The Asia-Pacific Education Researcher

Yang, Chao-Chun; Fan, Chih-Wen; Chen, Kuan-Ming; Hsu, Shih-Chi; Chien, Chin-Lung

doi: 10.1007/s40299-018-0403-4pmid: N/A

Kindergarten teacher turnover is an important topic in education, especially in East Asia. Two approaches, the disease model and positive psychology perspective, are integrated to investigate kindergarten teachers’ turnover intention, and the “happy/productive teacher” hypothesis that happy teachers have lower turnover intention is tested. A comprehensive model that integrates role stress, subjective well-being (SWB), and turnover intention is proposed herein. A mail survey was conducted, consisting of 272 kindergarten teachers in Taiwan. Structural equation modeling was used for the data analysis. The “happy/productive teacher” concept was supported in that teachers’ SWB has a negative effect on turnover intention. Role stress was found to have a negative effect on SWB and a positive indirect effect on turnover intention completely mediated by SWB. In conclusion, role stress and SWB both have significant effects on turnover intention. However, SWB is a more direct and powerful antecedent than role stress. This study has important theoretical and practical implications for kindergarten teachers’ turnover intention from the positive psychology perspective, and may contribute to the positive education in Asia.

Deng, Li; Zhu, Gang; Li, Guofang; Xu, Zhihong; Rutter, Amanda; Rivera, Hector

doi: 10.1007/s40299-018-0404-3pmid: N/A

This research frames student teachers’ professional identity formation through the lenses of emotions and dilemmas based on semi-structured interviews and emotional journals. Utilizing grounded-theory analysis method, this paper reveals a pattern of the emotional trajectories that the six student teachers experienced from the beginning to the end of the practicums: eagerness and anxiety at the beginning of the teaching practicums, shock and embarrassment immediately after the student teaching, anger and puzzlement at the middle of the internship, helplessness and loneliness toward the end of the practicums, and guilt and regret after the teaching practice. Furthermore, the participants were faced with four dilemmas: (1) tensions between classroom authority and the ethic of caring, (2) acting as a community member or an “outsider,” (3) working as an office assistant or a “real teacher,” (4) conflicting pedagogies regarding teaching different academic performance levels of students. All these dilemmas contribute to the complexity of the teaching practicum in China. Finally, implications for teacher education, especially for preservice teachers’ pedagogy of identity and ethical professionalism, are discussed.

Li, Shan; Zheng, Juan

doi: 10.1007/s40299-018-0405-2pmid: N/A

The one-to-one computing environment provides students adaptive and individualized learning experiences, which has the great potential to enhance their learning performances, but it also requires students to actively motivate themselves to self-regulate their learning processes. This study examined the relationships between self-efficacy, task values, and self-regulated learning (SRL) in a one-to-one computing environment. Specifically, how task values (intrinsic value, utility value, and cost) mediate the relationship between students’ self-efficacy and SRL was explored. A total of 299 seventh grade students (176 boys and 123 girls, with an average age of 15) from 8 classrooms of one public school volunteered to participate in this study. They were asked to complete a questionnaire pertaining to their perceptions of task values, self-efficacy, and SRL when using eSchoolbag, a type of one-to-one computing environment, to assist their learning. Results revealed that self-efficacy was a significant predictor of students’ SRL, and their intrinsic value, utility value, and cost. Intrinsic value and utility value both significantly predict students’ SRL. However, the cost of a task did not predict students’ SRL. Utility value significantly mediated the relationship between self-efficacy and SRL, whereas the indirect effect of self-efficacy on SRL mediated by intrinsic value was not significant. The findings from this study provided important practical implications for the teaching and learning in one-to-one computing environment.

Zhang, Xiaodong

doi: 10.1007/s40299-018-0406-1pmid: N/A

This study investigates how systemic functional linguistics (SFL)-based teaching impacted on the adjustment of Chinese minority students to the discourse of academic English writing. Through qualitative analyses of one Chinese college ethnic minority student’s interviews, reflections, written documents, and conversations, the study shows that instruction from an SFL perspective in and out of class enabled her to re-conceptualize the valued linguistic features of academic English writing and effectively engage in academic literacy, which helped her to reposition herself as an English language writer in the mainstream college classroom. The study concludes that when effective instruction is provided on features of academic English writing, minority students can adjust to mainstream teaching, meeting the demands of complex academic English writing and reconstructing their identities in challenging social–cultural contexts.

Zhang, Qian; Clarke, Anthony; Lee, John

doi: 10.1007/s40299-018-0408-zpmid: N/A

This exploratory study examines the evolving nature of Chinese pre-service teachers’ identity in relation to their experiences of school-based learning to teach during an 8-week internship. The results suggest that the identities of the four Chinese pre-service teachers in this study are anchored by two dimensions: their commitment to teaching and their perception of the teacher’s role. After the internship, the four pre-service teachers’ identities all shifted with respect to these two dimensions. The findings address an issue of potential conceptual confusion about the relationship between identity and learning to teach, which is neither linear nor unidirectional, but reciprocal. Further, the outcomes of this study suggest that there is a need to be more sensitive and responsive to identity shifts as students negotiate the transition from being a pre-service teacher to practicing professional. Lastly, this study conducted in a non-Western professional context, that is, a Chinese Teacher Education and Chinese School context, offers a valuable but missing perspective on teacher identity in the Western literature.

Lin, Feng

doi: 10.1007/s40299-018-0411-4pmid: N/A

Building on Carey and Smith’s work on epistemology of science, this study characterized elementary students’ scientific epistemology from the role-of-idea and theory-building perspective. The participants included 102 elementary students in Hong Kong. Open-ended questions and coding schemes were developed to examine and characterize their epistemic understanding of science. Four key dimensions were identified: role of idea, theory-fact understanding, theory revision and creation, and social process of scientific progress. The general pattern showed that students’ views of scientific inquiry ranged from seeing it as a mechanical process involving concrete materials and sets of scientific skills, to viewing it as an idea-driven process comprising collective theory-building and knowledge creation. The analysis showed that these students generally had a limited understanding of the role-of-idea and theory-building in science. Quantitative analysis indicated that this conceptualized epistemology of science was an important predictor of students’ academic performance in science. Implications for science education and future research are discussed.

Chung, Edsoulla

doi: 10.1007/s40299-018-0412-3pmid: N/A

In second language (L2) vocabulary research, much attention has been paid to how learners can be supported to acquire vocabulary and how teachers can be better prepared to teach vocabulary in the language classroom. As research efforts have been devoted largely to exploring effective vocabulary teaching strategies and techniques, it remains unclear what teachers know and believe regarding L2 vocabulary acquisition beyond the commonplace conception that teaching and learning are interrelated. The present study explored the epistemological and pedagogical beliefs about vocabulary development reported by four in-service English language teachers in Hong Kong through in-depth semi-structured interviews. It also examined the major factors shaping those beliefs. The results suggest that although the interviewees considered vocabulary teaching to be pivotal, they seemed to focus only on certain aspects of lexical knowledge and rely on a limited range of strategies in teaching vocabulary. Implications for L2 education and teacher development are drawn.

Lee, June; Lee, Yunoug; Kim, Mi

doi: 10.1007/s40299-018-0413-2pmid: N/A

Schools in South Korea are experiencing problems such as bullying and school violence, so solutions are needed. Developing students’ empathy could reduce or prevent these problems. Thus, the purpose of this study was to apply an empathy-based learning model to elementary social studies classes and document its effects on students’ empathy at school and academic engagement. The participants were 54 fifth-grade students from two classes in Korea (27 in the experimental group and 27 in the control group). The experimental group was placed in a social studies class using the empathy-based learning model, while the control group was placed in a different class taught in a traditional way. Quantitative data measuring students’ empathy at school and academic engagement were analyzed using independent sample t tests and covariance analysis. A teacher and students from the experimental group also participated in written interviews to provide more in-depth perspectives about the model. Qualitative data were analyzed by referring to Creswell’s (A concise introduction to mixed methods research, Sage Publications, Thousands Oaks, 2014) data analysis spiral methodology. The analysis was conducted through data collection, data transcription, data reading, classification, and interpretation based on this method. The results showed that empathy-based instruction had stronger positive effects on students’ empathy and academic engagement than traditional lecture-oriented instruction. Interviews with experimental group students and the teacher indicated that they were satisfied with the empathy-based class and acknowledged the importance of empathy. This suggests a positive influence of the empathy-based learning model on students in social studies. Implications and future directions are discussed.