National identity and its relationship with teachers' historical knowledge and pedagogy: the case of Taiwan

National identity is one of the most important forms of ideology that affects human behaviours. Yet, the issue of whether it influences history teachers' subject matter knowledge or teaching practice is overlooked most of the time. With regime change in Taiwan, history curriculum and textbooks are no longer dominated by a China-centred narrative; more Taiwanese history is included in the curriculum. Given the fact that the Taiwanese are split on the issue of national identity, it is important to understand if and how teachers vary in their historical knowledge and instruction. This study examines the issue by investigating the relationships between Taiwanese junior high school history teachers' national identities, their subject matter knowledge and teaching practices. The result indicates that teachers' national identities significantly relate to their historical knowledge and conceptions about history, but bear no relationship to their teaching approaches. Pro-independence teachers have significantly more knowledge in both Taiwanese and Chinese histories and have better conceptions about the nature of history, but they do not necessarily choose to provide students multiple perspectives and interpretations. The implications for democratic citizenship education and teacher education are discussed.     

Being a ‘Purist’ in Hong Kong: To Use or Not to Use Mixed Code

This paper reports on my first‐hand experiences of being a ‘purist’ in Hong Kong, during which time I was not allowed to use mixed code, a common discursive practice among Hongkongers in Hong Kong. I shall discuss the difficulties in using ‘pure’ English and ‘pure’ Chinese in my daily life, as well as exploring the problems I encountered when I used ‘pure’ English in teaching English to a small group of ESL students at a primary school in Hong Kong. I argue that mixed code is very much characteristic of everyday language use by most Hongkongers and represents an important marker of their ethno‐linguistic identity. In relation to language teaching, I suggest that mixed code may be usefully adopted in teaching English in Hong Kong, rather than being shunned at all costs.     

The impact of after-school programs on educational equality and private tutoring expenses

The purpose of this study was to examine how the implementation of after-school programs in Korea’s public schools is related to educational equality and private tutoring expenses. The analyzed data was from the Survey on the Status of Private Tutoring and the Study of the Policy Measures to Reduce Private Tutoring Expenses conducted by KEDI (Korea Education Development Institute) in (International conference for exploring the ways to activate the after-school program, KEDI, Seoul, 2007). The Chi-square test was employed to investigate (a) the relationship between after-school participation and family income and residential location of students (b) the association between after-school engagement and the reduction in private tutoring expenses. The study found that: (a) in general, low-income and rural students participated more than higher income and urban peers in after-school programs and (b) after-school participation was generally negatively associated with private tutoring engagement and the impact of after-school participation on the reduction in private tutoring expenses was stronger for low-income students in elementary and high schools and rural students in high schools. The overall findings provide further research issue regarding whether after-school programs can help foster educational equality by offering more opportunities for learning and achievement improvement for disadvantaged students. The results also imply the potential of after-school programs in reducing private tutoring expenses, particularly for low-income families.     

“American = English Speaker” Before “American = White”: The Development of Children's Reasoning About Nationality

Adults implicitly judge people from certain social backgrounds as more “American” than others. This study tests the development of children's reasoning about nationality and social categories. Children across cultures (White and Korean American children in the United States, Korean children in South Korea) judged the nationality of individuals varying in race and language. Across cultures, 5‐ to 6‐year‐old children (N = 100) categorized English speakers as “American” and Korean speakers as “Korean” regardless of race, suggesting that young children prioritize language over race when thinking about nationality. Nine‐ and 10‐year‐olds (N = 181) attended to language and race and their nationality judgments varied across cultures. These results suggest that associations between nationality and social category membership emerge early in life and are shaped by cultural context.     

Decentralized adaptive output-feedback control of interconnected nonlinear time-delay systems using minimal neural networks

This paper presents a minimal-neural-networks-based design approach for the decentralized output-feedback tracking of uncertain interconnected strict-feedback nonlinear systems with unknown time-varying delayed interactions unmatched in control inputs. Compared with existing approximation-based decentralized output-feedback designs using multiple neural networks for each subsystem in lower triangular form, the main contribution of this paper is to provide a new recursive backstepping strategy for a local memoryless output-feedback controller design using only one neural network for each subsystem regardless of the order of subsystems, unmeasurable states, and unknown unmatched and delayed nonlinear interactions. In the proposed strategy, error surfaces are designed using unmeasurable states instead of measurable states and virtual controllers are regarded as intermediate signals for designing a local control law at the last step. Using Lyapunov stability theorem and the performance function technique, it is shown that all signals of the total controlled closed-loop system are bounded and the transient and steady-state performance bounds of local tracking errors can be preselected by adjusting design parameters independent of delayed interactions.     

Use of NSE/PS2m-transgenic mice in the study of the protective effect of exercise on Alzheimer's disease

In its late stage, Alzheimer's disease results in progressive muscle weakness in the arms and legs. The aim of this study was to determine whether mice expressing the skeletal muscle-specific mutant PS2 gene (a model of Alzheimer's disease) are a useful experimental system to study the protective effect of exercise on Aβ-42 reduction, improvement of behavioural function and changes in metabolic parameters. With this aim in mind, the transgenic mice were subjected to treadmill exercise for 3 months. The results showed that in transgenic mice, but not in normal mice, treadmill exercise resulted in a reduction of Aβ-42 deposits and an improvement in behavioural function, thereby restoring normal concentrations of total cholesterol, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol and triglyceride. Thus, exercise may represent a practical therapeutic strategy for use with human patients with Alzheimer's disease.     

A study on the motivational aspects of information management practice

This research investigates the motivational aspects of information management practice by developing and performing an initial test of the theorization on the components and structural properties of a new variable, called information management motivation (IMM). Based on a synthesis of the motivation and information processing literature in the information systems, psychology, management, and information technology training fields, we theorize IMM as a second order construct composed of formative sub-constructs of proactiveness, sharing, transparency, and formality. New measures were developed for the constituent constructs of IMM and refined through two studies involving 120 knowledge workers. The model of IMM was tested, confirming the proposed structural relationships between the constituent constructs and IMM. The study findings provide important insights on understanding and improving individual knowledge workers’ information management activities.