Children’s early numeracy in England,Finland and People’s Republic of China

This research investigated the similarities and differences between countries in young children’s early numeracy skills related to age, culture, and gender. The participants were five‐year‐old children from Beijing (People’s Republic of China), England, and Finland. The rationale for the cross‐cultural comparison originates from research results with older children showing that Asian children outperform children from America or Europe, and from the lack of such information concerning younger children. The results showed that in all locations older children performed better than the younger children. Cultural differences were found: young children from Beijing outperformed those from England and Finland in overall early numeracy performance, as well as in sub‐tests for understanding of quantities and relations (i.e. relational skills), and counting skills. Finnish children had better scores than English children in the whole early numeracy scale and in the relational scale. The results are discussed in relation to culture, instruction in preschools, and learning support at home, as well as the effects of language characteristics. The culture’s appreciation of and approach to mathematics learning in early childhood is a plausible explanation for the cross‐cultural differences found in this study.     

Minority Teachers as Change Agents in the People’s Republic of China

China is becoming an increasingly polarized society, in large part due to the inaccessibility of basic education for minority children. Schools can be vehicles for social change and community building, and teachers can be agents of transformation and hope. The PRC, however, is experiencing a critical shortage of trained teachers willing to serve in minority schools and be agents of change. This article examines the problem by first outlining some of the factors that affect teachers’ ability to be change agents. These factors include teachers’ social location, their education, and the context in which they are employed. Next, four possible change agent roles that teachers can assume are discussed. Finally, some strategies for realizing change and outcomes of teacher change agency are presented. We end with suggestions for how the model we use to explain minority teacher change agency in China could be applied by others, for data collection or hypothesis testing, in future research.     

A gendered point of view on the challenges of women academics in The People’s Republic of China

The authors conducted a qualitative study of women’s experiences as faculty members at Northern Research University, a pseudonym for a top 40 university in The People’s Republic of China. Based on 27 semi-structured interviews with women (15) and men (12), and drawing from feminist standpoint theory and symbolic interactionism, the authors identified four key findings that highlight serious barriers confronting Chinese women faculty. They describe these as: (1) working double time, (2) the glass ceiling, (3) the boys club and social exclusion, and (4) comrades in arms. The first three findings support previous international studies of women’s experiences as faculty members and thus contribute to an expanding global body of knowledge about challenges faced by women academics. The fourth finding—comrades in arms—highlights a structural quality somewhat unique to the Chinese university and raises important concerns about the limited role women play in critical personnel decisions influencing academic promotions and advancement.     

University of Nottingham Ningbo China and Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University: globalization of higher education in China

This essay studies the University of Nottingham Ningbo China and Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University—the two Chinese campuses established respectively by the University of Nottingham and the University of Liverpool. They represent successful models of globalization of higher education in China; however their rationale, strategies, curricula, partnership, and orientation are very different. Through a comparative analysis, the paper reveals their unique development and offers a template for studies of globalization of higher education in China and elsewhere through branch campuses.     

The impact of an elaborated assessee’s role in peer assessment

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of an elaborated assessee’s role on metacognitive awareness, performance and attitude in peer assessment. Two intact groups (a total of 82 students) were randomly assigned to a treatment condition (having back‐feedback activity) or a control condition (not having back‐feedback activity). The results indicated that, regarding metacognitive awareness, when participants played the elaborated assessee role, they tended to report higher metacognitive awareness in their learning process. Regarding performance, when participants played the elaborated assessee role, they tended to receive better scores in making a concept map. Regarding attitude, when participants played the elaborated assessee role, they reported greater motivation towards the peer assessment. The findings of this study suggest instructional implications for those who want to employ peer assessment as a learning method by showing the effectiveness of a well‐developed role design, specifically one that includes the back‐feedback activity.     

Private Nonprofit Organizations for Child Welfare Cases of South Korea and People’s Republic of China

Private organizations and public sector regarding child welfare services have been two main actors in improving the quality of children ’s lives. In this paper, the author examines two cases of childre...     

Non-adult child supervision practices in Lao People’s Democratic Republic

Researchers have paid little attention to non-adult child supervision and the prevalence and factors influencing this practice in low-income countries. A better understanding of this phenomenon is needed to inform the development and implementation of policies and interventions to enhance child supervision in those settings. This study explores the prevalence and factors associated with young children being home alone or under the care of another young child in Lao People’s Democratic Republic. Using the 2011–2012 Lao Social Indicator Survey (N = 10,740 for the subsample of ‘child was home alone’ and N = 10,539 for the subsample of ‘child cared by another child < 10 years of age’), multi-level Poisson regressions were performed to determine the number of days children under five years of age were home alone or under the care of another child younger than 10 years of age. Large discrepancies across provinces and between urban and rural populations within each province were found. Children living in rural areas were more than five times more likely to be unsupervised than children living in urban settings (incidence rate ratio, IRR 5.2; 95% CI: 1.8–15.2), and children living in rural areas were nearly twice more likely to be under the care of another child than children living in urban settings (IRR 1.9; 95% CI: 1.3–2.8). Age was also a common factor in explaining variation in both dependent variables. Policies aimed at facilitating adequate child care and supervision should consider rurality to increase children’s protection.     

A Brief Statement on Educational Principle of the People＇s Republic of China

China issued two educational principles in 1960s and 1990s respectively. Both are composed of three fundamental elements-general aim of education, concrete purposes of education and ways of realizing them. Both emphasize the combination of education and work as well as the all-round development of the educatee. The difference between the two is that the former stipulates that education should serve the proletarian politics and education of laboring people while the latter provides that education should serve the socialist modernization and cultivation of builders and successors of socialism.     

The Importance of Parent‐to‐Parent Support among Families of Children with Autism in the People’s Republic of China

This article reports the experiences of families of children with autism in the People’s Republic of China. The caregivers of 43 children with autism attending one of two short‐term (3‐month) intervention programmes for young children with autism were interviewed about their experiences before, during, and after the programme. Parent‐to‐parent support emerged as the main theme. Specifically, caregivers in this study discussed the value of being with other parents who share similar experiences. Two reasons were given for the importance of parent‐to‐parent support: to learn from each other, and to gain moral support and encouragement in a relationship that is more equal and less discriminatory than was experienced from others in society. This report also briefly highlights the factors that are similar to family experiences in western contexts, as well as factors that are influenced by the Chinese context.     

Estimating network effects in China’s mobile telecommunications

1 Introduction 1 Both economic literature and legal literature have focused a great deal of attention on the phenomenon of network effects, or network externalities: “markets in which the value that consumers place on a good increases as others use the good.”[1] Network effects have important implications for structure and competitiveness of underlying market, as well as for regulation policy making. In China, theoretical developments of the concept have been introduced, but it still remains…     

Anonymity as an instructional scaffold in peer assessment: its effects on peer feedback quality and evolution in students’ perceptions about peer assessment skills

Although previous research has indicated that providing anonymity is an effective way to create a safe peer assessment setting, continuously ensuring anonymity prevents students from experiencing genuine two-way interactive feedback dialogues. The present study investigated how installing a transitional approach from an anonymous to a non-anonymous peer assessment setting can overcome this problem. A total of 46 bachelor’s degree students in Educational Studies participated in multiple peer assessment cycles in which groups of students assessed each other’s work. Both students’ evolution in peer feedback quality as well as their perceptions were measured. The content analysis of the peer feedback messages revealed that the quality of peer feedback increased in the anonymous phase, and that over time, the feedback in the consecutive non-anonymous sessions was of similar quality. The results also indicate that the transitional approach does not hinder the perceived growth in peer feedback skills, nor does it have a negative impact on their general conceptions towards peer assessment. Furthermore, students clearly differentiated between their attributed importance of anonymity and their view on the usefulness of a transitional approach. The findings suggest that anonymity can be a valuable scaffold to ease students’ importance level towards anonymity and their associated need for practice.     

Parental migration and children’s academic engagement: The case of China

In the context of China’s increasing rural-urban migration, few studies have investigated how parental migration affects children’s experience in school. The high cost of schooling, taken together with the institutional barriers in destination cities, have compelled many rural parents in China to migrate without their children, leaving them in the care of their spouses, grandparents, relatives or other caregivers. Still other parents migrate with their children, many of whom then attend urban migrant schools in their destination city. Understanding the academic engagement of children of migrant workers is particularly salient because the poor qualities of migrant schools, a lack of parental support, and exposure to competing alternatives to schooling may render both migrant children in the cities and left-behind children in the rural villages vulnerable to disengagement, and ultimately school dropout. Using data collected in 2008 in the urban Haidian and Changping districts of Beijing and rural Henan and Shaanxi provinces, the authors of this paper investigate the association between parental migration status and two measures of academic engagement, academic aspirations and the odds of liking school, by comparing migrant children attending migrant schools and left-behind children with their rural counterparts who do not have migrant parents. The authors’ findings show that migrant children attending migrant schools have lower academic engagement compared to rural children of non-migrant parents. The correlation between academic engagement and parental migration status can be accounted for in part by the support children receive from family and teachers. The association between certain measures of family and school support and academic engagement also varies by parental migration status: for example, high teacher turnover rates significantly reduce migrant children’s odds of liking schools, but do not affect children of non-migrant parents.     

The role of feedback in young people’s academic choices

ABSTRACT

Women are underrepresented in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics subjects with more girls leaving these subjects at every stage in education. The current research used a scenario methodology to examine the impact of teacher feedback on girls’ and boys’ choices to study a specific science subject, engineering. British participants aged 13 (N?=?479) were given scenarios where a new teacher encouraged them to take engineering using person feedback which focussed on their abilities, process feedback which focussed on their effort levels or gave them no reason. Results suggested that both boys and girls were more likely to select to study engineering when they received person feedback rather than process or no feedback. Young people also thought that ability was more important to being successful in science than in non-science subjects.This suggests young people feel that ability is needed to succeed in science subjects and person feedback can lead them to believe that they have this ability. Therefore, teacher feedback which gives ability attributions for possible success could be used to encourage more young people to persist in science. However, the potentially negative longer term outcomes of ability attributions and how they may be negated are also discussed.     

Women’s participation in academic conferences in Israel

This article examines the participation of women in academic conferences in Israel, a country in which women are under-represented in academia vertically and horizontally. Data were retrieved from announcements of academic conferences in Israel, for one academic year, covering 56 conferences that attracted 997 participations. Participation was measured according to a three-level vertical hierarchy and a three-level horizontal divide that was based on academic discipline. Statistical z-tests and χ² tests were conducted to compare the proportions of male and female participation. Findings show that male participation in conferences was three times that of women. It was also found that the conferences reflected the social agenda in Israel. It is suggested that women are subjected to two forms of gender marginality, one stemming from the gendered division of labour and the other from the characteristics of the academic conferences that reflect the masculine military social agenda in Israel.     

Tensions and striving for coherence in an academic’s professional identity work

The emergence of ‘new managerialism’ in academic institutions and professions has given rise to tensions between one’s professional self and work context. Such tensions often originate from a misalignment between institutional and personal values. This study builds on a dialogical approach to identity and discusses the role of inner tensions and conflicts in terms of making sense of one’s professional identity. These aspects are explored and exemplified by introducing a sample case of one individual student and university researcher/teacher, Anna, who participated in one-year Pedagogical Studies for Adult Educators. Leaning on the narratives of Anna’s learning diaries and a later interview, the article describes tensions and critical conflicts in her professional I-positioning. The study shows how tensions and their resolutions, at their best, can lead to constructive identity work, thereby finding a new personal sense resulting in a more integrated professional identity.     

University lecturers’ experiences of teaching in English in an international classroom

ABSTRACT

Demand for English-taught courses (ETCs) is growing exponentially in non-English speaking universities. These courses require new teaching competences of lecturers, most obviously English language proficiency and intercultural skills. Given the high workloads academics are currently burdened with, it can be expected that this form of teaching is presenting them with a considerable challenge. Despite this, little is known about their ETC teaching experiences. This study addressed this issue by examining and comparing beginning and experienced ETC lecturers’ perspectives on their practices. The study was conducted at a university in Taiwan. Ten academics were interviewed in-depth, some two to three times over a two-year period. The study found the two groups’ experiences were polar opposites. This paper argues an awareness of English as a lingua franca accompanied by student-centered teacher concerns led to the senior cohort’s positive ETC teaching experiences, while a lack thereof gave rise to the beginning lecturers’ unfavorable experiences.     

Examining scholarship in China’s academe: an exploratory study

We selected five Chinese university-based journals and five Western university-based journals to examine the extent of contributions by editorial board members and faculty from the universities in which the journals are published over a 6-year period from 2001 to 2006. A disproportionate contribution of faculty papers was from editorial board members in the Chinese university-based journals and faculty in the universities the journals are affiliated to. We speculate that this could be attributed to various reasons, including issues of protectionism, academic accountability, and the social capital of guanxi in the specific context of China. We suggest that editorial review boards of university-based journals in China may need to re-examine professional roles, responsibilities and ethics that may require new thinking on scholarship in higher education.     

Academic buoyancy mediates academic anxiety’s effects on learning strategies: an investigation of English- and Chinese-speaking Australian students

Abstract

A primary goal our study was to explore whether relations between academic anxiety and students’ use of a range of learning strategies (memorisation, elaboration, personal best [PB] goals and cooperation) were mediated by academic buoyancy. We were also interested in extending knowledge of anxiety and its role in students’ learning strategy use. Given mixed findings regarding the impact of language spoken at home on psycho-educational factors, our third aim involved investigating the extent to which relationships were moderated by language (English vs. Chinese-speaking). The sample consisted of n = 380 English-speaking and Chinese-speaking (Mandarin and Cantonese) Australian high school students, with groups (n = 190 each) matched on age and gender, and controlling for parental education and prior academic achievement. We found mediation effects of academic buoyancy across the four learning strategies. In addition, anxiety was positively associated with memorisation, elaboration and PB goals in the mediation analyses. Mediation effects were broadly similar across the two languages; however, there were some significant differences across the two groups. Findings hold relevance for future research on academic buoyancy’s nomological network, the role of language spoken at home in the academic process and the design of interventions addressing academic buoyancy and academic anxiety.