The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the classroom discussion engagement experiences, the challenges faced and strategies for their solution, of eight international Indonesian masters students in one public university in the United Kingdom through a demographic questionnaire and semi-structured interviews. The results indicated that the participants faced some speaking challenges in engaging in discussion, including (1) language barriers, (2) individual matters, and (3) academic culture differences. To cope with those challenges, the participants have undertaken strategies, such as (1) having the verbal response, (2) utilising learning sources, and (3) maintaining a positive motivation.

In recent years there has been a drop in the percentage of male teachers. The gender disparity is evidenced in many primary and secondary schools in Nigeria. This article is set to ascertain the nature of gender disparity in Nigerian publicly funded schools, the underlying reasons for the growing disparity, such as the feminization of the teaching profession, low teacher’s salary, flexibility of teaching of the profession, women as care givers, cultural belief, and sexual molestation. Challenges to the increase of male teachers in schools, such as low status of teaching, parental expectation, work policies and societal perception were explored. The implications of the absence of male teachers in the schools, among others, were failure among male students, academic under-achievement, under-utilization of male talent and indiscipline in school. Suggested courses for action to increase the presence of male teachers in schools include improving the condition of service, education policy reform, gender balance in other professions, publicizing a male friendly environment, and admitting men to educational programs. The aforementioned are efforts meant to encourage diversity in the teaching workforce. The article relied heavily on data collected from Education Management Boards of some Nigerian States’ for its discussion.

Recently, the interest in the educational robotics has grown greatly, but few studies have been conducted in this field. This study intended to investigate the trend of usage robotics in education during the period of 2001-2014 while analyzing 133 research papers to find the answers to the following questions. First, what is the general research trend of utilizing robotics in education? Second, what are the most recent issues and challenges of robotics in education? Publications have been analyzed using quantitative analysis and cross-tabulation. All gathered articles have been categorized and analyzed under twelve categories. Furthermore, seven categories have been cross-tabulated with other categories. Overall findings present that there are a significant amount of publications on higher and secondary education. Articles on early education and teachers training have started to become more apparent lately. It has also been noticed that robotics generally is seen as an extracurricular activity. Among educational robots, ‘robot kit’ type was one of the highly utilized, especially LEGO Mindstorms robot kit. The main objective of most analyzed articles is the experience of a course curriculum. Results of the study show that there are three main issues and challenges of robotics in education. First, there is a lack of quantitative research on the impact of robotics in education. Second is an absence of well-defined curriculum for target audience. Third is the narrow use of robotics in education. The study also present recommendations for future research.