English Language Teaching in Taiwan Today

This paper gives an overview of English education in Taiwan. It traces the historical development of ELT in the country, discusses ELT today, and the implications of foreign language policies on ELT in schools in Taiwan.     

ASSISTANCE IN HIGHER EDUCATION LEGISLATION: THE LEGISLATIVE REFORM PROGRAMME OF THE COUNCIL OF EUROPE

Between 1989 and 1992, the Council of Europe responded to the perceived need to assist eastern and central European countries to develop a legal basis for their higher education systems that would lead to a workable and equitable balance between state control and university autonomy and academic freedom. Thus the Legislative Reform Project of the Council of Europe got underway in the spring of 1992. The results so far have been very positive. In 1996, the Council on Higher Education and Research of the Council of Europe recommended the continuation of the Project, now known as a Programme, for another four‐year period and its extension to the sectors of science and technology.     

ASSISTING QUALITY ASSESSMENT AND IMPROVEMENT IN THE HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS OF SLOVENIA

There are two universities in Slovenia which undertake research and teaching and offer professional services. The quality of the research performed by faculty members is assured by strict quantitative bibliographical criteria employed in the faculty rank award procedure. The criteria for teaching quality are less well defined. The new Higher Education Act of 1993, organized university staff development, the appearance of an integrated information system, and student evaluation of faculty teaching performance with the aid of student questionnaires can all be regarded as extrinsic assistance to intrinsic efforts on the part of faculty, students, and their organizations. Slovenia will endeavour to broaden and deepen its co‐operation with international organizations and foundations in the field of quality assessment and improvement of higher education institutions, particularly the quality of the teaching they offer.     

Turning boys off? Listening to what five‐year‐olds say about reading

This paper reports the first part of a 2‐year longitudinal study, which examined the impact of age of entry to school on the reading development of 60 summer‐born boys during Key Stage One. The sample was drawn from 18 schools in six Local Education Authorities operating different admissions policies. Thirty‐one had attended nursery part‐time, while 29 had experienced full‐time reception class before their fifth birthday and before statutory age of entry to school. The data offer an original portrayal of learning to read through the voices of a group of 5‐year‐old boys as they reflected on home and school literacy events relating to reading. Reading acquisition was examined within a theoretical model which incorporates attitudinal factors as intrinsic and defining components of reading literacy. The data draw attention to the centrality of these factors in the complex structure which supports the process of reading acquisition, acknowledging the need to investigate this process from the perspective of the child. This paper discusses the findings in the context of the boys' early years experience and the implications in the light of the widespread debate about age of entry to school and appropriate early years practice. The data suggest the current wide‐spread skills‐based approach to reading often ignores the crucial motivational elements that make a real reader and that the formality associated with this approach may be damaging reading attitudes in the youngest children of our reception classes.     

The owner,the participant and the spectator: positions and positioning in peer activity around the computer in pre‐school1

One of the most important benefits of computer use within educational settings has been described as its potential for use in collective activity. However; there is a need to take a closer look at the apparently unproblematic picture of children's actual cooperation around the computer. The purpose of this research was to study positions and positioning in peer activity around the computer in pre‐school. Data were collected in three different Swedish municipal pre‐school units with children from three to six years of age. In this paper three positions, described as ‘owner’, ‘participant’ and ‘spectator’, are identified and discussed. The positions are static as they constitute a specific space for acting, including rights, duties and obligations. They are also dynamic as, in relation to previous experiences, they appear to imply different opportunities to use the afforded space for acting. The play around the computer implies that positions and positioning are continuously defined and transformed in relation to each other.     

Factors That Influence Self‐Efficacy of Counseling Students: An Exploratory Study

The study examined whether age, prior work experience, number of courses taken, and number of internship hours have a positive relationship with counseling self‐efficacy. Participants were 116 counselor education students. The results from correlation and multivariate analyses of covariance revealed that the length of internship hours and prior related work experience were positively correlated with counseling self‐efficacy. The differences in counseling anxiety, affection adjustment, and assessment found between the students in programs accredited by the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP) and those in non‐CACREP‐accredited programs disappeared when the background variables were controlled as covariates.     

Critical Social Research and the Academy: the role of organic intellectuals in educational research

This paper is presented in two parts. The first part explores the methodological and epistemological implications of working as a black, female researcher studying issues of social justice and equality in a faculty of education. It is argued that many of those researching social issues and motivated by the desire to facilitate change are faced with an apparent contradiction between a commitment to producing objective, value free research and their commitment to equality and justice. This apparent contradiction haunts them in their negotiations with gate keepers, research funders, employers, the academic community and with policy makers and other practitioners. It is argued that the contradiction is indeed only apparent and that it is based on mistaken notions of ‘objectivity’ and ‘universal values’. I argue that as ‘committed’ researchers we need to move beyond such false contradictions while at the same time accepting a dual role, of empowerment and critical engagement. In part two of the paper, it is suggested that a radical humanist, critical and reflexive form of action research, one that is informed by a concern for social justice and emancipation, may be constructed that is grounded on Habermas's conception of a ‘pathology of communication’. Such research would be directed at the dominant mode of academic and educational production itself. The Gramscian conception of the ‘organic intellectual’ is invoked in elaborating a research model that might go beyond the kind of ‘simultaneous‐integrated’ action research that has been described by researchers such as Alison Kelly while being radically distanced from work being carried out under the rubric of ‘teacher as researcher’ or other possibly technicist and managerial action‐research models.     

Students’ views on the effectiveness of motivational interviewing for challenging disaffection

Emerging evidence suggests motivational interviewing (MI) is an effective intervention for supporting disaffected students. However, previous literature has failed to establish students’ views on MI. In the present study, three students took part in an individual MI intervention, delivered by three educational psychologists (EPs). Self-report measures of school-based motivation and semi-structured interviews were used to obtain student views, post-intervention and at three month follow-up. EP interview data were also used to contextualise findings from student interviews. Qualitative findings indicated that students were generally enthusiastic about the intervention and perceived some positive impact on behaviour. However, these views were not consistent with questionnaire responses and two of the pupils experienced exclusions around the time of the intervention. The implications of these ambiguous findings are discussed, in relation to contextual factors that are likely to have influenced the effectiveness of the interventions.     

THE EMANCIPATION OF WOMEN: A COMMON EUROPEAN CONCERN

The true emancipation of women should become a common European concern and a common European goal. Emancipation means that no socio‐cultural or biological constraint should prevent women from obtaining the same chances and opportunities as men. True emancipation, which is still a distant objective in most of the European countries, implies that access to professional life should not have to be paid for by an exhausting cumulation of domestic and professional roles. A recent research programme on the student population of the University of Geneva provides data which are relevant in this respect. Female students are less likely to have internalized norms of behaviour which facilitate adaptation to a competitive environment in which women have to compete with men. Being subject to cross pressures and torn between two sets of behavioural norms, young women are often ambivalent in their attitudes. The conclusions of the Geneva research are consistent with other research results in other countries. The major explanatory factor is early socialization. True emancipation of women requires a long‐range education policy aiming at gradually reducing the differences in the socialization patterns of boys and girls.     

Social Context Effects on Children's Performance of Number Conservation Tasks: plausibility and evidence

Abstract Recent controversy over Piagetian tasks concerns whether the experimenter's actions result in children misunderstanding the question. Evidence for this has been derived from differences in performance of conservation tasks according to whether the transformation is intentional or accidental. Studies reporting large differences according to transformation type are claimed to be flawed procedurally. Including a preliminary talk and restricting questions to one domain result in little or no transformation type effect. Whether children's correct judgments in accidental versions are reliable indications of their knowledge has also been disputed. They may reflect children's ignoring of the transformation or covert counting. Using an identity conservation pretest 192 Yemeni children were selected to be tested on number conservation tasks varying in transformation type, numerosity and equality. The results were analysed using a model‐fitting procedure. Identity nonconservers were affected by transformation type but not numerosity whereas identity conservers showed the opposite pattern. The identity nonconservers may simply have been so bemused by the adult experimenter introducing a soft toy in the accidental conditions that they guessed. For identity nonconservers guessing will result in greater success than reasoning.