Terasaki Satomi, Ochanomizu University

Nakajima Yuri, Ochanomizu University

Mimizuka Hiroaki, Ochanomizu University

In recent Japan, sociologists have indicated that the gap in educational achievement between socioeconomic groups has been expanded. School education is regarded as the equipment which ensures meritocratic social mobility through educational achievement. If the situation changes, it is necessary to reveal the reality. The purpose of this report is to examine the situation of the meritocracy of current Japan paying attention to the influence of socioeconomic strata on educational and occupational aspiration.

This report is based on the Japan Education Longitudinal Study, which aims to investigate many development aspects of children from elementary school to the stage of getting a first job. In this report, the data used for analysis consisted of 2025 junior high school students of a metropolitan area and a rural area.

From analysis, it became clear that 1) in the metropolitan area which has many private schools, attribute-factors such as parents' academic background had affected a child's educational and occupational aspiration. 2) In the rural area only with public schools, the meritocracy-factors such as minutes spent in study were dominant. 3) The difference between areas has been grasped also with students’ images of a success to the career plan which they considered. Consequently the difference in the factors which specified aspiration was probably related to students’ sense of value.

These results mean that some students in a particular socioeconomic group are willing to drop out from meritocratic competition. We need the policy of raising their aspiration with fairness to all groups. However it must not drive them to intense competition profusely, because such competition has a possibility of damaging students’ self-esteem. In that regard, career education may be a better recipe. Since the concern about career education is increasing in Japan recently, we have to find the better way to reconstruct meritocracy-society through it.

Nakajima Yuri, Ochanomizu University

Terasaki Satomi, Ochanomizu University

Mimizuka Hiroaki, Ochanomizu University

In recent Japan, low level of girl’s educational and occupational aspiration remains the key issue for sociologists, although school has a function of student selection by academic abilities. In addition, though more women have had a job, students’ work values seem to differ on the basis of gender. The report aims to examine an effect of gender on academic ability and educational/occupational aspiration so that today’s situation of the meritocracy in Japan will become clear.

In this report, I used the data consisted of 1,057 ninth grades in suburbs of Tokyo and 968 ninth grades in a rural area. The data were collected in 2003, as a part of our project of Japan Education Longitudinal Study (JELS) in Ochanomizu University. JELS aimed to investigate various aspects of growth of children from elementary school to work by a questionnaire and achievement tests. From this research, it became clear that 1) academic ability and educational aspiration were related to their work values on the basis of gender, and that 2) the differences of academic ability and educational aspiration were related to their image of success on their career. That is to say, their work values on the basis of gender and their image of success were related to their academic ability and aspiration.

According to the result, we have to warn against career education in Japan. The education has been promoted under increasing criticism for the young who quits a job easily. The education seems, however, to be lack of the perspective on gender equality. The career education would encourage students more to consider their own career in reference to existing gendered job. We need to rethink the career education and go over an agenda how we minimize the effect of gender on people’ s career and restructure a meritocratic society.

Garcia Yolanda, WestEd E3 Institute

Baba Sandy, WestEd E3 Institute

E3 Institute-Advancing Excellence in Early Education-WestEd has led Santa Clara County, California, USA in the planning and implementation of Power of Preschool (PoP), a demonstration project dedicated to providing early educational opportunities to children and families to whom it would otherwise not be available.

Research shows that children 0-5 years of age are at a critical stage in their development and that preschool can make a positive contribution to their readiness to learn. The PoP model uses the latest research as its foundation.

PoP is a high-quality, free, voluntary, part-day preschool program for 4-year-old children (and 3-year-olds when spaces remain and eligible 4-year-old children are served). It also provides resources for families and early educators. The overarching goal of PoP is to assist children in becoming personally, socially, and physically competent, effective learners, and ready to transition into kindergarten.

Power of Preschool is a multi-year project that is builds on and integrates with existing public and private early care and education programs and partnerships. The targeted population is children and families in high-priority/underserved communities living with multiple risk factors. Risk factors include exposure to drugs or toxins before birth, extreme family poverty, living in a high-crime neighborhood, poor nutrition, parental depression or substance abuse, domestic violence, and family unemployment. Underserved areas are further defined as those with a low supply of licensed early childhood programs relative to the density of children 0-5 years of age

The PoP service model addresses all domains of a child’s life. Children do not develop in isolation, but rather within social systems that are interconnected and dynamic. These systems are family, neighborhood, and community. Through a high level of collaboration, early educators will work with community partners to provide a three-part model including: a) High-quality early learning environments, b) Home visitation with families when needed and appropriate, and c) Therapeutic interventions and family support. Beyond the obvious immediate return for the children and families, it is also believed that this targeted investment works to gain a return on public investment that benefits all of society.

Mau Wei-Cheng, Joseph, Wichita State University

College access and enrollment rates vary considerably with parents’ educational attainment and socioeconomic status. In the United States, first generation, minority students are often targeted for federal outreach programs designed to raise the level of student preparation and readiness for postsecondary work. During the last decade, higher education reform in Taiwan has resulted in a drastic change enrollment rate and education opportunity. However, very little is known about the impact of this change in educational/career behaviors of first-generation, low-income students in Taiwan. This study examined the characteristics of first-generation, low-income college students regarding their college enrollment paths, enrollment rate, fields of study, satisfaction with study and school, and academic persistence. A nationally representative sample of Taiwanese college freshmen (N = 49,611) enrolled in 2003 were tracked for two years into their junior year. Factors influencing their college success were also examined. Implications for educational policy were discussed.

Chen Yen Ting, 中華醫事學院幼兒保育系

This study was conducted to explore the preschool teachers’ ability of proposing the examples about the “compose & decompose” concept. The subjects of this study were thirty-six preschool teachers in Taiwan, who were assigned to write down their teaching examples about the “compose & decompose” concept. Their responses about “what is the “compose & decompose” ”concept and teaching examples were investigated through Tall (1986) theory. The results of this study revealed that the task about proposing teaching examples could promote some preschool teachers’ clearing their mathematics concepts. And the preschool teachers just could understand the “composing of numbers” concept of “compose & decompose” concept rather than the “the relationship of the composing of numbers” concept and “the relationship of complementary and interchange of the composing of numbers” concept of “compose & decompose” concept. Furthermore, preschool teachers’ service seniorities and service mechanisms could affect their ability of proposing the examples about the “compose & decompose” concept. And the preschool teacher educators should strengthen preschool teachers’ ability of considering “representative character” and “development character”. This study suggested that educators could use more samples to establish preschool teachers’ teaching examples image to find the starting point of teaching and strengthen their understanding about the number concepts.

Merenti-Välimäki Hanna-Leena, Espoo-Vantaa Institute of Technology

Nokelainen Petri, University of Tampere

Tirri Kirsi, University of Helsinki

The purpose of our study was to explore the self-attributions of three different groups of mathematically oriented Finns and compare the results with American, German, and Taiwanese ones. These Finnish groups are: adults who have participated in international Olympics in mathematics, students from Polytechnic institute who study mathematics as part of their studies, and secondary school students who have taken part in national competitions in mathematics.

Campbell has conducted several salient cross-national studies on Mathematics Olympians He made two interesting findings: first, the international data with math self-concept verified the finding that the academic self-concepts fluctuate from grade school to high school, and second, the Olympians attributed effort to be more important in their success than ability.

As our three samples represent three different age groups, it was interesting to see that Campbell’s first research finding is valid in this domain. His latter research finding has been verified by Chan who reported that adolescent gifted students were more likely to attribute failure to lack of effort than to attribute it to low ability. The American, Finnish and Taiwanese Olympians have also attributed success and failure more to effort than to ability.

In contrast to Campbell’s findings, the results in studies of German Olympians finalists and prefinalists in mathematics, physics, and chemistry, showed that participants valued ability significantly higher than effort. Effort was estimated to be equally important in the case of failure as in the case of success.

Koga Nari, Boston College

This poster session provides a synthesis of literature on the reciprocal and ecological relations between English language learners' (ELLs') social identity negotiations and their English language acquisition. As English language education proliferates in the world due to the wide-spread notion of globalization and internationalization, a growing number of students in various educational settings continue to experience strong societal, parental, and educational expectations towards an attainment of English language proficiencies. Previous studies, both conceptual and empirical studies, have demonstrated that ELLs' identity negotiations, including explorations, reevaluations, and constructions of identities, influenced their attainment of linguistic competences and overall academic engagement. The purpose of this session is to describe the patterns and developmental processes of ELLs' identity negotiations accompanied with their English language learning as well as to suggest possible research implications for the current ESL and EFL contexts. The reviewed literature focuses on diverse populations of ELLs, ranging from kindergarteners through young adults, who live in various countries. Two major topics in this session include: (a) the conceptualization of social identity as an interdependence of individuals' social psychological states and their collective involvement in given sociocultural learning contexts and (b) the reciprocity existing between ELLs' social identities and their English language learning within their educational experiences ranging from their inevitable struggles, such as alienation, marginalization, and deteriorating mental health, to their achievement of developing translingual and transcultural identities. By presenting above topics that emerge from relevant literature, this session suggests that incorporating our deep understandings of learners' social identities into our teaching practices may make significant changes in current approaches of English language education.

Chen Mu-Nen, National Changhua University of Education

Gross Steven Jay, Temple University

The New DEEL (New Democratic Ethical Leadership) originates from the 9th Annual Values and Leadership Conference. Since the end of 2004, members of New DEEL embarked a research study on curriculum worldwide which enable students form the US and Australia to participate in the processing of reform, expression their opinions, and play a role in the school development of curriculum, instruction and assessment. On February 2005, educational unites in the states of New Jersey and Pennsylvania and members from Temple University, Penn State University, and Australian Catholic University et al. initiated cooperation and strategy association in hopes that starting with the US, concepts of New DEEL will be widely spread in schools. As the primary advocate of New DEEL project, Gross found that based on a few examples on the reform of curriculum, instruction and assessment promoted by several districts, leaders are likely to experience different degrees of organizational turbulence or otherwise volatile conditions. The beginning stage of current project has not completely categorized the details of leadership missions.

Failures of past educational reform are often resulted in the opposition of conservatives or accidental incidents that impedes reform facilitation. A leader’s behavior should no be monotonous; rather he/she should change in accordance with the degree of the opposite force, or turbulence. In other words, leaders’ behavior during extreme turbulence is not necessarily the same as those during light turbulence. Leaders must learn to always consider the time and current situations. The path of reform consists of many unknown factors. Reformists may also induce the opposite force from anti-reformists. This study attempts to investigate whether New DEEL is suitable for educational reform in Asian countries by comparing the history of western and eastern educational reform. In addition, Gross’s turbulent theory is also utilized to describe how leaders create a democratic educational environment with the paradigms of ethical leadership.

Chau Chan Wai Yi, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Kwok Siu Kuen, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Facing the challenge of globalization on nearly every aspect of our lives, there is a sustainable need of learning Chinese in an era of globalization. In Hong Kong, because of historical reason, its education essentially adopted the British system in which almost all subjects were conducted in English, except some inevitable Chinese subjects such as Chinese Language and Chinese History. Thus, Hong Kong people generally suffer from lacking the use of Chinese in written communication. Therefore, there is a sustainable need of Chinese workplace training in an attempt to upgrade the Chinese language ability of the employees. The authors have more than ten years experience in Chinese workplace training. We would like to share our experience in order to draw the attention of educators and policy-makers on how to effectively reform education and prepare the next generation to improve their Chinese language ability to meet their future challenges.

This paper will first review the historical background of Hong Kong’s education system, analyzing the reasons of the sustainable needs of Chinese workplace training of Hong Kong people. Then, we will summarize the characteristics of Hong Kong’s Chinese workplace training after the sovereignty back to China on July 1, 1997. We will especially focus on the characteristics and deficiencies of Hong Kong’s working people in using Chinese, the expectations of the public and private sectors in Chinese workplace training, and the feedbacks from the students in Chinese workplace training. It is our hope that our experience and analysis will be useful in improving the Chinese language ability of Hong Kong people, especially in designing our next generation’s education in the way of learning syllabi, teaching aims and objectives, as well as the teaching modes and methods.

Lam Chi Tak, TWGHs Lui Yun Choy Memorial College

The development of a highly qualified and committed teaching force is one of the core issues in ongoing worldwide educational reforms. Under the tide of change as a result of globalization (Mok & Chan, 2002), certain reforms on teacher education and professional development have been recently introduced in Hong Kong. Among these, the Advisory Committee on Teacher Education and Qualifications (ACTEQ) initiated the proposal of internship for beginning teachers in 2003. It proposed the implementation of teacher internship through mentoring so as to increase effectiveness of the beginning teachers. Although there is still no formal policy text of internship, its concept and practice have been discussed for few years as a discourse. In the school year of 2005-2006, internship is piloted in Hong Kong secondary schools where An Experimental Induction Tool Kit is invented and adopted. There is an extensive literature supports that internship of beginning teachers should be introduced through mentoring as a way of improving professional development of teachers at both individual and school levels (Bubb et.al., 2002; Hessinger, 1998; Norbeck, 1999; Weedy, 2001). Nevertheless, this paper tries to examine teacher internship from a critical approach. It attempts to identify the proposal through text analysis at first glance. Then the concept of internship is going to be explored by historical overview and international perspective in respectively. The paper aims at illuminating the theoretical and empirical foundations of internship. These foundations include epistemological foundation, rationality and power. All these provide a platform of reflection on the purpose and practice of internship. Not only does it indicate that deep contemplation is required for implementing internship among Hong Kong teachers, but also does it suggest that the proposal of internship signifies the rise of managerialism.

Vanderburg Robert, Clalfin University

I would like to conduct a presentation where I share how I teach English teachers to use writing workshops to teach students how to write. I use some information from Nancy Atwell’s book In the Middle and experiences of my own instructional practices using writing work shops. I give my students different procedures they can use to run successful writing workshops. The procedures range very structured to less structured. I have developed different procedures to help teachers with different teaching styles and different classroom personalities. I also present how to use mini-lessons along with the workshops to focus each workshop on a central writing theme. Finally, I present how teachers can use these workshops to create editing groups and to give direct one-on-one instruction to each student.

Gu Limin, Mid Sweden University

Ivarson-Jansson Ewa, Mid Sweden University

The decentralization in Swedish educational system since the 1990’s requires teachers’ ownership over searching for increased knowledge and their involvement in the process of school improvement. The development of teachers’ professional knowledge and their initiatives and ability of doing research is thus regarded as crucial for teacher professionalism that refers to the quality of practice(Cochran-Smith, 1994; Gore, 1995; Griffin, 1999; Tickle, 2001; Zeichner & Noffke, 2001).

There is an ongoing project on teachers learning at the Faculty of Teacher Education at Mid Sweden University. Three dimensions are explored in this project: teachers’ learning (teachers who work at schools), student teachers’ learning (pre-service student teachers), and teacher educators’ learning are explored in this project. In this paper we will briefly present the results from two subprojects within the dimension of teachers’ learning, in which the use of classroom observation and action research by teachers into an in-service teacher education program as a departure point for their reflective professional learning has been examined (Ivarson-Jansson & Gu, 2004; Gu & Ivarson-Jansson, 2005). Based on this, we are also going to present a research proposal and designs for other two research dimensions of teachers learning, in which using research-based approach into pre-service teacher education and the model of learning community of university teachers and teachers in local schools in forms of seminars, workshops, and cooperative research projects will be our focus.

Lin Chun-wen, National Taiwan Normal University

The recent spurt in early childhood education legislation is an indication of its importance in educational reform in Taiwan, and early childhood teacher certification is prominently addressed in the current legislative initiatives. To improve the quality of early childhood teachers – as emphasized in the K program in U.S.A. - a more complete certificate endorsement program for the teacher skills and knowledge is required. Early childhood education law did not previously comprehensively address the early childhood teacher certification; however, current legislative initiatives may endanger the existence of private preschools and kindergartens.

The purposes of this article are: (1) to analyze the current early childhood education legislative initiatives, (2) to discuss the impact of the early childhood teacher certification legislation and (3) to summarize the results and provide suggestions for improving the quality of the early childhood teacher. Besides that, this article utilizes documentary research and review of current legislative initiatives from several aspects, such as early childhood teacher wages, certification, legislation, promotion, kindergarten management, and human resources. The results suggest the following: (1) to legislate the wage initiative, and set up welfare and retirement systems for solving the problems of low wages of early childhood teacher, (2) to establish a certificate endorsement program for early childhood teachers, (3) to legislate ”childcare and early childhood law” and set up early childhood teachers regulation, (4) to classify early childhood teachers and assistants, and to institutionalize promotion road maps, (5) to assist the establishment of private kindergarten, and (6) to evaluate and avoid a deficit in teachers material and human resources.

Lin Chun-wen, National Taiwan Normal University

This article explores the impacts of globalization and free enterprise on early childhood education in Taiwan. The author adopts the literature review and “childcare and early childhood education initiative” analysis to examine the impacts on the early childhood education in various aspects such as educational policy, qualification for early childhood teacher, localization culture, and school management. Globalization allocates the limitation of national sovereign and state autonomy, while entrepreneurialism will create free market and monopolization. While globalization and free enterprise have been critical in bringing dramatic changes to the world economy, this article challenges the enthusiastic pursuit of capitalist-type system in early childhood education - although the growing economic interdependence of countries worldwide through increasing number of free enterprise is inevitable. It is evident that globalization and free enterprise have economic, cultural, political, and technological aspects that may be intricate and thus affect children’s identity, convention, conception and behavior in the future.

The author contends that multinational corporation will eventually dominate the new patterns of management of kindergarten and preschool in Taiwan and issue of localization or native culture or language raised in the context of westernization and capitalism will highlight the early childhood educational policy-making in advance. This article identifies inadequate solution in “childcare and early childhood education initiative” and presents recommendations for further policy-making and practice : (1) developing a advanced education policy and management agenda for progressive growing global capitalism, (2) qualification for foreign teachers in preschool and kindergarten should proceed subsidiary legislation, (3) curriculum should comprise localization culture in bilingual preschool, and (4) entrepreneurialism and transnational preschool institutes may endanger the existence of native preschool and kindergarten in the future, – thus requiring the intervention of the government moving on legislation.

Hsiao Hsi-Chi, Cheng Shiu University

Chen Mu-Nen, National Changhua University of Education

Yang Hao-Sen, National Changhua University of Education

Huang Tien-Chu, National Changhua University of Education

Curriculum decision-making is the primary task for educational administrators. Curriculum decision-making includes the process of curriculum development. The current policy of vocational education in Taiwan tends to distribute the power of curriculum decision-making. In the future curriculum, Ministry of Education will only be responsible for establishing curriculum guidelines, review of curriculum plans and the offer of resources. If school administrators deem themselves as only curriculum executors without the ability to plan curriculum and intention to make necessary changes, the establishment of school-based curriculum will remain a far-fetched idea.

In the past, Taiwan vocational high schools have little authority on curriculum decision-making. All of the schools must comply with the curriculum structure promulgated by central government and have no authority to decide curriculum. In recent years, the trend of democratization of education prompts Ministry of Education to promote vocational education reform and the project of New Curriculum of Technological and Vocational System. This project aims to distribute curriculum decision-making to schools and expects schools to complete the development of school-based curriculum. School administrators have long lacked the sense of curriculum autonomy, and thereby are equipped with professional abilities regarding regulating curriculum goals and contents. As a result, this reform is likely have enormous impact to all vocational high schools.

In 2002, five vocational high schools have experimentally conduct school-based curriculum. Among these schools, some administrators encounter few problems in the development of experimental curriculum, whereas other schools find it difficult to distribute authority of curriculum decision-making. The factors causing these issues are worth of investigation. This study aims to study the five schools involved in the project of school-based curriculum and investigate the increase of curriculum decision-making of administrators prior to and after educational reform in forms of interviews; in addition, this study also concentrates on strategies for performing curriculum decision-making. Lastly, this paper concludes the study by making a comparison between the literature reviewed and interviews conducted for current study.

Cheng Ying-Yao, National Sun Yat-sen University

Wang Wen-Chung, National Chung Cheng University

Chou Wan-Yu, National Sun Yat-sen University

Lee Yu-Chia, National Sun Yat-sen University

Based on the model of creative problem solving (Parnes, 1977), this study developed the Children Creative Problem Solving Test for 5th and 6th graders. The test was designed to measure pupils’ creativity in real-life problem solving. Eight content experts were recruited to review the items. The test covered 4 major processes, problem-observation, problem-definition, problem-analysis, and problem-solution. The test contained 8 testlets, each with 4 items. These 32 items can be classified into 3 parts, story telling, note making, and fun puzzle. A set of 284 5th and 6th graders were administered. It was found that the 4 subtests (processes) had alpha coefficients of between .52 and .63, and the whole test had an alpha coefficient of .85, suggesting some evidence of reliability. The correlations among the 4 subtests were between .53 and .71, providing some convergent validity. The test was again administered to 207 5th graders (102 boys and 105 girls) for cross-validation. Basically, the major results did not change very much, indicating some evidence of invariance. Basically, this test has good psychometric properties.

湯 維玲 , 國立屏東教育大學

There is a new curriculum reform in Taiwan, the arrangement of Grade 1-9 curriculum, encouraging “bottom-up” curriculum development by elementary and secondary schools. This article presents the procedures and the results of “School-Based Curriculum Development, SBCD” on Drama in an elementary school. The target school has endeavored to implement SBCD for one and a half years, from August 2002 to January 2004. While analyzing the second-grade, fourth-grade, fifth grade, and six-grade teachers’ action research results, the author has found the problems, the value conflicts, and the curriculum development dilemma. In order to solve these problems, this article suggests some solutions for teachers.

The results are that SBCD focused on students’ creativity, which is obviously increased by using the drama curriculum. Through drama skills, integrated in the school curricula, students make progress in creativity as confirmed by their teachers’ teaching records and creativity assessments. The students love the drama courses.

莊 護林 , 粉嶺公立學校

早於 2000 年 5 月，自教育統籌委員會發表的《教育制度檢討改善方案》諮詢文件後，「全方位學習」已成爲各科發展課程的一大方向，其中尤以常識科的發展路向至爲明顯。「全方位學習」的優點在於能爲學生創造機會，讓他們從實際體驗中學習，這有助學生在不斷變化的社會中，實現全人發展的目標和發展終身學習的能力。

電子手帳為社會普及的工具，其裝置的功能逐漸多元化，除了一般個人的記事管理，如通訊錄、記事和備忘、日程安排外，亦同時具備計算器、錄音、媒體播放工具和辭典等功能。以致進一步延伸至收發電子郵件、網絡電話、上網等通訊領域外，甚至是具備全球定位系統的功能。此外，大部分的電子手帳均具備 sd/cf 外置插卡槽及 USB 的接駁口。這樣將有助用家除了封閉式的基本功能外，可以隨使用者的需求購買不同功能的卡片進行功能的升級。

本文旨在分享就小學常識科內如何運用電子手帳配合全方位學習的實際經驗及注意事項。

傅 清雪 , 中華醫學院

在幼兒階段其社會化及認知發展逐漸建構中，幼兒教師扮演輔導幼兒語言發展和充實幼兒語言經驗的角色。學習不僅僅是認知和心理的過程，更是依賴師生之間社會關係的建立（ Stubbs,1976 ）；因此，教師的語言除了是知識的傳遞外，更是師生關係建立的基礎。「師者傳道、授業、解惑也」，教師與學生的溝通方式，透過語言的傳達是不可或缺的。 Bellack （ 1966 ）等人在教室的觀察研究中發現，傳統教室中正式的「教室言談」（ classroom talk ），「教師言談」（ teacher talk ）就占了百分之七十五。