The importance of morphological awareness in Korean–English biliteracy acquisition

This study examined the importance of morphological awareness in Korean–English biliteracy acquisition. English is an opaque orthographic system, in which letters and sounds have indirect correspondences. Korean Hangul, on the other hand, is a transparent orthographic system where there are direct letter-sound correspondences. Sixty-five children from Grades 2 to 4 were tested on a set of comparable Korean and English tasks tapping into oral vocabulary, phonemic awareness, morphological awareness, real word reading, and passage reading comprehension. Results showed that morphological awareness explained a significant amount of variance in word reading and reading comprehension within both Korean Hangul and English, suggesting that morphological awareness is important not only in an opaque orthography but also in a transparent orthography. Furthermore, morphological awareness in one language uniquely predicted a significant amount of variance in reading real words in the other language, suggesting that morphological awareness facilitates word reading across different orthographies.     

Incremental cue phrase learning and bootstrapping method for causality extraction using cue phrase and word pair probabilities

This work aims to extract possible causal relations that exist between noun phrases. Some causal relations are manifested by lexical patterns like causal verbs and their sub-categorization. We use lexical patterns as a filter to find causality candidates and we transfer the causality extraction problem to the binary classification. To solve the problem, we introduce probabilities for word pair and concept pair that could be part of causal noun phrase pairs. We also use the cue phrase probability that could be a causality pattern. These probabilities are learned from the raw corpus in an unsupervised manner. With this probabilistic model, we increase both precision and recall. Our causality extraction shows an F-score of 77.37%, which is an improvement of 21.14 percentage points over the baseline model. The long distance causal relation is extracted with the binary tree-styled cue phrase. We propose an incremental cue phrase learning method based on the cue phrase confidence score that was measured after each causal classifier learning step. A better recall of 15.37 percentage points is acquired after the cue phrase learning.     

IRT Approaches to Modeling Scores on Mixed-Format Tests

This article considers psychometric properties of composite raw scores and transformed scale scores on mixed-format tests that consist of a mixture of multiple-choice and free-response items. Test scores on several mixed-format tests are evaluated with respect to conditional and overall standard errors of measurement, score reliability, and classification consistency and accuracy under three item response theory (IRT) frameworks: unidimensional IRT (UIRT), simple structure multidimensional IRT (SS-MIRT), and bifactor multidimensional IRT (BF-MIRT) models. Illustrative examples are presented using data from three mixed-format exams with various levels of format effects. In general, the two MIRT models produced similar results, while the UIRT model resulted in consistently lower estimates of reliability and classification consistency/accuracy indices compared to the MIRT models.     

‘The best students will learn English’: ultra‐utilitarianism and linguistic imperialism in education in post‐1997 Hong Kong

In September 1997, shortly after China resumed sovereignty over Hong Kong, the Education Department announced a policy which was widely seen as a restoration of 'mother‐tongue education', but which, in reality, was an elitist language selection policy. This policy, which provided for the selection of the best primary school graduates for monolingual education in English, was designed to be a cost‐effective way of training in English skills for those who had the economic and cultural capital to benefit from it. Meanwhile, the majority of students were barred from sufficient exposure to English, the language of power and wealth. In this paper, I shall show that this policy draws on a strong utilitarian discourse about the centrality of English for the economic survival of Hong Kong, which was engineered by business interests on the eve of the changeover in 1997, and which helped perpetuate a form of linguistic imperialism. Meanwhile, academics whose research was used to legitimize the policy, failed to problematize dominant language ideologies that have been used to justify pedagogically unsound practices and an inequitable language streaming policy. Through documenting the voices of individual educators, I am able to delineate counter‐discourses which, albeit weak and isolated, nevertheless manifested much broader educational concerns than the narrow utilitarianism and the unquestioned privileging of the learning of English skills that underlay the current policy.     

Utilizing online learning data to design face-to-face activities in a flipped classroom: a case study of heterogeneous group formation

This study investigates the possibility of utilizing online learning data to design face-to-face activities in a flipped classroom. We focus on heterogeneous group formation for effective collaborative learning. Fifty-three undergraduate students (18 males, 35 females) participated in this study, and 8 students (3 males, 5 females) among them joined post-study interviews. For this study, a total of 6 student characteristics were used: three demographic characteristics obtained from a simple survey and three academic characteristics captured from online learning data. We define three demographic group heterogeneity variables and three academic group heterogeneity variables, where each variable is calculated using the corresponding student characteristic. In this way, each heterogeneity variables represents a degree of diversity within the group. Then, a two-stage hierarchical regression analysis was conducted to identify the significant group heterogeneity variables that influence face-to-face group achievement. The results show that the academic group heterogeneity variables, which were derived from the online learning data, accounted for a significant proportion of the variance in the group achievement when the demographic group heterogeneity variables were controlled. The interviews also reveal that the academic group heterogeneity indeed affected group interaction and learning outcome. These findings highlight that online learning data can be utilized to obtain relevant information for effective face-to-face activity design in a flipped classroom. Based on the results, we discuss the advantages of this data utilization approach and other implications for face-to-face activity design.

     

Learning Classroom Management Through Web-Based Case Instruction: Implications for Early Childhood Teacher Education

In this article, we report a research project on web-based case instruction that was developed and implemented to allow prospective early childhood teachers to be exposed to various dilemmas faced by practicing teachers. The goal of this project was to design an instructional tool and method that could help prospective teachers expand their notion of classroom management beyond a set of techniques. We collected 23 prospective teachers’ pre and postessays before and after the 3-week implementation of the web-based case instruction, along with surveys and a focus group interview data. The initial data analysis results indicated that this instructional method was effective for (a) promoting prospective teachers’ awareness of multiple perspectives, (b) encouraging them to explore diverse ways of problem solving, and (c) articulating their justification based on a sense of moral responsibility and affective engagement. We conclude with implications for future research and early childhood teacher education.

The relationship between students ’ perceptions of classroom environment and their academic achievement in Korea

The classroom has long been recognized as a critical milieu for students ’ educational achievement. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between students ’ perceptions of classroom environment and their academic achievement in Korea. For this study, the Classroom Environment Scale (CES), developed by Moos and Trickett (1987), was revised and translated into Korean. The Korean Classroom Environment Scale (KCES), consisting of nine subscales, was used to measure the psychosocial characteristics of the classroom environment. The data was collected from May to June 2001 from a sample of 1,012 students in 10th and 11th grades at the same school district in Seoul, Korea. The results of ANOVA analysis of the data revealed that there were statistically significant differences in classroom environments according to students ’ school and classroom organizations. Additionally, the results of Pearson ’s simple correlation coefficient analysis showed that the seven subscales in the KCES (i.e., involvement, affiliation, competition, task orientation, order and organization, rule clarity, and teacher control) had a significant correlation with students ’ academic achievement. Furthermore, the results of multiple regression analysis revealed that the multiple correlation (R) between the KCES 9 subscales and students ’ academic achievement was 0.27. Based on these results, it was claimed that classroom environment was a good predictor of students ’ academic achievement.     

The romance and the reality between pre-service teachers’ beliefs about the potential benefits of a short-term study abroad programme and their practices

This qualitative study aimed to explore Hong Kong pre-service teachers’ beliefs about the potential benefits of a short-term study abroad programme and their practices. Pre- and post-programme semi-structured interviews and reflective journals were employed to collect data. The findings suggest that the transformation of beliefs into practices plays a critical role in the actualization of possible learning outcomes, such as increasing the use of the target language, fostering pedagogical development, broadening cultural understanding and nurturing personal growth. The programme per se, however, does not guarantee target language enhancement in a short time. Implications for programme coordinators and future research are discussed.     

Latent variable modeling in the hierarchical modeling framework in longitudinal studies: a fully bayesian approach

This paper presents a strategy for specifying latent variable regressions in the hierarchical modeling framework (LVR-HM). This model takes advantage of the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) approach in terms of modeling flexibility—regression among latent variables—and of the HM approach in terms of allowing for more general data structures. A fully Bayesian approach via Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) techniques is applied to the LVR-HM. Through analyzing the data from a longitudinal study of educational achievement, gender difference are explored in the growth of mathematical achievement across grade 7 through grade 10. Allowing for the fact that initial status effect to rates of change may differ for girls and boys, the LVR-HM is specified in a way that rates of change parameters are modeled as a function of initial status parameters and the interaction between initial status and gender.