Asia Pacific Education Review

China’s reforms on the National College Entrance Examination (NCEE) include diversification of subject combinations, which have a profound influence on senior secondary school (SSS) education. Although existing studies have paid attention to this issue, only a few were able to provide insightful explanations. This study uses a grounded theory approach to analyse the interview data of 42 major SSS leaders. It develops an in-depth understanding of how the diversification of NCEE subject combinations affects SSSs. Two main aspects of the findings are identified. First, diversification of the NCEE subject combinations has changed the educational goals and development strategies of SSSs, increased organisational and management difficulties, and required students to have a sense of active growth. Second, teacher quality gaps, along with disparities in school infrastructure and facilities, have led to significant differences between urban and rural SSSs. This study argues that the issue of diversifying NCEE subject combinations is not a case of ‘the more, the better’. How well this test scheme will be implemented in the future is rather a question of striking the right balance between effectiveness in student selection and practicality.

The paper outlines the usefulness and challenges of teaching the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) to the young generation of the twenty-first century. Reflecting on the author’s experience of engaging university students the paper shares with readers some personal lessons on the subject. A brief history of the UDHR in the past seven decades will be outlined with a crucial question of why the promise of human rights has not been fulfilled as expected despite the proliferation of international legal standards since the foundation of the UDHR. In so doing I would like to shift the focus of human rights discourse away from the conventional legal-institutional one toward the conditions and contexts in which human rights could be conceptualized and realized. As a way of suggesting an alternative path to the realization of human rights through the lens of education I will discuss the structural literacy, global and ecological citizenship, and peace-rights nexus and solidarity. The conclusion will wrap up the whole argument with some pointers on the role of the UDHR-based human rights education in the seriously fragmented world of today.

This research investigated the internationalization policy and involved evaluating the effects of policy-driven reform on universities in the context of neoliberal theory. In this study, 293 professors from various universities were invited to express their opinions on the selected indicators reflected the implementation of internationalization in institutional level. Fuzzy mean and defuzzification were applied to transform the fuzzy interval data. The concept of fuzzy distance was used to interpret the gap between importance and feasibility of implementation of internationalization in specific indicators. According to the data analysis, the policy-driven reform led to changes in academic culture. The result reveals most respondents in this research assessed internationalization-related indicators positively and assigned them a high value. However, there is a gap between the importance and feasibility of the internationalization in terms of specific indicators which reviewed at the university level. In particular, this study found that implementing the internationalization policy has substantially increased the gap related to the input dimension. The finding will provide suggestions for policy makers and university authorities to improve the current situation.

This article reviewed recent studies of instructional design theory in Korea to explore major trends and suggest future directions. Based on the analysis of 40 articles from the Journal of Educational Technology between 1994 and 2006, this study identified six trends: little emphasis on the conceptualization of instructional design theory; dominant interest in instructional design theories for higher-order thinking skills or self-regulated learning; special interest in instructional design theories for motivation and interactivity; emergent studies on the generic topic of instructional theories; heavy emphasis on instructional design theory for computer or Web environment; and sparse developmental research. Future directions of study for instructional design theory in Korea are suggested in response to issues arising from these trends.

In order to fill in the research gap related to the theory and practice of critical literacy in Taiwan, this article describes an English Conversation activity offered during the 2005 spring semester at a university in southern Taiwan. The article uses a critical instructional model to analyze students’ team dialogues as responses to a picture-book-based exercise. The informants in the study included the instructor and his 26 students. This research is a qualitative case study in that it employs various descriptive data (e.g. students’ team dialogues and reflection papers) in an attempt to (1) investigate the extent to which the goals of critical literacy were achieved in the classroom and (2) arrive at some implications for the implementation of critical literacy in Taiwan. This study suggests that instruction based on social-issue picture books is effective not only in promoting literacy learning but also in eliciting meaningful themes for students. Second, it shows that language learning is best understood as socially constructed. Critical instruction should promote not only text-centred responses but also reader responses to social issues; this can lead to more critical stances for students. Third, the study suggests that a critical literacy curriculum should progress from personal/cultural resources to critical social practices and critical stances. Finally, enthusiasts of critical literacy should not insist on including all dimensions of the analytical model used in the study. Instead, teachers should consider their students, teaching purposes and teaching contexts when they use elements from the critical literacy instructional model.

The purpose of this paper is to develop the proper directions and practical ways for Character Education in the Elementary School. To this end, this paper presents an accurate definition of Character Education so as not to create confusion in using and understanding the term, analyses the present obstructive causes of Character Education practice in our elementary schools, and suggests effective strategies for Character Education that are both practical and suitable. To develop a good character, a person has to try hard for his or her lifetime, and the circumstance he survives also has to be moral to contribute to his moral life. Schools can play a central role in this process of exertion because schools in modern society are poised to be the backbone in Character Education and thus need to propel it with apparent purpose, and effective strategies. An organic cooperation system is also needed because raising good character cannot be completed with one single element of character. It is connected with both the formal curriculum and informal curriculum. A harmonized partnership of school-home-community is urgently needed. It is the teacher who takes the very core role in this process.

As a concept, technology, and method, information-based teaching precisely connects teachers and students at the two ends. In the context of Chinese vocational colleges, where there are differences between teachers’ information-based teaching abilities and students’ subjectivity, the paper examines the differences in the effects of information-based teaching on student learning achievements in vocational colleges. The study shows, first, that learning achievements are significantly improved after adopting an information-based teaching mode. Second, an analysis of the heterogeneity of students based on assessment levels found that information-based teaching has a relatively limited effect on the learning achievements of students with poor academic performance due to their low level of motivation. Third, an analysis of the heterogeneity of teachers’ information-based teaching strengths found that stronger information-based teaching abilities significantly improved the performance of vocational college students. These findings provide useful insights for Chinese vocational colleges to improve the effectiveness of information-based teaching reform.

This study examines the effects of family migration on migrant children’s educational outcomes. We especially focus on the relative importance of family investment and school quality to children’s achievements. A unique and nationally representative sample from the National Children’s Study of China (NCSC) (2004 migrant children and 3923 rural children) is used. Estimates from the propensity score matching method suggest that conditional on basic personal and family characteristics, children’s academic performances are significantly improved by family migration. Further examination using the Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition approach reveals that over 40% of the differences in the children’s scores in Chinese and about 40% of those in mathematics can be explained by family investments (about 18.67–21.75% in different cases) and school quality (about 18–34.67% in different cases), including parental expectations, family material support, school expenditure, teacher quality, and student–teacher ratio. However, our results also reveal the potential for migrant children to be exposed to social exclusions in urban public schools.