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Background. Peer-to-peer feedback is crucial in the development of clinical abilities. However, owing to the differences in cultural backdrop, peer-to-peer feedback can be difficult to embrace and follow in a positive manner in Saudi Arabia. Objectives. The purpose of this study is to analyze family residents’ perceptions of peer-to-peer feedback on clinical examination skills. Material and methods. This descriptive cross-sectional quantitative and qualitative study was done in 2023 at the Ministry of Health’s Postgraduate Academy of Family Medicine in Alhasa, Saudi Arabia. 83 family medicine residents were invited, and 66 consented to participate. Residents’ perceptions were analyzed using a well-established and validated questionnaire. Results. The results indicate that most of the residents expressed a positive attitude toward peer-to-peer feedback as a valuable learning activity for skill improvement and addressing deficiencies. Nevertheless, some concerns were raised, including feelings of embarrassment, potential bias, personal judgments, a lack of medical knowledge among peers, and varying experiences with feedback delivery. In response to these concerns, residents suggested several improvements for peer feedback, such as conducting regular, supervised, and anonymous feedback sessions and organizing preplanned sessions on specific subjects before the feedback sessions. Conclusions. This study highlights the positive reception of peer feedback among family medicine (FM) residents, emphasizing its role in professional development and addressing weaknesses. Our findings reveal areas for improvement in FM residency programs, including creating a supportive feedback environment and enhancing feedback quality through training and valid instruments. © 2025, Polish Society of Family Medicine. All rights reserved.

Introduction: Rural Canadians have poorer health indices than their urban counterparts and struggle with worse access to care due to an undersupply of physicians. Research has identified personal factors, such as being raised in a rural environment, and traits, such as lower harm avoidance, among those drawn to rural practice. As well, the impact of aspects of medical training, such as rural rotations, have been recognized in creating rural practice intentions, but the role of specific clinical competencies here has yet to be determined. Emergency medicine is often one of the most challenging components of rural practice and thought by some to have its competencies poorly developed in family practice training. We hypothesized a model for rural practice affinity in which a strong sense of general self-efficacy would be independently mediated by the development of emergency medicine competence and rural practice self-efficacy, leading to stronger intentions to embark on a rural practice career. Methods: This model was tested using the data from a survey of all family medicine residents nearing graduation from 14 of the 17 Canadian medical schools. Demographics and data on factors known to influence a rural career choice were collected and accounted for when determining the strength of the hypothesized relationships. Both existing and specifically designed survey tools were used to assess model components. A partial correlation matrix between the variables of interest (general self-efficacy, emergency medicine competency, rural practice self-efficacy, and rural practice intentions) – controlling for the effects of relationships, financial aspects, personal aspects, and social desirability – was created and subjected to a structural equation model. Results: Our initial rural practice affinity model resulted in a poor fit of the model to the data. However, the addition of a pathway from emergency medicine competence to rural practice selfefficacy improved the model to one showing significant paths as hypothesized as well as excellent measures of fit. Discussion: The importance of general self-efficacy is recognized and is itself mediated by the more specific rural practice self efficacy to rural practice intentions, consistent with the literature. Emergency medicine competency has a central role in both mediating general self-efficacy to rural practice intentions, while also being mediated itself by rural practice self-efficacy to rural practice intentions. This provides new understanding in the development of rural practice self-efficacy. The link of emergency medicine competency to both rural practice self-efficacy and rural practice intentions suggests that this is a curricular area that deserves greater focus and consideration of how to ensure that residents are meeting emergency medicine requirements and receiving robust training in this area. This is especially important as there have been significant concerns from various groups on the efficacy of emergency medicine training in family medicine residency. Conclusion: These findings will help inform residency program curriculum and pedagogies, underlining the critical role of emergency medicine competence to support rural physician identity formation and to improve physician recruitment to rural Canada. © This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Rocky school‐to‐work transition processes, characterized by spells of unemployment and education–job mismatch, can have long‐lasting scarring effects on young people and often lead to a loss of income and occupational status. However, the mechanisms that either foster or prevent unemployment scarring are underinvestigated. Our article thus asks whether vocational education and training (VET) diploma holders’ unemployment duration and the probability of status loss at labour market re‐entry are affected by the interplay between occupation‐specific labour demand and young workers’ skill sets acquired in VET. Our theoretical approach combines job search, human capital, and signalling theory with arguments from structural segmentation approaches. Our analyses use complete national register data on VET diploma holders who became unemployed during their early careers. We combine national register data on unemployment spells with register data on education trajectories in Switzerland and occupation‐specific labour demand data. Results from event‐history analyses indicate that unemployment episodes are associated with lower employment chances and higher risk of status loss of VET diploma holders. These general patterns are attenuated by occupation‐specific labour demand and the skills taught in vocational training programmes. Re‐employment chances are higher and the risk of status loss lower when occupation‐specific labour demand is high and few of the accessible job opportunities offer lower status than the job before unemployment. Additionally, we find that workers who trained in occupations imparting large proportions of occupation‐specific skills have a higher re‐employment probability but also face a higher risk of status loss than those who trained in occupations imparting larger proportions of general skills. Our findings indicate a trade‐off between occupation‐specific skills and general skills. © 2025 by the author(s).

Interventions targeting the well-being, motivation, and professional development of refugee teachers are central to enabling the provision of high-quality education to refugee children and youth in crisis contexts. The overall lack of it hinders learners’ academic and psychosocial adjustment and may prolong the effects of displacement-related stress among teachers and learners. This study explores the well-being and motivation of refugee teachers in the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 refugee teachers who were randomly recruited from eight schools in the camp. The findings reveal compounded well-being risks at the national level (e.g. the right to work and remuneration, and professional development), school level (e.g. class size and workload, and learning resources), and individual teacher level (e.g. level of education, teaching experience, and gender) that undermine their occupational well-being and motivation. © Julie Matthews and Quentin Maire 2025. All rights reserved.

Introduction: Although university education in Germany is without tuition fees, the parental educational background influences the decision to study as well as the choice of subjects, and is linked to challenges that students face during the course of study. However, little is known about these aspects in veterinary medicine. In this study, the differences between the first-generation students (FGS) and continuing-generation students (CGS) in veterinary medicine, as well as the challenges (study entrance, financial situation, concerns about the future), are examined in order to identify any need for supportive action. Methods: The results of this study are based on a survey that was open to all German veterinary students in Spring 2023. Results: Responses from 1,525 students were analyzed (response rate 24%). A considerable proportion of veterinary students (40%) in Germany are FGS. They are more likely to rate their financial situation as poor (20%) or very poor (7%) than CGS (poor: 10%, very poor: 3%). Even though FGS and CGS work for income alongside their studies in similar proportions (FGS: 71%; CGS: 67%), the motivation was different: CGS are more likely to work in order to earn extra money (CGS: 68%; FGS: 49%) and FGS because other sources of income are insufficient (FGS: 34%; CGS: 12%). A similar proportion of FGS and CGS frequently or consistently considers dropping out of university (FGS: 10%; CGS: 11%). However, in FSG this is more often due to financial reasons (FGS: 28%, CGS: 16%). Almost all students have a high school-based university entrance qualification (97%). Final school grades of CGS were better on average than those of FGS. More FGS than CGS had already completed vocational training prior to their studies (FGS: 47%, CGS: 30%). Discussion: In conclusion, FGS and CGS differ in their own educational background and the financial challenges in veterinary education. It is therefore important to create an awareness of challenges related to the social background of veterinary students. Moreover, support services to counteract challenges of FGS (and CGS) are needed. There is a need for further research concerning the associations between parental educational background and academic and professional success in veterinary medicine. © © 2025 Kracht, Doherr and Jensen.

This research explores the optimization of YOLO-based computer vision algorithms for real-time recognition of Indonesian Sign Language (BISINDO) letters under diverse environmental conditions. Motivated by the communication barriers faced by the deaf and hearing communities due to limited sign language literacy, the study aims to enhance inclusivity through advanced visual detection technologies. By implementing the YOLOv5s model, the system is trained to detect and classify correct and incorrect BISINDO hand signs across 52 classes (26 correct and 26 incorrect letters), utilizing a dataset of 3,900 images augmented to 10,920 samples. Performance evaluation employs k-fold cross-validation (k=10) and confusion matrix analysis across varied lighting and background scenarios, both indoor and outdoor. The model achieves a high average precision of 0.9901 and recall of 0.9999, with robust results in indoor settings and slight degradation observed under certain outdoor conditions. These findings demonstrate the potential of YOLOv5 in facilitating real-time, accurate sign language recognition, contributing toward more accessible human-computer interaction systems for the deaf community. © Authors.

This study explores how educational robotics enhances elementary students’ computational thinking, problemsolving skills, and technological humanistic literacy. A total of 23 sixth-grade students participated in a seven-week Kebbi Air robot programming course. A computational thinking competency test and a problem-solving self-assessment questionnaire were used for quantitative analysis, and student interviews were conducted to examine their perspectives on technological humanistic literacy. The results indicated significant improvements in students’ understanding and application of computational thinking concepts, particularly in conditional logic and iteration structures. In problemsolving, the "testing, evaluation, and improvement" dimension showed the most notable progress. Interview findings revealed that students were not only interested in robotics technology but also considered its societal implications. This study validates the potential of educational robotics as a medium for programming education and a catalyst for fostering students’ awareness of technology’s societal impact. © 2025, The Education University of Hong Kong. All rights reserved.

This article extends social realist theorising about theoretical knowledge and curriculum within the sociology of education to explore the nature of qualifications. The article draws on Bernstein’s concept of evaluative rules to do so. It evaluates human capital, institutional, and credentialist theories about the role qualifications play in society. Each offers important insights, yet each is unsatisfactory. Each fails to recognise education as a relatively autonomous field distinct from other social fields. We theorise qualifications to explore, on the one hand, the role they play in transforming society, and on the other, the role they play in reproducing social inequalities. We argue that qualifications matter, even if they are imperfect, contribute to the reproduction of social inequalities, and should be tied less, and not more, tightly to the labour market. A socially just model of qualifications would include four key purposes: individual, educational, occupational, and social. © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

The rapid advancement of ICT, robotics, data science, and cyber-physical systems (CPS) has intensified the need for agile, future-ready human resource development (HRD) strategies. This scoping review explores current HRD practices, challenges, and opportunities across these technological domains. Guided by the PRISMA-ScR framework, 791 records were initially retrieved from four databases, with 43 peer-reviewed publications ultimately included following a rigorous screening process. Thematic analysis revealed a strong emphasis on digital and AI literacy, interdisciplinary training, and the adoption of immersive technologies such as virtual reality and AI-driven competency tracking systems. Persistent gaps, including misalignment between academic training and industry needs, a lack of scalable HRD models, and underdeveloped policy frameworks. Statistical comparisons revealed no significant differences across fields, indicating the cross-cutting relevance of the identified strategies. The findings underscore the need for structured, empirically grounded, and industry-integrated HRD approaches to prepare the workforce for the demands of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. © IEEE. 2013 IEEE.

Background: Although the professions of medical and dental assistants are some of the most popular apprenticeships among young women, the shortage of skilled workers in medical practices and medical care centers is growing alarmingly. Despite a high willingness to start training, apprenticeships in the field of medical and dental assistants are terminated prematurely more often than average. Research question: Which profession-specific training structures in medical and dental practices may contribute to the educational programs not being completed as scheduled? Methods: Training statistics and cross-occupational research findings are analyzed and related to results of occupation-specific surveys. Possible correlations of institutional factors influencing training conditions are discussed and research gaps are identified. Results: Institutional and structural framework conditions for the training of medical and dental assistants are considered by various perspectives as needing improvement, and this is leading to below-average satisfaction rates among trainees. The current absence of uniform standards for the qualification of vocational trainers, in conjunction with concepts for the didactic organization of dual training, is a matter of concern. Furthermore, it has been demonstrated that a lack of appreciation and comparatively low training allowance are associated with high drop-out rates. Conclusion: The findings highlight the essential importance of training-promoting framework conditions in the practical training institutions and the pedagogical–didactic development of the training as a factor that can be directly influenced by the actors in the genesis of training drop-outs. © The Author(s) 2025.