This study seeks to reveal the perceptions of pre-service visual arts teachers on social justice through art-based practices focused on social justice. Designing on visual phenomenology, this study was performed in the fall semester of the 2018-2019 academic year. Five different activities involving visual inquiries are presented to reveal the perceptions of the pre-service teachers on social justice. The research participants are 35 (13 male, 22 female) sophomore-level pre-service teachers. The data are obtained through course documents, reflective diaries and semi-structured interviews. The data are then analysed through content analysis; reliability and validity are ensured through triangulation. This study identifies four different themes: association, questioning, transformation and reflection. The findings show that the pre-service teachers questioned common issues related to social justice. It was observed in the activities performed in this study that the pre-service teachers identified the visual themes. They mentioned common social justice issues based on the things they experienced and their observations. These are such as women's rights, violence against women, children's rights, LGBT, animal rights, language and religion differences, income imbalance, racism, and discrimination. The issues they questioned were the direct expression of the individual experiences of the pre-service teachers through visuals.

Higher education institutions around the world had to implement an emergency remote education (ERE) modality due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This study aimed to determine the individual and relational factors that affect the perception of learning in engineering, education, and health students during emergency distance education. Through a quantitative, non-experimental, and correlational study, an online survey was administered to a sample of 929 higher education students regarding their ERE experience. They were surveyed regarding their perceived learning, empathy, classroom interaction, self-regulation of learning, positive agency, student engagement, learning approaches, and use of digital resources. Data was analyzed using quantitative methods, namely correlations, comparisons of means and a linear regression analysis. Education students showed a more positive perception of learning, used a deep learning approach, and rated more positively the empathy shown by their professors and the possibilities for class participation than other students. Engineering students had the lowest scores on perceived learning and on almost all other variables. In general, students with a better perception of learning presented a higher engagement in their studies and a lower use of surface learning approach.

I use the disability studies framework and autoethnography method in this qualitative research to examine my lived experiences in education and their impact on the disability community. The qualitative research method focuses on obtaining data through open-ended and conversational communication. This method is about what people think and why they think so. Disability Studies is an interdisciplinary body of intellectual work that positions disability positively and complexly, interrogating rhetoric that disability is a deficit that experts should remedy. Autoethnography is a research method and methodology which uses the researcher’s personal experience as data to describe, analyze and understand cultural experience. I focus on my disability community membership, professional development, and ways I integrate social justice in teacher education to correct education systems into ones that value disabled people. Using the self-study technique, I review my education journey and identities and how they have shaped me into a teacher educator who believes education leverages us to question happenings and provide solutions. I, therefore, reflect on the entwinement of my scholarship and community outreach and how they are geared towards creating and advancing a local and global pluralistic society that values disabled people. My values of collaboration, innovation, integrity, excellence, access, diversity, equity, equality, and inclusion are best practices that dismantle educational barriers and empower educators and disabled people.  

This research concentrated on observing academic student teachers’ teamwork, especially its effectiveness and their attitudes to collaboration and transformation, as well as their reflective, written self-assessments in relation to teamwork. Teams have been studied widely, but these kinds of special contexts are rare. The target group was higher education teachers, the context was an introduction of a new pedagogical program, and the teams acted under the guidance of mentors and occasional lecturers. Besides the content analysis, the study method was a deep analysis of the essays. The most effective positive influencers proved to be social exchanges, including mentoring, peer support, input for learning and the experiences of wellbeing. Individual distrust of working methods in teams, and emotional suspicions of their self-efficacy in transformational settings emerged as latent factors, revealing mainly the difficulty of changing traditional mindsets. The analyses offered individual and community-wide opportunities to steer education in the future.