Largest Education System Research Articles

Adaptive educational expectations: How do parental educational expectations respond to child academic performance in various family contexts?

Parental educational expectations are well-studied in sociology of education and social stratification and mobility, but most literature conceptualizes these expectations as static or considers how they change only at key educational junctures such as educational transitions. Whether parental educational expectations adapt to child academic performance more generally, and what might be the key theoretical components in adaptation, are not well-conceptualized or tested. To address these limitations, we posit and test the concept of adaptive educational expectations. Our concept encompasses three key propositions: adaptability – parental expectations adapt to child academic performance; relative responsiveness – the adaptive response of parental expectations to child performance is larger in magnitude than the responsiveness of child performance to parental expectations; and heterogeneity – the adaptability of parental expectations varies across family contexts. We test the concept using the case of China, the largest education system in the world, with analyses of longitudinal data from the China Education Panel Survey. Findings show that parental expectations are more adaptive to child performance in low-SES families than in high-SES families and in rural areas than in nonrural areas, but there is no difference in adaptability by child gender and sibship size. These findings indicate that the adaptation of educational expectations is more shaped by socioeconomic circumstances than family demographics. Furthermore, the use of this concept reveals a hidden form of educational inequality that prior literature often neglects: compared with high-SES parents, low-SES parents not only hold lower educational expectations but are more likely to decrease their expectations when child academic performance declines, which further reduces their educational involvement. These findings illustrate the relevance of all three features of the adaptive educational expectations concept.

Harmony Teaching Research — Implication for Music Education

This study aims to find out how students’ executive function skills are impacted by music instruction, especially harmonic instruction. The study adheres to ethical standards, ensuring participant confidentiality and freely given, informed consent. The introduction, which also provides background information on the importance of music education, outlines the goals and objectives of the study. In this review of the literature, we focus on constructivism and sociocultural theory as the theoretical frameworks for our analysis of the studies on music education and its impact on cognitive development. The techniques section describes the tools and how they were used; a questionnaire and open-ended comments were used to collect the data. The findings section includes both quantitative and qualitative results. The quantitative findings show a statistically significant positive association between executive function skill reports and the intensity of harmonic teaching, which may indicate a link between higher harmonic education progress and better executive function ability rises. The qualitative findings provide additional insights into the viewpoints and experiences of the participants, which strengthens the research. The conclusion summarizes the main findings and identifies the study’s limitations. Overall, emphasizes the value of music instruction in developing well-rounded individuals and presents solutions for integrating music instruction into the larger educational system that are supported by research. Because of the study’s rigorous research design, dedication to ethical principles, and use of appropriate statistical procedures and analytic tools, the findings are more believable and legitimate. The study’s findings and recommendations are meant to improve formal music education programs and advance understanding of how music education fosters students’ creativity and cognitive skills.

Teaching-learning dynamics between schools and tutoring centres in India: a virtuous or vicious cycle? (Las dinámicas de enseñanza-aprendizaje en los centros escolares y los centros de tutorías privadas en la India: ¿ciclo virtuoso o ciclo vicioso?)

ABSTRACT Unpacking the linkages between mainstream education and private tutoring is fundamental for advancing knowledge on tutoring’s implications for learners and systems of learning. This paper explores the micro-processes of teaching-learning at schools and tutoring centres to provide a nuanced understanding of the dynamics between them, in the context of India. Using qualitative data from lesson observations, interviews and focus group discussions with 85 participants, the paper explicates the teaching-learning processes in these two settings. The findings and analysis illuminate how actors in one setting shape their responses based on their perceptions of the other, thus influencing their pedagogical practices. The cyclic nature of the resulting dynamics highlights the negative implications for mainstream education in terms of undermining the implementation of progressive pedagogical reforms and inhibiting the need for systemic interventions to resolve incongruities and misalignments within the larger education system. This could result in a potentially vicious feedback loop. The non-binary exploration of this feedback loop has wider global relevance in terms of the nuances added to the theme of private tutoring’s negative outcomes.

Editor's Page

Editor's Page Stephanie M. Lang 'The articles in this issue of the Register highlight a series of sweeping changes occurring not only in Kentucky but also nationally during the early and mid-twentieth century. Spurred on by political corruption and the consolidation of wealth in the hands of a few, reformers in the Progressive Era sought to inject morality back into society through a series of reforms. Punctuated by a back-and-forth between the forces of reform and reaction, the state had to navigate modernization. Within this environment, new ideas, mindsets, and lifestyles took root at an accelerated pace, but not all ventures fostered the intended outcomes. One example of a progressive reform that significantly altered Kentucky was Prohibition, which reshaped the bourbon industry. Although Congress celebrated bourbon in 1964 and recognized it as a distinctive product of the United States, temperance advocates in the first two decades of the twentieth century turned their energy to the prohibition of alcohol. In her article, "'America's Native Spirit': Prohibition and the Consolidation of the Kentucky Bourbon Industry," Bailey Browning chronicles the shutdown, impact on communities, and subsequent consolidation of the bourbon industry following repeal. Browning describes how many smaller, community-based distilleries permanently closed or were purchased by larger companies during this thirteen-year period. The industry that emerged utilized new strategies and technologies to produce bourbon for international markets. A failed experiment meant as a form of social control, Prohibition was repealed in 1933 as part of a larger effort to alleviate economic tensions during the Great Depression. [End Page 1] Modernism and fundamentalism also clashed in the early twentieth century over the teaching of evolution in schools and universities, signaling additional changes in the larger education system. After university enrollment plummeted during the Great Depression and World War II, an influx of students in the postwar period due to the G.I. Bill renewed issues over funding and curriculum. In "No Longer an 'academically inferior, church-controlled southern school': How Transylvania College Found Success After World War II," Jonathan Tyler Baker explores how Transylvania reconciled academic changes as a religiously affiliated institution. Seeking to move forward without depending entirely on funding from the Disciples of Christ, university administrators became policy-oriented fundraisers and campus builders. As Baker notes, the changes in higher education during this era could help us adapt as we move forward in a new digital age. The rapid speed of societal transformations during the twentieth century meant that adaptability was key for both the bourbon industry and Transylvania University. Refusing to buckle under the pressures of modernization, or shifting religious and political ideologies, both Transylvania University and the bourbon industry redefined themselves and emerged economically stronger. Today, Transylvania University is a renowned liberal arts college, while Kentucky produced two million barrels of bourbon in 2021 with a record 12 million aging in warehouses.1 [End Page 2] Footnotes 1. "Kentucky Distillers Set Records for Bourbon Barrel Inventories, New Fills—And Punishing Production Taxes," Kentucky Distillers' Association, September 27, 2022, available online via https://kybourbon.com/industry-news/kentucky-distillers-set-records-for-bourbon-barrel-inventories-new-fills-and-punishing-production-taxes/. Copyright © 2022 Kentucky Historical Society

Higher education expansion and supply of teachers in China

We examine the teacher labour market in China using the 2005 mini-Census, in the context of the transformation of the world's largest education system. We first document a significant increase not only in quantity, but also in quality of teachers during 1990–2005. Instrumental Variables results based on the natural experiment of a substantial expansion of higher education in 1992/93 indicate a large positive causal effect of the expansion on supply of teachers. Consistent with differential opportunity costs across graduate occupations, the supply effect is more pronounced for women and those living in less developed regions. Further analyses of differential college premiums in earnings and non-pecuniary benefits between teaching and non-teaching occupations suggest that teacher recruitment has become more market-oriented and flexible, in attracting low to lower-middle ability college graduates into teaching in an increasingly decentralized and competitive graduate labour market.

Personal, Cultural, and Institutional Perspectives of Special Education Technology Integrators: A Narrative Inquiry

The purpose of this narrative inquiry was to gain a deep understanding of the lived experiences of four special education technology integrators from personal, cultural, and institutional perspectives. Two semi-structured, recorded interviews were conducted with each participant, followed by a focus group with all participants. Data analysis included continuous memoing, coding, cross coding, raw data triangulation, investigator triangulation, and member checking as a means of deeply understanding participant experience within the larger educational system. Study findings can be used to inform educational stakeholders and policy makers of the challenges found within special education, the unique benefits that special educators bring to the system, and how through collaboration, we might initiate systemic change in support of special education teachers.

FOREIGN STUDENT IN A RUSSIAN UNIVERSITY: TRENDS OF CHOICE, PROBLEMS OF ADAPTATION AND FORMATION OF RELATIONSHIPS

Purpose of the study: The object of this paper is to provide a sociological analysis of the situation related to educational process and organization of foreign students in Russian universities in ratings and relationships of students from China that will help to identify the real problems of adaptation to new conditions of socio-cultural and educational space.
 Methodology: The fundamental basis of this study is an observational one - an overview of the subject "Investigation of Satisfaction with the Organization of Chinese under studies' life at Russian Universities". N = 615, speaking to Chinese understudies concentrating in Russian colleges. The portrayal of sociological data is given by a multi-stage defined example with quantity determination of units of perception on the last advance.
 Results: Preparing of remote understudies in China and Russia ought to completely utilize worldwide experience and training to create first-class universal seriousness, build up the status of China and Russia as nations of ground-breaking instruction on the world training market, reinforce the national security of China and Russia.
 Applications of this study: In this study, the barriers to intercultural change in the field of globalization and integration of Eurasia, large educational systems such as Chinese and Russian have been identified that can be used in the global-scale analysis.
 Novelty/Originality of this study: The scientific novelty of this research consists in the presentation of adaptation and intercultural transformation strategy of foreign students’ educational process in Russian universities in the context of globalization and Eurasian integration of socio-cultural and educational space.

What’s Hot in Literacy Instruction

What’s Hot in Literacy Instruction

A tangled web: The reciprocal relationship between depression and educational outcomes in China

Research on depression and education usually focuses on a unidirectional relationship. This paper proposes a reciprocal relationship, simultaneously estimating the effects of depression on education and of education on depression. China, which has the world's largest education system, is used as a case study. This paper applies structural equation modeling to three datasets: the China Family Panel Studies, the China Education Panel Survey, and the Gansu Survey of Children and Families. Analyses reveal a reciprocal and negative relationship between depression and educational outcomes. Specifically, early depression reduces later educational achievement, and higher educational achievement also lowers the level of subsequent depression by resulting in less peers' unfriendliness, less pressure from parents' expectations, and less teachers' criticism. More time spent on studies is not associated with higher educational achievement but significantly increases the level of depression. Children from lower SES families bear more pressure and spend more time on studies, which does not correspond to higher educational achievement but rather to higher levels of depression. In the long term, prior depression lowers educational attainment and, after controlling for prior depression, lower educational attainment is also associated with higher levels of subsequent depression. This paper shows that the lower achievers, not the high achievers, bear the major psychological burden of the education system's quest to produce high achievement. This situation reinforces these students' educational disadvantage.

The Argument for a “Data Cube” for Large-Scale Psychometric Data

In recent years, work with educational testing data has changed due to the affordances provided by technology, the availability of large data sets, and by the advances made in data mining and machine learning. Consequently, data analysis has moved from traditional psychometrics to computational psychometrics. Despite advances in the methodology and the availability of the large data sets collected at each administration, the way assessment data is collected, stored, and analyzed by testing organizations is not conducive to these real-time, data intensive computational methods that can reveal new patterns and information about students. In this paper, we propose a new way to label, collect, and store data from large scale educational learning and assessment systems (LAS) using the concept of the “data cube.” This paradigm will make the application of machine-learning, learning analytics, and complex analyses possible. It will also allow for storing the content for tests (items) and instruction (videos, simulations, items with scaffolds) as data, which opens up new avenues for personalized learning. This data paradigm will allow us to innovate at a scale far beyond the hypothesis-driven, small-scale research that has characterized educational research in the past.

CHINA’S SCHOOL SYSTEM: CONTEMPORARY STATE AND LINES OF DEVELOPMENT

This article is intended to provide an overview of education in China today, including mechanisms the country uses to manage its education system, as well as current policies and reforms. It focuses on education in mainland China, and started with a brief overview into the quick facts about special administrative regions (Hong Kong, Macau) and Taiwan. Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao are connected not only by the geographic proximity of their territories, but also shared cultural and linguistic characteristics. According to National Bureau of Statistics of China, China has the largest education system in the world. With almost 260 million students and over 15 million teachers in about 514 000 schools, excluding graduate education institutions, China’s education system is not only immense but diverse. The article also highlights the main official documents, which regulate the functioning of the school system, such as education laws, the strategic plan for reform and development of education at all levels in China during 2010-2020, etc. The last one delineates national strategies, tasks and system reforms. It also describes education development mission. As to compulsory education development mission, it is: consolidating, enhancing nine-year compulsory education; promoting balanced development in compulsory education; lessening schoolwork burdens on primary, middle school students. In accordance with the Plan, the strategic goals to be attained by the year 2020 are to basically modernize education, bring a learning society into shape, and turn China into a country rich in human resources. It is concluded that the organization of China’s school system has moved from a highly centralized, national system to one that is much more decentralized. It has made the school system more equitable, producing better outcomes for a wider array of students. Strategies such as decentralizing education, stressing on quality assurance and accreditation, and developing various types of education institutions are paying off.

Book review of "Palace of ashes: China and the decline of American higher education"

Ferrara, M. S. (2015). Palace of Ashes: and the Decline of American Higher Education. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Pages: 206. Price: 29.95 USD (hardcover).This book is a case study of education (HE) in the US, or rather two studies, as developments in the US are compared with developments in the HE sector in China. While the focus is mainly on the last 30 years the study goes back to the very beginnings of learning both in the West and in China, which helps one's understanding of the different roots and traditions of what much later became known as higher education. Although he is no education researcher, the author is well qualified to undertake such a study as he is familiar with both countries, having taught and lived for several years in (as well as South Korea), is familiar with the Chinese language, and has traveled widely in as the director of the Chinese Exchange Program at Drake University. A professor of English, he currently holds a faculty position at the State University of New York.Ferrara's main argument is that, while is massively investing in education and in universities in particular, universities in the US are losing their position as world-wide leaders in education due to major cuts of public budgets for education and, partly as a consequence, the adoption of a neoliberal agenda-i.e., of corporate values and organization. The list of Ferrara's complaints about the decline of US education is long and includes: the erosion of academic freedom through the loss of faculty governance; the disappearance of tenured professors and their replacement, on the one hand, by poorly paid and disposable lecturers, and, on the other, a growing class of overpaid administrators; and rising tuition, which makes education unaffordable for many students or puts them into debt for years after graduation. Similarly, the author bemoans the disappearance or significant reduction of the role of the liberal arts, and generally the vocationalization of education programs at the expense of the humanities and social studies.This list is neither new nor unfamiliar, since many books have been published over the last ten years or so in the US on the crisis of the university, most of them written by faculty members like Ferrara or other university insiders (e.g., Derek Bok, former Harvard president, who published Universities in the Marketplace: The Commercialization of Higher Education, in 2003). What is new and original, however, is his juxtaposition of the two largest education systems in the world, belonging to the two biggest economic powers.Describing the Chinese system, Ferrara does not idealize it but points out several major flaws that are keeping it from ascending to real academic excellence and becoming a world model. The most important of these is the lack of academic freedom of faculty members because of the tight control by the Communist Party and the state authorities. Likewise, the massive clampdown at Tiananmen Square against student protests in the spring of 1989 is mentioned as an example of a tightly controlled education system, which is at odds with the Western ideals of free and critical thinking and freedom of (academic) speech.The author's comparison of the two systems gives just one, but an important advantage over the US: the recognition that education and academic research are the most important elements of modernization and competition in a global market and that, therefore, they must be recognized and financed accordingly.Although the book's subtitle China and the Decline of American Higher Education seems to suggest that China's massive investment and build-up of education infrastructure and capacity has a direct or indirect effect on developments in US education, this is not substantiated in the book. …

The Potential and Limits of Performance Management: Improving Basic Education in the Western Cape

The focus of this paper is on the management and governance of education at provincial level – specifically on efforts to introduce performance management into education by the Western Cape Education Department (WCED), and their impact. Post-1994 the WCED inherited a bureaucracy that was well placed to manage the province’s large public education system. Subsequently, irrespective of which political party has been in power, the WCED consistently has sought to implement performance management. This paper explores to what extent determined, top-down efforts, led by the public sector, can improve dismal educational performance. The paper concludes that the WCED is (and long has been) a relatively well-run public bureaucracy. However, the sustained, determined efforts to strengthen the operation of the WCED’s bureaucracy have not translated into systematic improvements in schools in poorer areas. One possible implication is that efforts to strengthen hierarchy might usefully be complemented with additional effort to support more horizontal, peer-to-peer governance at the school level.

Flipping theClassroom; Developing listening Material

Flipped classroom is an approach to teach listening in which students participate in online learning in place of traditional homework and then attend school for face-to-face, teacher-guided practice or projects. It is a part of larger education system called blended learning. In this approach, students could learn new content on their own by watching video lectures or other online sources and assigned problems (traditional “homework”) are completed in class with teachers offering personalized guidance instead of lectures. The paper here examined an ESL listening class. Listening skill is much more than hearing. Unfortunately, in students’ opinion, listening is an uninteresting activity. Many students feel very bored in listening class. That is why teachers should know about how to make the students more interested in listening. The aim of this paper is discuss best practices and challenges of implementing the flipped classroom in teaching and learning listening. By using this approach, it is expected that students will develop their listening skills as well as have a lot of fun. The main findings of the study indicate that the students enjoyed learning listening in a flipped classroom environment. They can practice not only listening but also all language skills in listening class.

Pedagogical leadership in action: two case studies in English schools

This paper explores the construct of pedagogical leadership in action in two case-study schools in England. Both schools investigated had headteachers who were recognized as excellent practitioners who had led their schools from a failing position to being judged as ‘outstanding’ and had successfully sustained and extended this status. Their behaviours thus corresponded to the ideals of pedagogical leadership which had been developed in the previous research by the authors. This approach is an extension of ideas pertaining to learner-centred leadership where the key focus is on the personalization of education for the benefit of the learner. Pedagogical leaders take this further, however, and ensure they are equally responsible to the local community and the larger education system when determining appropriate action to support learning in their schools. The research reported here is based on interviews conducted with members of the school community (including students) to establish to how these pedagogical leaders determine effective action. The examination of data identifies six categories of leadership activity which contribute to the continued growth of these schools: establishing a success culture, managing external expectations, selection and induction of staff, managing a robust supportive environment, sustaining effective internal relationships and headteacher leadership behaviour.

Teaching Controversial Issues in Geography: Climate Change Education in Singaporean Schools

In this article, the authors investigate 6 Singaporean geography teachers’ understandings of climate change education. The findings indicate that the participants held very different beliefs about the primary purposes of climate change education, in spite of the highly centralized national curriculum and the unambiguous state support for the science of climate change. The findings suggest that the diversity in teachers’ understandings of the purposes of climate change education and their preferred pedagogical approaches reflect some of the tensions within the larger education system in Singapore.

A New Paradigm in Higher Eeducation in India

India has a massive 1.2 billion population of which a high proportion of them are young. The demand for education in developing countries like India has skyrocketed as education is still regarded as an important bridge of social, economic and political mobility. India has innumerable challenges in terms of infrastructure, socio-economic, linguistic and physical barriers for people who wish to access education. The focus of this paper is to examine the role of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in with a new paradigm in higher education in India in the 21st century. India has a billion-plus population and a high proportion of the young and hence it has a large formal education system. The demand for education in developing countries like India has skyrocketed as education is still regarded as an important bridge of social, economic and political mobility. There exist infrastructure, socio-economic, linguistic and physical barriers in India for people who wish to access education. This includes infrastructure, teacher and the processes quality. There exist drawbacks in general education in India as well as all over the world like lack of learning materials, teachers, remoteness of education facilities, high dropout rate etc. Innovative use of Information and Communication Technology can potentially solve this problem. Internet usage in home and work place has grown exponentially. ICT has the potential to remove the barriers that are causing the problems of low rate of education in any country. It can be used as a tool to overcome the issues of cost, less number of teachers, and poor quality of education as well as to overcome time and distance barriers. To conclude, Higher education in India is an extraordinarily important part of modern Indian society and it is intertwined in the political and social systems of the society. It is in need of change, development and important. In order to effectively plan for reforms and improvement, it is necessary to have in realistic perceptions of what is possible and what is not.

A Little Learning is a Dangerous Thing: Factors Influencing the Increased Identification of Special Educational Needs from the Perspective of Education Policy-makers and School Practitioners

This article considers the increased identification of special educational needs in Australia’s largest education system from the perspectives of senior public servants, regional directors, principals, school counsellors, classroom teachers, support class teachers, learning support teachers, and teaching assistants (n = 30). While their perceptions of an increase generally align with the story told by official statistics, participants’ narratives reveal that school-based identification of special educational needs is neither art nor science. This research finds that rather than an objective indication of the number and nature of children with special educational needs, official statistics may be more appropriately viewed as a product of funding eligibility and the assumptions of the adults who teach, refer, and assess children who experience difficulties in school and with learning.

Dentistry: by choice or chance? A questionnaire survey for pre clinical dental students

Historically, Indian education has been elitist. Currently, India has the second largest education system in the world preceded by China. In order to meet the demand for coveted dental education, private dental colleges have sprung across the country, making the access easy for the students to enroll into dental education programmes after their higher secondary education. This has lead to a suspicion whether these dental students had been forced into a course that they did not aspire of and even if they actually chose the career, are they performing as good as they expected to be once the course commences. This questionnaire survey aims at discussing these issues and to prepare the Indian education system at both school and college level to encompass and implement an orientation and motivation program to overcome this.

Explanation-Construction in Fourth-Grade Classrooms in Germany and the USA: A cross-national comparative video study

To help explain the differences in students' performance on internationally administered science assessments, cross-national, video-based observational studies have been advocated, but none have yet been conducted at the elementary level for science. The USA and Germany are two countries with large formal education systems whose students underperform those from peers on internationally administered standardized science assessments. However, evidence from the 2011 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Exam assessment suggests fourth-grade students (9–10 year-olds) in the USA perform higher than those in Germany, despite more instructional time devoted to elementary science in Germany. The purpose of this study is to comparatively analyze fourth-grade classroom science in both countries to learn more about how teachers and students engage in scientific inquiry, particularly explanation-construction. Videorecordings of US and German science instruction (n 1 = 42, n 2 = 42) were sampled from existing datasets and analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively. Despite German science lessons being, on average, twice as long as those in the USA, study findings highlight many similarities between elementary science in terms of scientific practices and features of scientific inquiry. However, they also illustrate crucial differences around the scientific practice of explanation-construction. While students in German classrooms were afforded more substantial opportunities to formulate evidence-based explanations, US classrooms were more strongly characterized by opportunities for students to actively compare and evaluate evidence-based explanations. These factors may begin to help account for observed differences in student achievement and merit further study grounded in international collaboration.