‘Feeling bad’ or ‘being bad?’ The trapping effect of effort in academic failure in a Confucian cultural context

A predicament faced by students who fail academically in East Asian Confucian societies, such as Taiwan, is being obscured by students’ outstanding performances in international academic assessments. This article proposes that there is a trapping effect of effort for these students. They are trapped in a dilemma between ‘feeling bad’ (emotional distress) for exerting too much effort and ‘being bad’ (negative image) for making little effort. Such a dilemma may be worse in the domain of academic achievement than in non-academic domains like the arts, with the former being more directly related to children’s dutiful fulfilment of parental expectations. Two consecutive studies – a scenario experiment with 700 subjects and a survey on past experiences of failure with a sample of 190 – were conducted. The results supported our hypothesis that effort becomes a double-edged sword for students who failed. They are more likely to either ‘feel bad’ or ‘be bad’ after failing academically compared to performing poorly on non-academic activities. Implications of the findings are further discussed.     

The Social Status of Teachers in Taiwan

The social status of teachers is one of the indicators reflecting the significance attached to education in each culture. This study found that teachers in Taiwan enjoy a relatively higher occupational prestige and an overall greater satisfaction with their jobs than their international counterparts. These outcomes may be attributed to the favourable policies in teacher education and schooling operations adopted by the Taiwanese government over past decades. The roots of these policies are in the cultural, historical and political development of the Taiwanese society. The Chinese cultural tradition, Japanese colonisation and Nationalist rule have all played a role in forming the relatively high social status of teachers in Taiwan. However, as Taiwan has been undergoing major political and cultural transformations in recent years, the policies and public perceptions of teaching may change accordingly; therefore the social status of teachers in Taiwan remains to be closely observed.     

In pursuit of teacher quality in diversity: A study of the selection mechanisms of new secondary teacher education programmes in Taiwan

As the definition of teacher quality changes with time, the selection mechanism of students into teacher education programmes may also change accordingly. In Taiwan, before the 1994 teacher education reform, selection of pre-service students was based solely on academic achievement. Afterwards, the selection was delegated to individual teacher education programmes with varied missions for teacher education. This study examines the degree of diversity and selectivity of the selection mechanisms of these programmes. Data from 48 programmes, including institutional documents, telephone inquiries and governmental reports, were collected and analysed. The results show that the selection mechanisms of these programmes are diverse enough to reflect a variety of characteristics of teacher quality, and rigorous enough to ensure a certain level of quality. Related issues on teacher selection are further discussed.