Authors:Cen Wang; Sungok Serena Shim; Christopher A. Wolters Abstract: The present study investigated the mediating role of motivational self-talk strategies (i.e., mastery self-talk, extrinsic self-talk, and efficacy enhancement self-talk) in the relationships between achievement goals and academic engagement (i.e., involvement, withdrawal in the face of difficulties, avoidance of challenges, and disruptive behaviors) among 1096 10th grade students (43% male) in a selective Chinese high school. Structural equation models showed that total and desirable effects of mastery goals were partially mediated by motivational self-talk strategies. Performance approach goals were maladaptive and only weak partial mediation was found through motivational self-talk strategies. A similar pattern was observed with performance avoidance goals. Mastery self-talk and efficacy enhancement self-talk were related to positive patterns of engagement while extrinsic self-talk was related to maladaptive patterns of engagement. Theoretical, cultural, and practical implications are discussed. PubDate: 2017-06-20 DOI: 10.1007/s12564-017-9495-4
Authors:Anne Power; Son Truong; Tonia Gray; Greg Downey; Tim Hall; Benjamin Jones Abstract: This project sought to investigate the learning that comes about from the intersection of outbound mobility experience programs (OMEs) with service learning in pre-service teacher education settings. The aim of the program of international service learning in the case study was to encourage pre-service teachers to rethink potentially ethnocentric assumptions. The guiding research question was, ‘What outcomes ensue from the combination of OMEs and service learning for pre-service teachers'’ The focus of the paper was on OMEs that took place in China and Malaysia. Findings included that the combined program aided development of global mindedness, learning by being there, teacher experience in a new context and the development of a professional identity in the participating students. PubDate: 2017-06-20 DOI: 10.1007/s12564-017-9496-3
Authors:Huiyoung Shin Abstract: This study is aimed to gain insights into adolescents’ classroom peer climate by examining descriptive and status norms of academic and social behaviors. Descriptive norm was assessed as the average score for each behavior and status norm was assessed using the correlation between each behavior and social status within each classroom. Expanded sets of academic and social behaviors (i.e., academic engagement, disruptive, overt and relational aggressive, bullying, and prosocial behavior) and three different social status of admired, popularity, and leader were examined. The sample was from 28 elementary school classrooms in South Korea (N = 736 at w1 and N = 677 at w2; 13 fifth and 13 sixth grade classrooms). Results indicated that descriptive norms for disruptive, relational aggressive, and bullying behavior became more positive over time across the school year. Status norms displayed distinct pattern for each social status. Although admired was associated with academic engagement and prosocial behavior, popularity and leader were associated with both positive and negative behaviors in both academic and social domain. Further, when adolescents increased their level of behaviors that are perceived to be important (i.e., associated with positive status norms) in their classrooms, they gained elevated social status over time across the school year. PubDate: 2017-06-09 DOI: 10.1007/s12564-017-9494-5
Authors:Hongxia Shan Abstract: Researchers in China have keenly explored how lifelong education and lifelong learning, as imports from “the West,” may become localized in China, although a small chorus has also tried to revitalize Confucianism to bear on the field. This paper adds to this domain of discussion with a critical discourse analysis of Chinese lifelong education/learning policies. It finds that lifelong education and life learning have been positioned pragmatically to support the country’s modernist project of development, which culminates in the proclamation to shift from “made in China,” i.e., a manufacture-based economy, to “created in China,” i.e., a knowledge-based economy. Within this overall picture, the Marxist socialist and collective ideology has been made the hegemony in the promotion of lifelong education/learning practices. Western humanism and Confucian humanism have also had sketchy presence in the documents examined, although they are not necessarily invoked together with their original ideological connotations. The study also shows that given their directive genre, these policies have served to designate multiple actors to turn lifelong education and learning into practice and promote socialist lifelong learners as the ideal learning subjects; both mechanisms are implicated in entrenching existing governmental power structure. PubDate: 2017-05-23 DOI: 10.1007/s12564-017-9483-8
Authors:Dae Joong Kang; Sungmin Cho Abstract: Theoretical thought on adult and/or lifelong learning in the Republic of Korea has been largely indebted to Western theoretical frameworks in the past few decades. Academic journal articles and doctoral dissertations dealing with the topic of learning in adulthood flooded with Western, typically North American, theories and concepts. Is it indeed unproblematic to use Western frameworks in understanding domestic phenomena of learning in adulthood? To tackle this question, we looked into 15 academic journal articles in the Republic of Korea, which are explicitly taking Jack Mezirow’s transformative learning theory as a theoretical framework. We chose Mezirow’s theory because its undoubted status as a solid theory has recently faced serious challenge in Western scholarly communities. In the analysis of the chosen journal articles, we focus on how those articles used Mezirow’s theory in terms of its core elements. We concluded that Mezirow’s theory has been largely misappropriated. We used Edward Said’s concept of “traveling theory” to discuss possible reasons for this (mis-)appropriation. We suggested that sociocultural and historical influence should be taken into consideration in theory-use as well as theory-making. PubDate: 2017-05-18 DOI: 10.1007/s12564-017-9481-x
Authors:Hyunwoo Yang Abstract: Using data from the Korean Educational Longitudinal Study of 2005–2007, the current study investigated the role of family and school social capital in students’ academic achievement in South Korea. Results showed that while some forms of family and school social capital were associated with increased math achievement, the effect of family social capital was greater than that of school social capital. Results also suggested that similar to parents who play a key role in shaping social capital at home, teachers may play an important role in building ecological school social capital such as collective school norms, which was found to affect students’ academic achievement. In addition, results found some interaction effects between family social capital and school social capital. Specifically, collective school norms were found to compensate the deficiency of parental involvement in school, while student–teacher relationships and academic emphasis had boosting effects with parental educational expectation on students’ academic achievement. Features of Korean education related to the distinctive role of family and school social capital in students’ academic achievement and policy implications were discussed. PubDate: 2017-05-17 DOI: 10.1007/s12564-017-9492-7
Authors:SoongHee Han Abstract: East Asia shows newly emerging experiments in lifelong learning that contrast with European experiences. The concepts and ideas share a similar platform, while the trajectories of institutionalization reveal great differences. It is because the idea of lifelong learning was coined by international agencies, like UNESCO, to share, it rather shows divergent mode of institutionalization in different contexts. In this article, I intend to grasp the particular characteristics of ‘institution formation’ in lifelong learning practices, especially shown in East Asian countries, including the Republic of Korea, Japan, and China. In so doing, I adopt social systems theories in interpreting the phenomena. Education is presumed to be a social system, or ‘autopoiesis’ that functionally differentiates and expands itself by self-referential reproduction. In this context, lifelong learning is a relative newcomer with new frameworks and ideas, which sometimes conflict with traditional education, and institutionalizes itself by competing the contested terrains of the system, most of which are preoccupied by early sectors of education. In this paper, I focus on how the ‘idea’ of lifelong learning embodies into the system, secures its own education spaces, and keeps expansive reproductions as a part of the education system in general. PubDate: 2017-05-17 DOI: 10.1007/s12564-017-9490-9
Authors:Atsushi Makino Abstract: Nowadays in Japan, people’s social existence may become less well defined as changes are brought about by social shifting. Japan is simply shifting from a society model based on an industrial society to another model, so-called a consumer society. In terms of social structure, this means shifting from the idea of society and economy assuming the presence of a government to a new one based on resident’s own much smaller community, which freely changes its way of connecting, and thereby creates, cycles, and redefines new values perpetually and forever. What these residents are looking for now as they explore how they can weave this new way of configuring society is a way to develop a system that realizes the transition of learning from the government to the community based on lifelong learning activities, and how to go beyond. This lifelong learning is not the same system that has been implemented by the policies of transcendental power. It is one generated by those living in communities who work with their neighbors to actively implement and create the new society. PubDate: 2017-05-17 DOI: 10.1007/s12564-017-9484-7
Authors:Kendo Otaka Abstract: The central aim of this article is to explore the role of social enterprises in relation to providing a space for dialogical learning amongst people with different backgrounds and cultures, and hence with different perceptions towards community development practice. The case studies are based on the experiences of the Japan Workers’ Co-operative. The study aims to explore mutual-learning processes amongst multi-stakeholders, including a recent attempt to work together with the socially disadvantaged. Through the analysis of ‘associated work’ with multi-stakeholders in the local community, the focus is particularly on its challenging attempts to create various co-working circumstances amongst worker-members, clients, and the local community to raise a sense of community consciousness, thereby implying the potential of dialogical community learning as central to the holistic community development practice with a more collective and socially subjective nature. PubDate: 2017-05-15 DOI: 10.1007/s12564-017-9487-4
Authors:Wonsup Chang; Yoojeong Koo Abstract: This paper considers ‘masters’ as the ideal archetype of workers. Here, the term ‘master’ includes not only those who are in traditional handcrafting or manufacturing industry, but also who work in various fields such as information technology, medicine, arts, and so on. To explore the lifelong learning of masters, we conducted qualitative interviews with 15 masters from various fields. The findings reveal that masters have been through a long and complicated formative circle of learning to become who they are. Specifically, this paper suggests the concept of ‘masterity (Jang-in-sung, 匠人性).’ Unlike the existing concept of ‘master craftsmanship (匠人精神),’ the term ‘masterity’ accounts for the materialistic and formative aspects of masters’ learning. The journey to become a master was a way of developing masterity which was a kind of ‘habitus’ (Bourdieu 2005) of lifelong learning. PubDate: 2017-05-13 DOI: 10.1007/s12564-017-9488-3
Authors:Michael Osborne; Katarzyna Borkowska Abstract: In this article, we seek to assess the extent to which adult and lifelong learning policies and practices in Asia have distinctiveness by comparison to those found in western societies, through an analysis of inter-governmental, national and regional policies in the field. We also inform our study through the analysis of the work of organisations with an international remit with a specific focus on Asia and Europe. In one case, the Asia–Europe Meeting Lifelong Learning (ASEM LLL) Hub has a specific function of bringing together researchers in Asia and Europe. In another, the PASCAL Observatory has had a particular focus on one aspect of lifelong learning, that of learning cities, with a concentration in its work on Asia and Europe. We focus on learning city development as a particular case of distinction in the field. We seek to identify the extent to which developments in the field in Asia have influenced and have been influenced by practices elsewhere in world, especially in Europe, and undertake our analysis using theories of societal learning/the learning society, learning communities and life-deep learning. We complement our analysis through assessment of material contained in three dominant journals in the field, the International Journal of Lifelong Education, the International Review of Education and Adult Education Quarterly, each edited in the west. PubDate: 2017-05-13 DOI: 10.1007/s12564-017-9479-4
Authors:Takashi Miyazaki Abstract: If we use words from Freirean thought, we can find “indigenous Freirean thought” in each country. This paper discussed critical education theory’s maturing process during Japan’s modernization process and analyzed the conditions for creating an alternative community, based on an emancipatory learning practice. In East Asian countries, modernization process exposed its inherent violence and exploitative nature. In Japan, critical researchers on education have been looking for the conditions of establishing a learning theory for emancipation under this process. The deconstruction of people’s underlying consciousness that was formed during the modernization process was considered as one of necessary conditions by the researchers. In this context, community was proposed as a tool for decoding conflict among the oppressed people. Here, we can find the same approach as Freire. Furthermore, the case study on the experience of community education in Yamagata farmer’s college revealed a double bind, which was generated by conscientization of the contradiction of self. It is an essential moment for creating a community, and making judgment of social directionality clear. It is safe to say the experiences of community learning in East Asian countries have a possibility of creating an alternative critical theory of education. PubDate: 2017-05-13 DOI: 10.1007/s12564-017-9486-5
Authors:Lue Fang; Rachel C. F. Sun; Mantak Yuen Abstract: China’s rural to urban migration is the largest population movement in human history. To unpack the intertwining relationship between migration and education, previous research tended to view migrant children as one universally vulnerable category, while ignoring the potential disparity in family socialization and functioning. This study investigated how these rural to urban migrant children in Zhejiang, China, described the ways in which their parents are involved in their education. A total of 30 migrant children (4th–9th Grade, mean age = 13 years) participated in the interviews. The results suggested that although they shared similar socioeconomic background, the high-achieving migrant children reported more parental support in academic socialization at home and in school than did their low-achieving counterparts. The study highlighted the salient role of socio-cultural factors such as perceptions of societal demands in influencing parenting ideology and behavior. The study concluded that the substantial in-group variation in children’s educational experiences might be attributable to differences in parental educational values and parenting styles, which are shaped by the broader social milieu. PubDate: 2017-05-13 DOI: 10.1007/s12564-017-9491-8
Authors:Qi Sun; Elizabeth A. L. Roumell Abstract: Applying international and comparative education and cultural perspectives, through critical comparative reflection, this paper examines issues and challenges of adult learning, teaching, and research endeavors between the East and the West. First, a brief literature review illuminating the obstacles and barriers for a two-way exchange between East and West is presented to argue and call for an interchange through which the West might endeavor to listen to and learn from intelligent life beyond its own borders (Merriam and Associates. Non-western perspectives on learning and knowing. Krieger: Malabar. 2007; Milligan, Stanfill, Widyanto, & Zhang. Educational Studies, 47(1):50–70, 2011). Second, via critical personal narratives, two international adult educators’ lived issues, experiences, and reflections demonstrate the pressing necessity that invites us to recollect critically what has been “dismissed or at very least delegitimatized” (Reagan. Non-Western educational traditions: Indigenous approaches to educational thought and practice 3. New York: Routledge. 2010), in the discourse of conceptualizing educational thoughts and practice, and argue for consciousness to challenge our own ethnocentrism and the ethnocentrism of others that could help make the learning from each other more authentic and equally value from both sides. Finally, it concludes with recommendations that may facilitate further deliberations—philosophically, theoretically, and practically. The paper calls for a different mindset that helps interrupt educational neocolonialism in the globalized world. It also aims to help create a “third space” for bridging educational understandings and learning between East and West accurately, and more effectively. PubDate: 2017-05-13 DOI: 10.1007/s12564-017-9482-9
Authors:Mo Wang; Dayong Yuan; Maximilian Weidlich Abstract: Lifelong learning has become a global phenomenon that has significantly reshaped the conventional foundation of national education systems. Lifelong Learning has experienced an evolution that can be identified in two generations: it first emerged in the 1970s and then quickly gained significance and prevalence by the 1990s. There is general consensus that the rise and spread of the lifelong learning concept in the 1990s was propelled by an intensifying process of globalization, which has also greatly shaped the emphasis and agendas that are captured in the concept. Correspondingly, a dominant albeit disputed trend emerged in literature that portrays lifelong learning as serving the global knowledge economy. Based on a review of the discourse on the global forces that affect lifelong learning, this study explores how lifelong learning policies and practices in China are influenced by globalization. It finds that China has adopted broader agendas of lifelong learning than those required by the global forces. This study serves as a first step towards filling the current research gap: there is a lack of studies exploring lifelong learning policies and practices in East Asia, while most of the existing literature on the topic is focused on Western countries. PubDate: 2017-05-11 DOI: 10.1007/s12564-017-9485-6
Authors:Seon-Young Lee; Ghang Lee Abstract: This study has identified factors stimulating creative ideas, transforming creative ideas to products, and continuing creative performance in the field of architecture based on interviews with 10 creative and successful architects. Having a penchant for liberal arts and reading books on a broad range of topics on arts, humanities, social sciences, and engineering were two major sources of creative inspirations for these architects. The interview data showed that creative inspirations occurred with a variety of artistic and cultural experiences outside the field of architecture, while it got blossomed in forms of creative architecture by means of architectural knowledge and skills, commitment with efficient problem solving and interpersonal skills, and great mentors in the field. Constraints imposed on by architectural regulations and other people, including clients, had a positive impact on creative productivity. Despite constant challenges and difficulties, the architects showed psychological strengths and positivity that enabled them to stay and survive in the field. PubDate: 2017-05-10 DOI: 10.1007/s12564-017-9489-2
Authors:Shutao Wang; Xuan Dong; Yaqing Mao Abstract: This study aimed to determine if boarding on campus benefited left-behind children’s social-emotional competence (SEC). We developed a SEC scale for the Chinese context and culture using exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, and reliability analysis. Data were collected from 6638 school-aged children from 74 rural boarding schools in 11 provinces in western China. The results indicated that children’s SEC was significantly affected by being left-behind, living on campus, and their cross-effects. Left-behind children had lower levels of SEC than those under parental guardianship. Children living on campus had fewer positive SEC skills than those who commuted between home and school. We also found that left-behind children living on campus had a higher negative SEC than left-behind children who were commuting every day. The SEC of left-behind but commuting children was higher than that of non-left-behind boarding school students. Food quality and caregivers’ service attitudes also significantly affected children’s SEC. Children who received good or medium quality food and good service from caregivers had higher SEC than those with poorer food and service. In conclusion, boarding on campus negatively affects left-behind children’s SEC. This suggests that more attention should be directed to the negative effects of boarding on campus, and boarding condition, and improving food quality and caregivers’ service. PubDate: 2017-05-02 DOI: 10.1007/s12564-017-9476-7
Authors:Wenlan Wang; Hongbiao Yin; Genshu Lu; Qiaoping Zhang Abstract: This study explored the relationships between Chinese college students’ perceptions of the classroom environment and some affective aspects in the study of mathematics. A total of 2529 students responded to three measures that were specifically designed to assess college students’ perceptions of the mathematics classroom environment, their emotional experiences and values of studying mathematics. Comparatively, the students had a higher score on the value of mathematics but lower scores on their emotional experiences of mathematics learning, and the characteristics of the classroom environment had some significant effects on the students’ emotional experiences and values of studying mathematics. The eight classroom environmental factors were categorised into three groups according to the nature and extent of their effects on students’ affect in mathematics learning. Although most classroom environmental factors had a positive impact on college students’ emotional experiences and values in the study of mathematics, the effects of two environmental factors, the difficulty of studying mathematics and teacher support, were of particular interest. Given these results, instructors are encouraged to leave more room for student autonomy, to adopt some innovative learning approaches to promote student collaboration and to pay close attention to the difficulty of the mathematics curricula and competition among students. PubDate: 2017-04-29 DOI: 10.1007/s12564-017-9478-5
Authors:Erdem Aksoy Abstract: The objective of this study is to comparatively analyze the university-based and alternative teacher certification systems in Turkey in terms of the attitudes of trainee teachers toward the teaching profession, explore the reasons of choosing teaching as a career as well as analyze attitudes by gender, department, and graduating faculty type in the frame of dominant ideological and economical paradigms. For the study, rational screening model was used, employing mixed methods research strategy. Participants in the study were 208 trainee teachers from the departments at the faculty of educational sciences and 200 trainee teachers at alternative certification programs at the same university. As a result of this research, it was found that university-based trainee teachers have better attitudes than trainee teachers of alternative certification programs toward the teaching profession and that female trainee teachers in both groups had better attitudes toward the teaching profession. Further, it was found that university-based trainee teachers utilized intrinsic motivators more, whereas trainees at alternative certification programs mainly utilized extrinsic motivators for career choice. Thus, intrinsic motivations of student teachers need to be strengthened as without realizing and emphasizing the divine values and the respectability of the teaching profession, it would be impossible to raise a new generation of teachers with high levels of intrinsic motivation, and the result could be having an army of technicians aiming to earn more money or have a more comfortable life rather than intellectuals who believe in contributing to and making a change in the lives of students. PubDate: 2017-03-25 DOI: 10.1007/s12564-017-9475-8
Hybrid journal (It can contain Open Access articles)
[2345 journals]
