The project centers on an online professional development course called Teaching English to Young Learners, often abbreviated in the field as TEYL. The course is being led by Shin together with Woomee Kim, and the two faculty members will oversee five separate course sections through the university’s Global Online Teacher Education Center, known as GOTEC. The initiative is expected to reach approximately 125 teachers this year, connecting English language educators from widely differing national and institutional contexts in a shared learning environment built around the specific challenges of teaching English to children.

From a technical and pedagogical standpoint, the TEYL course addresses a long-standing gap in the language education field. Much of the foundational research and training in English language teaching has historically focused on adolescent and adult learners, whose cognitive profiles, motivation structures, and classroom behaviors differ substantially from those of young children. Teaching children a foreign or additional language requires distinct strategies: instruction must be developmentally appropriate, heavily scaffolded, and often embedded in play, story, song, and multimodal activity. Teachers working with young learners must also manage classroom dynamics, family expectations, and assessment practices that look very different from those used with older students. A dedicated professional development track for this population of educators is therefore not merely an extension of general English language teacher training but a distinct area of expertise in its own right.

The delivery model chosen for the course, fully online and organized into multiple sections, reflects broader trends in teacher education research. Online and blended professional development has become an increasingly important vehicle for reaching teachers in regions where in-person training is scarce, expensive, or logistically impractical. Asynchronous and synchronous online formats allow working teachers to participate without leaving their classrooms for extended periods, and they enable a single expert faculty team to serve a geographically dispersed cohort. At the same time, researchers in online teacher education have emphasized that course design matters enormously: effective programs combine structured content with opportunities for collaboration, reflection, and the co-construction of practice among participants. The George Mason project explicitly frames its work around building a community of practice, a concept drawn from the learning sciences that describes groups of practitioners who learn together by sharing experiences, problems, and solutions over time.

That community-of-practice orientation is central to how the project describes its goals. Rather than treating professional development as a one-way transmission of expert knowledge to passive recipients, the Teaching English to Young Learners course is designed to convene English language teachers from around the world around a shared professional concern: the teaching of children. In such a community, a teacher in one country may describe a successful storytelling technique while another adapts it to a large, low-resource classroom elsewhere; a third participant may raise a question about assessing very young learners that prompts discussion across the whole group. This kind of distributed, peer-supported learning is difficult to achieve in short workshops but is well suited to sustained online formats that persist over weeks or months and that deliberately cultivate interaction among participants.

The institutional home for the work, the Global Online Teacher Education Center, carries a mission that the university states as advancing research and pedagogy in online teacher education and professional development around the world in ways that are inclusive, accessible, and culturally and linguistically responsive and sustaining. That language signals a research agenda as much as a service mission. GOTEC faculty, including those involved in the current project, conduct research on how online teacher education functions: what design features support teacher learning, how cross-cultural cohorts interact, and how digital professional development can be made responsive to teachers’ local linguistic and cultural contexts. The TEYL course delivery project is therefore doubly valuable: it provides direct professional development to practicing teachers while simultaneously generating a site for scholarly inquiry into online teacher education at a global scale.

The funding pathway itself is instructive about how internationally oriented education projects are often financed. The U.S. Department of State supports English language programming around the world as part of its public diplomacy and educational exchange portfolio, frequently channeling resources through implementing organizations. In this case, Family Health International serves as the prime recipient, with George Mason University participating through a subaward. Such arrangements are common in internationally funded education and development work, allowing specialist academic units to contribute research expertise and instructional capacity within larger funded programs. The $100,000 award size reflects a focused, scalable intervention: rather than a large infrastructure grant, it funds the design, staffing, and delivery of five course sections serving roughly 125 teachers, which works out to a per-teacher investment that can be examined when evaluating the efficiency of online professional development relative to face-to-face alternatives.

The timing of the award, spanning academic year 2026-27, positions the project within a period of rapid change in both language education and online learning. Artificial intelligence tools, automated speech recognition, and adaptive learning platforms are reshaping what is possible in language classrooms, and teachers of young learners increasingly need support in evaluating and integrating these technologies in developmentally appropriate ways. At the same time, global demand for English instruction at the primary level remains strong in many education systems, driven by curricular reforms that introduce English earlier in schooling. This early-start trend has intensified the need for teachers who are specifically trained to work with children, since primary teachers recruited from general education backgrounds may lack specialized training in second language acquisition for young learners, and secondary-trained language teachers may be unfamiliar with child-centered pedagogy. Programs like TEYL respond directly to this structural gap in the workforce.

The emphasis on culturally and linguistically sustaining pedagogy in the GOTEC mission also connects the project to significant currents in contemporary education research. Scholars in the field have argued that teacher education should not position any single cultural model of teaching as universal, and that effective professional development helps teachers build on the linguistic and cultural resources their students already possess. For a global cohort of English teachers, this means the course content and discussions must be adaptable to classrooms in which English is a foreign language, a second language, or a medium of instruction, and to contexts ranging from well-resourced urban schools to under-resourced rural settings. An online community of practice spanning these contexts can surface this diversity productively, allowing participants to compare approaches and develop more nuanced, context-sensitive understandings of what teaching English to young learners can look like.

As the funding period proceeds through late September 2027, the College of Education and Human Development expects the project to deliver on both of its interlocking aims: high-quality professional development for approximately 125 English language teachers of young children, and ongoing faculty research through the Global Online Teacher Education Center into how such global online programs can be designed, delivered, and improved. The award underscores George Mason’s positioning in this space; as Virginia’s largest public research university, enrolling more than 40,000 students from 130 countries and all 50 states, the institution has built its recent growth around innovation, accessibility, and engagement with global challenges. A project that connects a Virginia research university with English teachers across multiple continents, supported by U.S. Department of State funding administered through a non-governmental implementing partner, illustrates the increasingly networked character of contemporary teacher education, in which expertise, technology, and international cooperation converge to strengthen teaching practice one cohort at a time.

Subject of Research: Online professional development course delivery and research for teachers of English to young learners through George Mason University's Global Online Teacher Education Center.

Article Title: Shin receives funding for AY26-27 TEYL course delivery

Article References: Shin receives funding for AY26-27 TEYL course delivery. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: George Mason University, Joan Kang Shin, Teaching English to Young Learners, online teacher education, professional development, U.S. Department of State, Family Health International, GOTEC, English language teaching, community of practice, global education, College of Education and Human Development

The dimensions of the problem are not confined to the clinic. Digital spaces and online platforms have introduced new and complex risks with direct mental health consequences, including cyberbullying, exposure to harmful content and patterns of excessive or unregulated use that can erode sleep, attention and self-esteem. These pressures are compounded in Malaysia by persistently high levels of stigma surrounding mental illness, and by longstanding social and structural inequalities that leave some groups of young people far more exposed than others. Despite the evident urgency, youth-focused mental health research in the country remains scarce, and gaps persist in both policy frameworks and in services specifically designed to reach adolescents and young adults. The result is a widening distance between a rapidly evolving burden of disease and the systems meant to address it.

A research initiative now underway in neighbouring Cambodia and Vietnam offers a possible template for closing that gap. The Mental health capacity Building and stRengthening In Global HealTh systems, or M-BRIGHT, study is designed to build capacity for youth-targeted mental health services in settings where specialist clinicians are in short supply. Its architecture rests on four key elements. First, the intervention is co-adapted with young people aged fourteen to eighteen alongside teachers, government representatives, non-governmental organisations and faith leaders, ensuring that what is delivered reflects the realities and values of the communities involved. Second, the intervention is delivered in schools, embedding support in an institution young people already attend. Third, capacity is built among non-specialists, including teachers, so that delivery does not depend on scarce clinical staff. Fourth, the approach is embedded and scaled up through sustained multi-sectoral stakeholder engagement rather than remaining a stand-alone research project.

In May 2026, this model was brought directly into conversation with Malaysia. M-BRIGHT researchers, together with the United Nations University–Global Health, co-convened a stakeholder engagement and priority-setting workshop in Kuala Lumpur to discuss the M-BRIGHT approach and explore how it might be adapted to a Malaysian context. The gathering was unusually broad in composition. It drew together government representatives from the Ministries of Health, Education and Digital, alongside participants from the private sector, non-governmental organisations, United Nations agencies, academia and clinical practice. Over the course of the workshop, participants examined youth mental health trends, risk factors, existing programmes, service gaps and priority concerns, and considered lessons emerging from M-BRIGHT’s work elsewhere in the region. One observation surfaced repeatedly: while some local programmes are demonstrably effective, infrastructural challenges must be addressed if their reach and sustainability are to improve.

From those discussions, five interrelated priority areas crystallised. The first concerned target groups. Although young people aged ten to eighteen were widely recognised as the priority population for mental health research and programming, participants stressed that particular attention may be needed for those easiest to overlook: youth who are out of school, young people living in challenging home environments, refugees, vulnerable minorities and undocumented children. These are precisely the groups least likely to be captured by school-based screening or to present voluntarily at clinics, and their invisibility in routine data compounds the risk that services are designed around the needs of the most visible rather than the most vulnerable.

The second priority area defined the focus of future programming and research. Participants identified specific topic areas demanding attention, including eating disorders, adverse childhood experiences, suicide, and risky sexual and social behaviours. They also emphasised digital spaces, framing them in dual terms: as drivers of youth mental ill-health, and simultaneously as an opportunity, a channel through which prevention, literacy and support could be delivered at scale. The third strand centred on prevention itself, including early intervention and the promotion of mental health literacy, so that problems are recognised and addressed before they escalate into clinical crises that overwhelmed services cannot absorb.

Reaching young people emerged as the third priority. Schools were identified as the key platform, and for good reason: they offer consistent access to large numbers of adolescents within existing structures. Yet participants were careful not to treat schools as the only entry point. Religious groups, madrasah schools, sports teams and centres, community centres, workplaces, digital spaces and peer networks were all noted as potential routes through which support could reach young people who might otherwise be missed. This pluralistic delivery strategy reflects a pragmatic recognition that in a country as diverse as Malaysia, no single institution can carry the entire burden, and that trust is built through the settings where young people already live, learn, pray, play and socialise.

The fourth and fifth priorities concerned the surrounding ecosystem of care. Family-focused programmes were deemed critical to raise awareness of mental health, promote improved dialogue between parents and children, and address the stigma that still clings to psychological distress in many households. Without parental understanding and acceptance, even well-designed school programmes risk collapsing at the doorstep of the family. Integration into existing systems was judged equally essential: this means embedding mental health literacy into school curricula and strengthening delivery systems, including through the training of lay mental health providers who can extend the reach of the formal workforce. Sustainability and scale, participants argued, depend not on creating parallel structures but on weaving mental health into the systems that already function every day.

Advancing these priorities, the workshop concluded, requires genuine multi-sectoral collaboration, particularly across government ministries whose remits intersect in the lives of young people. The Kuala Lumpur meeting itself represented an important first step in that process, placing the Ministries of Health, Education and Digital in the same room as NGOs, United Nations agencies, academics, clinicians and the private sector, all of whom bring complementary expertise spanning Malaysian and international experience. Building on existing initiatives through partnership, rather than duplicating them, was highlighted as a guiding principle. As a critical next step, participants proposed establishing a multi-stakeholder, multi-sectoral Community of Practice to facilitate knowledge and resource sharing, coordinate new initiatives and advocate for greater attention to youth mental health in Malaysia.

The vision behind the proposed Community of Practice is deliberately participatory. It aims to co-create, together with young people, parents and those with lived experience of mental ill-health, a tailored approach to supporting youth mental health in Malaysia, one that ensures cultural and religious relevance and can be embedded within existing structures and systems. Crucially, the ambition does not stop at the border. The Community of Practice is also intended to support regional learning and collaboration, creating opportunities to adapt and scale the approach across Southeast Asia, where many countries face similar demographic pressures, digital transitions and workforce constraints. If the doubling of mental health difficulties among Malaysian children in four short years is a warning, the response taking shape in Kuala Lumpur suggests that regional solidarity, shared evidence and youth partnership may yet turn a gathering crisis into a manageable public health challenge. The cost of inaction, researchers warn, will be measured in a generation’s wellbeing; the opportunity is to act now, with the evidence and the coalition finally in place.

Subject of Research: Youth mental health in Malaysia and Southeast Asia and capacity-building approaches for youth-targeted mental health services

Article Title: Addressing youth mental health in Southeast Asia: a call to action with a spotlight on Malaysia

Article References: Samuels, F., Murray, A., Palar, S., Muniandy, K., Shanmugam, P. K., Zainuddin, N. A., Riha, J., Morgado, P., & Lopes, C. A. (2026). Addressing youth mental health in Southeast Asia: a call to action with a spotlight on Malaysia. The Lancet Regional Health – Western Pacific, 74, Article 101972. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lanwpc.2026.101972

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1016/j.lanwpc.2026.101972

Keywords: youth mental health, Malaysia, Southeast Asia, M-BRIGHT, mental health literacy, digital well-being, stigma, schools, Community of Practice, capacity building, Addressing, youth

The concept of hegemony, drawn from the Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci, describes a situation in which a dominant group’s worldview becomes accepted as simple common sense, even by those it disadvantages. Crucially, hegemony does not depend on coercion. It operates through persuasion and passive acceptance, through the accumulated weight of policies, productivity targets, billing rules, and professional hierarchies that make one way of doing things feel inevitable. In healthcare settings, researchers have long described how medical discourse dominates decision-making, sidelining nursing and allied professions. For occupational therapy, whose entire identity rests on the therapeutic power of occupation rather than the treatment of impairment alone, this dominance creates a profound professional dilemma.

Earlier studies have documented the problem. In Australia, researcher Clare Wilding used action research to show that occupational therapists unconsciously complied with others’ expectations, focusing on medical diagnoses rather than occupational concerns and on productivity rather than client-centered care. She concluded that such hegemonic practices rendered occupational therapy an invisible and subservient profession. In Malaysia, investigators identified hegemony as a suppressor of the profession’s growth, producing occupational injustices. But until now, little attention had been paid to how therapists in the United States—particularly those working in acute mental health settings governed by risk-averse and biomedical ideologies—experience and respond to these forces in their daily work.

To answer that question, the researchers turned to practice-based enquiry, an action-oriented methodology in which clinicians become co-researchers of their own practice. In 2020, Gallagher, then practicing in a university-affiliated acute mental health facility in the southeastern United States, invited all of the occupational therapists at the hospital to join what the team called a community of practice scholars. All nine agreed. The group included therapists with one to sixteen years of mental health experience, spanning entry-level and advanced practitioners, some with international experience, and a diversity of gender and ethnicity. Following a structured three-stage facilitation model, the scholars met biweekly from May 2020 to June 2021, documenting their thoughts, emotions, and actions in written or audio reflections posted to a secure shared platform while collectively discussing their experiences of practice.

The analytic process was deliberately rigorous. Each reflection was read by at least two members of the analysis team, and the data were coded using three complementary schemes: in-vivo codes that preserved the therapists’ own words, process codes that captured their actions, and emotion codes that recorded their feelings. The team then assigned each reflection a descriptive title—names like ‘Good Trouble’ and ‘Staying the Course’—and through repeated discussion distilled the material into themes. Because the co-researchers themselves had generated the data and ultimately confirmed that the final analysis accurately reflected their experiences, the researchers argue the findings carry strong internal trustworthiness, even though a study of a single small community is not intended to be generalizable.

What emerged was a strikingly maritime metaphor for professional survival. The therapists’ shifting narratives resolved into three themes: making waves, staying afloat, and sailing away. Responses to hegemony varied by person, by moment, and by circumstance, and the overall story, the authors write, was one of challenge and survival, much like navigating difficult waters in the face of strong prevailing winds. For some clinicians, growing awareness of how the system constrained occupation and dulled their professional values ignited what one therapist called being ‘fired up’—a decision to make waves and, in a phrase borrowed from civil rights leader John Lewis, to make good trouble.

The acts of resistance were often small, subversive, and deeply humane. One therapist deliberately broke a unit policy by leaving a patient with her own hairbrush, reasoning that the woman needed some agency and self-care at a time when nothing in her life was within her control. Another took a patient to a courtyard coffee shop, following protocol but not waiting for permission, and described the moment as one of embodying her own values rather than adopting values that rang hollow. Others asserted themselves within the interdisciplinary hierarchy: one practitioner recounted telling a doctor to come back later so she could finish an evaluation, and described feeling empowered by it. Beyond individual defiance, some therapists pursued structural change, with one successfully advocating for a seat on the clinical leadership team to help redesign unit schedules and improve quality of care. These acts of counter-hegemony, the study found, left therapists feeling hopeful that change was possible, though sustained transformation would demand a long-haul approach.

Not everyone had the bandwidth for battle. The second theme, staying afloat, captured therapists who, worn down by the COVID-19 pandemic, personal circumstances, conflict avoidance, or relentless productivity demands, chose to work within the system rather than against it. One practitioner admitted feeling guilty for avoiding her unit because it was so physically and mentally taxing. Another spoke of prioritizing productivity over change, acknowledging she had little capacity for reform. Some gave up on educating colleagues or improving programming when staff would not follow through, retreating into a narrowly defined scope of practice. Yet staying afloat was not framed as failure. The researchers describe it as a valid protective state, and some therapists preserved their commitment by modeling small moments of occupational connection—organizing coffee and music on the unit so patients could pour for one another, share interests, and experience belonging—which they knew had the capacity to heal even if fleeting.

The third theme, sailing away, was the most sobering. Feelings of being undervalued, frustrated, and trapped by context pushed several therapists toward detachment, including literal departure from the setting—the first author among them. Others sought influence elsewhere, such as a state-level role in occupational therapy, or withdrew emotionally, with one noting that she wanted change at both individual and macro levels but was simply tired. As one reflection poignantly summarized, some colleagues traveled hundreds of miles to find fulfilling practice aligned with their values, others bided their time searching for jobs with less moral distress, and those unable to leave were left to work around whatever stood in their way.

The findings resonate with broader evidence of occupational alienation and burnout in healthcare. A Swedish national survey found that occupational therapists considering leaving the profession struggled for recognition, felt less valued than physical therapists, and reported working in constant headwinds when trying to justify occupation. The authors argue that practice-based enquiry itself can serve as a counter-hegemonic tool, fostering the critical reflexivity needed to see that feelings of isolation and discontent may stem from an oppressive biomedical and fiscal culture rather than personal inadequacy. They call for professional socialization and curricula that teach therapists how to advocate, ruffle feathers, and make good trouble—skills they believe could produce a healthier workforce and, amid a national mental health crisis, better care. The stakes, they conclude, could not be higher: if occupational therapy’s unique ways of knowing are to survive within hegemonic systems, therapists must be empowered not merely to stay afloat, but to change the course of the ship.

Subject of Research: Occupational therapists' experiences of hegemony in acute mental health practice

Article Title: Occupational therapists’ experiences of hegemony in a mental health setting: A practice-based enquiry

Article References: Gallagher, M., & Bagatell, N. (2025). Occupational therapists’ experiences of hegemony in a mental health setting: A practice-based enquiry. Scandinavian Journal of Occupational Therapy, 32(1), Article 2456462. https://doi.org/10.1080/11038128.2025.2456462

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1080/11038128.2025.2456462

Keywords: hegemony, occupational therapy, mental health, occupation-based practice, practice-based enquiry, occupational alienation, occupational justice, biomedical dominance, community of practice, burnout, professional identity, advocacy