扎根于“微”拓展到“远”和“宏”的测控专业教学体系建设研究

测控专业的首要任务是培养能够设计制造仪器仪表的专业人才,其次是仪器仪表的应用、维护。目前测控专业毕业生多从事控制或电子信息相关行业,在仪器仪表制造行业竞争力不足,因此强调扎根于"微",拓展到"远"和"宏"的培养模式与课程体系,以提高仪器仪表设计制造人才的素质和能力,提高本专业人才的培养效率、质量及毕业生的就业竞争力。     

Online activities of urban Malaysian adolescents: report of a pilot study

The literacy practices of many communities today show new ways of meaning making in the contemporary, technological and digital culture. A number of Malaysian adolescents belong to this culture. This pilot study reports the preliminary findings of a larger study aimed at describing the online activities of Malaysian adolescents. Fifty‐four participants from an urban secondary school in Penang took part in this study. One finding showed that the percentages of language use on the Internet were: 80.6 per cent in English, 10.6 per cent in Bahasa Malaysia and 8.8 per cent in Chinese. In addition, the study also revealed some common websites that these adolescents frequented. The findings point to the need to investigate the extent of these online literacy practices beyond school among the adolescent population in Malaysia and to look into the implications for ESL education.     

Creating thinking schools through authentic assessment: the case in Singapore

Using Singapore as an example, we argue that schools need to equip and encourage teachers to adopt authentic assessment in teaching and learning so as to develop the students’ higher-order thinking. The importance of teaching and assessing higher-order thinking in Singapore classrooms is encapsulated in the vision of ‘Thinking Schools’ launched by the Ministry of Education in 1997. Underpinning this vision is a shift from conventional assessment to authentic assessment. Unlike conventional paper-and-pencil tests that focus on knowledge reproduction and low-level cognitive processing skills in artificial, contrived contexts, authentic assessment tasks underscore knowledge construction, complex thinking, elaborated communication, collaboration and problem solving in authentic contexts. However, the creation of thinking schools in Singapore remains a constant challenge as many teachers tend to rely on conventional assessment and are often ill-prepared to implement authentic assessment. By presenting the findings from a recent empirical study, we propose that schools build teacher capacity by providing ongoing and sustained professional development on authentic assessment for teachers.     

Styles of creativity: Adaptors and innovators in a singapore context

Kirton (1976) described two creative styles, namely adaptors and innovators. Adaptors prefer to “do things better ” whilst, innovators prefer to “do things differently ”. This study explored the relationship between two creative styles (adaptor and innovator) and the Big Five personality traits (extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness to experience) and how they subscribe to creativity, risks and goal orientations. A total of 206 Polytechnic students from Singapore completed a self-report questionnaire, which consisted of the Kirton Adaptation-Innovation Inventory (Kirton, 1976), NEO-Five Factor Inventory (Saucier, 1994), Learning Goal Scale (Ng, 2003), What Kind of Person Are You Self-Report Inventory (Khatena & Torrance, 1976), Gough’s Creative Adjective Checklist, Risk Scenario, and Risk Taking Attitude Scale developed by Ng. It was found that adaptors were significantly more conscientious and subscribe to risk avoidance, ego approach and ego avoidance orientations than innovators, whilst, innovators were significantly more extraverted and open to experience and are likely to subscribe to creativity, risk taking and mastery goal orientations than adaptors. No significant differences were found between adaptors and innovators in agreeableness. The implications for the findings for the classroom teacher will also be discussed.     

School–Parent Partnerships in Singapore

In an era of rapid global economic and social change, educational institutions like schools and universities are struggling to keep their curricula and programs relevant. Singapore’s schools are no exception, especially when education is viewed as the essential element for maintaining the nation’s global competitiveness in ways that are totally disproportionate to its size. The current shift from an ‘efficiency-’ to an ‘ability-’ driven paradigm in education, however, is increasing uncertainty and raising the stakes in an already pressurized system where schools, educators and students constantly compete for top academic awards and rewards. The concept of “partnership” in Singapore education is a significant, relatively new, trend that has caught on among local schools only since the late-1990s, with the focus on creating better “total” learning environments for students. This paper analyses the challenges of matching rhetoric with professional practice with regard to school–home partnerships in Singapore, and concludes that the key to authentic collaboration lies in the mutual appreciation and valuing of diversity as well as a deep sense of shared responsibility by all parties concerned.     

Understanding mobile digital worlds: how do Australian adolescents relate to mobile technology?

ABSTRACT

Various responses to the ideas of a digital disconnect between home and school include the call for a more thoughtful exploration of the relationship between formal and informal uses of technologies. Studies have indicated the complex and interacting influences on patterns of technology use at home and at school, including patterns of Web 2.0 use that do not align with common assumptions about the characteristics of current students. Together, these studies indicate that we need more nuanced insights into how today’s students relate to available digital technologies if we are to build appropriately on their experiences in education. The current research investigates quantitatively mobile digital practices and literacy as well as attitudes in over 1140 school students in the first years (7–10) of secondary education in Australia in order to enrich insights into these students as learners in contemporary classrooms. The implications of the research for teaching are discussed.     

There Is Water Everywhere: How News Framing Amplifies the Effect of Ecological Worldviews on Preference for Flooding Protection Policy

The purpose of this study is to examine the interactive effect of worldviews and media frames on policy preference. Using flooding as a case study, we examine the interplay of ecological worldviews and news framed as either emphasizing harmony with nature or mastery over nature on individuals' preference for flood protection policy. A total of 255 undergraduate students participated in a 2 (ecological worldviews: balance-with-nature vs. human-domination-over-nature) × 2 (media frames: harmony frame vs. mastery frame) between-subjects experiment. The findings indicate that both the balance-with-nature worldview and the human-domination-over-nature worldview have significant impacts on preference for flood protection policy. Furthermore, the harmony frame amplified the effect of the balance-with-nature worldview in supporting a natural approach to flood protection. In contrast, the mastery frame amplified the effect of the human-domination-over-nature worldview on the preference for a structural approach to flood protection. Implications are discussed.     

Acculturation strategies, social support, and cross-cultural adaptation: a mediation analysis

Previous acculturation research has established the influences of acculturation strategies and social support on cross-cultural adaptation. The present study attempted to elaborate these direct associations by proposing that social support and the use of the integration and marginalization strategies might affect psychological adaptation indirectly, via their influences on sociocultural adaptation. Two hundred and twelve Mainland Chinese students studying at a university in Hong Kong completed measures of psychological and sociocultural adaptation, the integration and marginalization strategies, and social support. Analyses using structural equation modeling (SEM) showed that sociocultural adaptation significantly mediated the effects of integration, marginalization, and social support on psychological adaptation. The direct impacts of social support and the two acculturation strategies on psychological adaptation were not significant. A multigroup SEM analysis revealed no gender differences in the full mediation model. Implications of the findings are discussed.     

Rethinking the mission of internationalization of higher education in the Asia-Pacific region

This article adopts the critical theory approach to reflect and analyse the impacts of globalization on the internationalization process of higher education in the Asia-Pacific region. It argues that globalization forces many of the higher education institutions in the region to follow global practices and ideologies of the Anglo-American paradigm without developing their own unique systems and honouring the rich cultures of their own countries. While higher education institutions are indulging in internationalization in terms of marketization and economic pragmatism, they have to ask themselves, ‘What is missing in the process of internationalization?’ This article argues that internationalization of higher education contributes to building more than economically competitive and politically powerful states. It represents a commitment to the development of an internationalized curriculum where the pursuit of global citizenship, human harmony and a climate of global peace is of paramount importance.