Collaborative filtering for expansion of learner’s background knowledge in online language learning: does “top-down” processing improve vocabulary proficiency?

In recent years, collaborative filtering, a recommendation algorithm that incorporates a user’s data such as interest, has received worldwide attention as an advanced learning support system. However, accurate recommendations along with a user’s interest cannot be ideal as an effective learning environment. This study aims to develop and evaluate an online English vocabulary learning system using collaborative filtering that allows learners to learn English vocabulary while expanding their interests. The online learning environment recommends English news articles using information obtained from other users with similar interests. The learner then studies these recommended articles as a method of learning English. The results of a two-month experiment that compared this system to an earlier collaborative filtering system called “GroupLens” reveal that learners who used the collaborative filtering system developed in this study read various news articles and had significantly higher scores on topic-specific vocabulary tests than did those who used the previous system.     

Chinese TEFL teachers’ perceptions about research and influences on their research endeavours

English has always occupied a key position in China’s education. The quality of English education depends largely on the quality of the English teaching force. Improving the overall quality of Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) teachers entails advancing both their teaching and research competence. This study, with its focus on Chinese TEFL teachers working in a higher education institution, was set up in a context where Chinese higher education colleges are being transformed into universities and research is becoming a crucial aspect of all teachers’ work. This small-scale case study investigated a group of Chinese TEFL teachers’ perceptions about research and their individual and workplace characteristics that influenced their research endeavours. The findings revealed that Chinese TEFL teachers recognised the significance of research for teaching, professional growth and career advancement. However, lack of individual characteristics such as research and disciplinary knowledge, confidence in research and intrinsic motivation impeded their research efforts. Their institution and departments seemed to encourage research; yet, more specific financial and academic support to start and sustain their research endeavours is required. This study’s findings provide implications for both individual teachers and their institutions to engage TEFL teachers more actively in research.     

The school in the state and the state in the school: the social re-production of education systems in a mobile modernity

Schools offer powerful scope for viewing and comprehending the wider society in which they are produced and replicated. The ways in which schools are structured, positioned, funded, managed, appreciated, critiqued, cared for and neglected, presents us with a means for seeing beyond the rhetoric of a nation state to the lived realities faced by its citizens. In this paper I want to link the development of Australian educational policies to shifts in socio-cultural thought and practice that reflect and reproduce a mobile modernity. I am interested in school funding policies as they relate to the private, or non-government education sector from the late colonial period to these so-called neo-liberal/late modern times. The interrogated scenes shift about amongst a complex of interrelated fields, from the urban to the rural, the public and the private, as well as the primary, secondary and tertiary layers of educational “offerings”. The periodization reveals a loosening of commitments to a secular, state-centred, welfare-focused modernity, towards a privatizing, individualizing “second modernity”. Drawing from a range of empirical studies of school choice I highlight the shifting ideas and practices of those involved in the re-production of both public and private schools either as professionals/workers in the system, or as “consumers” of the products available in education’s “quasi-markets”.     

Mobilisieren und Optimieren

Looking at the conflictual constitution of educational systems by equality and excellence, this paper examines the discursive formation of two political rationalities in the contemporary German educational system that are directly opposed. While early childhood and primary education discourses are dominated by a terminology of equity, tertiary education institutions such as universities are described with a terminology of excellence that has become a reference point for political interventions and institutional reform processes.Taking up the theoretical position of hegemony-theory, governmentality studies and system theory, the paper analyzes the rules of justification these hegemonic discourses refer to by employing a discourse analysis of strategic, conceptional, and institutional texts of the German education policy discourse between 2003 and 2010. The paper puts forth the thesis that mobilizing and optimizing represent the common principles of equality and excellence as rationalities of the maximal mobilization of educational ressources.     

Bildung,Ausbildung und soziale Ungleichheiten im Lebenslauf

This paper describes mutual links between educational attainment and social inequality from a life course perspective. Analytically we distinguish between aspects of inequality with regard to access to education, consequences of education, and social reproduction through education. A special emphasis is put on the role institutions play in these processes. The paper presents selected empirical findings, discusses theoretical mechanisms, and draws some conclusions for the conceptualisation of education systems.     

The role of English language and international media as agents of cultural globalisation and their impact on identity formation in Kuwait

This study examines the influence of English language usage and international media on the strength of either national or global identity. The regression analysis of 354 responses reveals that individuals who studied at universities that use English as a medium of instruction show significant differences in the extent to which they embrace a global identity. Viewing local (Kuwaiti) television programmes and the use of the Internet predict national identity. This study discusses the social entities that are important factors in mitigating the influence of globalisation on national identity. It concludes that the argument that globalisation and Westernisation are two faces of the same coin is overstated.     

Soziale Ungleichheit beim Zugang in eine Berufsausbildung: Welche Bedeutung haben die Institutionen?

The corporatistic governance model of nonacademic vocational training, which is predominant in Germany, has produced heterogeneous and complex conditions for the access to vocational training. Which training programs are offered and the selection of applicants is largely determined by the training companies themselves. Adolescents interested in vocational training are thus confronted with diverse admission requirements. Which resources they can and have to use in order to receive a training position is significantly determined by the respective admission requirements. The present paper elucidates key institutional conditions of the access to vocational training which can serve as explanations for the (re-)production of social inequalities in the transition process from school to vocational training. In particular, the inequalities with respect the admission to vocation training along the lines of educational degrees, gender, as well as regional, social, and ethnic backgrounds are investigated.     

Sprachförderung von Kindern und Jugendlichen aus Zuwandererfamilien

Children and adolescents of families with immigrant background are less successful in the German education systems than those without immigrant background. These differences can largely be explained by deficits in the language of instruction, indicating a lack of learning opportunities in the second language. The present paper investigates how it is possible to reduce language disparities before children enter school on the one hand and during the course of schooling on the other hand. This is being done by presenting the current state of research on the acquisition of a second language. In particular, recent findings on the influence of the quantity and quality of early childhood education on the language acquisition of children are summarized. Furthermore, findings on the effectiveness of attending all-day schools and of current programs for language instruction are presented. Finally, potential avenues for further development of language instruction as well as for future research are discussed.