Learning approaches: examination type,discipline of study,and gender

A sample of 248 Australian university students participated in a study that investigated the influence of assessment type and discipline of study on students' learning approaches. Participants (93 psychology and 155 business students) responded to the Study Process Questionnaire in a context of preparation for a hypothetical examination. The hypothetical examination is in either a multiple‐choice or an essay format. Results indicated that assessment type had no significant influence on how students approach their learning, while discipline did have significant influence on student learning.     

Job Satisfaction and Withdrawal Cognition among Preservice Teachers

This study attempts to survey the different levels of job satisfaction among 350 preservice teachers who had experienced their first teaching practicum at the end of their first year of training. Four scales for job satisfaction (perception of the work environment, intrinsic reward, career prospects and career commitment) and a scale for withdrawal cognition were administered to the preservice teachers. A study of their attitude profiles revealed that a high proportion of the preservice teachers experienced negative feelings about various aspects of career prospects, particularly, salary and career advancement. In the area of career commitment, nearly 37% of the trainees felt that the teaching profession was not always their ambition. Despite the less‐than‐expected commitment level and perception of career prospects, trainees had positive feelings for the work environment and intrinsic reward for the profession in many aspects. A multiple‐regression model fitted to the data gave the result that perception of career prospects and career commitment were highly significant predictors of withdrawal cognition.     

The Malaysian Teacher Standards: a look at the challenges and implications for teacher educators

Talks of education transformation to improve the quality and outcomes of education in Malaysia culminated in the articulation of standards for teachers. The all new Malaysian Teacher Standards (MTS) launched in 2009 is to establish ??high competency?? standards for the teaching profession and to increase the status of teachers in Malaysia. This article briefly describes the standards that concern teachers and teacher educators alike. It is proposed that there are three challenges to the standards system that teacher educators may face. First, on transforming ingrained beliefs, values and biased perceptions of teaching that student teachers bring to the teaching institution. The second centers on the rhetoric-reality gap of the MTS itself, while the third challenge involves the actual training of teachers. Given these three challenges, this article also outlines several avenues for teacher educators to consider as they set out to better understand and re-design teacher education programs in this standards-based era of educational transformation. The discussion of the challenges and the proposed resources to meet the challenges are by no means exhaustive or acts as a conclusion but rather to create awareness for further discussion and analysis of the implications proposed in this article.     

Young children's number sense in Finland,Hong Kong and Singapore

This study examines young children's number sense in subjects from Finland (n=254), Hong Kong (n=246), and Singapore (n=130). Chinese, English and Finnish versions of the Early Numeracy Test (ENT; Van Luit et al., 1994) were used. Two highly correlated aspects of number sense were measured, one reflecting children's abilities to organize and compare quantities (i.e. relational skills), and the other pertaining to their ability to operate with number-word sequence (i.e. counting skills). The results showed significant age-related gain on the relational and counting scales. No gender or language differences were found. The children in Hong Kong and Singapore outperformed those in Finland in relational and counting tasks starting at the age of four years. The children in Singapore also had better relational and counting skills than those in Hong Kong. Differences in teaching were assumed to explain the findings.     

Learning environment associated with use of mixed mode delivery model among secondary business studies students in Singapore

At many teacher education institutes around the world, preservice teachers are empowered to use pedagogical tools and strategies that engage their students. We used a modified version of the Constructivist Learning Environment Survey (CLES) to evaluate the effectiveness of a pedagogical model known as the Mixed Mode Delivery (MMD) model in terms of the CLES’s five scales of personal relevance, uncertainty, critical voice, shared control and negotiation. Comparisons were made between 2,216 secondary school students taught by the preservice teachers in an MMD group and 991 students in a control group in terms of the relative magnitudes of the gap between the actual and preferred learning environment in students’ school classrooms. The findings supported the positive impact of using MMD in terms of students’ perceptions of their classroom environments for all CLES scales.     

Tunable spatial heterogeneity in structure and composition within aqueous microfluidic droplets

In this paper, we demonstrate biphasic microfluidic droplets with broadly tunable internal structures, from simple near-equilibrium drop-in-drop morphologies to complex yet uniform non-equilibrium steady-state structures. The droplets contain an aqueous mixture of poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) and dextran and are dispensed into an immiscible oil in a microfluidic T-junction device. Above a certain well-defined threshold droplet speed, the inner dextran-rich phase is "stirred" within the outer PEG-rich phase. The stirred polymer mixture is observed to exhibit a near continuum of speed and composition-dependent phase morphologies. There is increasing interest in the use of such aqueous two-phase systems in microfluidic devices for biomolecular applications in a variety of contexts. Our work presents a method to go beyond equilibrium phase morphologies in generating microfluidic "multiple" emulsions and at the same time raises the possibility of biochemical experimentation in benign yet complex biomimetic milieus.     

Differences between Chinese and Australian students: some implications for distance educators.

First year undergraduate Business and Computing Chinese students studying on‐campus in Australia and from Confucian cultural heritage societies were compared with first year Australian undergraduate students of the same courses using Entwistle and Ramsden's (1983) Approaches to Studying Inventory (ASI). Results were analysed for each ASI scale using analyses of variance. Significant differences were shown for a number of scales, with implications for the design and delivery of effective off‐shore distance education directed towards Confucian heritage cultures. The results are discussed in a context of the factor structure identified for Chinese students by Smith, Miller and Crassini (1998) with a view to informing instructional decision‐making.     

A knowledge management perspective on Art Education

This paper applies concepts drawn from KM to Art Education. Specifically, the purpose of this paper is to study the knowledge types, knowledge sources, knowledge processes as well as factors affecting these processes in Art Education. The research was carried out using an interpretative case study methodology in Singapore. Apart from 26 one-to-one interviews conducted with various stakeholders of the Art Education community, on-site observations were made at 19 different Art Education events. Four major findings emerged. One, the knowledge types of Art Education in Singapore were a blend of different knowledge domains. Two, perceptible knowledge sources were those which conveyed an appearance of authority. Three, knowledge processes in Art Education were steeply humanistic. Finally, factors that affected knowledge processes were (i) the highly competitive Singapore education system, (ii) management support and policies, (iii) personal values and interests, (iv) workload and (v) the absorptive capacity of Art teachers. This paper concludes with a number of research and practical implications.     

Teacher preparation in Malaysia: needed changes

The article attempts to present personal views of some changes that are needed to be made within teacher education in Malaysia. It uses one teacher education university as a point of reference to forward concerns. The university remains anonymous as it is not the intent of the article to critique the university but rather to highlight the more general challenges in preparing preservice teachers and to explore some approaches to improve teacher education within this university and its setting. The article starts by drawing together a set of concerns that face the field, arguing that three changes are needed to improve teacher preparation, namely (1) a curriculum that is grounded in the Malaysian context, (2) an improved practicum experience, and (3) to develop and situate practices in the schools. It concludes that the efforts to change within teacher education will not be easy, but needful; else the ultimate losers are the future teachers and their students.