A conceptual change approach to staff development: A model for programme design

With the rapid expansion in tertiary education in the past decade, coupled with the rising emphasis on accountability, teaching quality has become an important issue in higher education worldwide. The increasing emphasis on quality has placed new demands on staff development, in particular to find promising models and methodologies that will guide development approaches. The paper describes an innovative approach to staff development that was synthesized from four theories about conceptual change or change in general. This conceptual change approach is based on the hypothesis that changing teachers' conceptions of teaching towards more elaborated levels will bring about improvement in their teaching practices. A short course derived from this model is outlined.     

Mixed Methods Research – Nonverbal Observations of Cultural Convergence in Online and Offline Contexts: Testing Hall’s Low- Vs. High-Context Framework

ABSTRACT

Extending the existing low- and high-context culture theoretical framework, the current research examined the extent to which globalization has shaped low- and high-context cultures in relation to nonverbal communication. The current study employed an exploratory sequential design mixed research method. The first phase of the study observed cultural convergence evident in people’s nonverbal communication in real life and reported the observations qualitatively. In the second phase of the study, a quantitative content analysis was carried out. The content analysis, namely sentiment analysis, examined the occurrences of people of diverse nationalities expressing their emotions when they provide reviews of airlines on a travel website and empirically test the relevance of low- and high-context theoretical framework in the era of globalization. A total of 85,228 reviews of 592 airlines available on a travel website were downloaded using a web crawler. The qualified records used for analysis included records from the following regions: Africa, Asia, Australia, Latin America, Northwestern Europe, Southern Europe, and United States. An analysis of variance on the number of words people used in writing travel reviews online yielded significant variations among the seven regions. This data also sheds light on cultural convergence.     

Communication,cognitive processing,and public knowledge about climate change

This study advances the cognitive mediation model (CMM) by examining the factors behind acquiring knowledge about climate change. Based on a nationally representative survey of Singaporeans (N?=?1,083), this study supported the original CMM. The extended CMM showed that surveillance gratification was positively associated with traditional and online media attention, while social utility was positively associated with online media attention. While attentions to traditional and online media were positively associated with elaboration, online media attention was positively associated with selective scanning. Elaboration was positively associated with knowledge. Implications for theory and practice were discussed.     

Adult Interactions and Child Engagement

The purposes of this study were to investigate how engagement varied as a function of concurrent adult interactions (e.g., individual versus group orientation, type of teacher interaction) and pre-existing states (e.g., age, ratings of typical engagement). Eleven child care teachers and 63 children were videotaped in 93 naturally occurring child care situations. Two teacher interaction categories, elaborations and information giving, were associated with participatory engagement, attention, and low engagement. Interaction behaviors that were responsive without providing direction and those that were directive without responding to children were not associated with engagement. Individually targeted interactions produced more engagement than did group-targeted interactions. Chronological age, developmental age, and ratings of persistence did not statistically significantly affect engagement.     

When ideology meets bottom line: analysis on market competition and ideological bias in newspapers

This study investigated how newspapers adopted partisan branding as a product differentiation strategy under pressure of intense market competition, through cases of conservative dailies in South Korea. Despite academic interest in news media's partisanship, only a few studies attempted to conduct analysis at the organizational level. Drawing on the hierarchy of influences model as a main theoretical framework, the present study examined how partisanship of newspapers was related to the social and economic forces. Evidence demonstrated that conservative bias increased as market competition intensified. Conservative bias was positively associated with the ideological mood of the conservative group, and the revenue decreased as conservative newspapers carried stronger conservative bias. These results will add insight into the prevalence of partisanship in today's media environment.     

Continuity of Care: Primary Caregiving in Singapore

Early Childhood Education Journal - Child care centres in many developed countries have expanded exponentially due to the increased participation of women in the workforce. Consequently, children...     

儒家文化对认知发展的影响

本论文研究儒家文化对中国儿童认知发展有何影响。文献归类为几方面的研究：早期控制冲动的能力与日后学业成就的关系，言语能力与非言语能力的比较，创造力的培养，学业成就动机，成就动机与集体取向的关系，对学习成败的信念与归因，及学习方式与思维。证据表明儒家文化①强调把早期冲动控制的掌握作为日后学业成功的先决务件，②培育植根于集体主义倾向的学业成就动机，③把成功或失败归因于努力。其教学和学习的方式着重于记忆和重复练习，而不是鼓励发现、创造和元认知。     

Cognitive skills and literacy performance of Chinese adolescents with and without dyslexia

The present study sought to identify cognitive abilities that might distinguish Hong Kong Chinese adolescents with dyslexia and to assess how these abilities were associated with Chinese word reading, word dictation, and reading comprehension. The cognitive skills of interest were morphological awareness, visual-orthographic knowledge, rapid naming, and verbal working memory. A total of 90 junior secondary school students, 30 dyslexic, 30 chronological age controls, and 30 reading level controls was tested on a range of cognitive and literacy tasks. Dyslexic students were less competent than the control students in all cognitive and literacy measures. The regression analyses also showed that verbal working memory, rapid naming, morphological awareness, and visual-orthographic knowledge were significantly associated with literacy performance. Findings underscore the importance of these cognitive skills for Chinese literacy acquisition. Overall, this study highlights the persistent difficulties of Chinese dyslexic adolescents who seem to have multiple causes for reading and spelling difficulties.