Impact Factor: 0.6 JOURNAL HOMEPAGE SUBMIT PAPER The oldest educational publication in the country, the Journal of Education's mission is to disseminate knowledge that informs practice in PK-12, higher, and professional education. A refereed publication, the Journal offers … | View full journal description

  29. Intravenous push antibiotics in the emergency department: Education and

    The intravenous push and piggyback groups each had 43 patients. The time from the order to the start of administration decreased from 74 (interquartile range, 29-114) minutes in the piggyback group to 31 (interquartile range, 21-52) minutes in the push group (P = 0.003).When the estimated monthly cost savings for ceftriaxone, cefepime, and meropenem were added together, across the emergency ...