A reflective learning taxonomy for an educational tour

This study is to investigate the reflective learning in a group of secondary school students who participated in an educational tour to Liannan, which is located in a rural area in Guangdong Province, Mainland China. The specific aim is to develop a framework to describe the learning in an educational tour. For this purpose, data were collected through students?? reflective writing in daily journals and end-of-trip sharing passages, triangulated with participant observation and interviews. The data analysis involved the use of grounded theory??s constant-comparative technique??an inductive method for generating hypotheses that are grounded in data. During the analysis of the data, the types of student learning which emerged were categorized in a Reflective Learning Taxonomy for an educational tour, comprising seven levels which are developmental in nature. The interpretative framework based on such a taxonomy of reflective learning reveals the rich context of learning in an educational tour and so makes a contribution to research on learning outside the classroom.     

Continuity of Care: Primary Caregiving in Singapore

Early Childhood Education Journal - Child care centres in many developed countries have expanded exponentially due to the increased participation of women in the workforce. Consequently, children...     

The evolution of a hybrid classroom: Introducing online learning to educators in American samoa

TechTrends - This case study suggests that the process of designing and facilitating hybrid courses in the island community of American Samoa required continuous negotiation with respect to the...     

Privatization Or Marketization: Educational Development in Post-Mao China

In the post-Mao era, the reformers have taken significant steps to privatize social policy and social welfare. Revamping the social security system and commodifying social services have become more prominent since the mid-eighties. Despite the post-Mao leaders' discomfort about the term "privatization", signs of state withdrawal from the provision of social policy and welfare are clear. The author argues that the emergence of private educational institutions indicates that China's educational development has gone through a similar process of privatization or quasi-marketization though the Chinese experience is different from that of Western counterparts. Specifically, this paper tries to examine how the flourishing market economy and the policy of decentralization have affected the development of China's higher education. No longer solely relying on public schools, private and minban (people run) educational institutions are becoming more popular in the new socialist market system. This paper attempts to examine how privatization and quasi- marketization have affected educational development in mainland China. The paper concludes with a discussion of the policy implications of the privatization of education in China.     

Effects of active learning classrooms on student learning: a two-year empirical investigation on student perceptions and academic performance

Recent studies on active learning classrooms (ACLs) have demonstrated their positive influence on student learning. However, most of the research evidence is derived from a few subject-specific courses or limited student enrolment. Empirical studies on this topic involving large student populations are rare. The present work involved a large-scale two-year study that examined the effects of ACL on student perceptions of their learning experience and the relationship with academic performance in a General Education programme. An institutional survey was used to gather more than 35,000 units of student perception data from all 306 courses in the programme. Our empirical findings show that students thought courses that adopted an ACL as the key learning environment were significantly better designed and more encouraging of student creativity and innovation than courses which used regular classrooms; thus, student perceptions were improved. We are also the first to report that this positive effect on creativity and innovation is statistically unaffected by academic performance, with high, middle and low achievers all benefiting from the use of the facility. The results suggest that ACLs are better environments for nurturing innovation for all students, regardless of their academic ability.     

学马列要精,要管用——学习《邓小平文选》第三卷的体会

学马列要精,要管用是学习马列主义、毛泽东思想的目的、态度和方法。学习的目的在于应用,在于指导实践。学习态度必须坚持理论联系实际的学风。学习方法坚持少而精,学习和掌握马克思主义的立场、观点和方法。     

Massifying and internationalising higher education,changing labour markets and social mobility: challenges for education and urban governance

ABSTRACT

The major objective of this introductory article is to set the wider policy context for the present special issue with a particular focus to examine how the massification and internationalisation of higher education has taken place in Asia. More specifically, this introduction highlights the major arguments of articles being adopted in this issue. The contributions have been selected and gathered from presentations in various regional and international research events held in the last few years. Having experienced the growing pressure for enhancing their global competitiveness, governments in Asia are determined to expand their higher education systems to provide more learning opportunities for addressing pressing educational demand, putting additional resources to internationalising student experience and raising the research profile in order to quest for regional education hub and world-class university status. However, the rapid expansion of higher education has indeed created more university graduates than the labour market could fully absorb. It has become problematic when the global market currently experiences economic stagnation. This special issue sets out against such a political economy context to examine issues related to changing labour conditions, youth mobility and challenges for education and urban governance.     

Use of information technology and music learning in the search for quality education

This paper focuses on the paradigm shift in teaching that has resulted from the use of information technology (IT) and the ways in which IT in the curriculum enhances music learning in Hong Kong. In 1998 the government proposed a five‐year strategy plan, Information Technology for Quality Education, and since this time the Hong Kong education system has changed rapidly, with increasing demands on teachers to upgrade their technological skills and practices. Semi‐structured interviews concerning concepts of IT with 29 primary and secondary school teachers and their 543 students, held between February and August 2002, give situation‐specific insights into their views. The paper concludes that when IT is carefully planned, designed and integrated into good music practice in classrooms, it can support students’ motivation and enhance the quality of learning.