INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF EDUCATION最新文献

Abstract

Opting to homeschool children is a growing trend worldwide. However, surprisingly, there is a dearth of research on understanding how digital technologies are used by learners who opt for homeschooling. Thus, in the present study, semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten homeschoolers in the United States to examine: (1) how digital technologies are being used; (2) why these technologies are being used to support learning; and (3) what digital technologies are being used. Thematic analysis revealed that homeschooled children used a wide array of digital technologies to support their learning. Children’s learning projects commonly stemmed from their interaction with the real world, and a good portion of their learning was self-directed. Digital technologies afforded children access to specific materials and enabled them to collaborate with other learners. Perhaps most importantly, the homeschoolers reported a love for (self-directed) lifelong learning. They tended to learn in a self-directed and autonomous manner, and they commonly used digital technologies constructively and productively.

For the past four decades, intercultural bilingual education (IBE) has been a common policy prescription to address Indigenous/non-Indigenous education gaps in Latin America. Initiatives have grown from small, localised pilots to national and state-level initiatives across thousands of schools. While there is some rigorous evidence of the effectiveness of IBE pilot initiatives at a small scale, there is very little evidence that expanding them to a larger scale benefits learners to the same extent. This article reviews the existing evidence on IBE’s effectiveness and identifies a number of challenges in replicating success at scale. The authors identify factors which have limited our understanding of IBE’s effectiveness, as well as factors which may have contributed to less-than-ideal outcomes for larger programmes, including uneven coverage, varying teacher quality, and limited resource availability for smaller Indigenous languages. Addressing these issues will be crucial for improving IBE programmes’ ability to operate successfully at scale.

The main objective of this case study was to use children as models to assist their parents in acquiring literacy with the help of a phone-based literacy game. Eight women in rural Zambia were loaned phones with GraphoGame^TM, a digital literacy game, to use as a resource for literacy learning, with the assistance of their children. The participants were given literacy tests before the intervention and after their exposure to GraphoGame to determine the impact of the intervention. Analyses using t-tests and a Mann-Whitney U test found that the parents’ performance on the literacy tests improved significantly after the intervention period, compared with their pre-intervention performance. Furthermore, key informants indicated that the parents who participated in the study improved their literacy skills in various social and community interactions, as compared with parents within the same community who were not exposed to the game. Thus, the study showed that it is possible to use literacy technology to teach literacy to illiterate rural adults with the help of their children. The study concluded that literacy can play an important role in increasing community participation and consequently community improvement for rural women.

Using Pierre Bourdieu’s capital framework as a theoretical lens, this qualitative phenomenological case study explored the challenges that obstruct African refugee students’ access to higher education in Egypt. Fifteen African refugee students (ten male and five female) in Egypt responded to semi-structured interview questions to express their views regarding the challenges that prevent them from attending public and private post-secondary institutions. The authors identified these challenges and classified them into three thematic categories: sociocultural, economic and psychological barriers. In addition to these barriers, the lack of relevant laws and policies governing refugee access to higher education in Egypt and the absence of support systems have exacerbated an already dire situation for refugee students. The authors conclude their article with a number of recommendations to enhance and facilitate the access of refugees to higher education in their host communities.

While current research on school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic is predominantly concerned with learning deficits, the exploratory study presented here focuses on the previously neglected question of young people’s concrete learning experiences during this disruptive period, with a focus on how they used their time and how this relates to their individual needs. The authors interviewed German secondary school students via Zoom and used a grounded theory approach and a transformative learning theory framework to derive recommendations for environmental and sustainability education (ESE). Their findings highlight two important insights: first, that the predominant focus on academic learning loss obscures a more comprehensive understanding of students’ learning experiences; and second, that real-world experiments such as the involuntary school closures during the pandemic may hold the potential to start meaningful, transformative learning processes and experimentation with new strategies for needs satisfaction.

At a time when the world has suffered such an unprecedented event as the COVID-19 pandemic, it is essential to conduct research to evaluate the relationship of student satisfaction with interaction, Internet self-efficacy, and self-regulated learning in a fully online learning environment. The results of a survey of 290 students at a university in Viet Nam, using partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM), indicate that four types of interaction (learner–learner interaction, learner–instructor interaction, learner–content interaction, and learner–technology interaction) positively and significantly affected students’ satisfaction with online learning, whereas Internet self-efficacy and self-regulated learning were not found to be significant predictors. These findings are crucial for enhancing the quality of online learning, which is regarded as not only the best cure for the massive global crisis COVID-19 has caused in education but also an innovative advancement compared with traditional face-to-face education. The authors discuss practical implications for instructional and course design, as well as directions for future research.