Competency-based education is an approach focused on equipping students with practical skills for future life and work. A new policy review examining Thailand’s version of this reform reveals its distinct characteristic: it is not a clean break from the past but is deliberately built upon the foundation of the nation’s longstanding standards-based curriculum. The study provides crucial insights for policymakers navigating similar large-scale curriculum transitions.

Medical errors remain one of the leading causes of death, yet healthcare systems continue to struggle to reduce them. A new perspective article argues that fear of legal consequences, institutional secrecy, and poor communication prevent healthcare from learning from failure. It calls for a cultural shift toward transparency, responsibility, and psychological safety, framing learning from mistakes as essential to saving lives and restoring trust in medicine.

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.

Evaluating education quality across countries is complex and often inconsistent. A recent study introduces the Global Education Quality Index (GEQI), developed to offer a comprehensive and comparative tool for assessing education worldwide. Drawing on data from 62 countries between 2009 and 2018, the study uses an input-process-outcome framework to analyze basic, school, and postsecondary education. By highlighting regional differences and systemic strengths, the GEQI offers new insights into improving global education systems.

Can rating be more than a warm-up activity in classroom assessments? A new Hong Kong study reveals that the accuracy with which students rate their own and their peers’ writing significantly shapes the quality of feedback, the depth of revision, and ultimately the improvement of their writing performance. The research challenges the common perception and instead shows its essential role in driving meaningful learning outcomes.

While the classroom has long been described as the “black box” of education, classroom analysis aims to reveal what truly happens inside it. A new study led by East China Normal University identifies ten key questions at the frontiers of classroom analysis, offering a guideline for future research and practice. This study suggests that defining guiding values, constructing high-quality analytical frameworks, leveraging multimodal data, and ensuring ethical standards are essential to advance classroom research globally.