The increasing globalization of healthcare demands that nursing professionals acquire not only clinical expertise but also advanced linguistic competence, particularly in mental health communication. This study presents a retrospective research analysis examining the integration of healthcare-oriented language instruction with entertainment-based media, specifically subtitled audiovisual content, to enhance psychiatric vocabulary acquisition among nursing students. Drawing on interdisciplinary literature from English for Specific Purposes (ESP), second language acquisition, and media-assisted learning, the study investigates how exposure to captioned audiovisual narratives contributes to contextualized vocabulary development, comprehension, and retention.

The research adopts a retrospective analytical design, synthesizing findings from prior implementations of audiovisual learning tools and edutainment strategies in educational contexts. It evaluates the effectiveness of integrating subtitled television content, particularly Korean drama series, within structured language instruction frameworks tailored for healthcare learners. The analysis identifies key mechanisms such as multimodal input processing, contextual reinforcement, and emotional engagement as critical drivers of improved lexical acquisition.

Findings indicate that combining entertainment media with domain-specific language instruction significantly enhances students’ ability to acquire and apply mental health terminology. The approach facilitates deeper semantic understanding, improves retention, and reduces cognitive barriers associated with abstract psychiatric vocabulary. Furthermore, the integration supports the development of cultural sensitivity and empathy, which are essential for effective mental health care delivery.

The study also highlights challenges, including variability in language proficiency, the need for pedagogical scaffolding, and potential over-reliance on entertainment content without structured guidance. Despite these limitations, the research demonstrates that edutainment-based learning models represent a viable and innovative approach for enhancing specialized vocabulary in nursing education.

This paper contributes to the growing body of literature on technology-enhanced language learning and ESP by offering a comprehensive framework for integrating audiovisual media into healthcare language instruction. It provides practical implications for curriculum design and suggests directions for future research in multimedia-assisted professional education.

In recent decades, educational discourse has increasingly emphasized the development of cognitive skills, technological competence, and labour market readiness among students. However, comparatively less attention has been given to the emotional and relational dimensions of teaching and learning, particularly in the preparation of teachers themselves. This paper examines the critical role of emotional intelligence (EI) in transforming teacher education to support holistic, inclusive, and future-oriented learning environments. Emotional intelligence, defined as the ability to perceive, understand, manage, and utilize emotions effectively, has emerged as a key competency for educators navigating complex classroom dynamics, diverse student populations, and rapidly changing educational contexts. Drawing on interdisciplinary scholarship from educational psychology, teacher education, and socio-emotional learning research, the paper argues that emotionally intelligent teachers are better equipped to foster positive classroom climates, support student wellbeing, enhance engagement, and promote meaningful learning outcomes.

The study critically reviews contemporary literature on emotional intelligence in education and highlights how EI competencies, such as self-awareness, empathy, emotional regulation, and relationship management—are fundamental to effective pedagogy and leadership in modern classrooms. Despite the growing recognition of socio-emotional learning within school curricula, the integration of emotional intelligence into teacher preparation programs remains limited in many contexts. This paper therefore proposes a conceptual framework that positions emotional intelligence as a core component of teacher education, alongside pedagogical knowledge, digital competence, and critical thinking skills. By embedding EI within teacher training curricula, practicum experiences, and professional development programs, teacher education institutions can cultivate educators who are capable of responding to the complex emotional, cultural, and social realities of contemporary schooling.

The discussion further considers the implications of emotionally intelligent teaching for student development, particularly in relation to wellbeing, resilience, collaboration, and ethical citizenship—qualities increasingly recognized as essential for navigating the uncertainties of the twenty-first century. In addition, the paper reflects on the relevance of emotional intelligence for educational contexts in the Global South, including Pacific Island nations such as Fiji, where culturally responsive, relational, and community-oriented approaches to education are particularly significant.

Ultimately, this paper argues that repositioning teacher education to prioritize emotional intelligence is essential for preparing educators who can teach not only with knowledge and skill but also with empathy, compassion, and cultural awareness. Integrating emotional intelligence into teacher education frameworks has the potential to strengthen teaching effectiveness, enhance student learning experiences, and contribute to more humane, inclusive, and future-ready education systems.

Small Pacific Island States are among the most climate-vulnerable regions in the world, facing increasing threats from sea-level rise, extreme weather events, coastal erosion, freshwater scarcity, and ecosystem degradation. These environmental pressures are not only transforming livelihoods, infrastructure, and settlement patterns but are also profoundly reshaping the educational landscape. Schools, which serve as critical sites for knowledge transmission, social cohesion, and community resilience, are increasingly situated on the frontlines of climate change. This paper argues that the impacts of climate change will compel Pacific Island nations to fundamentally reposition and reconfigure their education systems in order to respond effectively to emerging environmental, social, and economic challenges.

Drawing on existing scholarship on climate change education, resilience theory, and education for sustainable development, this study examines how climate-related disruptions—such as school displacement, disaster-induced interruptions to learning, and climate-driven migration—are influencing education policy and practice in Pacific Island States. The paper further explores the growing recognition that education systems must move beyond traditional curricular models to incorporate climate literacy, disaster preparedness, indigenous ecological knowledge, and community-based resilience strategies. In doing so, schools can play a transformative role in equipping future generations with the knowledge, skills, and adaptive capacities needed to navigate an increasingly uncertain climatic future.

Particular attention is given to the Pacific context, where education systems must operate within geographically dispersed islands, limited resources, and high exposure to climate hazards. The paper highlights how education can function as a strategic mechanism for climate adaptation by strengthening community resilience, promoting sustainable environmental stewardship, and preparing youth to participate in climate-responsive governance and development. However, despite increasing global attention to climate change education, significant gaps remain in policy integration, teacher preparedness, curriculum reform, and infrastructure resilience within Pacific education systems.

The study concludes that repositioning education systems in Pacific Island States requires a holistic and forward-looking approach that integrates climate change adaptation into educational planning, curriculum design, infrastructure development, and teacher training. Such transformation is essential not only for safeguarding learning continuity but also for empowering Pacific communities to respond proactively to the complex realities of climate change. By situating education at the centre of climate resilience strategies, Pacific Island nations can transform schools into hubs of knowledge, adaptation, and sustainable development.

Corporal punishment has historically been embedded within schooling systems across Fiji and the Pacific, often justified as a culturally accepted method of maintaining discipline and authority. However, increasing global advocacy for child protection, alongside regional policy reforms aligned with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, has intensified calls to critically reassess its role in contemporary education. This paper interrogates the continued use and perceived effectiveness of corporal punishment in addressing student behavioural challenges, arguing that it is neither pedagogically sustainable nor ethically defensible in modern learning environments.

Drawing on interdisciplinary literature, policy analysis, and emerging empirical insights from the Pacific context, the study highlights the adverse psychological, social, and educational consequences associated with punitive disciplinary practices. It further situates corporal punishment within broader ethical frameworks, particularly deontological ethics, utilitarianism, and the ethics of care, to demonstrate its incompatibility with principles of dignity, equity, and relational pedagogy. Importantly, the paper foregrounds the tension between entrenched cultural norms and evolving human rights discourses, emphasizing the need for contextually grounded yet transformative approaches to discipline.

In response, the paper advances a reconceptualization of school discipline through the lens of positive behaviour support, restorative practices, and culturally responsive pedagogy that resonate with Pacific values of respect, community, and reciprocity. It argues that effective discipline must move beyond compliance-driven models toward approaches that foster self-regulation, accountability, and holistic student development. The study concludes by offering policy and practice recommendations aimed at supporting educators, school leaders, and policymakers in transitioning from punitive to restorative and ethically grounded disciplinary frameworks.

Ultimately, this paper contributes to ongoing debates on educational reform in Fiji and the Pacific by positioning discipline not as control, but as a transformative process central to nurturing inclusive, respectful, and future-ready learners.

This study examines the relationship between organizational culture, human resource development (HRD), and employee performance in private universities in Southwestern Nigeria. The increasing competition within Nigeria’s higher education sector has compelled private universities to prioritize human capital development in order to achieve institutional effectiveness and academic excellence. Despite growing investments in HRD initiatives such as training, career development, and performance management, evidence suggests that these initiatives do not always translate into improved employee performance. This study therefore investigates how HRD influences employee performance while considering the mediating role of employee motivation and the contextual influence of organizational culture. A survey research design was adopted, and data were collected from academic and non-academic staff across six selected private universities in Southwestern Nigeria. Using a multi-stage sampling technique, 409 questionnaires were distributed, out of which 380 valid responses were analyzed. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis was employed to examine the relationships among the variables. The findings reveal that HRD significantly influences employee performance, while employee motivation partially mediates the relationship between HRD and performance. The results further indicate that a supportive organizational culture enhances the effectiveness of HRD initiatives by encouraging employee engagement and professional development. The study concludes that integrating HRD practices with motivational strategies and positive organizational culture is essential for improving employee performance and sustaining institutional competitiveness in Nigerian private universities.

This study examined the level of students’ satisfaction with the Career Planning and Development Services of the University of Cebu–Main Campus. Using a descriptive-quantitative research design using a survey method, data were gathered from 205 undergraduate and graduate students across various colleges and programs. The study assessed satisfaction in terms of relevance of services, job placement support, career advisement, and follow-up mechanisms. Results revealed that students were very satisfied with the overall implementation of career planning and development services. Statistical tests further indicated that age, sex, and program enrolled were not significantly related to students’ satisfaction, while college enrolled showed a significant relationship. These findings suggest that institutional context influences how career services are perceived by students. The study highlights the importance of continuously enhancing career services to address the diverse needs of academic units. Consequently, the results serve as a basis for an action plan aimed at strengthening career development initiatives within the university.

This study examines the combined effect of digital innovation, psychological empowerment, and human resource capability on the performance of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) in South-western Nigeria. Digital innovation, characterized by the adoption of technologies such as artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and e-commerce platforms, has become a critical driver of operational efficiency, customer engagement, and competitive advantage. However, SMEs in Nigeria face persistent challenges including limited infrastructure, high implementation costs, and inadequate digital skills, which constrain effective adoption. In parallel, psychological empowerment—defined by employees’ sense of autonomy, competence, meaning, and impact—plays a vital role in enhancing motivation, job satisfaction, and productivity. Human resource capability further strengthens organizational performance through the development of employees’ skills, knowledge, and competencies.

A quantitative survey research design was adopted, with data collected from 500 SME operators across six South-western states using a multi-stage sampling technique. Data were analyzed using multiple regression analysis. The findings reveal that psychological empowerment significantly influences SME performance, explaining a substantial proportion of performance variation. Moreover, digital innovation and human resource capability were found to complement empowerment in driving organizational outcomes. Importantly, the study establishes a strong synergistic relationship among the three variables, indicating that their combined effect is greater than their individual contributions. The study concludes that SMEs that integrate digital technologies while fostering employee empowerment and developing human resource capabilities achieve superior performance. It recommends that SME managers adopt a holistic socio-technical approach to enhance sustainability and competitiveness.

This paper examines the viability and effectiveness of the European Union’s approach in responding to the political, security, and governance challenges following the fall of the Berlin Wall. It examines the EU s four-pronged approach to assess EU engagement: (1) the EU’s strategy toward sub-regional frameworks, focusing on its efforts to promote stability, cooperation, and resilience in neighboring regions; (2) the EU’s crisis management concepts, evaluating mechanisms for rapid response, conflict prevention, and operational coordination; (3) the evolution of the Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP), analyzing how the EU’s security and defense instruments have developed to support both regional and strategic objectives; and (4) the EU enlargement strategy, considering its role in shaping political, economic, and normative alignment across prospective and neighboring member states. By integrating these dimensions, such as it was conceived from the outset by the EU Commission, the paper highlights both strengths and limitations in the EU’s post-Cold War engagement, emphasizing the interplay between strategic policy design, operational capacity, and normative influence.

This study examined how siSwati L1 speakers acquire and produce English passive constructions, focusing on the promotion of the agent in the nominative case to the subject position. It explored how structural differences between siSwati and English influence learners’ use of the passive voice. The study contrasted passive constructions in the two languages, identified areas of structural non-correspondence that predict syntactic transfer, and analysed learners’ written passives to determine sources of error. Data were drawn from a passive construction task administered to second- and third-year university students majoring in English. Using contrastive analysis, the findings revealed significant non-correspondence effects, particularly in agent promotion and tense–participle formation. Although learners demonstrated general awareness of passive morphology, many produced errors linked to interlingual transfer, intralingual transfer, and peripheral normativity. The study concludes that these difficulties reflect both L1 interference and incomplete L2 syntactic development, highlighting the need for targeted pedagogical support in teaching English passives in siSwati-dominant contexts.

This qualitative study investigated subject-verb agreement (SVA) errors in the writings of English major students at a university in Eswatini. Guided by the Contrastive Error Analysis (CEA) framework, the study examined how first language (L1) siSwati and second language (L2) English interactions shaped grammatical performance accuracy. Data were purposively collected from student essays and reflective writings, from which 55 sentences containing SVA errors were extracted and analysed for patterns and causes. The findings revealed a hierarchy of error types: omission (most frequent) → addition (moderate) → misinformation (least frequent). These patterns were primarily attributed to interlingual and intralingual influences (overgeneralization, incomplete grammatical knowledge) and processing difficulties. Omission errors dominated due to the low salience of English inflectional morphemes, while addition and misinformation errors resulted from L1 transfer, overgeneralization, and syntactic complexity. Contributing factors included incomplete understanding of grammatical rules, test anxiety, time constraints, and inadequate editing. The study recommended supportive pedagogical interventions such as low-stakes writing tasks, time management guidance, and constructive feedback to reduce learner anxiety and improve grammatical accuracy.