Asia Pacific Education Review最新文献

In recent years, the Asia–Pacific region has experienced unprecedented expansion in the adoption of the International Baccalaureate (IB) program. The IB Middle Years Program (MYP) features interdisciplinary curriculum design, concept-based curriculum development, and multiple assessments, which significantly differ from the traditional structures of junior high school curriculum in Taiwan. This study investigates the experiential and challenging aspects of the transformation of a traditional public junior high school in Taiwan into an IB school. The study employs multiple data collection methods, including document analysis, participant observation, and interviews. The study findings are as follows. The agency of bottom-up school transformation stems from the awareness of teachers of the exigency of the school for survival, adherence to the educational philosophy of IB, and the politically correct demand for educational equity. Moreover, the challenges encountered during the transformation process include changing the mindset of teachers about educational philosophy, aligning the IBMYP with the national education system, restructuring the organization, and redistributing tasks with limited faculty. At last, by implementing the IBMYP, teachers can apply innovative pedagogies and actively adapt to the two distinct education systems regarding educational progression, curriculum organization, teaching approaches, and assessment methods. These changes foster continuous professional development and catalyze a transformative momentum for teachers. These findings pose implications for other public schools that are considering the implementation of IBMYP.

This study investigates the effect of interactive games on improving reading comprehension skills and attitudes toward games among Iranian learners of English as a foreign language. In this quantitative study, the participants in the control group received reading comprehension instruction through traditional models of teaching reading while the participants in the experimental group developed their reading skills through participating in interactive games. A reading comprehension test was administered as a posttest. The mean performance of the two groups was compared by performing an independent-samples t-test and a paired-samples t-test. The analysis revealed that participants in the experimental group (N = 30, M = 26.33, SD = 2.80) significantly outperformed those in the control group (N = 30, M = 16.80, SD = 3.71) in the posttest. Moreover, an examination of the participants’ perceptions showed they have a positive attitude toward games. The findings of this study suggest that interactive games are powerful tools for improving student engagement, motivation, and learning outcomes in the classroom. The study also provides some practical suggestions for further research.

This paper presents evidence from an innovative teacher professional development (TPD) project tackling school-related gender-based violence (SRGBV) in primary and lower-secondary schools in Cambodia. The core activities of the TPD project are discussed, focusing on teachers’ changes in attitudes and beliefs toward emotional abuse and physical violence against boys and girls, as well as gender equity. The TPD was evaluated using a pre- and postintervention study, and a treatment and control group in Battambang and Svay Rieng provinces, respectively. A total of 151 teachers responded to the questionnaire at baseline (October 2018) and there were 149 teachers in the postintervention period (October 2020). To improve the comparability between the treatment and control groups, we estimated a difference-in-differences analysis in combination with propensity score matching. Only two treated teachers were not matched to the control group, with the final sample consisting of 298 observations. Findings indicate moderate to small effects on changing attitudes and beliefs about SRGBV in both primary and lower-secondary schools. Furthermore, teachers from primary schools benefit the most from the TPD; that is, they engage in less SRGBV. In secondary schools, the effects on engaging in emotional or physical abuse are not significant.

Despite the position of the United States as a top destination for international student mobility and the advancement of research on study abroad decisions, little is known about how American college students choose a destination country for study abroad. Expanding the understanding of students’ choice of a study abroad destination can contribute to promoting study abroad and guiding college students’ study abroad decisions. Therefore, this study used qualitative data from multiple institutions and study abroad providers in the US to explore how study abroad participants choose a destination. The findings show that various forms of capital—cultural and social, linguistic, academic, and program capital, which can also be conceptualized as pre-college, college, and program capital—guided these destination choices. The findings suggest how higher education institutions can help students build such capital for their study abroad destination choices.

In a globalized world with increasing international migration and encounters of difference, education is presented with new challenges and opportunities regarding diversity, including teacher diversity. This paper focuses on teachers with immigrant backgrounds and explores how they potentially add constructive diversity to the receiving country’s education system. The empirical setting of this paper is Singapore, an Asian city-state seldom featured in teacher diversity research. Drawing from a broader study involving online surveys and qualitative interviews, this article examines the discourses of five immigrant teachers chosen for their insightful perspectives. We found that the teachers consciously engaged their foreigner/outsider identities by drawing on their biographical and educational backgrounds; they sought to add value to aspects of the Singapore school system which they perceived to be lacking, while negotiating with dominant values and teaching practices. Their negotiations, however, remain delimited in significant ways. The paper argues that immigrant teachers represent an undertapped and underappreciated resource for greater educational diversity in Singapore and beyond.