Abstract: This study validated the underlying factor structure of the Factors Influencing Teaching (FIT)-Choice survey in the South Korea context and examined motivations and perceptions of 903 Korean preservice teachers by major demographic characteristics. Secondary preservice teachers reported significantly higher values than elementary preservice teachers for Qualification fit and desire to teach and Task return. Male preservice teachers believed more strongly than female preservice teachers that they chose the teaching profession because of Qualification fit, Influencing others, and Task return. Compared to freshmen/sophomores, juniors/seniors reported significantly higher values for Task demand. Participants with low- to medium-level self-reported income ($12K–$46K) weighted Benefits significantly higher than those with medium-level income ($46K–$88K). STEM majors reported higher values for the Qualification fit and Influencing others than non-STEM majors. As South Korea is one of the few countries which has an oversupply of highly qualified teacher candidates, findings were compared with other countries to provide useful insights to improve recruitment of highly qualified individuals to teaching workforce in many countries where teacher shortage is a chronic problem. Based on these data analyses, we argue that policy makers, politicians, education researchers, and others who care about quality education and student academic achievements need to make efforts to increase task returns and benefits. PubDate: 2019-03-16
Abstract: In the last few years, adoption of service learning in higher educational institutions has emerged as a modern teaching and learning strategy. This study is aimed to offer a systematic literature review of service learning implementation in higher education. There is a lack of research on the role of service learning in higher education sector. Moreover, a comprehensive systematic literature review of service learning in higher education is also overlooked in previous studies. Therefore, this study covers an in-depth systematic literature review, which reflects the utilisation approach and outcomes of service learning in higher education. By employing a rigorous exploratory approach, this study offers four major findings: (1) Acceptance and use of service learning in different academic disciplines, which covers a detailed discussion of up to what extent service learning pedagogy practice exists in each discipline. (2) Emerging issues regarding the integration of service learning in different academic disciplines. (3) Comparative analysis of previous service learning frameworks, which includes theoretical foundation, main findings and limitations of each framework. (4) Potential benefits of service learning for all participants. Service learning presents diverse benefits for all stakeholders; we identified the list of potential outcomes in the light of emerging service learning literature. These findings show that service learning is frequently employed in some academic disciplines, i.e. medical and nursing sciences; business and economics; computer science and information system; social studies; teacher education; linguistic and environmental disciplines. Moreover, comparison of previous service learning frameworks revealed that most of them are subject-oriented, specifically focused on institutionalising and practical aspects. PubDate: 2019-02-28
Abstract: This study aimed to determine the mediating effects of school climate on the relationship between school heads’ transformational leadership and students’ modernity. We asked teachers to report on their school heads’ transformational leadership, school climates, and students’ modernity. Data were collected from 378 teachers from 42 middle and primary schools in five provinces in mainland China. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was adopted to test multiple mediating effects. Results indicated that school climates, including affiliation climate, innovation climate, and justice climate, were significantly affected by school heads’ transformational leadership. All these three school climates had positive effects on students’ modernity, and partially mediated the relationship between school heads’ transformational leadership and students’ modernity. These three mediating variables accounted for 35.1% of the total indirect effects; the innovation climate accounted for 15.6% of the total indirect effects, followed by justice climate (11.7%) and affiliation climate (7.8%). Results suggest that school climates are important factors that need special attention when school heads wish to develop students’ modernity. In the implementation of transformational leadership, the combination of school climates and the establishment of innovation, justice, and affiliation climates should be emphasized. PubDate: 2019-02-22
Abstract: This study aims to reveal features of student talk over a sequence of consecutive mathematics lessons in a large-size class in mainland China. By examining the time allocation for student talk and the number of Chinese characters spoken by the students, this study finds that, in some of the lessons observed, student talk added up to a longer duration and included a larger number of Chinese characters than teacher talk. But individual students were observed to have unequal opportunities to participate in public talk and there is a large gap regarding the number of Chinese characters that an individual student could speak in public. Each individual student’s accountability to talk was recorded to be less diverse in public presentation than in non-presentation contexts (e.g., answering teacher questions). This study suggests that a unit of consecutive lessons can help a clearer and more comprehensive observation and analysis of student talk. PubDate: 2019-02-22
Abstract: Numerous researches have already revealed the existence of sheepskin effects and proved the signaling value of education based on empirical materials from developing or developed countries; however, only a few empirical studies have explored the mechanism lying behind the proved educational signaling value. With this regard, based on recent 6-year cross-section data from China General Social Survey, the authors discussed the interactive effects between the educational signaling value and parents’ educational level. After correcting the selective bias and endogenous issues by multiple methods—Heckman two-stage, IV, and comprehensive models combined HTS and IV—it finds that there exist obvious sheepskin effects in the returns to education in China and robust complementary effects between parents’ educational level and the signaling function of individual’s education on their personal income. PubDate: 2019-02-21
Abstract: To investigate the relationships between schools’ ICT supporting conditions and ICT application, a total of 2567 primary and secondary schools from 47 prefecture-level cities were surveyed. The questionnaire was administered to collect the ICT supporting conditions in school (ISCS) and the ICT application in school (IAIS) for each school. Among the ISCS factors, the ICT Environment and School Scale were indicated as being significant predictors of IAIS. In addition, the significant predictive relationship between the ISCS and the IAIS factors for rural schools was much stronger than for urban schools. This indicates that the rural and urban schools in China are now at different ICT development stages. Furthermore, rural schools should focus on the improvement of physical ICT infrastructure and the quality digital resources, whereas urban schools should try to improve teachers’ inadequate epistemic beliefs and design thinking ability. Nevertheless, there are other external and individual-level factors that could directly and indirectly influence schools’ ICT application in education. PubDate: 2019-01-02
Abstract: Little effort has been made to understand the professional identity of novice teachers in various working contexts despite its significance for teacher professional learning and growth. This article aims to explore the professional identity of novice secondary teachers within Korean education system, where a bureaucratic school culture and teaching to the test prevail. A series of three phenomenological interviews were conducted with four novice secondary teachers to understand their formation of professional identity. Since beginning to teach, all four teachers came to possess similar professional identities as caring teachers, emphasizing their role in supporting students’ growth and happiness. Specifically, three of these teachers who had initially perceived their role as excellent subject teachers transformed their professional identities into those of caring teachers. Meanwhile, the fourth teacher, who had originally aspired to be a caring teacher, retained her professional identity by focusing more on supporting students’ well-being. This study argues that teachers’ ongoing professional identities as caring teachers can be understood as enacting their agency to reconfigure the meaning of teacher professionalism and schooling in the working context that diminishes their role as mere executors of the system’s mandates. PubDate: 2019-01-02
Abstract: Is constructivist teaching still valuable and relevant in an era where standardized testing reigns supreme' If so, how do college students, who have been subject to a considerable amount of testing, respond to constructivist pedagogy that nurtures student autonomy' This QUAN-QUAL study, conducted at a mid-sized university in the United States (U.S.), describes preservice teachers’ evaluation of a range of strategies grounded in constructivist principles, to varying degrees, and the factors that influenced their interest and willingness to participate. The researchers used SPSS to analyze survey data from 57 preservice teachers, and Nvivo to analyze qualitative data from seven interviews, the course syllabi, and the participant-researcher’s instructional narrative. The quantitative data confirmed that participating preservice teachers showed a preference for constructivist-based strategies over strategies that were more traditional. Additionally, participants were motivated primarily by grades, future career plans, learning goals, course requirements, and course value. Qualitative data deepened our understanding of the relationship between these variables. This study contributes to a limited body of literature that describes how preservice teachers respond to different types of pedagogy, the learning experiences they value, and the factors that propel them to participate in these experiences. PubDate: 2018-12-19
Abstract: Previous findings on the relationship between private tutoring and self-regulated learning are inconsistent. In this study, we assumed that the inconsistency of these findings was due to a combination of methodological issues, differing definitions of self-regulated learning and failure to account for the amount of time spent in private tutoring. The purpose of the study is to examine a causal effect of private tutoring on students’ self-regulated learning based on a social-cognitive perspective via the marginal mean weight through stratification method (MMW-S). We especially investigated if the effect of private tutoring varies depending on the quantity of private tutoring. Based on the hours of private tutoring per week, 3750 Korean middle school students were classified into six subgroups, and the population average causal effect of multivalued private tutoring was estimated with MMW-S. This finding indicated that private tutoring had a null effect on self-regulated learning across different levels of private tutoring, and no evidence was found that excessive private tutoring for academic subjects had a positive or negative impact on self-regulated learning. The findings imply that private tutoring itself neither progresses nor damages students’ self-regulated learning abilities. PubDate: 2018-12-18
Abstract: This article analyses and compares the responses of parents to education policy initiatives in Singapore, Shanghai and Hong Kong. The education reform in three localities converges on changing an exam-centric culture and equipping students to thrive in a globalised world. Through a discussion of three representative policy initiatives—Direct School Admission in Singapore, extended and inquiry/research curricula in Shanghai and Liberal Studies in Hong Kong—this article contends that the parents variously make sense of, negotiate, support and circumvent the policy initiatives. Their strategies, it is argued, are grounded in and shaped by their shared habitus, manifesting the four processes identified by Zhao, Selman and Luke (Bourdieu and Chinese education: Inequality, competition, and change, Routledge, Oxon, 2018) for understanding the formation of habitus. A major implication arising from the study is the usefulness of the concept of habitus in illuminating the educational expectations and proposed actions of parents when confronted with educational changes. PubDate: 2018-12-17
Abstract: This study investigates the impact of supervisor support on research innovation pursuit among international doctoral students in China. A total of 120 international doctoral students’ responses were employed through random sampling from the three business schools of Chinese public universities. The data were analyzed using the partial least squares technique, a second-generation statistical software package for structural equation modeling. The results revealed that supervisor support significantly affects students’ research innovation endeavors. The study also suggests that supportive supervision is necessary for fostering citizenship behavior, creativity and innovation pursuit among international doctoral students. The findings of this pioneering study will help higher education administrators, and policymakers revisit existing doctoral program management and deliveries processes and encourage academic supervisors to modify guidance and mentoring procedures for doctoral students. PubDate: 2018-12-17
Abstract: Social justice and equity have become indispensable to the critical lexicon of education scholars around the globe. By combining a theory of teaching for social justice with complexity theory perspectives, this study explores South Korean elementary teachers’ beliefs about social justice teaching in relation to practices and contexts. By analyzing the data collected from interviews and observations, the findings illuminate the dynamics of teachers’ beliefs in social justice teaching, with focus on dilemmas caused by (1) tensions within the individual teachers’ beliefs about what one should know and be able to do to promote social justice and (2) tensions between the teachers’ beliefs in social justice teaching and the given contexts. The findings also suggest that a democratic school context and teacher reflections collectively contribute to building a more integrative view on social justice teaching. By connecting the teachers’ unique experiences of being involved in social justice teaching with existing scholarship across nations, recommendations for teacher education, national curriculum, and education policies are provided. PubDate: 2018-12-01
Abstract: Higher education for disabled people is an important factor that can improve their living standards in the long run but, in Thailand, little is known about the interplay between inclusive higher education practices and disabled students. This article, therefore, sets forth a qualitative method for investigating barriers that affect the inclusive higher education participation of blind students. Findings drawn from face-to-face interviews with 12 blind students clearly indicate that unfriendly physical environments on campus, lecturers’ inaccurate understanding of inclusive education, and inclusive higher education policy inconsistencies limit their active learning opportunities. The author recommends that senior university administrators introduce sharply tailored interventions to adopt universal design concepts, appropriate academic adjustments, and campus-wide inclusive practices that contribute to supporting the educational achievement of blind students. PubDate: 2018-12-01
Abstract: With the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD), nations’ engagement with sustainability has differed considerably on the basis of their socio-political priorities. Since reviewing research trends is one way of getting a broad understanding about the value attached to an internationally prioritized issue, such as Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), this study aims to see the coherence and effectiveness of the DESD on the Turkish stakeholders’ side and portrays how such a global issue is addressed in educational research by local actors. The study employed a mixed-method design through a two-step process: a quantitative investigation through numbers to assess the level and direction of the attention paid to ESD; and a qualitative examination through content and collocation analyses to identify key dimensions and prevalent themes. As the sample, the papers published with a focus on ESD themes between the years 2005 and 2014 in three high-impact educational journals in Turkey were included. The data analyses were carried out through: (a) descriptive statistics by use of frequency distribution tables and percentages; (b) a content analysis employed with thematic coding and categorization and (c) a collocation analysis done by means of the software AntConc. The most prevailing themes emerging from the publications were on environmentalism; human values; gender equality; democratic values; multiculturalism; interculturality; morals and character education; student dropouts and absenteeism; life-long learning; community service and responsibility; human rights; children’s rights; citizenship and peace education. All those themes gave crucial hints about the local concerns and socio-cultural priorities of the case of Turkey. PubDate: 2018-12-01
Abstract: This study investigated the effects of educational context variables on two types of achievement: cognitive domain and affective domain. To assess the effects of educational context variables at student and school levels, the National Assessment of Educational Achievement data were used, which were collected by the Korea Educational Development Institute. Participants were in the second year of a high school. Multivariate multilevel modeling was employed to model the two related dependent variables: cognitive and affective domains. Results showed that school characteristics were generally more influential for cognitive achievement than for affective achievement. Moreover, it was found that psychological stability and satisfaction with the facilities at school played an important role in predicting affective achievement for the subjects of Korean, English, and mathematics. Korea’s Educational Broadcasting System was found to exert a positive effect on affective achievement, but negative effects on cognitive achievement. Shadow education was found to be generally helpful in improving cognitive/affective achievement. Programs aimed at improving academic achievement at school were found to have had very limited success in accomplishing their aim. Teacher climate, in particular, adversely affected students’ cognitive achievement. Schools must be equipped with good facilities and counseling centers for student to improve student achievement. PubDate: 2018-12-01
Abstract: This study employed survey research in China to investigate the relationships among teacher evaluation, teacher self-efficacy, and teacher job satisfaction, while controlling for demographic variables. Four hundred and twenty-five teachers from a medium-sized city in Heilongjiang Province participated. The study examined the teachers’ perceptions regarding using student achievement data in evaluation, finding mixed views about the inclusion of student scores, consistent with many recent studies on teacher evaluation reforms. Principal component analysis was conducted on the perception data and three factors emerged. The three factors were used in hierarchical multiple regression analyses and, in addition, three variables of teacher self-efficacy (i.e., efficacy for student engagement, efficacy for instructional strategies, and efficacy for classroom management) also were included in the analyses. The analyses found that (a) teachers’ perceptions of their evaluation have a significant explanatory power on their job satisfaction, and (b) when their perceptions of evaluation are controlled, teachers’ self-efficacy can explain additional variance in teachers’ job satisfaction. Specifically, teachers’ self-efficacy for student engagement was significantly predictive. Implications for educational policymakers and practitioners in light of enhancing teacher job satisfaction and developing rigorous teacher evaluation are discussed. PubDate: 2018-12-01
Abstract: This mixed-method study developed a conceptual model for understanding the characteristics of professional learning communities (PLCs) in Chinese context. Exploratory qualitative interviews were first conducted to examine the characteristics of PLCs in several schools in Shanghai, China, through which an initial conceptual model was resulted. Based on the qualitative findings, a questionnaire was developed and then administered in 31 schools in Shanghai to adjust the conceptual model. Results show that rooted in the Chinese institutional (i.e., the accountability system and the Teaching Research System) and cultural (i.e., the collective and harmonious culture) context, PLCs in China could be operationalized in terms of eight characteristics at two levels, including collective inquiry and sharing, shared purpose and responsibility, informal collaborative learning, supportive leadership, organizational structure, collaborative relationship, institutional barriers, and cultural barriers. Practical implications and suggestions for future research are put forward. PubDate: 2018-12-01
Abstract: This study reported the results of Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) analyses on 13 competing structural models on the inter-relationships among academic achievement and student- and course-related attributes. The samples were Malaysian pre-university students enrolled in two STEM courses (biology, n = 326; mathematics, n = 339; biology only, n = 92; mathematics only, n = 105; biology and mathematics, n = 234). For both courses, interdisciplinary cross-validation was observed for four models which hypothesized that current academic achievement could be predicted (1) directly by prior academic achievement (high school grades) and student approaches to learning (SAL), and (2) directly and/or indirectly by personality, intrinsic motivation and course experience (CE). For at least one course, all constructs (except intrinsic motivation, clear goals and standards, openness and conscientiousness) significantly and directly predicted current academic achievement. The strongest predictor of current academic achievement was prior (high school) academic achievement, with the largest effect sizes, followed by SAL. Current academic achievement was significantly and positively predicted by all CE constructs (except clear goals and standards) for only mathematics, with moderate and large effect sizes. Only one personality construct (neuroticism) significantly and moderately predicted current academic achievement (biology). SAL partially mediated relationships between current academic achievement with workload appropriateness, assessment for understanding and neuroticism for at least one course. Generally, the strongest predictors of SAL were assessment for understanding, workload appropriateness and intrinsic motivation. Multigroup invariance analysis revealed differences in five hypothesized paths, attributable almost entirely to significant paths found in mathematics but not biology (prior [high school] to current academic achievement, conscientiousness to surface approach to learning, intrinsic motivation to deep and surface approaches to learning). Therefore, this study is the first to report course-nuanced differences in the presence of reduced interpersonal differences. The implications of this study is that, besides the importance of prior high academic achievement which might not be within educators’ control, factors in the teaching–learning ecosystem within educators’ control which influence current academic achievement are strongly mediated by SAL, which is itself influenced most by assessment, workload and intrinsic motivation. PubDate: 2018-12-01
Abstract: Malaysia, Singapore, China, and South Korea employed branch campuses as a means to develop and promote economic growth and global competitiveness. The aim of this study was to explore national policies and regulatory frameworks for international branch campuses in the four key nations identified above. The development of internal quality assurance mechanisms and external review approaches in international branch campuses were investigated, via in-depth interview and document analysis. The study presented three major findings. First, an inclusive model of internal quality has been developed in international branch campuses found in the four nations. Second, the international branch campuses’ external quality assurance approaches, in the four countries, were diverse and included exemption, reliance on home country accreditation, duplication, and international accreditation. Third, South Korea and Singapore were more closely aligned to liberal regulation with minimal quality assurance, whereas Malaysia and China were in the category of liberal regulation and restrict regulation, respectively, but with comprehensive quality assurance process. PubDate: 2018-12-01
Abstract: Policymakers around the world search for an optimal school schedule to enhance student’s academic achievement. In this paper, I examine the effect of the 9 o’clock attendance policy on student’s academic performance in South Korea. I find little evidence that delaying the school schedule positively affects pupil’s performance when I control for an extensive list of characteristics or an individual fixed effect. My result implies that individual’s omitted heterogeneities might confound results of previous literature which supports positive effects. I show that the effect of delaying the school starting time is likely to come from a good bird (self-selection effect) rather than a late bird (policy treatment effect). Therefore, we need to be cautious when interpreting the effect of postponing the school starting time, and more analysis and discussion are necessary on the education front. PubDate: 2018-12-01
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