The Chinese Government Scholarship Program: An Effective Form of Foreign Assistance?

International Review of Education - This study investigates the effectiveness of Chinese international education assistance through an examination of student experience in the Chinese Government...     

The Chinese Government Scholarship Program: An Effective Form of Foreign Assistance?

This study investigates the effectiveness of Chinese international education assistance through an examination of student experience in the Chinese Government Scholarship Program, an important mechanism of Chinese foreign aid. Grounded in Pascarella’s (1985) model of the impact of college on students, the study investigates participants’ level of satisfaction with their higher education experience in China and their perception of the role of the scholarship program in promoting positive relationships between China and the scholarship students’ home countries. Findings indicate that participants are generally satisfied with their experiences in China and are positive about the impact of the program in building friendships with their home countries. The authors discuss the implications of these findings in terms of China’s emerging prominence as a provider of international development assistance.     

Academic stress of international students attending U.S. universities

This study investigated factors associated with the academic stress experienced by international students (N=412) attending graduate school in the United States. The study was grounded in a cognitive framework in which academic stress is understood as the consequence of students' appraisal of the stressfulness of role demands and their perception of their ability to cope with those demands. These two appraisals, in turn, were posited to be a function of cultural distance, students' social support network, and their role competencies. Results indicated that the primary determinants of the two types of appraisals differed. While self-perceived English-language skills and, to a lesser degree, cultural distance were the predictors of primary appraisal, self-perceived English-language, academic, and problem-solving skills and social support network were the main determinants of secondary appraisal. Implications for how universities might work more effectively with international students are discussed.     

Guest Editorial

Editorial Board

Guest Editorial     

The Reconstruction of Primary Teachers' Identities

Primary teachers have had to reconstruct their identities in response to the reconstruction of the education system. The holism, humanism and vocationalism of the old Plowden self-identity has been challenged by a new assigned social identity signalled in the assault on child-centred philosophy, the diminution of elementary trust, and changes in the teacher role. These challenges have thrown up new dilemmas for teachers, and represent 'fateful moments' in the careers of their identities. In trying to resolve the dilemmas, teachers have engaged in identity work, characterised mainly by identity talk, and a number of emotional and intellectual strategies. The result has been a partitioning of the old Plowden self-identity, with the 'real self' being largely withheld from the new personal identity and the sense of vocationalism being set to one side. The new personal identity in teaching represents a more instrumental and situational outlook, with the substantial self finding more expression elsewhere. Identity work is still in progress and seems set to continue while teachers have to find ways of relating to two or more competing discourses.     

Lifelong learning and the reform of the teaching practicum in Australia

This paper reports the findings of a project—‘Lifelong learning and teacher education’—undertaken by the Centre for Lifelong Learning, Australian Catholic University, under the auspices of the Australian Commonwealth Department of Education, Science and Training. The study was designed to investigate the operationalization of lifelong learning in Australian teacher education. The study revealed that there is a range of existing, innovative practices regarding partnerships between schools and higher and further education that are in keeping with emerging ideas about lifelong learning. Moreover, some of these take the form of collaborative action research projects focused on improving the learning occurring in the partnership schools. This paper describes some current approaches in Australia to collaborative action research by teacher educators' and their partnership schools and shows how they contribute to lifelong learning. The approaches are then analyzed to suggest ways of advancing lifelong learning within Australian Education Faculties thus helping to make lifelong learning more of a reality for all.     

What troubles early childhood educators in New Zealand: a 20-year cross-sectional study of ethical difficulties in early childhood practice

For more than 20 years, the New Zealand early childhood (EC) sector has had guidance about how to deal with situations of ethical difficulty in daily practice through the ECE Code of Ethics. This paper reports on three surveys undertaken at 10-year intervals that sought to understand EC educators’ experiences of such situations, and how they addressed them within their EC settings. An analysis of educators’ stories of ethically troubling situations from the three data-sets traced shifts and similarities in the content reported, and in how educators responded to these challenges over the two-decade period. We situate this analysis alongside changes in the New Zealand ECE policy context during the same time frame. We argue that a connection exists between the reported situations and teachers’ responses to them, and changes within the policy and professional context of daily EC practice.     

International minority ethnic academics at predominantly white institutions

Using critical race theory, this article examines the racial positioning of British international minority ethnic (IME) academics in predominantly White institutions (PWIs). Empirical data, in the form of 28 in-depth interviews with IME academics, is used to analyze the complex raced and gendered positionalities of IME academics in institutions of higher education in the United States. We argue that the institutional contexts of predominantly White universities continue to re-affirm White privilege in ways that reflect the struggles in higher education to diversify faculty at PWIs. As scholars call for more diversity across higher education campuses, we suggest that it is important to understand the interconnections between policy and practice surrounding attempts to recruit and retain IME academics.     

A content analysis of research published in the Journal of Research in Science Teaching from 1985 through 1989

To determine if actual practice was consistent with commonly recommended research methods and procedures, this study examined 130 studies reported over a 5-year period in three volumes of the Journal of Research in Science Teaching (JRST). The results were consistent with similar previous analyses (Shaver & Norton, 1980a, 1980b; Wallen & Fraenkel, 1988a) and indicate that appropriate generalizations beyond the confines of the reported studies may be impossible for most (64%) of the JRST studies surveyed. The findings also show that replication studies, which could be employed to offset deficiencies in generalizability, were not commonly encountered (3%) in these 130 reports. In addition, the study results indicate that many researchers (48%) do not properly restrict their conclusions based on the limits imposed by the accessible populations and samples used; nor do they typically provide possible alternative explanations for the outcomes obtained (76%). These findings prompt the following recommendations: 1. A greater awareness and use of replication as a check on generalizability should be encouraged by the science education community. 2. Clearly defined populations (target and accessible) and fully described samples warrant increased attention as report components from authors, reviewers, and editorial board members of JRST. 3. In light of the difficulties inherent in effecting random selection in educational settings, a greater emphasis should be placed on recognizing the limits that the underlying assumptions of inferential statistics place on research conclusions. The results of this study indicate that the methodological quality of published science education research should remain a concern for both practitioners and readers.