Promoting instructional improvement or resistance? A comparative study of teachers’ perceptions of teacher evaluation policy in Korea and the USA

This study draws on institutional theory to examine teachers’ and principals’ perceptions of new teacher evaluation policies, factors that influence such perceptions and how such perceptions shape the implementation of the policies in Seoul (Korea) and Michigan (USA). The study featured in-depth interviews of 11 elementary school teachers and 4 principals and analysis of policy documents in both countries. While Korean teachers strongly disagreed with the new teacher evaluation policy in Seoul and implemented it in ways that were not intended by policy makers, the Michigan teachers varied in their perceptions and implementation of the policies. The teachers’ perceptions of the new policies seemed to be influenced by the designs of the policies, their backgrounds and definitions of ‘effective teachers’ and principal leadership. The association between teachers’ perceptions and their implementation of the new policies was quite strong.     

Writing evaluation: rater and task effects on the reliability of writing scores for children in Grades 3 and 4

We examined how raters and tasks influence measurement error in writing evaluation and how many raters and tasks are needed to reach a desirable level of .90 and .80 reliabilities for children in Grades 3 and 4. A total of 211 children (102 boys) were administered three tasks in narrative and expository genres, respectively, and their written compositions were evaluated in widely used evaluation methods for developing writers: holistic scoring, productivity, and curriculum-based writing scores. Results showed that 54 and 52% of variance in narrative and expository compositions were attributable to true individual differences in writing. Students’ scores varied largely by tasks (30.44 and 28.61% of variance), but not by raters. To reach the reliability of .90, multiple tasks and raters were needed, and for the reliability of .80, a single rater and multiple tasks were needed. These findings offer important implications about reliably evaluating children’s writing skills, given that writing is typically evaluated by a single task and a single rater in classrooms and even in some state accountability systems.     

Cognitive regulations in ICT-supported flipped classroom interactions: An activity theory perspective

In recent years, most studies on flipped classrooms or flipped learning have focused on learners’ motivation, academic achievement and teachers’ and students’ perceptions of the flipped classroom. Little research has involved interactions in the flipped classroom. This study aims to show that in-class collaborative learning in the flipped classroom can not only be conceived as a collective activity consisting of discrete actions, but also as a systematic activity. From the activity-theoretical perspective, contradictions were found between components of an activity such as subject, tools, rules, community, division of labor, object and outcome. This study conducted a pre-experiment, selecting one lesson of the seventh-grade Information Technology Course as the learning content, conducted in a flipped classroom. Three triads with different compositions were specifically observed by recording their interactions. More second-level contradictions existed between subject and tools, and division of labor within the low-level triad than within the other two triads, and more first-level contradictions also occurred within the low-level triad than within the other two triads. Most second-level contradictions within the high-level triad were resolved by self-regulation of cognition. Instead, most second-level contradictions within the mixed-level triad were overcome by co-regulation or shared regulation of cognition. This study sheds light on how to effectively design and implement flipped learning, and provides a new approach for analyzing interactions in the classroom.     

The Role of Instruction for Spelling Performance and Spelling Consciousness

This study examined the role of instruction for spelling performance and spelling consciousness in the Dutch language. Spelling consciousness is the ability to reflect on one's spelling and correct errors. A sample of 115 third-grade spellers was assigned to a strategy-instruction, strategic-monitoring, self-monitoring, or control condition representing different types of metacognitive aspects. The results showed that students in all three training conditions made more progress in both spelling performance and spelling consciousness than students in the control condition. With respect to spelling consciousness, only students in the strategy-instruction condition made significant improvement between pretest and posttest. Students made more progress in spelling performance on regular words than on loan words. Students in all four conditions became more accurate at assessing which words they could spell correctly. Students in the control condition more frequently overestimated their spelling ability.     

Semantic categorization of digital home photo using photographic region templates

In this paper, a semantic categorization method in generic home photos is proposed. In recent years, the semantic categorization of image has been a challenge due to the proliferation of digital home photos. Our approach is to detect semantically meaningful concepts contained in a photo. The proposed method incorporates an intermediate level of concepts, called local concept, so that it catches well semantic meaning of local regions of image as bridging the semantic gap of the low-level features and high-level category concepts. To detect the local concepts from the home photo, region segmentation by photographic region template and concept merging is also proposed. The efficacy of the proposed semantic categorization method was demonstrated with 3828 general home photos. The experiment results showed the proposed categorization method would be useful to detect multiple semantic meaning of the home photos.     

Children's Evaluations of Decision-Making Procedures in Peer, Family, and School Contexts

Children's evaluations of decision-making procedures were examined in applications in different social contexts. Seventy-two children evenly divided into three grade levels (grades 1 – 2, 3 – 4, 5 – 6) were administered a structured interview requiring them to evaluate three decision-making procedures (consensus, majority rule, and authority-based) embedded in three social contexts (peer group, family, and school classroom) and to select the most appropriate decision-making procedure for two specific decisions: one expected to pull for procedures emphasizing children's autonomous decision making, and one expected to pull for adult authority. Judgments of decision-making procedures at all grade levels did not show a heteronomous acceptance of adult authority but rather were influenced by social context and type of decision. In general, consensus was preferred in peer and family contexts and authority-based procedures were preferred for school decisions about curriculum. Older children were more likely than younger children to consider how children's limited knowledge and competence may constrain their autonomous decision making.     

Analysis of student’s responses to contradictory results obtained by simple observation or controlling variables

This study investigated students’ responses to presentations of experimental results that conflicted with their preconceptions regarding electric circuits, and how those responses varied according to the type of inquiry skills required to obtain the results. One hundred and twenty students of both sexes were randomly selected from a science high school in Korea. They were questioned about their preconceptions regarding an electric circuit and forty-two students with relevant misconceptions were selected. The students were randomly assigned to two groups, and presented with one of two sheets of paper presenting results obtained by a fictional investigator. The first group was presented with results that were obtained by simple observation and asked for their evaluation of them. The second group was presented with a set of results that were obtained by controlling variables, and asked to draw a conclusion and to evaluate it. Students’ responses were classified into two categories. Some students rejected their own preconceptions and introduced a new explanatory model when contradictory results were presented, and others denied the results for the simple reason that they conflicted with their preconceptions, or only modified a protective belt without changing their core of preconceptions. We found that this distribution of responses varied considerably by inquiry skill type. For the results obtained by controlling variables, almost all students accepted them and changed their preconceptions, but for the results obtained by simple observation, fifty-five percent of students preserved their own preconceptions by denying the contradictory results or modifying the protective belt.     

ORGANIZATIONAL QUALITY: An Examination of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Framework

One of the major obstacles to empiricalinvestigations of quality in organizations is thedifficulty in defining precisely what quality is. Onedefining framework that is widely accepted in for-profitorganizations is the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award(MBNQA) framework. This study examines the validity ofthe proposed relationships among the MBNQA dimensionsusing data from higher education. The empirical results help identify a modified model that hasimplications for managing quality improvementinitiatives.     

韩国教育模式的变革与发展

本文是对60年来韩国教育量的增长和质的提高及其与经济关系的概述,并围绕人力资源开发对先前的研究进行综合,分析韩国教育发展和变革的独特模式.文章首先对韩国过去六十年间教育政策变革和改革进行概述,进而对韩国教育质和量的关系及特点进行概括,最后对教育对人力资源开发和经济发展的贡献的研究进行综述.     

Prenatal Maternal Stress,Child Cortical Thickness,and Adolescent Depressive Symptoms

Prenatal maternal stress predicts subsequent elevations in youth depressive symptoms, but the neural processes associated with these links are unclear. This study evaluated whether prenatal maternal stress is associated with child brain development, and adolescent depressive symptoms using a prospective design with 74 mother child pairs (40 boys). Maternal stress was assessed during pregnancy, child cortical thickness at age 7, and depressive symptoms at age 12. Prenatal maternal stress was associated with less cortical thickness primarily in frontal and temporal regions and with elevated depressive symptoms; child cortical thickness additionally correlated with adolescent depressive symptoms. The observed associations are consistent with the possibility that cortical thickness in superior frontal regions links associations between prenatal maternal stress and adolescent depressive symptoms.