Journal of Research for International Educators

Trauma-Informed Education During Crisis

Brenda Morton — 2026-02-15

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has led to one of the most significant refugee crises in modern European history, with over 120,000 Ukrainian refugees entering Estonia in 2022. Among this displaced population, children face heightened vulnerabilities stemming from exposure to war-related trauma, abrupt displacement, and challenges adjusting to new sociocultural environments. These adversities can result in long-term psychological consequences such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety, depression, and learning difficulties. Schools play a critical role in supporting the recovery and integration of refugee children, yet educators often report feeling underprepared to meet the complex needs of traumatized students. This study explores how Estonian educators were trained in trauma-informed practices to better support Ukrainian refugee students in the early months of the war.
The mixed-methods research was conducted during Spring 2022 at Tallinn University and the University of Tartu as part of a course developed through the Fulbright Specialist Program. The course was grounded in the Trauma-Informed School Practices (TISP) framework and incorporated neuroscience, attachment theory, and psychological first aid principles. Training activities included intensive readings, classroom simulations, and certification through the National Child Traumatic Stress Network. A total of 63 participants—teachers, education assistants, and pre-service education students—completed the ARTIC-35 survey before and after the course and submitted reflective writing assignments.
Quantitative findings revealed statistically significant improvements across all five ARTIC subscales (Cause, Response, On-the-job Behavior, Self-efficacy, and Reactions to the Work), with medium to large effect sizes. These outcomes suggest that the training enhanced participants’ knowledge, confidence, and professional attitudes toward trauma-informed care. Qualitative analysis of the writing assignments surfaced recurring themes related to emotional and physical safety, the role of neurobiological understanding in shaping empathetic responses, the importance of modeling emotional regulation, and the application of trauma-informed tools such as sensory spaces and relationship-based interventions.
Notably, participants contextualized their learning within the broader fear of Russian aggression, drawing parallels between Estonia’s history and Ukraine’s present. Many described forming emergency evacuation plans or joining Estonia’s voluntary defense forces, heightening their emotional investment in the refugee crisis. This emotional proximity enhanced their motivation to provide safe, supportive, and inclusive classrooms for Ukrainian students.
This study underscores the transformative potential of trauma-informed teacher education, particularly when delivered in culturally and emotionally resonant contexts. The findings contribute to the growing body of research supporting trauma-informed approaches in education and highlight the importance of preparing educators not just with strategies but with the mindset necessary to foster healing-centered learning environments.

DOI: https://zenodo.org/records/18664466

Dignity in Every Meal

Justin Joy — 2026-02-15

This paper examines a transparency and community engagement initiative implemented within a statewide network of fully residential schools in Karnataka, India, designed to deliver equitable education to children from marginalized backgrounds. While these schools consistently met basic service standards, their operations were largely inaccessible to the public, which contributed to a sense of isolation and limited trust between institutions and communities. Recognizing this gap, administrators introduced a low-cost, participatory practice that required each school to share daily photographs of four elements: the day’s menu, plated meals, children during mealtimes, and kitchen spaces.

This simple, low-technology intervention reframed institutional monitoring as a tool for empowerment rather than oversight, providing visibility into the lived experiences of students while fostering pride and accountability among staff. The initiative encouraged schools to improve presentation and hygiene practices, instilling a sense of dignity and collective responsibility. Through the amplification of these images on social media, schools transitioned from being closed systems into active participants in community dialogue, enhancing trust and engagement without the need for additional financial or technological investments.

The case demonstrates that grassroots, visibility-driven reform can address systemic challenges in low-resource educational contexts by prioritizing transparency and participation over surveillance and bureaucracy. It highlights how visual documentation, when employed as a mechanism for representation, can contribute to social justice outcomes by affirming the dignity of marginalized children, increasing institutional accountability, and promoting inclusivity. Beyond the immediate impact on meal quality perception and school culture, this approach offers a replicable model for other education and welfare initiatives seeking to strengthen relationships between service providers and the communities they serve. By leveraging simple tools and community-centered strategies, this initiative illustrates that meaningful reform can be achieved without complex infrastructure, creating opportunities for sustainable, equity-driven development.

DOI: https://zenodo.org/uploads/18626687

EduGenius AI: An Adaptive and Inclusive Intelligent Learning Assistant for Global Education

Helen Josephine Vincent Lawrence — 2026-02-15

The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into education is transforming teaching and learning processes around the world. According to recent surveys, more than 70% of educational institutions have already implemented AI-driven solutions to increase learning results, accessibility, and engagement. Despite this progress, existing digital platforms mostly focus on content delivery and assignment management, with inadequate assistance for adaptive, interactive learning experiences. Students sometimes have difficulties in connecting their everyday study practices with planned course objectives, resulting in unequal information acquisition and decreased motivation. The research introduces EduGenius AI, an intelligent learning assistant developed to fill these gaps. The system provides interactive explanations, real-time academic support, personalized study plans, and engaging tools to promote self-directed learning. It additionally features multimodal elements that make interaction more accessible and inclusive to a diverse learners. EduGenius AI encourages continual academic progress by combining conversational AI and individualized educational support. The evaluation demonstrates its ability to work as an adaptive and interactive digital tutor, providing a scalable, ethical, and inclusive approach to AI adoption in global educational settings.

DOI: https://zenodo.org/records/18664520

Exploring Effective Methods of Assessing University Students Amidst AI Usage

Kaunda Salimu — 2026-02-15

The research explored the effective methods that lecturers and educators can employ to assess university students, in the context of artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots. The field of artificial intelligence has been rapidly growing. The rapid growth has wrought interactive tools such as ChatGPT, a text based interactive tool that generates human like responses based on user text input. ChatGPT was launched not so long ago, in November 2022 but has attracted millions of users, world over. Chatbots like ChatGPT are able to give responses to complex essay questions, programming problems and even business ideas in a way that mimics the student writing the response on their own. Lecturers and educators now have to rethink and restructure the type of assessments that they assign to students. The traditional methods of assessing university students might not produce the intended results according to set university pedagogical goals. Students’ use of AI chatbots to write answers to assessments given by educators has the greatest potential to negatively impact key academic areas such as critical thinking, development of research skills, and becoming a lifelong learner. Hence the need for an exploration of approaches, strategies, techniques and methods to assess students amidst the usage of artificial intelligence tools. The research involved an extensive literature review on the subject followed by collection of qualitative data on the views of both educators and learners from universities in Ndola, Zambia. The study population comprised two universities in Ndola, from which a sample size of 25 participants was drawn, based on attaining saturation point. The research findings could benefit university faculty as they will have a guide on what type of assessments to assign students and how to evaluate student responses. In addition, other non-academic institutions that create assessments could also find the findings useful in that they may be assessing individuals who might be versed with artificial intelligence tools. Higher education policies can be formulated based on the findings of this research.

DOI: https://zenodo.org/records/18700736

Data Security Compliance in Zambian Universities under the Data Protection Act (2021):

Cornelius Chipasha — 2026-02-15

This study assessed data security compliance in Zambian universities following the enactment of the Data Protection Act No. 3 of 2021, which established a legal framework for safeguarding personal information. Despite universities managing highly sensitive data, such as student records, biometrics, and academic credentials, there is limited empirical evidence on their institutional compliance with this legislation. This study aimed to evaluate the extent of data protection implementation, identify barriers to compliance, and propose evidence-based strategies for improvement.
A qualitative multiple-case study design was employed, involving two private and one Government universities. Data collection included 21 semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders, document analysis, and observational field notes. Thematic analysis was conducted following Braun and Clarke’s six-phase approach.
Findings revealed distinct disparities in compliance maturity. University B exhibited high compliance, characterized by robust policy frameworks, technical safeguards, and effective incident response protocols. University A showed moderate compliance, with general awareness but inconsistent implementation. University C demonstrated low compliance, lacking foundational governance structures and awareness of the Act. Three key patterns emerged: (1) a leadership-awareness versus operational-implementation gap, (2) a policy-practice disconnect due to poor communication and training, and (3) systemic resource constraints.
The study concludes that legal mandates alone are insufficient to ensure data security compliance. A shift towards a data protection culture, supported by adequate resources, capacity building, implementation guidelines, and regulatory oversight, is essential. The findings have implications for university governance, national policy, and the development of sustainable data protection frameworks in Zambia’s higher education sector.

DOI: https://zenodo.org/records/18664512

The The Builders Guild:

David Wohlers — 2026-02-15

It is a common experience for faith and ethics to be disconnected from the “real world” of science, technology, engineering, math and construction trades (STEM & CT). Related to this phenomenon, Neil Postman uses the term “technopolies” to describe societies that are dismissive of religion and tradition and instead submit culture to the “sovereignty of technique and technology” (Postman, 1993, p. 59). Despite assumptions made by “technopolies”, customs and belief systems serve essential functions in helping people to know their history, form identity, and navigate ethical challenges. Foltz and Foltz argue that, “To destroy belief systems is to lose the very resources needed for a meaningful democratic society” (Foltz & Foltz, 2018, p. 4). STEM & CT education does not escape technopoly’s grip and, reflecting its very ethos, modern STEM curriculum generally exalts “technical” subjects while discounting “soft” subjects such as religion and ethics. It is not uncommon even for STEM educators within Christian higher-education institutions to isolate faith from technical disciplines. After collecting and modeling surveys from 2,074 faculty representing 55 institutions from within the Council of Christian Colleges & Universities (CCCU), Kaul et al. found that: “The results of the Discipline model suggest that, on average, faculty from the field of religion and philosophy are more likely to integrate faith and learning, whereas faculty from both the hard or applied sciences and humanities are less likely to integrate their faith into the classroom” (Kaul, Hardin, & Beaujean, 2017, pp. 172–187 & 183).

To address such challenges that face people who work in STEM & CT, I developed and facilitated a short course—known as “The Builders Guild”—as one component of my Doctor of Ministry thesis-project. The Builders Guild explored the integration of Biblical theology with ethical decision-making, emphasizing a Biblically transformed virtue ethic as a preferred alternative to the more commonly emphasized ethical frameworks of deontology or utilitarianism.

This article addresses some of the core highlights of my thesis-project, including participants’ increased confidence in understanding and applying Biblically transformed virtues of courage, temperance, justice, prudence, and the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love. At the conclusion of the Builders Guild course, participants also expressed increased desire to integrate their religious faith into ethical decision-making. Findings also suggest that integration of theology into ethics education is not only viable but deeply meaningful for practitioners who seek to navigate theological and ethical complexities inherent to vocations in STEM & CT.

DOI: https://zenodo.org/records/18664493

Early Warning Indicators of Bankruptcy Risk

Linda Hamulumbu — 2026-02-19

This study investigates early warning indicators of bankruptcy risk in State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) in Zambia, with an emphasis on the predictive importance of liquidity ratios. Using a quantitative approach, the research analyses financial data from a sample of SOEs to examine the relationship between key financial ratios and bankruptcy outcomes. The analysis employed descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, and visual comparisons to identify significant patterns. The findings reveal that lower liquidity ratios are significantly associated with higher bankruptcy risk, highlighting liquidity as a critical early warning indicator. Other ratios, including solvency, profitability, and acid-test ratios, showed weaker and less consistent associations with bankruptcy. These results underscore the importance of monitoring liquidity in SOEs as part of effective financial management and risk mitigation strategies. The study contributes to understanding financial distress in SOEs and offers practical insights for policymakers and managers seeking to improve financial sustainability.

DOI: https://zenodo.org/records/18690073

Sustainability in the Economy through the Achievement of Gender Equality

Piyali Roy Chowdhury — 2026-02-15

The discussion of Triple Bottom Line (TBL) is now at the highest priority level as the countries are trying to reach their level of targeted sustainability. While environmental, Social and Governmental (ESG) issues are now focussed more on measurable criteria, the requirement of research based on ESG and sustainability has come to forefront. On this context, the pillars of Triple Bottom Line (TBL) emphasise on finding the justification on people, planet and profit with aligning the objectives of ESG. The parameters of ESG are dealing with the economic indicators, social indicators and governance indicators of the respective countries. Based on this, the current study extracts prominent variables from each framework and tries to ascertain the conceptual theories behind the same. On one hand, previous studies have focussed on finding the relationship among the three pillars of ESG with respect to extraneous variables, while, on the other hand, our current research focuses on finding the impact of economic pillar on the social pillar in Asian economies. The uniqueness of the current research, thus, is that it finds the impact inside the Triple Bottom Line whereas, the previous studies have concentrated the influence of TBL on the other external variables. Thus, the requirement of TBL to be discovered as independent factors’ effect has been the major focus of the study. Here, the article tries to focus on the impact of economic growth (SDG) on two of the social pillars, i.e., gender equality (SDG) and hunger valuation (SDG). During the analysis, the key focus of the study was to extract the importance of gender sensitivity along with hunger assessment to promote sustainability in economies. As the poverty remains the maximum concern for Asian economies, the study choses countries as China, India, Indonesia, Japan and Korea for the data analysis. As these five economies are prominent in their development path, they strive towards sustainable economy considering reaching all the pillars of their respective goals. But unfortunately, the basic hindrance remains as poverty in these countries. Eradicating poverty will overcome the difficulties towards smooth sustainable transition for them. Thus, the research focuses on formulating short run and long run strategies for the countries to reach zero hunger (SDG) by focussing on gender equality, hunger index and economic growth. Also, it directs to emphasise gender equality primarily in Asian nations to channelise ultimate development towards sustainable path.

DOI: https://zenodo.org/records/18645184

Introduction to the Issue

Jeffrey Moore — 2026-02-15

What does it take for people to flourish inside the institutions that shape daily life? Schools, workplaces, and public systems aim to promote development, yet under strain they can also produce exclusion, mistrust, and harm. The five articles in this special issue approach a shared question from different settings: how can institutions design practices and tools that support learning, well-being, dignity, and sustainable outcomes while remaining ethically grounded?

DOI https://zenodo.org/records/18664443