International Journal of Learning, Teaching and Educational Research

Adopting GenAI-Assisted Writing Feedback in L2 Learning: A UTAUT Study of Medical Students

2026-09-02T16:22:20+00:00

The use of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) writing instruction has created new opportunities to support students’ English language writing. Yet little is known about the factors that influence medical students’ acceptance of GenAI-assisted writing feedback. This study modified the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) to examine the determinants of medical students’ adoption of GenAI-assisted English language writing feedback. A cross-sectional survey was conducted among 357 medical students at a Chinese medical university. The data were analysed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM). The proposed model showed satisfactory explanatory power (R² = 0.475 for use behaviour) and predictive relevance (Q² > 0.41). All hypothesised relationships were significant. Social influence was the strongest predictor of use behaviour (? = 0.274, p < .001), followed by performance expectancy. Intention to use significantly mediated the relationships between the antecedent variables and use behaviour, indicating partial mediation. Social influence and performance expectancy also had stronger total effects than effort expectancy and facilitating conditions. The findings extend the application of the UTAUT model to medical students’ English language education. They suggest that successful implementation of GenAI-assisted writing feedback depends on both clear educational value and strong support from teachers and peers. These factors may encourage continued student use of the technology.

https://doi.org/10.26803/ijlter.25.8.10

VR-Enhanced EFL Instruction in Higher Education: A Systematic Review (2020-2024)

2026-09-02T15:49:06+00:00

This systematic review examines how Virtual Reality (VR) has been used to support English as a Foreign Language (EFL) instruction in higher education. It synthesises evidence on reported cognitive, affective, and behavioural outcomes, and analyses how learner characteristics, instructional design, and contextual conditions are associated with VR effectiveness. Following PRISMA 2020 guidelines, the review included 49 empirical studies published between 2020 and 2024. The findings show that VR was most consistently associated with effective and behavioural outcomes, including engagement, motivation, willingness to communicate, and active participation. Cognitive outcomes were less stable. Improvements were more often reported for meaning-focused performance than for linguistic accuracy or higher-order cognitive processing. More favourable results appeared in studies that used active, constructive tasks, instructor guidance, combined forms of scaffolding, and longer interventions. Outcomes also varied according to VR type and instructional setting. The review indicates that VR is more likely to support EFL learning when activities are matched to clear pedagogical goals, learners’ readiness, and feasible classroom conditions. By taking a design-oriented perspective, this review shifts attention from whether VR works to the conditions under which it appears to support EFL learning in higher education contexts.

https://doi.org/10.26803/ijlter.25.8.1

Alignment or Mismatch? Teacher Subject Combinations and School Labour Market Demand in Limpopo Province, South Africa

2026-09-02T16:13:45+00:00

This study investigated the alignment between the subject specialisation combinations offered by the teacher training programmes at a selected university with the demand for specialisation combinations at schools in the South African province of Limpopo. While a shortage of teachers is often framed as a quantitative deficit, this study used labor market theory and human capital theory to argue that the crisis is fundamentally a qualitative mismatch between how specialisations are bundled by teacher training programmes and the combinations required by schools. Employing a qualitative descriptive document analysis and comparative research design, we purposively sampled 56 teacher vacancy advertisements as a proxy for revealed demand and compared them against the subject specialisation pairings produced by the University of Limpopo. The findings reveal a significant disciplinary contextual gap: the university offered standardised, policy-aligned clusters of subject specialisations, whereas schools—particularly in resource-constrained rural areas—demanded teachers with multiple specialisations from different disciplines to manage limited staffing and timetable constraints. High alignment between supply and demand was evident for some conventional subject specialisation combinations, such as Mathematics and Physical Sciences, and Foundation Phase subject bundles. Partial alignment and structural mismatch were identified where schools required hybrid or cross-disciplinary combinations, such as Mathematics and EMS, Accounting and Sepedi, or phase-spanning primary school teaching. The study concludes that teacher labour-market mismatch in Limpopo is due not only to a shortage of teachers but results from a configuration problem, where qualified teachers may be less employable if their subject specialisations do not match schools’ operational needs. The study recommends stronger use of vacancy data in teacher education planning, more flexible subject-combination pathways, and improved coordination between universities, the Department of Basic Education, and the Department of Higher Education and Training.

https://doi.org/10.26803/ijlter.25.8.8

The Influence of Parenting Style, Peer Attachment, and Teacher Support on Personality Traits in Residential Secondary Schools

2026-09-02T16:08:09+00:00

This study aimed to examine the relationships between parenting style, peer attachment, teacher support, and personality traits among adolescents in residential secondary school settings in Malaysia. Guided by Adler's Individual Psychology and Bandura's Social Learning Theory, a quantitative survey design was employed involving 521 students aged 16 to 17 years, selected through stratified random sampling from residential secondary schools across multiple regions in Malaysia. The research instruments comprised the Big Five Inventory (BFI) to measure personality traits, the Parental Authority Questionnaire (PAQ) to assess parenting styles, the Inventory of Parent and Peer Attachment (IPPA) to measure peer attachment, and the Child and Adolescent Social Support Scale (CASS) to assess teacher support. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation analysis, and multiple regression analysis to identify the dominant predictors of adolescents' personality traits. The findings revealed significant positive relationships between parenting style, peer attachment, teacher support, and adolescents' personality traits. Multiple regression analysis indicated that teacher support, particularly the perceived importance of teacher support (? = .181, p < .001), emerged as the strongest predictor, followed by maternal parenting style (? = .166, p = .003) and peer attachment (? = .118, p = .010). The regression model explained 10.7% of the variance in adolescents' personality traits (R² = .107). These findings highlight the significant contribution of social support systems to adolescent personality development and provide empirical support for Adler's Individual Psychology and Bandura's Social Learning Theory within residential educational environments.

https://doi.org/10.26803/ijlter.25.8.6

How Saudi Students Perceive Academic Acceleration: A Group Concept Mapping Study in Inclusive Classrooms

2026-09-02T16:01:54+00:00

Gifted students need tailored interventions to develop their potential and abilities, interventions that address their needs, which are not typically met in traditional classroom settings. Classroom acceleration has proven effective for these students; however, its implementation in Saudi Arabia remains fraught with caution due to implicit or explicit beliefs among teachers and students regarding the effects of acceleration. This study aimed to examine and identify students’ beliefs about accelerating gifted students and placing them in higher grades with older peers. The study employed a group concept mapping methodology to investigate students’ beliefs in inclusive classrooms regarding full-grade acceleration. Fifty-five middle school students generated ideas related to acceleration and then sorted, evaluated, and categorized the factors to consider when making acceleration decisions into a pooled list. Hierarchical cluster analysis was used to identify key concepts within the structured data. The analysis revealed five key conceptual clusters representing students’ beliefs about acceleration: (a) the suitability of acceleration for fast learners (highest rated in terms of importance, mean = 3.40); (b) concerns about progress; (c) benefits to others (including peers and teachers); (d) potential barriers to acceptance (including bullying and social rejection); and (e) unpleasant feelings. Students ranked fairness and access to better learning opportunities as the most important factors in their acceleration decisions. The findings also revealed that students are aware of ability disparities between accelerated students and their older peers in receiving classes, which may contribute to social and emotional challenges for both groups.

https://doi.org/10.26803/ijlter.25.8.4

From Play to Progress: A Structured Narrative Review of Design Characteristics and Reported Developmental Outcomes of Digital Games for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

2026-09-02T15:53:17+00:00

Digital games have increasingly been used to support learning and early intervention for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), yet evidence regarding their impact on children's developmental outcomes remains fragmented. Therefore, this study conducted a structured narrative review to examine the design characteristics and reported developmental outcomes of digital games for children with ASD. A total of 27 studies were identified from Web of Science, IEEE Xplore, PubMed, and Google Scholar based on their relevance to children with ASD, digital games, and reported developmental outcomes. The findings indicate that the reviewed studies reported outcomes across five domains: communication and social behavior, emotional regulation, daily living skills, executive functioning and cognition, and learning skills. Therapeutic digital games were more frequently reported in relation to adaptive domains, particularly communication and emotional regulation, whereas educational digital games more frequently target cognitive and learning-related outcomes. The reported outcome patterns also varied by participant age, intervention duration, technology format, and study type. Overall, digital games demonstrate meaningful potential as supportive tools for children with ASD rather than as stand-alone evidence of universal effectiveness. Future research should adopt more rigorous and standardized designs to enhance comparability and clarify the conditions under which digital games may support specific developmental outcomes.

https://doi.org/10.26803/ijlter.25.8.2

Enhancing Formal Writing Skills of Omani Post-Foundation EFL Students through QuillBot (an AI Tool) Integration

2026-09-02T16:18:02+00:00

Artificial intelligence (AI) is being integrated into English as a foreign language (EFL) writing instruction, yet empirical evidence regarding its effectiveness in improving learners’ writing performance remains inconclusive, particularly in under-researched EFL contexts such as Oman. This study investigated the impact of AI-assisted instruction on formal writing proficiency among Omani post-foundation EFL students (N = 58) using a quasi-experimental pre-test–post-test mixed-methods research design. The intervention integrated QuillBot as a supplementary paraphrasing and grammar feedback tool within structured, teacher-guided writing tasks. A one-way ANCOVA, controlling for pre-test performance, revealed no statistically significant difference, as the AI?assisted intervention did not produce a statistically significant improvement in total formal writing scores or in any individual writing category relative to conventional instruction. Furthermore, the raw post-test scores in several categories, including Organization, favored the control group rather than the experimental group. Qualitative findings obtained through semi-structured interviews with the five most active students revealed broadly positive perceptions of the intervention, including increased confidence, reduced anxiety, and reported gains in error awareness and revision practices. However, this qualitative pattern did not consistently align with the quantitative findings. Overall, the findings indicate that short-term AI-assisted instruction using a single corrective tool did not yield measurable quantitative gains in formal writing performance within the study’s timeframe, even though some students reported a positive subjective experience with the tool. Thus, this study recommends the need for AI-tool integration for long-term interventions using larger samples, focusing on the measurement of student engagement with AI feedback.

https://doi.org/10.26803/ijlter.25.8.9

Beyond Assessment: A Policy Review of PIRLS and Early Grade Reading Interventions in South Africa

2026-09-02T16:11:02+00:00

The chronic reading difficulties that have been recorded in successive cycles of the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) since 2006 in South Africa are one of the most serious and complex issues confronting the country's education system. The mean scores of Grade 4 learners in South Africa have generally been lower than the international mean score of 500 in each of the assessment cycles (2006, 2011, 2016 and 2021), with about 81% of learners in the 2021 cycle unable to read for meaning. This policy review paper critically discusses the progress South Africa has made regarding the outcomes of PIRLS, the design and implementation of the Early Grade Reading (EGR) interventions, policy gaps, and proposes evidence-based suggestions for policy system change. The Simple View of Reading (SVOR) and Vygotsky’s Socio-cultural Theory of Literacy provided the theoretical framework for literature review, and a qualitative document analysis, informed by Critical Policy Analysis (CPA), was used. This article contends that South Africa's reading problems are not only pedagogical, but structural, characterized the presence of structural inequalities, poor policy implementation, language policy tensions and inadequate teacher development. The review concludes that effective reading improvement will occur if we have a coherent, sustained, and equity-centred reform effort that is grounded in research and evidence, centres on instruction, and takes into account the socio-economic factors that influence literacy.

https://doi.org/10.26803/ijlter.25.8.7

Evaluating Command-Line Interface-Based Agentic Large Language Model Coding Tools for Non-English Thematic Analysis: A 3 x 3 x 3 Factorial Study of Models, Prompts and Stochastic Variability

2026-09-02T16:04:51+00:00

Command-line interface (CLI)-based agentic coding tools enable large language models (LLMs) to autonomously read local data files, write and execute analysis scripts, and generate outputs, but whether they can reliably perform thematic analysis of non-English educational data remains understudied. This 3 × 3 × 3 factorial experiment compared three frontier LLMs (Claude Opus 4.6, GPT-5.3-Codex, and Gemini 3 Pro Preview) across three prompt tiers (detailed, structured, and exploratory) with three repetitions per condition, yielding 27 runs. Each run processed 89 anonymized student evaluations (Likert ratings and open-ended Thai comments) from a Year 3 preventive dentistry course over three academic years. Outputs were evaluated against 10 required items covering statistical computation, thematic analysis, and visualization, with the generated scripts inspected to classify categorization as direct reading or keyword matching. Statistical computation and overview charts each passed 93% (25/27), and detail charts passed in all 27 runs, with failures confined to exploratory prompts. Thematic reading was the primary difference. Opus and Gemini read Thai directly while GPT usually generated keyword-matching scripts. Structured prompts achieved the highest thematic reading pass rate at 78% (7/9), followed by detailed at 67% (6/9) and exploratory at 33% (3/9). Identical configurations produced different outputs across repetitions, with theme counts ranging from 4 to 31. CLI-based agentic coding tools can perform thematic analyses of Thai-language educational feedback, but natural language processing output reliability depends on model selection, prompt specificity, and stochastic variability. Multiple independent runs are recommended to assess consistency.

https://doi.org/10.26803/ijlter.25.8.5

Design-Based Research on Green Entrepreneurship E-Learning: Cultivating Entrepreneurial Intention in Vocational Fashion Design and Marketing Programs in Salatiga

2026-09-02T15:57:58+00:00

Growing global concern over sustainability has highlighted the need to integrate green entrepreneurship into vocational education. However, the limited use of learning technologies linking entrepreneurship with sustainability has created a gap in vocational high schools. This study aims to design and validate a Green Entrepreneurship e-learning platform for vocational high school students majoring in Fashion Design and Marketing in Salatiga, Indonesia. A Design-Based Research (DBR) approach was employed through iterative cycles of problem identification, platform design, refinement, and validation. Data were collected through questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, observations, and focus group discussions involving 2 teachers, 2 school principals, 48 students from public and private vocational schools, and 4 expert validators. Students were selected using simple random sampling, while experts were recruited through purposive sampling. Qualitative and quantitative analyses were conducted during the needs analysis, design, and validation stages. The findings reveal two main outcomes. First, the platform was developed using a green entrepreneurship framework comprising learning modules and project-based activities spanning conceptualization, practical implementation, and digital promotion of circular products. As a paperless, cloud-based Learning Management System (LMS), it supports collaborative learning while encouraging students to transform altruistic values into practical solutions for real-world challenges. Second, the platform demonstrates high feasibility, with mean scores of 4.58/5 (92%) from media experts and 4.32/5 (86%) from green entrepreneurship experts. Future studies should integrate Artificial Intelligence (AI) to provide personalized feedback on students’ green entrepreneurship literacy according to their vocational specialization.

https://doi.org/10.26803/ijlter.25.8.3