Asia Pacific Education Review最新文献

Acting as a governmental tool to enhance competitiveness and integrate research and education by merging a local university and a provincial academy of sciences, this case study provides an example of a novel cross-sectoral complementary merger in higher education in China. Through a qualitative analysis of its three-stage process and the factors influencing its preliminary positive outcomes from the university leadership perspective, this study examines a unique higher education merger, emphasizing the effects of cultural issues and leadership. This study adds an interesting example to the growing literature on higher education mergers and offers suggestions for future research and practice.

Research has demonstrated the crucial role of creative metacognition and risk-taking in creativity. However, little empirical research has examined how creative metacognition and risk-taking work on creative performance in educational practice. This paper explored the moderating effects of creative metacognition on the relationships between different types of risk-taking (i.e., propensity for taking a risk, willingness to take a risk) and creative performance (i.e., general creativity, originality, usefulness) in a middle school context. The sample consisted of 350 7th- and 8th-grade students from three middle schools. They completed a survey and  a creative performance task. Hierarchical regression analysis revealed that creative metacognition moderated the relationships between willingness to take a risk and both originality and usefulness. The results indicated that creative metacognition reinforces the positive effect of risk-taking on originality and mitigates the negative effect of risk-taking on usefulness. Our findings suggest a potential role for creative metacognition in enhancing curriculum-based creative performance in middle schools. In the end, practical implications, limitations, and future directions are discussed.

Differentiated instruction (DI) is a beneficial approach to addressing students’ diverse learning needs, abilities, and interests to ensure that each student has the opportunity to make academic progress. To answer the question of how teachers utilize DI in K-12 classrooms, this systematic review was based on 61 empirical studies on DI published between 2000 and 2022. It examined the current status and trends of implementing DI in K-12 education and integrated various factors involved in the process of DI, including educational levels, subjects, student difference analysis, instructional methods, content, tools, assessment methods, and instructional effectiveness. The findings indicated that (1) DI was most commonly used in primary school mathematics and language classrooms, with the majority of studies having sample sizes exceeding 100 and lasting for more than 6 months; (2) The most frequently employed form of DI was ability grouping, often grouped based on academic achievement; (3) Information technology tools and resources can empower differentiated instruction; (4) Most studies utilized standardized tests, questionnaires, and scales as evaluation tools, with a focus on the impact of DI on students’ academic achievement and skills; and (5) The effectiveness of DI was controversial and influenced by multiple factors, such as may be associated with the instructional methods. In response to these findings, the study introduces a comprehensive DI model. This model, rooted in the perspective of instructional design, elucidates the interconnected factors of DI. It serves as a valuable reference for the future design and implementation of DI, offering a practical guide for educators aiming to create inclusive and effective learning environments.

Although citizenship education (CE) has been widely addressed in many countries’ curricula, few studies have sufficiently explored students’ learning of official CE curriculum content. Accordingly, in this study, students’ responses to the CE curriculum content are investigated in a constrained social context taking an agency perspective. Drawing on qualitative data set in two high schools in China, the study revealed that the students learned the official content of the CE curriculum with agency by critiquing textbooks, spending limited time on the subject, memorizing the textbooks’ contents without taking them seriously, and most importantly, deliberately determining what to be incorporated, reinterpreted, and resisted. The findings also showed that students’ agentic citizenship learning resulted from the interplay of four elements: students’ agentic orientations (interest and aspirations, prior political experience and knowledge, and practical evaluation); teachers’ modifications of the CE content; a high-stakes testing educational system; and China’s contested civic environment. The study extends the social constructivist understanding of citizenship learning and recommends reconstructing the Chinese CE curriculum, the educational system, and the civic environment to nurture agentic citizens.

Cambodian upper secondary education is divided into two tracks: science and social science. Students make their track selection in grade 10 and begin their enrollment in grade 11. The enrollment in the science track has witnessed a steep decline from 96% in 2014 to 34% in 2020, while the enrollment in the social science track has seen a remarkable surge from 4% in 2014 to 66% in 2020. This tendency poses a significant challenge to the government’s endeavors aimed at promoting workforces in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. This survey study aimed to examine factors influencing students to leave science-track classes. The survey was administered to 696 grade-12 students from 20 upper secondary schools. The two-level hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) was used for data analysis. The findings revealed that at the individual level, age, ease of national examination, high passing rates, preference for good grades, expense on private tutoring, STEM major choices at the territory level, attitudes toward science, parental advice, and family income significantly influenced students’ decision to opt for social science track over science track. At the school level, school location was a significant predictor of track choices. The findings were discussed with practical implications to improve enrollment in the science track at Cambodian upper secondary schools.

Adoption of the “Double World-Class” policy in China has led to substantial changes in the country’s higher education governance system. Thus, to examine whether any undesired effects have occurred, in this study, we conducted document analysis along with purposive interviews to gather pertinent data on one local university that has been selected for inclusion in the national “Double World-Class” initiative as well as the Guangdong Province’s “High-Level Construction Universities” project. This investigation is guided by de Zwart’s (Theory and Society 44:283–297, 2015) concept of the “unintended but not unanticipated consequences” and a clear distinct perspective on how these consequences arise. Application of this analytical framework on unanticipated consequences of purposive social action allowed us to identify selective neglect, utility maximization, and the pursuit of the “world-class university” label to perpetuate the myth of superior educational quality as the main drawbacks of the recent policy change. The impact of these factors on the quality of higher education in China is discussed, along with the strategy that can be adopted to mitigate the noted drawbacks in future.

This study aims to explore and compare the experiences of international academics in government-funded research institutes in Korea and Japan and focuses on their integration through primary roles and contributions, reasons to stay, and the challenges they face in their academic and daily lives. Although international academics are critical human resources in academia, their experiences in northeast Asian research institutes, instead of universities, require thorough investigation. Additionally, policy initiatives and projects in these countries tend to emphasize international academics in universities instead of those in research institutes. The study conducted semi-structured interviews between October 2020 and July 2021 with 15 international academics from government-funded research institutes in Korea and Japan. We intend to illuminate their experiences outside of universities and demonstrate that a clear academic role, a (relatively) horizontal organizational culture, and systemic support are the major reasons for their decision to stay and integrate. We also highlight the challenges they face in relation to policy, language, and family issues. International academics help create an internationalized work environment, although they frequently struggle to bridge domestic and international academia. All interviewees were male academics working in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields; thus, further studies are required to explore the experiences of female international academics and those working in other areas and to compare between the academic cultures of universities and research institutes in Korea and Japan.

It is essential that students develop the skill of reading comprehension during their schooling, although it has been defined in various ways. The Programme for International Student Assessment indicates that a substantial proportion of students fail to develop sufficient reading skills during their schooling. While it is easy to understand the concept of reading comprehension, the various factors and processes involved in it make it quite complex as a task, and many factors can affect the performance of reading comprehension. This study, using an e-book experiment, explores the factors that predict reading comprehension ability among indigenous Taiwanese high school students using different teaching methods (teacher read aloud and teacher questioning). The participants were indigenous students studying at a high school in Hualien County, Taiwan. Using five scales, the study investigated correlations among two teaching methods and prior knowledge, reading comprehension, reading strategies, reading attitudes, and reading motivation. Correlation analysis and hierarchical regression were conducted to assess the impact of the two main teaching methods on reading comprehension scores and predictive factors. The results indicated that both methods showed a significant positive correlation with prior knowledge and with reading comprehension scores. In the teacher read-aloud method, reading motivation showed a significant positive correlation with reading comprehension scores, while for the use of teacher questioning, reading strategies provided a significant positive correlation with reading comprehension scores. This study sheds light on the predictive factors for reading learning among indigenous Taiwanese students under different teaching methods, which holds considerable significance.