Virtual Tutee System: a potential tool for enhancing academic reading engagement

This article reports on evaluation studies of the Virtual Tutee System (VTS) designed to enhance students’ engagement in academic reading. The VTS is a web-based peer-tutoring environment in which students teach a virtual tutee about the content in course readings that students have been assigned to learn. With the VTS, students interact with virtual tutees by providing lecture notes and answering questions from these tutees. The initial prototype of the VTS was implemented and evaluated through two field trials in a college classroom. The purposes of the two field trials were to assess the efficacy of the VTS and improve its design. In the first field trial, students successfully completed the VTS and showed a deeper engagement in reading with the use of the VTS, but reported several design issues. Based on findings from the first trial, two modifications in the VTS design were made. In the second field trial, students used the revised VTS. They expressed enjoyment in teaching their virtual tutees and appreciated the value of the VTS. They also demonstrated a significant increase in their reading strategy use. The article concludes with design considerations for the VTS and implications for future research and development.     

The third-order multiculturalism: civil rights,diversity, and equality in Korea’s multicultural education

This paper examines the politics of South Korea’s multicultural discourse and locates its recent development in the context of a broader analytical discussion about multiculturalism. Utilizing the historical experience of the USA, this paper identifies the three orders of multiculturalism. Up until the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, the USA exhibited the first-order multiculturalism where diverse populations coexisted under discriminatory policies. The post-civil rights era exemplifies the second-order multiculturalism because it not only institutionalized the equality discourse in public spheres, but also provided legal protection against discriminatory practices. Both Korea and the USA, however, share the challenge of achieving the third-order multiculturalism that fosters inter-cultural understanding and addresses the socially embedded inequalities.     

Educational psychology as an evolving discipline: trends and synthesis in Asia Pacific Education Review

Educational psychology has seen rapid growth as an academic discipline in recent years. The current study reviewed research articles published in Asia Pacific Education Review (APER), a journal that has been gaining greater international recognition, to reveal recent trends in educational psychology research in Asia Pacific. Specifically, the study reviewed general (country, research methods and academic subject) and topical trends among 84 articles published in APER from 2005 to 2013. Findings of the study revealed that studies on diverse age groups were conducted in various countries. Although quantitative research greatly outnumbered qualitative research, qualitative research appeared to be increasingly accepted. Topics from special education and counseling were actively studied, with the greatest focus on learner characteristics highlighting individual differences. Outlined research trends and related discussions in this study may be useful for educational psychology researchers in East Asia.     

Interaction between task values and self-efficacy on maladaptive achievement strategy use

We tested the interaction between task value and self-efficacy on defensive pessimism, academic cheating, procrastination and self-handicapping among 574 Korean 11th graders in the context of English as a foreign language. We hypothesised that perceiving high value in tasks or domains for which self-efficacy was low would pose a threat to perceived self-worth, leading students to resort to various maladaptive achievement strategies. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses demonstrated that, consistent with our hypothesis, the relationships of task value with academic cheating and procrastination depended on the level of self-efficacy. Perceiving high intrinsic value positively predicted academic cheating for students with low self-efficacy but not for students with high self-efficacy. Likewise, perceiving intrinsic or utility value positively predicted procrastination for students with low self-efficacy but not for students with high self-efficacy. Our findings support the major tenets of self-worth theory.     

Toward Sustainable Educational Changes through School-Based Professional Development on ELL Assessment for New Teachers

Developing teachers' knowledge about assessing English language learners (ELLs) is critical for achieving intended policy outcomes of improving teaching under Race to the Top policy and Common Core State Standards. In addition to teachers' expressed concerns about teaching Common Core State Standards to ELLs in a national survey published in Education Week (Gewertz, 2013 Gewertz, C. (2013, February). Standards worrying teachers. Education Week, 32(22), 12–13. [Google Scholar]), the formation of two assessment consortiums (i.e., Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, or SBAC, and Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC) indicates the urgency for teachers to demonstrate their assessment knowledge and for schools to provide meaningful professional development opportunities in that area. In this article, we detail the rationale for school-based professional development targeting assessment, especially for new teachers, and outline a proposed procedure for providing such training.     

Acquisition of Chinese characters: the effects of character properties and individual differences among learners

Drawing upon research on the visual complexity effect and Dual Coding Theory, this study investigated a) the effects of character properties on, and b) the contribution of individual learner differences to Chinese character acquisition. Participants included 325 Chinese-speaking children in grades 1 through 3 in China. Using a novel character acquisition task, the study extended the scope of previous research by investigating the process of acquiring the meaning of new characters. Results showed that for all three grade-groups, a) characters with radicals and with less visual complexity were easier to acquire than characters without radicals and with greater visual complexity; and b) the effect of radical presence was more pronounced with characters with greater visual complexity. Visual analogical skill made a significant contribution to the acquisition of characters varying in properties, regardless of age. The contribution of radical awareness, however, varied with character properties and age.     

The influence of unsupervised time on elementary school children at high risk for inattention and problem behaviors

In the last few decades, changing socioeconomic and family structures have increasingly left children alone without adult supervision. Carefully prepared and limited periods of unsupervised time are not harmful for children. However, long unsupervised periods have harmful effects, particularly for those children at high risk for inattention and problem behaviors. In this study, we examined the influence of unsupervised time on behavior problems by studying a sample of elementary school children at high risk for inattention and problem behaviors. The study analyzed data from the Children's Mental Health Promotion Project, which was conducted in collaboration with education, government, and mental health professionals. The child behavior checklist (CBCL) was administered to assess problem behaviors among first- and fourth-grade children. Multivariate logistic regression analysis was used to evaluate the influence of unsupervised time on children's behavior. A total of 3,270 elementary school children (1,340 first-graders and 1,930 fourth-graders) were available for this study; 1,876 of the 3,270 children (57.4%) reportedly spent a significant amount of time unsupervised during the day. Unsupervised time that exceeded more than 2 h per day increased the risk of delinquency, aggressive behaviors, and somatic complaints, as well as externalizing and internalizing problems. Carefully planned afterschool programming and care should be provided to children at high risk for inattention and problem behaviors. Also, a more comprehensive approach is needed to identify the possible mechanisms by which unsupervised time aggravates behavior problems in children predisposed for these behaviors.     

Family Background,Students’ Academic Self-Efficacy,and Students’ Career and Life Success Expectations

This study examined the relationship of family background on students’ academic self-efficacy and the impact of students’ self-efficacy on their career and life success expectations. The study used the national dataset of the Educational Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS: 2002), funded by the U.S. Department of Education. Based on a path model, results demonstrated that family background predicted academic self-efficacy positively and students’ career and life success expectations negatively. However, with the mediating influence of academic self-efficacy, family background positively influenced students’ career and life success expectations. School counselors should consider interventions to enhance interactions between parents and students and seek to develop positive perceptions about students’ capabilities and futures. In addition, school counselors need to be knowledgeable about curricula, enrichment classes, summer opportunities, various educational options, and students’ academic and career aspirations for providing better guidance.     

Production of a Science Documentary and its Usefulness in Teaching the Nature of Science: Indirect Experience of How Science Works

In this study, we produced a documentary which portrays scientists at work and critically evaluated the use of this film as a teaching tool to help students develop an understanding of the nature of science. The documentary, “Life as a Scientist: People in Love with Caenorhabditis elegans, a Soil Nematode” encompasses the entire process of a scientific investigation by exploring the everyday life of a particular group of scientists. We explored the effectiveness of this documentary in teaching the nature of science by examining the epistemological views of college students toward science before and after viewing. In addition, we collected written responses from the students where they described which aspect of the nature of science they learned from the documentary. The scores of epistemological views toward science increased between the pretest and the posttest (p < 0.01) with the most significant increase being in their views of the role of social negotiation. In the written responses, approximately half of the students suggested that they had learned more about the role which cooperation and collaboration play in the development of scientific knowledge by watching the documentary. The documentary overall provides a valuable instructional context so that students are able to discuss and reflect on various aspects of nature of science within authentic scientific research.     

Is oral/text reading fluency a “bridge” to reading comprehension?

In the present study we investigated developmental relations among word reading fluency, listening comprehension, and text reading fluency to reading comprehension in a relatively transparent language, Korean. A total of 98 kindergartners and 170 first graders in Korea were assessed on a series of tasks involving listening comprehension, word reading fluency, text reading fluency, and reading comprehension. Results from multigroup structural equation models showed that text reading fluency was a dissociable construct from word reading fluency for both kindergartners and first graders. In addition, a developmental pattern emerged: listening comprehension was not uniquely related to text reading fluency for first graders, but not for kindergartners, over and above word reading fluency. In addition, text reading fluency was uniquely related to reading comprehension for kindergartners, but not for first graders, after accounting for word reading fluency and listening comprehension. For first graders, listening comprehension dominated the relations. There were no differences in the pattern of relations for skilled and less skilled readers in first grade. Results are discussed from a developmental perspective for reading comprehension component skills including text reading fluency.