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Budget literacy is defined as 'the ability to read, decipher, and understand public budgets to enable and enhance meaningful citizen participation in the budget process'. It is comprised of two main parts - (i) a technical understanding of public budgets, including familiarity with government spending, tax rates and public debt and; (ii) the ability to engage in the budget process, comprising of practical knowledge on day-to-day issues, as well as an elementary understanding of the economic, social and political implications of budget policies, the stakeholders involved and when and how to provide inputs during the annual budget cycle. Given that no international standards or guidelines have been established for budget literacy education to date, this book seeks to address this gap by taking stock of illustrative initiatives promoting budget literacy for youth in selected countries. The underlying presumption is that when supply-side actors in the budget process -- governments -- simplify and disseminate budget information for demand-side actors -- citizens -- this information will then be used by citizens to provide feedback on the budget. However, since citizens are often insufficiently informed about public budgets to constructively participate in budget processes one way to empower them and to remedy the problem of \"budget illiteracy\" is to provide budget-literacy education in schools to youth, helping them evolve into civic-minded adults with the essential knowledge needed for analyzing their government's fiscal policy objectives and measures, and the confidence and sense of social responsibility to participate in the oversight of public resources. This book elaborates on approaches, learning outcomes, pedagogical strategies and assessment approaches for budget literacy education, and presents lessons that are relevant for the development, improvement, or scaling up of budget literacy initiatives.

Slovak language and Slovak literature is a specific subject in schools with Hungarian as the language of instruction and occupies a leading place in the hierarchy of subjects. Its specific role is determined by the fact that Slovak language has the status of a state language in the Slovak Republic, it is the language of the majority, a means of communication, i.e. a tool for communication for citizens of Hungarian nationality with citizens of other nationalities in the Slovak Republic and at the same time it is a second (specific target) language in schools with Hungarian as the language of instruction. Social requirements are taken into account when planning the curriculum and the educational process. Children and pupils of citizens belonging to national minorities and ethnic groups are guaranteed the right to learn the state language. The educational process in schools with the language of instruction of nationalities is carried out in accordance with the instrument of ratification of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. The importance of being able to speak the majority language by members of minorities is supported by a number of European recommendations. The paper deals with the concept and strategy of teaching Slovak language and Slovak literature as well as its central position: helping the overall personal development of students, acquiring habits of good behaviour, especially in the field of speech, positively influencing the development of language-analogous abilities, the development of feelings connected with the language, creativity and positive attitudes towards Slovak language.

This textbook on 'Instructional Design for Learning' is a must for all education and teaching students and specialists. It provides a comprehensive overview about the theoretical foundations of the various models of Instructional Design and Technology from its very beginning to the most recent approaches. It elaborates Instructional Design (ID) as a science of educational planning. The book expands on this general understanding of ID and presents an up-to-date perspective on the theories and models for the creation of detailed and precise blueprints for effective instruction. It integrates different theoretical aspects and practical approaches, such as conceptual ID models, technology-based ID, and research-based ID. In doing so, this book takes a multi-perspective view on the questions that are central for professional ID: How to analyze the relevant characteristics of the learner and the environment? How to create precise goals and adequate instruments of assessment? How to design classroom and technology-supported learning environments? How to ensure effective teaching and learning by employing formative and summative evaluation? Furthermore, this book presents empirical findings on the processes that enable effective instructional designing. Finally, this book demonstrates two different fields of application by addressing ID for teaching and learning at secondary schools and colleges, as well as for higher education.

The integration of digital instructional methods has significantly enhanced the academic system. This study explores the viewpoints of educators and students on the application of digital resources and online platforms in the aftermath of the global health crisis. The research involved 135 university students enrolled in a cloud computing course that integrated theoretical teaching, practical exercises, and assessments to track their academic progress. Educational sessions were conducted on platforms like Microsoft Teams, Mentimeter, and Padlet, while interactive games were utilized on platforms such as Quizizz and Kahoot. Practical exercises were carried out using Tinkercad. At the end of the semester, the students' academic performance was evaluated using box plots, and a detailed comparison between traditional and digital teaching methods was presented. Results indicated that the majority, approximately 75%, of the students demonstrated better performance when employing digital learning strategies compared to traditional methods. In addition, feedback was gathered through surveys to evaluate the effectiveness of the study, incorporating perspectives from both educators and students for a comprehensive assessment.

ChatGPT is a substantial language model developed by OpenAI, rooted in the GPT-3.5 architecture, with the capacity to generate human-like responses to text-based inputs. ChatGPT serves various purposes, encompassing chatbots, customer service, and personal assistants, which can significantly contribute to sustainability initiatives. Its applications range from language translation and content creation to text summarization. Utilizing ChatGPT offers several advantages, notably its rapid response generation, high accuracy, and its capacity to evolve and improve over time, aligning with sustainability goals for efficiency and innovation. In an educational context, ChatGPT can provide invaluable support to students and educators, aiding in tasks such as generating summaries for extensive texts and addressing subject-related queries. For programming education, ChatGPT can assist students with coding assignments by offering suggestions, hints, and even generating code snippets, fostering sustainable coding practices. Nevertheless, employing ChatGPT in coding education presents challenges, particularly the risk of students becoming overly dependent on AI-generated code and failing to grasp fundamental concepts, which can hinder long-term sustainability in the field. To gauge the viability of ChatGPT in programming education and sustainability, we conducted a Likert scale questionnaire with a group of 40 Brazilian students from March to April 2023. Our primary goal was to assess students’ interest in utilizing ChatGPT as a tool to face programming challenges and problems. Specifically, we aimed to determine their level of inclination towards relying exclusively on ChatGPT during programming classes. In addition to these objectives, we sought to discern not only the positive and beneficial perceptions of using ChatGPT in the classroom but also to investigate its potential impact on learning outcomes and student engagement. Furthermore, we aimed to explore whether participants would consider transitioning to exclusive reliance on ChatGPT in the context of their programming education. Our study revealed that students recognized ChatGPT as an innovative set of AI tools applicable to various classroom contexts, including programming and computer languages, thereby fostering sustainability in the adoption of AI technology for educational purposes. Notably, a majority of students participating in the study expressed a keen interest in employing this tool as a supplementary educational resource in the classroom, promoting sustainable and enhanced learning experiences.

Developing teacher knowledge, skills, and confidence in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education is critical to supporting a culture of innovation and productivity across the population. Such capacity building is also necessary for the development of STEM literacies involving the ability to identify, apply, and integrate concepts from STEM domains toward understanding complex problems, and innovating to solve them. However, a lack of visible models of STEM integration has been highlighted by teachers as a challenge to successfully implementing integrated STEM education in schools. Problem Based Learning (PBL) has been well-established in higher education contexts as an approach to learning in the STEM disciplines and may present an effective way to integrate knowledge and skills across STEM disciplines in school-based STEM education and support the development of students as capable, self-directed learners. However, if PBL is to effectively contribute to STEM education in schools and build teacher capacity to teach STEM, then this approach needs to be better understood. This paper aims to generate a set of principles for supporting a PBL model of STEM education in schools based on insights from the literature and expert focus groups of PBL professionals. Four principles of PBL emerged from the data analysis: (a) flexible knowledge, skills, and capabilities; (b) active and strategic metacognitive reasoning; (c) collaboration based on intrinsic motivation; and (d) problems embedded in real and rich contexts. The study outcomes provide evidence-informed support for teachers who may be considering the value of adopting a PBL approach in school-based STEM education. [Author abstract]

Teacher noticing has been widely understood as a kind of seeing or way of making sense of classroom events and instructional details. Such notions of teacher noticing often construe noticing as a disembodied, purely mental form of seeing and position the teacher as separated or separable from the observing environment. They rely on intuitive models that adopt the usual divide between mind, body, and matter, and that fuel the dualism between the individual and the environment. In this paper, I attempt to work towards a more comprehensive model of teacher noticing that instead proposes an entanglement of the cultural-historical, embodied-ecological, and social-material. Teacher noticing, in such a proposal, includes culturally and historically constituted forms of framing classroom events, embodied ways of accessing and exploring the classroom world, and active shaping and interaction with the classroom setting's social and material structure. [Author abstract]

Today, Romanian universities largely have eLearning platforms generally based on the most popular Moodle-LMS platform or on the most popular collaborative educational platforms designed by Microsoft and Google, which contain mail group modules, virtual classes, video conferencing, presentation and testing. In the context of the pandemic generated by COVID-19, the authors tried to investigate the way in which Romanian society has managed to face this challenge in the field of education. The events followed one another very quickly, and the first thing that crashed was the medical system, quickly followed by the economic environment and then, obviously, education. The authors’ research methodology was based on the interpretation of the results of a questionnaire composed of 19 questions and applied to a population of 200 respondents. The survey period was only 24 h, between 29 April 2020 at 1 p.m. and 30 April 2020 at 1 p.m. The investigated population, the respondents, were students of the University of Petroșani undertaking bachelor and master studies for the academic year 2019–2020, but the study could be extrapolated to the Romanian education system.