The empirical core of the paper is a state-of-the-practice survey, reviewed and approved by the Internal Review Board at the University of Colorado Denver, that asked scholars about the research methods they have used over the past decade, the dependent variables that anchor their studies, the economic theories embedded in doctoral training, and the institutional incentives that shape career decisions. Respondents also answered open-ended questions about the barriers that keep the information systems community from engaging with climate and environmental challenges, and about alternative pathways for doing better. The researchers coded these responses using established qualitative content analysis techniques, with generative AI tools used only to summarize pre-coded themes and select representative quotes, all of which the authors independently verified against the original data.

The picture that emerges is one of a field that is aware of the problem but structurally unprepared to address it. Scholars overwhelmingly recognize the importance of environmental issues, yet the survey reveals that research agendas remain dominated by revenue, innovation, customer, and performance outcomes, while explicit incentives to pursue climate-related work are rare in departments and doctoral programs. Doctoral curricula lean heavily on free-market and mixed economics, leaving graduates with little exposure to the ecological, political, or critical economic traditions that question growth itself. The authors argue that this training pipeline reproduces a narrow view of what information technology is for, treating it primarily as an engine of productivity and profit rather than as a force embedded in biophysical systems.

The technical backdrop to this critique is stark. The information and communication technology sector’s energy and emissions footprint is growing as data volumes soar, and the rise of generative artificial intelligence is accelerating demand for power-hungry data centers, a trend documented in industry analyses from Deloitte and the World Economic Forum. Local communities are beginning to push back, as in the reported rejection of an Amazon-linked data center project amid fears over water use. The authors also cite material flow research showing that the volume of man-made stocks increased twelvefold between 1900 and 2015, with roughly 35 percent of that material now solid waste and 25 percent emitted into the environment. Consumption-based accounting of material footprint shows a consistent rise alongside GDP, raw material extraction, and carbon dioxide emissions since 1970.

Against this backdrop, the paper’s theoretical move is to import the frameworks of ecological economics into information systems research. The field’s intellectual foundations, the authors argue, rest on assumptions inherited from neoclassical economics: that economies can grow indefinitely, that technology will decouple output from resource use, and that market mechanisms will price environmental damage appropriately. Ecological economics starts from a different premise. The Earth is effectively a closed system for materials, open only to incoming solar energy, so no amount of digital innovation can conjure new resources or make waste disappear. Economist Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen argued as early as 1975 that the transition from fossil fuels to solar energy is not merely a policy option but an ultimate necessity for economies to operate within biophysical limits, a point the authors treat as foundational for any credible theory of sustainable computing.

Central to the proposed transformation is Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics, whose dual focus on ecological ceilings and social foundations the authors adopt as a template for reorienting the discipline. In this framing, humanity must live below planetary boundaries, such as climate stability and intact ecosystems, while ensuring that everyone has access to the social essentials of a dignified life. The authors suggest that information systems research should be evaluated not by whether it increases firm performance or adoption rates, but by whether it helps societies stay within the doughnut. Alternative indicators already exist to support such a shift: the Genuine Progress Indicator adjusts personal consumption for inequality, household labor, and environmental costs, and long-term data show that GDP and GPI moved together until the late 1970s before diverging, with GDP rising while genuine progress declined.

The survey respondents themselves offered a set of alternative pathways, which the authors organized into four aggregate dimensions: institutional change, leadership, research approach, and other measures. On the institutional front, scholars called for departments to provide explicit financial rewards and promotion criteria for climate-related research, and for doctoral programs to broaden the economic theories taught alongside methodological training. On the research front, respondents pointed toward studying green information systems in organizations, circular economy practices enabled by digital technologies, carbon management systems that promote ecologically responsible behavior, energy informatics, and the detection and reduction of data waste through machine learning. Others emphasized the need to distinguish between artificial intelligence for sustainability and the sustainability of artificial intelligence itself, given the technology’s own growing resource demands.

The authors are careful to note that the barriers are not primarily attitudinal. Information systems scholars already perceive the community as having reasonable awareness of climate and environmental challenges; what is missing, they argue, is domain knowledge, relevant theories, and data sources for measuring climate impacts within the field’s traditional research domains. This gap between awareness and capability is compounded by incentive structures: ranking systems that track publications in the field’s leading journals reward conventional topics, and junior researchers rationally follow the path of least resistance. Without changes to what gets rewarded, the authors warn, individual goodwill will continue to produce only marginal, incremental contributions while the window for meaningful action narrows.

The paper’s recommendations extend to journal editors and institutional leaders, not just individual researchers. Editors are encouraged to welcome work that measures ecological and social outcomes alongside economic ones, and to treat ecological framing as legitimate across the full range of information systems topics rather than confining it to special issues. Institutions are urged to align hiring, promotion, and doctoral education with the reality of the environmental crisis. The authors also acknowledge the practical grounds for optimism: the International Renewable Energy Agency reported in 2025 that solar photovoltaic projects were on average 41 percent cheaper than the lowest-cost fossil fuel alternatives, and onshore wind 53 percent cheaper, meaning that the technological economics increasingly favor the transition that ecological theory demands.

What makes the study notable is its willingness to question the discipline’s own growth-oriented foundations at a moment when the digital sector’s material consequences are becoming impossible to ignore. The authors conclude that, given the urgency of the crisis, ecological perspectives should serve as a guiding meta-framework for designing and conducting general information systems research, shaping research priorities, institutional structures, collaborative practices, and methodological approaches alike. Whether the community takes up that challenge will depend less on the persuasiveness of any single paper than on whether the incentives that govern academic careers can be redesigned to reward work that treats the planet’s limits as a first-order research constraint rather than an afterthought.

Subject of Research: Environmental sustainability and ecological economics in information systems research

Article Title: [State-of-the-Practice-Survey] Environmental Sustainability in Information Systems Research: Beyond Incrementalism Toward a Transformative Path Forward

Article References: Oh, O., Gregg, D. G., & Aghakhani, N. (2026). [State-of-the-Practice-Survey] Environmental Sustainability in Information Systems Research: Beyond Incrementalism Toward a Transformative Path Forward. Information Systems Frontiers. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10796-026-10825-0

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s10796-026-10825-0

Keywords: environmental sustainability, information systems, ecological economics, Doughnut Economics, climate crisis, green information systems, survey research, data centers, generative AI energy use, circular economy, Genuine Progress Indicator, academic incentives

The study, titled “Daughters promote pair-bonding in fathers in modern Western cultures,” draws on a body of prior work showing that fathers play an outsized role in the development of their daughters’ self-esteem and in shaping their broader expectations about men’s reliability and availability in long-term relationships. Building on that literature, the Rutgers team formulated a specific hypothesis: if fathers matter so much for how daughters come to view male investment, then the presence of a daughter might itself increase a father’s tendency to favor and display long-term commitment, effectively signaling to the child that male investment in a partnership is dependable. In other words, the researchers suspected that men might behave differently as partners depending on whether they are raising a boy or a girl, and that the direction of that difference would favor daughters.

To test the idea, the scholars conducted three separate surveys of nearly 1,700 parents across the United States, a sample size large enough to give the question a genuinely representative test rather than a laboratory curiosity. The design was deliberately layered so that each survey addressed a potential weakness of the previous one. The first survey asked fathers of daughters under the age of 18 to rate the quality of their relationship with the child’s mother, capturing the men’s own reports of attachment, commitment, trust and intimacy. Because self-reports can be inflated, the researchers then reversed the perspective entirely.

In the second survey, the team asked mothers of daughters to describe their perception of the fathers’ behaviors. This step mattered because a father’s own account of being a devoted partner could reflect optimism or self-presentation as much as reality. When the mothers’ perceptions aligned with the fathers’ self-reports, the researchers had converging evidence from two independent observers of the same relationship, and the pattern again pointed in the same direction: fathers of daughters were seen, by both themselves and their partners, as more attentive and committed.

The third survey was designed to address the most serious remaining alternative explanation, namely that men who choose to have daughters, or who already hold particular views about relationships and gender, might simply differ from men who have sons before any child is born. To rule out pre-existing differences, the researchers recruited soon-to-be parents during the last trimester of pregnancy and phrased their questions to determine whether differences in fathers’ behavior were already present before birth or whether they emerged only after the child arrived and the sex became known. This longitudinal framing allowed the team to separate the effect of having a daughter from the effect of the kind of man who happens to have one.

The results, the researchers report, were striking. “Fathers of daughters are not necessarily better dads, but they are perceived, both individually and by the child’s mother, as better at being there for their partner,” said Krystal Duarte, a postdoctoral research associate at the Center for Women in Business and lead author of the study. The distinction she draws is an important one for interpreting the finding. The study does not claim that fathers of daughters parent better or love their children more; it identifies a specific shift in how men engage with their co-parent, a shift visible in self-reports and in the perceptions of the mothers themselves.

“Having a daughter appears to be protective of the primary parent relationship,” said Kristina Durante, professor and research fellow at the Center for Women in Business and a coauthor of the study. “When men have daughters, it alters their psychologies in interesting ways, including, as we found, higher levels of commitment to the mother.” The word “protective” is doing careful work here: given that the transition to parenthood is widely associated with strain on couples, a factor associated with stronger attachment and intimacy in fathers runs against the general trend and may help buffer the parental relationship during a vulnerable period.

Why the effect exists remains an open question, and Duarte and Durante are explicit that their explanations are theories rather than settled conclusions. One leading account centers on what fathers teach their daughters, sometimes without intending to. “Fathers are often a daughter’s first close look at what to expect from a man in a relationship,” said Duarte. “If a father is showing up for the child’s mother, being attentive, supportive, committed, that becomes the daughter’s working model for what a good partner looks like. We think dads may be, in effect, coaching their daughters on what to expect and what not to settle for, just by how they treat mom.” On this view, the heightened commitment is a form of instruction delivered through behavior rather than words, and it connects directly to earlier findings that fathers shape daughters’ expectations about men’s reliability.

Other candidate mechanisms are physiological and cultural. The researchers note that fatherhood is known to be associated with declines in testosterone, which may trigger endocrine shifts that facilitate caregiving behavior and motivation for pair-bonding. But they point out that this hormonal change would apply to fathers of sons as well as fathers of daughters, so biology alone cannot explain the sex-specific pattern. Daughters, they suggest, may also evoke cultural norms surrounding protection, alter perceived family vulnerability within the household, or shift relational expectations between the couple in ways that sons do not. Any of these routes could plausibly nudge fathers of daughters toward more visible investment in the partnership.

The explanation the authors favor, however, looks less at what fathers need and more at what daughters stand to gain. “Relationships are enormously beneficial to men, but historically they’ve been especially critical for women,” said Durante. “A father who’s actively working at his own partnership is showing his daughter that this kind of investment from a man is possible, and worth expecting.” Framed this way, the pair-bonding effect is best understood as an adaptive alignment of interests: a father whose daughter observes a reliable, committed model of male investment is a father whose daughter is likely to expect, and presumably secure, comparable investment in her own adult relationships. The method of research was a survey, the subjects were people, and the authors declare no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have influenced the work. Whether the pattern extends beyond modern Western populations, where the study was conducted, is a question the researchers and their colleagues will now need to test in other cultural settings.

Subject of Research: Effects of having daughters on fathers' pair-bonding and relationship commitment

Article Title: Dads of daughters may be more attentive partners

Article References: Dads of daughters may be more attentive partners. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: fatherhood, daughters, pair-bonding, relationship commitment, parenting, attachment, Personality and Individual Differences, Rutgers Business School, evolutionary psychology, family dynamics, testosterone, survey research

The research, conducted by a team at Universitas Negeri Semarang and published in Discover Education, recruited participants through e-Guru.id, an Indonesian online professional learning network that offers webinars, memberships, and specialized training. All respondents had completed at least one MOOC related to professional development. The sample was predominantly female, with 1,665 women and 866 men, and professionally seasoned: nearly 78 percent were aged 35 or older, and almost 57 percent had at least 15 years of classroom experience. Notably, despite that deep experience, most were newcomers to MOOC learning, with 82.3 percent reporting zero to two years of MOOC use. The authors caution that because recruitment relied on a digitally connected professional network, the sample should not be treated as nationally representative of all Indonesian teachers.

Methodologically, the study is a cross-sectional survey designed to describe and explore rather than to test causal claims. Each of three conceptual domains was measured with five items on a four-point Likert scale, a format chosen to push participants toward a directional response rather than a neutral midpoint. The three domains were Perceived MOOC Effectiveness, covering instructional value, relevance, and professional usefulness; Perceived Professional Competence and Confidence, covering motivation and the perceived ability to apply new knowledge; and Perceived Opportunities and Challenges, covering scheduling flexibility, collaboration, effort, institutional support, and workload. Before any group comparisons, the team validated the instrument with confirmatory factor analysis using IBM SPSS Amos, and the three-factor model showed excellent fit, with a Comparative Fit Index of 0.972, a Tucker-Lewis Index of 0.967, and a Root Mean Square Error of Approximation of 0.057.

The statistical machinery behind the subgroup comparisons deserves attention because it reflects a growing standard of rigor in educational research. Rather than relying on classical analysis of variance, the team used Welch’s independent-samples t-tests and Welch’s one-way ANOVAs, which do not assume equal variances and are better suited to the substantially unequal group sizes in the sample. Because 15 item-level comparisons were run for each demographic variable, the researchers applied Benjamini-Hochberg false discovery rate corrections within each family of tests, and they followed significant omnibus results with Games-Howell post hoc tests. Effect sizes were reported as Cohen’s d for gender comparisons and as eta squared and omega squared for the ANOVAs. Of 75 item-level comparisons across five grouping variables, only three survived correction, a result the authors interpret as evidence of greater similarity than difference across teacher groups.

The descriptive findings tell a coherent story about what teachers value. Within the effectiveness domain, item means ranged from 3.42 to 3.64 on the four-point scale, with the highest rating going to the statement that MOOCs provide valuable resources and materials for improving teaching practice. Close behind were items on the contribution of MOOCs to understanding pedagogical strategies and instructional design, the relevance of content to classroom teaching, and usefulness for professional growth. The lowest item in the domain, though still positive, concerned perceived benefits for student learning, suggesting that teachers were more confident identifying immediate professional gains for themselves than attributing changes in student outcomes to their course participation. The authors stress that student outcomes were not measured independently, so this item reflects perception rather than demonstrated achievement gains.

The competence and confidence results reveal a subtle but important gap. Teachers rated their motivation to teach and share knowledge after MOOC participation highest, at a mean of 3.56, followed closely by perceived improvement in teaching skills. But confidence in applying MOOC-acquired knowledge in practice and in integrating technology into classroom teaching scored slightly lower, at 3.46 and 3.45 respectively. The authors argue this distinction separates professional learning acquisition from professional learning transfer: teachers may absorb knowledge and feel motivated, yet still struggle to translate that knowledge into technology-supported classroom practice. Because the data are self-reported and cross-sectional, the findings capture perceptions of capability rather than independently verified changes in instructional performance.

The opportunities-and-challenges domain produced the most differentiated pattern and the study’s most striking single result. Teachers rated opportunities to collaborate with colleagues across Indonesia highly, at a mean of 3.50, and valued the flexibility of MOOCs amid busy schedules at 3.45. Yet the item measuring difficulty completing MOOCs because of workload or other commitments scored an identical 3.45, and the effort required to keep up with course content scored 3.39. Flexibility, in other words, did not eliminate the demands of participation; it reorganized them. The lowest mean across the entire survey went to institutional support, at just 3.03, with a large standard deviation of 0.92 indicating wide variation in teachers’ experiences of organizational backing. The authors suggest that many participants may not have experienced MOOC learning as embedded within school-level professional development structures.

The subgroup analysis dismantles several common assumptions about who benefits from online professional learning. After false discovery rate correction, age, educational attainment, and teaching experience showed no robust differences on any of the 15 items, challenging narratives that frame digital learning through generational or qualification-based divides. Only two small gender differences survived correction: male teachers reported slightly higher perceived scheduling flexibility and slightly stronger institutional support, with Cohen’s d values of just -0.12 and -0.13. A nominal gender gap in technology-integration confidence vanished after adjustment. The one substantive pattern involved duration of MOOC use: teachers with more than six years of experience rated content relevance significantly higher than newer users, though the omnibus effect was small, explaining less than 1 percent of variance, and the longest-duration group contained only 74 participants. The authors note that causality cannot be inferred; sustained participants may find courses more relevant, or prolonged engagement may sharpen their ability to identify relevant content.

What emerges is a socio-technical picture in which MOOCs are not standalone solutions but components of broader professional learning ecosystems. The authors argue that access to online courses does not automatically become meaningful professional growth, and that knowledge acquired through MOOCs requires opportunities for experimentation, reflection, feedback, and institutional support before it becomes classroom practice. The coexistence of high flexibility ratings with high workload ratings exposes what they call a common misconception: that accessibility translates into ease of participation. For working teachers, flexible delivery shifts rather than removes the burden of allocating time, sustaining motivation, and balancing coursework against teaching and administrative duties. Barriers, they conclude, are organizational and temporal as much as technological.

The practical implications point away from demographic targeting and toward the conditions surrounding participation. The authors recommend designing relevant, practice-oriented content, reducing unnecessary workload, fostering collaborative learning communities, and embedding MOOCs within school-based professional development structures that provide recognition, mentoring, and protected time. They are careful to frame these as priorities for program development whose effects require direct evaluation, not proven interventions. The study’s limitations, including its cross-sectional design, self-reported data, and convenience sampling, restrict causal interpretation and generalizability. Future research, the team suggests, should employ longitudinal, mixed-method, and performance-based designs to examine whether MOOC participation actually changes instructional practice, how perceptions evolve over time, and which institutional conditions sustain engagement. For now, the message for education systems betting on MOOCs at scale is clear: teachers are ready and willing, but the surrounding ecosystem must catch up.

Subject of Research: Indonesian teachers' perceptions of massive open online courses for continuing professional development

Article Title: Indonesian teachers’ perceptions of MOOCs for digital professional development

Article References: Iqdami, M. N., Haryono, Astuti, T., & Widhanarto, G. P. (2026). Indonesian teachers’ perceptions of MOOCs for digital professional development. Discover Education, 5(1), Article 1080. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44217-026-02170-w

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44217-026-02170-w

Keywords: MOOCs, teacher professional development, Indonesia, online learning, continuing professional development, survey research, institutional support, workload, teacher perceptions, digital learning, Discover Education, statistical analysis

The study, led by Daniel Kruger, research associate professor in the School of Public Health and Health Professions at the University at Buffalo, together with Paul Gillis-Smith, program lead at the Center for the Study of World Religious Studies at Harvard Divinity School, was published in the journal Psychedelics. Additional co-authors are affiliated with the Michigan Psychedelic Center at the University of Michigan, Blue Sage Health Consulting in Ann Arbor, the Michigan Psychedelic Society and the Radical Well-Being Center in Southfield, Michigan. The research team set out to test whether a document written in the early days of the psychedelic counterculture could still speak to a generation of users who, in many cases, are experimenting far outside any clinical or regulated setting.

Bieberman’s pamphlet stood apart from the era’s more flamboyant psychedelic rhetoric. While Leary urged a generation to “turn on, tune in, and drop out” and spoke in esoteric terms such as “surrender to the void,” Bieberman focused on something far more mundane and, arguably, more enduring: how to keep a psychedelic session from going badly wrong. She established the Psychedelic Information Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and used the pamphlet to offer best practices for all types of psychedelics, with particular attention to first-time users. She also addressed what might go wrong during an LSD or psilocybin mushroom trip, cataloguing the psychological traps that can turn an evening of exploration into a frightening ordeal.

Among her warnings were several that will sound familiar to anyone versed in modern harm reduction. Kruger notes that Bieberman highlighted a number of “games” that may be better avoided during an LSD session, such as running away from one’s companions or becoming convinced that one has unlocked the deepest truths of the universe and must immediately tell the world about them. She recommended that users stay with people they like and trust, avoid going out in public, and clear their minds of negative emotions before beginning. When Kruger first encountered these pragmatic teachings, he wanted to know whether they would hold up today, a timely question given that psychedelic use now exceeds what was seen during the countercultural 1960s.

To find out, the researchers surveyed almost 600 self-identified psychedelic users, recruited through online advertisements and in-person outreach at a psychedelic advocacy event in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The anonymous respondents reported using LSD and psilocybin mushrooms, mescaline, ayahuasca, ketamine and MDMA, also known as ecstasy or molly, primarily within the previous year. They ranged in age from 18 to 85, with an average age of 43, and some identified as psychedelic guides or educators. The breadth of the sample matters, because it captures not only casual experimenters but also people who occupy informal teaching and facilitation roles within a growing community that operates largely beyond the reach of formal medicine.

The results were striking in their consistency. On preparation, the majority of respondents agreed with Bieberman’s statements that one should “be with people who know, like, and trust each other” and “be aware that, even with a guide, you have to do most of the work yourself.” For overall advice, the strongest agreement went to two statements that speak to the emotional arc of a psychedelic experience: “Recognize that the experience will eventually end,” and “Recognize that you may experience anxiety, which does not mean that something is wrong.” Kruger says participants strongly endorsed advice emphasizing interpersonal trust, personal responsibility and psychological preparation, principles that are thought to be foundations of safe and meaningful psychedelic experiences in clinical research.

Not every recommendation found universal favor. Participants neither uniformly agreed nor disagreed with Bieberman’s advice to avoid looking in the mirror during a psychedelic trip, an experience that over the decades has proven frightening for some users. That single point of ambivalence, out of nineteen, underscores how closely the rest of her guidance tracks with contemporary expectations. It also hints at the ways subjective culture around psychedelics has shifted: what was a widely shared caution in 1967 is now a matter of individual preference, while her core counsel about companions, setting and mindset remains close to consensus.

The renewed interest in Bieberman’s work arrives at a moment of extraordinary momentum for psychedelic science. Kruger points out that these drugs are gaining new traction through hundreds of clinical trials and through legal pathways in states such as Oregon and Colorado. The idea, he explains, is to medicalize psychedelics for psychiatric conditions such as severe PTSD and depression, a field he describes as overdue for innovation. There really has not been any big innovation in mental health medications since the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors were introduced in the 1980s, he notes, and those drugs do not work as well as originally thought. Psychedelics have even been explored for physical conditions such as cluster headaches, which are so painful that some sufferers have reported suicidal ideation.

The clinical evidence emerging from this wave of research is encouraging, according to Kruger. Trials show people are getting better across a range of conditions, and some participants report finding more meaning in life, having greater spiritual connections and improving their relationships. Yet he cautions that while these trials may offer promise to millions, the majority of people experimenting with psychedelics today are doing so outside of any regulated context and with little prevention education. As a public health professional, he argues, the priority is to protect these users. When Bieberman’s pamphlet was published, there were few resources for novice users, and although the term “harm reduction” was still decades from entering the vernacular of drug education and safety, Kruger and his colleagues propose that “Session Games” and Bieberman’s larger body of work are precursors to that approach.

History gives the argument additional weight. Psychedelics were considered a promising therapeutic tool in the mid-20th century, when they were used to treat conditions including neurosis and schizophrenia, alongside general psychotherapy. By the late 1960s, however, the drugs became criminalized and psychedelic therapy waned, leaving a gap of roughly five decades during which informal guides, pamphlets and word-of-mouth wisdom filled the void left by formal medicine. Bieberman’s manual is a surviving artifact from that gap, and the new survey suggests its practical wisdom survived alongside it.

The regulatory landscape is now shifting again. While classic psychedelic drugs remain illegal in the United States at the federal level, Colorado and Oregon have established state-regulated frameworks for supervised therapeutic use, and Kruger predicts that New Mexico is not far behind. He expects more psychedelics-based medications to enter the marketplace in the not-too-distant future, and he frames the challenge in vivid terms: it is a freight train coming down the tracks, he says, so society had better build a train station to safely load passengers on board, or else they will simply try to jump on while the train is moving. In other words, the demand is arriving whether or not the infrastructure exists to meet it safely.

That is where a 59-year-old pamphlet becomes unexpectedly relevant. Bieberman’s guidance anticipated many of the principles now embedded in clinical protocols: screened and trusted companions, careful psychological preparation, an acceptance that difficult emotions may arise without signaling catastrophe, and the reminder that even the most intense experience is temporary. The fact that modern users, surveyed anonymously across a wide age range, endorse nearly all of it suggests that harm reduction for psychedelics is less a novel invention than a rediscovered discipline. For Kruger and his collaborators, the lesson is that public health efforts aimed at recreational and unregulated users need not start from scratch. The tools were drafted decades ago, in a one-dollar Cambridge pamphlet, by a woman history nearly overlooked, and the people most likely to benefit from them appear ready to listen.

Researchers hope the findings will encourage both clinicians and community educators to draw on historical resources as psychedelic use continues to expand. Kruger notes that the 2026 Psychedelic Community Survey is now available for anyone to take, regardless of whether they have experienced psychedelics, with all answers anonymous. He recommends that participants complete the survey on a private computer or device in a private location. As the science advances and legal frameworks multiply, the study stands as a reminder that the conversation about how to use psychedelics safely began long before the current renaissance, and that some of its earliest voices still have something to teach.

Subject of Research: Contemporary agreement with 1967 psychedelic harm reduction advice from Lisa Bieberman's LSD manual

Article Title: Study: Obscure 1967 guide for LSD use still relevant as psychedelics gain in popularity

Article References: Study: Obscure 1967 guide for LSD use still relevant as psychedelics gain in popularity. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: psychedelics, LSD, harm reduction, Lisa Bieberman, Timothy Leary, psilocybin, psychedelic-assisted therapy, PTSD, depression, public health, University at Buffalo, survey research

The research, published in Discover Education, was led by I Wayan Sumandya of Universitas PGRI Mahadewa Indonesia together with colleagues from Universitas Pendidikan Ganesha and other institutions. The team set out to answer a deceptively simple question: what actually shapes whether teachers in inclusive schools, where students with diverse learning needs and disabilities learn alongside their peers, come to see AI as a valuable pedagogical ally? To find out, they built a predictive statistical model that tested two candidate forces simultaneously: the quality with which AI was woven into STEM teaching, and the depth of teachers’ own professional experience with the technology.

The context matters enormously. Indonesia is a maritime nation of more than 17,000 islands, where disparities in internet access, digital infrastructure, and teacher training are stark between urban centers and remote regions. Inclusive schools there face a multidimensional challenge: teachers must integrate emerging technologies while simultaneously ensuring accessibility, fairness, and differentiated instruction for students with visual, hearing, cognitive, and other impairments. AI tools promise real benefits in this setting. Speech-to-text and text-to-speech systems can assist students with sensory impairments, adaptive platforms can adjust content in real time to individual learning paces, and predictive analytics can flag students at risk of falling behind before it is too late to intervene.

Yet most previous research on AI in education has been what the authors call technocentric, focusing on algorithmic capabilities, student-facing applications, and theoretical potential while treating teachers as passive users rather than active agents of change. Established frameworks such as the Technology Acceptance Model, which holds that perceived usefulness and ease of use drive adoption, and the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge framework have tended to treat teacher-related variables as static background factors rather than dynamic constructs shaped by direct experience. The Indonesian team argued that for inclusive classrooms, teachers’ perceptions are forged in the crucible of lived experience: successes, failures, technical glitches, and moments when AI genuinely helped a struggling student grasp a difficult concept.

To test this idea rigorously, the researchers employed a quantitative explanatory survey design with purposive sampling. They recruited active teachers with at least two years of experience, participation in AI or STEM-related training, and direct involvement in inclusive teaching. Questionnaires were distributed through provincial teacher associations, STEM education communities, and inclusive education networks across Bali, Java, Sumatra, Sulawesi, and Nusa Tenggara. Of 1,183 initial responses, 1,000 complete surveys survived data screening, a response rate of 84.53 percent. Respondents answered items on five-point Likert scales covering three constructs: AI integration in STEM teaching, encompassing planning, tool use, student engagement, and data-driven assessment; teachers’ experience, including technological competency, challenges encountered, and institutional support; and teachers’ perspectives, covering perceived benefits, implementation readiness, ethical considerations, and future expectations.

The sample was demographically broad. Women made up 62.4 percent of respondents, and teachers were distributed across primary schools (41.8 percent), junior secondary (34.6 percent), and senior secondary levels (23.6 percent). Nearly half had six to fifteen years of teaching experience, a quarter had more than fifteen years, and 71.2 percent had previously participated in AI or STEM professional development. The instrument was refined through expert review by three specialists and piloted with 30 teachers, achieving Cronbach’s Alpha reliability values between 0.82 and 0.89 before the main survey launched.

Analysis was conducted using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling, or PLS-SEM, a variance-based technique well suited to predictive models in emerging research areas. The measurement models proved robust: all indicator loadings exceeded 0.70, composite reliability values ranged from 0.906 to 0.918, and average variance extracted surpassed 0.65 for every construct. Discriminant validity was confirmed through both the Fornell-Larcker criteria and the HTMT ratio, all comfortably below the 0.90 threshold, establishing that the three constructs, while related, were statistically distinct. Multicollinearity checks showed inner VIF values below 5, and common method bias was ruled out through full collinearity VIF values under 3.3 alongside procedural safeguards such as anonymous participation.

The structural results were striking. Both hypotheses were supported, but with a telling asymmetry. AI integration quality significantly influenced teachers’ perceptions, with a path coefficient of 0.399 and a t-statistic of 17.424, well beyond the significance threshold. Yet teachers’ professional experience proved the stronger predictor, with a coefficient of 0.512 and a t-statistic of 24.121. Effect sizes told the same story: experience produced a substantial effect (f-squared of 0.36, above the 0.35 benchmark for a large effect), while integration quality showed a moderate effect of 0.21. Together the two factors explained 44.9 percent of the variance in teachers’ perceptions, a moderate level of explanatory power, and the model achieved satisfactory fit with an SRMR of 0.045, well under the 0.08 criterion.

Perhaps the most innovative contribution lies in the model’s demonstrated predictive power. Using PLS Predict analysis, the team compared their model’s out-of-sample error against a naive linear regression benchmark. The PLS-SEM model posted lower root mean squared error and mean absolute error values across all five indicators of teachers’ perspectives, and all Q-squared predicted values were positive, confirming genuine predictive relevance. In practical terms, this means the model does not merely describe the present; it can simulate future scenarios. Policymakers could, for instance, estimate how expanding experiential training programs might shift teachers’ implementation readiness or long-term expectations, turning the study from a snapshot into a planning instrument.

The theoretical and practical implications ripple outward from Indonesia to any education system attempting to balance digital transformation with equity. The findings extend the Technology Acceptance Model by positioning teachers’ experience as a critical antecedent, stronger than system integration alone, in complex inclusive settings. They align with constructivist learning theory, which holds that knowledge and attitudes are built through experience and reflection, and with prior work showing that hands-on engagement reduces technology anxiety and builds self-efficacy. The authors recommend that schools move beyond one-way theoretical training toward immersive, ongoing professional development in which teachers can experiment with AI, make mistakes, and reflect in a supportive environment. Institutional leaders should cultivate professional learning communities where educators share implementation strategies and accessibility adaptations, while policymakers should fund sustainable mentoring, accessibility support systems, and inclusive AI governance frameworks rather than hardware alone. The study’s limitations, including purposive sampling, a cross-sectional design, and self-reported data, mean the findings are associative rather than definitively causal, and the authors call for longitudinal and mixed-methods research to track how experience compounds over time. But the core message is already clear: in the race to bring AI into classrooms that serve every learner, the technology is only half the equation. The other half is the teacher who has actually used it, struggled with it, and seen it work.

Subject of Research: Teacher experience and AI integration in inclusive STEM education in Indonesia

Article Title: AI integration in STEM learning in inclusive schools in Indonesia from teachers experiences and perspectives

Article References: AI integration in STEM learning in inclusive schools in Indonesia from teachers experiences and perspectives. (n.d.). https://doi.org/10.1007/s44217-026-02139-9

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44217-026-02139-9

Keywords: artificial intelligence, inclusive education, STEM education, teacher perception, PLS-SEM, Indonesia, educational technology, teacher professional development, technology acceptance model, accessibility, adaptive learning, survey research

Fine needle aspiration, often abbreviated FNA, is one of the most powerful yet underappreciated tools in veterinary medicine. The technique involves inserting a thin needle into a mass and drawing out cells, which are then smeared onto a slide, stained, and examined under a microscope. Compared with surgical biopsy, it is minimally invasive, carries low risk, costs far less, and can produce results within minutes to days. When a dog or cat presents with a persistent lump measuring at least one centimeter, roughly the size of a pea, that has been present for a month or longer, established guidelines from the American Animal Hospital Association recommend FNA or biopsy to obtain a diagnosis before any treatment decisions are made. The rationale is straightforward: knowing whether a mass is benign or malignant, and what type of tumor it might be, fundamentally changes how a veterinarian plans surgery, staging, and follow-up care.

The stakes are considerable. Roughly 30 percent of all tumors in dogs and cats arise in the skin or the tissue just beneath it, and malignancy rates in these lesions vary dramatically between species. In dogs, an estimated 20 to 40 percent of skin tumors are malignant; in cats, the figure climbs to between 70 and 82 percent. Because a lump that feels benign to the examining hand may in fact be an aggressive cancer, the guidelines emphasize that no definitive diagnosis can ever be made on palpation alone. Yet the new survey suggests that in everyday practice, clinical impression frequently wins out over cytology.

The research team, led by Gillian Dank of Onco Pet Veterinary Services in Israel along with colleagues at HT Vet and in private consulting, distributed a 16-question survey by email to 10,000 small-animal veterinary professionals across the United States, including veterinarians, veterinary technicians, and practice managers. A total of 240 respondents completed the questionnaire, a response rate of 2.4 percent, with 235 providing fully answered forms. Most respondents were veterinarians, about 62 percent of practices were independently owned, and the vast majority worked in general practice. The survey asked about daily caseloads of mass patients, the proportion of cases in which FNA was performed, whether samples were evaluated in-house or sent to reference laboratories, the perceived rate of inconclusive results, and the barriers that discouraged the test.

The statistical analysis, conducted in Python using standard tests of association, revealed several striking patterns. Clinicians who evaluated four or more patients with dermal or subcutaneous masses per day were significantly less likely to perform FNA than those seeing fewer than four such patients daily, a difference that reached statistical significance. The mean FNA rate fell from roughly 41 to 42 percent among lower-volume respondents to 33 percent among those with the heaviest caseloads. The authors suggest that the cumulative cognitive load of making dozens of clinical decisions each day may push busy veterinarians toward a quick wait-and-see discharge rather than an additional procedure, particularly when a lump is an incidental finding during a visit for something else.

Experience, surprisingly, worked in the opposite direction. Clinicians with more than 20 years in practice were significantly over-represented among the high users of FNA, performing the test on more than half of masses at rates of 40 to 44 percent, compared with only 19 to 24 percent among less experienced colleagues. This contradicts the intuitive assumption that seasoned veterinarians feel comfortable judging a lump by look and feel alone. The authors speculate that decades of practice bring greater familiarity with the aspiration technique and a deeper appreciation of its clinical utility, gained through years of watching palpation-based guesses go wrong.

The barriers veterinarians cited for skipping the test were revealing. The most common primary reason, selected by 35 percent of respondents, was the perception that the mass was benign and did not require further investigation. Cost concerns came second at 32 percent, and client declination for reasons other than cost accounted for 19 percent. Taken together, the cost and refusal categories suggest that in roughly half of cases, the veterinarian would have performed the aspiration if the owner had agreed. Only 8 percent cited limited confidence in the diagnostic value of FNA itself, and just 4 percent pointed to the time the procedure takes. Notably, when the same respondents were asked what percentage of lumps could be accurately diagnosed from palpation and history alone, half estimated that this was reliable in fewer than 10 percent of cases, a striking contradiction with their stated reliance on clinical impression. The authors interpret this as a gap between theoretical knowledge and the practical, split-second decision-making of a busy appointment.

One of the most consequential findings concerned surgery. Respondents reported performing excisional biopsies, in which the entire mass is surgically removed, without any prior FNA in an average of 30 percent of cases. Clinicians who expressed confidence in diagnosing lumps by palpation alone were two and a half times more likely to skip the preoperative aspiration. This matters because knowing the tumor type before surgery provides critical information about local invasiveness, metastatic potential, and whether the cancer spreads through lymphatic or blood vessels, all of which influence the width of surgical margins, the need for preoperative staging tests, and the overall surgical strategy. Since the first operation often offers the best chance of complete tumor removal, proceeding blind may, in some cases, compromise the outcome. The authors caution, however, that there are legitimate reasons to excise directly, such as very small masses that appear benign, or palliative procedures where tumor typing would not change the plan.

The survey also examined the role of digital cytology, a rapidly growing technology that allows slide images to be transmitted to remote board-certified clinical pathologists for interpretation. About 35 percent of clinics reported using such services, with medium and large practices significantly more likely to adopt them than small ones. Counterintuitively, clinics with digital cytology performed fewer aspirations overall, 35 percent versus 42 percent, evaluated fewer samples in-house, and reported higher rates of inconclusive results. The authors offer several possible explanations: clinicians may expect definitive answers from submitted samples and grow frustrated when findings are non-diagnostic; the higher cost of digital services may discourage routine use; slide preparation and upload take time during busy consultations; or the association may simply be confounded by the fact that larger, high-volume clinics, which already perform fewer aspirations, are also the ones most likely to have the technology.

The study has limitations that the authors acknowledge candidly. The response rate was low, the survey reached only US-based subscribers of a single professional publication, and many answers relied on recollection rather than verified clinical records. The questionnaire also did not capture the clinical reasoning behind every decision to skip aspiration. Even so, the overall picture is consistent: a fast, cheap, minimally invasive test that veterinary schools teach and guidelines endorse is being underused, especially where caseload pressure is highest. The authors argue that better integration of FNA into routine workflows, along with hands-on training for veterinary students and practicing clinicians in both aspiration technique and slide assessment, could close the gap between what the guidelines recommend and what actually happens when a worried owner points to a lump on their pet. Early diagnosis, they emphasize, remains one of the most powerful predictors of a good outcome in veterinary oncology, and the pea-sized lump dismissed today may be the aggressive tumor that a two-minute needle test could have caught in time.

Subject of Research: Underuse of fine needle aspiration for diagnosing skin masses in dogs and cats in veterinary practice

Article Title: Underutilization of fine needle aspiration for canine and feline superficial masses-survey results

Article References: Dank, G., Buber, T., Levy-Hirsch, L., Fink, A., Marks, N., Greenberg, U., & Hanael, E. (2026). Underutilization of fine needle aspiration for canine and feline superficial masses-survey results. Veterinary Oncology, 3(1), Article 25. https://doi.org/10.1186/s44356-026-00077-0

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s44356-026-00077-0

Keywords: fine needle aspiration, veterinary oncology, cytology, dogs, cats, skin masses, biopsy, digital cytology, diagnostic guidelines, survey research, cancer diagnosis, veterinary practice

The research team employed a mixed-methods approach, a design philosophy that deliberately combines numerical measurement with narrative depth. Specifically, they used what methodologists call a sequential explanatory design, in which a quantitative phase is conducted first and its results then inform and are interpreted through a subsequent qualitative phase. In this study, the quantitative component took the form of a survey, while the qualitative component was structured as a case study. This sequencing matters: by first establishing how much anxiety exists across a broad group, the researchers could then use interviews to explore why those levels exist and what they mean to the individuals concerned, giving the numbers a human voice.

The quantitative phase drew on a population of 208 pre-service teachers enrolled in the science education department of the faculty of education at a state university in Turkey. From that population, the researchers selected a sample of 162 pre-service science teachers using simple random sampling, a technique in which every member of the population has an equal chance of being included. Random sampling of this kind is a cornerstone of survey methodology because it reduces the risk of systematic bias in who ends up answering the questionnaire, making the resulting descriptive and inferential statistics more defensible as a portrait of the wider group. The instrument administered to these 162 students was a scale designed to gauge levels of anxiety specifically about artificial intelligence applications.

When the scale data were analyzed using both descriptive statistics, which summarize the distribution of responses, and inferential statistics, which test whether observed patterns are likely to hold beyond the sample, the central finding emerged clearly: the pre-service science teachers reported a moderate level of artificial intelligence anxiety. That middle-of-the-road result is itself informative. It suggests that these future educators are not experiencing the acute alarm sometimes portrayed in popular discussions of AI, but neither are they indifferent or fully at ease. A moderate reading points to a population that is aware of the technology, uncertain about its implications, and receptive—potentially—to training that could tip the balance toward confidence.

To understand what lay behind that moderate score, the researchers turned to the qualitative phase of the sequential explanatory design. They conducted semi-structured interviews with eight pre-service science teachers, selected for maximum diversity, a purposive sampling strategy that deliberately seeks participants who differ from one another in relevant characteristics so that the qualitative findings are not confined to a single type of respondent. Semi-structured interviews follow a prepared guide of questions but allow the conversation to develop naturally, letting participants raise concerns the researchers might not have anticipated. The interview transcripts were then subjected to content analysis, a systematic method of coding textual data to identify recurring themes and patterns of meaning.

One of the most striking outcomes of the interview phase was the degree of convergence between participants with high anxiety and those with low anxiety. Despite sitting at opposite ends of the anxiety scale, the two groups gave strikingly similar answers in conversation. Both groups agreed that artificial intelligence cannot replace the teaching profession. That shared conviction, held across the anxiety spectrum, is a significant insight: it suggests that anxiety about AI among future science teachers is not simply a proxy for fear of professional obsolescence. Even the most anxious participants did not believe their chosen career was about to be automated away, and even the least anxious recognized that the technology raises real questions for educators.

What the interviews add, then, is a picture of anxiety that is more textured than a single scale score can convey. Moderate anxiety coexisting with confidence in the irreplaceability of teachers implies that the concerns of these pre-service educators likely center on practical and pedagogical uncertainties—how to use AI applications appropriately, what such tools mean for the integrity of learning, and how their own preparation has left them under-equipped to judge. The study’s design cannot assign precise weights to those individual concerns, but the pattern of a shared belief in the durability of the teaching profession, held by both high- and low-anxiety participants, anchors the interpretation of the quantitative result in the participants’ own words.

Based on these findings, the research team put forward two recommendations. The first is to provide pre-service teachers with the necessary training on artificial intelligence, so that the moderate anxiety observed in the survey can be addressed directly through competence-building rather than left to resolve itself. The second is to offer an artificial intelligence course to all pre-service teachers, embedding AI literacy into teacher education as a standard component rather than an elective add-on. Taken together, the recommendations treat AI anxiety not as an individual failing of nervous students but as a structural gap in teacher preparation—one that faculties of education can close by making the technology a routine, examined part of the curriculum.

The study was conducted with formal ethical oversight. All protocols and methods involving human participants were reviewed and approved by the Erciyes University Social and Human Sciences Ethics Committee under approval ID 596, and the research was carried out in accordance with relevant institutional and ethical guidelines, including the principles of voluntary participation and confidentiality. Informed consent was obtained from all participants before data collection began, and participant consent forms were required for the collection of participants’ opinions. These safeguards are standard for research involving human subjects, but they are worth noting because they underline that the anxiety being measured is self-reported, personal, and offered voluntarily by students describing their own professional futures.

For the wider conversation about artificial intelligence in schools, the study offers a timely data point. Debates about AI in education often swing between utopian predictions of personalized learning at scale and dystopian warnings about deskilled classrooms, and both extremes tend to be articulated by adults already established in their careers. This study instead listens to the people who will actually inherit the AI-infused classroom: students now training to teach science. Their measured verdict—moderate anxiety, coupled with a firm belief that no algorithm can replace a teacher—suggests that the most productive path forward is neither alarm nor complacency, but deliberate preparation. If the authors’ recommendations are heeded, the next generation of science teachers may enter the profession not anxious about artificial intelligence, but equipped to use it, question it, and keep the human core of teaching intact.

Subject of Research: Anxiety levels of pre-service science teachers regarding artificial intelligence applications in education

Article Title: Pre-service science teachers’ anxiety levels about artificial intelligence applications

Article References: Çakir, C., Gökçe, H., & Kariper, İ. A. (2026). Pre-service science teachers’ anxiety levels about artificial intelligence applications. Discover Psychology, 6(1), Article 269. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44202-026-00909-y

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44202-026-00909-y

Keywords: artificial intelligence, pre-service teachers, science education, teacher anxiety, mixed methods, sequential explanatory design, survey research, semi-structured interviews, content analysis, teacher training, educational psychology, Erciyes University

The study, led by Nevin Cambaz Kurt of the Department of Pediatrics at Başakşehir Çam and Sakura City Hospital in Istanbul, together with colleagues from hospitals and universities across Türkiye, set out to fill a well-defined gap. Although interest in herbal products and complementary medicine for pediatric patients has grown steadily, the authors note that pediatricians’ attitudes toward phytotherapy and the factors driving those attitudes remained insufficiently characterized. To address this, the team recruited 206 physicians practicing in pediatric care through professional communication networks and online platforms, using convenience sampling, and measured their views with a structured psychometric instrument rather than ad hoc questions.

That instrument was a modified 22-item version of the Attitude Scale for Phytotherapy Practices, a questionnaire designed to quantify where a clinician falls on a spectrum from skepticism to enthusiasm about plant-based treatment. The researchers subjected the scale to rigorous statistical scrutiny. Internal consistency, the degree to which items measuring the same underlying construct produce similar responses, was assessed with Cronbach’s alpha, and the modified scale returned an exceptionally high value of 0.966, well above the conventional 0.70 threshold for reliability. Exploratory factor analysis, a technique that examines whether groups of items cluster around shared latent dimensions, supported a dominant general factor structure, meaning the scale behaves as a coherent measure of a single overall attitude rather than a loose collection of unrelated opinions.

The demographic profile of the sample reflects the modern pediatric workforce in Türkiye. Of the 206 participants, 144 were women, representing 69.9 percent of respondents, and the largest age group was 30 to 40 years old, accounting for 42.7 percent. Against this backdrop, the headline numbers on training are stark. Only 5.3 percent of the pediatricians surveyed held any formal phytotherapy certificate, meaning roughly one in twenty had structured credentials in the field. Yet when asked whether they wanted such education, 66.0 percent said yes. That gap, between barely any formal training and a two-thirds majority hungry for it, is arguably the single most consequential finding of the study, because it suggests demand for evidence-based herbal medicine instruction that current pediatric curricula are not meeting.

The mean total phytotherapy attitude score across the sample was 75.99, with a standard deviation of 16.79, indicating a moderately positive average attitude with substantial spread between individuals. The more interesting question is what predicts where a given pediatrician falls within that spread. To answer it, the researchers turned to multivariable linear regression, a statistical method that estimates the independent contribution of each predictor while holding the others constant. The model adjusted for demographic and professional characteristics and produced a result that is unusually strong for survey research of this kind: the adjusted model explained 55.4 percent of the variance in attitude scores, a proportion of explained variation that few psychosocial models achieve.

Three factors emerged as independent predictors of more favorable attitudes toward phytotherapy. The first was possession of a phytotherapy certificate, which was associated with an increase of 7.99 points on the attitude scale, with a 95 percent confidence interval of 1.76 to 14.23 and a p-value of 0.012. The second, and by far the largest, was a stated desire to receive phytotherapy education, which added 14.60 points on average, with a confidence interval of 10.58 to 18.62 and a p-value below 0.001. The third was the frequency with which a physician used phytotherapy for themselves or close relatives, contributing 5.05 points per unit increase in frequency, with a confidence interval of 2.94 to 7.17 and a p-value below 0.001. Notably absent from the list of significant predictors were the demographic and professional variables that often dominate such analyses.

This pattern carries a clear interpretive message: what pediatricians know, want to know, and have personally experienced with herbal medicine matters far more than who they are. Attitudes toward phytotherapy were associated mainly with educational interest, certification status, and experiential familiarity rather than demographic or professional characteristics alone, the authors conclude. The finding that a desire for education is such a powerful predictor is statistically interesting in itself, since it raises the possibility of a feedback loop: physicians who already view herbal medicine favorably are the ones most likely to seek training, which in turn reinforces favorable attitudes. The researchers addressed this concern with a sensitivity analysis, reported in supplementary material, that re-ran the regression model excluding the desire for phytotherapy education, a standard robustness check for a predictor that may be conceptually entangled with the outcome.

The methodological apparatus of the study deserves attention because it signals a level of statistical care that is not always present in survey-based complementary medicine research. The authors report using a heteroscedasticity-consistent covariance estimator, specifically the HC3 variant, which makes regression standard errors robust to uneven variance in the residuals, a common problem in Likert-scale survey data. They also report variance inflation factors, used to detect multicollinearity among predictors, and interquartile ranges alongside standard deviations for descriptive statistics. The study was reported in accordance with the STROBE guidelines, the widely used checklist for strengthening the reporting of observational studies, and was approved by the Van Training and Research Hospital Clinical Research Ethics Committee with electronic informed consent obtained from all participants in line with the Declaration of Helsinki.

As with any cross-sectional survey, there are limits to how far the findings can be generalized. The sample of 206 physicians was recruited through convenience sampling, which means participants may be more engaged with the topic of complementary medicine than the average pediatrician, potentially inflating both attitude scores and expressed demand for education. The survey captures attitudes at a single point in time, so the causal direction between experience, education, and attitude cannot be definitively established. The study was also conducted entirely within Türkiye, and attitudes toward herbal medicine are known to vary across cultures and health systems, shaped by national traditions, regulatory frameworks, and the availability of herbal products. The authors themselves frame their conclusions carefully, emphasizing associations rather than causal claims.

Even with those caveats, the practical implications are hard to ignore. If two-thirds of pediatricians want structured phytotherapy education while fewer than six percent have any formal certification, then children’s doctors are being asked questions about herbal teas, plant extracts, and supplements that most have never been trained to answer, in an environment where families are already using these products regardless of physician guidance. The authors argue that their findings support the integration of evidence-based, safety-oriented, and clinically oriented phytotherapy content into pediatric education. That framing matters: the goal they describe is not to promote herbal medicine but to ensure that the physicians on the front lines of child health can evaluate it with the same rigor they apply to any other therapy, distinguishing preparations with genuine evidence from those with only marketing behind them. In a medical landscape where patient demand for complementary therapies shows no sign of slowing, that may be the most sensible prescription of all.

Subject of Research: Pediatricians' attitudes toward phytotherapy and the factors associated with them

Article Title: Pediatricians’ views and attitudes toward phytotherapy: a cross-sectional survey study

Article References: Kurt, N. C., Güven, D., Erol, C., Güzel, M., & Kurt, B. (2026). Pediatricians’ views and attitudes toward phytotherapy: a cross-sectional survey study. BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12906-026-05551-8

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s12906-026-05551-8

Keywords: phytotherapy, pediatrics, complementary medicine, physician attitudes, cross-sectional survey, medical education, herbal medicine, Türkiye, attitude scale, linear regression, pediatricians, survey research

The study, published as an open-access short communication in Global Surgical Education, the journal of the Association for Surgical Education, was led by Marvin Man Ting Chung of the Department of Orthopaedics and Traumatology at the University of Hong Kong. Between April and July 2023, the team distributed a 28-item online questionnaire to resident and resident-specialist grade doctors in the surgical and orthopedic departments of a single public university teaching hospital. The specialties included general surgery, urology, otolaryngology, paediatric surgery, neurosurgery, cardiothoracic surgery, and orthopaedics. Only doctors with prior experience teaching medical students were invited to participate, and all responses were anonymized with informed consent obtained under ethics approval from the institutional review board.

The response rate was strikingly high: 40 of the 55 eligible doctors completed the survey, or 72.7 percent, a figure that lends considerable weight to the findings. The respondents spanned every training grade from postgraduate year 1 through 6 as well as resident specialists, and their gender and seniority distribution closely mirrored the full target population, which reduces the chance that the sample was demographically skewed. Every single respondent had themselves been taught by residents during medical school, and 65 percent rated that experience as good or very good—a detail that matters, because the authors found that residents who had positive experiences learning from residents were significantly more likely to enjoy teaching themselves.

The quantitative picture of teaching activity was equally revealing. Nearly all respondents, 97.5 percent, had delivered bedside teaching; 82.5 percent had acted as student supervisors when students attached to their teams as assistant interns; 60 percent had led small-group tutorials; and 30 percent had given seminars or lectures. The average annual teaching commitment was 23.9 hours, though the range stretched from zero to 80 hours, indicating highly uneven distribution of educational labor across the department. This volume of unpaid, often unstructured educational work is delivered on top of the demanding clinical and operative obligations of a surgical residency.

The attitudinal data told a story of qualified positivity. A majority of residents, 65 percent, said they enjoyed teaching medical students, and 80 percent believed their students benefited from it. Most strikingly, 75 percent agreed that teaching improved their own knowledge and learning, an endorsement of the old pedagogical maxim that to teach is to learn twice. Nearly half, 47.5 percent, actively wanted to be more involved in teaching, and 60 percent believed that formal training in medical education would advance their professional development. These numbers suggest that the appetite for educational engagement within surgical training is far larger than many program directors might assume.

Yet the structural supports for that appetite were almost entirely absent. Only 25 percent of respondents had ever received formal training in medical education or teaching technique. Just 12.5 percent had protected time carved out from clinical duties for teaching, and a mere 20 percent felt valued by their hospital or university for their teaching contributions. Feedback on teaching quality was similarly scarce, reported by only 25 percent. Perhaps most tellingly, a substantial minority voiced outright skepticism: 37.5 percent viewed teaching as a burden, and 40 percent believed that specialists and university staff, not residents, should shoulder the responsibility for undergraduate teaching.

The statistical associations uncovered in the survey add nuance to these headline figures. Male respondents rated their enjoyment of teaching significantly higher than female respondents, a difference that reached statistical significance, and men were also more likely to want greater involvement in teaching. Senior trainees and resident specialists reported feeling more comfortable and better prepared to teach than junior residents, suggesting that pedagogical confidence accumulates with experience over the course of training. Residents who logged more annual teaching hours were more likely to agree that teaching deepened their own learning, with a moderate positive correlation, implying that the reciprocal intellectual rewards of teaching compound with sustained practice. Age, place of primary medical qualification, possession of a higher degree, and success in passing the professional surgical examination on a single attempt showed no significant association with teaching attitudes.

The authors argue that these findings expose a systemic gap that residency programs cannot afford to ignore. The literature they cite shows that structured residents-as-teachers curricula, including workshops and even globally delivered virtual courses, measurably improve residents’ knowledge, confidence, and feedback skills. Peer observation offers a low-cost alternative that reduces the faculty time required for instruction, and distributing teaching materials electronically has proven feasible in busy surgical programs. On the time problem, the authors point to North American models of protected block teaching time, in which residents are freed from on-call and clinical duties during teaching sessions while colleagues cross-cover their service obligations—support that must, they caution, come from genuinely adjusted workloads rather than simply stretching the training day. They suggest practical, low-friction interventions such as brief case-based micro-teaching on ward rounds and distributing teaching duties across the whole team, including attending surgeons.

Recognition emerges as perhaps the most psychologically potent lever. While faculty surgeons can accumulate teaching awards and educational portfolios that advance their careers, residents perceive few direct professional benefits from excellence in teaching, which may explain why some see it as uncompensated labor competing with the operating room. The authors propose awards, formal evaluations, and career advancement tied to teaching quality as mechanisms to close that gap. Their finding that residents with more teaching hours wanted even more involvement hints that institutional acknowledgment could trigger a virtuous cycle. There is also a workforce pipeline argument: prior research shows that surgical residents who are effective educators strongly influence medical students to pursue surgical careers, and the Hong Kong survey’s finding that early positive exposure to resident teachers predicts later enjoyment of teaching underscores how teaching culture perpetuates itself across generations.

The authors are appropriately candid about the study’s limits. It captures a single academic institution whose local educational culture may not generalize, the modest sample size raises the risk of response bias, and social desirability—amplified in a small departmental cohort where anonymity may not feel complete—may have inflated reported enthusiasm. The questionnaire lacked formal validity testing and had no qualitative component. Future work, they write, should use mixed methods across multiple sites with focus groups and properly validated instruments. Even so, the core message travels well beyond Hong Kong: surgical and orthopedic residents already recognize that teaching sharpens their own clinical reasoning and benefits their students. What they need from institutions is not exhortation but infrastructure—formal pedagogical training, protected time, honest feedback, and tangible recognition—so that the residents-as-teachers model can deliver on its promise for the next generation of doctors.

Subject of Research: Perceptions and experiences of surgical and orthopedic residents teaching medical students in a residency training program

Article Title: “Residents-as-teachers”: a survey on perceptions and experiences of surgical and orthopedic residents in teaching medical students

Article References: Chung, M. M. T., Cheung, B. H. H., Co, M. T. H., & Wong, T. M. (2026). “Residents-as-teachers”: a survey on perceptions and experiences of surgical and orthopedic residents in teaching medical students. Global Surgical Education – Journal of the Association for Surgical Education, 5(1), Article 155. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44186-026-00564-w

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44186-026-00564-w

Keywords: residents as teachers, medical education, surgical residency, orthopedics, clinical teaching, teaching hospital, undergraduate medical education, survey research, protected teaching time, faculty development, Hong Kong, surgical education

The study, conducted by Karin Falk-Brynhildsen, Carina Bååth, Dimitri Beeckman, Christine Leo Swenne, Charlotte Raepsaet and Camilla Wistrand, set out to describe Swedish operating room nurses’ self-estimated knowledge and attitudes regarding the prevention of intraoperative pressure ulcers. Using a cross-sectional design reported according to the STROBE guidelines for observational studies, the team distributed an online questionnaire by email to operating room nurses across all 21 of Sweden’s healthcare regions. Of the 2247 addresses contacted, 343 proved non-functional, leaving 1904 eligible recipients. After two reminders, 284 nurses completed the survey, a response rate of 15 percent. Data collection took place in August and September 2020 as part of a larger project developing two validated instruments tailored to the operating room: the Pressure Ulcer Knowledge Assessment Tool for the operating room, known as PUKAT 2.0 OR, and the Attitudes toward Pressure Ulcer Prevention instrument adapted for the same setting, the APuP-OR.

The scale of the clinical problem provides the context for why this matters. According to the European Pressure Ulcer Advisory Panel guidelines, surgery-related pressure ulcers occur in approximately 4 to 45 percent of surgical procedures. Recent studies have documented intraoperative incidence rates ranging from 6.2 to 16.2 percent, and one study of patients aged 65 and older reported an incidence of 18.8 percent, with operative times of 180 minutes or longer strongly associated with increased risk. Medical devices compound the danger: blood pressure cuffs, adhesive tapes, endotracheal tubes and spectral index monitors can all damage skin and mucosal surfaces, and device-related pressure ulcers have been estimated at a prevalence of around 11.8 percent, while positioning-related ulcers may reach 23.5 percent. The operating room is therefore recognised as a high-risk environment where every member of the surgical team shares responsibility for tissue protection.

The 284 respondents were an experienced and highly educated group. Their mean age was 42.8 years, 93 percent were women, and 37 percent held a master’s degree while another 33.8 percent held a professional operating room nursing degree. More than 63 percent had over 11 years of experience in healthcare, and 37.7 percent had more than 20 years. When asked to rate their own expertise using Benner’s classic proficiency levels, half identified as proficient and 38 percent as competent, with 11.3 percent claiming expert status and only two nurses describing themselves as novices. Crucially, 87 percent said that further education in pressure ulcer prevention would be beneficial, an appetite for learning that the study’s findings suggest is well founded.

The knowledge assessment told a story of two halves. In the domain of aetiology, the nurses performed impressively. More than 95 percent correctly identified the causes of pressure ulcers and understood the biomechanical consequences of a patient sliding in a semi-upright position, and 90.1 percent recognised that body weight contributes to risk. These results align with previous research emphasising the role of knowledge in delivering evidence-based care. But when the questions turned to prevention, classification and observation, performance dropped sharply. Only 38 percent correctly identified where deep tissue injuries develop during surgery, and just 41.2 percent correctly classified blisters observed on both heels after a three-hour procedure. Nearly 60 percent answered incorrectly when asked about heel protection measures for a patient already lying on a pressure-redistributing mattress, and questions about patient positioning yielded correct response rates of only around 51 to 52 percent.

The researchers applied a demanding benchmark to these results, using a 90 percent threshold for correct answers, and only 3 of the 14 knowledge items met it. Even when the cut-off was lowered to 70 percent, the number of adequate responses remained limited. The authors deliberately retained the stricter threshold, reflecting on whether adjusting the standard of what counts as sufficient knowledge in pressure ulcer prevention is appropriate at all. The finding that positioning competencies are limited is consistent with earlier work by Sørensen and colleagues, who reported similar gaps among surgical teams, and it points to a specific, teachable weakness at the heart of intraoperative care: knowing how to position a patient safely is not the same as knowing why pressure damages tissue.

Attitudes, by contrast, were overwhelmingly positive. A remarkable 94.7 percent of respondents reported feeling confident in their ability to prevent pressure ulcers, and 98.6 percent agreed that prevention should be a priority and a personally important responsibility. Fully 94 percent acknowledged the financial burden that pressure ulcers place on society. The nurses firmly rejected dismissive statements: 93.7 percent disagreed that the impact of pressure ulcers on patients is exaggerated, 96.5 percent rejected the notion that too much attention is paid to prevention, and 96.1 percent refused the idea that they bear no responsibility if an ulcer develops in their patient. Attitude scores were higher than those reported in a previous study by Khong and colleagues, suggesting Swedish operating room nurses occupy an unusually favourable motivational position.

Experience shaped confidence in measurable ways. Pairwise comparisons revealed statistically significant differences across years of operating room experience in perceived training: nurses with more than 20 years of experience felt significantly better trained than those with 5 to 10 years, with a p-value of 0.049. A similar pattern emerged for perceived confidence, with significant differences between the most experienced nurses and those with 5 to 10 years of experience, and between the 11-to-20-year group and their less experienced colleagues. Yet the study’s central paradox remains: despite this confidence and experience, overall knowledge was insufficient, and positive attitudes did not translate into consistently correct answers about prevention strategies such as surgical linen use, positioning angles and heel offloading.

The authors are candid about the limitations of their work. Self-reported data are vulnerable to recall bias and social desirability bias, and some question wording may have confused participants. The 15 percent response rate restricts generalisability, and it is possible that respondents were more interested in pressure ulcer prevention than non-respondents, which could have inflated the apparent knowledge and attitude scores. The measurement instruments themselves, while validated, showed modest internal consistency on some subscales, and the authors note that PUKAT 2.0 OR requires further refinement to capture the complexity of pre-positioning across different surgical procedures while preserving operative exposure for the surgeon.

The implications reach beyond Sweden. Because most pressure ulcers are preventable, the authors argue, raising awareness and promoting evidence-based prevention strategies across the entire operating room team is imperative, including surgeons, anaesthesiologists and nurse anaesthetists, not nurses alone. They call for systematic, evidence-based educational interventions, structured training programmes, simulation-based learning and regular competency assessments integrated into continuing professional development, alongside mixed-methods research to clarify why positive attitudes fail to produce adequate knowledge or consistent preventive action. Structured risk assessment tools, which guidelines consider the gold standard, should complement rather than replace clinical judgement. For a complication that can begin forming the moment a patient is positioned on the table, the message of this survey is clear: the will to prevent pressure ulcers is present in the operating room, but the knowledge to do so reliably still needs to be built, one training programme at a time.

Subject of Research: Operating room nurses' knowledge and attitudes regarding intraoperative pressure ulcer prevention

Article Title: Preventing Pressure Ulcers in the Operating Room: A National Survey of Operating Room Nurses' Knowledge and Attitudes

Article References: Falk‐Brynhildsen, K., Bååth, C., Beeckman, D., Leo Swenne, C., Raepsaet, C., & Wistrand, C. (2026). Preventing Pressure Ulcers in the Operating Room: A National Survey of Operating Room Nurses' Knowledge and Attitudes. Nursing Open, 13(9), Article e70808. https://doi.org/10.1002/nop2.70808

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1002/nop2.70808

Keywords: pressure ulcers, operating room nurses, patient safety, intraoperative care, nursing knowledge, survey research, Sweden, patient positioning, surgical complications, nursing education, pressure injury prevention, cross-sectional study