Korean Educational Development Institute

This article reviews the findings of a field‐based study that compared the academic performance of East Asians and Anglo elementary school students. Variations in academic performance are viewed as the result of the relationship between sociocultural factors and interpersonal interactions. Results link the academic success of East Asian students to the values and aspirations they share with their parents, to the home learning activities, in which they participate with their families, and to the expectations and interactions they have with their teachers and classmates.

An introduction to integrated e-learning e-learning - W. Jochems, J. van Van Merrienboer and R. Koper 1. Instructional design for integrated e-learning - J. Van Merrienboer, T. Bastiaens and A. Hoogveld 2. Designing integrated collaborative e-learning - P. Kirschner,J.W. Strijbos and K. Kreijns 3. Performance assessment in integrated e-learning - D. Sluijsmans and R. Martens 4. Virtual business e-learning: an approach to integrating learning and working - D. Jansen, M. van Laeken and W. Slot 5. Learning technologies in e-learning: an integrated domain model - R. Koper 6. Educational Modelling Languages, H. Hermans, J. Manderveld and H. Vogten 7. Interface design for digital courses - H. Tabbers, L. Kester, H. Hummel and R. Nadolski 8. Usability evaluation of integrated e-learning - F. Paas and O. Firssova 9. Work processes for the development of integrated e-learning courses - K. Schlusmans, R. Koper and W. Giesbertz 10. Learning objects: are they the answer to the knowledge economy's predicament - P. Sloep 11. Management and organization of integrated e-learning - M. van der Klink and W. Jochems 12. Coaching and training in integrated electronic learning environments (IELEs) - H. Boshuizen and P. Kirschner 13. Implementing integrated e-learning: lessons learnt form the OUNL case - W. Westera 14. Evaluating integrated e-learning - T. Bastiaens, J. Boon and R. Martens 15. Epilogue - W. Jochems, J. Van Merrienboer and R. Koper

This study investigates friendship selection and influence processes in relation to popularity, aggression, and prosociality among 613 fifth graders in 26 classrooms within one academic year. Results showed that youth tended to select their friends based on similarity in popularity more than similarity in aggression or prosociality. Aggressive youths tended to select prosocial peers as friends given similarity in popularity, but prosocial youths did not disproportionately nominate aggressive peers. Socialization within friendships was evident for aggressive and prosocial behavior and popularity. Discussion considers the importance of social status as a grouping mechanism in peer social ecologies, and as a malleable factor that can impact student adjustment.

.Curriculum-based measurement of oral reading (CBM-R) is often used to benchmark growth in the fall, winter, and spring. CBM-R is also used to set goals and monitor student progress between benchmarking occasions. The results of previous research establish an expectation that weekly growth on CBM-R tasks is consistently linear throughout the academic year. The patterns of CBM-R growth were examined for a large sample of students (N = 3808) from both general education and special education populations in second to sixth grades. Results support four general conclusions: (a) annual growth is more substantial within the general education population; (b) growth is more substantial in earlier elementary grades; (c) more growth occurs in the fall than the spring season (i.e., seasonal effect), especially within the early primary general education population; and (d) the seasonal effect is less pronounced within the special education population. Estimates of growth within and across seasons are presented and implications are discussed.

This study investigated moderating effects of classroom friendship network structures (centralization and density), teacher–student attunement on aggression and popularity, and gender on changes in the social status of aggression over 1 school year. Longitudinal multilevel analyses with 2 time points (fall and spring) were conducted on a sample of 856 fourth and fifth graders from 45 classrooms. Aggressive boys lost social status over time in classrooms where friendship networks were egalitarian (not centralized) and dense (with many friendship ties) and where the teacher and students were attuned to (shared perceptions about) who in their classroom was aggressive and popular. There were no effects for girls. Educational implications and prospects for setting-level theory, measurement, and intervention are discussed.

To identify the mathematically gifted, Mathematical Creative Problem Solving Ability Test (MCPSAT) was developed. The test was developed for 2 years. In the first year, mathematical creative problem solving ability was conceptualized through literature review. Exemplary items were developed and pilot tested. In the second year, the actual test was constructed and standardized. National and local norms were constructed. Statistical analyses verified that the MCPSAT was valid and reliable to be used in identification of the mathematically gifted. Types of problems, specific criteria for scoring and statistical analyses for verification on goodness of tests are described in this paper.

Abstract Even before infants utter their first words, they engage in highly coordinated vocal exchanges with their caregivers. During these so-called proto-conversations, caregiver–infant dyads use a presumably universal communication structure—turn-taking, which has been linked to favourable developmental outcomes. However, little is known about potential mechanisms involved in early turn-taking. Previous research pointed to interpersonal synchronization of brain activity between adults and preschool-aged children during turn-taking. Here, we assessed caregivers and infants at 4–6 months of age (N = 55) during a face-to-face interaction. We used functional-near infrared spectroscopy hyperscanning to measure dyads' brain activity and microcoded their turn-taking. We also measured infants’ inter-hemispheric connectivity as an index for brain maturity and later vocabulary size and attachment security as developmental outcomes potentially linked to turn-taking. The results showed that more frequent turn-taking was related to interpersonal neural synchrony, but the strength of the relation decreased over the course of the proto-conversation. Importantly, turn-taking was positively associated with infant brain maturity and later vocabulary size, but not with later attachment security. Taken together, these findings shed light on mechanisms facilitating preverbal turn-taking and stress the importance of emerging turn-taking for child brain and language development. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘Face2face: advancing the science of social interaction’.

Numerous studies have explored the affordances of 3D virtual worlds. Although previous studies indicated that virtual worlds would be helpful for experiential and collaborative learning through enhancing physical and social presence, few studies have investigated what determines physical and social presence and what are their roles in learning and teaching in virtual worlds. The current study investigates the influences of individual differences such as age, gender, and epistemological beliefs on physical and social presence. This study also investigates the influences of physical and social presence on situational interest and perceived achievement in virtual role-play. The role-play activity allowed pre-service teachers (n = 151) to teach their peers in realistic classroom contexts within Second Life and to reflect on their language use as teachers. This study found that pre-service teachers' age and epistemological beliefs significantly influenced their physical and social presence in the virtual world. This finding implies that physical and social presence are influenced not only by the representational fidelity of virtual worlds but also by individual differences. In addition, physical and social presence positively influenced situational interest and perceived achievement. More attention should be paid to the roles of physical and social presence in teaching and learning in virtual worlds.

Purposes: This study investigates the role of formal and informal leaders in the diffusion of external reforms into schools and to teachers’ practices. Formal leaders are designated by their roles in the formal organization of the school (e.g., principals, department chairs, and instructional coaches) and informal leaders refer to those who do not have any formal leadership roles but are nominated by other colleagues as influences on their instructional practices. In the context of implementing reading policies associated with No Child Left Behind (NCLB) 2001 legislation, this study aims to examine (a) how formal and informal leaders promote instructional changes through professional interactions with teachers and (b) which types of instructional practices are most responsive to which types of leaders. Research Methods: The authors analyze longitudinal data concerning both professional interactions about teaching reading and instructional practices of teachers and leaders in nine K-8 schools in a single state. Findings and Implications: Formal leaders convey influence on general teaching practices such as setting standards, selecting materials, and assessing students while informal leaders convey influence on specific pedagogical practices (e.g., the use of particular strategies for teaching basic reading skills). Findings contribute to the theoretical and methodological development of both distributed leadership and policy implementation within schools. Moreover, this study suggests the importance of and several strategies for developing a strong instructional leadership team that recognizes and supports the complementary influences of formal and informal leaders.

Abstract To better understand the factors related to teachers' decisions to leave for jobs outside of education, the study employs a structural equation modeling approach to analyze data from two large national datasets from the National Center for Education Statistics. The focus on occupation switchers is unique, with most studies of teacher attrition failing to differentiate between teachers who leave by their reasons for doing so. Overall, our findings suggest that district- and school-level leaders concerned about keeping good teachers in the classroom can take steps to improve teachers' job satisfaction by enhancing salaries and the conditions in which teachers work. Forced to choose between these levers, administrators may be more successful in boosting satisfaction and reducing the rate by which teachers quit to take a job outside of education by focusing their efforts on improving working conditions. Keywords: teacher attritionschool improvementeducational policystructural equation modeling Notes 1. Urban schools also have difficulty filling vacancies, primarily in mathematics (34.7%), foreign languages (30.3%), and special education (31%) (Strizek et al., 2006). 2. The survey uses a complex sampling framework that includes stratification, clustering, and oversampling of teachers with certain characteristics (e.g., new teachers, bilingual teachers) to ensure that samples of these teachers are large enough to produce reliable estimates. In surveys with complex sample designs, direct estimates of the sampling errors based on the assumption of simple random sampling will typically underestimate the variability in summary statistics and distort tests of statistical significance (Hahs-Vaughn & Lomax, 2006; Thomas & Heck, 2001). In order to compensate for this bias, weights assigned by NCES were used in our analyses. Weights are inversely proportional to the probability of selection. Given the relatively small size of our analytic sample, sampling weights can improve our ability to generalize results to the population of the K-12 public school teachers. 3. From a sample of 263 teachers who reported leaving teaching for another job, we excluded 41 part-time or itinerant teachers and teachers who left their teaching position for another job in education (e.g., administrators, counselors, curriculum coordinators, instructors). 4. A latent trait that cannot be measured directly is more reliable and valid when it is measured with two or more indicators (Kline, 2005). 5. We could not use SASS items related to induction/mentoring as they were only asked of first-year teachers. 6. Variation across teacher subgroups (e.g., race, age, gender) and school characteristics in the effect of each exogenous variable on satisfaction and teacher decisions to switch occupations was explored by comparing separate SEM models for each group. 7. The model fit is evaluated using χ 2 (chi-square), the root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) for a measure of absolute fit, and the normed chi-square (χ 2/df ) for a parsimonious fit measure. As rules of thumb, RMSEA values of .05 or less indicate a good fit (Cudeck & Browne, 1993; Hoyle, 1995) as do normed chi-square values of less than 5 (Kline, 2005). Confirmatory factor analysis showed that the fit of the measurement model was satisfactory (χ 2/df = 4.61; RMSEA = .048) with one exception. The significant chi-square statistic [308.94 (df = 67), p < .01] indicates an unsatisfactory model fit. However, the chi-square fit index is highly sensitive to sample size. A model is likely to be rejected when the sample size is large, even though the discrepancy between the sample correlation/covariance matrix and model-predicted correlation/covariance matrix may be small or trivial (Fan, Thompson, & Wang, 1999; Fan & Wang, 1998). 8. Construct validity and reliability are also evaluated (data not shown). Construct validity is evaluated by examining the standardized factor loadings within the constructs (Hair et al., 1998). The standardized factor loadings on all latent constructs are statistically significant at the .05 level. Construct reliability, a statistic that measures the amount of scale score variance that is accounted for by all underlying factors, ranges from .575 and .737 (Hair et al., 1998). The construct validity and reliability for working conditions is just below the acceptable threshold (.6). This may be due to correlated error variances between "principal leadership/administrative support" and "teacher influence over school policy" and between "student conduct" and "teacher control in the classroom", which we allowed to remain in the model based on evidence from other empirical studies. For example, Blase and Kirby (1992) and others (Clift, Veal, Holland, Johnson, & McCarthy, 1995; Conley, 1991) found that facilitative principal leadership and support that provide teachers opportunities to participate in decisions about policies and practices are positively associated with teachers' job satisfaction and commitment. In addition, teacher authority over instruction and discipline have been found to be related to student behavior wherein fewer student behavioral problems exist in schools where teachers perceive having more control (Evertson & Weinstein, 2006; Ingersoll, 2003). 9. For the multigroup comparisons, we build a final structural model with four significant constructs (excluding professional development experiences) from the relative weight and mediating models. The equivalence of the measurement model is established, and the structural models for subgroups compared (Byrne, 1998; Jöreskog & Sörbom, 1993; Kelloway, 1998). The structural paths of interest among the latent variables are compared by examining chi-square and other fit indices (e.g., χ 2 /df and RMSEA) between the fully and partially unconstrained models.

With the passing of Korea's Gifted Education Act, creativity has come to the forefront in considering the future of Korea's economic prosperity in the global economy (Korean Educational Development Institute, 2003). The purpose of this study was to examine the understanding of creativity among Korean science teachers of gifted students. Sixty teachers participated in this study with an open-ended questionnaire about their understanding of creativity. The data were analyzed based on Urban's (1995) three components of creativity. The findings indicated that these science teachers had a thorough understanding of the cognitive component and a strong association of creativity with intellectual ability, but overidentified with the cognitive component, showing less awareness of the personal and environmental components of creativity. To shift their understanding to a more balanced view, personality and environmental components, as well as attributes in other component areas, should be emphasized.

This article focuses on teachers' dual frustrations caused by contradictory requirements in Korean education reform policies since 1995. It summarizes recent education policy reforms in Korea and links them to the intensification of teachers' work through the extension of its range, and the possibility that teachers' work will be deskilled by requirements to develop new technical skills with limited resources. Above all, teachers, who have tried to overcome standardized classroom teaching, and have been frustrated by limited resources and the existing school system, are now being frustrated again by recent re-standardization policies.

The federal School and Staffing Survey (SASS) and Teacher Follow-up Survey (TFS) were used to examine the impacts of induction activities on beginning teacher turnover. This study excluded those teachers who moved or left schools for unavoidable and involuntary reasons, a confounding factor in previous research. This analysis revealed that three induction activities are beneficial in significantly reducing turnover rates for beginning teachers: seminars, common planning time, and extra classroom assistance.

Abstract Interests towards teaching programming skills have risen recently in the realm of computing education. Learning how to program not only enables learners to develop computing applications, but it can also enhance learners’ computational thinking (CT) practice. CT refers to learners’ ability to approach ill-structured tasks systematically based on algorithmic thinking in computing. Along with growing academic interests towards CT in recent studies, researchers have emphasized the role of teaching programming in facilitating learners’ problem-solving skills. Emerging OERs have expanded learners’ opportunities to engage in hands-on programming exercises; yet a challenge still remains as to how learners’ programming exercises can be tailored to accommodate individual differences in terms of learners’ digital literacy skills. There is still a lack of in-depth discussions on how to support learners’ personalized learning experiences during programming exercises associated with CT. This study hence proposes a conceptual framework that seeks to consider how to promotelearners’ personalized learning experiences and enhance their CT skills in OERs. Through extensive reviewing of literature, this study provides several implications for further research.

This article examined teacher–student agreement on the measure: “bullies and kids they pick on” in 38 (15 first, 12 third, and 11 fifth grade) elementary school classrooms. Overall agreement between teachers and students was low, 7.9%. The frequency of bully–victim dyads reported by teachers and victim prominence were positive predictors, and class size was a negative predictor, of teacher–student agreement. Gender and grade differences emerged. Teacher–student agreement was higher for boy–boy and girl–girl than girl–boy bully–victim dyads. The agreement on boy–boy bully–victim dyads was higher in 5th than in the 1st grade classrooms. Limitations and educational implications of these findings are discussed.

This study examined the effects of group composition based on the learners’ personality types as measured by the Myers-Briggs type indicator as they interacted in threaded discussions. Three groups comprised introverts, extroverts, and mixed introvert-extrovert classifications. Ninety-six participants were divided into 24 groups of 4 participants each: 8 introverted, 8 extroverted, and 8 mixed. Dependent measures included number of posted messages, social, interactive, cognitive, and metacognitive interaction as measured by Henri’s (1992) scheme for coding the type of interaction. Participants in the mixed and extroverted groups posted more messages than those in the introverted group. The extroverted and mixed groups’ learners showed more social, interactive, and cognitive interaction than those of the introverted group. However, the mixed group showed more metacognitive interaction than that of the extroverted group.

We focus on the relationship between universities' academic research and knowledge transfer and the relationship between the national innovation system and the higher education system during a country's transition from catch-up to developed country. We find a structural similarity between publishing and patenting activities and industrial structure by discipline and sector. The two activities have co-evolved with structural changes in industry throughout different periods. Publications have shifted from being close to the traditional industries to the high-tech industries. Academic patents show a similar change. The recent increase in co-publishing and co-patenting between universities, industry and public research institutes implies a vitalisation of the interactions between these three. Our results explain the South Korean Government's efforts to support both academia and industry in a harmonised way, reflecting the different developmental stages of the Korean innovation system. These findings provide the basis for policy recommendations for supporting universities in South Korea as well as in other Asian countries that are achieving rapid economic catch-up.

The goal of this investigation was to determine which reading instruction improves multiple science text comprehension for college student readers. The authors first identified the cognitive processing strategies that are predictive of multiple science text comprehension (Study 1) and then used what they learned to experimentally test the effectiveness of explicit pre-reading instructions (Study 2). Study 1 showed that self-explaining was positively related to comprehension tasks. Study 2 showed that explicitly instructing participants to self-explain while reading multiple science texts enhanced comprehension test performance. These results showed that self-explanation during reading is a successful strategy for enhancing multiple science text comprehension.

Differential item functioning (DIF) is typically evaluated in educational assessments with a simple structure in which items are associated with a single latent trait. This study aims to extend the investigation of DIF for multidimensional assessments with a nonsimple structure in which items can be associated with two or more latent traits. A simulation study was conducted with the multidimensional extensions of the item response theory likelihood ratio (IRT-LR) test, the multiple indicators multiple causes (MIMIC) model, and logistic regression for detecting uniform and nonuniform DIF in multidimensional assessments. The results indicated that the IRT-LR test outperformed the MIMIC and logistic regression approaches in detecting nonuniform DIF. When detecting uniform DIF, the MIMIC and logistic regression approaches appeared to perform better than the IRT-LR test in short tests, while the performances of all three approaches were very similar in longer tests. Type I error rates for logistic regression were severely inflated compared to the other two approaches. The IRT-LR test appears to be a more balanced and powerful method than the MIMIC and logistic regression approaches in detecting DIF in multidimensional assessments with a nonsimple structure.

This chapter reports results from a national policy study that examined state dual credit policies and how state policies address the quality of dual credit courses.