Malayanized Chinese-language cinema: on Yi Shui’s Lion City,Black Gold,and film writings

This article discusses how the Singaporean Chinese director, Yi Shui, created a Malayanized Chinese-language cinema during the 1950s and 1960s, and offers a retrospective of the way people in Malaya and Singapore framed their nation-building discourse in terms of anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism after the Bandung Conference in 1955. This article holds that the term huayu dianying (Chinese-language cinema) was not first used in the 1990s by scholars in Hong Kong and Taiwan, but that its origins can be traced to Singapore and Malaya in the 1950s where Yi Shui promoted Malayanized Chinese-language cinema in the Nanyang Siang Pau. This earlier use of the term “Chinese-language cinema” overlaps with its current academic usage, including films in Mandarin and Chinese dialects. In 1959, Yi Shui’s essays were collected in On Issues of the Malayanization of Chinese-Language Cinema. Yi Shui also directed several Malayanized Chinese-language films. This article analyzes his “Chinese language cinema” film practice by examining the discourses surrounding the “Malayanization of Chinese-language cinema” in order to show that his semi-documentary Lion City and the melodrama Black Gold attempted to mediate the misunderstandings rooted in the national boundaries and politics of various dialect groups through a “multi-lingual symbiosis” of Chinese languages.     

Introduction of Molecular Methods into a Food Microbiology Curriculum

Maintaining current, relevant curriculum in undergraduate Food Microbiology courses is essential for training future experts in food quality and safety. Having an understanding of the fundamental techniques (for example, polymerase chain reaction [PCR]) that are used in the food industry and regulatory agencies is critical for students entering the workforce. The purpose of this study was to assess the efficacy of integrating molecular methods into an undergraduate Food Microbiology course in both lecture and laboratory settings. Modules on PCR and pulsed‐field gel electrophoresis (PFGE), both of which are currently used by government agencies and the food industry to investigate the presence and persistence of foodborne pathogens, were developed, introduced, and evaluated among 269 students over 4 y. Multiple teaching and learning styles were incorporated through (i) traditional lecture format on the basics of PCR and PFGE; (ii) hands‐on group activities to build upon the lecture instruction; (iii) performing PCR and PFGE in the laboratory; and (iv) group discussions to analyze results from laboratory exercises. Pre‐ and postinstruction evaluations revealed significant increases in understanding and application of both methods in lecture and laboratory settings as demonstrated by 0.60 and 0.51 mean normalized gains for respective PCR and PFGE lectures and 0.50 and 0.56 mean normalized gains in respective labs. Academic year significantly impacted score improvement, potentially due to hidden factors, such as previous exposure to material and student aptitude. This study provides the platform for successful introduction of molecular techniques in an undergraduate Food Microbiology course. The guidelines and materials developed by our group are publicly available for use by other institutions.     

Experimental intervention research on students with specific poor comprehension: a systematic review of treatment outcomes

Students with specific poor comprehension (SPC) can sound out words accurately, but have difficulty understanding what they read. However, most existing reading intervention studies on students with reading disabilities did not differentiate students with SPC from other types of students with reading disabilities who accompany with decoding difficulties. The purpose of this systematic review was to synthesize findings from 14 experimental intervention studies that have included students with SPC with the goal of increasing reading comprehension. Out of eight types of interventions identified, Reciprocal Teaching (g = .856) demonstrated the largest effect size. Metalinguistic intervention showed the effect size of above .50 (a medium effect size), suggesting that intervention that explicitly teaches high-level oral language strategies was positive to improve reading performances of students with SPC. Findings also suggest a need to specify the classification criteria of students with SPC to broaden an understanding about the evidence-based intervention for students with SPC. Practical implications for effective practice, limitations, and future directions are discussed.     

Technology‐rich inquiry science in urban classrooms: What are the barriers to inquiry pedagogy?*

What are the barriers to technology‐rich inquiry pedagogy in urban science classrooms, and what kinds of programs and support structures allow these barriers to be overcome? Research on the pedagogical practices within urban classrooms suggests that as a result of many constraints, many urban teachers' practices emphasize directive, controlling teaching, that is, the “pedagogy of poverty” (Haberman, 1991 ), rather than the facilitation of students' ownership and control over their learning, as advocated in inquiry science. On balance, research programs that advocate standards‐based or inquiry teaching pedagogies demonstrate strong learning outcomes by urban students. This study tracked classroom research on a technology‐rich inquiry weather program with six urban science teachers. The teachers implemented this program in coordination with a district‐wide middle school science reform. Results indicated that despite many challenges in the first year of implementation, students in all 19 classrooms of this program demonstrated significant content and inquiry gains. In addition, case study data comprised of twice‐weekly classroom observations and interviews with the six teachers suggest support structures that were both conducive and challenging to inquiry pedagogy. Our work has extended previous studies on urban science pedagogy and practices as it has begun to articulate what role the technological component plays either in contributing to the challenges we experienced or in helping urban science classrooms to realize inquiry science and other positive learning values. Although these data outline results after only the first year of systemic reform, we suggest that they begin to build evidence for the role of technology‐rich inquiry programs in combating the pedagogy of poverty in urban science classrooms. © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 39: 128‐150, 2002     

Evaluation of Korean information infrastructure policy 2000–2010: Focusing on broadband ecosystem change

South Korea has been very active in broadband development for the last decade, which has made major strides in its development. This study evaluates the evolution of Korea's broadband development from the year 2000 to the present day. Historic and archival data related to Korean broadband projects are reviewed in this paper, drawing on broadband ecosystem as a framework for assessment. The purpose of this study is to provide insight into challenges and create a prospectus by offering a socio-technical analysis of broadband development. This will involve the in-depth investigation of the social dynamics, political discourse, and technological choices inherent in the design and development of the next generation of networks. Despite active investment and proactive drive, uncertainty still remains surrounding the evolution of broadband and what impact it may have on the new broadband milieu in Korea. This study will offer an effective adoption/diffusion strategy as well as a viable information policy model for more advanced infrastructure in other countries.     

韩国瑞吉欧方案教学发展简述

自1994年韩国首次应用瑞吉欧方案教学以来,瑞吉欧方案教学已经在韩国发展了十几年,在儿童发展、教师专业成长、家园合作等方面促进了韩国学前教育的发展。但在本土化的过程中,韩国瑞吉欧方案教学面临着新的挑战,需要韩国社会的进一步支持。中、韩两国分享瑞吉欧课程发展经验,有利于两国学前教育的发展。     

Structured Constructs Models Based on Change‐Point Analysis

This study proposes a structured constructs model (SCM) to examine measurement in the context of a multidimensional learning progression (LP). The LP is assumed to have features that go beyond a typical multidimentional IRT model, in that there are hypothesized to be certain cross‐dimensional linkages that correspond to requirements between the levels of the different dimensions. The new model builds on multidimensional item response theory models and change‐point analysis to add cut‐score and discontinuity parameters that embody these substantive requirements. This modeling strategy allows us to place the examinees in the appropriate LP level and simultaneously to model the hypothesized requirement relations. Results from a simulation study indicate that the proposed change‐point SCM recovers the generating parameters well. When the hypothesized requirement relations are ignored, the model fit tends to become worse, and the model parameters appear to be more biased. Moreover, the proposed model can be used to find validity evidence to support or disprove initial theoretical hypothesized links in the LP through empirical data. We illustrate the technique with data from an assessment system designed to measure student progress in a middle‐school statistics and modeling curriculum.     

Adapting Strategies of Effective Instruction for Culturally Diverse Preschoolers

This article describes collaboration between preschool and university educators focused on adapting the Center for Research on Education, Diversity, and Excellence (CREDE) standards for Effective Pedagogy for use in early childhood (EC) settings. The CREDE standards are strategies of best practices for culturally diverse K–12 students. Teachers and teacher educators worked together to adapt the CREDE standards for use with young children. Participants included 13 preschool teachers and 2 administrators serving 2- to 5-years-olds at a university-based EC center. Data sources included participant observations and video-recordings of the teachers' instruction. Criteria for measuring use of the standards were changed to be more developmentally appropriate, including adjustments for language development and a focus on goals that included self-management and social skills. The adapted CREDE EC standards may provide a useful framework for high-quality EC instruction for diverse children. This partnership may have been successful because the project drew on the strengths of both the university and EC collaborators, minimizing the hierarchical relationship that is often experienced in such an arrangement.     

A group recommendation system for online communities

Online communities are virtual spaces over the Internet in which a group of people with similar interests or purposes interact with others and share information. To support group activities in online communities, a group recommendation procedure is needed. Though there have been attempts to establish group recommendation, they focus on off-line environments. Further, aggregating individuals’ preferences into a group preference or merging individual recommendations into group recommendations—an essential component of group recommendation—often results in dissatisfaction of a small number of group members while satisfying the majority. To support group activities in online communities, this paper proposes an improved group recommendation procedure that improves not only the group recommendation effectiveness but also the satisfaction of individual group members. It consists of two phases. The first phase was to generate a recommendation set for a group using the typical collaborative filtering method that most existing group recommendation systems utilize. The second phase was to remove irrelevant items from the recommendation set in order to improve satisfaction of individual members’ preferences. We built a prototype system and performed experiments. Our experiment results showed that the proposed system has consistently higher precision and individual members are more satisfied.     

Designing a business model for financial products for cultural heritage in the Korean market

There are many contingent valuation (CV) studies to estimate the economic benefits of cultural heritage, but few provided advice on the design of financial products for cultural heritage assets. This paper conducted conjoint and willingness-to-pay (WTP) analyses for providing the design implication of these financial products. We calculated WTP for each attribute. The result of conjoint analysis shows that people prefer a short period of investment, high-expected rate of return and small amount of money invested. Only the amount invested and the rate of return on investment are significant to estimate WTP for these financial products.