With the enormous scientific and technological developments, higher education institutions are facing rapid structural, social, technological changes. Because they are considered as an important center of talent development and knowledge production and sharing for countries. To fulfill their educational, social and economic needs, higher education institutions need to respond to changing education needs, to adopt the more flexible modes of organizational culture. Organizational culture is a promotive environment which influences values, assumptions and beliefs. In an innovative culture, people can easily develop new ideas and exhibit collaboration. Therefore, this paper examines the relationship between the organizational culture features and the perceptions and student reported implementation with regard to student-centered learning, collaborative learning and use of innovative educational technologies in Turkish higher education. Four universities were involved, and 894 students responded to a questionnaire comprising three groups of questions. The three groups of questions capture (i) demographic characteristics, (ii) student perceptions of organizational culture, (iii) students’ perceptions of and responses to educational innovations comprising the following scales in a survey study. The results show that features of organizational culture affect students’ perceived need for innovation, their views about innovative approaches to instruction, responsiveness to instructional innovations and the perceived implementation level of educational innovations. In addition, differences among the institutions were examined and discussed. The study concludes that hierarchical structure, lack of open communication and autonomy, workload, lack of financial resources and support are main barriers for educational innovations in Turkish universities. It also implies to understand the link between organizational culture and educational innovations in Turkish higher education context.
A rich home literacy environment (HLE) fosters students’ academic achievement. However, the link between HLE and children’s reading comprehension is unclear. This study examined the effects of HLE factors on children’s reading comprehension through a meta-analysis of 59 studies conducted between 1998 and 2018. Results of the meta-analysis indicated three main findings. First, the overall positive correlation between HLE and children’s reading comprehension was moderate (z = .32). Second, sampling area, type of home literacy resource and parental involvement styles did not show a significant interaction effect between each HLE factor and children’s reading comprehension. Third, parents’ involvement and literacy expectations of children had a significantly higher correlation with children’s reading comprehension than home literacy resources did. Findings of this study suggest that parental literacy activities involvement and parental literacy expectations contribute more to children's literacy knowledge enhancement.
This investigation set out to analyse the relation between parents’ academic qualifications, profession and role in educating their children and their children’s level of efficacy in reading at the end of the adolescent stage, in three states with different socio-cultural contexts, namely Canada, Finland and Singapore. The study is carried out in three countries with differing socio-cultural contexts and uses multilevel analysis and binary logistic regression to measure the predictive value of socio-family skills in these three countries against a range of student reading ability profiles. The results show that the parents’ academic qualifications, profession and educational role are the most influential aspect of the predictability in the variability of their children’s reading skills. Parents with a low level of education predict poor student reading ability, but when it is the mother who has a medium or high level of education, the results of the students are better than when that level is only achieved by the father. Therefore, the educational role of mothers and fathers, as shown by the interest they take in their children’s schoolwork, is a predictor of students’ reading skills, regardless of the sociocultural and academic context of the students.
Globally, there is great interest in enhancing young children’s literacy development as a route to improving worldwide literacy. To contribute to this area of interest, this paper reports findings from a multi-pronged early-literacy program designed to improve the print-knowledge of young children in Yucatec Mayan villages. The school-based Club de Lectura Solyluna provided 16 culturally relevant bilingual (Spanish/Maya) children’s books to caregivers during four workshops. The sample of 567 mothers and their preschool-aged children (n = 567) were enrolled in 28 preschool classrooms, which also received teacher trainings, children’s books, and establishment of a school-based library. Outcomes were examined with respect to overall parent participation and uptake of workshop materials, features of the home-literacy environment, and children’s gains in print knowledge in both Mayan and Spanish. The study findings show positive outcomes across all outcomes evaluated with the exception of growth in children’s Mayan print-concepts skills. The program description and findings should be of relevance to efforts to implement early-literacy programming with indigenous villages in lower- and middle-income countries.
Validating the intended interpretations and proposed uses of tests scores is paramount for making valid inferences in educational and psychological research. Ascertaining measurement invariance for measurement instruments is an assumption for comparing means. If measurement invariance does not hold for groups of interest, comparison of means will be invalid since making valid inferences presupposes that the instrument measures the same construct across subgroups. One of the most widely used instruments for measuring learning strategies for college students is the Learning and Study Strategies Inventory (second edition). The inventory has 10 subscales namely, information processing, selecting main ideas, test strategies, anxiety, attitude, motivation, concentration, self-testing, study aids, and time management with eight items for each subscale. Although it is stated that the learning and study strategies inventory is internationally adopted to measure students’ use of learning and study strategies, little is known about its measurement invariance across gender (males/females) and discipline (science/humanities) in Egyptian college students. The authors utilize an adapted Arabic version of the Learning and Study Strategies Inventory administered to 522 Egyptian college students to investigate if the adopted model has measurement invariance across gender (males/females) and discipline (science/humanities). Results revealed that the effort-related activities, goal orientation, and cognitive activities model was confirmed for these students. Using multiple-group confirmatory factor analyses, results also showed that the factorial structure of the adopted model had partial measurement invariance across gender and full measurement invariance across discipline. Centers for teaching and learning at universities can use the validated instrument to measure students’ learning and study strategies across gender and discipline. More implications and suggestions for future research were also addressed.
Background: The Internet has many positive sides, but it can also have a negative impact on human emotional-cognitive and behavioral functioning, especially during adolescence. To the most common consequences, the authors add addiction of the teenager to the Internet. This addiction is related to many negative physical and mental problems, including depression, substance abuse and social isolation. Methods: In the study, SSBS (Student School Burnout Scale) was used to measure the level of burnout, and the level of Internet addiction was measured using PUI (Internet Addiction Test). The research was carried out among 230 individuals aged 17–20 years. Results: The results of the research showed that higher level of school burnout is related to higher Internet addiction indicators, and connection was stronger in the male group. Gender significantly predicted Internet addiction and moderated the link between school burnout and Internet addiction. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses confirmed different predictors of Internet addiction for male and female students. However, for both groups, higher burnout due to parents was a significant predictor of Internet addiction (IA). Discussion: Internet addiction was predicted by school burnout, appearing as a result of parental pressure for high school achievements. In addition, school burnout and school-related characteristics have greater prediction power of Internet addiction and its indicators in a male group.
Data analysis is a significant methodological component when conducting quantitative education studies. Guidelines for conducting data analyses in quantitative education studies are common but often underemphasize four important methodological components impacting the validity of inferences: quality of constructed measures, proper handling of missing data, proper level of measurement of a dependent variable, and model checking. This paper highlights these components for novice researchers to help ensure statistical inferences are valid. We used empirical examples involving contingency tables, group comparisons, regression analysis, and multilevel modelling to illustrate these components using the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) data. For every example, we stated a research question and provided evidence related to the quality of constructed measures since measures with weak reliability and validity evidence can bias estimates and distort inferences. The adequate strategies for handling missing data were also illustrated. The level of measurement for the dependent variable was assessed and the proper statistical technique was utilized accordingly. Model residuals were checked for normality and homogeneity of variance. Recommendations for obtaining stronger inferences and reporting related evidence were also illustrated. This work provides an important methodological resource for novice researchers conducting data analyses by promoting improved practice and stronger inferences.
The video-game industry has become a significant force in the business and entertainment world. Video games have become so widespread and pervasive that they are now considered a part of the mass media, a common method of storytelling and representation. Despite the massive popularity of video games, their increasing variety, and the diversification of the player base, until very recently little attention was devoted to understanding how playing video games affects the way people think and collaborate across cultures. This paper examines the recent literature regarding the impact of video games on players from an intercultural perspective. Sixty-two studies are identified whose aim is to analyze behavioral-change, content understanding, knowledge acquisition, and perceptional impacts. Their findings suggest that video games have the potential to help to acquire cultural knowledge and develop intercultural literacy, socio-cultural literacy, cultural awareness, self-awareness, and the cultural understanding of different geopolitical spaces, to reinforce or weaken stereotypes, and to some extent also facilitate the development of intercultural skills. The paper provides valuable insights to the scholars, teachers, and practitioners of cultural studies, education, social studies, as well as to the researchers, pointing out areas for future research.
The importance of mobile technologies in the educational process has directed the attention of many researchers to this field and has created an important body of academic research. The main purpose of this study is to determine the effect of mobile learning on students' learning performance. In this study, the meta-analysis method was employed. The literature was reviewed through different databases in order to access the relevant researches within the scope of the study. After reviewing the literature, study aspects and inclusion criteria were applied. The studies to be included in the meta-analysis were examined, and 104 studies conducted between the years of 2009 and 2019 that met the inclusion criteria were subjected to a meta-analysis. Education level, course/subject and the implementation period of the studies were determined as moderating variables. The sample of the study consists of 7,568 participants. As a result of the analysis performed according to the random effects model, the mean effect size value was calculated as 0.85 with an error of 0.07. It was determined that there was no publication bias in the meta-analysis. According to the results of the moderator analysis, it was found that the effect of mobile learning on the learning performance of the students did not change according to the education level and the implementation period, but it changed according to the course/subject. In addition to the aforementioned research results, this article also contains descriptive analysis of the results of the studies included in the meta-analysis.
It is widely accepted that Japanese, compared to Americans, commit fewer criminal and other forms of deviant acts. However, there is evidence that Japanese students have an unusually high prevalence of bullying. In the current study, we develop a rationale for predicting that Japanese students, relative to Americans, should be oriented more strongly toward an external locus of control and have more favorable attitudes toward bullying, which, in turn, might explain why student bullying is more prevalent in Japan than in the U.S. Analyses of comparable survey data from college students in Japan (N = 584) and the U.S. (N = 623) provide generally supportive evidence for our predictions. In agreement with expectations, Japanese students committed more bullying acts during their high school days than Americans. Further, Japanese students were oriented more strongly toward an external locus of control and had more favorable attitudes toward bullying. After controlling for both an external locus of control and student attitudes toward bullying, the initially significant difference between the two samples in student bullying disappeared. We discuss the utility of comparative research to increase our understanding of cross-national differences in student bullying. We suggest that longitudinal comparative data on an external locus of control and student attitudes toward bullying, both of which reflect individual cognitive orientations, are an important resource for further development of school intervention programs around the world.
Student’s individual, family, and teacher factors play a significant role in children’s reading development. However, the mechanisms by which these critical factors jointly contribute to children’s reading comprehension achievement are poorly understood. The present research aimed at developing a multilevel comprehensive model which shows critical correlates, involving these factors, of reading comprehension of Chinese secondary school students. A random sample of 1,322 students, nested in 27 classes, was taken from five secondary schools. The student-level variables included student’s gender, autonomous reading motivation, controlled reading motivation, metacognitive awareness of reading strategies (MARS), and household income. Class-level variables included teacher’s qualification and experience. The results indicated student’s MARS and autonomous reading motivation were the two most powerful correlates of reading comprehension among the significant variables. Furthermore, teacher’s qualification and experience moderated the strength of the relationship between MARS and reading comprehension. Implications for future research, policy making, and improvement of reading instruction are discussed.
There is a great deal of research showing that PhD students suffer from dissatisfaction. Whereas most studies in this field strived to identify factors negatively related to PhD students’ well-being, still little is known about factors positively related to the well-being of young academics. We based our analysis on the Job Demands-Resource Theory (JD-R), to identify study resources positively related to PhD student satisfaction. Building on the results of the survey conducted among 360 PhD students of the Jagiellonian University (Poland) we singled out seven main resources most strongly related to PhD student satisfaction. Our findings might provide initial evidence about what type of resources are worth developing to maximize PhD student well-being. These results could be of particular importance and interest for candidates who look for PhD positions and PhD students already working in different academic environments, as well as for broader academic community and higher education policymakers.
This study aims at quantifying the relationship between the marks of students and their seating position in the classroom. The study is cross-sectional, quantitative, observational, and correlational. It analyzed data collected throughout two academic years about the students’ marks (in different terms, courses, and degrees) and about their daily seating position (so, every change was recorded) for both theory and practice lessons. The quantitative data collected in the study was statistically analyzed. The main result is that the seating position is significantly correlated with the marks in the studied context (engineering schools with classrooms with 5-66 students). Other side results show a positive influence on marks of working alone with respect to sharing the computer with a classmate; indicate where do students who give up the course usually sit, and when in the academic term do, they give up. This article provides empirical data with regards to the relation between classroom seating and academic performance in engineering schools. The results obtained quantify this relation, but they cannot determine whether it is causal, consequential, or both. This study complements other studies that correlated motivation with seating preferences.
In recent years, bullying and cyberbullying against teachers by students have been recognized as problems affecting educators teaching in different grades. Few studies to date have addressed explanatory risk factors related to the perpetrators (students) rather than the victims (teachers) in a longitudinal design, in order to establish the possible causes of this antisocial behavior to better develop prevention and intervention programs to reduce teacher victimization. The main aim of the present study is to analyze the effect on teacher victimization of individual and interpersonal risk factors, including empathy, moral disengagement, peer and parent support, awareness of online risks, and school climate. A total o251 Italian students (aged 11-19) participated in a longitudinal study. The results showed that, for girls, high moral disengagement, low awareness of online risks and poor school climate were risk factors for later teacher victimization. For boys, high moral disengagement and low awareness of online risks were also risk factors, in addiction to low parental support and high peer support. The findings are discussed along with possible applications for prevention and intervention.
Knowledge monitoring is an important metacognitive process, which can help students improve study habits and thereby increase academic performance. Which is more useful in predicting test performance: knowing what you know, or knowing what you do not know? Two distinct constructs of knowledge monitoring calibration, sensitivity and specificity, were used along with the more traditional Goodman-Kruskal gamma correlation to predict performance on tests in an undergraduate educational psychology course. The gamma correlation provides a measure of how good one is at judging both items one knows and items one does not. Measures of sensitivity and specificity distinguish between the two. Students in an undergraduate educational psychology course completed a 50-word knowledge monitoring assessment to measure sensitivity, specificity, and gamma. These measures were then correlated with test and final exam scores in the course. It was found that sensitivity, a measure of correctly identifying known items, was the most useful in predicting overall test scores as well as final exam scores. Specificity, on the other hand, had no significant impact on exam performance. Results suggest that sensitivity and specificity may be more meaningful measures of knowledge monitoring calibration when it comes to predicting academic achievement, as well as being better adapted for missing values in any one cell of the data. Further research is recommended to determine in what other situations the measures of sensitivity and specificity may be useful. Findings presented in this study can also be used to help guide attempts to improve student metacognition and strategies.
Despite being widely adopted in higher education to support student-centred learning, the pedagogical design of flipped classrooms has been criticised as lacking in theoretical framing. This study proposes that the pedagogical dimensions of personalisation, higher-order thinking, self-direction, and collaboration can be used as theoretical lenses to deconstruct how flipped classroom practices support student-centred learning. Through a systematic review of 56 cases from 51 studies of flipped learning implementation published in peer-reviewed articles, this study found that flipped classrooms personalise learning through resource and teacher access, develops higher-order thinking through problemsolving, and engages students in collaborative learning through both peer groups and design groups. Trends of positive student learning outcomes are more consistent among cases that support collaborative learning and student selfdirection of learning performance review by repeated application and remediation. Nevertheless, majority of the cases reflect students having limited personalisation of learning choice and structured collaborative processes are seldom used apart from the few cases implementing team-based learning. The theoretical applications of the four pedagogical dimensions as well as the implications for the future research and practice of flipped classrooms are discussed.
During the three decades of the Republic of China, even under constant political turbulences, higher education was not interrupted and instead achieved unprecedented progress, in the area of western literature teaching. Beijing University, Tsinghua University, and National Southwestern Associated University cultivated a generation of influential scholars and experts in western literature education. To understand the influence of English literature education and dissemination of English literature works on the Chinese modern literature, this paper reviews the English literature education activities at famous universities in the era of the Republic of China. The results show that Yenching University offered bilingual courses to enhance students’ interests in language and literature in a conductive learning environment. Tsinghua University, aiming to cultivate “scholars of profound knowledge”, set up language and literature courses, and improved student’s capacity of language and English literature research under proper guidance of faculty. National Southwestern Associated University, integrated by Beijing University, Tsinghua University, and Private Nankai University, offered diversified teaching methods in English literature. Dissemination of English literature works by faculty and graduates at the Republic of China era has contributed to the development of literature translation and theoretic research back then.
Based on the bibliometric method, 770 papers on sports culture education collected in CSSCI on CNKI since 1998 were visualized, and the scientific knowledge graph was drawn by the CiteSpace V visual analysis software to study the number of papers on sports culture education, scientific research institutions, authors, research focus and evolutionary processes to further gain an overall understanding of the trends and dynamics of sports education research in China, which provides a reference for the direction of sports culture education research. Research conclusions: Firstly, the research on sports culture education in China began in 1998, and the number of publications reached the peak in 2014, which afterwards still remained high despite slight decline. Secondly, normal colleges and universities are the main force for the research on sports culture education. Thirdly, in terms of the evolutionary process, the research on sports culture education continuously keeps eyes on school sports, and transfer its focus to the competitive sports and mass sports at the later stage, indicating that sports culture education is a systematic project involving the entire population and requires the participation of the whole society.
The Belt and Road is a brand-new exploration of economic model in China. It is devoted to building a comprehensive community of political, economic and cultural integration by countries along the Belt and Road. Under the new model, the training of required interdisciplinary and comprehensive talents will be an important foundation to promote its development. This paper analyzes the construction purpose, significance and concrete contents of the inter-regional, inter-school and inter-disciplinary research institutions in the context of the Belt and Road, and probes into the specific conditions of the existing teaching practice. On the basis of a thorough understanding of the existing practice, an exploratory scheme is provided for the development of interdisciplinary research institutions, with integration into the teaching practice. The experimental results show that the exploration scheme can effectively improve the comprehensive satisfaction of training inter-disciplinary talents. The research results of this paper have important guiding significance to the construction direction and teaching model of inter-regional and inter-disciplinary of the future research institutions in countries along the Belt and Road.
