Student perspectives on international education: an examination into the decline of Japanese studying abroad

The number of students going abroad for study purposes continues to grow exponentially, even despite the global economic downturns of recent years. One exception is Japan, where the number of students going overseas has continued to decline since the mid-2000s. This paper first explores various explanations for the persistent decline in Japanese study abroad based on a review of the literature and official sources. In particular, an analysis is done of the media's reporting of Japanese youth's supposed disinterest in overseas study. Secondly, questionnaire data from a survey of Japanese university students' perspectives on study abroad is analysed to help shed light on the motivating and de-motivating factors influencing the decision to study abroad. Lastly, implications are made regarding the potential consequences of decline in study abroad for Japan and its system of higher education.     

Students' conceptions of learning in an engineering context

Research on student learning in higher education has highlighted the central role that students' conceptions of learning play in influencing their approaches to learning. This article reports on a study of conceptions of learning among engineering students on a one-year foundation course. Students were interviewed about their conceptions of learning at three intervals during their academic year. The data was analysed using a phenomenographic perspective and from the data five qualitatively different conceptions of learning were identified. The resulting characterisation of these conceptions of learning is presented using excerpts from the interviews and some implications for student learning are discussed.     

Student teachers’ conceptions of creativity in the secondary music classroom

This study aims to explore the meaning of the concept of creativity from the perspective of student teachers pursuing a one year teacher training course following their first degree. Seventeen student teachers following a specialist music teaching route in secondary education were selected as the sample for this study to offer their understanding on creativity in the secondary music classroom. Data were collected through questionnaires and semi-structured interviews and were subject to in-depth qualitative analysis using Atlas.ti software. All student teachers seemed eager to teach for creativity as they thought it was a vital component of their pupils’ musical engagement and development. However, some held richer conceptions than others or tended to overlook significant areas of musical involvement, such as improvisation, group work and engagement in evaluating and refining the creative musical product. Creativity was generally expected but it would emerge on an intuitive level as a by-product of a learning objective rather than being explicitly considered in the planning process. These narrow conceptions of the meaning of creativity in the music classroom need to be taken seriously and explicitly addressed in music education programs in order to maximize the expression of pupils’ creative potential in the music classroom and beyond.     

Student conceptions of natural selection and its role in evolution

Pretests and posttests on the topic of evolution by natural selection were administered to students in a college nonmajors' biology course. Analysis of test responses revealed that most students understood evolution as a process in which species respond to environmental conditions by changing gradually over time. Student thinking differed from accepted biological theory in that (a) changes in traits were attributed to a need-driven adaptive process rather than random genetic mutation and sexual recombination, (b) no role was assigned to variation on traits within a population or differences in reproductive success, and (c) traits were seen as gradually changing in all members of a population. Although students had taken an average of 1.9 years of previous biology courses, performance on the pretest was uniformly low. There was no relationship between the amount of previous biology taken and either pretest or posttest performance. Belief in the truthfulness of evolutionary theory was also unrelated to either pretest or posttest performance. Course instruction using specially designed materials was moderately successful in improving students' understanding of the evolutionary process.     

Creativity in Art: The feasibility of assessing current conceptions in the school context

The article reviews different views of creativity, building on the work of Czikszentmihaly. It offers a definition of creativity in terms of trait/process/product. The issue of how creativity might be assessed is explored using this definition and some illustrative examples are provided. The article concludes that creativity can and should be assessed but that this must be with an appropriate methodology. Such assessment is important not only for assessing students' work but also for evaluating curriculum content, in order to promote curriculum development in the teaching of creativity.     

出国留学经历对跨文化交际情感因素的影响研究

跨文化交际情感因素是跨文化交际能力构成要素的重要组成部分,本文主要从文化偏见、焦虑、态度和移情四个方面来调查留学经历对跨文化交际情感因素的影响。研究结果表明国外留学经历有助于减少跨文化交际活动中的文化偏见和焦虑心理,同时也有利于培养交际主体对跨文化交际行为的积极态度和移情能力。     

Student motivation: an experience of inservice education as a context for professional development of teachers

This article focuses on an inservice education experience conducted in a constructivist perspective. The experience was aimed at fostering elementary, middle and high school teachers’ professional development regarding student motivation. Thirty-six teachers from these school levels reflected on their professional experience and practical knowledge in groups conducted and supervised by university researchers. In group work, the participants analyzed and discussed materials and situations from their professional experience, re-elaborated in the light of a constructivist framework. At the end of the intervention, they showed an increased ability and interest in reflecting with colleagues and researchers on their students’ motivational problems, and collaborative planning of educational interventions. The results of the intervention are presented and the possibility of carrying out similar education experiences in the Italian school system is discussed.     

Munchausen by Proxy in an international context

OBJECTIVE: The professional literature on Munchausen by Proxy (MBP) abuse consists of more than 400 articles, chapters, and books. Most have come from a handful of English-speaking industrialized countries. Our aims were to establish the extent to which published work about MBP has emerged from outside these countries, and to determine the characteristics of any reported cases. METHOD: Numerous health care computer databases were queried, and the results supplemented by materials accumulated less formally. RESULTS: We identified 59 articles from 24 countries describing at least 122 cases in 9 different languages. Among cases in which the information was available, the mother was the sole perpetrator in 86%, the victim was aged between 3 years and 13 years in 52%, and the victim was male in 54%. The presentations of MBP appear to be similar across the world with the exception of induced apnea, which emerged as notably uncommon in this review. An extensive table presents the characteristics of each case. CONCLUSIONS: MBP clearly is not a phenomenon unique to Western or highly medicalized societies. This form of abuse is being increasingly recognized and reported throughout the world. The literature from the US, Canada, UK, Australia, and New Zealand often presupposes access to resources, such as subspecialists and social service agencies, that may be seriously constrained in other countries. The contributions of professionals elsewhere will be vital in ensuring that the efforts in English-speaking industrialized settings to develop standards of care encompass an international perspective.     

Foreign study as a safety-valve: The experience of China's university students going abroad in the eighties

Since 1978, a large number of Chinese university students have gone to Western countries, especially to North America. This paper argues that this widespread phenomenon of going abroad provided an important alternative for aggrieved university students, and that the increased difficulty for Chinese university students to go abroad in the late eighties was one of the major grievances of Chinese students on the eve of the 1989 Chinese Student Movement. This is a part of my study on the causes and dynamics of the 1989 Chinese Student Movement. I would like to thank Maurice Pinard, Steven Rytina, Marcia Beaulieu, Muriel Mellow and editors and reviewers for their advice and comments on this paper.     

Student learning of thermochemical concepts in the context of solution calorimetry

Student understanding of heat and thermal phenomena has been the subject of considerable investigation in the science education literature. Published studies have reported student conceptions on a variety of advanced topics, but calorimetry - one of the more elementary applications of thermochemical concepts - has apparently received little attention from science education researchers. Here we report a detailed analysis of student performance on solution calorimetry problems in an introductory university chemistry class. We include data both from written classroom exams for 207 students, and from an extensive longitudinal interview series with a single subject who was herself part of that larger class. Our findings reveal a number of learning difficulties, most of which appear to originate from failure to understand that net increases and decreases in bond energies during aqueous chemical reactions result in energy transfers out of and into, respectively, the total mass of the resultant solution.     

Teachers’ conceptions of learning philosophies: discussing context and contextualising discussion

With the introduction of any new initiative into the mathematics classroom, there is often an assumption that it will produce visible and measurable effects in teaching approaches and pupil progress. Yet, there is a body of research that tempers such optimism, drawing attention to a series of mitigating factors, for example, the deep-seated nature of teachers’ practices, their implicit or stated beliefs and values, and their lack of detailed awareness of how they perform in the classroom. Rather than make associative links between these factors and the success of the initiative, our intention is to examine the ways in which teachers are trying to interpret what the new scheme requires of them and how in turn, engaging with it causes them to re-describe both their pedagogic understanding and classroom practices relationally to earlier approaches. Employing data from a small project, we seek to examine four teachers’ moves to grapple with this attempted shift from one teaching paradigm to another by considering how certain key terms serve to anchor the teachers’ conceptions of themselves during this transition and find that their responses can be idiosyncratic and varied depending on the approaches in which they have been previously embedded. By using theoretical ideas from some neo-Marxist writers we examine these discursive shifts and their relevance to conceiving curriculum change. We suggest that the individual’s teaching practice develops as a result of it being understood and enacted through a succession of ideological filters, each adding to the cumulative experience of the teacher.     

The impact of Antioch education through experience abroad

Participants in a program of living, studying, and working abroad in the 1960's consider this in retrospect to have been one of the most important experiences they ever had. A preliminary analysis of questionnaire data indicates, along with academic outcomes, a significant impact upon subsequent behavior. Educational and job decisions were influenced, as well as thinking about values and American identity. It appears that the more a program overseas encourages involvement in other cultures in a variety of roles, with work experience prominent among them, the more we can expect enduring attitudinal and behavioral outcomes.This study was made together with Dr. Ruth Churchill, Dean of Educational Evaluation at Antioch, and Paula Spier, Director of Student Programs, Antioch International. It was first reported in February, 1978, at the national meetings of the International Studies Association in Washington, D.C., and a condensed version was printed inAntioch Notes in March, Working into Another Culture.     

Student experience of a scenario-centred curriculum

In 2006 UCL implemented new scenario-centred degree programmes in Civil and Environmental Engineering. The new curriculum can be characterised as a hybrid of problem-based, project-based and traditional approaches to learning. Four times a year students work in teams for one week on a scenario which aims to integrate learning from lecture and laboratory classes and to develop generic skills including team working and communication. Student experience of the first two years the old and new curricula were evaluated using a modified Course Experience Questionnaire. The results showed that students on the new programme were motivated by the scenarios and perceived better generic skills development, but had a lower perception of teaching quality and the development of design skills. The results of the survey support the implementation new curriculum but highlight the importance of strong integration between conventional teaching and scenarios, and the challenges of adapting teaching styles to suit.