Personal Storytelling as a Medium of Socialization in Chinese and American Families

The goal of this study was to determine how personal storytelling functions as a socializing practice within the family context in middle-class Taiwanese and middle-class European American families. The data consist of more than 200 naturally occurring stories in which the past experiences of the focal child, aged 2,6, were narrated. These stories were analyzed at 3 levels: content, function, and structure. Findings converged across these analytic levels, indicating that personal storytelling served overlapping yet distinct socializing functions in the 2 cultural cases. In keeping with the high value placed on didactic narrative within the Confucian tradition, Chinese families were more likely to use personal storytelling to convey moral and social standards. European American families did not treat stories of young children's past experiences as a didactic resource but instead employed stories as a medium of entertainment and affirmation. These findings suggest not only that personal storytelling operates as a routine socializing practice in widely different cultures but also that it is already functionally differentiated by 2,6.     

Gender Differences in Social Mastery Motivation and Its Relationships to Vocabulary Knowledge,Behavioral Self-Regulation,and Socioemotional Skills

The present study investigated gender differences in social mastery motivation, vocabulary knowledge, behavioral self-regulation, and socioemotional skills and examined the relationships among this knowledge and these skills by gender. Participants were 134 Chinese children (68 boys, M age = 3.80; 66 girls, M age = 3.89) and their parents recruited through local kindergartens’ parent groups. The children were administered measures of social mastery motivation, vocabulary knowledge, behavioral self-regulation, and nonverbal intelligence. Parents reported their education level and children’s socioemotional skills. Research Findings: Results revealed that boys exhibited more social mastery interactions than girls, and girls showed better behavioral self-regulation and socioemotional skills than boys. Girls with higher social mastery interaction frequency demonstrated better vocabulary knowledge and socioemotional skills, whereas boys with higher social mastery interaction frequency showed lower behavioral self-regulation. Boys, who showed more positive affect during social mastery interactions, tended to have better expressive vocabulary, which facilitated their behavioral self-regulation. Practice or Policy: Findings highlight social mastery motivation as a potential factor that facilitates children’s early development, but it may contribute to boys and girls in different ways.     

Using Adjustments to Support the Learning and Assessment Needs of Students with Disabilities: Macau and Mainland China Teachers’ Report

Adjustments are considered necessary for students with disabilities to be fully included in classroom instruction, classroom assessment and external accountability tests. The 67 item Checklist of Learning and Assessment Adjustments for Students (CLAAS), translated for the Chinese community, was used by 74 teachers from Macau and Mainland China to document their application of adjustments for 319 students with special educational needs across these three settings. Results indicated consistently large gaps between adjustment use in classrooms compared with national tests, with the allowable adjustments for public testing reportedly used very little. Findings also provided evidence for the content validity of the checklist for teachers of students with disabilities in China and its utility in documenting applied adjustments. This study also indicates the potential for CLAAS to provide teachers across China with a comprehensive list of adjustments, to reflect on and review adjustment decision-making and assessment protocols for all students.     

Assessment of early handwriting skill in kindergarten children using a Chinese name writing test

Reading and Writing - This study developed and validated a Chinese name writing scale (CNWS) for evaluating early handwriting skills of kindergarten children. We then used the validated CNWS to...     

Towards a taxonomy of novices' misconceptions of the Prolog interpreter

A series of novice programmers' misconceptions of Prolog flow-of-control and variable unification are identified on the basis of existing empirical evidence, and informal observation. This classification is intended to serve as a first pass attempt towards an understanding of these errors and as a basis for future empirical work.     

Learning by Creating: Letting the Student Do the Work

There is evidence to suggest that mature students, perhaps studying at home where human tutors are not readily available, learn particularly effectively in a problem-solving environment. Also, they appear to be especially responsive to analogies and metaphors. We seek to exploit these effects by requiring students to transform problems into alternative forms before solving them. Three examples are given of domains where the student has to convert the formulation into an equivalent diagram. Arguably, the process of performing this transformation increases their understanding of the subject area.     

Understanding the leadership qualities of a head of department coping with curriculum changes in a Hong Kong secondary school

Little relevant research examining the leadership patterns of heads of department (HoD) coping with curriculum changes is found within the Chinese context. This article presents an exploratory case study which delineates the leadership qualities exhibited by a HoD as he overcomes the difficulties typically confronted in the process of school-based curriculum development (SBCD) in a Hong Kong secondary school. The findings showed that the challenges faced by the HoD included: (1) teachers' low receptivity of SBCD; (2) teachers' limited time and expertise in SBCD; and (3) a need for more effective collaboration in the department. The essential leadership patterns detected were: (1) personal charisma; (2) shared vision building; (3) empowerment of teachers; (4) changing beliefs and enhancing the capacity of teachers; and (5) fostering collegiality among teachers. This study suggests that unless the HoD is committed to making an innovation a priority, the potential of teachers to contribute to any curriculum change may not be realised.     

There Is Water Everywhere: How News Framing Amplifies the Effect of Ecological Worldviews on Preference for Flooding Protection Policy

The purpose of this study is to examine the interactive effect of worldviews and media frames on policy preference. Using flooding as a case study, we examine the interplay of ecological worldviews and news framed as either emphasizing harmony with nature or mastery over nature on individuals' preference for flood protection policy. A total of 255 undergraduate students participated in a 2 (ecological worldviews: balance-with-nature vs. human-domination-over-nature) × 2 (media frames: harmony frame vs. mastery frame) between-subjects experiment. The findings indicate that both the balance-with-nature worldview and the human-domination-over-nature worldview have significant impacts on preference for flood protection policy. Furthermore, the harmony frame amplified the effect of the balance-with-nature worldview in supporting a natural approach to flood protection. In contrast, the mastery frame amplified the effect of the human-domination-over-nature worldview on the preference for a structural approach to flood protection. Implications are discussed.     

Is the Study Process Questionnaire (SPQ) a good predictor of academic achievement? Examining the mediating role of achievement-related classroom behaviours

Studies have shown that the Study Process Questionnaire (SPQ)—which provides a measure of student approaches to learning—is a relatively weak predictor of academic achievement. The present study sought to explore whether students’ achievement-related classroom behaviours, as observed by teachers, can be used as a mediator between student approaches to learning and academic achievement. The SPQ was administered to 1,608 students enrolled in six different diploma programmes offered by a polytechnic in Singapore. Data were analysed by means of correlation and path analysis. In line with existing studies, the results revealed that student approaches to learning was a weak predictor of academic achievement. However, achievement-related classroom behaviours turned out to be a significant mediator between student approaches to learning and academic achievement, effectively doubling the explained variance in academic achievement. Implications of these findings for using the SPQ are discussed.