The study took place during a four-week pre-sessional English course designed for seventeen international students who were preparing to begin a Master’s degree in Manufacturing at a UK university. Pre-sessional courses of this kind are a common feature of British higher education, offering intensive academic language preparation before degree programmes begin. Rather than relying exclusively on teacher-led instruction, the course in this study encouraged students to make decisions about aspects of their learning based on their own needs, to work collaboratively with classmates, to reflect on their progress, and to investigate questions, described in the research as puzzles, that genuinely interested them.

Those puzzles were strikingly varied and rooted in the students’ real lives rather than in a syllabus. Examples included Why are we here?, Why is it hard to find accommodation around the university? and Why is it hard to come up with a good idea for our library project? Students pursued their questions using sources that included academic literature and the internet, discussed their findings with classmates, and presented what they had learned to the group. The approach meant that language learning was not confined to textbook exercises but was embedded in authentic inquiry into issues that mattered to the students themselves, from the practical challenges of settling into a new city to the intellectual demands of producing academic work.

Through analysing the students’ experiences, the research identified five key themes: learning through interaction and collaboration, student agency, working towards understanding, quality of life and joy, and integrating research into teaching and learning. Together, these themes paint a picture of a classroom in which the boundaries between language study, research training and everyday student life become permeable. Students did not simply practise academic English; they used academic English as a tool to understand and improve their own circumstances, which in turn gave their language development a purpose and immediacy that more conventional exercises can struggle to achieve.

Feedback from the students indicated that they valued being able to make decisions about their learning and to work together with their peers. Some students also reported that keeping a daily learning diary helped them reflect on what they had learned and consider what they wanted to do next, a practice that appears to have supported the development of self-regulation, a capacity widely regarded in educational research as central to successful study at postgraduate level. The exploratory activities also gave students opportunities to develop research and interpersonal skills. Students said they learned how to formulate questions, collect and organise information, interview people, and collaborate with classmates from different countries, abilities that map directly onto the demands of a UK Master’s programme.

Importantly, the study does not argue that students should simply be left to learn independently. Students themselves highlighted the value of guidance from the teacher, and some suggested that they would have welcomed more support when making decisions or working in groups. This finding is significant because debates about student-centred learning often polarise between advocates of full learner independence and defenders of traditional instruction. The research instead points towards a negotiated middle ground in which teacher expertise structures the opportunities for autonomy while students exercise meaningful choice within that structure.

The study’s author combined the two approaches deliberately to explore how they could complement one another. Learner autonomy, in this framing, provides a clear structure through which students can plan, carry out and evaluate their own learning. Exploratory Practice, an approach developed within language education that encourages teachers and learners to investigate questions and develop understanding together, adds a dimension of inquiry, inviting students to ask questions about what matters to them and to focus on understanding rather than simply finding solutions. The findings suggest that when the two are woven together, autonomy supplies the scaffolding for self-directed study while Exploratory Practice fills that scaffolding with questions that carry personal and practical significance.

A notable feature of the approach was the way it brought academic learning together with students’ wider experiences of living and studying in a new environment. Questions about accommodation or about the purpose of the course itself were not treated as distractions from the curriculum but as legitimate objects of classroom investigation, explored through the very academic practices, reading, discussion, interviewing and presenting, that the course was designed to develop. The long-term resonance of this method is captured in the reflection of one student, who, a year later, described the experience in a single memorable line: Questions are always the best teacher.

The research suggests that combining learner autonomy and Exploratory Practice may offer teachers a practical way to integrate research, reflection and student-led enquiry into everyday teaching, rather than treating research as something separate from classroom learning. For educators working in English for Academic Purposes and related fields, this is a potentially meaningful shift. Instead of positioning students as apprentices who must first master the conventions of academia before contributing to it, the approach invites them to practise inquiry from the outset, using their own puzzles as the raw material for developing the linguistic, cognitive and collaborative skills that postgraduate study demands.

At the same time, the author is careful to frame the limits of the study. It was conducted with a small group of seventeen students over a short four-week course, and, as practitioner research, the teacher also acted as the researcher. The findings therefore provide insight into this particular classroom experience rather than evidence that the approach will produce identical outcomes in all educational settings. Even with these caveats, the study adds to a growing body of work exploring how students can become active participants in their own education, not simply recipients of teaching, but people who help shape their learning experience and investigate questions that matter to them, a shift that could, if replicated more widely, change what classrooms feel like for the students inside them.

Subject of Research: Combining learner autonomy with Exploratory Practice to enhance classroom engagement for international students learning academic English

Article Title: Giving students a voice in how they learn could transform the classroom experience

Article References: Giving students a voice in how they learn could transform the classroom experience. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: learner autonomy, Exploratory Practice, English for Academic Purposes, student-led enquiry, pre-sessional courses, international students, classroom collaboration, student agency, practitioner research, reflective learning, higher education pedagogy, Journal of English for Academic Purposes

Psychiatric nursing presents a distinctive set of challenges. Patients frequently experience impaired communication, emotional dysregulation, social isolation, and stigma, and establishing a trusting therapeutic relationship can be slow and difficult. Nurses in these settings rely heavily on empathy, therapeutic communication, and emotional presence, yet the demanding nature of the work exposes them to burnout, emotional exhaustion, and reduced job satisfaction when those emotional resources run dry. Previous research has hinted that aesthetics-based care, which draws on sensory experience, creativity, and reflective practice, correlates with higher levels of compassion, but rigorous educational trials in psychiatric settings have been scarce.

To address that gap, the research team recruited 90 registered nurses from a hospital workforce of roughly 170, all of whom held a bachelor’s degree or higher, had at least six months of psychiatric experience, and consented to participate. Participants were assigned to intervention or control groups of 45 each using a lottery-based allocation. Because blinding was impossible in an educational trial, the study was designed and reported as a quasi-experiment under the TREND reporting guidelines. Data were collected between June 2024 and March 2025, and remarkably, every participant completed the full study, giving a 100 percent response rate with no missing outcome data.

The intervention itself was deliberately experiential. Two nursing faculty members specializing in psychiatric nursing and aesthetics delivered four structured weekly sessions. The first introduced the concepts and theoretical foundations of aesthetics-based nursing care, tracing its history as the art of nursing. The second explored the psychological and spiritual dimensions of care, asking nurses to consider how touch, tone of voice, gestures, and deliberate word choice shape the patient experience. The third focused on empathy, therapeutic companionship, and creativity in solving clinical problems. The fourth summarized the links between aesthetics, job satisfaction, communication, and professional motivation. Between sessions, nurses in small groups of five completed reflective assignments and shared their own lived experiences of aesthetic care.

The researchers measured outcomes using two validated instruments. The Aesthetics of Nursing Care Scale, recently validated in Iran, spans 20 items across five dimensions: compassionate commitment and competence, stress-free care, humanistic attention to the patient, patient satisfaction and comfort, and admirable commitment and competence. The Compassion Competence Scale, developed by Lee and Seomun, assesses 17 items across communication, sensitivity, and insight. Both tools showed strong internal consistency in this sample. Questionnaires were completed before the intervention and again one month after the program ended, an interval chosen specifically to test short-term retention and real-world application rather than immediate post-training enthusiasm.

The results were dramatic. The overall aesthetic care score in the intervention group rose from a baseline of 43.26 to 81.02, while the control group remained essentially flat, moving only from 43.80 to 46.24 over the same period. Every one of the five aesthetic care dimensions improved significantly in the trained group, with between-group effect sizes ranging from roughly 2.0 to 4.1 on Cohen’s d, far beyond the conventional threshold of 0.8 for a large effect. The control group showed no statistically significant change on any measure. To ensure ethical fairness, the control nurses were offered an abbreviated version of the workshop after data collection concluded.

Compassion competence followed the same pattern. Total scores climbed from 40.80 to 60.73 in the intervention group while the control group rose only from 39.35 to 40.71. Communication subscale scores increased to 25.91 versus 18.17 in controls, sensitivity scores to 19.46 versus 12.28, and insight scores to 15.35 versus 10.24. The between-group effect sizes for compassion outcomes ranged from 1.26 to 1.68, again indicating substantial educational impact. No adverse events related to the training were reported during the study period.

The authors attribute these gains to the reflective and participatory character of the program. Group discussion, scenario-based learning, and the sharing of lived clinical experiences appear to encourage nurses to examine the emotional and interpersonal texture of their work, heightening self-awareness and sensitivity to patients’ needs. This aligns with prior qualitative work showing that aesthetic experience fosters more humane, empathetic connections with patients and helps convert intuitive understanding into artistic, attentive behavior. Importantly, the study suggests that compassion competence, often treated as a fixed personal quality, can be cultivated through structured education, potentially protecting nurses against the emotional labor and burnout that accumulate in psychiatric environments.

The implications extend to nursing curricula, orientation programs, and continuing professional development. Healthcare managers and educators may find that embedding aesthetics-based education into routine staff development strengthens therapeutic relationships, improves patient experiences, and nurtures a more humanistic care culture, particularly in mental health settings where trust and communication are central to recovery.

The researchers caution that the evidence has limits. The study took place at a single hospital, follow-up lasted only one month, and all outcomes were self-reported, leaving room for social desirability bias and expectancy effects, while the absence of blinding and the possibility of a Hawthorne effect cannot be excluded. Patient-centered outcomes such as satisfaction, therapeutic alliance, and clinical recovery were not measured. Larger multicenter trials with longer follow-up, objective measures, and patient-reported endpoints are needed. Even so, the scale of improvement in this trial makes a compelling case that the art of nursing, long celebrated in theory, can be systematically taught and meaningfully improved in the clinic.

Subject of Research: Aesthetics-based educational intervention to improve compassion competence and aesthetic care quality among psychiatric nurses.

Article Title: Effects of an Aesthetics‐Based Educational Intervention on Compassion Competence and Aesthetic Care Quality Among Psychiatric Nurses: A Quasi‐Experimental Study

Article References: Balideh, D., Farokhzadian, J., Miri, S., Shahraki, S. K., & Motamed‐Jahromi, M. (2026). Effects of an Aesthetics‐Based Educational Intervention on Compassion Competence and Aesthetic Care Quality Among Psychiatric Nurses: A Quasi‐Experimental Study. Nursing Open, 13(9), Article e70854. https://doi.org/10.1002/nop2.70854

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1002/nop2.70854

Keywords: psychiatric nursing, compassion competence, aesthetic care, nursing education, quasi-experimental study, therapeutic communication, nurse burnout, reflective learning, mental health care, Iran, humanistic care, continuing education