Linguistic intergroup bias tells ingroup/outgroup orientation of bicultural Asian Americans

Traditional studies of ethnic relations focus on racialization between Whites and Blacks, or ethnic stratification between Whites and people of color. This study aims at broadening conventional studies of interethnic relations to examine racial attitudes among people who have internalized more than one culture – i.e., the biculturals and multiculturals. Social psychological research suggests that bicultural individuals are capable of switching between two cultural meaning frames depending on contextual demands. Bicultural individuals vary in how well they integrate the two cultural identities internalized in them – i.e., their bicultural identity integration levels (BII levels). Their BII levels lead to either culturally congruent or culturally incongruent behaviors among bicultural individuals. The underlying assumption of linguistic intergroup bias indicates that people tend to describe more abstractly observed positive ingroup behaviors and negative outgroup behaviors and describe more concretely observed negative ingroup behaviors and positive outgroup behaviors. In this study, bicultural Asian American participants are hypothesized to use language of either higher or lower abstraction to describe actions of positive and negative valence performed by either ethnic Asians or European Americans depending on the cultural priming they received and their BII levels. The demonstrated pattern of ingroup enhancement and outgroup derogation of the bicultural participants point out the perceived ingroup/outgroup orientation of these biculturals towards their coethnics and people of the mainstream culture. Effects of the cultural priming and impact of BII levels are also discussed.     

Investigation of High School Students’ Online Science Information Searching Performance: The Role of Implicit and Explicit Strategies

Due to a growing trend of exploring scientific knowledge on the Web, a number of studies have been conducted to highlight examination of students’ online searching strategies. The investigation of online searching generally employs methods including a survey, interview, screen-capturing, or transactional logs. The present study firstly intended to utilize a survey, the Online Information Searching Strategies Inventory (OISSI), to examine users’ searching strategies in terms of control, orientation, trial and error, problem solving, purposeful thinking, selecting main ideas, and evaluation, which is defined as implicit strategies. Second, this study conducted screen-capturing to investigate the students’ searching behaviors regarding the number of keywords, the quantity and depth of Web page exploration, and time attributes, which is defined as explicit strategies. Ultimately, this study explored the role that these two types of strategies played in predicting the students’ online science information searching outcomes. A total of 103 Grade 10 students were recruited from a high school in northern Taiwan. Through Pearson correlation and multiple regression analyses, the results showed that the students’ explicit strategies, particularly the time attributes proposed in the present study, were more successful than their implicit strategies in predicting their outcomes of searching science information. The participants who spent more time on detailed reading (explicit strategies) and had better skills of evaluating Web information (implicit strategies) tended to have superior searching performance.     

Autonomy and Acceptance of Long-Term Care

This study explored the relationship between four types of autonomy (health autonomy, informational autonomy, living autonomy, and financial autonomy) and the acceptance of five types of long-term care (adult day care, respite care, assisted living, unit care, and group home) for the elderly in Taiwan. Data were collected from 167 middle-aged and older people. The acceptance of five types of long-term care ranged from 75.9–84.9%. Financial autonomy and information autonomy were significantly related to acceptance of all five types of long-term care. Living autonomy is related to assisted living and group homes. Policy implications are discussed.     

The impact of multilevel factors on technology integration: the case of Taiwanese grade 1–9 teachers and schools

Technology integration is influenced by many factors related to the teacher and the school environment. While many studies have examined factors that influence teachers’ use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) at the teacher level, a growing number of studies have suggested that it is beneficial to examine those factors using multilevel modeling. Multilevel analysis can separate the impact of teachers from the school environment and provide insight into the influence of those factors at each level. This study uses multilevel modeling to analyze data from 3,652 grade 1–9 teachers in 289 schools in Taiwan. The results of this multilevel analysis found both teacher-level and school-level factors contributing to the integration of ICT in the teaching process. Among teacher level factors, teachers’ beliefs and hours of training in the previous year predicted ICT integration proficiency well. Among school level factors, training hours and teachers’ perceived school support are the most important factors that impact ICT integration. School support is not only a significant factor at the school level but also a strong predictor at the teacher level. In addition, important school level variables included access to Internet connectivity, availability of projectors, and stability of computers. These results highlight the importance of individual teachers and the role schools play in ICT integration.     

A context-aware ubiquitous learning approach for providing instant learning support in personal computer assembly activities

Personal computer assembly courses have been recognized as being essential in helping students understand computer structure as well as the functionality of each computer component. In this study, a context-aware ubiquitous learning approach is proposed for providing instant assistance to individual students in the learning activity of a computer-assembly course. In addition to comparing the learning achievements and learning satisfaction of the students who learned with context-aware ubiquitous learning and conventional technology-enhanced instruction, the computer-assembling performance, cognitive load, learning perceptions, as well as the learning attitudes of the students are also discussed. It was found that those students utilizing context-aware ubiquitous learning achieved better effects than those with conventional technology-enhanced learning. Moreover, with context-aware ubiquitous learning, the field-independent students presented higher acceptance of cognitive load, and more positive learning experience, learning perceptions, learning satisfaction, and learning attitudes than the field-dependent students.     

“iRobiQ”: the influence of bidirectional interaction on kindergarteners’ reading motivation,literacy, and behavior

This study focused on an intelligent robot which was viewed as a language teaching/learning tool to improve children’s reading ability, reading interest, and learning behavior. The iRobiQ, with its multimedia contents, was employed to encourage children to read, speak, and answer questions. Fifty-seven pre-kindergarteners participated in this study, and they were divided into an experimental group (30 children using iRobiQ) and a control group (27 children using a tablet-PC). After 2 months of experiments, the reading ability of the experimental group was better than that of the control group. It was found that using iRobiQ as a learning tool had many advantages, for example, the enhancement of learners’ reading literacy, in comparison with the use of tablet-PC. In this study, there were three interesting findings: (1) iRobiQ is a more effective learning companion as compared to tablet-PC; (2) iRobiQ is a bidirectional interactive toy; and (3) iRobiQ can foster and promote the peer collaboration and competition because it has intriguing characteristics, particularly its communicative and interactive functions. The bidirectional interactive robots allow pre-kindergarten teachers to create more active and interactive learning environment for children and provide the children with more various learning contents.     

The impact of alternative approaches to comforting,closeness of relationship,and gender on multiple measures of effectiveness

The impact of 6 approaches to comforting (suggesting a diversion, expressing optimism, providing an external account, offering assistance, explaining the perspective of the offender, and a combination of the first 5), attributed to either a good friend or a casual acquaintance, was assessed for 2 situations by 394 students. Distressed individuals responded to comforting messages along two dimension: feeling less upset and feeling demeaned, with some indications that yet a third dimension (appreciating the concern of the comforter) may exist. The message that combined elements from the other 5 approaches yielded generally the most positive responses, but responses to specific message approaches varied with situation and dimension of response. Messages from good friends were more successful than those from casual acquaintances in helping the distressed individual to feel less upset.     

Establishing the Criterion-related,Construct, and Content Validities of a Simulation-based Assessment of Inquiry Abilities

The emphasis on scientific inquiry has increased the importance in developing the fundamental abilities to conduct scientific investigations and urged a need for valid assessments of students' inquiry abilities. We took advantage of the advanced technology to develop a simulation-based assessment of inquiry abilities (SAIA) that allowed students to generate scientific explanations and demonstrate their experimental abilities. This paper describes the validation of the assessment. Data were collected from 48 12th-grade students at a local high school who were categorized into three groups based on their program majors. Both quantitative and qualitative approaches were utilized to validate SAIA. The quantitative results showed that SAIA was aligned with a validated reasoning-skill test (criterion-related validity), discriminated variance among different groups (construct validity), and was highly suitable for examining inquiry abilities (content validity). Additionally, we utilized the think-aloud technique in order to identify the performances exhibited by students while they accomplished the SAIA tasks. The protocol analysis indicated that in general, students demonstrated the expected abilities in SAIA and that their SAIA scores accurately reflected their performance levels of inquiry abilities. The results suggested that SAIA was a valid assessment for evaluating the inquiry abilities of high school students. This study also provided systemic strategies for validating simulation-based assessments.     

Factors Affecting Teachers’ Adoption of Technology in Classrooms: Does School Size Matter?

Researchers in educational technology have searched for factors to explain teachers’ acceptance and resistance to using technology for instruction. Among the many identified factors, however, organizational and school factors have not yet been explored and discussed. This study investigates the effects of school size on science and mathematics teachers’ adoption of technology in classrooms. Using national survey data collected from 940 science and mathematics teachers at junior high schools in Taiwan, we employed factor analyses, log-linear analyses, and three-way ANOVA techniques to examine interactions among school factors and teacher factors. Results obtained from the log-linear analyses suggested that both the interactions of school region with school size and school size with technology users were needed to explain teachers’ use of educational technology in classrooms. It appears that teachers at small schools were more likely to use technology for instructional purposes. Additionally, results of the study revealed that teachers at small schools tended to have positive attitudes toward technology use and that among users of educational technology in southern Taiwan, teachers at small schools designed and used significantly more instructional activities with technology. This study suggests that small schools provide a better environment for science and mathematics teachers to implement educational technology in instruction.