Exploring the Cultural Context of School Improvement in Thailand

As education becomes a global enterprise, policies and practices derived from a particular cultural context are finding their way into educational systems that differ significantly from their land of origin. The article explores the cultural context of school improvement in Thailand, a developing Asian nation. Although Thailand is rapidly integrating into the global culture, it retains a strongly traditional set of cultural values and norms. Drawing upon literature review and case study data, we examine the changing nature of successful school improvement in Thailand during this period of rapid cultural transition. We also discuss implications for school improvement more generally.     

Tool Support for Teaching the Personal Software Process

Software engineering education can be viewed as a challenging task. Computer science students tend to focus on the programming aspects of a project, and take a “hacking approach” to completing a project, rather than viewing the process. Our course material includes teaching the Personal Software Process (PSP). Students are required to produce defect and effort metrics, as well as project summary reports. Tools to assist information recording and production of reports are difficult for students to access. The cost in terms of financial and learning time is usually too high at the educational level to justify using commercial tools that are available for the professional software engineer. We have developed a tool—Personal Assistant for Software Engineers—to aid students in the learning of the PSP. The tool has been successfully used in four subjects for a semester. Following feedback and evaluation, it has been redesigned, and is currently in stage two. The tool has been useful for students, and has automated the previous manual process of producing time and defect reports, along with project summaries, thus allowing them to focus on the meaning of the information.     

Divergent production in gifted adolescents using timed vs. untimed stimuli with creative prompting

Although creativity and expertise are related, they are nonetheless very different things. Expertise does not usually require creativity, but creativity generally does require a certain level of expertise. There are similarities in the relationships of both expertise and creativity to domains, however. Research has shown that just as expertise in one domain does not predict expertise in other, unrelated domains, creativity in one domain does not predict creativity in other, unrelated domains. People may be expert, and people may be creative, in many domains, or they may be expert, or creative, in few domains or none at all, and one cannot simply transfer expertise, or creativity, from one domain to another, unrelated domain. The domain specificity of creativity matters crucially for creativity training, creativity assessment, creativity research, and creativity theory. The domain specificity of creativity also means that interdisciplinary thinking, interdisciplinary collaboration, and interdisciplinary creativity are even more important than one would assume if creativity were domain general.     

Assessing working students' college experiences: a grounded theory approach

This study explores working students' college experiences using the grounded theory approach. Focus groups were conducted to allow working students to elaborate on their college experiences, clarifying issues not easily addressed through surveys. Two theoretical propositions are offered to describe how working students are constantly searching for meaningful work as well as meaning in their work. It is important for institutions to consider work as an educationally purposeful activity outside classroom and to create job opportunities that benefit students academically, socially and financially.