Maternal literate mediation of writing and Korean children’s reading and writing across 1 year

The present study examined the relations of maternal literate support instructions during parent–child joint writing to children’s word reading and writing across 1 year among 95 4- and 5-year-old children from Korea. The whole episode of mothers individually teaching their children how to write words was videotaped, and a Korean scale of mothers’ literate mediation of their children’s writing was developed based on six cognitive strategies focusing on whole Gulja (Korean written syllable), visual strokes, letter, Gulja structure, and CV (consonant + vowel) and coda (final consonant of a syllable) subsyllabic units. Maternal literate support explained a significant amount of variance in children’s word reading and writing concurrently and longitudinally across 1 year after controlling for children’s age, nonverbal IQ, phonological and morphological awareness, rapid automatized naming and mother’s education. In addition, children’s coda phoneme awareness explained unique variance in word reading and writing concurrently and longitudinally. Results underscore the unique characteristics of Korean and the importance of Korean maternal literate support as a major factor in early literacy development.     

Perceived competence and autonomy as moderators of the effects of achievement goal orientations

The primary purpose of this study was to investigate the roles of two moderators – perceived competence and perceived autonomy – in the relationships of achievement goal orientations with a broad range of learning‐related variables, including interest, effort, learning strategy use and academic achievement. Perceived competence and autonomy played roles as moderators by strengthening the positive effects of a mastery goal pursuit on outcome measures of adaptive use of learning strategies and effort, respectively. However, no moderating role of either perceived competence or perceived autonomy was found for the effect of a performance‐approach and performance‐avoidance goal pursuit. In addition, perceived competence played a significant role in determining the level of academic achievement in the context of multiple‐goal pursuit. For students with high perceived competence, the adoption of high performance‐approach goals resulted in a higher level of achievement regardless of the levels of mastery goals. In contrast, students with low perceived competence showed the highest achievement when high performance‐approach goals are paired with low mastery goals.     

Peer reviewers learn from giving comments

Research on peer reviewing has revealed that comments received from peer reviewers are helpful when it comes to making revisions in an individual’s writing, but the role of providing comments to peer writers has been little explored despite the potential value of such research. In this study, we explored how student reviewers learn by reviewing peer drafts in the context of reciprocal peer reviewing. Undergraduate students in an introductory physics course participated in this study as part of their course activities. Participants wrote technical research drafts, reviewed three or four peer drafts, and revised their own drafts in the SWoRD system. A total of 3,889 comment segments were analyzed in two dimensions: (a) evaluation (strength vs. weakness) and (b) scope (surface, micro-meaning, and macro-meaning). We found that providing weakness comments for micro-meaning and strength comments for macro-meaning improved the reviewers’ writing qualities. In addition, reviewers’ initial writing skills and the quality of reviewed peer drafts influenced the types of comments given. The results are discussed, along with their implications for improved writing through reviewing.     

A semantic Bayesian network approach to retrieving information with intelligent conversational agents

As access to information becomes more intensive in society, a great deal of that information is becoming available through diverse channels. Accordingly, users require effective methods for accessing this information. Conversational agents can act as effective and familiar user interfaces. Although conversational agents can analyze the queries of users based on a static process, they cannot manage expressions that are more complex. In this paper, we propose a system that uses semantic Bayesian networks to infer the intentions of the user based on Bayesian networks and their semantic information. Since conversation often contains ambiguous expressions, the managing of context and uncertainty is necessary to support flexible conversational agents. The proposed method uses mixed-initiative interaction (MII) to obtain missing information and clarify spurious concepts in order to understand the intention of users correctly. We applied this to an information retrieval service for websites to verify the usefulness of the proposed method.     

Chaos and control of discrete dynamic traffic model

This study discusses chaotic traffic flow. The discrete dynamic model proposed herein is derived from both the flow-density-speed fundamental diagram and Greenshield's model. The model employs occupancy as its variable and the ratio of free flow and average speed as its control parameter. The function form of the model is equal to logistic map that bifurcates when the value of the control parameter increases. Chaotic traffic means that traffic becomes unstable and unpredictable, which is dangerous for driving. Therefore, this study considers the implementation of chaotic control in signal or ramp metering design so as to stabilize the chaotic traffic phenomena. These results are illustrated by numerical examples.     

Eliciting critical literacy narratives of bi/multilingual teacher candidates across U.S. teacher education contexts

This paper examines critical literacy narratives of bi/multilingual preservice teachers across contexts in the United States. It draws upon empirical data from two studies—a narrative inquiry with Latino teacher candidates in the Midwest and a participatory action research project with bilingual preservice teachers in Hawaii—to examine participants’ identities and experience in academia. Preservice teachers in both studies resisted the labeling practice of “minority” and challenged simplistic notions of “bilingual teacher identity.” This cross-examination argues for further ways to explore how teacher preparation programs should create dialogic spaces for making the voices of diverse preservice teachers heard.     

Conceptualizing and Assessing Higher-Order Thinking in Reading

Students engage in higher-order thinking as they read complex texts and perform complex reading-related tasks. However, the most consequential assessments, high-stakes tests, are currently limited in providing information about students’ higher-order thinking. In this article, we describe higher-order thinking in relation to reading. We provide a framework for understanding higher-order thinking in reading, in relation to relevant theories and research in reading, and standards and assessment initiatives. We conclude with the considerations in assessments of higher-order thinking in reading that can help teachers and students work toward attainment of the Common Core State Standards.     

Rapid naming in relation to reading and writing in Korean (Hangul), Chinese (Hanja) and English among Korean children: a 1‐year longitudinal study

The relation of rapid automatised naming (RAN) to word recognition may depend on the phonological regularity of the orthography. This study examined differential contributions of RAN to reading and writing in Korean alphabetic Hangul, logographic Hanja (Chinese) and English as a second language among 73 fifth graders in Korea across 1 year. RAN was differentially associated between reading and writing in Hangul and English. After statistically controlling for age, gender, morphological awareness, vocabulary and phonological awareness, RAN was uniquely predictive of Hangul word writing but not Hangul word recognition, and it uniquely accounted for English word recognition but not English word writing. Meanwhile, RAN explained both reading and writing in Hanja. Findings were discussed in terms of their orthography characteristics and different levels of proficiency.     

A comparison of attitudes related to global citizenship between Korean- and US-educated Korean university students

This study compared the perceptions of Korean-national university students studying in Korea and in the US regarding global citizenship. The study sample consisted of two distinct groups: students who had received their education exclusively in Korea and students who were born in Korea but had studied in the US since secondary school. By applying latent mean analysis, the study found that the US-educated Koreans had higher levels of trust and national identity, whereas the Koreans had higher levels of social responsibility and participation. The results suggest that university students of the same nationality who experience different social environments may perceive global citizenship in dissimilar ways. For future investigations, we suggest a longitudinally designed experimental study, which may reveal a causal relationship between the social experiences of university students who study abroad and their perceptions of global citizenship. In addition, future investigations should consider how these students are assimilated into and adapt to diverse interactions on multicultural campuses.     

Modeling of chemotactic steering of bacteria-based microrobot using a population-scale approach

The bacteria-based microrobot (Bacteriobot) is one of the most effective vehicles for drug delivery systems. The bacteriobot consists of a microbead containing therapeutic drugs and bacteria as a sensor and an actuator that can target and guide the bacteriobot to its destination. Many researchers are developing bacteria-based microrobots and establishing the model. In spite of these efforts, a motility model for bacteriobots steered by chemotaxis remains elusive. Because bacterial movement is random and should be described using a stochastic model, bacterial response to the chemo-attractant is difficult to anticipate. In this research, we used a population-scale approach to overcome the main obstacle to the stochastic motion of single bacterium. Also known as Keller-Segel''s equation in chemotaxis research, the population-scale approach is not new. It is a well-designed model derived from transport theory and adaptable to any chemotaxis experiment. In addition, we have considered the self-propelled Brownian motion of the bacteriobot in order to represent its stochastic properties. From this perspective, we have proposed a new numerical modelling method combining chemotaxis and Brownian motion to create a bacteriobot model steered by chemotaxis. To obtain modeling parameters, we executed motility analyses of microbeads and bacteriobots without chemotactic steering as well as chemotactic steering analysis of the bacteriobots. The resulting proposed model shows sound agreement with experimental data with a confidence level <0.01.