in education Volume 31, Number 2, 2026 Spring/Summer

Editorial

Valerie Triggs and Kathleen Nolan, University of Regina

Our Spring 2026 issue of in education offers eight exciting research articles and one book review, each attending to educational experience from diverse perspectives and through an assortment of research designs and geographical contexts.

In several of these articles, the role of self-reflection is shown to be important for educators and students. Mariam Farooq, in her article titled The Power of Reflection: An Exploration of Its Role in Learning and Teaching, shares an autoethnographic journey of appreciating and practicing reflective writing as a graduate student and as a teacher. By delving into literature and personal experience about reflective writing, she highlights her evolving understanding over time and offers important observations about the transformative nature of reflective writing. Johanathan Woodworth, Andrea Fraser, and Phillip Joy also consider the transformative nature of written reflection in Metaphor, Emotion, and Ethics: Arts-Based and Queer Pedagogy as Transformative Reflection. Their research analyzes the structured reflections of 12 students following their engagement with queer-themed comics. Using arts-informed thematic analysis, these authors describe the ways in which emotion, metaphor, and ethical awareness indicate transformative learning in their study. Authors Ingrid Rachel Strand, Unni Knutstad, and Mette Sagbakken present a qualitative investigation from Norway in which self-reflection and self-assessment play an important role. In their article Enhancing Self-Assessment and Reflection in Nursing Education: Insights from a Qualitative Study on Students’ Professional Development in Clinical Practice, Strand et al.’s research reveals that students’ abilities to apply communication skills and clinical procedures are enhanced through reflection that not only reinforces practical proficiency but also theoretical understanding.

The next set of articles highlights the impacts of personal situations and perspectives on educational experience for teachers and students. Beginning with Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics: Learning About Sustained Changes in Teacher Practice through the Interconnected Model of Teacher Professional Growth, Candy L. Jones shares a professional development initiative in a Manitoba school division. The initiative was designed to improve teachers’ sense of self-efficacy in mathematics instruction as well as to understand their desire to adopt research-based pedagogies in their classrooms. This case study focuses on cohorts of mathematics teachers/coaches over 2 years, finding that teacher contexts and personal situations are determining factors in their abilities to engage in sustained changes in practice. Concentrating on recruiting and retaining teachers in northern Manitoba, Natalie Pegus reports on a qualitative study examining the experiences of teachers new to working and living in northern and remote contexts. In her article Belonging, Community, and Preparedness: Teacher Experiences of Working and Living in Northern Manitoba, Pegus offers an integrated understanding of teacher recruitment and retention. Through her model of ‘feeling at home in teaching,’ Pegus claims that teacher perceptions of school-based belonging are central. In The Art and Science of Teaching Reading: Understanding Teacher Mindsets About Teaching Reading and Salient Influential Factors, Robin Bright, Chris Mattatall, and Adam Browning investigate how the mindsets of K-6 teachers, regarding reading development and instruction, influence student literacy achievement. Bright et al.’s mixed methods study involves open-ended questions and interviews, coded and themed using the constant comparative method. Data show that mindsets valuing both the science and art of reading instruction had the strongest influence on student achievement. In Learning to Teach Through Action Research: Teachers’ Perspectives on Their Experiences as Preservice Teachers, Deborah Toope’s qualitative research investigates teachers’ perspectives regarding their experience in designing and conducting action research inquiry as preservice teachers. Data from semi-structured interviews, research proposals and lesson plans are analyzed to reveal how action research provides opportunities for preservice teachers to transform relationships with students, engage in reflective practice, and shape their teacher identities as they transition to becoming teachers. Lastly, in the article Between Digital and Analogical: Familial Perspectives on Teaching to Develop 21^st-Century Competences, María Mairal-Llebot, Cecilia Latorre-Cosculluela, and Marta Liesa-Orús report on a large-scale study conducted in northeastern Spain. In the study, the authors examine the perceptions of the families of students aged 3-18 regarding teaching methods with and without the use of information and communications technology (ICT). Data from 720 families offer a large regional sample, highlighting the crucial role of families in supporting both traditional (analogical) teaching methods and ICT-based learning.

We close this sizable Spring/Summer 2026 issue with a book review by Jennifer MacDonald, who offers a rich engagement with the 2024 book entitled Teaching Where You Are: Weaving Indigenous and Slow Principles and Pedagogies, authored by Shannon Leddy and Lorrie Miller. MacDonald offers high praise for this book, noting its accessibility for K-12 pre-service and in-service teachers through the authors’ style of compelling narrative writing and its importance in building decolonial literacy by highlighting the parallels between slow and Indigenous pedagogies.

As Editors-in-Chief, we would be remiss if we did not include two important acknowledgements in this editorial. Firstly, we offer our deepest appreciation to our managing editor, Marzieh Mosavarzadeh, who will be leaving her position following the publication of this issue. Marzieh has worked alongside Valerie and Kathleen for more than a year and a half, always conscientious, cooperative, and highly skilled at her tasks of manuscript copyediting and formatting, as well as journal production. She will be greatly missed.

Secondly, we wish to share that this is the final issue with Valerie Triggs as the journal’s co-Editor-in-Chief. In December 2025, Valerie retired from her faculty position at the University of Regina, though she made the commitment to remain in her role with the journal until June 30, 2026. We recognize and thank Valerie for the enormous amount of work she has accomplished while serving in this role since November 2023; she has always approached her role as co-Editor-in-Chief with deep conviction, strong leadership, and a warm heart. Valerie will be deeply missed by Kathleen and the journal’s editorial team. We wish her well in her new retirement ventures!