China’s Free Teacher Education (FTE) scholarship program, launched in 2007, aims to attract top students into teaching and address teacher shortages in underdeveloped regions. A new study finds that FTE scholarships draw high-performing students who are more likely to end up as teachers. Despite experiencing slightly higher burnout, these scholarship recipients demonstrate superior teaching effectiveness.

Integrated writing (IW) requires learners to synthesize multiple sources of information for a written response. It has become a key component of language education and assessment globally. A new integrative review synthesizing two decades of research reveals that Chinese IW is a complex construct influenced by individual psychological factors and shows strong associations between the first- and second-language skills, offering valuable insights for teaching and assessment.

This scoping review identifies the first wave of randomized controlled trials testing large language models in digestive diseases. Four published and ten ongoing trials suggest that AI tools such as ChatGPT are increasingly used for clinical decision-making and patient education, but robust, international evidence based on real patient outcomes is still urgently needed.

Cognitively activating teaching practice, as a strategy that can promote students' critical thinking, problem-solving, and in-depth learning, is considered to have potential relevance for teachers’ professional collaboration. A new international study led by Dr. Mehmet Şükrü Bellibaş provides compelling evidence that teachers who collaborate professionally are significantly more likely to use cognitively activating teaching practices. The study also reveals that the positive effects of collaboration are even stronger in schools with high collective innovativeness.

Private tutors, as key actors in the rapidly expanding global shadow education sector, construct diverse and dynamic professional identities shaped by cultural, economic, political, and institutional environments. A new review by researchers at Hong Kong Baptist University provides the first systematic synthesis of private tutor identities across diverse cultural contexts.