Beyond the school setting: language teachers and tensions of everyday life

As an emergent theme in educational research, examination of the lives and careers of teachers reveals a wide range of educational factors occurring in many different contexts. Despite the relationship between teaching and life outside school, research studies have been inclined towards the working aspects of teachers’ lives. Rather than following the predominant model in the research literature, this study focused on teachers’ lives in the broader sense exploring the life tensions faced by teachers of English language in Vietnamese primary schools. Drawing on narrative inquiry as a research approach, data were collected from interviews conducted with six participating teachers. The findings indicated that the participants, similar to the majority of Vietnamese teachers, were involved in struggles over living conditions. As a result of the low pay they received for their teaching jobs, they engaged in private tutoring to bolster their income to adequately support themselves and their family. As language teachers, the participants used the English language for access to other cultures but they lived under pressures caused by cultural differences. Along with depicting the lives of Vietnamese teachers, the study offers suggestions to education leaders and educational researchers on how the situation might be alleviated.     

iPads in higher education—Hype and hope

This paper systematically reviews current research on using iPads in the higher education sector. Since the release of iPads by Apple in 2010, this new technology has been quickly adopted everywhere, especially by the younger generation and professionals. We were motivated to find out how iPads have been adopted for use in the higher education sector. We searched for and collected all the peer‐reviewed publications in conference proceedings and scholarly journals in EBSCOhost, Scopus, Informit A+ Education, ProQuest Academic Research Library and Google Scholar, and conducted a content analysis of the full‐text papers collected. The results show that the reported studies are at an early exploratory stage from both the student and staff perspectives. From the student perspective, the iPad was found to enhance the learning experience but not necessarily lead to better learning outcomes. From the staff perspective, the iPad was found to offer benefits associated with electronic information dissemination, academic administration and professional development support. A finding common to both perspectives is that while the iPad has the potential to offer benefits to the academics and students who were found to be eager adopters of this technology, it is not clear how best to align and integrate it within the academic programmes and workflows, and how best to manage it as a resource within a university's organisational setting.     

A cross-cultural study of possible iatrogenic effects of gifted education programs: tenth graders’ perceptions of academically high performing classmates

Previous empirical studies have yielded inconclusive results about peer perceptions of academically high performing students. The purpose of this study was to investigate students’ perceptions of the intellectual ability, positive social qualities, and popularity of a hypothetical new high performing classmate. Participants were 1060 Vietnamese, South Korean, British, Australian, Peruvian, and Spanish boys and girls in 10th grade. The results revealed that the perceptions of academically high performing classmates differed by country group. Positive perceptions of intellectual ability and social qualities were commonly found in all countries except the two Asian countries (Vietnam and South Korea), where the students reported more neutral views of high performers. In conclusion, it is argued that there is no evidence for possible iatrogenic effects of gifted education programs aiming at high achievements     

Agreement on Childhood Disability between Parents and Teachers in Vietnam

The purpose of the present study was to examine agreement on childhood disability among the teachers and parents of children with cognitive delays in Vietnam. The participants were 57 teachers in kindergarten programmes (for children 2 to 6 years of age), and 106 mothers and 93 fathers of the children attending these kindergarten programmes. The data were collected using the ABILITIES Index and a demographic information form. The results indicated that teachers rated the children’s level of functioning more severely, especially in the areas of intellectual disabilities and behaviour problems, than mothers and fathers. Logistic regression that examined the factors that predicted the agreement and disagreement among parents and teachers revealed that teachers and parents were more likely to agree when the child’s disability was genetically related or physical. Screening, diagnosis and treatment issues can become more challenging for children with intellectual disabilities who do not have such physical and genetic conditions, especially when the agreement between parents and professionals on the conditions of the children is low.     

An inquiry-based practicum model: What knowledge,practices, and relationships typify empowering teaching and learning experiences for student teachers,cooperating teachers and college supervisors?

The author examines an inquiry-based teaching/learning model involving diverse members of learning communities. A triad of cooperating teachers, student teachers, and a college supervisor engaged in ongoing and purposeful discourse to explore the teacher–learner (expert–novice) reciprocity, school culture and social relations. In their efforts to broaden and deepen their intellectual exchange, they interrogated their own and one another's beliefs, values, and perspectives about who owns knowledge and how knowledge is distributed/shared. This reflective and reflexive process helped to enhance their knowledge, practices, relationships, and practicum experience.     

The effect of performance support and training on performer attitudes

While training has been a proven and heavily relied on intervention to impart job‐enabling information to performers, its ability to have a positive effect on job performance has been demonstrated to diminish over time. One intervention that has been adopted by performance technologists to provide ongoing support is an electronic performance support system (EPSS). The study presented here examined the effect of EPSS and training on user attitudes. Results revealed that participants receiving only EPSS and those receiving training and EPSS had significantly higher attitudes than participants who received only training. Recommendations on how to best combine and implement these performance interventions based on these data are discussed.