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“To Open Minds, To Educate Intelligence, To Inform Decisions”

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The Executive Council of the International Advisory Board

Mr Mitsumasa Aoyama
Director, The Yufuku Gallery, Tokyo, Japan

Professor June Henton
Dean, College of Human Sciences, Auburn University,
USA

Lord Charles Bruce
Lord Lieutenant of Fife
Chairman of the Patrons of the National Galleries of
Scotland
Trustee of the Historic Scotland Foundation, UK

Professor Michael Hudson
President of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term
Economic Trends (ISLET)Distinguished Research Professor of Economics, The
University of Missouri, Kansas City

Professor Donald E. Hall
Herbert J. and Ann L. Siegel Dean
Lehigh University, USA
Former Jackson Distinguished Professor of English
and Chair of the Department of English

Professor Koichi Iwabuchi
Professor of Media and Cultural Studies & Director of
the Monash Asia Institute, Monash University, Australia

Professor Arthur Stockwin
Founding Director of the Nissan Institute forJapanese Studies & Emeritus Professor
The University of Oxford UK
Professor Chung-Ying Cheng
Professor of Philosophy, University of Hawai’i atManoa, USA
Editor-in-Chief, The Journal of Chinese Philosophy
Professor Steve Cornwell
Professor of English and Interdisciplinary Studies,
Osaka Jogakuin University, Osaka, Japan
Osaka Local Conference Chair
Professor A. Robert Lee
Former Professor of English at Nihon University,
Tokyo from 1997 to 2011, previously long taught
at the University of Kent at Canterbury, UK
Professor Dexter Da Silva
Professor of Educational Psychology, Keisen University,
Tokyo, Japan
Professor Georges Depeyrot
Professor and Director of Research & Member of theBoard of Trustees
French National Center for Scientific Research(CNRS) & L’Ecole Normale Superieure, Paris, France
Professor Johannes Moenius
William R. and S. Sue Johnson Endowed Chair of
Spatial Economic Analysis and Regional Planning
The University of Redlands School of Business, USA

Professor Sue Jackson
Professor of Lifelong Learning and Gender & Pro-Vice
Master of Teaching and Learning, Birkbeck, Universityof London, UK
Professor Sir Geoffrey Lloyd
Senior Scholar in Residence, The Needham ResearchInstitute, Cambridge, UK
Fellow and Former Master, Darwin College, Universityof Cambridge
Fellow of the British Academy
Professor Keith Miller
Orthwein Endowed Professor for Lifelong Learning in
the Science, University of Missouri-St.Louis, USA
Professor Kuniko Miyanaga
Director, Human Potential Institute, Japan
Fellow, Reischauer Institute, Harvard University, USA
Professor Dennis McInerney
Chair Professor of Educational Psychology and CoDirector of the Assessment Research Centre
The Hong Kong Institute of Education, Hong Kong
SAR
Professor Brian Daizen Victoria
Professor of English
Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies
Professor Michiko Nakano
Professor of English & Director of the Distance
Learning Center, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan
Professor Thomas Brian MooneyProfessor of Philosophy
Head of School of Creative Arts and Humanities
Professor of Philosophy and Head of School of
Creative Arts and Humanities, Charles Darwin
University, Australia

Professor Baden Offord
Professor of Cultural Studies and Human Rights & CoDirector of the Centre for Peace and Social JusticeSouthern Cross University, Australia
Professor Frank S. Ravitch
Professor of Law & Walter H. Stowers Chair in Law
and Religion, Michigan State University College of Law
Professor Richard RothSenior Associate Dean, Medill School of Journalism,
Northwestern University, Qatar
Professor Monty P. Satiadarma
Clinical Psychologist and Lecturer in Psychology &Former Dean of the Department of Psychology and
Rector of the University, Tarumanugara University,
Indonesia
Mr Mohamed Salaheen
Director, The United Nations World Food Programme,Japan & Korea
Mr Lowell Sheppard
Asia Pacific Director, HOPE International
Development Agency, Canada/Japan
His Excellency Dr Drago Stambuk
Croatian Ambassador to Brazil, Brazil
Professor Mary Stuart
Vice-Chancellor, The University of Lincoln, UK
Professor Gary Swanson
Distinguished Journalist-in-Residence & Mildred S.
Hansen Endowed Chair, The University of Northern
Colorado, USA
Professor Jiro Takai
Secretary General of the Asian Association for Social
Psychology & Professor of Social Psychology
Graduate School of Education and Human
Development, Nagoya University, Japan
Professor Svetlana Ter Minasova
President of the Faculty of Foreign Languages andArea Studies, Lomonosov Moscow State University
Professor Yozo Yokota
Director of the Center for Human Rights Affairs, Japan
Former UN Special Rapporteur on Myanmar
Professor Kensaku Yoshida
Professor of English & Director of the Center for the
Teaching of Foreign Languages in General Education,
Sophia University, Tokyo, Japan

The Asian Conference on Education 2020
Official Conference Proceedings

ISSN: 2186-5892© The International Academic Forum 2020
The International Academic Forum (IAFOR)
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Table of Contents
Doing Multicultural Education in Times of Trouble: A Case of PBL in
Bilingual Arab-Jewish School in Israel
Raz Shpeizer
Orit Freiberg

pp. 1 - 10

What’s Noteworthy and What Needs to be Taken Note of: An Exploratory
Examination of a Learning Center for Refugee Children
Jennifer Tan Poh Sim

pp. 11 - 18

Using Assignments Linked with Assessments to Teach Qualitative
Research in Education
Yukiko Inoue-Smith

pp. 19 - 28

Encountering and Embracing Differences through Experiential Learning:
Business Classroom Design for Perspectives Broadening
Kant Thongtawee

pp. 29 - 33

Developing Creativity through Design-by-Analogy with Word Trees
Hung-Hsiang Wang

pp. 35 - 46

Stand-Alone Worksheets for Basic Mathematical Computation Skills
Developement
Jaymar L. Bonaobra
Richard M. Lorente

pp. 47 - 53

The Study of Factors that Affect Zhuhai Undergraduates’ Willingness to
Get Master Degree in Hong Kong
Li Pinzhong
Hu Dongxue

pp. 55 - 71

Supporting the Academic Dimension of the Transition to University
A. C. Spowage
Xinru Deng

pp. 73 - 86

Suicide Intervention Experiences and Practices of School Counselors:
Basis for Development of Practice Guidelines
Joel C. Navarez

pp. 87 - 96

College Students Informal and Formal Ways of Seeking Help: Who’s totalk with?
Maria Cristina M. Firmante

pp. 97 - 103

Boosting Self-Care Strategies and Resiliency Manual for PromotingCounselors’ Wellness
Rosemarie A. Tayoto

pp. 105 - 115

The Development of Lesson Plan Based on CIPPA Model in Principles of
Guidance Course
Karakada Nugkim
Chakree Kerdsomboon

pp. 117 - 124

Developing Advanced Critical Thinking Skills in Education Systems:
Higher-Order Thinking Processes in an Era of Rapid Change
Nathaniel Edwards

pp. 125 - 131

Transformative Pedagogy: A Twenty-First Century Perspective Towards
Improving Education
Alisha Souza

pp. 133 - 140

A Materials Library Created by Students, for Students: A Valuable
Learning Resource
Faith Nightingale
Andrew Spowage

pp. 141 - 155

The Effect of College Service Quality on the Learners' Satisfaction at
English Department of Higher Education
SabarunHamdanah

pp. 157 - 170

Cognitive Representation of Social Identity of Collectivist andIndividualistic Oriented Primary School Students
Alla Gudzovskaya
Michail Goryachev

pp. 171 - 179

Teaching (and Learning) in the Time of Epidemics: Reflection on
Humanities Teaching in Higher Education
Amy Leepp. 181 - 188

Emergent Curriculum Practice in Malaysian Kindergarten
Masayu Dzainudin
Faridah Yunus
Hamidah Yamat
Iylia Dayana Shamsudin

pp. 189 - 199

A Study to Investigation the Role of Universities to Promote theEntrepreneurial Culture in Pakistan
Huma Kausar
Anjum Naz

pp. 201 - 214

University Speaking Assessment as Collaborative and Self-Reflective Skill
Development
James Herbach
Kinsella Valies

pp. 215 - 227

Understanding the Role of Mary in the Catechetical Documents Issued in
the Philippines
Andrew Joseph S. Chanco

pp. 229 - 237

Exposure Therapy as an Intervention for Social Anxiety Disorder: A Case
Study of a College Student
Josephine Indah Setyawati
Adhityawarman Menaldi

pp. 239 - 252

Teachers’ Characteristics, Teacher Burnout and Motivation to Leave
Sukritta Preechawong
Anusit Anmanatrakul
Pichet Pinit
Ravinder Koul

pp. 253 - 261

Performing Arts: Assessment of Learning in Grade 7 Mathematics
Ruth M. Revilla
Jocelyn F. Goyena

pp. 263 - 274

Embracing Differences through Dialogue and Engaged Learning
Maria Guajardo
Mandeep Taneja
Swati Vohra

pp. 275 - 287

Study on Computer-Adaptive Testing: Proposal of a Scaffolding Tool
Hirotaka Azuma
Hironobu Takenouchi
Tatsuyuki Takano
Osamu Miyakawa
Takashi Kohama

pp. 289 - 298

Exclusion of Persons with Impairment: Role of Language Vocabulary
Mansi Pandey

pp. 299 - 312

International Student Migration: Pre-COVID Educational Paths ofChinese Undergraduate Students at Emory University
Hong Li
Levin Arnsperger
Michael Cerny

pp. 313 - 326

Effectiveness of Using Smartphone Instant Messaging (IM) App for
Academic Discussion in an Undergraduate Chemistry Course
Mei Xuan Tan
Eng Ying Bong

pp. 327 - 335

A “BIG” PBL Problem: What Supports or Hinders Student Motivation?
Shyamli Mehra
Emilia Idris

pp. 337 - 344

Learner Responses to Language Exchange Activities in a TechnologyMediated Environment in the COVID-19 Era
Mizuki Mazzotta
Yutaka Yamauchi

pp. 345 - 356

Faculty Mentoring and Unmasking Gender Biases and Influences for
Pakistan Returnee Doctoral Graduates from Abroad
Maleeha Ashraf
Denise Hawkes
Maryam RabDirector
Wilson Eduan

pp. 357- 371

Attitudes of Filipino Senior High School Students Towards English:
Implications for Teaching English
Jerusha Eve F. Ong

pp. 373 - 390

Teaching Music in the Times of the Pandemic: Pedagogical Pathways forOnline Learning
Kris Ho
Victor J. Rodriguez

pp. 391 - 398

Vocational Skill Training Model to Embody Social Independence of MildIntellectual Disability People
Zubaedah Wiji Lestari
N. Dede Khoeriah
Nani Nur'aeni

pp. 399 - 411

Teaching Strategies Guidelines to Foster the Computational Thinking
Ability in Higher Education
Virawan Amnouychokanant
Surapon Boonlue
Saranya Chuathong
Kuntida Thamwipat

pp. 413 - 426

Analytics of Behavior Semantics for Understanding Constraint Conditions
Hidden in Formative Process of Real-world Learning
Koryu Nagata
Masahiro Tada
Masaya Okada

pp. 427 - 436

A Real-Time Engagement Assessment in Online Learning Process Using
Convolutional Neural Network
Shofiyati Nur Karimah
Shinobu Hasegawa

pp. 437 - 448

Self-Regulated Learning Recognition and Improvement Framework
Minh-Tuan Tran
Shinobu Hasegawa

pp. 449- 465

Transforming International Pre-Service Teachers’ Pedagogy withTechnology in the Era of Multiliteracy
Huijing Wen
Valerie Harlow Shinas

pp. 467- 481

The Role of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy on Self-efficacy and Worry inCollege Students
Qaishum Masturoh
Adhityawarman Menaldi

pp. 483- 492

Using Constructivist Pedagogies to Support Foreign Language Teachingin Remote Spaces
Valerie Harlow Shinas
Huijing Wen
Lijing Luo

pp. 493- 501

A Prototype System with Speech Recognition Function for Practicing
Speaking English
Harumi Kashiwagi
Min Kang
Kazuhiro Ohtsuki

pp. 503- 510

Overcoming Academic Anxiety and Improving Hope of University
Students: A Group Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
Larissa Amira Giyani
Adhityawarman Menaldi

pp. 511- 525

Developing University EFL Learners Debate Speaking Skills throughClosed Facebook Groups and Zoom Lessons
Leveth Jackson

pp. 527- 533

Unpacking Mission Statements of International Universities Recognized
for Innovation
Kate A. Montgomery

pp. 535- 547

Developing a Textbook of Writing Pantun, Syair, and Acrostic Poetry by
Using the Website www.rimakata.com and kbbi.kemdikbud.go.id
Armilia Sari

pp. 549- 558

Instructional Coaching for School Principals: Lessons and findings fromthe Peruvian Principal Mentoring Programme
Pamela Valdivieso

pp. 559- 572

The Asian Conference on Education 2020

Officilal Conference Proceedings

Doing Multicultural Education in Times of Trouble: A Case of PBL in Bilingual
Arab-Jewish School in Israel
Raz Shpeizer, Kaye Academic College of Education, Israel
Orit Freiberg, Kaye Academic College of Education, Israel
The Asian Conference on Education 2020
Official Conference Proceedings
Abstract
Israeli society, like many contemporary societies, consists of various cultures and subcultures. This diversity finds expression in Israel's education system, albeit throughsegregation, since the system is divided into culturally-based educational sectors,
most prominently among Jews and Arabs. This segregation strengthens mutual
cultural alienation rather than intercultural dialogue. Against this tendency, a few
bilingual-bicultural Arab-Jewish schools have been established in Israel, one of which
is situated in Beer-Sheva, a city in the southern region of Israel, whose demographic
consists predominantly of Bedouins-Arabs and Jews.The bilingual school in BeerSheva was built on multicultural and intercultural principles. The school’s underlying
pedagogical assumption is that there should be a connection between the school's
educational agenda and the forms of teaching that it deploys. Thus, in order toadvance social transformation in the spirit of multiculturalism and interculturalism, apedagogical approach that fosters students' activism, initiative, critical thinking andcollaborative abilities needs to be adopted. Such an approach can be found in PBL(project-based learning), a proactive, student-centered, group-oriented and practiceoriented teaching method.Therefore, in this lecture we explore a case study of a 4months PBL initiative that took place in Beer-Sheva’s bilingual Arab-Jewish school.
Through a rich and thick description, we expose the different layers of the case andprovide a holistic picture of it, arguing that the study’s findings affirm the positive
connection between PBL and a multicultural agenda. Based on these findings, weoffer some guidelines for the implementation of PBL in the context of multiculturaland intercultural education.
Keywords: Multiculturalism, Interculturalism, Education, Bilingual Schools, ProjectBased Learning (PBL), Israel

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PrologOur story begins in 2006 in the city of Beer-Sheva, when a group of Jewish and Arabparents, who knew each other socially, got together and decided to create a JewishArab community and local bilingual education system. In order to understand theuniqueness of this step, we need to give you some context and information about
Israel.
The context
Israeli society, like many contemporary societies, is a multicultural and multiethnic
society. The Arab-Israelis, or Palestinian citizens of Israel, as they preferred to becalled (Mandel, 2018; Mossawa Center, 2016), are, by far, the largest minority groupin Israel. Their population is estimated at 1.9 million, which is about 21.0% of theoverall Israeli population, 75% of which are Jewish-Israelis (Israel Central Bureau of
Statistics, 2019). The Palestinian population within Israel is comprised of either
people who lived in the region prior to 1948, or their descendants. 1948 was the year
in which the Israeli state was established, after a prolonged armed conflict between
the Jews and the Arabs who occupied the region (the latter, at some stage, were joinedby the armies of the surrounding Arab states). During this conflict, an estimated700,000 Palestinians fled or were forced into exile, and hundreds of Palestinianvillages were deserted or destroyed (Morris, 2003). It is no wonder, then, that while
the Jews refer to the 1948 war as the War of Independence, Palestinian citizens ofIsrael, and the Arab world as a whole, call it al-Nakba (the catastrophe. See Mori,
2009). This dichotomy expresses in a nutshell the ongoing tension and conflict
between the two ethnic groups.
The vast majority of Palestinian citizens in Israel live in separate communities, andthis segregation usually exists even in the ethnically mixed cities of Israel. It also
exists in the Israeli education system which is divided into culturally-based
educational sectors. Thus, the Arab education system and the Jewish education system
in Israel are mostly separated, a situation which duplicates and reinforces the tension
and alienation between the two groups rather than encouraging intercultural dialogue.
Against this tendency, several bilingual-multicultural Arab-Jewish schools have been
established in the last few decades (as for today, there are 8 of them. See Weininger,2019). One of these schools is the bilingual school in Beer-Sheva, a city in south
Israel, a region with a relatively large population of Arabs (mainly Bedouins)
alongside the Jewish population.
The case study's actual and conceptual arena
The bilingual school in Beer-Sheva is an elementary school, which is part of a larger
local bilingual educational structure, which offers also private daycare and prekindergarten. From the outset, this educational apparatus was conceived by its
founders in terms of community – the Hagar community – which includes thefamilies of the students and encompasses shared activities both inside and outside theframework of the school. As of today, in the bilingual school of Hagar study, in mixed
classrooms, 260 children, with approximately equal numbers of Arab and Jewish
students and teachers.

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Hagar's community and school were built on multicultural and intercultural principles.
As many scholars (e.g., Raţă, 2013) have noted, there is no one accepted definition ofmulticultural education, and since a serious exploration of the concept is not possible
here, we would like to focus on the school's explicit and implicit agenda in order tounderstand its attitude toward multiculturalism. An analysis of this agenda (which
included analysis of school’s curriculum, official documents and internet site) reveals
3 levels of multiculturalism:
1. The values level. On this level, the school adheres to principles of social
justice, social activism, equality, equity and pluralism.
2. The vision level. On this level, the school aspires its students to become selfaware autonomous agents, who are committed to respecting not only their own
but other peoples’ right to live as autonomous people in a democratic society. At
the same time, the school explicitly aims to the transformation of schoolling andof society as a whole.1 "To build an egalitarian civil society in the Negev and in
Israel as a whole through our bilingual, integrated schools…" (Hagar: Jewish
Arab Education for Equality, vision section, n.d.).
3. The pedagogical level. The school’s underlying pedagogical assumption isthat there should be a connection between the school's overall agenda, that is,
between its vision and values, and the forms of teaching that it employs. In otherwords, there should be a match between the content and the form of what istaught and learned in order to advance both individual growth and socialtransformation in the spirit of multiculturalism and interculturalism. Regarding
content, the school: Acknowledges and gives voice to the different historicalnarratives of the two cultures; combines the core studies with multicultural
themes; and incorporates the study of the three main monotheistic religions –Judaism, Islam and Christianity – and their cultures into the curriculum.
Regarding form, the school embraces a progressive learning approach combinedwith bilingual methods. Hence, the students are active and engaged participants inthe learning processes, and lessons are taught by Arab and Jewish co-teachers inboth languages.
One of the teaching-learning methods used in the school is PBL (project-basedlearning), which, according to one definition
Engages students in learning knowledge and skills through an extended inquiry
process structured around complex, authentic questions and carefully designed
products and tasks (Markham, Larmer & Ravitz, 2003, p. 4).
By being a proactive, student-centered, group-oriented and practice-oriented teaching
method, PBL was thought by the school’s educational leadership to provide a suitable
framework for advancing the school's educational and ideological goals. Thus, it was
gradually incorporated into the curriculum, although none of the projects which wereconducted was on the scale of the project which is the focus of the present study.

1

We use here Gorski's (2010) terminology, since it corresponds well with school's manifested vision.

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The case study description
There were 23 students and two homeroom teachers – one Arab and one Jewish – inthe fourth-grade class of the bilingual school in Beer-Sheva. The PBL took place over
4 months, as part of the students’ humanities studies. Its title was: "My, your and ourliving space." The underlying research question was: "How can we live together in a
multicultural neighborhood?” The students started by observing and characterizing
their own homes and neighborhoods. They presented their findings in class,acknowledging the wide variety of lived environments. They further learned about thegeographic area in which they live – the Negev – and its uniqueness. They constructed
some understanding of the principals of multiculturism through conceptualization.
Based on their research, as well as the knowledge and insights they gathered, thestudents decided that the class project would be to plan a special neighborhood, which
they decided to name "Living together." They had to combine their understanding of
the notion of "living space" with the variety of needs of a multicultural society, inorder to plan the neighborhood. The students were divided into a number of small
groups, and each group had to plan, design and build an architectural model of acommon area, like a park, or public institution, such as a school, a community center,a mall, a house of worship (for each religion), and so forth. In the final stage of the
project, all the models were combined, and the houses of the neighborhood wereadded to them, so a model of the complete neighborhood was created.
Few teachers and experts were involved in the PBL process:- The homeroom teachers led and guided the project and taught the humanities
topics.
- The math teacher taught the students to calculate areas and to use anarchitectural plan.
- The art teacher was responsible for helping build the models with the students.
- The pedagogical counselor and a PBL advisor guided the teachers in theprocess.
- A professional architect gave a lecture about the fundamentals of architecture.
In the closing event of the project, the students presented and explained their work to
an audience comprised of their families and educational experts. A few days later, themayor of Beer-Sheva and the city’s education minister arrived at the school, met thestudents and their teachers, and learned about the project.
Study rationale, objectives and questions
Although, as mentioned, there is no one accepted definition of multicultural
education, there is a considerable consensus among educators and researchers
regarding some main aspects of it. Thus, for example, many would agree thatmulticultural education should promote equality and equity, “Tolerance, respect,understanding, awareness and acceptance of self and others in the diversity of theircultures” (Arslan, 2015, p. 16). There is also wide agreement that multicultural
curriculum should include various cultural perspectives, and that the way of teachingshould generally be student-centered, sensitive to students’ different cultural
backgrounds, and favor collaboration (Anderson et al., 2000; Norley, 2014).
However, the discussions about the “Art of multicultural curriculum delivery”

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Officilal Conference Proceedings(Thompson, 2014, p. 11) tend to be abstract, and there is not much information or
research regarding specific methods for teaching and educating for multiculturalism(Sleeter & Grant, 1987; Thompson, 2014).
Given this situation, the project that was carried out at the bilingual school in BeerSheva presented us with an opportunity to study the connections between PBL, which
is a well-established teaching method, and the actual life and goals of a multicultural
educational institution. Accordingly, two main research questions were formulated:- How do students and education staff in a bilingual multicultural Arab-Jewish
school experience the process of PBL?
- How do students and education staff in a bilingual multicultural Arab-Jewish
school perceive the connections between PBL and the school’s multicultural
agenda?
Methodology
The main research method we employed was participative case study, which is a
special genre of case study in which the researchers, who observe and study the case,are also participants (Baskerville, 1997; see also, Reilly, 2010). Using theparticipative case study method allowed us to maintain a close connection with theprocess and the participants, and, at the same time, provide consulting when needed.
Furthermore, it allowed us to put more emphasis on the participants’ voice, and toadvance their knowledge, skills and sense of self-efficacy, all of which are goals of
PBL. In order to keep the research rigorous and fair-minded, we integrated the action
research iterative cycle (see, e.g., Carr and Kemmis, 1986) into the process.
The research tools we used were semi-structured in-depth interviews with bothteachers and students, during and after the project; participant observation;
photographs; and a research log. The data analysis applied was a free version of theconstant comparative method (Strauss & Corbin, 1998), wherein categories are
extracted, compared and re-shaped from the beginning until the end of the field work.
Findings
We will focus on three main themes that the data analysis revealed and are relevant to
the research questions:- Guidance, support and preparation- A sense of the real
- Bonding through collaborative doing
1. Guidance, support and preparation
The willingness to listen […], I had someone to talk with. There is somebody
who hears me […]. And also the professional tools we have received. These arethings that helped us a lot (Miriam, teacher).2
All of the educational staff emphasized the importance and need of close guidance,
attentive support and thorough preparation and planning. For the teachers, the two
2

The names of the teachers and students were changed to ensure anonymity.

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major needs expressed were guidance in the technique and process of PBL andemotional support. In accordance with some teachers’ observations, it seems that theneed for the latter is the consequence of the combination of intense work, uncertain
conditions, and the close interactions between the teachers themselves, and between
them and the students: “Sometimes there was some tension regarding the teachers cooperation;” “The work on the project was very intense and time consuming.”
Both teachers and managing-supportive staff (i.e., the schools’ pedagogicalcounsellor, the PBL advisor and the school principal) agreed on the importance of
preparation. “Planning, planning, planning,” said another teacher, Rina, “PBL requiresvery good planning.” However, looking back, the managing-supportive staff felt that
there was also a need for more theoretical preparation regarding the foundations ofmulticulturalism. “It was the first big PBL in our school,” noted the principal, “Sonaturally we have focused more on the ways of doing it. In future projects, we willmore explicitly connect the multicultural principles and foundations to the actual
project, though, of course, these principles and foundations are present in all our
educational activity.”
2. A sense of the real
We really learned. It wasn’t just opening a book (Munar, student).
The observations and interviews reveal that all project participants – teachers andstudents alike – experienced the process not merely as a theoretical exercise, but as anactivity directly connected to their real everyday life. This sense of the real was
expressed: First, by the level of engagement and emotional involvement: “It was very
interesting and important to me, as a teacher […]. I was really happy when we
successfully completed the project, and the children were so proud of their work;"
second, by participants’ reference to a meaningful and memorable experience: “Thisis something I’ll always remember”; “This is something I don’t forget. I spoke withall my friends about it;” and third, by participants (especially the students) explicitly
connecting their learning and the project’s subject matter to their lives:
We have learned that in real life you have to work hard to get results […], and webelieved that this project can really make a change, help stop racism and violence,
help stop some of the bad things in the world.
3. Bonding through collaborative doing
The connection to real life was first and foremost facilitated by the action-oriented
character of PBL, which encourages learning by doing. All of the study’s participants
repeatedly mentioned the importance and impact of the element of doing:
My strongest experience was that of learning by doing. You really learn throughactive doing (Suha, teacher).
The doing was real fun, and we also learned a lot from it (Daniel, student).
Most of the project work was done in groups. The teachers worked, at least part of thetime (e.g., planning, coordination), as a group, and the students worked mainly insmall (3-4 students) – ethnically-mixed – groups, and sometimes as a whole-class

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group. As already hinted at above, this collaborative doing occasionally yielded
tensions and arguments. However, it is important to note that most of the students did
not view these disagreements in a negative light, but rather as part of a natural processof collaborative work, which eventually leads to a better understanding of the others,
and better connection with them.
- Maybe there were…well, not fights but, for example, we didn’t agree about
the design […]. There were conflicts and disagreements, but it has also taught me
how to agree.
- The fact that you work with other people, and it is not only a Jewish
neighborhood, but a neighborhood of different religions, different cultures, itmade everything to connect.
- It was difficult sometimes, but it also was fun, and in the end it has unified theclass. Even after the project finished, we continued to share things with eachother.
Discussion
The need to provide teachers with guidance regarding the foundations andimplementation of both PBL and multiculturalism is well acknowledged in theliterature (see, e.g., Arslan, 2013; Shpeizer, 2019; Thompson, 2014). The same is true
about the need for careful planning of any PBL project (Markham, Larmer and Ravitz,
2003. See also, Chandler, 2015; D'Ambra, 2014). What is less obvious and yet,according to our findings, equally important is the need for emotional support forteachers engaging in a multicultural PBL. It seems that the combination of ademanding teaching method, cooperative work, and a multicultural framework andcontent, creates an intense experience for teachers. Thus, much like students, theyneed attentive and empathic support throughout the process so that they can share andunpack their feelings.
Multicultural education aims to transform individuals and society (Gorski, 2010).
Hence it is a praxis, rooted in and oriented toward real life. The fact that the study’s
participants experienced and perceived the project as a real-life process indicates that
the PBL method, with its emphasis on authentic and active learning and actual
product, suits this goal particularly well. Students and teachers not only accumulated
knowledge and appreciation of the other’s culture, but also strengthened their belief inthe possibility of pro-actively changing society, thus enhancing their ability to workand live together.
What further contributed to this learning was the collaborative way of work. Although
PBL work can, and sometimes does, take the form of individual projects, our findings
agree with the PBL literature which usually encourages students engaging in PBL to
do it through collaborative learning (Shpeizer, 2019; Yiping & MacGregor, 2004).
The present study’s findings suggest that the students – as well as the teachers – whoworked on the multicultural PBL improved not only their general social competence
and skills, but also their ability to move from a segregated cultural and ethnic point ofview toward a more inclusive, and in a way more cosmopolitan, one. Actual
collaborative work means that the participants learn with each other and from eachother, a process that is “much richer and more enduring than merely ‘tolerating’them” (Hansen, 2009). In this sense, the arguments and disagreements that occur

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between the participants during the project should not necessarily be seen in anegative light. They are part and parcel of any deep human interaction, and indeed ofany multicultural society. As Rachel Har-Zion, the school pedagogical counsellor of
the Bilingual Arab-Jewish School in Beer-Sheva, puts it: “The project brought forthsome of the [multicultural] conflicts, but it has also shown that we must deal withthem together, in a dialogical way.” And this, surely, is a pre-condition for theadvancement of any multicultural society.
Conclusion
PBL, which is built on the foundations of in-depth, authentic, active and preferablycollaborative learning, provides multicultural education a beneficial ally and mode ofpedagogy. This alliance has the potential to foster the art of living together in aheterogeneous multicultural society, as well as students’ belief in the possibility of
improving such a society. However, for this alliance to be fruitful, it should not betaken lightly. A good deal of guidance and support is needed in the basics of both
multiculturalism and PBL, as well as on the cognitive, emotional and practical levels.
Acknowledgement
We thank Hagar: Jewish-Arab Education for Equality association, the bilingual
school in Beer-Sheva, and especially the teachers, students and educational staff who
took part in the project, and shared with us their experiences, thoughts and feelings.
Without them, this paper and the research behind it would not have been possible.

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References
Anderson, S. K., MacPhee, D., & Govan, D. (2000). Infusion of multicultural issues
in curricula: A student perspective. Innovative Higher Education, 25, 37-57.
Arslan, H. (2013). Multicultural education: Approaches, dimensions and principles. In
H. Arslan & G. Raţă (Eds.), Multicultural education: From theory to practice (pp. 1534). Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Baskerville, L. R. (1997). Distinguishing action research from participative casestudies. Journal of Systems and Information Technology, 1 (1), 25-45.
Carr, W., & Kemmis, S. (1986). Becoming critical. Lewes: Falmer Press.
Chandler, A. (2015, September 8). Must-know Buck institute project-based learning
resources. Retrieved from https://www.gettingsmart.com/2015/09/must-know-buckinstitute-project-based-learning-resources/
D'Ambra, L. N. (2014). A case study of project-based learning in an elementary
school setting (Master thesis). Retrieved from Open Access Master's Theses (Paper428), https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/theses/428
Gorski, P. (2010, April 14), Multicultural education working definition. EdChange
and The Multicultural Pavilion. Retrieved from http://www.edchange.org/multicultural/initial.html
Hagar: Jewish Arab Education for Equality. (n.d.). Retrieved fromhttps://www.hajar.org.il/en/home/
Hansen, D. (2009, January 8). Cosmopolitanism and education today. Retrieved fromhttps://www.tc.columbia.edu/articles/2009/june/cosmopolitanism-and-educationtoday/
Israel Central Bureau of Statistics (December 2019). Population of Israel on the eveof 2020. Retrieved from https://www.cbs.gov.il/en/mediarelease/Pages/2019/Population-of-Israel-on-the-Eve-of-2020.aspx
Mandel, E. R. (2018, February 19). What do the Palestinian citizens of Israel want?
The Jerusalem Post. Retrieved from https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/What-do-thePalestinian-citizens-of-Israel-want-543070
Markham, T., Larmer, J., & Ravitz, J. (2003). Project based learning handbook: A
guide to standards-focused project based learning for middle and high school
teachers (2nd ed.) Novato, CA: Buck Institute for Education.
Mori, M. (2009). Zionism and the Nakba: The mainstream narrative, the oppressed
narratives, and the Israeli collective memory. Kyoto Bulletin of Islamic Area Studies,
3 (1), 89–107. Retrieved from https://kias.asafas.kyoto-u.ac.jp/1st_period/contents/pdf/kb3_1/07mori.pdf

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Morris, B. (2003). The birth of the Palestinian refugee problem revisited. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Mossawa Center (2006). The Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel: Status, opportunities
and challenges for an Israeli-Palestinian peace. Retrieved fromhttp://www.mossawa.org/eng//Public/file/02006%20The%20Palestinian%20Arab%20
Citizens%20of%20Israel%20Status.pdf
Norley, K. (2013). Language, social class, ethnicity and educational inequality. In H.
Arslan & G. Raţă (Eds.), Multicultural education: From theory to practice (pp. 103118). Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Raţă, G. (2013). Bi-, cross-, multi-, pluri-, or trans-cultural education? In H. Arslan &G. Raţă (Eds.), Multicultural education: From theory to practice (pp. 3-14).
Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Reilly, C. R. (2010). Participatory case study. In A. J. Mills, G. Durepos & E. Wiebe(Eds.). Encyclopedia of case study research (pp. 658-660). California: Sage,
Thousand Oaks.
Shpeizer, R. (2019). Towards a successful integration of project-based learning inhigher education: Challenges, technologies and methods of implementation. Universal
Journal of Educational Research 7 (8), 1765-1771.
Sleeter, E., & Grant, A. C. (1987). An analysis of multicultural education in the
United States. Harvard Educational Review ,57 (4), 421-444.
Strauss, A., & Corbin, J. (1998). Basics of qualitative research: Techniques andprocedures for developing grounded theory (2nd ed.). London: Sage.
Thompson, T. F. (2014, January-March). Effective multicultural instruction: A noncolor-blind perspective. Sage Open, 1-15.
Weininger, A. (2019). Bilingual institutions (Hebrew–Arabic) in the education
system. The Knesset Research and Information Center. Retrieved fromhttps://m.knesset.gov.il/EN/activity/mmm/Bilingual_Educational_Institutions.pdf
Yiping, L., & MacGregor, S. K. (2004). Enhancing project-based learning throughonline between-group collaboration. Educational Research and Evaluation, 10 (4-6),
419-440.
Contact emails: razsp@yahoo.com
oritfr17@gmail.com

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What’s Noteworthy and What Needs to be Taken Note of: An Exploratory
Examination of a Learning Center for Refugee Children
Jennifer Tan Poh Sim, HELP University, Malaysia
The Asian Conference on Education 2020
Official Conference Proceedings
Abstract
This paper examines the initiatives of a faith-based, non-governmental learning centerset up to teach basic literacy and numeracy skills to a group of Rohingya refugee
children in Malaysia. Using the four criteria mentioned in the SAFE Approach;
Sequenced, Active, Focused, Explicit, the purpose of the study is to highlight the
noteworthy practices of the center as well as to identify what are some essential
weaknesses that need to be taken note of in order for sustained teaching and learning tohappen. Based on the exploratory nature of the research purpose, face-to-face, in-depth,
semi-structured qualitative interviews and observations were used to collect the study
data. Findings showed that while good intentions to serve the community seem to drive
the initiatives, there is a dire need to see a shift in focus to training and development of
human resources, particularly towards the teachers and volunteers who scaffold thechildren as they begin the challenging process of navigating a new educational
environment. Finally, this paper concludes with some recommendations for a moresustainable program; particularly in the area of teacher/volunteer development.
Keywords: Noteworthy Practices, SAFE, Refugee Community

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Background of the study
The latest available data on refugees in the world, according to the United Nations HighCommissioner for Refugees (2020), showed the highest levels of displacement onrecord; 79.5 million people around the world have been forced to flee their homes since2019 and among them, 26 million are refugees. There are also millions of statelesspeople, who have been denied a nationality and lack access to basic rights such as
education, health care, employment and freedom of movement. At least 1 per cent of
the world’s population have caused millions to flee their homes as a result of conflictor persecution and countries that account for two-thirds of today’s refugees (68%) comefrom Syria, Iraq, South Sudan, the Central African Republic, and Myanmar.
In Malaysia, by end August 2020, there were 178,140 refugees and asylum-seekers
registered with UNHCR in Malaysia and from the registered numbers, some 153,430
were from Myanmar- 101,530 Rohingyas; remaining were ethnic groups from conflictaffected areas or fleeing persecution in Myanmar such as Karens and Chins. Rohingya
refugees in Malaysia do not live in camps. They reside with the local community, often
in overcrowded housing situations. Although the Rohingyas have been living in
Malaysia since the 1990s, they are still without proper access to basic healthcare andeducation. Rohingyas in Malaysia are not allowed to work legally and do not haveaccess to free healthcare and education in this country. To make a living, Rohingya men
collect scrap metal for resale, work in the wholesale markets and try to find work doing
odd jobs which are sometimes available in the construction site; the women stay athome to take care of the families. While some adult Rohingya refugees can read andwrite in Jawi from the religious classes attended on regular basis, many have not receive
any form of formal education, thus are unable to read and write; however, most canspeak the Malay language after years of living amongst Malaysians.
In the absence of access to public education, Rohingya refugees attend UNHCR-fundedlearning centers or community-based schools. More than 46,000 are below the age of
18 and of the school going age group, only 30 per cent are reported to be enrolled inschools (NST, 2019). Among the community, there are parents who consider education
as essential in ensuring stability and a sense of normalcy for the children; the purposeof education is for their children to succeed and have a better life. They understand that
acquiring literacy will ensure their children a better future, whether they are resettled
or repatriated to a third country. However, there are also many parents who have more
traditional mindsets i.e. girls will be married off by the time they reach puberty whilst
boys are expected to help their fathers earn a living, usually as scrap metal or cardboard
collectors.
Learning Centres
Many refugee children study in learning centres run by the community and faith-basedorganisations. After school hours, the children will attend religious classes which areusually taught by a Rohingya imam who heads the community’s mosque or surau.
While there is a small number of licenced learning centres which have been running for
more than a decade, most centers are run on the goodwill of organisations, aided byvolunteers who are usually not trained to teach; these centres are also not like schools
in that they do not have the facilities, educational personnel and education policy of anestablished formal institution of learning. As such, the challenges faced in these centres

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are numerous, for example staff movement and retention, lack of standardized teaching
and learning, professional development and formal training in educational content andpedagogy. Parental involvement is also at times limited and dependent on the particularcommunity; in a more traditional Rohingya community, girls’ education can beseverely restricted due to parents’ unwillingness to send adolescent girls to mixed
gender educational facilities. Some parents may also consider education to be of
secondary importance compared to finding work to support the family, which means
children can be taken out of these centres at any time.
Purpose of the study
This study documents practices which are noteworthy as well as to identify what aresome essential weaknesses that need to be taken note of in order for sustained teaching
and learning in a center set up to teach teach basic literacy and numeracy skills to agroup of Rohingya refugee children in Malaysia. While the Inter-Agency Network for
Education in Emergencies (INEE) Minimum Standards Framework (2010) is usuallyreferred to for evaluating programs/organisations in disaster induced situations as itprovides the minimum standards that a learning centre should have to provide quality
education, this study will refer to the SAFE Approach; Sequenced, Active, Focused,
Explicit instead. The SAFE Approach proposes that social and emotional skills,
attitudes, and behaviors can be taught using a variety of approaches, and this is vital
when dealing with programs that involve children who come from varied backgrounds
and experiences which include war, violence, abandonment and even death. While the
INEE focuses on minimum criteria for quality education, the SAFE Approach focuseson social and emotional learning (SEL) which is the process through which knowledge
is acquired and applied to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve
personal and collective goals in order to co-exist effectively with those around.
Practices in the learning center were noted by referring to the four elements represented
by the acronym SAFESequenced: Connected and coordinated activities to foster skills development
Active: Active forms of learning to help students master new skills and attitudes
Focused: A component that emphasizes developing personal and social skills
Explicit: Targeting specific social and emotional skills
The duration of observation/study was carried over one semester, a total of 12 weeks.
The researcher visited the center on a weekly basis, and was involved in bothconsultative and teaching roles. Data gathered included indepth interviews with theCentre’s management, volunteer teachers and children. Observations of teaching andlearning sessions and document paraphernalia completed the triangulation of data forvalidity and reliability purposes.
Background of the Centre
Set up in the communal hall in the local mosque and operational for more than a year,
the Centre is run by a religious non-governmental organization. The Head and Assistant
Head are professionally qualified in fields other than Education, while the five full time

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volunteers have attended 12 years of formal schooling in their respective countries ofIndonesia, Myanmar and China. The occasional volunteers may come in on a once-aweek basis or could just do a one-time ‘dropping by visit’.
During the morning class sessions, the communal hall of the mosque is partitioned bythree curtains to form three classrooms corresponding to the three different learninglevels. Tables are mobile makeshift planks which will be put away once school is overfor the day. In the class for older children, girls and boys sit separately, as required by
the parents, and the seating position is not conducive as the girls sit diagonally, against
a wall, facing the boys, instead of the teacher in front. This causes a lot of distraction
and very often, fights erupt. The cramped space also provides little opportunity forphysical activities for the early childhood classes. There is no play area for thesechildren and because of this, there is no physical education. During recess, thechildren’s primary activity is to eat their meals the entire period, as there is no place forthem to run about. On Fridays, a volunteer professional sports coach would to train theboys in soccer and the girls in Frisbee at a neighbourhood playground which is adistance from the settlement. Teachers organise end-term excursions to the downtown
area in the capital city and hikes to the nearby waterfall for the older children, andsometimes, these excursions are treats as a result of good behaviour or academic
accomplishments.
There are 3 levels of schooling; Early Childhood Education which does not prescribe
to any particular curriculum, while the Early and Upper Primary/Lower Secondary
levels follow an American home-school curriculum which seeks to integrate characterbuilding lessons into the academic context, with self-instructional activities designed todevelop thinking skills and to create mastery learning. Materials are adapted to suit theculture and needs of the children (and community) and the students are taught using
worktexts. Meanwhile the children attending the Early Childhood Level watch
educational videos and do arts and crafts most of the time.
Evaluation of the Centre using the SAFE Approach
Sequenced: Connected and coordinated activities to foster skills development – Socialand Emotional Outcomes
The teaching and learning is predominantly through a teacher-centred approach, evenat the Early Childhood level. Most times, questions posed by the teachers wereprimarily factual or definitional in nature, offering very few opportunities for students
to ask questions or engage in creative thought, while the children hardly probed
concepts or received further explanation. The teachers award recognition for thechildren’s learning efforts at the end of the school year - a progress report of theiracademic achievement and cooperative behaviour. The fathers of the children often
express their aspirations to see tangible results of what their children learn at the centre
and their primary wish is for their children to be awarded recognised certification fromthe internationally recognised SATs (or Standard Assessment Tests).
Active: Active forms of learning to help students master new skills and attitudes
Volunteers from a private university work together with the Centre by helping thechildren learn life skills. Using a Project Based Learning approach, projects such as

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growing vegetables on a plot of land nearby the settlement and setting up a rabbit
hatchery proved successful in allowing the children develop important life skills as they
had to learn to work with one another. At the start of the planting project, the children
were very competitive, almost to the point of destructive- they would stomp on anddestroy the plants of someone else which were growing well. However, they slowly
began to learn to work together as individual groups, and as a whole class once theyrealized each group had their own ‘secrets’ to growing the plants, and in order for
everyone to succeed, they would need to share information as well as be humble to ask
for help. See picture below of both boys and girls working together to grow theirvegetables.

Figure 1: Children at their vegetable plots
Focused: A component that emphasizes developing personal and social skills
The children were given the opportunity to write their own class rules which included“do not fight with one another”, “don’t tell lies”, “listen to teacher.” Deciding on theirown rules allowed them the opportunity to reflect on their own behaviour and whatwas (in)appropriate. The activity also provided the opportunity for ownership andmanagement of their own (mis)behaviour.
In the Rohingya community, men and women have very specific roles, women are
relegated to cooking and cleaning. However, volunteers created opportunities to createawareness on the importance of shared responsibilities through the Gardening Project;as the children’s garden bore fruit, they were able to harvest the vegetable for a meal.
This activity provided the opportunity to work together, more importantly, both boys
and girls were involved in the process of food preparation, cooking and cleaning up
afterwards as seen in the picture below.

Figure 2: Cooking a meal together

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Explicit: Targeting specific social and emotional skills
Occasionally, volunteers would take a class for various purposes for example, to givethe teacher a break or to ‘model’ a particular teaching approach. These sessions were
not part of the usual teaching and learning routine. On these occasions, all levels werecombined and various activities incorporated so that no child got left out, regardless ofage and/or capabilities. As these were ‘stand alone’ teaching classes, volunteers wereable to showcase a variety of teaching and learning techniques and approaches, forexample, tell stories, use play to teach or conduct art and craft sessions which were tied
to a particular skill or theme. During a story telling session, the children were read astory, ‘Soraya’s Blanket’ which is about a young girl who left her home country (andher grandmother) behind. The story resonated with many of the Rohingya children who
left behind family members back in Myanmar. The question and answer session proved
cathartic to them as they were given opportunities to recall who was left behind, andhow they felt. Afterward, the children made cards to express their feelings toward
particular family members or friends. Many cards contained expressions of gratitude,
longing, remorse and according to the class teachers, this was a rare occasion that thechildren managed to express themselves. These sessions were particularly targeted forspecific purposes, for example, stories with certain themes were chosen to teach a moral
lesson or to allow children to speak their minds, music and craft was used for expression
and creativity while games inculcated sportsmanship.
Recommendations and Conclusion
An area to note is the emphasis on empowering the children to be able to be a participant
and contributor in whichever country of their eventual settlement. This is not only
achievable through excellent grades but also to be exposed to the multifaceted aspectsof people from other countries. Lessons should incorporate aspects of social studies,
history, geography and literature besides the 3 main subjects of Math, Science andEnglish.
Character-building which are universal and traits such as integrity, resilience, respect,
cooperation, and the 21st Century skills have to be emphasised throughout the school
years. Life skills that enable them to improve their financial prospects and well-being
and vocational and technical skills should incorporated into learning at the centre as it
is expected of the children, upon reaching the age of fifteen or sixteen, to find workand contribute financially to the family.
An important group of people- the regular volunteers have to go through some form ofcarefully planned action plan for training. Through interviews with them it was foundthat there were some pertinent issues that needed addressing particularly in the areas ofpedagogy and methodology. Additionally, there seemed to be little room forprofessional development as some of the volunteer teachers were without official
documentation that allows for enrolment in local educational institutions. Therefore,
it is not enough to have ad-hoc sessions to plug temporary gaps but rather, there should
be a clear understanding of what is required to train the volunteers in. As the centre has
been running for a while now, set ways and ideas may be difficult to change. Fromobservations and as mentioned a ‘start from scratch’ approach should be considered,and a tailored teacher training package for non-experienced volunteers, and one that iscontextually specific to Rohingya children, has to be put in place.

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To conclude, while there are many challenges in providing quality education to the
Rohingya refugee children at the learning centre, the paper has shown that there havealso been a lot of innovative practices which catered to their social emotional
development, an area that is often neglected due to preference over academics andtangible accolades. It is therefore necessary to note that it will not just be paper
qualifications that will help pave the path for a better future for these children, the socialand emotional aspects also need to be taken note of, and learning centres can play animportant role in ensuring these children grow up to be well rounded adults who areable to contribute positively in the country they choose to call home.

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References
https://www.unhcr.org/en-my
https://casel.org/sel-framework/
Palik, J (2020). Education for Rohingya Refugee Children in Malaysia. PRIO Policy
Brief. https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/Palik%2C%20Julia%20%20Education%20for%20Rohingya%20Refugee%20Children%20in%20Malaysia%2
C%20PRIO%20Policy%20Brief%202-2020.pdf
Raudah Mohd Yunus, Nur Aisyah Zainordin, Nur Saniah Shamsuddin, Nur Athira
Zailana, Nur Sabila Syazwani Hariyono. (2019). 70 per cent of refugee kids do not go
to school. New Straits Times.
https://www.nst.com.my/opinion/letters/2019/08/510066/70-cent-refugee-kids-do notgo-school
MacEwen, L. (2009). Certification Counts – Recognizing the learning attainments ofdisplaced and refugee students. Paris: IIEP-UNESCO
Sinclair, M., 2001. Education in emergencies. Learning for a future: Refugee
education in developing countries, pp.1-84.

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Using Assignments Linked with Assessments to Teach Qualitative Research in
Education
Yukiko Inoue-Smith, University of Guam, United States
The Asian Conference on Education 2020
Official Conference Proceedings
Abstract
Educational researchers make use of highly diverse qualitative methods but teachingthese methods to students involves considerable challenges. This paper describes
master’s level qualitative research assignments that employ student-centered andmasterly learning approaches. The paper addresses the increasingly important issues of
how best to create course assignments of qualitative inquiry; and how to assess learning
outcomes. The assignments described here focus on three interconnected challenges:(i) doing interviews and observations; (ii) writing fieldwork reports; and (iii) presenting
orally qualitative data. The paper systematically explains how these sequencing
assessments will promote students’ practical understanding of qualitative datacollection for a mini-ethnographic case study. The approach to designing theassignments proposed in this study can be applied to both traditional and online
courses.
Keywords: Qualitative Research, Triangulation, College Teaching, Learning by Doingiafor
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Introduction
Qualitative research places emphasis on exploring and understanding with a focus on
drawing meaning from the experiences and opinions of participants (Almalki, 2016).
Qualitative research is “usually described as inductive, with the underlying assumptions
being that reality is a social construct, that variables are difficult to measure, complex,
and interwoven, that there is a primary of subject matter, and that the data collected willconsist of an insider’s viewpoint” (Rovai et al., cited in Almalki, 2016, p. 291).
Furthermore, “rather than speak of ‘generalizability’ (where data or interpretations areunderstood to be directly transferable to other places or situations), qualitative
researchers more often engage social theory as a means to speak beyond the nuances of
their empirical studies” (Delyser, 2008, p. 234). In essence, according to Malterud(2001):
Qualitative research methods are founded on an understanding of research as asystematic and reflective process for development of knowledge that can somehow becontested and shared, implying ambitions of transferability beyond the study setting.
Drawing on these assumptions, the researcher must be prepared to use strategies for:questioning findings and interpretations, instead of taking them for granted; assessing
their internal and external validity, instead of judging them obvious or universal;
thinking about the effect of context and bias, without believing that knowledge isuntouched by the human mind; and displaying and discussing the processes of analysis,
instead of believing that manuals grant trustworthiness. (p. 483)
“Increasingly, there has been a focus on developing research methodologies that
promote social justice, inclusion, and empowerment of people” (McNicoll, cited in
O’Connor & O’Neill, 2004, p. 20); and qualitative methods “tend to move beyond a
positivist frame of reference which advocates that there is only one ‘true’ reality” (p.
20). Qualitative research data therefore “should be collected in the form that will
increase understanding of human experience in the real life. However, qualitative
researchers often do not know at the beginning of a study where they will find theirmost rusted information” (Dabić & Stojanov, 2014, p. 362). Hernández-Hernándeza
and Sancho-Gilb (2015) noted that data collection methods in qualitative research“came to understand micro- ethnography as a powerful method for studying practices
in dynamic social systems” (p. 657). The qualitative research methods “do not form a‘how to do’ set of skills that can be applied in the textbook fashion of quantitative
methodologies and statistical analyses” (Mason, 2002, p. 69).
“Whereas quantitative research provides insight into the types and the strengths ofrelationships amongst variables, qualitative research may afford a better understanding
regarding the nature of those relationships” (Bender & Hill, 2016, p. 93). The following
are commonly used data-collection approaches in qualitative research: ethnography
phenomenology; historical; grounded theory; case study; narrative inquiry; andexploratory-descriptive (Astroth & Chung, 2018). Breslin and Buchanan (2007) discussa case study approach as follows:
The application of case study methodology in the social sciences has correlations withthe emerging field of design research, but the connection runs deeper than that. Formalcase study structure requires researchers to determine a problem, make initial

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hypothesis, conduct research in gathering information and making observations, revise
hypotheses and theory, and tell a story. These all are acts that strikingly similar to thework of a designer. The result is that the act of researching and writing a case study
easily am an application of the design processes. (p. 38)
In qualitative research and case studies, data collection instruments “such as
observation, open-ended question, in-depth interview (audio or video), and field notes
are used to collect data from participants in their natural settings. The methods
employed in data collection give a full description of the research with respect to theparticipants involved” (Daniel, 2016, p. 92); and qualitative research “views humanthought and behavior in a social context and covers a wide range of phenomena in orderto understand and appreciate them thoroughly” (p. 93). As noted by Daniel, two of the
major disadvantages of qualitative research are: (i) findings may be limited to theparticular groups of people or individuals studied; and (ii) sampling procedures thatmay produce source material no more accurate than the products of biased samples.
“The art of being a qualitative researcher frequently is overshadowed by a concern forteaching the technical aspects of research” (Start & Watson, cited in McAllister & Rowe,
2003, p. 296)—and so, “Although students may acquire the characteristics ofqualitative researchers by observing role models, there is much the educational process
and skilled teachers can do to emphasize and develop students’ passion for being
qualitative researchers” (p. 296).
This paper describes the master’s level assignments promoting students’ passion for
qualitative research. The assignments facilitate a mastery of skills by providing
maximum opportunities for students to practice and apply what they learn. Addressing
the increasingly important issues of how best to create or design course assignments inqualitative research courses, and how to assess learning outcomes, the paper focuses on
three interconnected challenges: (i) conducting effective interviews and carefulobservations while taking field notes; (ii) writing organized fieldwork reports; and (iii)
presenting orally qualitative data informatively. The paper explains how theseinterconnected assessments will promote students’ practical understanding of
qualitative inquiry when a mini ethnographic case study is used. The approach todesigning the assignments proposed in the current paper can be applied to bothtraditional and online courses.
THE STUDY——Assignments Linked with Assessments
Methodological training is essential in research courses at the graduate level (Wells etal., 2015), because “qualitive research poses many challenges for educators. The named
approaches to qualitative research are numerus and diverse; it is not a single unified
tradition, as is probabilistic qualitative research. Difference in epistemologies, research
purposes, methods, and reporting styles make simple generalization about qualitative
research difficult” (Drisko, 2008, p. 85).
Most important is that in qualitative research where the researcher is considered as a
research instrument. “Since qualitative research is very much about doing….Somequalitative and ethnographic research courses include what could be called a ‘miniethnography’ component, where students practice ethnographic techniques such as

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participant observation and interviewing at a local site of their choosing” (Este et al.,cited in Delyser, 2008, p. 239). “In ethnographic research, the investigator is often
involved in group activities, spends extended time in the field, and interviews
participants” (Eller, 2019, p. 38).
The assignments described in this paper are designed based on a mini ethnographic casestudy approach. Although a mini ethnographic case study design uses data collection
methods blending a mini ethnography and a case study, this type of design “allows
researchers to explore causality links, which is not typical for ethnographies…the useof a mini-ethnographic case study design enables researchers to generate as well as
study theory in real world applications” (Fusch, Fusch, & Ness, 2017, p. 926).
Targeting master’s level students (in-service teachers mostly) in a qualitive researchmethods course, the above-mentioned interconnected assignments provide ample
opportunity for hands-on experience to develop and enhance students’ both theoreticalknowledge and practical skills in conducting a small-scale qualitative research. As
illustrated in Chart 1, students will be assigned to a research project in which they willinterview and observe potential individuals in schools or other educational settings,
collecting data in the form of field notes, summarizing and analyzing the fieldwork datain the form of written reports on their interviews and observations, and presenting thesereports orally and formally in class.
The course syllabus will provide the details of learning objectives and activities. The
assessments are aligned with Bloom’s (revised) taxonomy that is a classification ofdifferent objectives and skills for learning, teaching, and assessing. The taxonomy
consists of the following six levels within cognitive domain of learning: Level 1(memorizing); Level 2 (understanding); Level 3 (applying); Level 4 (analyzing); Level
5 (evaluating); and Level 6 (creating). In the revised version, the lowest level of theoriginal version of “knowledge” was renamed as “remembering.” Chart 1 illustrates theentire picture of the course assignments described in this paper.

Chart 1. Three Interconnected Assignments (the first slide of the PPT file)
A case study—typically qualitative in nature—is a research method generally used insocial sciences, resulting in a narrative description of behavior or experience. “The casestudy approach is familiar to social scientists because of its popularity in psychology(Freud), medicine (case analysis of a problem), law (case law), and political science(case reports). Case study research has a long, distinguished history across many
disciplines” (Creswell, 2006, p. 73). Qualitative case study design actually “evolved
out of ethnographic design” (Fusch et al., 2017, p. 926)—and so, “Contemporary casestudy design is much like historical case study design—both have specific boundaries,
but within those boundaries there is a great deal of room for personal design: interviews,
direct observation, document review, focus group sessions, journaling, participant
observation, and more (Amerson, cited in Fusch et al., 2017, p. 967).

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Officilal Conference Proceedings“Case studies may be exploratory, explanatory, or descriptive and may involve one
organization and location or multiple organizations and locations for a comparative casestudy design” (Yin, cited in Fusch et al., 2017, p. 926). These characteristics of casestudies are particularly appropriate for the assignments designed in this study. Charts 2,
3, and 4 illustrate the step-by-step processes of the assignments for students: indicating
how the assignments are conducted and assessed. Chart 5 illustrates the use oftriangulation in the assignments. Each Chart is illustrated in PowerPoint (PPT) slides(one chart per one slide in the file) created by the instructor: the five slides, which
explain specifically the assignment steps and rubric links, are posted on the course page.
Students can click to see the assessment rubric at any time to work on each step of work.
Assignment 1
Both summative and formative assessments are needed for effective teaching andlearning. For assessing students’ field notes, it is important for the instructor (the authorof this paper) to provide students with actionable feedback in a timely manner topromote student learning. As Wiliam (2013) argued, “The term formative should apply
not to the assessment but to the function that the evidence generated by the assessment
actually serves” (p. 15)—for this to happen, the instructor must know the process inlearning: specifically, where the student is right now; where the student needs to be;
and how to get there.
For Assignment 1, students will develop observational guidelines and interview
questions: select study participants for their research; conduct a 40-minute observation
for two participants and a 40-minute interview for two participants; and transcribe theirsemi structured interviews with supplementary notes. Submitted assignments will
include descriptive and reflective notes, and sketches describing important features of
the individual or the setting. Students’ field notes and interview transcripts will beassessed using formative assessments. These assessments will be kept simple, to makechecking the list straightforward. The list includes three categories: (i) observation
guidelines and interview questions are developed in an orderly manner; (ii) observation
notes are detailed and fact-based; and (iii) the interview transcripts are based on theestablished interview questions. And then, students will write their fieldwork (Chart 2)
assignment reports (Assignment 2) based on the instructor’s assessment-based feedback.

Chart 2. Assignment 1: Collecting Qualitative Data (the second slide of the PPT file)
Assignment 2
Online learning communities can be best described as a group of people that share acommon purpose or interest. As an example, “By requiring students to choose anargument and support the view-point with a rationale, students were better able to

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construct knowledge as related to course content” (Howell, LaCour, & McGlawn, 2017,
p. 487).
At this stage of the assignment 2, students share portions of their fieldwork reports byposting to the discussion forum. The instructor must encourage students providing
timely feedback, which is specific and descriptive, not general or vague. Such feedback
certainly helps students to revise their fieldwork reports. The rubrics for assessing
Assignment 2 cover the following five categories of evaluation: (i) the content rubric
evaluates the degree to which the report is a fully developed description: demonstrating
the student’s abilities to interview and to observe carefully, and to generate coherent
records of interviews and observations; (ii) the organization rubric addresses the degree
to which the report has an engaging introduction and is logical and well organized, as
well as the adequacy of the student’s conclusions; (iii) the disposition rubric
quantifies the degree to which the student’s interpretation of field relations provides abasis for continued inquiry; and the relevance of the information included; (iv) the
length rubric rates the degree to which the number of pages the report contains isappropriate for this assignment; and (v) the writing and style rubric addresses the degree
to which the report is stylistically strong, demonstrating that the student can revise
successfully.
Learning Objective: Demonstrate skills of writing field work reports
Learning Activity: Revise draft fieldwork reports based on the instructor’sand peers’ feedback by participating in an online learning community
Assessment: Click here for the details about a scorecing rubric

Chart 3. Assignment 2: Analyzing Qualitative Data (the third slide of the PPT file)
Assignment 3
Virtually everyone agrees that oral presentations—which are commonly assigned incollege courses—provide positive learning experiences. An in-class presentation is a“chance for students to gain insight into knowledge and skills that make a good lecturer,
which often turns to become their vocation… sharing their knowledge in a constructive
way both for their audience and themselves with structured planning and organization”(Živković, 2014, p. 469). Rubrics are often used to assess student oral presentations andwritten reports. In terms of using rubrics for course assignments, Rippé’s (n. d.)describes as follows:
There is no room for bias or subjective prejudice in rubric utilization because a rubric
is impartial. A student either meets that defined objectives or does not. This helps
promote fairness and increases satisfaction, since there is no preferential treatment
when everyone is measured using the same benchmarks. (pp. 12–13)
Student presentations in Assignment 3 are assessed using a rubric, focusing on the four
categories of evaluation: (i) the organization rubric addresses the degree to which thestudent presents information adequately in logical and interesting sequence whichaudience can follow; (ii) the topic knowledge rubric evaluates the degree to which the

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student demonstrates knowledge by answering questions with explanation andelaboration; (iii) the graphics and tables rubric assesses the degree to which thestudent’s graphics fully explain and reinforce screen text and presentation; and (iv) the
delivery rubric rates the degree to which the student delivers the message in a confident,
poised, and enthusiastic fashion.

Chart 4. Assignment 3: Reporting Qualitative Data (the fourth slide of the PPT file)
Triangulation is “somewhat like looking through a crystal to perceive all the
facets/viewpoints of the data. Moreover, he posited that triangulation should be
reframed as crystal refraction (many points of light) to extrapolate the meaning inherent
in the data and thereby mitigating one’s bias” (Denzin, cited in Fusch et al., 2017, p.
927). Triangulation requires using more than one approach to investigate the same
research question. In most cases, researchers involve five types of triangulation forestablishing the validity of research: (i) data triangulation (using different sources of
information); (ii) investigator triangulation (using several investigators in data
analysis); (iii) theory triangulation (using multiple perspectives in data interpretation);(iv) methodological triangulation (using multiple methods to study the person or event);and (v) environmental triangulation (using different locations or settings related to theenvironment).
The assignments described here basically apply methodological triangulation. As
illustrated in Chart 5, through their hands-on experience, students may realize that
ethnographic interviews and observations are valuable tools for case studies to collectmeaningful data about people (study participants) interacting in a natural setting.
Students may also realize that one key to getting meaningful data from interviewing is
to ask well-thought-out questions. These types of real-life experiences are truly the bestteachers for students who are taking a qualitative research methods course. In
qualitative research, the researcher participates actively both in data collection, and intransforming the data into important findings.

Chart 5. Triangulation of Data for a Mini Ethnographic Case Study (the fifth slide of
the PPT file)

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Conclusion
Goussinsky, Reshef, Yanay-Ventura, and Yassour-Borochowitz (2011) explained athree-phase model in qualitative research: “While in the first phase students are exposedto the qualitative thinking and writing, they are required in the second phase to take aqualitative research methods course that includes practice. The third and final phases
include conducting a qualitative research seminar” (p. 126). An instructor can facilitate
student learning, but students must accept some responsibility for their own learning(Centra & Gaubatz, 2005). As a proverb goes, “You can lead a horse to water, but you
cannot make it drink.”
As noted by Goussinsky et al., much learning among master’s level students occurs
through practice, and by making connections between classroom experiences and theoutside world. Such meaningful learning occurs when students take responsibility for
their own learning. This is particularly true in qualitative research courses. What the
instructor can do is to stimulate such learning through assignments and assessments byproviding—effectively and efficiently—formative assessments with feedback andencouraging work that develops students’ competencies in a small-scale qualitative
research project.
It should be emphasized that learning by doing is a central concept in qualitative
research courses, given that “qualitative research is very much about doing…” (Este etal., cited in Delyser, 2008, p. 239). Confucius’ saying can be also applied to teachingqualitative research: “I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.”Once students are equipped with substantial knowledge of philosophical assumptions
and theoretical perspectives of qualitative research, it is time for them to develop handson understanding of techniques used in qualitative research, applying Goussinsky et al.’(2011) three-phase model discussed here.
Highlighting the importance of integrating methodologies and paradigmatic elements
when teaching qualitative methods, Terkildsen and Petersen (2015) recommend
focusing on teaching epistemology, instead of teaching methods for methods’
sake. This paper described how to teach qualitative research systematically, integrating
students’ real-life experience. The author strongly believe that individual students do
not really learn qualitative research until they start collecting and analyzing data fromtheir own research. Assigning a mini ethnographic case study described herein will be
implemented in the next academic year, with learning outcome-based assessments ofeach of the interconnected assignments.
Finally, the concepts of practice, coaching, and teamwork are as important in qualitative
research as in team sports. Just as athletes improve their skills with practice, researchers
improve their skills through practice. In student centered learning, the instructor acts asa coach or a guide. To benefit from their practice, students will need support andfeedback as they encounter predictable challenges in reviewing the literature, clarifying
researchable questions, and collecting and analyzing their data. In a master’s levelresearch course, the goal should be cooperation, not competition: encouraging students
to become resources for one another. As a result of practice, feedback, and collaboration,
students will come to see how qualitative methods can provide uniquely useful answers
to important questions in education.

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References
Almalki, S. (2016). Integrating quantitative and qualitative data in mixed methods
research—Challenges and benefits. Journal of Education and Learning, 5(3), 288–
295.
Astroth, K. S., & Chung, S. Y. (2018). Focusing on the fundamentals: Reading
qualitative research with a critical eye. Nephrology Nursing Journal, 45(4), 381–348.
Bender, S., & Hill, K. (2016). Pedagogical considerations for effectively teachingqualitative research to students in an online environment. The Journal of Effective
Teaching, 16(2), 93–103.
Breslin, M., & Buchanan, R. (2008). On the case study method of research andteaching in design. Massachusetts Institute of Technology Design Issues, 24(1), 36–
40.
Centra, J. A., & Gaubatz, N. B. (2005). Student perceptions of learning andinstructional effectiveness in college courses: A validity study of SIR II. The
Educational Testing Service, Princeton, NJ.
Creswell, J. W. (2006). Qualitative inquiry & research design: Choosing among five
approaches. Los Angeles, CA: SAGE.
Dabić, T., & Stojanov, Ž. (2014). Techniques for collecting qualitative field data in
education research: Example of two students in information technology field. Sinteza:
Internet and Education, 362–376. DOI: 10.15308/SINTEZA-2014-362-367.
Daniel, E. (2016). The usefulness of qualitative and quantitative approaches andmethods in researching problem-solving ability in science education curriculum.
Journal of Education and Practice, 7(15), 91–100.
DeLyser, D. (2008). Teaching qualitative research. Journal of Geography in Higher
Education, 32(2), 233–244.
Drisko, J. W. (2008). How is qualitative research taught at the master’s level? Journalof Social Work Education, 44(1), 85–101.
Eller, K. F. (2019). The trail of courage: A mini-ethnographic case study exploring thefeasibility and acceptability of integrated equine-assisted therapy (IEAT) on Yazidi
adolescent girl wellbeing. Public Access Theses and Dissertations from the College of
Education and Human Sciences. 331. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cehsdiss/331.
Fusch, P. I., Fusch, G. E., & Ness, L. R. (2017). How to conduct a mini-ethnographic
case study: A guide for novice researchers. The Qualitative Report, 22(3), 923–941.
Goussinsky, R., Reshef, A., Yanay-Ventura, G., & Yassour-Borochowitz, D. (2011).
Teaching qualitative research for human services students: A three-phase model. The
Qualitative Report, 16(1), 126–146.

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Hernández-Hernándeza, F., & Sancho-Gilb, J. M. (2015). A learning process within
an education research group: an approach to learning qualitative research methods.
International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 18(6), 651–667.
Howell, G. S., LaCour, M. M., & McGlawn, P. A. (2017). Constructing student
knowledge in the online classroom: The effectiveness of focal prompts. College
Student Journal, 51(4), 483–490.
Malterud, K. (2001, August). Qualitative research: Standards, challenges, andguidelines. The Lancet, 358, 483–488.
Mason, O. J. (2002). Teaching qualitative research methods: Some innovations andreflections on practice. Psychology Teaching Review, 10(1), 68–75.
McAllister, M., & Rowe, J. (2003). Blackbirds singing in the dead of night?:
Advancing the craft of teaching qualitative research. Journal of Nursing Education,
42(7), 296–303.
O’Connor, D. L., & O’Neill, B. J. (2004). Toward Social Justice: Teaching
Qualitative Research. Journal of Teaching in Social Work, 24(3/4), 19–33.
Rippé, C. (n. d.). Using rubrics to improve teaching, learning, and retention in
distance education. In C. Hill (Ed.), Faculty development in distance education (pp.
12–13). Retrieved fromhttps://www.immagic.com/eLibrary/ARCHIVES/GENERAL/GENPRESS/
F091026F.pdf/
Terkildsen, T., & Petersen, S. (2015). The future of qualitative research inpsychology—A students’ perspective. Integrative Psychological Behavioral Science,49, 202–204.
Wells, R. S., Kolek, E. A., Williams, E. A., & Saunders, D. B. (2015). How we knowwhat we know”: A systematic comparison of research methods employed in higher
education journals, 1996−2000 vs. 2006−2010. The Journal of Higher Education,
86(2), 171–198.
Wiliam, D. (2013). Assessment: The bridge between teaching and learning. Voicesfrom the Middle (National Council of Teachers of English), 21(2), 15–20.
Živković, S. (2014). The importance of oral presentations for university students.
Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 5(19), 468–475.

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Encountering and Embracing Differences through Experiential Learning:
Business Classroom Design for Perspectives Broadening
Kant Thongtawee, Valaya Alongkorn Rajabhat University, Thailand
The Asian Conference on Education 2020
Official Conference Proceedings
Abstract
In this current disruptive, diverse world of digital economy and globalisation,
classroom design for students in business management field to prepare them to faceand embrace the dynamic world full of differences could be challenging. Throughexperiential classroom design, students could have the possibility to encounter
different worldview from fieldwork, which could eventually broaden theirperspectives, preparing them for the diversified environment of the real businessworld. This study aimed to explore the experiential learning techniques used in anundergraduate business management course in Thailand to broaden students ’perspectives. The classroom was designed for students to directly encounter andinteract with business entrepreneurs, to learn from their experiences on businesstechniques used through economic challenges. Qualitative methods of participant
observation and in-depth interview were used in data collecting and analysis. It was
found in this study that the experiential classroom design could provide students
opportunity to gain different perspectives, broadening their understanding on realworld business management.
Keywords: Embracing, Encountering, Differences, Perspectives, Worldview, Business
Management, Classroom Design, Experiential Learning

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Introduction
In this current disruptive, diverse world of digital economy and globalisation,
classroom design for students in business management field to prepare them to faceand embrace the dynamic world full of differences could be challenging. Throughexperiential classroom design, students could have the possibility to encounter
different worldview from fieldwork, which could eventually broaden theirperspectives, preparing them for the diversified environment of the real businessworld.
Objective
This study aims to explore the experiential learning techniques used in anundergraduate business management course in Thailand to broaden students ’perspectives.
Methodology
Qualitative methods of participant observation and in-depth interview were used indata collecting and analysis.
The classroom studied was designed for students to directly encounter and interact
with business entrepreneurs, to learn from their experiences on business techniques
used through economic challenges.
Key informants were chosen by purposive samplings.
Conceptual Basis
Through Experiential Learning model’s four processes of learning, with awareness ofreal-world business context, a business management classroom design could help
preparing students to embrace different views and broaden their perspectives.
The conceptual basis of this study could be shown as in the following diagram:

Figure 1: Conceptual Basis

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Literature Review
Experiential Learning Theory
From the Experiential Learning Model (ELM) of David Kolb , the cycle ofExperiential Learning Model is consisted of 4 learning processes:
1. Concrete Experience: the first learning process of experimental practice.
2. Reflective Observation: the process when learners start to reflect. This would
need learners ’own initiation.
3. Abstract Conceptualization: the process when the learners would try toconceptualize what they have leant for future practice/experiment application.
4. Active Experimentation: the process when the learners would try to experience
the practice again, in order to prove their own learning and understanding.
Learners could truly learn through experiences, which include emotional reaction andreflection over such experiences (Moon, 2004).
Learners, in experiential learning process, are encouraged to initiate their own
learning and reflection. Learners take initiation by posing questions or inquiring todevelop solution. (Blumenfeld et al., 1991)
Learners learning through these processes of experiential learning could acquire newskills and new judgement, which could lead to new direction of judgement making(Chickering, 1977).
Results
Case Study 1 : Traditional Noodle Shop
The classroom studied was a business management class for undergraduate students.
The students were assigned to plan their own individual business plan. Then they
were asked to go as a small group for participant observation of a business store of
their own choices. After discussion with classmates in the group, each students could
get to reflect upon real-life understanding of business management. Then they wereasked to bring the new understanding to adjust the business plan designed prior tofield visit.
The student, Patcharin Malay, with a group of classmates, spent times observing andparticipating in the management of a traditional noodle shop in Amphawa, a touristic
town of Thailand.
This experiential learning had given her the new perspectives on how to plan the
management of her business model designed prior to field visit.
“...I would apply some successful techniques in shop management from thistraditional noodle shop to my own future business plan: the uniqueness of recipe.
However, I would also improve some aspects: seating and shop appearance design,
wide varieties of choice in the menu, and impressive service...” (P. Malay, May 20,
2020)

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Case Study 2 : Traditional Beverage Shop
The student, Kanjana Glaharn, with a group of classmates, spent times observing andparticipating in the management of a traditional beverage shop in Amphawa, atouristic town of Thailand.
This experiential learning had given her the new perspectives on how to plan the
management of her business model designed prior to field visit.
“... I would apply some successful strategy of this beverage shop to my futurebusiness plan of barbecue shop, especially, the competitive pricing. I would also adopt
the technique of paying attention to daily cost calculation and daily raw materials
stocking. This could greatly reduce loss and create more benefits. Giving attention todetailed taste preference of each customer could also attract them to come back...I
would improve the appearance of the shop to be more stylish though. Customers
nowadays prefer shops where they could take nice photos to share on social media...”(K. Glaharn, May 20, 2020).
Discussions and Conclusion
From study results, students, being directly exposed to real-life experience of business
management, could develop understanding and insight through reflective observationand conceptualization of what was going on and what to do in the future.
It was found in this study that the experiential classroom design could provide
students opportunity to gain different perspectives, broadening their understanding on
real-world business management.

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References
Blumenfeld, P. C., Soloway, E., Marx, R. W., Krajcik, J. S., Guzdial, M., Palincsar, &Annemarie. (1991). "Motivating Project-Based Learning: Sustaining the Doing,
Supporting the Learning". Educational Psychologist, 26 (3&4), 369–398.
Chickering, A. W. (1977). Experience and Learning. New York: Change Magazine
Press.
Moon, J. A. (2004). A Handbook of Reflective and Experiential Learning:Theory andPractice. London: Routledge Falmer.
Glagarn, K. (2020, May 20). Personal interview.
Malay, P. (2020, May 20). Personal interview.

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Developing Creativity through Design-by-Analogy with Word Trees
Hung-Hsiang Wang, National Taipei University of Technology, Taiwan
The Asian Conference on Education 2020
Official Conference Proceedings
Abstract
This study aims to understand the effect of the Design-by-Analogy (DbA) WordTree
method, proposed by Linsey (2007), on the individual’s development of creativity.
The method was introduced to two training workshops using near-sources and to two
others using far-sources. The Creativity Assessment Packet (CAP) and the Kaufman
Domains of Creativity Scale (K-DOCS) were used in the pre-test and the post-test forthe participants, who were 100 students of a university. The progress of eachparticipant’s creativity was examined. Results reveal that the participants’ domaingeneral creativity and domain-specific creativity both largely rose after taking thewhole training workshops. The ideas generated in the workshops also show that thefar source and the near-source are equivalent in enhancing idea generation byanalogy. Future studies should conduct controlled experiments to compare the methodwith others.
Keywords: Creativity, Design Education, Word Trees, Design-by-Analogy

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Introduction
Analogical thinking plays a vital role for designers to obtain inspiration in productdesign and development (Keane, 1987; Dahl & Moreau, 2002). Design-by-Analogy(DbA) is a method that helps designers generate creative solutions by searching for
analogs which are similar to the target problem and blending the problem and analog(Linsey, 2007). In the process, we need not only some structures to map the problem
and analogies (Larkin, McDermott, Simon & Simon, 1980), but also some principles
to select potential sources of analogy.
Many analogical principles for source selection focus on the structural similarity
between the target and source. Literature recommends that the best sources ofinspiration for creative breakthroughs are those who have higher structural similarityand lower surface similarity to the target problem (e.g., Gentner & Markman, 1997;
Ward, 1998; Han, Shi, Park, Chen & Childs, 2018). However, it is still arguable thathow similar (or dissimilar) a source should be to the target being mapped (Chan, Dow& Schunn, 2015).
A new approach, namely, DbA-WordTree, has demonstrated the advantages ofgenerating creative solutions in the domain of engineering design (Linsey, Markman& Wood, 2008). However, how effective is the approach to develop individuals’
creativity remains a question. The present study is an attempt to find out how
effective is the approach to develop general creativity.
Literature Review
1.

Design-by-Analogy

Analogy is a promising tool for innovation by mapping from the inspiration source ina domain to the target problem in the other domain to make sense of the solution(Gentner, 1983). The former is typically called the source of the analogy, and thelatter the target. For example, children can learn the concept of the atom by using thesolar system as the source, because the structure and behavior of an atom are similar
to that of the solar system.
In the cognitive process model for analogical reasoning, the process of humanreasoning by analogy can be divided into four steps. Before a target problem is given,
the person has encoded some source analogy and store it in memory. Once theproblem is given, the person retrieves an appropriate analogy from memory. The next
step is to find a mapping between the problem and the source. Finally, the person
generates solutions by finding the inference based on the mapping.
Professional designers often use analogies at the ideation stages of design processes(Casakin and Goldschmidt, 1999; Christensen & Schunn, 2007). The use of analogy
to assist designers in identifying and developing analogies, including examples,
related cases, scenarios, and connected experiences, to solve design problems is called
DbA (Linsey, 2007; Goldschmidt, 2001). How to identify and develop the bestsources of inspiration for creative breakthroughs is a great challenge. Empiricalstudies reveal the principles of a better source are still controversial (Fu, Chan, Cagan,
Kotovsky, Schunn & Wood, 2013).

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Some studies assert the better sources for creative breakthroughs should be
structurally (in terms of such relationship of object features as mechanically, spatially,
and causally) similar but superficially (in terms of such object features as shape,material, and temperature) dissimilar to the target (Gentner & Markman, 1997; Ward,
1998; Holyoak & Thagard, 1996; Ward, 1998). More specifically, other researchclaims the better sources for novelty, quality, and flexibility of ideation should beconceptually far from the target sources (Dahl, D. and Moreau, P. 2002; Chan, Fu,
Schunn, Cagan, Wood & Kotovsky, 2011; Chiu & Shu, 2012). In contrast, somestudies find there are no obvious benefits from conceptually far source for creative
thinking (Fu, Chan, Cagan, Kotovsky, Schunn & Wood, 2013; Chan & Schunn, 2014;
Dunbar, 1997) or the effects of far and near sources have equal advantages (Malaga,
2000).
2.

Word trees

A word tree illustrates multiple parallel sequences of words to analyze unstructured
texts. Based on the visualization of abstract tree structures, it is used to show which
words most often follow or precede a target word or to show a hierarchy of terms.
There are many tools developed in an interactive form of the keyword-in-context(KWIC) technique (Wattenberg & Viégas, 2008). The word tree tools developed by
Fernanda Viégas and Martin Wattenberg (see http://hint.fm/projects/wordtree/) andJason Davies (see https://www.jasondavies.com/wordtree/) are typical examples. The
advantage of these interactive tools is threefold: (1) easy to spot repetition in thecontextual words that follow a phrase, (2) clear to display the natural tree structure of
the context, and (3) easy to explore the context further.
A novel approach, DbA-WordTree method, has been developed by Julie Linsey(2007) to systematically identify far sources and find a mapping between the source
and the target. Since enhancing analogical retrieval requires that design problems are
represented in multiple forms ranging from very domain-specific to domainindependent to provide a variety of related effective retrieval cues (Chan, Dow &Schunn, 2015). A tree structure or tree diagram is a way of representing thehierarchical nature of a structure in a graphical form. It is named a "tree structure"
because the classic representation resembles a tree, even though the chart is generally
upside down compared to an actual tree, with the "root" at the top and the "leaves" atthe bottom. All the tree elements are called "nodes," and the lines connecting
elements are called "branches". Nodes without children are the leaves. Every finite
tree structure has a member that has no superior; this member is the root.
The WordTree method is a promising tool because it can create multiple linguistic
representations by focusing on alternative functional representations. An experimentin workshops using the DbA-WordTree method shows that designers can identify agreater number of analogies and alters their search approaches leading to moreunusual analogous solutions being located (Wattenberg & Viégas, 2008).
The process of the workshop comprises five steps:(1)
List key problem descriptors, which are single-word action verbs derived fromthe functions and customer needs in the problem statement.
(2)
Re-represent the key problem descriptors using the WordTrees method
through both the team’s knowledge and a large lexical database of English, WordNet

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Officilal Conference Proceedings(see https://wordnet.princeton.edu/). The team uses rotational brainwriting to create
sticky note WordTrees, and using WordNet to retrieve additional keywords.
Combining both the results to identify and search potential analogies and analogous
domains, and create multiple problem statements.
(3)
Generate ideas using WordTrees and rotational brianwritng.
(4)
Summarize results and continue with the design process.
Although the WordTree method is a powerful approach for the re-representation ofdesign problems and the generation of creative ideas in the engineering domain, how
it works in the context of domain-general is worth studying.
3.

Creativity assessments

Human creativity can be developed by training (Davies, 2011). If a group ofparticipants is trained by the DbA-WordTree workshop, how their creativity changes
should be measured. There are many tools for measuring cognitive aspects ofcreativity with certain reliability and validity. The cognitive aspects refer to basic
thinking processes that lead to creative production, which include identifying,defining, and redefining the problem, selective encoding (Barbot, Besançon & Lubart,2011).
In cognitive creativity measurements, the Creativity Assessment Packet (CAP) can
measure the cognitive thought factors of fluency, flexibility, elaboration, originality,
vocabulary, and comprehension (Williams, 1967; Williams, 1980). It is useful for theworkshop which involves identifying and searching for action verbs.
Aside from the rather domain-independent approach to measuring cognitive
creativity, there are some domain-specific assessment tools. The Kaufman Domainsof Creativity Scale (K-DOCS) is a relatively new measure for assessing domainspecific creativity in five domains: everyday, scholarly, performance, science, and art(McKay, Karwowski & Kaufman, 2016; Kaufman, 2012). These five domains are
consistent with the Big Five personality factors, extraversion, agreeableness,
conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness to experience. That means KDOCS is not only a measurement tool for cognitive aspects but also conative aspects.
K-DOCS is a 50-item self-report measure assessing the five domains. The instructions
ask the participants to compare to people of approximately their age and life
experience, how creative would they rate themselves for each of the items. Items wererated on a 5-point scale (much less creative too much more creative). K-DOCS is
suitable for specifying which domain the participant’s creativity progresses.
Besides, product-based assessment is required for assessing the achievement of acreative product resulting from workshops. Typically, these products are evaluatedby experts of the domain using the Consensual Assessment Technique (CAT)(Amabile, 1982). The requirements of CAT include (1) judges should all have hadsome equivalent experience with the domain in question, (2) the judges must maketheir assessments independently, (3) the judges should rate the products relative to
one another, rather than rating them against some absolute standards they might hold,(4) each judge should view the products in a different random order (Hennessey,
Amabile & Mueller, 2011).

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Given the literature review, the present study focuses on the relationship between the
DbA-WordTree method and the individual’s development of creativity. Hypotheses
for the training include (1) the participant’s domain-general creativity makes muchprogress after training, (2) the participant’s domain-specific creativity makes muchprogress after training, and (3) the far-source is more likely than the near-source toenhance the participant’s ideas generated by analogy.
Methods
1.

ParticipantsParticipants of the workshops were 122 second-year students from colleges ofmechanical and electrical engineering (51), electrical engineering and computerscience (9), engineering (23), management (24), design (12), and humanities andsocial science (3). They were randomly divided into 30 groups. Each group consistsof four to 6 participants, who come from at least two different colleges.
2.

Instruments

The participants’ cognitive creativity was assessed using K-DOCS and CAP. The
revised Chinese edition CAP (Wang & Lin, 1986), published by Psychological
Publishing Co., Ltd, Taiwan, was used. The K-DOCS was translated into Chinese
edition. The participants’ product-based creativity was assessed by three experts who
have three-month training of the DbA-WordTree method in a CAT way. The items of
the assessments were to determine the following indexes:(1)
Ratio of valid nodes (Rn) = (the number of the nodes that indicate the clue for
exploring or mapping the sources to the target) / (the number of all the nodes of theword tree)(2)
Ratio of valid analogies (Ra) = (the number of the analogies that are related to
the valid nodes of the word tree) / (the number of all the analogies generated in aworkshop)(3)
Ratio of valid ideas (Ri) = (the number of the ideas that mix the analogous
source to solve the target problem) / (the number of all the ideas generated in aworkshop)Also, each workshop used specific worksheets to help participants focus on the design
task given along with the DbA-WordTree method. Each worksheet contained the
instruction, the sub-tasks in sequence, and background layout.
3.

Procedures

Before attending the workshops, all the participants took the K-DOCS and CAP as the
pre-test. When completing all workshops, they took the K-DOCS and CAP again as
the post-test. Two workshops used the far-sources and the other two used the nearsources. All of the tasks were selected from (Van Gundy, 2005), which collectedmany analogical thinking activities. Either the far-sources (i.e., the unrelated stimuli
of inspiration) or the near-sources (i.e., the related stimuli of inspiration) wereavailable in various activities. Table 1 shows the tasks of the four workshops. The
activities ‘#70 What’s the Problem?’ and ‘#82 Brain Purge’ were used for workshops

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with near sources, whereas the activities ‘#21 Tickler Things’ and ‘#97 The Name
Game’ were used for workshops with far sources.
Table 1: Tasks of workshops
Near sources
Far sources
Workshop 1
Workshop 2
Workshop 3
Workshop 4#70. What’s the#82. Brain Purge#21. Tickler#97. The Name
Problem?
Design a newThingsGame
Design a new tape peeler.
Design a method
Design a newdispenser.
to recruit moremosquito trap.
club members.
The activity of each workshop contained two stages. In the word tree stage, eachgroup was requested to complete a word tree using brainwriting for the initial problem
given. Afterward, in the design stage, each group used their word tree as the structural
guidelines to create ideas to solve the problem given.
In each activity, an initial problem was given. The original process of each activity,
adopted from the book of Van Gundy (2005), was adapted to follow the five steps of
the DbA-WordTree method, as described earlier. For each group, the sequence ofeach workshop activity was randomized to avoid the bias of the learning effect. Once
all the workshop outcomes had been collected, the three judges examined the wordtrees created by each group in every workshop.
For instance, the activity for the first workshop is ‘#70. What’s the Problem?’,
adapted from the Synectics of William Gordon (1961). The objective was to help theparticipants reverse their natural tendency to exhaust all conventional solutions andthen declare they have run out of ideas. The target problem for each group was todesign a new tap dispenser by following the steps:(1)
Describe a general, abstract problem (how to remove unpleasantness andavoid worry) without revealing the target problem (how to design a new tapedispenser).
(2)
Use word trees to generate ideas for the abstract problem.
(3)
Reveal the real problem and instruct the group members to examine the ideas
for the two abstract problems and use them as stimuli for new ideas.
(4)
Write down any ideas on posters for evaluation.
Results
Only 100 participants of 26 groups completed the whole process, from the pre-tests,
the four workshops, to the post-tests. Figure 1 illustrates an example completed by agroup in the first workshop. The word tree, as shown in Figure 1(a), is developed forthe abstract problem about removing unpleasantness. The root is “to travel,” which
has two children nodes, “to drive” and “go camping”. These two nodes respectively
have two leaves. For example, the leaves of the node, “to drive”, is “to turn” and“apply brake”. When the key verbs for the abstract problem have been obtained, eachof them is related to an object that most represents the key verb. For example, “Ferris
wheel” is chosen as the representative of the verb, “to turn”. Afterward, each object isseen as the inspiration source to develop ideas for solving the real problem,

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Officilal Conference Proceedings“designing a new tape dispenser”. The sketch, as shown in Figure 1(b) depicts a tap
dispenser using the Ferris wheel as a source of DbA.

(a)
1.

(b)
Figure 1: Example worksheets completed by a group in workshop 1
Progress of creativity

The pro-test with the pre-test was compared to determine the effect of the training
through four workshops on the participants’ creativity. First, the participants’ pro-testof CAP made extremely significant progress (24.3%, p<.01), as shown in Table 2.
The greatest progress made was the elaboration factor (113.4%) while the otherfactors, originality (30.3%), fluency (15.8%), and flexibility (13.2%) also had
relatively large progress.
Second, the comparison of the pro-test and the pre-test was displayed in Table 3.
Except for the creativity in the everyday domain, all the others had extremely
significant growth (p<.01). Both domains of the performance (13.9%) and science(12.9%) have much progress, though the progress of Scholarly was much lesser(3.2%). Still, the domain of art increases (9.6%, p<.05).
Table 2: Pre-test and pro-test of CAP
Factor Assessment N
M
SD
Progress
Pre-test
100
10.10
3.17
Fluency
15.8%
Pro-test
100
11.70
1.69
100
24.88
8.52
Comprehensi Pre-test
1.6%
on
Pro-test
100
25.27
6.06
Pre-test
100
6.65
2.18
Flexibility
13.2%
Pro-test
100
7.53
1.91
Pre-test
100
17.03
7.21
Originality
30.3%
Pro-test
100
22.19
6.11
Pre-test
100
9.30
7.39
Elaboration
113.4%
Pro-test
100
19.85
7.63
Pre-test
100
13.87
6.43
Vocabulary
9.1%
Pro-test
100
15.13
4.80
Total
Pre-test
100
81.83
27.35
24.3%
Pro-test
100
101.7121.35*p<.05, **p<.01

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t-value-4.564**-.373-3.036**-5.461**-9.930**-1.569-5.730**

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Table 3: Pre-test and pro-test of K-DOCS
Assessmen
DomainN
M
SD
Progresst
Pre-test
100
3.24
.66
Everyday
9.3%
Pro-test
100
3.54
.66
Pre-test
100
3.78
.62
Scholarly
3.2%
Pro-test
100
3.90
.60
Pre-test
100
2.67
.88
Performance
13.9%
Pro-test
100
3.04
.99
Pre-test
100
2.95
.88
Science
12.9%
Pro-test
100
3.33
.84
Pre-test
100
3.24
.90
Art
9.6%
Pro-test
100
3.55
.89
*p<.05, **p<.012.

t-value-1.401-3.229**-2.788**-3.176**-2.416*Creativity of ideas

Independently examining each group’s DbA-WordTree per workshop, the three
judged identify the number of nodes, analogies, and ideas that were related to thetarget problem to calculate the ratio of valid nodes (Rn), the ratio of valid analogies(Ra), and the ratio of valid ideas (Ri). Table 4 exhibits the difference between theseratios of the near-source workshops and far-source workshops. Results show that the
far-source workshops had a significantly higher Ra than did the near-source, though
the difference was trivial (3.2%, p<.05). The other two ratios, Rn and Ri between thenear-source and far-source workshops were not significantly different.
Table 4: Pre-test and pro-test of K-DOCS
ChangeSourceNM
SDt-value
Rate
Near
26
3.24
.66
Rn
9.3%
0.70
Far
26
3.54
.66
Near
26
3.78
.62
Ra
3.2%
0.03*
Far
26
3.90
.60
Near
26
2.67
.88
Ri
13.9%
0.09
Far
26
3.04
.99
*p<.05, **p<.01
Item

Conclusion
The first two hypotheses are supported, but the third one is not supported. As theresults of the CAP showed that the participants’ domain-general creativity largely
rose, the first hypothesis is not rejected. Also, since the participants’ domain-specificcreativity mostly rose to a certain degree, the second hypothesis is not rejected. It isnoticed that the present study adapted the DbA-WordTree method of (Linsey, 2007).
It did not involve using WordNet database, and its activities were designed for laymen
instead of specific professionals. Still, the groups were of cross-domains instead of theengineering domain. Despite the adaptation, the results supported the findings ofmany researchers, such as (Linsey, 2007; Linsey, Markman & Wood, 2008; Linsey,

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Markman & Wood, 2012), and recommend that the method can enhance theparticipants’ creativity.
After the training by the four workshops, the participants’ creativity assessments
mostly rose. Either the far-source or the near-source contributed to developing theparticipants’ cognitive and conative creativity to a certain extent. This raises aquestion on the usefulness of even random sources as stimuli for DbA. Future
research needs some controlled experiments to compare the effect of the DbAWordTree method and other methods.
The third hypothesis is rejected. Although the far source was more likely than thenear-source to generate valid analogy, yet the far-source does not have an advantage
over the near-source in developing valid word trees or valid ideas. The results wereconsistent with the findings of Malaga (2000), where the effects of the far-source andthe near-sources have equal advantages.
In the studies of Linsey and her peers (Linsey, 2007; Linsey, Markman & Wood,2012), all the participants were engineering students. In contrast, the majority ofparticipants in the present study came from engineering-related colleges (83, 68%),
and the rest were from non-engineering colleges (39, 32%). The effect of the crossdisciplinary grouping on the individual development of creativity and thecollaborative idea development is worthy of future study.
To sum up, the major advantage of the DbA-WordTree method may lie in the fact thatit requires the participants to use action verbs for identifying and mapping morepotential concepts towards the target design problem. This leads them to better control
divergent thinking to move forwards the target.
Acknowledgments
The author thanks the support of MOST [grant numbers 108-2221-E-027-019],
Taiwan, R.O.C.

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Wang, M. J. & Lin, X. T. (1986). Revision of the Creativity Assessment Packet(CAP) in the Republic of China, Bulletin of Special Education, 2, 231-250. (inChinese)Ward, T. B. (1998). Analogical distance and purpose in creative thought: mental leaps
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Gentner and B. Kokinov Eds. 221-230, Sofia, Bulgaria.
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Contact email: wanghh@ntut.edu.tw

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Stand-Alone Worksheets for Basic Mathematical Computation Skills Developement
Jaymar L. Bonaobra, Bicol University Graduate School, Philippines
Richard M. Lorente, Bicol University Graduate School, Philippines
The Asian Conference on Education 2020
Official Conference Proceedings
Abstract
The recent National Achievement Test (NAT) results proved the mathematics
performance of Filipino learners fall below the DepEd’s 75% MPS target.
Additionally, international assessments including TIMSS and PISA revealed similarpoor results of Filipino students in math. This study developed “Stand-alone
Worksheets” (SAWs) to address least mastered computation skills; it revealed thedeveloped Grade 6 basic mathematical computation skills preparatory to Grade 7 andperformance gains of the mathematically challenged Grade 5 completers along basic
mathematical computation skills. A one-group pre-test and posttest pre-experimental
design was used in this study. There were 880 pupils from three (3) representativelarge schools in Albay of S.Y. 2018-2019 screened from where the lowest 25%
participants were taken. Fifteen (15) worksheets were developed covering multiple
operations on whole numbers, estimations and four basic operations on fractions anddecimals. The SAWs increased the pupils’ performance. The said improvement isstatistically significant at 𝛼 = 0.01. Further, the SAWs can be adopted and/or
modified to enhance learners’ performance level, and that teachers should focus on
deepening pupils’ conceptual understanding of basic computation skills. This paper
suggests that a better mathematical performance is achievable in both primary andsecondary levels when teachers focus on developing basic math skills among students.
Keywords: Basic Computation Skills, Conceptual Understanding, Primary Math
Education

iafor
The International Academic Forumwww.iafor.org

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Introduction
Even with the presence of digital mathematical devices which can perform various
mathematical procedures, basic foundation skills in math remain integral parts oflearner’s mathematics education because they lay the foundation for success inlearning higher mathematics (Harris, 2017). In general, every citizen needs to have astrong mathematical background to be able to pursue higher education and eventually,
thrive in a highly technological workplace. However, over the past years in thePhilippines, the National Achievement Test (NAT) results of primary Filipino pupils
in math remained low (Philippine Statistics Authority, 2016). Recently, in 2018, thecountry also participated in an international benchmark assessment of PISA in
reading, mathematics and science. Unfortunately, the results were as frustrating as thecountry ranked the lowest among the 79 participating countries in reading
comprehension and ranked second to the last (78th) in mathematics and science(BusinessWorld, 2019). The Philippines was outperformed greatly by its neighboring
Asian countries such as China, Japan and Singapore among others.
Basic computation is one of the predominant competency areas in primarymathematics curriculum. It comprises the most salient foundational competencies
such as basic arithmetic, conversions, estimations, and rounding off rational numbers.
These skills are entrenched in the primary math curriculum along Numbers andNumber Sense Strand which “focuses on learners’ understanding of numbers such ascounting numbers – whole numbers, integers, fractions, decimals, real numbers andcomplex numbers, properties, operations, estimation and their application to the realworld situations” (SEI-DOST&MATHTED, 2011). Developing such skills among
primary learners should be a priority of primary mathematics teaching if the goal is toaugment students’ performance in the subject. More specifically, maintaining the needto increase the performance of secondary students in math, early proficiency
assessments on these skills among pupils who are moving to the secondary level(upper elementary i.e. Grade 4, 5 and 6) and providing interventions which could
create a positive impact on the current math performnce status of Filipino students is
an imperative. This research developed intervention materials that address leastmastered skills along numbers and number sense strand in primary mathematics.

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Table 1. Least Mastered Skills in Grade 7 along Numbers and Number Sense and their
Prerequisite Skills
Commo
nly
Least
Least Mastered Skills among the Respondents which are Prerequisites
Masterein Grade 7 Competencies Along Numbers and Number Sensed
Skills in
NAT
Grade 7
Grade 6
Grade 5
Operatio 1.
Performs basic operations 1.
Simplifies a series of
ns on
on integers
operations on whole numbers
whole2.
Performs series of
involving more than two operations
numbers operations following GEMDAS
using the PMDAS/GMDAS rule.
and
rule
2.
Estimates sums, andrational
3.
Estimates sums anddifferences, products and quotients ofnumbers: differences of fractions andfractions and mixed numbers
integers, decimals in simple and or mixed
3.
Adds fractions and mixed
decimals, form
numbers with/out regrouping
fractions 4.
Adds and subtracts
4.
Subtracts fractions and mixed
andfractions in simple mixed forms
numbers
percent
with or without regrouping
5.
Multiplies a fraction and a5.
Adds and subtracts
whole number and another fraction
decimals and mixed decimals
6.
Divides, simple fractions;through the thousandths with/out
whole numbers by a fraction and vice
regroupingversa
6.
Estimates products of7.
Estimates the sum orwhole numbers, fractions anddifference of decimal numbers
decimals
8.
Adds and subtracts decimals
7.
Multiply fractions inthrough thousandths with/out
simple and mixed forms
regrouping
8.
Multiplies decimals and
9.
Adds and subtracts mixed
mixed decimals throughdecimals with/out regrouping
thousandths with/out regrouping
10.
Estimates products of decimalwith zero difficulty
numbers
9.
Estimates quotients of
11.
Multiplies decimals bywhole numbers, fractions andmultiples of 10 and 100
decimals
12.
Multiplies decimal numbers of
10.
Divides fractions andvalues up to hundredths
decimal numbers in simple and13.
Multiplies mixed decimals
mixed forms
with tenths and hundredths by whole
11.
Divides whole numbers
numbers(2-5digits) by decimals (1-2digits) 14.
Multiplies mixed decimals by
12.
Divides mixed decimals
mixed decimals with tenths andby whole numbers
hundredths
13.
Divides whole numbers by 15.
Estimates the quotients of
mixed decimals
decimal numbers
14.
Divides mixed decimals
16.
Divides decimal numbers byby mixed decimals
whole numbers
15.
Divides decimals by
17.
Divides decimal numbers of

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powers of ten
16.
Computes common
percentage problems

values up to hundredths
18.
Finds percentage in a given
problem

The continuous decline of NAT results of the Filipino students has triggered reforms
and innovations in mathematics curriculum, and driven numbers of researches aimed
at reducing the ripple effects (Mirabueno, 2019). However, recent report of DepEd
Regional Office 5 informs that the Bicolano students’ performance remained low inthe subject. This said report presented a summary and interpretation of the NAT
results and noted the hard-to-teach, and least-learned competencies in both primaryand secondary mathematics. This information formed the baseline data of this study
and strengthened the need to conduct an assessment and early intervention. Cawley
and Miller (1989) cited that while it is likely that the curriculum may account forsome achievement deficits, learning gaps of students may actually be due to intrinsic
factors and are not solely caused by poor teaching or curriculum design. Hence, thisstudy developed and validated worksheets specifically designed to fit the needs of the
respondents. Each worksheet embeds a set of basic computation skills which is geared
towards proficiency.
Table 2. Developed Skills and Competency Rating by School by Competency Area
Area
Competency No.
Pre-Test
Post-Test
Schools
Row
SchoolsRow
F
I
J Mea F
I
J Mea
n
n
Whole
Simplifies a series of
10. 29. 16. 19% 39. 38. 34. 37%
Numb
operations on whole
9
4
7
13
2
4
er
numbers involving morethan two operations(Comp 1)
Fracti
Estimates sums, and10. 20. 11. 14% 33. 17. 31. 28%
ondifferences, products and
9
6
7
7
7
7
quotients of fractions andmixed numbers (Comp 3)
Adds fractions and mixed 8.7 19. 0
9% 20. 37. 20 26%
numbers with/out
63
3
regrouping (Comp 4)
Subtracts fractions and
0 2.9 01% 19. 29. 23. 24%
mixed numbers (Comp 5)4
6
4
3
Multiplies a fraction and
0 5.8 02% 34. 29. 33. 33%
a whole number and8843another (Comp 6)
Divides simple fractions,
0 5.8 10 5% 23. 88. 26. 46%
whole numbers by a8
9
2
7
fraction and vice versa(Comp 7)
Decim
Estimates the sum or
15. 29. 10 18% 26. 94. 23. 48%
aldifference of decimal
2
4
1
1
3
numbers (Comp 8)
Adds and subtracts
15. 11. 28. 18% 29. 64. 38. 44%

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decimals and mixed
decimals throughthousands with/out
regrouping (Comp 9)
Estimates products ofdecimal numbers (Comp10)
Multiplies decimals by
multiples of 10 and 100(Comp 11)Multiplies decimal
numbers of values up to
hundreds (Comp 12)
Multiplies mixed decimals
with tenths and hundreds
by whole numbers (Comp13)
Multiplies mixed decimals
by mixed decimals withtenths and hundredths(Comp 14)
Estimates the quotients ofdecimal numbers (Comp15)
Divides decimal numbers
by whole numbers (Comp16)
Divides decimal numbersof values up to
hundredths (Comp 17)

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2

8

3

3

7

3

10.
9

8.8
2

10

10%

47.
8

64.
7

53.
3

55%

13.
0

0

6.6
7

7%

32.
6

47.
1

46.
7

42%

23.
9

0

6.6
7

10%

26.
1

64.
7

50

47%

10.
9

5.8
8

10

9%

45.
6

29.
4

43.
3

39%

13.
1

20.
6

20

18%

26.
1

20.
6

36.
7

28%

10.
9

2.9
4

16.
8

10%

23.
9

20.
6

40

28%

15.
2

14.
7

26.
7

19%

23.
9

35.
3

30

30%

17.
4

14.
7

20

17%

26.
1

23.
5

16.
7

22%

Conclusions
Based from the results of the study, it can be inferred that the respondents were able todevelop the basic computation skills which are prerequisites of higher mathematics by
the use of stand-alone worksheets. This effect proves that the said materials wereadequate and effective in increasing learner’s performance. However, although suchincrease is statistically significant, performance rating of the respondents percompetency has not met the 75% cut-off score. This condition suggests that further
assessments should be done to monitor the learners’ learning progress and teachers
and/or researchers should further conduct interventions. In addition, materials to
supplement instructional tools other than worksheets should also be developed andemployed. This can be those which engage and allow learners to use multiple senses.
This further implies that teachers need to demonstrate flexible and effective teaching
methodologies, strong classroom organization and management skills in order toensure that the students learning needs are appropriately addressed.

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Acknowledgements
I offer my deepest gratitude to the many people who extended great help during thishurdle; to the Department of Science and Technology-Science Education Institute, forfinancing this study, Professor Richard M. Lorente, my thesis adviser, Professor Ma.
Carolina L. Boyon, my statistician and editor, to my parents, Jaena and Joevic Sr., andto all others whose names I failed to mention for without their collective efforts, thiswouldn’t be a success.

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Rerefences
Business World. (2019.) K to 12 review finds declining test scores, skills mismatch.
Retrieved on October 28, 2019 at https://www.bworldonline.com/k-to-12-reviewfinds-declining-test-scores-skills-mismatch/
Cawley, J.F. & Miller, J.F. (1989). Cross sectional comparisons of the mathematical
performance of students with learning disabilities: Are we on the right track towards
comprehensive programming? Journal of Learning Disabilities, 22, 250-257
Harris, A. (2017). What are math computation skills? Retrieved on October 26, 2019at https://sciencing.com/computation-methods-fifth-grade-math-5535746.html. Leaf
Group Ltd. / Leaf Group Media. 2019.
Mirabueno, J.A.S. (2019). Senior high school academic progression in mathematics.
Bicol University Graduate School.
SEI-DOST & MATHTED, (2011). Mathematics framework for Philippine basic
education. Manila: SEI-DOST & MATHTED. Retrieved on February 22, 2019 fromhttp://www.sei.dost.gov.ph/images/downloads/publ/sei_mathbasic.pdf
Contact email: jaymar.bonaobra@bicol-u.edu.phrmlorente@bicol-u.edu.ph

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The Study of Factors that Affect Zhuhai Undergraduates’ Willingness to Get
Master Degree in Hong Kong
Li Pinzhong, HKBU-BNU United International College, China
Hu Dongxue, HKBU-BNU United International College, China
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Abstract
Previous research is limited in analyzing students’ willingness to study abroad in
specific political settings. This paper used a Push-pull model to develop a model thatlinks political, economic, and cultural factors with Zhuhai undergraduates’
willingness to get a master's degree in HK. We tested this model with the data got
from five universities in Zhuhai and a sample size of 150. Regression results showedthat perceived safety and cultural adaptation positively influenced Zhuhai
undergraduates’ willingness to get a master's degree in HK. Two hypotheses proposedin the paper were verified. While the perceived cost of living and tuition fees have a
low effect on Zhuhai undergraduates’ willingness to get a master's degree in HK.
Keywords: Higher Education, Master Degree, Hong Kong

iafor
The International Academic Forumwww.iafor.org

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Introduction
In the global comprehensive competition, talents have become a significant growthpole. The international exchange of talents is improved and expanded. Global student
enrollment in higher education rises from 2 million to 4.5 million in the first decadeof the 20th century. China's rapid development and construction have also
strengthened the demand for talents. In the process of meeting such demand, tocultivate high-quality talents, more and more Chinese parents and students choose to
get further education abroad -- in 2018, the number of Chinese students studying
abroad reached 662,100, maintaining a growth rate of more than 8% from 2016
consistently. With the rise of China's international status and the sharing of
educational resources across the borders, universities in the western countries, and thetwo special administrative regions of China, have set relatively looser admission
requirements for Chinese students than before, making the choices of Chinese
students more abundant.
In the context of more choices and increasing demand for higher education,competition among education groups has intensified, making attracting students achallenge. What factors affect the educational decision-making of college students has
attracted extensive attention worldwide. A vast number of researches have been
conducted to investigate the international students’ choices of education. Previous
research indicates that there are seven major categories of factors that influence
students’ choice of international education, including personal, cultural, economic,
social, legal, and political, environmental, and HEIs-related factors (Paulino &Castaño, 2019). Some researches focused on China, which indicates that the
government’s role in both sending and receiving students has changed from directsponsors into regulators and facilitators. Market forces play an increasing role inmatching demand and supply (Mei Li, 2007). Those research focus on financial andtime costs; employment prospects; postgraduate education as a cultural adventure;
linguistics; visa issues; admissions; climate; the influence of referents; academic
image and reputation. They find that financial and time costs are of vital importancefor Chinese undergraduates (Zhu & Reeves, 2018).
Also, a survey from overseas education institutions found that Hong Kong, America,
Australia, and the UK were the most popular places for mainland Chinese to continue
further study. Data from the UIC campus shows the following allocation of further
study destinations: HK 29.7%, UK 29.4%, US 10.6%, Australia 26.5%. Among these,
Hong Kong not only is the closest destination for mainland Chinese but also has
unique advantages in its higher education. All universities in HK determines its
positioning based on social needs with the division of different key major, which
pursues scientific allocation of educational resources. The inclusive culture andharmonious environment in HK attract scholars, making it an ideal place for mainland
graduates who want to study abroad.
However, due to political reasons, a series of riots occurred recently in Hong Kongthat seriously affected its social stability. Accordingly, how and to what extent the
choices of mainland undergraduates are affected becomes worth investigating. The
present paper adds to the existing literature by choosing Hong Kong as one qualifier
and aiming to identify the crucial factors that influence mainland undergraduates’
willingness to have further education in Hong Kong after the protest activities

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happening, taking Zhuhai as the representative.
The research studies on the factors that affect Zhuhai undergraduates’ willingness to
get a master's degree in HK after the protest activities in HK. The research objects areundergraduates who are willing to get further education and plan to apply for amaster's degree outside of mainland China (overseas, HKSAR, and Macao). The
timing of our research starts in June 2019, which is the beginning of HK protest
activities. The geography scope of our research objects is within Zhuhai.
Factors that affect the willingness of the undergraduates can be classified as political,
economic, and cultural categories from the perspective of motivation and value. In
each of the three aspects, the most influential factors will be summarized andhypothesized. More detailed operational meanings for the 3 categories will be
explained as follows.
For factors in the political category, the research factor focuses on perceived safety
which is the measurement of perceived social stability of Zhuhai undergraduates.
Blöbaum & Hunecke (2005) mentioned in the survey the perceived personal safety
was defined as the perceived danger that affected behavior and incidents.
For factors in the economic category, the cost mentioned in our hypothesis 2 includes
tuition fees and the cost of living in host countries. Opportunities cost (e.g. time aperson spends) for finishing students’ master's degrees were excluded. Also, to
exclude the influence of people’s different income levels, the cost we mentioned
below is students’ subjectively perceived cost instead of the standard and quantifiable
criteria.
For factors in the cultural category, cultural adaptation (sociocultural andpsychological) and the desire to experience other cultures are the two factors
included. Cultural adaptation is our focus in current research, among which,sociocultural adaptation refers to the more practical and behavioral aspects ofadaptation to a new culture; however, psychological adaptation refers to the degree towhich a person feels comfortable and happy in the new culture, or anxious anduncomfortable (Demes & Geeraert, 2014).
Literature Review and Hypotheses
Push-pull model
The push-pull factor is a model reflecting tourists' travel motivation. As Eder, Smith,and Pitts (2010) explain, “Individuals are influenced by motivational factors that pushthem into a travel decision, or in other words ‘whether to go,’ while pull factors
indicate how they are attracted by a location, or in other words ‘where to go’ (Baloglu& Uysal, 1996; Kim, Jogaratnam, & Noh, 2006).”
Previous work in tourism serves as an inspiration for cross-border student movement
models. Mazzarol and Soutar (2002) extend the model of push and pull factors fromdestination choice in tourism to cross-border higher education. Push factors consist ofvariables that cause students or their families to look into the option of cross-borderhigher education. Pull factors, as the focus of our research, is a common focus of

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inquiry hoping to reveal how to best draw students to a destination. Bodycott (2009,p. 354) identifies ten common pull factors drawn from (1) Knowledge and awarenessof the institution, its reputation, and general knowledge of the destination country, (2)Positive attitude toward supporting international education in the destination country,(3) Recommendations and the influence of relatives, parents, and friends, (4) Tuition
fees, living expenses, travel cost, and social cost, (5) Environment considerations
including climate, lifestyle, crime, safety, and racial discrimination, (6) Geographicalproximity, (7) Social or educational links to family or friends living in the destination
country, (8) Immigration prospects after graduation, (9) Perceived higher standards ofeducation and employment prospects, and (10) Availability of scholarships for study.
Political Factors
In the political category, the previous focused on social stability, visa policy, andimmigration policy. Rafi and Lewis (2013) indicated that Australian educational
policy provided the best interest for Indian undergraduates. With the streamlined visa
policy and preferential treatment on the immigration applicants of graduates, thenumber of Indian students choosing Australia for higher education destinations had
increased significantly, showing a positive trend. The findings of Daglish and Chan(2005) illustrated that two factors influenced Indian undergraduates’ choice ofAustralia including the difficulty of applying for a US visa and the complexity of theprocess. Shih (2016) researched the relationship between American international
enrollment and the opening of the US labor market under the H-1B plan (mainlyreflected in the number of visas issued). According to American Economic
Association data, a visa issued by a country is higher than the country's arrival in the
United States. The H-1B visa was reduced in October 2003, resulting in a 10%
reduction in foreign enrollment.
Exploring the security factor in social stability, in the research of Deumert,
Marginson, Nyland, Ramia, and Sawir (2005), Australia was considered a relatively
safe social and political environment compared to other countries. Compared withother countries as learning destinations, parents, and students in China, Taiwan, andIndonesia preferred to choose Australia to accept higher education. Mazzarol andSouter (2001) signified that the presence of social stability was the most significant
predictor of intentions to choose an education importing destination. Under theviolent demonstration in HK, according to a report on ChinaDaily, the title “Protests
disrupt city's stability and operations” indicated that protest had led to low social
stability in HK and people’s safety has been threatening.
Under the violent protest and poor social stability, every undergraduate has a different
perception of HK social turmoil and makes different choices whether to decide HK asa further education destination. So, the research factor in the political categories isdecided in the perceived safety of Zhuhai undergraduates:
Hypothesis 1: Throughout factors in the political categories, perceived safety has apositive correlation with Zhuhai undergraduates’ willingness to get a master's degree
in HK.

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Economic Factors
The economic factor is one of the two most influential determinants of international
student mobility (Wei, 2013). The cost that influences students’ willingness to study
abroad mainly includes the cost of the program or tuition fee, cost or standard ofliving, mobility cost, and other related expenses ( Beine, Noel, & Ragot, 2014;
Chapman & Pyvis, 2004; Cao et al., 2016; Coryton, 2014; Dahari & Abduh, 2011;
Naidoo, 2007; Perkins & Neumayer, 2013; Shanka, Quintal, & MEdman, 2006; Soo& Elliott, 2009; Tan & Goh, 2014; Wei, 2013; Zwart, 2013).
When analyzing the influence of economic factors on students’ decisions, different
scholars have a different emphasis. Maringe and Carter's (2007) trade economy (andhome country capacity) is a push factor that motivates students to study abroad. Bashaet al.’s (2016) emphasize the university-level factors. Meanwhile, Maybelle A & Mary
Caroline N mentioned that students are motivated to study abroad by possible
financial aid or scholarship grants and of the potential increase in the future expected
income (Paulino, M. A., & Castaño, M. C. N). Vrontis et al.’s (2007) focus on theenvironmental determinants (economy of the host countries). While Hemsley-Brown
and Oplatka (2015) mentioned the outcome and benefits (student /institutional
factors), which is an important factor in the return on educational investment thatpeople need to carefully consider.
In the study of economic factors, some scholars use quantitative methods while others
use qualitative ones. Cao et al (2016) used a quantitative study to analyze theeconomic factors that influence Chinese students’ choice of overseas educations.
While Rudd et al. (2012) studied the cost of living with some qualitative themes.
Based on the analysis above, previous researchers have analyzed future career,financial support, scholarship, the potential increase in future expected income, costof living, and tuition cost aspects in the economy category. This paper will discuss
Zhuhai undergraduates’ willingness to get a Master's degree in HK under the current
political situation. The cost of living and tuition costs will be discussed in detailbecause they are more measurable and representative features. Although cost is astandard and quantifiable criterion, different people with different incomes will
perceive it differently for the same price (or cost). Based on these different perceived
costs, different people will also behave differently. Therefore, to exclude these
influences on students’ choices, we mainly discuss their perceived cost. Hypothesis
one is proposed:
Hypothesis 2: Throughout factors in the economy categories, students’ perceived costof living and tuition fees have a positive correlation with Zhuhai undergraduates’
willingness to get a master's degree in HK.
Cultural Factors
Culture is defined as the beliefs, norms, behavioral patterns, and values of a nationalgroup (Paulino & Castaño, 2019). It is considered as one of the most significant
factors influencing undergraduates' choice of study destination, particularly forstudents from Confucian societies (Bodycott, 2009). In terms of cultural factors, theprevious research mainly focused on cultural adaptation and the desire to experienceother cultures. Different ethnic groups have disparate levels of cross-cultural pressure

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Officilal Conference Proceedings(Paulino & Castaño, 2019). Vergara et al. (2010) signify that not all undergraduates
are subject to culture shock and the pressure of cultural changes and unacquainted
cultures. Certain college students stay in a place around various cultures with pleasureand have a desire to experience other cultures (Busher, Lewis, & Comber, 2016). Zhu
and Reeves (2019) state that part of the Chinese undergraduates treats postgraduate
education as a cultural adventure to explore how to get along well with others withdiverse cultural backgrounds.
In the process of transition from the home country to the host country, international
students always need to deal with various adaptation problems, which is known ascultural adaptation (Popadiuk & Arthur, 2004). According to the model of Searle andWard (1990), there are two distinguishing sides of cultural adaptation–socioculturaland psychological. In the transition process, international students need to not only
adapt to the cultural environment of the host country but learn new cultural norms andvalues (Rujiprak, 2016). Based on more representative and measurable cultural
adaptation in cultural factors, it will be discussed in detail relating to the current
situation in Hong Kong. Hence, Hypothesis 3 is proposed:
Hypothesis 3: Throughout factors in the cultural categories, the cultural adaptation
has a positive effect on Zhuhai undergraduates’ willingness to get a master's degree inHK.

Figure 1: Push-pull model
Methodology
Sample and procedures
Participants in the current study were undergraduates in Zhuhai, a city in Southern
China, and were mainly concentrated on five campuses (UIC 1 , BNUZ, Beijing
Institute of Technology Zhuhai campus, Jinan university Zhuhai campus, Sun Yat-Sen
University Zhuhai campus).

1

UIC: United International College
BNUZ: Beijing Normal University, Zhuhai

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Quota sampling was used for the offline survey. Five campuses in Zhuhai was chosen
firstly based on location. The same questionnaires in paper format were administered
to students on each campus. The offline questionnaires were distributed to 200
students from five universities, including 70 students from BNUZ, 17 students from
UIC, 79 students from Beijing institute of technology Zhuhai campus, 15 students
from Sun Yat-Sen University Zhuhai campus, and 19 students from Jinan university
Zhuhai campus (with the total amount of 71500 students in the five universities).
Respondents were informed that the survey aimed to examine factors that affect their
willingness to get a master's degree in Hong Kong and were assured of theconfidentiality of responses. Two days were allocated in this stage.
Snowball sampling for the online survey was also planned to be used. However, it had
been given up due to uncontrollable political reasons.
Of the 200 respondents, we excluded 50 students who chose not to get a master's
degree outside mainland China. Among the 150 respondents who remained, 27.33
percent were male. Respondents reported an average grade of 2.23 years (S.D. 2=0.99), and 66 percent of students whose faculty belongs to liberal arts (S.D. =0.48).
Measures
The current research described the factors for undergraduate students in Zhuhai inchoosing to get a master's degree in Hong Kong. Gatfield and Chen (2006) haveidentified the key factors that affect students' choices in selecting the studying
overseas destination, we used them as a guide to developing the scales. To ensure thatthe measurement results are consistent with the Chinese and English versions,standard translation, and back-translation procedures (Brislin, 1980) were applied. We
reworded a few items, making them more relevant to the current topic. Unlessotherwise stated, responses to items were mainly measured on a Five-Point Liker
Scale, ranging from 1, “extremely disagree” to 5, “extremely agree”.
The perceived cost of living and tuition cost. We used two-item scales developed by
Julie Zwart (2012) to measure students’ perceived cost of living and tuition. It wasused to measure the importance of factors when choosing a country for overseas
study. Sample items were, “Which country is it most and least expensive to live in?”and “University from which country has the highest and lowest tuition cost?” The
scale’s reliability was .78.
Perceived safety. Researcher, Mialm, Furr-Holden, and Leaf (2010), have used 5
perceived items, rated on a 5-point Likert scale as the measurement of the perceived
safety of school climate. This research measured the students’ perceived safety fromschool climate, which was relevant to our research purpose, the undergraduates’
perceived safety from the social background of HK. So, we did some adaption on
original scale items to fix our research background. We changed the items on thepaper of students’ perceived safety from school climate, for example, changed“school” to “Hong Kong’s universities”, “students in school” to “undergraduates inuniversities of HK”, “student drug/alcohol abuse is a problem” to “Undergraduates in2Standard Deviation: S.D.

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Hong Kong’s universities have too much freedom” and “student possession of
weapons is a problem” to “Undergraduates in Hong Kong’s universities areaggressive. ” The sample items were “I feel safe at school in HK”, “I feel safe goingto and from school in HK”, “A lot of broken windows, doors, or desks at schools in
HK”. The scale’s reliability was .66. to improve the reliability in the politicalcategory, we delete the third question on the data analysis which is “Undergraduates
in Hong Kong’s universities have too much freedom.”
Cultural Adaptation. The model of Searle and Ward (1990) stated that cultural
adaptation including two aspects, socio-cultural and psychological. We used Demesand Geeraert’s (2014) eleven-item scale to measure sociocultural adaptation. Base on
the research context, the sample item was, “The pace of life is fast in Hong Kong.”
Meanwhile, the item “Natural environment (plants and animals, pollution, scenery)”
was deleted because it was not much related to the research context. For
psychological adaptation, a ten-item scale also developed by Demes and Geeraert(2014) was used. In terms of the research context, the sample item was, “Happy withyour day-to-day life in Hong Kong”. The scale’s reliability was .77.
Zhuhai undergraduates’ willingness to get a master's degree in HK. We used a twoitem scale developed by Hom, Griffeth, and Sellaro (1984) to measure students’
willingness to get a master's degree in different countries. It was used to measureintentions to pursue graduate education. The items were “I intend to pursue auniversity graduate degree within the next 12 months” and “I am planning to apply
for at least one university graduate program by this time next year.” The scale’s
reliability was .89.
Control variables. The demographic factors including gender, grade, and faculty wereconsidered as control variables. Previous research has shown that grades and faculty
are related to future career prospects (Jackson, 1982). Gender is related to cultural
adaptation (Hsieh, 2010). Gender was coded 1 for “male” and 2 for “female.” Thefour grades of undergraduates were coded from 1 for “junior” to 4 for “senior”. Also,
given many faculties in different divisions, we divided them into two major parts,
where 1 represented liberal arts and 2 represented science-related faculties.
Data Analysis
Descriptive statistics were first conducted on the samples and the statistical
distribution of them was determined based on gender, grade, and faculty. Then, we
conducted an adverse response to the research questions and analyzed the internalreliability among scales of three different IV separately using SPSS. After screeningout the unreliable scales, we calculated the mean value of all questions for eachparticipant under three IV's (one IV corresponded to one mean value; each person has
three representatives mean value. Finally, to test Hypotheses 1, 2, and 3, we
conducted a regression analysis based on the mean values of three IVs for eachparticipant.
Results
Table 1 presents the means, standard deviations, reliabilities, and correlations among
the study variables. Table 2 presents the results of the regression analysis.

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As shown in Table 2, perceived safety (β = .193, p < .01) and cultural adaptation (β= .236, p < .01) were positive related to the intention that get master degree in HongKong. Moreover, the results showed that the perceived cost has a weak influence on
the intention in the current environment of Hong Kong because the perceived cost’s
significant value (.617) is more than .05. Their interaction term accounted for 15
percent of the explained variance in intention (overall R2 = .152). Therefore,
hypothesis 1 and hypothesis 3 were fully supported while hypothesis 2 was notsupported.
Table 1: Means, Standard Deviations, Reliabilities, and Correlation among Study
VariablesaCorrelation coefficients of .20 or greater are significant at p < .01. Correlation coefficients that are greaterthan .16 and less than 0.20 are significant at p < .05. n=150 with listwise deletion.

Table 2: Results of Regression Analysis
Variables

Intention

Sig

Controls
Gender
Grade
Faculty

-.148
.002
-.012

.065
.979
.878

Direct effects
Perceived Safety
Cultural Adaptation
Perceived Cost

.193
.236
.040

.025
.007
.617

Overall R2
Overall F

.152
4.267

a

n = 150 with listwise deletion. Standardized regression coefficients are shown.

Discussion
Theoretical Implications
Our findings regarding willingness contribute to the overseas education literature inseveral ways. First, our findings support the cultural effects as one of the significant
factors influencing undergraduates’ choice of study destination in which Bodycott(2009) proposes that students from Confucian societies care about the cultural
adaption in international study mobility. Besides, our finding is consistent with thatcollege students stay in a place around various cultures with pleasure (Busher, Lewis,& Comber, 2016), further underscoring the Chinese students are with more desire toadapt to a different culture.
Second, our finding supports the research made by Mazzarol and Souter (2001) thatsignified that the presence of social stability was the significant predictor of intentions
to choose an education importing destination. Specifically, in the contemporary

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context of protests, our findings suggest that when choosing to study overseas,
perceived safety is much concerned with Chinese undergraduates. The undergraduates
tend to choose the studying destination in peace and safety (Deumert, Marginson,
Nyland, Ramia, and Sawir, 2005), and it is stressed by Chinese students currently.
Third, the effects of the perceived safety factor and cultural adaptation factor beyond
the perceived cost of living and tuition factor to the willingness of getting further
study in Hong Kong. They lead us to suggest that, in the contemporary context ofprotests are becoming more serious, the previous research demonstrates that perceived
cost factor is one of the two most influential determinants of international student
mobility (Wei, 2013), does not affect the willingness to get further education in Hong
Kong significantly. According to our findings, future research may need to take into
account that the perceived cost factor of international student mobility does notalways play an important role, when the perceived safety, as the precondition, cannot
be assured in serious protests.
Practical Implications
The results of our study have several practical implications.
First, it exists a change in mainstream international studying mobility. As theundergraduates tend to concern about the perceived safety and cultural adaption,
overseas study enterprises and universities should pay attention to these two factors
influencing the willingness of studying abroad and the effects on the trend of studying
abroad in the future.
As there is decreasing perceived safety in Hong Kong recently and the cost advantage
of studying is not so significant, if Hong Kong still wants to be an attractive studying
destination, the perceived safety should be concerned to improve. Or the willingness
to get further education in Hong Kong would be decreased.
Therefore, second, overseas study enterprises or international schools should not be
too dependent on the business that concentrates on getting an education in HongKong. A diverse development of overseas studying business system should be built, tospread the risk and loss that might happen in the uncertain situation of changes fromregional policies or safety. If possible, focus on the destination with high perceived
safety and Chinese students’ desire to make the cultural adaption.
Third, as the total amount of Chinese overseas students is increasing, the relationshipto share the talents between the universities in Hong Kong and the universities inother countries like Singapore or Britain is alternative (Baohua，2019), theuniversities in other countries should prepare for accepting this transfer flow ofChinese undergraduates. Make the plan to decide whether to expand the enrollment
or set higher qualified selection.
Limitation
First, on the methodology, we found the scale items in the existing paper andtranslated them into Chinese. And also, we edited some questions which made themfix our research background. The translation and adaption made slight differences

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compared to the original scales. These errors could lead to some divarication ofunderstanding the meaning of the question from our research.
Second, the hypothesis of perceived cost is not supported by the sample data whichindicates that the perceived cost only has a weak effect on influencing
undergraduates’ willingness. The reasons for the rejected hypothesis, we summarize
reasons as following: to begin with, except undergraduates in UIC, other
undergraduates in our sample are more likely to get a domestic master’s degree andthey do not plan to go aboard to get further education. So, this part of the sample, may
pay less attention to Hong Kong's current situation and don’t know much about thecost of studying abroad. And participants may misunderstand our ranking options andreversed the most expensive with the cheapest option. Lastly, the research finding of
our research applies in a specific situation that cannot be applied to the generalsituation. Because the research of Zhuhai’s undergraduates’ willingness to study in
HK universities is based on the background of current violent protests in HK. So, theresult of our research has timeliness.
Conclusion
From the analysis of the results, we can summarize the conclusion of the hypotheses.
The hypotheses of political and cultural factors are valid. So, students’ perceived
safety and cultural adaptation have a positive correlation with Zhuhai undergraduates’
willingness to get a master’s degree in HK. However, the hypothesis on perceived
cost is rejected and the data analysis shows that perceived cost has a weak influenceon the intention of Zhuhai undergraduates’ willingness under the recent situation. The
implication of the research, different from the past, today on choosing the destinationof further education, undergraduates would take more consideration on perceived
safety and culture adaptation. The enterprise relative with overseas study should refer
to HK current situation which causes the falling attraction as an oversea study
destination and enterprise from a diversified business system to reduce the risk offocusing the business on one choice, and the related universities of other countries
need to plan to deal with the transfer flow of Chinese undergraduates.

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Contact email: 18927400129@163.com

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Appendix
Items for perceived safety
I feel safe at HK’s universities.
I feel safe going to and from HK’ universities
Undergraduates in Hong Kong’s universities have too much freedom.
Undergraduates in Hong Kong’s universities are aggressive.
A lot of broken facilities, windows, or office at HK’ universities.
Items for psychological adaptation (Five-Point Liker Scale)Excited about being in HK.
Out of place, like you don’t fit into HK culture.
A sense of freedom being away from the home country.
Sad to be away from my home country.
Nervous about how to behave in certain situations.
Lonely without your home country family and friends around you.
Curious about things that are different in HK.
Homesick when you think of the home country.
Frustrated by difficulties adapting to HK.
Happy with your day-to-day life in HK.
Items for sociocultural adaptation (Five-Point Liker Scale)
Climate (I like the climate in HK)
Social environment (The pace of life is fast in HK)
Living (I have the same sleeping practices as Hong Kong people)
Practicalities (The transportation is convenient in HK)
Food and eating (I like eating Hong Kong food)Social norms (I have the same punchline as Hong Kong people)
Values (I have the same values about right or wrong things as Hong Kong people)
Beliefs (I have the same religious beliefs as Hong Kong people)
People (Hong Kong people is friendly to the mainlander)
Friends (It is easy to make friends with Hong Kong people)
Language (It is easy to communicate with Hong Kong people)
Items for the cost of living and tuition cost (Ranking questions)
Which country is it most and least expensive to live in?
University from which country has the cost of the highest and lowest tuition
Items for Zhuhai undergraduates’ willingness to get a master degree in HongKong
I intend to pursue a university graduate degree within the next 12 months
I am planning to apply for at least one university graduate program by this time nextyear

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Supporting the Academic Dimension of the Transition to University
A. C. Spowage, Queen Mary University of London, United Kingdom
Xinru Deng, Queen Mary University of London, United Kingdom
The Asian Conference on Education 2020
Official Conference Proceedings
Abstract
The transition from further to higher education is both an exciting and challenging
time for first year undergraduate engineering students. This work focuses ondeveloping a tool to support the academic dimension of the transition, specifically theidentification and closing gaps in student’s pre-requisite knowledge, skills andreasoning. A transition survey was developed and deployed to a large cohort ofChinese engineering students on a British Transnational Education Programme(TNE). The first iteration of the survey was first deployed to Queen Mary Engineering
School (QMES) students in September 2018. The results from which are presented inthis paper. The transition survey was enhanced with support from colleuges from twoother universities (Hassell, D, G., Gan, S, Y., Spowage A.C. 2019) and deployed to
students in three partner Universities in September 2019. Selected results from thissecond iteration deployed to QMES students are included in this paper for comparison
purposes.The results indicate the approach can support students in identifying andclosing gaps and thus support them in the management of the academic dimension of
the transition to undergraduate engineering education. However, additional work andaccess to data from a graduating cohort is needed to completely address the researchquestion. The work identified several areas where students background knowledge
skills and reasoning are incomplete to take full advantage of the learning opportunities
presented to them. The work defined several areas of improvement for future
iterations of the survey.
Keywords: Academic Transition, Transnational Education, Transition Survey

iafor
The International Academic Forumwww.iafor.org

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Introduction
The transition from further to higher education is an emotionally and intellectuallychallenging experience. Harvey et al identified several factors which influence a
successful transition. The impact of student retention, satisfaction and performance
has led to support of the first-year transition being considered a high-priority researcharea. The transition in the United States is considered by social and academic
integration theories. In British universities more emphasis is given for preparedness
for higher education, expectation management, satisfaction and the quality of theexperience (Harvey, Drew, & Smith, 2006). The most common way universities
support students during their transition is the resource (or “best practice”) approach(Fox, 1986) (Barefoot, 2000). Many universities provide counselling, online resources
and written guides to help support students make the transition (Mutch, 2005).
The literature suggests that in order to understand the issues students are having
during the transition it is important to appreciate their background (Eriksen &Strommer, 1991). Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) has established a“Joint Education Institute” with Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xi’an
China. The school, Queen Mary Engineering School (QMES), currently runs two,four year long, undergraduate bachelor’s programmes in “Materials Engineering” and“Polymer Science & Engineering” the first two years of which are undifferentiated.
Each programme has approximately 120 students per year and at the time of writing
the first cohort is in their 4th year of study.
After a review of past work, the approach of (Goodhew, Murphy, McCartan, &Myler, 2011)(McCartan & Goodhew, 2010) (Goodhew, Bullough, McCartan, &Connor, 2013) (McCartan C. D., 2015) were considered to be most adaptable to theobjectives of this work. The objectives of this early work are different to that in thiswork. However, the question bank developed holds the greatest potential to support
the objectives of this work.
The aim of this work is to support QMES engineering students during their transition
from school to a UK based engineering programme. The research question in thisinitial study is: could a transition survey support the academic dimension of thetransition to a transnational engineering education programme. Put it another way thework aims to help students with the transition by enabling them to identify any gaps
in their prerequisite knowledge, skills and reasoning. Once these gaps are identified
support should be made available to close the gaps.
This paper presents the findings for the first iteration of the transition survey andcontrasts them with the basic results from the second iteration.
Materials and Methods
The primary reference for the transition survey is that of (McCartan & Goodhew,2010). The authors developed a diagnostic tool, referred to in this work as a“transition survey” which aimed to “assess the knowledge and experience ofincoming engineering students”. Effectively the authors develop a comprehensive
question bank with links to related background reading although the purpose of the

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study and the mode of deployment (paper based) did not really encourage students to
use the links.
This work used the same question bank to determine if a “transition survey”, the term
used in this work, could be used to address the research question. The latest version of
the questions was generously provided by Prof. Goodhew, the complete dataset
contained 80 questions. These questions were reviewed for relevance to the QMES
programmes and suitability for deployment within the Chinese context. The web-links
in the transition survey needed to support student close any gaps identified. The links
were reviewed for suitability to the purpose of this work and accessibility in China.
Questions were classified into a number of areas relating to discipline, andsubclassified into the following question types: knowledge, skills and reasoning(McCartan C. D., 2015). The survey was deployed via the schools Moodle based
virtual learning environment (VLE).
Prior to deployment of the first iteration of the survey it was beta tested by several
graduate students. The survey was opened for two weeks, and students could accessthe quiz as and when they chose.
The question bank for the second iteration of the survey was heavily modified inconjunction with colleuges from the university of Bath and the University of
Nottingham Malaysia Campus (Hassell, D, G., Gan, S, Y., Spowage A.C., 2019).
Limited results from the second iteration are contrasted with those from the first
iteration where appropriate.
Results & Discussion
In the first iteration of the transition survey data was collected from a total of 225
students’, the basic data is summarised in Table 1. The percentages of students that
attempted the survey was high (100%). However, the number of students completingthe quiz was significantly lower (87%). Informal discussion with students that did notcomplete the survey suggested it was too long or that they were actively working on it
and simply forgot to submit before it closed. To improve the submission rate thenumber of questions was reduced in the second iteration (Hassell, D, G., Gan, S, Y.,
Spowage A.C., 2019). In addition, several reminders were sent to encourage
completion and submission before the survey closed. The approach improved thenumber of students that managed to complete the survey, the result was a higher
number of successful submissions in the second iterations, Table 1.
The response rate was better than in the original work (72%) which was delivered
synchronously in class using a paper-based approach (McCartan & Goodhew, 2010).
This may be associated with the way the survey was administered or the character ofthe QMES students. Another explanation could be the different focus of the work i.e.
this work aimed to help students identify and then close gaps in their STEM
background while the original work had a stronger focus on assessing knowledge andexperience which may not translate as readily into a direct benefit for students. Whilethe questions were similar, the purpose would be perceived very differently by
students. Additional work and comparisons with UK students on those on other

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Transnational Education Programmes is recommended to help decouple theseobservations in future iterations of the survey.
When the scores in the first iteration of the transition survey are mapped against the
QMUL grading bands a relatively high percentage of students (38.8%) obtained 1stclass marks (70% or more). This is not too surprising as the transition survey focuseson knowledge, skills and reasoning that the students should have mastered as prerequisites to starting their undergraduate engineering programmes. At the opposite
end of the spectrum nearly one quarter of students (22.3%) scores were in the 3rd classor below bands. Assuming that the questions are indeed related to areas important forsuccess within the degree programme, then this observation suggests a real need tosupport at least a subset of students to close gaps in their pre-requisite knowledge.
The average performance of students in the second iteration was higher than in thefirst, Table 1.
Analysis of the time students invested to complete the survey indicated that on
average students spent over 2days accessing the survey in both iterations. The
observation indicate that students were following the links and closing gaps as thesurvey would have taken less than 2hrs to complete. This is the only metric available
to assess if students actually followed the links to close any gaps identified. A more
direct metric is needed to determine the extent to which students followed the links,
and if possible, how much time they spent closing the identified gaps. In both
iterations some students clearly did not follow any of the links as the time taken was
far too short.
Analysis of correlation between the time taken to complete the transition survey andtheir average mark in QMES modules was investigated. The results indicate weak or
no correlation between time taken with either entry grade, transition survey
performance or the 1st academic year average mark.

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Statistic
Number that attempted the quiz
Number that finished the quiz
Average grade
Number of questions
Number of questions answered correctly
by 90% or more of students
Numberofquestionsansweredincorrectly by 90% or more of studentsValue
225 (100.0%)
195 (86.7%)
41.7 (63.2%)
66

Value
227 (100.0%)222 (97.8%%)
32.6 (74%)
44

2 (3.0%)13 (29.5%)

3 (4.5%)0

2
days
23min 7s

Average time taken (must have finished)

1hoursCorrelation – Gender and transition
None
survey score
Correlation – Entry grade and transition
None
survey score
Correlation – Between question types
Moderate to Strong
Correlation – Between question areas
Weak to Strong
Correlation – Time taken in the survey
and score, first year average or module None
marks
Table 1: Transition survey basic Statistics

2 days 14 hours
30 mins
None
None
StrongWeak to Strong
Weak

Figure 1: Frequency of correct answers for each question in the transition survey 1st
iteration
The frequency of correct answers for each question in the first iteration is shown in
Figure 1. The results indicate only two questions were answered correctly by over
90% of students. The results indicate that except for these two questions, the questionbank focused on areas that represented gaps to a major proportion of students. In thesecond iteration some questions were removed, and new questions added. The results
indicated that a higher number of questions (13) were answered correctly by morethan 90% of students. It is not clear if this is reflective of the differences between
cohorts or that the updated question bank was less challenging to students.
McCartan 2015 found (in there 40 question, 600 student survey that used a subset ofthe questions from iteration 1 of this work) that in 2 questions less than 10% of
students and in 16 questions less than 40% of students got the correct response. On amacro level these results would seem comparable. Comparing the questions where

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less than 40% of students got the correct response, the UK based students founddifficulty in areas of Manufacturing, Mechanics and Maths. However, the QMES
students found most difficulty in skill type questions (4 of 15 questions got lower than
40% accuracy), math topic (4 of 13 question got lower than 40% accuracy). McCartan
noted that it was surprising that even when students had very high mathematics entry
grades that did not necessarily translate to a high score in the math focused questionsof their quiz. Combining these observations may suggest that the issues QMES
students found with the math questions may not be completely associated withlanguage. Additional work and more direct comparison with British and students onother transnational education programmes should be considered in future studies.
Three questions from the first iteration were answered incorrectly by over 90% of
students. These questions were evaluated and either the phraseology improved, orthey were replaced in the second iteration. As a result no questions were answeredincorrectly by more than 90% of students in the second iteration.
The transition survey in this and the questions in the original work targeted three typesof questions; skill, knowledge and reasoning, Figure 2. In the first iteration thesignificance coefficient (2-tailed) for the total average score and the average score foreach question type indicated no significant difference for all question types. Analysis
by question types indicated that in only 6 (out of 38) knowledge, 4 (out of 15) skills
and 2 (out of 13) reasoning questions did 40% or more of students get the correct
answers. The observations indicate that the gaps in students STEM background, andthat the student’s backgrounds are quite diverse.
In the second iteration student performance in skills type questions was similar (64%)
to that in the first iteration but significantly higher in the knowledge (81%) andreasoning (79%) type questions. Figure 2. Due to the differences in the question banks
used it is not clear if the results are reflective of differences between cohorts or if thequestions asked.

Figure 2: Comparison of all question types from the 1st iteration of the transition
survey.

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The Pearson correlation coefficient between questions types is shown in Table 2.
Skills, Knowledge and Reasoning question types all indicate moderate to strong
correlation between types. That is it can be expected that students who scored highly
in knowledge type questions would also score well in skills and reasoning typequestions, Table 2.
Skills-Knowledge

Skills-Reasoning
Knowledge-Reasoningst
1 Iteration
0.7
0.5
0.6
Strong correlation
Strong correlation
Moderately correlation
2nd Iteration
0.70
0.59
0.65
Strong correlation
Strong correlation
Strong correlation
Table 2: Pearson relevance among question types

The question type QMES students found most challenging were associated with skills
in both iterations. It was suspected that issues with skills related question was
associated with English language capabilities e.g. the names of hand tools of otherspecialist vocabulary. The lack of correlation with the English language module
scores might be due to the lack of engineering specific terminology within the module
which might be an important factor in curriculum review. Either way it is an
important area and discussions with the English language team and a suitable glossaryof technical terms should be added to the survey for future iterations.
The relatively low performance of QMES students in mathematics related questions(many of the reasoning type questions) in the was something of a surprise asmathematics is given considerable attention in the student’s pre-university education.
It was suggested by Chinese colleuges that the result may be associated with thestudents not understanding the questions or how to apply their previous knowledge tothe way the questions were phrased. Further, there was no correlation between thestudent’s performance in the transition surveys maths questions and the mathematics
modules they study in their first year. This issue needs additional investigation in
future iterations in the survey.
Questions in the transition survey were also divided into several areas based on
discipline lines. The performance of male and female students, and between
programmes in each question area are considered in Table 3. The area of best
performance was MS Office & IT and the worst was General Knowledge. However,there were only a small number of questions in each of these areas. ANOVA analysis
indicates the average scores were similar in each area. The question areas werereorganised in the second iteration so a direct comparison would not be appropriate.
However, in each question area the performance of students was generally higher inthe second iteration with the exception of the “how they work” and “MS office andIT” areas.

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Number of correct
Number of Questions
Performanceanswers in each topic
Chemistry3
55.3%
The Workshop
462.8%
Nuclear Power
1
64.4%
How They Work5
63.9%
General Knowledge2
41.6%%MS Office & IT4
72.4%
General Physics
14
59.6%
General Engineering
7
59.9%
Materials Properties
13
57.2%
Maths
13
56.2%
Table 3: Analysis by question area 1st iteration
Table 4 indicates some question areas from the first iteration are strongly correlatedwith other question areas such as MS office & IT skills, General Physics, General
Engineering, Materials Properties and maths. While other question areas have only aweek/moderate correlation such as chemistry, the workshop and general knowledge.
Similar observations can be made about question areas from the second iteration.
The student’s entry grades were based on the Chinese Gaokao examinations. Gaokao
or the “The National Higher Education Entrance Examinations” cover six modules.
For science stream students this includes elements of Chinese, Math, English, Physics,
Chemistry and Biology. The Ministry of Education determines the current years key
enrolment benchmark depending on the number of applicants and the capacity of theuniversities. This will be different in different provinces (Davey, De Lian, & Higgins,2007). As a result, the Gaokao scores cannot be compared directly between provinces.
In this work the score over key
The
Works
hop
Chemis
try

0.34
weak

The
Workshop-

Nuclear
Power
How
They
Work
GeneralKnowledge
MS

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Nucl
ear
Pow
er
0.27
wea
k
0.28
wea
k

How
They
Work

Genera
l
Knowl
edge

MS
Offic
e&
IT

0.40
weak

0.30
weak

0.37
weak

0.57
mode
rate

0.34
weak
0.30
weak
0.38
weak

-

-

0.33
weak

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

0.47
mode
rate
0.47
mode
rate
0.56
mode
rate
0.44
mode
rate
-

80

Gene
ral
Physi
cs
0.48
mode
rate
0.54
mode
rate
0.45
mode
rate
0.66
stron
g
0.49
mode
rate
0.70

GeneralEngineering
0.45
moderate
0.52
modera
te
0.35
weak
0.57
moderate
0.49
modera
te
0.63

Mater
ials
Prope
rties
0.50
moder
ate
0.61
strong
0.49
moder
ate
0.62
strong
0.48
moder
ate
0.70

Math
s
0.46
mode
rate
0.58
mode
rate
0.40
weak
0.60
mode
rate
0.47
mode
rate
0.63

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Office& IT
GeneralPhysics

stron
g
-

-

-

-

-

-

strongstrong0.61
strong0.73
strong

stron
g
0.69
stron
g
0.63
stron
g

General
0.66
Enginestrongering
Materia
0.71
ls
stron
Propertg
ies
Table 4. Pearson relevance among different question areas 1st iteration
benchmark rate has been used for comparisons between provinces and termed “Entry
Grade” for simplicity.
The student’s entry grades were based on the Chinese Gaokao examinations. Gaokao
or the “The National Higher Education Entrance Examinations” cover six modules.
For science stream students this includes elements of Chinese, Math, English, Physics,
Chemistry and Biology. The Ministry of Education determines the current years key
enrolment benchmark depending on the number of applicants and the capacity of theuniversities. This will be different in different provinces (Davey, De Lian, & Higgins,2007). As a result, the Gaokao scores cannot be compared directly between provinces.
In this work the score over key benchmark rate has been used for comparisons
between provinces and termed “Entry Grade” for simplicity.
The relationship between entry grade and transition survey performance wasinvestigated using the Pearson correlation coefficient. There was no significant
correlation between entry grades and student’s performance in both iterations of thetransition survey. The observations indicate that entry grades alone cannot be used to
predict QMES student performance. It is possible that the additional subjects studied
in the entry qualifications diluted any correlation with performance in the transition
quiz. Future iterations should look for a correlation between the scores in the relevantscience subjects of the entry examinations and the results of the transition survey.
The Gaokao examinations are locally administered and there can be differences
between the areas covered, and, emphasis given to certain subjects in different
provinces. This can be thought of being analogous to different A-level examination
boards in the UK which might have a greater or less focus on specific areas. QMES
students are from different provinces. Figure 3 has been ordered highest entry scoreby province on the left to lowest on the right. Province 1 has the highest entry grade(0.6) and province 16 the lowest (0.1). Interestingly the province with the best entry
grade didn’t perform very well in the transition survey. That is Pearson correlation
between the score in transition survey and entry grades shows a negative correlation,
Table 5, in both iterations.

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Figure 3: Comparison of the performance of students from different provinces in
Entry Grade and in each question type of Transition survey 1st iteration
Similar comparisons have been done for each question type, Figure 3. The results
indicate that Skill, Knowledge and Reasoning have Moderate, Strong and WeakNEGATIVE correlation respectively with entry grade. The observation is interesting
but there is inadequate data for to draw any meaningful conclusions. It is however an
area which warrants additional consideration in future surveys.
Pearson correlation coefficient indicates no correlation between the year average
performance and the transition survey scores. This is to be expected as the students
complete the transition questions before receiving the feedback which in turn helps
them close any gaps. In this initial iteration of the transition survey no metric exists tomeasure the effectiveness of the survey, in future iterations direct measures ofassessing the survey’s effectiveness in helping students close gasp in their STEM
knowledge, skills and reasoning needs to be investigated.
While there was no correlation between average first year marks, there was acorrelation between the transition survey scores and specific modules. Similarly,
Harvey et al. did not find a link between entry grades (A-level) and overall
performance. However, they went on to say that “prior knowledge or expertise in a
subject and the grades achieved in the early part of the first year are indicators ofsuccess but only in combination with other variables”. It will be interesting to review
the data available post-graduation to determine if the transition survey, perhaps in
combination with the entry grades and other variables, are able to predict either
performance or identify potential problem areas.
The average score in QMES modules for students that did not submit the transition
survey were all lower than the score of students who did complete it. This observationneeds to be investigated future as it could act as a useful metric for the value of thetransition survey and as a warning system to flag students that might be at risk ofunderperforming.
Conclusion
The research question could not be fully answered based on the results of the first two
iterations of the transition survey. The gaps identified indicate a need to help students
identify and close them. Further, the QMES students were willing to spend time
closing those gaps as indicated by the high completion percentages. Together this

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suggests that the survey has value to QMES students. Additional metrics are required
to fully evaluate the research question over the long term.
Although no graduating class was available for comparison at the time of writing this,the initial results suggest a link between first year performance in some modules andthe transition survey. Performance in the transition survey is not a direct reflection of
the extent to which completing the survey supports closing gaps. That is, the students
take the survey before getting the links which helps close the gaps. Other metric need
to be developed to determine the effectiveness of the transition survey.
The results from this work indicate that indeed students who sat the transition survey
scored higher in the QMES examinations. There are of course other factors which
confound a direct correlation, methods of decoupling these need to be developed infuture iterations.
The transition survey is a student centred, deficiency model i.e. it helps to identify andfill in the gaps in students’ knowledge, skills and reasoning. In the terminology of(Palmera, O’Kaneb, & Owensc, 2009) the transition survey could represent a “keyturning point” in helping student with their transition. Completing the transition
survey has the potential to support students feeling that they are truly ready for at least
the academic dimension of university life and successful completion will build
academic confidence right at the start of their higher education journey. Additional
work is required to understand the scope of any improvements in these areas.
The concept of “academic and social” integration implies that students must possess
the pre-requisite academic capabilities if they are to engage in the ongoing academic
conversation (Barefoot, 2000) (Tinto, 1993). It is generally believed that thisengagement is essential to support higher performance and provide validation as anintegral member of the university. A portion of new students are not equipped withthe knowledge, skills and reasoning capacities that some within the academic
community consider important for success. The transition survey provides a means to
support all students to enhance their pre-requisites capabilities and in doing so smooth
their academic journey.
Research suggests that students may accept the principle of autonomous learning(Harvey, Drew, & Smith, 2006). However, they need help in becoming autonomous
learners. It is hypothesised that the way the transition survey is delivered, could, itself
represent a turning point on this journey. To that end future iterations of the transition
survey should also aim to further enable independent and active learning.
The available research suggests that, overall, predicting first-year outcomes iscomplex and requires a wide range of variables. There is little doubt that academic
background is one of the most important predictors of success (Van den Broecka, De
Laetb, & Lacantec, 2019). While it may not be possible to predict final grades withany degree of certainty, it is feasible that the transition survey can be used to support
identification of potential problem areas in the students near term future. Further, byallowing students to close any gaps enhance their chances of attaining higher grades.

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AcknowledgementsColleagues, particularly those from QMES who freely provided access to their own
experiences during these challenging times. The authors would like to thank Prof.
Peter Goodhew, Prof Robin Clark and Dr Matt Murphy for the access to the originalquestion bank as well as their advice and support at the start of this journey. In
addition, the authors would like to acknowledge the contributions of David Hassell
and Dr Gan SuYin who worked on the Strucuture of the question bank for the second
iteration. A joint publication from the three Universities experiences is expected in
2021.

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References
Barefoot, B. O. (2000). The First-Year Experience. About campus, 4:6, 12.
Davey, G., De Lian, C., & Higgins, L. (2007). The university entrance examination
system in China. Journal of Further and Higher Education, 31, 385-396.
Eriksen, ,. B., & Strommer, D. W. (1991). Teaching college freshmen. San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass.
Fox, R. N. (1986). Application of a conceptual model of college withdrawal todisadvantaged. American Educational Research Journal, 23: 415–24.
Goodhew, P., Bullough, T., McCartan, C., & Connor, J. (2013). Finding out what firstyear engineering students know. The transition into higher education in STEM
subjects : case studies of research and practice. Grove, M. & Williams, J. (eds.).
Birmingham: HE STEM Programme.
Goodhew, P., Murphy, M., McCartan, C., & Myler, P. (2011). The Transition into
University: What Engineering Students Know. Proceedings of the 7th International
CDIO Conference Technical University of Denmark. Copenhagen.
Harvey, L., Drew, S., & Smith, M. (2006). The first-year experience: a review ofliterature for the. The Higher Education Academy – October 2006.
Hassell, D, G., Gan, S, Y., Spowage A.C. (2019). Strucuture of the second iteration of
the transition survey., Private communications.
McCartan, C. D. (2015). A transition study to support curriculum reform. Proceedingsof the 11th International CDIO Conference. Chengdu : Chengdu University ofInformation Technology.
McCartan, C., & Goodhew, P. (2010). Managing the Transition at University
Engineering Courses. Retrieved from The Higher Education Academy:
https://www.heacademy.ac.uk/system/files/managing-the-transition.pdf
Mutch, C. (2005). The Transition from High School to University: An Analysis of
Advice for Students, Faculty and Administration. Nagoya Journal of Higher
Education, Pp.143-166.
Palmera, M., O’Kaneb, P., & Owensc, M. (2009). Betwixt sp aces: student accountsof turning point experiences in the first-year transition. Studies in Higher Education,
34:1, 37-54.
Tinto, V. (1993). Leaving College: Rethinking the Causes and Cures of Student
Attrition. (2nd ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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University of Queensland . (2011). Transitioning into University . Retrieved fromwww.uq.edu.au:http://www.uq.edu.au/studentservices/sites/default/files/Transition_Guide_1.pdf
Van den Broecka, L., De Laetb, T., & Lacantec, M. (2019). Predicting the academic
achievement of students bridging to engineering: the role of academic backgroundvariables and diagnostic testing. Journal of further and higher education, 43:7, 989–
1007.
Contact Email: a.spowage@qmul.ac.uk

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Suicide Intervention Experiences and Practices of School Counselors:
Basis for Development of Practice Guidelines
Joel C. Navarez, De La Salle University, Philippines
The Asian Conference on Education 2020
Official Conference Proceedings
Abstract
The current study investigated the Filipino school counselor’s knowledge, attitudes,and competencies in suicide intervention as well as their experiences and practices insuicide intervention. The study also aimed to develop and standardize suicideintervention guidelines. The study has two (2) phases. Phase 1 utilized the descriptive
and generic qualitative inquiry methods of research. Purposive and conveniencesampling was applied, and participants were college counselors from the National
Capital Region (NCR), Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao. Results revealed that
counselors do not have high level of knowledge on suicidal behaviors, have some
negative attitudes toward suicidal behavior, and need to acquire better intervention
skills. The findings also showed that the trainings received by counselors are notenough to advance their suicide intervention skills which would help enhance positive
attitudes towards suicide risk assessment and management. Some common
experiences of the counselors in suicide intervention were focused on the areas ofaccountability, stigmatizing attitudes of parents, and confidentiality issues. Phase 2 ofthe study was the development of suicide intervention practice guidelines using theDelphi process. The tentative guideline was based on the content analysis ofinterventions taken from literature and from the actual intervention practices ofcounselors as seen from the findings of the qualitative study of Phase 1. After three(3) Delphi rounds and the consensus from sixteen (16) mental health experts, 145
recommended actions can be implemented by school counselors in suicide.
Keywords: Counselor Competencies, Counselor Development, Practice Guidelines
School Counselors, Suicide, Suicide Intervention

iafor
The International Academic Forumwww.iafor.org

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Introduction
Suicide among adolescence has become a major public health issue. Suicide occurs
throughout the lifespan and is the second leading cause of death in young adults ages
15 to 24 years old (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2015), and is likely
the second among college students (Suicide Prevention Resource Center, 2014).
Suicide accounted for 1.4% of all deaths worldwide, making it the 17th leading causeof death in 2015. Rates have increased more sharply since 2006. According to theWorld Health Organization (2017), close to 800,000 people die due to suicide every
year, which is one person every 40 seconds. Statistics also showed that 78% of
suicides occurred in low and middle-income countries in 2015.
A vast body of literature addresses suicide as an important issue for the counselingprofession while it is of concern that the experiences of school counselors have been
neglected in the research literature. School counselors face child and adolescentsuicide as frequently as any other group of mental health professionals (Schmidt,
2003). Therefore, school counselors’ experiences of client suicide merits further study(Valente, 2003).
Many counselors lack the knowledge and information required for the competentassessment of a potentially suicidal client. This is particularly alarming, because
approximately 50% to 70% of people who committed suicide had been in contact witha health professional during the days or months prior to their death (Kutcher &Chehil, 2007). This lack of screening is tragic, because screening for suicide risk is
one of the most powerful suicide prevention strategies (Mann et al., 2005; Suicide
Prevention Resource Center, 2004). And even those counselors possessing thisknowledge on suicide risk assessment often find themselves in profound ethicalconflict regarding treatment options (Laux, 2002). Counselors remain poorly trained
and ill prepared for the aftermath of suicide (Dexter-Mazza, & Freeman, 2003).
Studies have highlighted the importance of knowledge and attitudes toward suicide,
as well as training and experience, in effectively counseling potentially suicidal
clients (Neimeyer, Fortner, & Melby, 2001). Conversely, studies have found thatprofessionals with previous training in suicide risk assessment and management show
more positive attitudes toward suicide prevention (Herron et al, 2001). Also,
professionals with more training and experience dealing with suicidal clients show
better intervention skills than less experienced and trained professionals (Neimeyer etal., 2001; Scheerder, Reynders, Andriessen, & Van Audenhove, 2010). In summary,knowledge, attitudes, competencies, and training related to suicide may influence
suicide intervention skills and therefore aid or hamper suicide prevention.
Further, despite the abundant and continually growing body of knowledge regarding
suicide, very few studies have been conducted to address factors relating to schoolbased suicide intervention in the local setting (Miller, 2011). To date, in thePhilippines, there is a lack of research that examines the experiences and intervention
practices of school counselors who work with suicidal clients. Moreover, there is noresearch to date in the Philippines that investigates the presence of suicideintervention within school crisis plans or the degree to which school suicideintervention protocols are aligned with recommended practices and which

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recommended practices are employed throughout school suicide intervention
protocols has yet to be investigated.
Most of the studies focused mainly about the epidemiology of suicide and suicidal
behavior in the Philippines and although its incidence is reported to be low, there is
likely to be under-reporting because of its non-acceptance by the Catholic Church andthe associated stigma to the family (Redaniel, Lebanan-Dalida, & Gunnell, 2011). In
spite of the fact that guidance and counseling has been a licensed profession in thePhilippines, the national organization for school counselors has not come forwardwith guidelines, policies, and procedures for the school counselors to follow indealing with suicide cases. Therefore, given the dearth of existing local research
investigating the counselors’ professional experiences and practices in working withsuicidal clients, the current research proposed to advance scientific knowledge by
exploring the professional experiences and practices of school counselors, hearing
their voices, and understanding their subjective opinions when working with thisvulnerable population of adolescents. The present study was designed to address theseconcerns.
The availability and presence of a suicide intervention practice guidelines is highly
significant not only to safeguard the practice of the school counseling profession but
primarily for the safety of students-at risk. The focus of this study was two-fold: (1) to
explore the knowledge, attitudes, and competencies in suicide intervention among
school counselors as well as their experiences and practices in suicide intervention;and (2) to develop and standardize suicide intervention guidelines.
This study sought to make a significant contribution to the field of school counselingby narrowing the gap between the existing counselor’s knowledge base about suicideintervention practices and actual needs of schools in the area of suicide intervention.
Understanding counselors’ experiences will provide a rich description and a deeper
understanding on the journey of professional school counselors with suicidal clients.
The results of this study provided valuable information with implications for the
training and practice of Philippine school counselors on suicide prevention,intervention, and postvention. The practical implications of this study will be both in
the area of improved knowledge and a clear guideline in managing healthemergencies like suicide.
Findings
Quantitative Study
The results revealed that counselors have an adequate degree of suicide literacy. Thisfinding is also consistent with the study conducted by Roberts-Dobie and Donatelle(2007) in which they found out that professional school counselors did not report highlevels of knowledge on suicidal behaviors. As what has been pointed out in somestudies, many counselors lack the knowledge and information required for thecompetent assessment of a potentially suicidal client (Kutcher & Chehil, 2007).
The importance and the need to increasing counselor’s knowledge about suicide was asignificant finding of this study. Level of knowledge of suicide can be considered asignificant predictor of counselor’s perceived self-efficacy in identifying and

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intervening with students at risk for suicide. This finding supports the notion that byincreasing counselor’s knowledge of suicide, counselors experience increased
confidence in their ability to identify, work with, and refer suicidal youth.
With regard to counselors’ attitudes towards suicide, the findings suggested that somecounselors still hold stigmatizing attitudes toward suicidal behavior. Studies havestressed the importance of attitudes toward suicide in effectively counselingpotentially suicidal clients (Neimeyer, Fortner, & Melby, 2001). Understanding
attitudes toward suicide is important because of its possible relationship to othervariables, such as intervention skills and effectiveness in dealing with suicidal clients(Botega et al., 2007; Bamero, Smith, Bates, & Fairbrother, 2008; Kodaka, Postuvan,
Inagaki, & Yamada, 2011). If negative attitudes influence clinical behavior, they may
affect suicide risk management because the mental health professional underestimatesrisk (Herron, Ticehurst, Appleby, Perry, & Cordingley, 2001), and may make nontherapeutic responses toward people who have attempted suicide (Demirkiran &Eskin, 2006).
The findings of this study showed that counselors have varying degrees ofcompetencies in terms of their intervention skills. Although though it’s noteworthy tomention that there are counselors who need to acquire better intervention skills,
personal and professional factors might have contributed to this wide disparity.
Enhanced skills related to suicide intervention could make a difference between thelife and death of a client. The counselor’s response to suicidal crises is a unique skill
and different than other skills practiced and acquired during training (Neimeyer,
Fortner, & Melby, 2001). While basic counseling skills can help facilitate a working
therapeutic relationship between client and counselor, these skills alone are notenough to help counselors intervene with a suicidal person.
The results of the study suggested that there is a need for increased training withregards to suicide intervention and that training in suicide intervention must be a highpriority for counselors. Shapiro (2008) also noted in their research findings thatprofessional school counselors felt inadequately trained to work with this vulnerable
and at-risk population. Counselors remain poorly trained and ill prepared for theaftermath of suicide (Dexter-Mazza, & Freeman, 2003; McAdams & Foster, 2000).
With the rising trend of severe mental health problems among the college student
population (Haas et al., 2003) and given the strong link that exists between severe
psychopathology and suicide (Bret & Perper, 1995; Tanney, 1992), more training isclearly needed in this area. Conversely, studies have found that professionals withprevious training in suicide risk assessment and management show more positive
attitudes toward suicide prevention (Bainero et al., 2008; Herron et al, 2001). Also,
professionals with more training and experience dealing with suicidal clients show
better intervention skills than less experienced and trained professionals (Neimeyer etal., 2001; Scheerder, Reynders, Andriessen, & Van Audenhove, 2010). In summary,knowledge, attitudes, and training related to suicide may influence suicideintervention skills and therefore aid or hamper suicide prevention.

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Qualitative Study
The findings of the qualitative study of Phase 1 provide a broader information about
the counselors’ experiences and practices in dealing with suicidal clients. Counselors
felt an overall responsibility to protect clients and with this accountability comeanxiety. Anxiety, which is consistent with previous research (Wachter Morris &Barrio Minton, 2012), was brought up repeatedly when discussing suicide, working
with suicidal clients, or the thought of working with suicidal clients in the future. As
the school counselors’ professional responsibilities extend beyond traditional
domains, ethical and legal obligations are increased, resulting in the probability of thecounselors’ entanglement in new and sometimes precarious situations (Drodge, 1997).
Because school counselors are mandated reporters, weighing out the ethics of when to
appropriately breach confidentiality and acquiring the knowledge base to effectively
implement strategies to assist these students is a challenge for school counselors. The
ethical and legal responsibilities of a school counselor require the counselor to makethe determination of when to notify parents (Isaacs & Stone, 1999). This study
acknowledged that in acute situations counselors may need to breach confidentiality
to ensure client safety. Confidentiality is a basic principle of mental health care and isan integral part of establishing trust and building a therapeutic alliance. The idea ofabsolute confidentiality is, however, unrealistic and must be tempered by common
sense (Backlar, 1996). When a client represents a clear danger to self or others,
breaking confidentiality may be necessary (Thelen, Rodriquez, & Sprengelmeyer,1994) and is indeed ethically and legally required (Allan, 2003; Bongar et al., 1998).
Van de Creek and Knapp (1989) suggest that it may sometimes be necessary forcounselors to take such active measures as communicating with the client’s family
and social support system about their suicide potential and other specifics of the casein order to recruit support for the client and to gain additional information (in theevent of an uncooperative or resistant client).
Competence issues related to suicide tend to bother counselors and the current study
also recognizes this concern. Counselors viewed that assessments of suicidal risk arecommonly inadequate and many counselors continue to rely on an utterly inadequate
intervention for suicide risk which is simply the utilization of a safety or no-harm
contract (Rudd, Mandrusiak, & Joiner, 2006).
Counselors in this study have stressed the need for a risk assessment as an importantpart of suicide intervention. As discussed by various authors (Jobes, 2006; Joiner,
Walker, Rudd, & Jobes, 1999), the adequate assessment of suicide risk should be athorough, extensive, and multifaceted activity. Although asking about suicidal
ideation is a start, there should be a more thorough assessment of history (Rudd &Joiner, 1998), relational aspects of suicide risk (Jobes et al., 2004; Joiner, 2005),
cognitive aspects (e.g., hopelessness and suicide-related cognitions; Beck, 1986),
environmental factors (e.g., access to lethal means; Lester, 1989) and among otherthings to allow counselors to adequately understand the potential for suicidal
behavior.
Counselors agreed that in assessing suicide risk there can be limits to purelyinterview-based clinical judgments which underscore the obvious value ofsupplementing interview assessments with additional assessment tools. In this vein,

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Barnett and Porter (1998) highlighted the importance of using objective assessment
measures to supplement more subjective interviews. A myriad of measures, scales,and diagnostic tools are available to assess suicide risk. These falls into two broad
categories: clinician assessment and self-assessment instruments (Range & Knott,
1997). The Los Angeles Suicide Prevention Center Scale is an example of a clinicianrated assessment tool which focuses on demographic and clinical characteristics topredict the likelihood that a client will engage in suicidal behavior (Farberow, Helig,& Litman, 1968). Examples of self-rated suicide assessment tools include the Beck
Depression Inventory (BDI), Beck Hopelessness Scale (BHS), and the Minnesota
Multiphasic Personality Inventory – 2 (MMPI-2) (Packman, Marlitt, Bongar, &Pennuto, 2004). Other measures, such as the Reasons For Living Inventory, attempt toestablish protective factors rather than assess risk factors (Range & Knott, 1997), theColumbia Suicide Severity Rating Scale (C-SSRS) is a suicidal ideation and behavior
rating scale to evaluate suicide risk. It rates an individual's degree of suicidal ideation
on a scale, ranging from "wish to be dead" to "active suicidal ideation with specificplan and intent and behaviors."
For the initial management of suicide risk, the counselors concurred that parent
notification and referring out to an outside professional was best practice whenworking with students who have suicidal risk. Referral to mental health specialists
like psychiatrists or psychologists was considered as a standard of care for further
assessment of the student and to initiate treatment and primary management in orderto mitigate risk of suicide. Counselors stressed that communication about the primarymanagement with mental health services should be clear so that roles can beestablished. In most cases, counselors only rely on the treatment provided by mental
health specialists and so counselors focus on following up and monitoring the student
at risk.
Counselors also emphasized the need for key support people like the academic teamand crisis team to be integrated within the initial management of suicide risk.
Counselors consult with the school administrator who will then inform the appropriate
personnel to minimize any immediate risk. Then, the counselor informs the family or
caregivers of the risk and proposes management as appropriate. To ensure thestudent’s immediate safety, counselor arranges for any hand-over of responsibility(including information about safety precautions) to the family or caregivers or ahealth professional.
The “No Suicide Contract” is still currently being utilized by counselors, however
there is an increasing controversy regarding its use. There are no data that support theidea that no-suicide contracts reduce suicide (Rudd, Mandrusiak, & Joiner, 2006) or if
a student in the midst of a suicidal crisis would decide not to make an attempt because
he or she signed a piece of paper. In place of a no-suicide contract, the current bestpractice standard of care is to create a safety plan (Brent, Poling, & Goldstein, 2011;
King, Foster, & Rogalski, 2013). The basic idea behind safety plan is that rather thanbeing a legal document, it is a clinical tool that the student can use before and during
a suicidal crisis. Eventually, some of the counselors who participated in this study
have been introduced this practice and some have implemented it as an intervention
tool.

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Counselors in this research study felt more competent when they utilized professional
support resources, such as supervision, consultation, or peer support groups.
Regularly scheduled clinical supervision was noted as very essential during the casemanagement of suicidal clients and was discussed as a means of providing counselors
with an opportunity for reflective practice and self-care. Counselors in this study alsoemphasized the importance of regular access to high-quality, relevant continuing
professional development related to managing suicidal ideation.
With regards to treatment modality, counselors also agreed that cognitive– behavioral
and problem-solving approaches are core interventions that are effective at reducing
suicidal ideation, depression, and hopelessness which also supported the findings of
Rudd et al. (2001). As Linehan (2007) has recently discussed, that psychosocial
interventions are most effective for treating suicidal ideation and behaviors. Yet,
medications are still widely used and may well be the primary treatment response forsuicidal people. Beyond considerations of suicide risk, it is interesting to note that
although medications appear to work for many patients, they do not work for manyothers, and length of treatment is an important consideration (e.g., Rush et al., 2006).
Participating counselors highlighted the importance of ongoing suicide risk
assessment. Follow patients at risk of suicide regularly and reassess risk frequently,
particularly when they return to school. The frequency of contact should bedetermined on an individual basis and increased when there are increases in risk
factors or indicators of suicide risk. Support should include reinforcement of thesafety plan at regular intervals. Contact and support can be helpful even whentelephone, letters, or brief intervention provides it.
Conclusion
The current study investigated the Filipino school counselor’s knowledge, attitudes,and competencies in suicide intervention as well as their experiences and practices insuicide intervention. The study also aimed to develop and standardize the guidelines
in delivering the appropriate interventions for suicidal clients.
The study is composed of two (2) phases. Phase 1 has quantitative and qualitative
studies that utilized a descriptive method of research. 100 counselors that are twentyfive (25) were selected from the National Capital Region, Luzon, Visayas, andMindanao who participated in the quantitative study of Phase 1. The counselors wereasked to answer three (3) standardized instruments to measure their level ofknowledge, attitude, and competencies regarding suicide.
Phase 1 of the study revealed that counselors did not report high levels of knowledge
on suicidal behaviors, the results suggested that some counselors still holdstigmatizing attitudes toward suicidal behavior and that there are counselors who needto acquire better intervention skills. The trainings received by counselors may not be
sufficient enough and it may influence their attitudes towards suicide risk assessmentand management. The lack of training and experience among some counselors may
also affect how they deal with suicidal clients because they may lack intervention
skills to be able to provide the necessary support among clients with suicide risk.

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Meanwhile, from the 100 counselors, twenty (20) were selected (five (5) from eachgeographical location) to participate in the qualitative part of Phase 1. The qualitative
phase used thematic analysis to analyze the data gathered from the interviews. The
data revealed that counselors perceived that working with suicidal clients posed highaccountability. It was also a dilemma to be able to break the confidentiality about
their client’s harm to self.
All of the counselor participants utilized a specific screening tool in assessing the riskof suicide among students. Counselors value the process of assessment in order to
identify contributory factors of suicidal behavior among their clients by observing theexistence of warning signs and recognizing risk and protective factors. Counselors
would notify the parents of the students at risk for suicide as an initial management
practice. Counselors also recognized the support of the academic team in handlingsuicidal students. They make immediate referral to a specialist particularly to a
psychiatrist for low to moderate risk of suicide. Generally, but not all counselors of
this study provide evidence-based counseling interventions to their clients becausesome rely on the intervention provided by the psychiatrists in terms of medication orby the psychologists who provides psychotherapy sessions. There are schools that set
re-entry conditions prior to the student resuming attendance by seeking medical
clearance and recommendations from the psychiatrists or psychologists as to whether
the student is fit to resume study. Counselors viewed that follow-up of clients at riskof suicide should be done regularly and reassess risk frequently as well as monitor
their treatment compliance. Counselors have also suggested to explore different ways
in following up the client so that they will not fall out of the session.
In summary, knowledge, attitudes, and training related to suicide may influence
suicide intervention skills and therefore aid or hamper suicide prevention and thatenhance suicide intervention skills could make a difference between the life and deathof a client. Counselors in this study have stressed that risk assessment is an importantpart of suicide intervention and that counselors should be competent in this area.
Involvement of parents in the treatment and referral to mental health services is being
practiced by counselors when working with students who have suicidal risk.
Counselors felt more competent when they utilized professional support resources,
such as supervision, consultation, or peer support groups. Schools lack written andstructured protocol in handling suicidal crisis.
For the Phase 2 of the study, suicide intervention practice guidelines were developed
using the Delphi process. The tentative guideline was constructed based on thecontent analysis of the actions related to suicide intervention taken from previous
studies and from the practices implemented by counselors taken from the qualitative
study of Phase 1. After three (3) Delphi rounds and the consensus from sixteen (16)mental health experts, 145 intervention actions can be implemented by school
counselors in handling suicidal clients.

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References
Botega, N. J., Silva, S. V., Reginato, D. G., Rapeli, C. B., Cais, C, Mauro, Cecconi, J.
P. (2007). Maintained latitudinal changes in nursing personnel after a brief training on
suicide prevention. Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior, 37(2), 145-153.
Centers for Disease Control (CDC) (2015). Suicide prevention: Youth suicide.
Retrieved from http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pub/youth_suicide.html.
Demirkiran, E., & Eskin, M. (2006). Therapeutic and nontherapeutic reactions in agroup of nurses and doctors in Turkey to patients who have attempted suicide. Social
Behavior and Personality, 34(8), 891-906.
Dexter-Mazza, E. T., & Freeman, K. A. (2003). Graduate training and the treatmentof suicidal clients: The students’ perspective. Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior,
33, 2, 211-218.
Haas, A., Hendin, H., & Mann, J. (2003). Suicide in college students. American
Behavioral Scientist, 46, 1224–1240.
Herron, J., Ticehurst, H., Appleby, L., Periy, A., & Cordingley, L. (2001). Attitudes
toward suicide prevention in front-line health staff. Suicide and Life-Threatening
Behavior, 3i (3), 342-347.
Kodaka, M., Postuvan, V., Inagaki, M., & Yamada, M. (2011, July). A systematic
review of scales that measure attitudes toward suicide. International Journal of Social
Psychiatry, 57(4), 338-361. doi: 10.1177/0020764009357399
Kutcher, S. and Chehil, S. (2007). Suicide Risk Management: A Manual for HealthProfessionals. Blackwell Publishing Ltd: Massachusetts, USA.
Laux, J. M. (2002). A primer on suicidology: Implications for counselors. Journal ofCounseling & Development, 80, 380-383.
Mann, J.J., Apter, A., Bertolote, J., Beautrais, A. (2005). Suicide Prevention
Strategies: A Systematic Review. The Journal of the American Medical Association.
294(16):2064-74.
Neimeyer, R. A., Fortner, B., & Melby, D. (2001). Personal and professional factors
and suicide intervention skills. Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior, 3 (l), 71-82.
Scheerder, G., Reynders, A., Andriessen, K., & Van Audenhove, C. (2010). Suicideintervention skills and related factors in community and health professionals. Suicideand Life-Threatening Behavior, 40(2), 115-124.
Schmidt, J. (2003). Counseling in schools: Essential services and comprehensive
programs. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
Shapiro, S. (2008). Addressing Self-Injury in the School Setting. The Journal of
School Nursing. 24, 3.

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Shaw, S. L. (2011). Suicide risk assessment: What psychologists should know?
Professional Psychology: Research and Practice. 48, 2, 98-106.
Suicide Prevention Resource Center (2014). Promoting mental health and preventing
suicide in college and university settings. Retrieved fromhttps://www.sprc.org/sites/default/files/migrate/library/college_sp_whitepaper.pdf.
Thatcher, J., Portman, T.A., & Williams-Viviani, A.M. (2009). A School Counseling
Program's Accountable Response to Adolescent Self-Mutilation. Journal of SchoolCounseling, 7, 6. Retrieved from http://www.jsc.montana.edu/articles/v7n6.pdf.
Valente, S. M. (2003). Psychotherapist reactions to the suicide of a patient. American
Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 64, 4, 614-621.
World Health Organization (2017). Suicide rates per 100,000 by country, year andsex. Retrieved fromhttps://www.who.int/mental_health/prevention/suicide_rates?en?index.html.
Contact email: joel.navarez@dlsu.edu.ph

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College Students Informal and Formal Ways of Seeking Help: Who’s to talk with?
Maria Cristina M. Firmante, De La Salle University, Philippines
The Asian Conference on Education 2020
Official Conference Proceedings
Abstract
Records show various ways to better understand help-seeking behavior. Literatures
also showed that despite the fact that free counseling is available in the campus; only
limited numbers of students are accessing the said service. The current study
investigated the college students’ informal and formal ways of seeking help among
488 samples enrolled at a private university in Metro Manila. These college students
were 18.5 years old on average [219 or 44.8% are males and 269 or 55.1% arefemales]. Findings reveal that 57% have not received or sought counseling while 43%
were found to be aware of the presence and have received or sought a counselingservice. Half or 55% proportions have expressed a need to talk their concerns ifoffered and 45% expressed no interest of expressing their concerns. The present study
revealed that these college students marked preference for informal ways of seeking
help specifically to their friends, parents, and other significant others but also showedinterest in accessing the formal ways of seeking help. These results highlight theneeds to explore better mechanisms as to how the campus-based counseling can
maximize students’ informal ways of seeking help. Working with students significant
others can be explored by creating a peer support system and easy access tocounseling. Furthermore, results point the need for the school counselors to further
promote the services of the campus school counseling centers by educating thestudents, parents, and campus stakeholders of the benefits of counseling.
Keywords: Theory of Planned Behavior, Filipino College Students, Informal andFormal Ways of Help-Seeking

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Introduction
University campuses and colleges offer an exceptional opportunity to address
students’ problems and have channels that help promote a positive effect on students’mental health (Hunt & Eisenberg, 2010). However, despite the free counselingservices available for students, only a few percentages use the said service (Vogel,Wester & Larson, 2007). For instance, Atik & Yalçýn (2011) posited that when
students in a university are faced with various challenges that require psychologicalhelp, an attitude toward seeking help is a salient factor that affects their decision. Thisdecision is either to seek or not to seek psychological assistance. Students are
reluctant to seek help from formal sources like school counselors and psychologists
on the campus (Boldero & Fallon, 1995).
Research suggests that several factors are associated with one's decision to seek help.
Gender differences have found to be associated with help-seeking intentions amongfemales in some studies (Komiya, Good & Sherrod, 2000; Yu, Liu, Hu, Liu, Yan,
Zhou & Xiao, 2015; Amarasuriya, Jorm & Reavley, 2018), perceptions of public
stigma contributed to the experience of self-stigma influenced help-seeking attitudes
and help-seeking willingness (Vogel, Wade & Hackler, 2007), and certain personality
characteristics such as willingness or unwillingness to seek help were also identified(Bouchard, 2003).
Acceptance of help-seeking procedures is a vital connection between the onset ofmental health problems and the services that can be given by health care professionals(Al-Krenawi, Graham, Dean, & Eltaiba, 2004). Having a deeper understanding ofstudents' help-seeking behavior is important to be able to address and cater to theneeds of students. Counseling services help prevent the onset of psychologicaldisorders by helping students deal with their stressful life events and treating somepossible pre-existing psychological concerns (Eisenberg, Hunt & Speer, 2013).
The Informal and Formal Ways of Help-seeking
According to Rickwood, Dean, Wilson & Ciarrochi (2005), there is a differentiation
in sources of help according to the different stages of the lifecycle. Help-seeking isdefined as a behavior of seeking help, communicating with other people to get help inany form such as advice, understanding, information, treatment, and or general
support in response to a problem. It is also defined as receiving support from informal(e.g. family, friends, community) and formal sources of support (e.g. mental healthprofessionals) to solve emotional and behavioral problems (Rickwood, Dean, Wilson& Ciarrochi, 2005). Young ones are more likely to seek help from informal resources
rather than formal resources. Seeking help from friends tends to be the preferredsource for their personal and emotional problems while parents ranked second tofriends (Boldero & Fallon, 1995; Schonert-Reichl & Muller, 1996). Although there
are a lot of studies that examined positive psychological factors that could facilitate
the help-seeking process, little research has examined informal sources of helpseeking (Rickwood & Thomas, 2012).

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Help-seeking and the Theory of Planned Behavior
The Theory of Planned Behavior (Ajzen, 1980) explored multiple variables affecting
the help-seeking behavior of an individual (Ajzen, 2011). It premised that a morepositive attitude, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control increase anindividual's behavioral intention that also increases the likelihood of engaging or
executing certain behavior such as seeking help. Human action is guided by threekinds of considerations: beliefs about the likely outcomes, beliefs about the normative
expectations of others, the motivation to comply with these expectations, the beliefs
about the presence of factors that may facilitate or impede the performance of the
behavior, and the perceived power of these factors (Ajzen, 2002).
The TPB hypothesized the prediction of mental health services requires knowledge ofindividual general assessment of help-seeking services and their information of theirsubjective norm and perceived behavioral control seeking help (Mackenzie, Knox,
Gekoski & Macaulay, 2004). For instance, Mak & Davis (2014) tested the applicationof the theory of planned behavior in explaining the intention to seek mental healthservices and understand factors related to intention to seek mental health services. The
model suggested that attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control were
all significant predictors of help-seeking intention although symptom severity, priorhelp-seeking, and gender did not significantly directly predict help-seeking intention.
Hess and Tracey (2013) tested the TPB model specifically for three common problem
areas of students such as anxiety or depression, career choice concerns, and alcohol ordrug use. They found out that it was significant variables that were executed of aperson when considering whether to seek or not to seek psychological help.
The Present Study
Campus policies and mental health prevention programs are important means ofincreasing students' personal positive believes towards mental health treatment (Chen,
Romero, & Karver, 2016). Counseling services are beneficial for the students on
campus. It caters to students' concerns like academic, personal difficulties, student
success, adjustment, and mental health concerns. Counseling on the campus is freeand easy access for the students (Lee, Olson, Locke, Michelson, & Odes, 2009).
However, despite the fact the free counseling is available inside the campus only a
few have utilized the counseling services.
It is in this light that the researcher would like to explore college students' informal
and formal ways of help-seeking to be able to have a better understanding of theirinternal and external resources in helping themselves cope. Understanding students’
help-seeking preferences will be able to help school counselors in developing creative
ways in promoting counseling programs and services.
Findings
A total of 488 participants’ responses were collected, tabulated, and analyzed. As
shown in Table 1, the result of this group revealed that more than half (n= 277 or57%) of the respondents have not received or sought a counseling service but also
show a good number for those who have received or sought counseling (n=211 or
43%). Proper information and awareness campaigns of the counseling center

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programs and services can lead the students to avail of the services. Still, the resultshows that many students are aware of the counseling service and have sought aformal way of seeking help.
Frequency
Percentage
Have received/sought counseling
211
43%
Have not received/sought counseling
277
57 %
Total
488
100%
Table 1: Tabulation of participants who have received/sought and have notreceived/sought counseling
Table 2, indicates the participants’ responses when asked if they would like to talkabout their concerns if the opportunity is offered. Most of the responses show that if
the opportunity is offered, the majority (n= 268 or 55%) will likely talk or discuss
their concerns and less than half will opt not to talk or discuss their concerns (n= 220
or 45%).
Frequency
Percentage
Yes
268
55%
No
220
45%
Total
488
100%
Table 2: Tabulation of participants when ask if they would like to talk their concerns
if opportunity is offered
Moreover, Table 3 shows the participants’ preferences in seeking help. There wereseven identified informal ways of seeking help and two formal ways of seeking help.
Results shows that most of the students preferred to seek help from their friends(Rank 1, n=208 or 42.6%) followed by their parents (Rank 2, n=132 or 27.0%),
school counselors (Rank 3, n= 118 or 26.3%), boy/girlfriend (Rank 4, n=99 or
20.2%), psychiatrist/other mental health professionals (Rank 5, n= 86 or 17.6%),
priest/pastor/religious (Rank 6, n= 61 or 12.5%), siblings (Rank 7, n= 58 or 11.8%),
no one (Rank 8, n =47 or 9.6%), teachers (Rank 9, n= 44 or 9.0%) and relatives (Rank
10, n= 43 or 8.8%).
Results indicate that friends, parents, and school counselors were the top 3 resourcesof students. It shows that for this group, they accessed both informal and formal waysof seeking help. Studies show that there was a significantly higher preference forseeking help from friends and family members rather from professional counselors
and or psychotherapists (Bunagan, Tuliao, & Velasquez, 2011). However, it isinteresting to note that participants from this study sought help from school
counselors. It seems that students for this group are aware of the benefits that they can
get from a professional. Supported by the Theory of Planned Behavior, individuals
who have the belief that they have accessed and can get proper help from thecounseling center are likely to intend to seek help and talk their concerns to school
counselors. Campaigns of the counseling centers can help facilitate students' own
volition of seeking help and making them aware of the benefits that they can get fromthe counseling service.

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Frequency

Percentage

Rank

Informal Ways of Seeking HelpParents
132
Friends
208
Boyfriend/Girlfriend
99
Teachers
44
Siblings
58
Priest/Pastor/Religious
61
Relatives
43

27.0%
42.6%
20.2%
9.0%
11.8%
12.5%
8.8%

2nd
1st
4th
9th
7th
6th
10th

No One

9.6%

8th

47

Formal Ways of Seeking Help
School Counselor
118
26.3%
3rd
Psychiatrist/Other
86
17.6%
5th
Mental HealthProfessionals
Table 3: Tabulation of participants Informal and Formal Ways of Seeking-Help
Conclusion
The findings of this study have contributed to college students’ preferences in seeking
help. It shows that generally college students sought help from their significant others
specifically towards their friends but accessed a wide range of both formal andinformal ways of seeking help. It highlights that for this group, participants show aninterest in seeking help if the opportunity is being offered. This information is very
helpful in the delivery of programs and services of every counseling center. Educating
students can enhance the help-seeking acceptance and therefore can enhance theirown volition of seeking help.
More quantitative and qualitative with a larger population size could be done tofurther explore and understand students’ help-seeking behavior. It is also important toacknowledge that students generally talk and discuss first their concerns to significant
others. It is interesting to note that perhaps school counselors can think of programs
that could highlight the value of the support system and the referral. Cultural factors
can also be explored to see other patterns and uniqueness of help-seeking behavior
among students.

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References
Ajzen, I. (2011). The theory of planned behaviour: reactions and reflections.
Psychology & health, 26(9), 1113-1127.
Ajzen, I. (2002). Constructing a TPB questionnaire: Conceptual and methodologicalconsiderations.
Ajzen, I., & Fishbein, M. (1980). Understanding attitudes and predicting social
behavior. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Al-Krenawi, A., Graham, J. R., Dean, Y. Z., & Eltaiba, N. (2004). Cross-national
study of attitudes towards seeking professional help: Jordan, United Arab Emirates(UAE) and Arabs in Israel. International journal of social psychiatry, 50(2), 102-114.
Amarasuriya, S. D., Jorm, A. F., & Reavley, N. J. (2018). Predicting intentions toseek help for depression among undergraduates in Sri Lanka. BMC psychiatry, 18(1),122.
Atik, G., & Yalçin, Y. (2011). Help-seeking attitudes of university students: the roleof personality traits and demographic factors. South African Journal of
Psychology, 41(3), 328-338.
Boldero, J., & Fallon, B. (1995). Adolescent help-seeking: What do they get help for
and from whom?. Journal of Adolescence, 18(2), 193-209.
Bouchard, G. (2003). Cognitive appraisals, neuroticism, and openness as correlates of
coping strategies: An integrative model of adaptation to marital difficulties. Canadian
Journal of Behavioural Science/Revue canadienne des sciences ducomportement, 35(1), 1.
Bunagan, K. S., Tuliao, A. P., & Velasquez, P. A. (2011, August). Alternative sourcesof psychological help, attitude towards counseling, and the moderating effects ofgender. In
A.
P. Tuliao, P. A. Velasquez, & M. R. M. Hechanova (Chairs), Why we don’t seek
counseling: Psychological help-seeking behaviors among Filipinos. Symposium
presented at the 48th Annual Convention of the Psychological Association of thePhilippines, Central Philippine University, Iloilo City.
Chen, J. I., Romero, G. D., & Karver, M. S. (2016). The relationship of perceived
campus culture to mental health help-seeking intentions. Journal of Counseling
Psychology, 63(6), 677.
Eisenberg, D., Hunt, J., & Speer, N. (2013). Mental health in American colleges anduniversities: Variation across student subgroups and across campuses. Journal of
Nervous and Mental Disease, 201, 60-67.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/NMD.0b013e31827ab077.

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Hess, T.R. & Tracey, T.J., (2013). Psychological help-seeking intention amongcollege students across three problem areas. Journal of Counseling & Development,
91 (3), 321-330.
Hunt, J., & Eisenberg, D. (2010). Mental health problems and help-seeking behavior
among college students. Journal of adolescent health, 46(1), 3-10.
Komiya, N., Good, G. E., & Sherrod, N. B. (2000). Emotional openness as a predictor
of college students' attitudes toward seeking psychological help. Journal ofcounseling psychology, 47(1), 138.
Lee, D., Olson, E. A., Locke, B., Michelson, S. T., & Odes, E. (2009). The effects ofcollege counseling services on academic performance and retention. Journal ofCollege Student Development, 50(3), 305-319.
Mackenzie, C.S., Knox, V.J., Gekoski, W.L., & Macaulay, H.L. (2004). An
adaptation and extension of the attitude toward seeking professional help scale 1.
Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 34 (11), 2410-2433.
Mak, H. W., & Davis, J. M. (2014). The application of the theory of planned behavior
to help-seeking intention in a Chinese society. Social psychiatry and psychiatricepidemiology, 49(9), 1501-1515.
Rickwood, D., Deane, F. P., Wilson, C. J., & Ciarrochi, J. (2005). Young people’s
help-seeking for mental health problems. Australian e-journal for the Advancement of
Mental health, 4(3), 218-251.
Rickwood, D., & Thomas, K., (2012). Conceptual measurement framework for helpseeking for mental health problems. Psychology Research and Behavior Management,
5, 173-83.10.2147/PRBM.S38707.
Schonert-Reichl, K. A., & Muller, J. R. (1996). Correlates of help-seeking inadolescence. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 25(6), 705-731.
Sheard, J. (2018). Quantitative data analysis. In Research Methods: Information,
Systems, and Contexts, Second Edition (pp. 429-452). Elsevier.
Vogel, D. L., Wade, N. G., & Hackler, A. H. (2007). Perceived public stigma and thewillingness to seek counseling: The mediating roles of self-stigma and attitudes
toward counseling. Journal of counseling psychology, 54(1), 40.
Vogel, D.L., Wester, S.R., & Larson, L.M., (2007). Avoidance of counseling:
Psychological factors that inhibit seeking help. Journal of Counseling andDevelopment, 85 (4), 410-422.
Yu, Y., Liu, Z. W., Hu, M., Liu, H. M., Yang, J. P., Zhou, L., & Xiao, S. Y. (2015).
Mental health help-seeking intentions and preferences of rural Chinese adults. PloS
one, 10(11), e0141889.
Contact email: maria.cristina.firmante@dlsu.edu.ph

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Boosting Self-Care Strategies and Resiliency Manual for Promoting Counselors’
Wellness
Rosemarie A. Tayoto, De La Salle University, Philippines
The Asian Conference on Education 2020
Official Conference Proceedings
Abstract
Counselors’ wellbeing is very essential in the fulfillment of their day to day task ofproviding counseling services to their clients. It is expected that a counselor with apositive physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional states will be able to develop atherapeutic alliance, demonstrate empathy, and design an appropriate intervention
plans to address the client’s presenting concern. On the other hand, prolonged
exposure to individuals experiencing a high level of stress may place counselors at
risk of vicarious stress, secondary stress disorder, compassion fatigue, and burnout.
Thus, it is at utmost importance that school counselors should prioritize their own
mental health. This current manual aims to provide a set of group intervention
activities that will offer a proactive approach to self-care practices and enhance
resiliency to promote counselors’ wellness. Counselors’ level of professional vitality,
personal vitality, professional stress, and personal stress will be measured using the
Skovholt Practitioner Professional Resiliency and Self-Care Inventory (Skovholt,2014). This will serve as a sounding board for counselors to reflect on their current
state of wellbeing and self-care practices. The proposed manual is composed of 6
sessions which will run for one and a half hours every session and will be scheduled
on a weekly basis. Strategies will include group sharing, individual journaling,creative works, reflections, and processing. At the end of the group intervention,
counselors are expected to have their own self-care plan that will aid them to maintainpositive mental health amidst the challenges brought by both personal andprofessional life.
Keywords: School Counselors, Resiliency and Self-Care, Wellness, Group Manual

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Introduction
Often school counselors are handling clients who are suffering from a high level of
distress and psychological crisis. Because of this, counseling professionals arevulnerable and predisposed to a lot of work-related risks such as compassion fatigue,
burnout, vicarious trauma, and secondary stress disorder (Tyre, Griffin, and Simmons,
2016).
In this regard, the proposed intervention aims to provide a venue for the counselingprofessionals to contemplate on their current state of well-being as school counselors
using the Skovholt Practitioner Professional Resiliency and Self-Care Inventory(Skovholt, 2014). The different group sessions target to promote counselors’ wellness
through different activities such as group sharing, individual journaling, creative
works, reflections, and processing. The main objective of this manual is for theparticipants to come up with their own self-care plan that will help them improve theirresiliency and sustain positive mental health while fulfilling professional and personaltasks.
This concept has been studied by numerous numbers of researchers and proved thathaving proactive self-care activities can avert the harmful effect of stress and boost
wellness to mental health practitioners such as psychologists, psychiatrists, social
workers, and school counselors. In a specific study conducted to psychologists, results
revealed that the main impact of self-care practices on an individual is reducing stresslevel, preventing possible burnout, and attaining life satisfaction (Rupert andDorociak, 2019). Likewise, it is also found among mental health professionals that
self-care plays an important role and is significantly associated with wellbeing(Richards, Campenni, Muse-Burke, 2010) and taking a proactive approach to self-careparticularly in integrating this to the professional development program of theinstitutions and professional organizations (Posluns and Gall, 2019). Furthermore, inthe study conducted to a group of therapists, it has been found that an increase in theirself-care activities will decrease the level of burnout and effect of secondary traumaticstress to them, in addition to the positive effect of self-care to compassion satisfaction
towards their clients (Catlin-Rakoski, 2012).

Figure 1. Conceptual Framework on Boosting Self-care Strategies and Resiliency
for Promoting Counselors’ Wellness

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School counselors are susceptible to experience a high level of stress (Lambie, 2006)
and burnout (Lawson, 2007) due to the nature of their work. They are expected tobuild therapeutic rapport with clients dealing with negative emotions and design
appropriate treatment plans to address the client’s concern. Often, counselors arefocus on attending to client’s needs and find it difficult to prioritize their own
wellness and self-care (Skovholt, Grier, & Hanson, 2001).
Aside from these, there are also varying environmental reasons such as too muchworkload, unsupportive and unhealthy relationships with peers, lack of formal
supervision from the supervisor, and poor program support from the teachers,
administrators, and other school personnel (Maslach, 2003).
With this kind of work environment and demands it is important that school
counselors have a high level of resiliency in order to execute daily tasks and work
effectively despite the challenges, they confront everyday both in their personal andprofessional life through adequate problem-solving skills, effective coping strategies
as well as self-care activities (Pooley & Cohen, 2010). Self-care practices are different
activities that counselors do in a conscious effort to maintain her physically, mentally,
emotionally, and spiritually healthy which will give support to carry on positiveenergy, determination, and commitment in performing expected responsibilities withhappiness and satisfaction.
The Code of Technical Standard for Registered Guidance Counselors (2015) in thePhilippines stated the importance of giving attention to the counselors’ well-being andits direct effect on the professional practice of counseling. Professional counselors areaccountable to maintain a healthy mind and body that will enable them to serve theirclients effectively. They are also expected to seek out professional help and support
once they experience mental health concerns or counselor impairment. Likewise, theAmerican Counseling Association Code of Ethics also emphasized that counselors
should monitor themselves for possible signs and symptoms of dysfunction in their
physical, emotional, and mental health. Counselors are advised to stop providing
services during impairment and submit themselves to appropriate intervention andtreatment when seen necessary to avoid malpractice (ACA, 2014).
School counselors who have lesser coping strategies and low levels of self-awarenessare at a higher risk to experience compassion fatigue, vicarious traumatization, andburnout due to prolonged exposure to clients experiencing emotional suffering andmental crisis (Robino, 2019).
To prevent impairment to school counselors, it is very important that they haveconscious efforts to engage regularly in self-care practices. It is an ethical obligationand should be the top priority for counselors and other mental health practitioners.
Richards, Campenni, and Muse-Burke (2010) explained the definition of self-care andits four components. First is physical self-care wherein it involves physical activities
that encourage the person to use his/her energy such as exercises, sports, householdchores, and daily functioning that facilitates body movement for which a person may
feel positive and energize. Second is the psychological definition of self-care thatrefers to submitting himself/herself to personal counseling. This will allow thecounselor to recognize his/her own personal and professional struggles and it gives anopportunity to get support from another person. The third is the spiritual component

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Officilal Conference Proceedingsof self-care which refers to finding meaning and sense of purpose in everything aperson does and its connection to one another. This may include activities such as
meditations and participation in religious activities and the likes. Lastly is the support
component of self-care. Establishing a positive relationship with colleagues andfamily can be a very helpful support system for those who are in the human service
profession. Likewise, regular supervision, case consultation and continues educationin the field of work can also benefit the professional and personal well-being anddevelopment of the counselor.
Practicing self-care strategies on a regular basis will help counselors enhance theirresilience. The concept of resilience has been well studied and defined from different
perspectives. According to Leipold and Greve (2019), through resiliency skills, aperson will be able to overcome and cope effectively with a very challenging
situation. Another common definition was “resilience is the ability to bounce back andovercome adversity” (McCubbin, 2001; p.2). A similar definition to this was stated by
Connor and Davidson who identified resilience as “personal qualities that enable one
to thrive in the face of adversity” (2003, p.76). Furthermore, Sadler-Gerhardt andStevenson (2012) pointed out that there is a way in order for a counselor to avoid
depletion and burnout due to the occupational hazard caused by a day to day
encounter with people who are in distress, victims of trauma, or suffering from mental
health conditions. For them, it is highly important that those in the helping profession
should prioritize building their resilience as they go through the process of helping
others. Once the counselor learns to build his resilience, there will be a lesser chanceof malpractice, enhance the drive to help clients, and increase job satisfaction.
In this regard, with continuous self-care practices among school counselors, it isexpected that their ability to cope with adverse life events both personal andprofessional will increase hence their resiliency level was enhanced and counselors’
wellness has been promoted. As defined by the World Health Organization (WHO,
2000), wellness is the optimum condition of the health of a person. There are two
focus areas when it comes to wellness. First is the realization of the fullest potential of
the individual in terms of physical, psychological, social, and spiritual aspects of anindividual. Second is the performance in whatever role they are in with their life
successfully. In line with this definition, a counselor’s wellness refers to personaladvancement and professional proficiency that encompass mental, emotional,
spiritual, social, and vocational well-being (Roach and Young, 2007).
Conclusion
The following are the specific guidelines and procedures in facilitating theintervention manual for school counselors. The main objective of this proposedintervention manual is to lead school counselors towards achieving wellness throughproactive self-care strategies that will aid them in enhancing resiliency skills andprevent mental health concerns. Specifically, the following goals are expected to be
met at the end of the process:a.) To become aware of their current state of wellbeing and self-care practices.
b.) To recognize the importance of self-care strategies and their vital role inresiliency building.
c.) To explore different types of self-care strategies that would help them to become
more resilient with stress and burnout.

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personal and professional wellness.
e.) To practice self-care purposefully to enhance psychological resources in handing
daily demands and achieves life satisfaction.
The group intervention is suitable for 10 – 15 members. This will run for 6 meetings
with one and a half hours per session once a week. Participants will be asked
voluntarily for their participation in the intervention therefore once consent was given,
they will be requested to actively take part and complete the entire program. The
schedule of the sessions will be plotted strategically on a common preference andavailability of the members of the group since all are expected to have their work
residency as school counselors.

Figure 2. Boosting Self-Care Strategies and Resiliency Manual for PromotingCounselors’ Wellness (Intervention Process)
The figure above shows the process of the proposed intervention for school
counselors. Volunteered participants will be asked to accomplish the Skovholt
Practitioner Professional Resiliency and Self-Care Inventory (Skovholt, 2014) togauge their level of resiliency and self-care practices. This will serve as a sounding
board for school counselors to reflect on their current state of well-being. The sessions
will be composed of different structured learning experiences such as group sharing,creative works, self-reflections, and processing. At the end of each session, they will
be asked to create an individual journal based on what they have experienced andrealized in the intervention. Lastly, after the completion of the six sessions, counselors
are expected to design their own self-care plan that will help them to maintain positive
mental health amidst the challenges brought by personal and professional life.
Outline of the Sessions
Session 1: Purpose, Activities, and Process
The purpose of the first session is to discuss to the participants the purpose of thisintervention program and its possible benefits to school counselors. Everyone will be
encouraged to take an active role in all the activities and their commitment to thesessions. Openness and confidentiality will be emphasized as an essential part of theintervention. More so, the first session will also be intended to take full advantage ofgetting to know one another, develop rapport, and to be comfortable with the presenceof everyone in the group as well as the facilitator.

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The first activity will be an introduction from the facilitator. The participants will be
asked to introduce themselves to the group and will be encouraged to share theirreasons for joining the intervention. The facilitator will then synthesize the answers of
the group and highlight the common reasons stated by the participants. Afterward, theparticipants will be asked to read and accomplish the Skovholt Practitioner
Professional Resiliency and Self-Care Inventory (Skovholt, 2014). This activity willlead the participants to reflect on their current state of well-being in both personal andprofessional domains and their self-care practices. Participants will be asked to share
their observations and reflections in their output specifically towards the level ofstress in personal and work life and how much self-care activities they practice intheir daily schedule. The facilitator will present a mini-lecture on risk factors ofmental health practitioners to different mental health conditions and the important roleof self-care and resiliency to prevent these conditions.
Session 2: Purpose, Activities, and Process
The second session of this intervention will be intended for the first type of self-carestrategies which is physical self-care. The purpose of this is to put emphasis on theimportance of taking care of once physical health to function well in daily tasks.
Thus, the activity will lead the participants to realize that when an individual starts
taking care of his/her body, it will make him/her think and feel positive too.
The facilitator recaps the activities and discussion that took place during the firstsession and asks each participant what part of the previous session they like most.
Then, the facilitator will introduce the different types of self-care to the group.
Starting on physical self-care, each participant will be asked to list down all the things
that they do to take care of their physical health (examples: sleeping pattern, foodintake, rest and relaxation activities, sports, exercise, and other activities that facilitatebody movement) which they are going to share to the whole group afterward. The
next activity will encourage the participants to experience a simple 20-minute exercise
by doing the “Happy Walk Workout” by Leslie Sansone. After this activity, thefacilitator will explore participants’ reactions, thoughts, and feelings toward the recent
activity. This session will underline the benefits of active physical self-care activities
to combat stress and burnout due to personal and professional demands.
Session 3: Purpose, Activities, and Process
The purpose of this session is to help the participants become aware of their
psychological vulnerability as a school counselor. This aims to help them understandthe importance of dealing with their own emotions and to seek professional help when
it is necessary as part of their psychological self-care.
The facilitator will again review the previous session and asks the participants fortheir learning insights then connect it to the new activity for the third session. Eachparticipant will be requested to think of a difficult situation or challenges they face
both in their personal and professional life. They will be given art materials to be used
to draw an image that will represent how they feel when they are in that current
situation. After this, participants will be asked to choose a partner with whom they are
comfortable sharing their work. The facilitator will then emphasize the importance of

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openness and confidentiality in this activity. Then processing follows which will
evolve in what they think and feel towards the activity, participants’ ways inmanaging their own emotions, and strategies they do to help them feel recharged
when facing difficult situations. Lastly, in a mini-lecture, the facilitator will discuss
the importance of submitting oneself to personal counseling to help the counselor
recognize his/her own personal and professional struggles and it gives an opportunity
to get support from another person.
Session 4: Purpose, Activities, and Process
The objective of the 4th session is to enable the participants to focus on the spiritualcomponent of self-care. This will help them develop deeper meaning and sense of
purpose in their life both in personal and professional aspects. The session will alsoemphasize that spiritual self-care will help them to improve a healthier lifestyle.
The facilitator will recap on the discussion that took place in the previous session andask some volunteers to share their realizations from the last activity. For this current
session, the facilitator will instruct the participants to walk outside the session room,bring out their cellular phones, and take three photos of things that can represent themeaning or purpose of their life. These can be objects, places, people, pets, scenery,etc. Participants can use symbols and are encouraged to be creative. After completingthe three photos, they will be given time to reflect on each photo and write theiranswers to these questions; “What does this photo represent? and Why it ismeaningful for you?”. After this, participants will be group into three and ask to share
their work with the members. A representative from each group will be requested tomake a summary of the individual sharing and give his/her insights from the activity.
In conclusion, the facilitator with then engage the participants in an interactive
discussion and synthesize the insights gained by the whole group. Emphasis on theimportance of nurturing spirit, finding deeper sense of purpose in life, andunderstanding the connection to the universe.
Session 5: Purpose, Activities, and Process
The objective of this session is to highlight the importance of connecting to others as
an essential part of social self-care. Thus, the activity will help the counselors reflect
on their own social needs and how they attend and give attention to these needs
despite the demanding roles they play both in their personal and professional life.
The facilitator will review what has been discussed in the last session and asked theparticipants to share what they have learned from spiritual self-care. For this session,
the facilitator will show different pictures of places (examples: beach, mountain, park,
restaurant, movie house, bowling alley, art gallery, karaoke bar, etc.) on the screen.
Participants will be asked to pick and list down 3 places that they like and identify
people that they wanted to spend time in their chosen places. They will be asked tolook for a partner to share their work and answer these questions; 1.) Do you allocate
enough time to spend with your family and friends? and 2.) How do you nurture yourrelationships with family and friends? After the sharing, the facilitator will synthesize
the activity by encouraging the participants to share their insights. Hence, leading thediscussion on the importance of addressing their own social needs by establishing andmaintaining a healthy relationship with family members, friends, co-workers, and

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highlight that socialization and positive relationship with others is an effective selfcare strategy and promote wellness.
Session 6: Purpose, Activities, and Process
The purpose of this last session is to accomplish the most important objective of thismodule which is for the participants to design their own self-care plan that will
eventually become part of their daily routine to combat stress brought by theirpersonal and professional life.
The facilitator will review to the participants the different types of self-care that they
have experienced in the previous sessions. Underlining their learning especially on thesignificance of self-care activities in building resilience and boosting the positive
wellbeing of school counselors. For the last activity, participants will be given
different writing and art materials that they can utilize in creating a self-care plan for amonth. This can be in a form of a bucket list, scrapbook, planner, or any other creative
output setting in mind the areas in their life that need more attention and self-care.
After finishing the task, all participants will be given a chance to present their work to
the whole group. Then, the facilitator affirms the active participation of the group andtheir efforts to achieve the goals of each session. In addition, the facilitator encourages
the commitment of each participant to implement their self-care plan, assess its
positive effect on their mental health, and eventually continue their attempts toconsciously incorporate self-care strategies every day.
Strategies to Evaluate the GroupIn the last session, participants will be asked to accomplish an evaluation made by the
researcher to measure the effectiveness of the program. Specifically, a Likert scale
will be utilized to determine if the objectives are met in terms of the content, delivery
method, activities, and strategies utilized by the facilitator. Also, a qualitative part will
also be provided by asking the participants to write their insight gained throughout thewhole six sessions.
The facilitator takes note of the different processes, participation, group dynamics,
and individual learning insights of the group at the end of each session. This will help
in documenting the progress of the group and monitoring if the objectives are being
achieved.
Referral Procedure
The participants who will be needing further assessment, individual counseling, orother therapeutic intervention will be properly referred to a psychologist or
psychiatrist with their consent to address their mental health concerns and improve
wellbeing.

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Implications to CounselingThis proposed manual can be used and incorporated in the professional development
program of different guidance center to help promote mental health and wellbeing
among school counselors. A proactive approach in promoting self-care practices andincreasing resilience among counselors is vital to prevent stress, burnout, and othermental health concerns due to the nature of their workload. In addition, a counselor
with a sound mind and body is more likely to fulfill tasks effectively. A counselor
with positive mental and physical health can build a therapeutic relationship,compassionate, committed, accountable, shows genuine concern, and able to candesign an evidenced-based intervention programs for his/her clients. More so,
prioritizing self-care improves resilience in coping with daily challenges, reduce therisk of illness brought by personal and professional life. Thus, it helps increasehappiness, job satisfaction, quality of life, personal and professional relationship, andoverall wellness.

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References
American Counseling Association (2014). 2014 American Counseling Association
Code of Ethics. Retrieved from https://www.counseling.org/Resources/aca-code-ofethics.pdf
Catlin-Rakoski, S. (2012). Therapist’s perceptions of self-care.
Code of Technical Standard for Registered Guidance Counselors (2015). Code of
Ethics for Registered and Licensed Guidance Counselors in the Philippines. Retrieved
from http://filpsycounseling.blogspot.com/2015/02/code-of-ethics-for-registeredand.html
Connor, K. M., & Davidson, J. R. (2003). Development of a new resilience scale: The
Connor-Davidson resilience scale (CD-RISC). Depression and anxiety, 18(2), 76-82.
Lambie, G. W. (2006). Burnout prevention: A humanistic perspective and structured
group supervision activity. The Journal of Humanistic Counseling, Education andDevelopment, 45(1), 32-44.
Leipold, B., & Greve, W. (2009). Resilience: A conceptual bridge between coping
and development. European Psychologist, 14(1), 40-50.
Maslach, C. (2003). Burnout: The cost of caring. Ishk.
McCubbin, L. (2001). Challenges to the Definition of Resilience.
Pooley, J. A., & Cohen, L. (2010). Resilience: A definition in context. AustralianCommunity Psychologist, 22(1), 30-37.
Posluns, K., & Gall, T. L. (2020). Dear mental health practitioners, take care ofyourselves: A literature review on self-care. International Journal for the
Advancement of Counselling, 42(1), 1-20.
Richards, K., Campenni, C., & Muse-Burke, J. (2010). Self-care and well-being inmental health professionals: The mediating effects of self-awareness andmindfulness. Journal of Mental Health Counseling, 32(3), 247-264.
Robino, A. E. (2019). Global Compassion Fatigue: A New Perspective in Counselor
Wellness. Professional Counselor, 9(4), 272-284.
Roach, L. F., & Young, M. E. (2007). Do counselor education programs promotewellness in their students?. Counselor Education and Supervision, 47(1), 29-45.
Rupert, P. A., & Dorociak, K. E. (2019). Self-care, stress, and well-being among
practicing psychologists. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice.
Sadler-Gerhardt, C. J., & Stevenson, D. L. (2012). When it all hits the fan: Helping
counselors build resilience and avoid burnout. Ideas and Research You Can Use:VISTAS 2012, 1, 1-8.

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Skovholt, T. M., Grier, T. L., & Hanson, M. R. (2001). Career counseling for
longevity: Self-care and burnout prevention strategies for counselor resilience. Journalof Career Development, 27(3), 167-176.
Tyre, Y., Griffin, M., & Simmons, R. T. (2016). Building Resiliency in Counselors inTraining for Counselors Educators. Alabama Counseling Association Journal, 41(1).
World Health Organization (2000). Health Promotion Glossary Update. Retrieved
fromhttps://www.who.int/healthpromotion/about/HPR%20Glossary_New%20Terms.pdf
Contact email: rosemarie.aquino@dlsu.edu.ph

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The Development of Lesson Plan Based on CIPPA Model in Principles of
Guidance Course
Karakada Nugkim, Kasetsart University, Thailand
Chakree Kerdsomboon, National Dong Hwa University, Taiwan
The Asian Conference on Education 2020
Official Conference Proceedings
Abstract
The aim of this study was to develop the pedagogical approach under the concept of
CIPPA instructional model in order to enhance the 26 students’ logical and rational
skills that enrolled in The Principle of Guidance course of the first semester in 2019.
Classroom research was utilized for this research. The three significant research
instruments employed for investigation are; 1) Lesson plan based on the CIPPA
model 2) The respondent questionnaires 3) The application form of reflection andfocus group. The findings indicated that according to students’ opinion toward thebenefits of activity participation, it was found that students have possibly learned andcomprehended other perspectives of thinking knowledge/understanding learning
process of the CIPPA model at the highest level, and the development of thinking
process/ thinking skills for themselves and the others. Regarding reflection on
behaviors in order to convey students’ thinking/thinking skills expresses during
participating learning activities are Creative, Analytical thinking, Step thinking, andSelf-learning knowledge construction. In term of activity participate on, thesupportive and encouraging activities which stimulated students to express their mostthinking behaviors and skills were Collaboration, Conceptual summarization, andPresentation. According to the focus group of the learners’ perspectives toward
activity participation based on the CIPPA, it was found that participating in activities
has strengthened Leadership skills, Communication skills, Adaptation, Positive
attitudes toward themselves, and classroom participation.
Keywords: CIPPA Model, Guidance, Lesson Plan

iafor
The International Academic Forumwww.iafor.org

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Introduction
Since the 1999 National Education Act serves as a basis for the education reform ofThailand, including higher education(Office of the National Education Commission,1999). The 1999 National Education Act states that “Learning reform is the key toeducation reform.” In chapter 4 National Education Guidelines, section 22 indicatesthat “Education shall be based on the principle that all learners are capable of learningand self-development, and are regarded as being most important. The teachinglearning process shall aim at enabling the learners to develop themselves at their own
pace and to the best of their potentiality”(Office of the National Education
Commission, 1999). Faculty of Education, Kasetsart University is the primarydepartment that produces personnel to drive the educational reform process as well as
continuously develop techniques and innovations in order to encourage learners todevelop to their full potential by taking into account individual differences. In 2019,the faculty of Education had adjusted its vision to be an “Institution of thinking”(Thinkin Faculty) with indicators for pedagogy by using teaching process thatemphasized thinking skills for learners (Faculty of Education, 2019).
One instructional model that has the potential to correspond to the policy is the
CIPPA instructional model. The teaching for thinking skill by using diverse
instructional models and processes focusing on thinking such as CIPPA instructionalmodel by Kheammanee (2002) CIPPA was focus on the learner as a center in learning
activities (Klinbumrung, Tansriwong, & Akatimagool, 2015). CIPPA provide thepupils freedom of learning, in which they had an opportunity to study themselves, aswell as collaboration that they learned together with their peers (Swekwi &Songkampol, 2019). Thus, it helps the students to learn skills in terms of content,
principles, theory, and practice. Consequently, they are able to create knowledge bythemselves (Thita & Ariya, 2020).
Based on a review of previous studies, there has been no research related to the
CIPPA model of instruction in guidance. A lot of applications of the CIPPA
instructional model in science learning are carried out at the secondary school level.
The objective of this study was to develop the pedagogical approach under theconcept of CIPPA model in the instruction and study students’ opinions after the
implementation of the CIPPA instructional model.
CIPPA is a principle that can be used to organize different learning activities for the
students. The process of CIPPA model allows for a variety of methods and processes
that could be arranged into various patterns. The process consists of 7 steps asfollows:
Step 1 Review of prior knowledge
This step reviews the students’ existing knowledge on the topic of the lesson toprovide a linkage between previous and new knowledge. Teacher can make use of avariety of instructional methods.

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Step 2 Search for new knowledge
This step encourages the pupils to search for new knowledge from information orsources prepared by the instructor.
Step 3 Study to understand new information or knowledge and to connect the newknowledge to the existing knowledge
This step encourages the students to study and understand the acquired information or
knowledge. The students must create meanings for new information or experiences bythemselves using different processes, for example, the thinking process and the groupprocess in a discussion, before summarizing their understanding of the information
based on the connection between the new information and the existing knowledge.
Step 4 Exchange the knowledge and understanding with group members
This part applies to the group dynamics to act as a tool to check and enhance thestudents’ knowledge and understanding and assist the students in sharing theirknowledge and understanding with others and simultaneously, to benefit from theknowledge and understanding of others.
Step 5 Summarize and organize the knowledge
This step summarizes all the attained knowledge, both previous and new, andsystematically organize the learned lesson to help the students remember what they
have learned more easily.
Step 6 Practice and/or exhibit the performanceThis step provides an opportunity for the students to showcase their performance as aresult of knowledge construction. This helps them to repeat or check theirunderstanding, to exercise their creative thinking, and to exhibit the effects of theirpractice.
Step 7 Apply the knowledge
This step encourages the students to practice using their knowledge and understanding
in a diversity of situations to increase their expertise, understanding, problem-solving
ability, and memory on the topic concerned.
Step 1 – 6 constitutes the process for the construction of knowledge in which the
instructor can provide activities to continually engage the students in learninginteractions and the process of learning. Each step offers various types of activities
that help promote physical, intellectual, emotional, and social participation and help
make the students alert and able to learn and acquire the knowledge well.
Step 7 benefits in the students’ application of the knowledge, hence completing the
CIPPA principle.

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Methods
ParticipantsParticipants included 26 students of Kasetsart University. The sample of 26 students
was purposively selected from students who enrolled in the Principles of Guidancecourse in the first semester of the academic year 2019.
Measures
The research instruments designed by the researcher and employed for the datacollection included the following:1.
Lesson plans based on the CIPPA model
The researcher studies the related theory and related work regarding using CIPPA
model in the instruction and sent lesson plans to three experts for examined content
validity2.

Students’ opinion toward the benefits of activity participation questionnaire

The researcher sent a questionnaire to three experts to confirm content validity.
3.

Forms of reflection and focus group

The researcher delivered forms of reflection and focus group to three experts toreview content validity and construct validity.
Analytic strategy
The means and standard deviations were calculated for the students’ opinions toward
the benefits of the activity participation questionnaire.
The transcripts were analyzed inductively. The main categories were allowed to arise
from the data by reading several times. The transcripts were read many times tosalient points that emerged to be placed into categories. The last categorization of thedata was verified by another researcher for consistency in the categorization of thedata.
Results
This study aims to develop the lesson plan based on CIPPA model and study students’opinions toward the benefits of activity participation.
The analysis following the CIPPA model instruction utilized the qualitative method.
Furthermore, the students’ opinions employed the statistical method. The results ofthe data analysis could be divided into three parts, as follow:

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The process of
CIPPA
1.Reviwe ofprior
knowledge

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Activity

Product

Indicator(CIPPA)I (Interaction)

The instructor checks the students’prior knowledge through activities.
For example, asking questions;
What is guidance service? Then,
ask students to discuss in the groupof three or four.
2.Search for
The instructor organizes hands-on
C (Construct)
newactivities that require information
I (Interaction)knowledge
searches about guidance service
from the library and technologicalmedia
3.Study to- The instructor asks students to- Brochure
C (Construct)
understandunderstand about guidance principle - PowerPoint I (Interaction)newand create a brochure to present to
P (Process
information or the class by groupskill)
knowledge and - After the presentation, students
to connect tocould ask, discuss, and reflect
the existing- The instructor explains more
knowledge
about the guidance principle andasks students to summarize together
Table 1: Example of a lesson plan based on CIPPA instructional mode
The development of a lesson plan based on CIPPA model
The researcher has improved and developed the lesson plan, which is divided into 3
sections by taking notes after teaching. It also discusses with learners to improve andevolve teaching and learning each time (see Table 1).
The analysis of the data concerning the students’ opinion toward the benefits ofactivity participation
Regarding the students’ response to the questionnaire, table 2 presented the averagescore and standard deviation of the students’ opinions toward the benefit of activity
participation. The score from 4 items that higher than 4.49 (5-point scale), and four
items that lower than 4.49 but not lower than 4.27.

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Item
Mean
SD
1
Students understand the learning process based on CIPPA
4.58
.504
instructional model after participating in activities
2
Students are developed thinking skills with others
4.54
.582
3
Students are developed their thinking skills
4.35
.745
4
Students are developed their thinking process
4.50
.648
5
Students understand and realize the importance of
4.38
.697
developing thinking skills
6
Students have guidelines for developing thinking skills
4.50
.583
for themselves and their peers
7Time for activities used effectively
4.27
.724
8
Media and equipment for activities are appropriate
4.42
.758
Table 2: The analysis of the data concerning the students’ opinion toward the benefitsof activity participation
Students’ opinion from reflection form and focus group
Analysis of the salient points of the data resulted in two questions of students’opinion.
1.
Participation in activities, students are encouraged to employ any thinking
skill?
We found many thinking skills that students indicated—for example, creative
thinking, critical thinking, and problem-solving.
Eleven of the respondents expressed that they were encouraged to employ criticalthinking and creative thinking skills. One respondent commented:“There are so many thinking skills that I employed, such as critical thinking, synthesis
thinking, creative thinking, etc. These skills could enhance student competence andfor a future career.”
Another respondent expressed a similar perception; he said:“This activity promotes students’ creative thinking, and I have extended my thinking
skills.”2.
Please, identify your behaviors that demonstrate thinking skills during yourparticipation in the activities
Fourteen of the students perceived that the behaviors that illustrate thinking skills
during their participation in activities are working with others and make a conclusionof concept. One respondent commented,“Working step by step, understanding the information, design production, such aspresentation, the conclusion of concept…”
Another respondent added:“I have opportunities to work with others those I am not familiar with.”

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Conclusion
The findings indicated that students perceive constructivism is essential for learning.
Constructivism is based on the idea that learners actively construct or make their own
knowledge, and that reality determined by their experiences as a learner. Basically,learners use their previous knowledge as a foundation and build on it with new things
that they learn. This was in accordance with Boonklum (2015)’s research study
entitled “The development of the learning achievement in the course politics,
economy and society using CIPPA model instruction.”
Regarding students’ opinion toward the benefit of activity participation, it was foundthat students have possibly learned and comprehended other perspectives of thinking
knowledge/understanding learning process of the CIPPA model at the highest level,
and the development of thinking process/ thinking skills for themselves and theothers. Regarding reflection on behaviors in order to convey students’
thinking/thinking skills expresses during participating learning activities are Creative,
Analytical thinking, Step thinking, and Self-learning knowledge construction. In termof activity participate on, the supportive and encouraging activities which stimulated
students to express their most thinking behaviors and skills were Collaboration,
Conceptual summarization, and Presentation. According to the focus group of thelearners’ perspectives toward activity participation based on the CIPPA, it was foundthat participating in activities has strengthened Leadership skills, Communication
skills, Adaptation, Positive attitudes toward themselves, and classroom participation.
There is a limitation of the present study that deserves attention. Findings from thisstudy were based on qualitative data concerning the classroom learning experience.
Consequently, more research on learning achievement within a class should be
performed. In addition, it will be useful to supplement qualitative data with aquantitative approach to increase the robustness of the results. Future research should
investigate other student-centered learning approaches to encourage the thinking
process of learners.
Acknowledgements
This research was supported by the faculty of Education, Kasetsart University,
Bangkhen Campus, Bangkok, in the budget of the year 2020.

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References
Boonklum, N. (2015). The development of the learning achievement in the course
politics, economy and society using CIPPA model instruction. Veridian E-Journal,
Silpakorn University, 8(5), 1-18. Retrieved from https://www.tcithaijo.org/index.php/EDKKUJ/article/download/50171/41560
Brooks, J. G., & Brooks, M. (1993). In search of understanding: The case of
constructivist classroom. Virginia: ASCD.
Faculty of Education. (2019). Vision of Faculty of Education, Kasetsart University,
Bangkhen Campus. Retrieved from Edu2.ku.ac.th/2018/vision.php
Khammanee, T. (2002). Teaching and learning patterns: Alternative. Bangkok:
Chulalongkorn University.
Klinbumrung, K., Tansriwong, S., & Akatimagool, S. (2015). The development of
instructional package on high-frequency transmission line engineering using REPEA
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Retrieved fromhttp://ncteched.fte.kmutnb.ac.th/nc8/ICTechEd03/ICTechED03EDU05.pdf
Office of the National Education Commission. (1999). National Education Act of
B.E.2542 (1999). Retrieved from asean.org/storage/2016/08/Thailand184.pdf
Swekwi, U., & Songkampol, N. (2019). Child-centered instruction module: CIPPA
Model. Ratchaphruek Journal, 17(2), 1-13. Retrieved from https://so05.tcithaijo.org/index.php/Ratchaphruekjournal/article/view/160970/135123
Thita, S., & Ariya, K. (2020). The local context-based instructional model of the 21stcentury career skills development for primary students in Chiangrai. RSU
International Research Conference 2020, (May), 1011-1019. Retrieved fromhttps://rsucon.rsu.ac.th/files/proceedings/inter2020/IN20-002.pdf
Zahoric, J. A. (1995). Constructivist teaching. Blooming, Indiana: Phi Delta Kappa
Education Foundation.
Contact email: karakada@yahoo.com

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Developing Advanced Critical Thinking Skills in Education Systems: Higher-Order
Thinking Processes in an Era of Rapid Change
Nathaniel Edwards, Yamaguchi National University, Japan
The Asian Conference on Education 2020
Official Conference Proceedings
Abstract
This paper examines the close connections between critical thinking and cognitive
development, logic, and emotionality and the growing importance of promoting anddeveloping higher order thinking processes in education systems and work
environments in an era of rapid change. Students and employees require advanced
critical thinking skills to carefully evaluate and effectively use vast amounts of
information and data from a growing number of sources. Educational institutions inmany countries have given priority to the development of critical thinking skills incurricula, most notably at the university level. Teachers at all levels of education havebeen advocating the use of critical thinking skills in classes in recent years. Criticalthinking skills can be improved by training students in the use of Socratic dialogue andby promoting an advanced self-awareness of thinking processes (Braun, 2004). Logicalreasoning, problem-solving and related skills are important elements in critical thinking,but emotions may also play an important role in thinking processes. Emotions may
influence logical, objective thinking and a certain level of emotional self-awareness andself-control may enhance critical thinking processes (Ruggiero, 2004). Critical thinking
has become an important topic in education systems in many countries, and the needfor self-aware, resilient, and resourceful students and employees who can thinkcritically, flexibly, creatively, and independently is increasing.
Keywords: Critical Thinking, Cognitive Development, Logic, Emotions

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Introduction
This paper explores the close relations between critical thinking and cognitive
development, logic, and emotionality and the increasing importance of promoting anddeveloping higher order thinking processes in education systems and work
environments in an era of rapid change. The ability of students and employees to thinkcritically is becoming increasingly important in a complex global economy andinterconnected international society. Educators and managers require a detailed
understanding of critical thinking and need to foster its development in students andemployees so that organizations and societies can function effectively, logically, andefficiently. Critical thinking encompasses a broad range of skills, abilities, and habits
and is connected to and influenced by cognitive development, logic, and emotionality(Schwarze & Lape, 2001). An understanding of critical thinking requires amultidisciplinary approach. In an era of accelerating change in technology, society, andwork, students and employees need advanced critical thinking skills to carefully
evaluate and effectively use exponentially growing amounts of information and datafrom a steadily increasing number of sources (Petrucco & Ferranti, 2017). Students andemployees need to identify false information and to modify hypotheses, theories, andbeliefs based on new, reliable information. Critical, evidence-based thinking based on
sound reasoning is an ongoing process which examines beliefs, identifies contradictions
and inconsistencies, and continually tests hypotheses (Braun, 2004). Critical thinking
is at the core of scientific reasoning and innovation and is necessary for the maintenanceand continual improvement of an increasingly complex global society.
Definitions and Characteristics of Critical Thinking
The concept of critical thinking has become so all-encompassing that it is difficult todefine with one single, simple, complete definition. Critical thinking is a powerful,empowering model of thinking and logical reasoning, but it may also be difficult tocomprehend and to teach without a great deal of self-reflective study and mental effort.
Critical thinking may, in part, be defined and classified as a form of higher-order
thinking that is involved primarily in the evaluation of arguments in a purposefulmanner enhanced by an objective self-awareness of one’s own decision-making
processes (Astleitner, 2002). Indeed, purpose must be a key element of higher-order
thinking and complex decision-making processes. Role modeling can be used to explain
the process of critical thinking which can be defined as a highly structured method ofthinking which is particularly useful when making decisions in a high-stressenvironment (Carroll-Johnson, 2001). Logical structure is a key component in criticalthinking, giving it a strong but flexible framework with a consistent level of validity
and reliability that can be applied to any challenging situation.
Meta-cognition, an objective self-awareness and understanding of one’s own thinking
processes, plays an important role in critical thinking (Braun, 2004). Critical thinking
includes some level of ability to self-monitor one’s own thought processes and to
identify logical inconsistencies, contradictions, and various forms of bias that may
distort the reasons given for certain choices. Class discussions, debates, andindependent research assignments can aid in the development of critical thinking skills(Hermond & Tanner, 2020). Some more detailed and extended definitions of criticalthinking deal primarily with the analysis of arguments and facts, and the identificationof common logical fallacies. For example, critical thinking may be defined as the ability

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to distinguish between evidence-based facts and statements of value, and as the ability
to identify bias and unstated assumptions (Duplass & Ziedler, 2002). Critical thinking
is also described and defined with detailed lists of attributes and general humancharacteristics such as inquisitiveness, the ability to seize new opportunities, openmindedness, flexibility in thinking and behaviour, persistence and attention to detailamong many others (Cheung, Rudowicz, Kwan, & Yue, 2002). Some of the multiple
terms used to describe and define critical thinking may be ambiguous and difficult todefine precisely. Critical thinking is a complex concept, a higher-order thinking processused to make logical choices and decisions, and an ability which defies simple
definitions.
Cognitive Development and Critical Thinking
Cognitive development in children is linked to a frequent questioning of thesurrounding environment and to the development of basic critical thinking skills(McDaniel, 2004). Aspects of critical thinking such as problem-solving skills can be
introduced into the lower grades in schools. Teachers can create classroom
environments in which elementary school pupils can start to acquire the habits ofinterpreting, analyzing, evaluating, and explaining various situations and phenomena(Leasa, Corebima, & Batlolona, 2020). The natural curiosity of children can be used tosupport the development of basic critical thinking skills and of a more sophisticated andpersistent examination and reevaluation of the surrounding environment by children. If
critical thinking is to become ingrained as a lifelong habit of active, purpose-driven,self-reflective thinking and behaviour, then appropriate aspects of critical thinking
should be taught as early as possible in schools. The methods of knowledgetransmission in schools can limit or enhance the ability to think critically andindependently (Manzo, 1998). Schools can discourage critical thinking by avoiding
controversial topics and by putting an emphasis on only one correct answer for eachquestion posed in class. Critical literacy, the ability to question and interpret texts andstories in different ways, can be taught using fairy tales (McDaniel, 2004). Students
need to learn how to interpret information from a variety of viewpoints and to be able
to modify or change opinions and beliefs to adapt to a rapidly changing and increasingly
technological world.
In addition to storytelling and literature, art studies can be used to promote cognitive
development and critical thinking in young students. For example, drawing pictures canbe combined with the teaching of narratives and social studies (Coufal & Coufal, 2002).
Art is a system of symbols that children can use to express feelings and concepts thatthey may not yet be able to clearly communicate in their own words. Social interaction
and collaborative activities and projects enhance cognitive development and the ability
to question aspects of the surrounding environment (Thayer-Bacon, 1997). A significant
amount of knowledge about the world is acquired through social interaction. Language
and art are systems of communication based on symbols and are closely related tocognitive development and critical thinking.

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Logic and Critical Thinking
Critical thinking is essential for the development of formal logic and the use ofdeductive and inductive reasoning (Kirby & Goodpaster, 2002). A desire to change ormodify existing viewpoints and to explore alternative explanations makes the use oflogical arguments possible. Valid arguments and formal reasoning can be developed
through the Socratic method, a process of questioning, analyzing, evaluating,comparing, and reinterpreting viewpoints and understandings (Schwarze & Lape, 2001).
A clear link exists between critical thinking skills and an understanding of formal logic
and the ability to apply it to a wide range of situations. Logical arguments are madepossible by critical thinking skills (Duplass & Ziedler, 2002). Advanced criticalthinking skills are essential for effective scientific reasoning and continual innovation.
The Influence of Emotions on Critical Thinking
Humans are not completely rational creatures devoid of emotions. The temporary
moods and emotions experienced by an individual may fluctuate frequently andinfluence personal decisions, opinions, and attitudes. Emotions may influence logical,
objective thinking and a certain level of emotional self-awareness and self-control may
enhance critical thinking processes (Ruggiero, 2004). A person who can objectively
evaluate his or her own emotional state and who can exercise some self-control may
also be capable of monitoring his or her own thinking processes and of self-evaluating
his or her own opinions and beliefs. Extreme or violent emotions and emotionallycharged language can inhibit the use of critical thinking and logic (Schwarze & Lape,
2001). Although emotions can have a negative impact on critical thinking and logicalreasoning, an overreliance on logic may also result in negative outcomes. For example,
managers who make decisions based on logic alone may not have enough empathy tounderstand the emotional and motivational needs of workers (Steininger, 1994).
Emotions have an impact on critical thinking that needs to be acknowledged andsystematically evaluated.
Developing Higher-Order Thinking Processes in Education Systems
Education systems in many countries have given priority to the development of criticalthinking skills in curricula, most notably at the university level. Critical thinking has
become an important topic among educators, and the importance of its development incollege students in the United States has been recognized as a national educational goalthat is essential for the success of the economy (Braun, 2004). Critical thinking skills
are essential for students and workers in a globalized world shaped by rapidly changing
technology and an exponentially increasing flow of information and data.
Collaborative learning is a common theme in many university courses that emphasize
practical project-based learning connected to real-world outcomes. Collaborative teamlearning projects combined with real-world data collection, consulting, and problem
solving are an effective method to develop critical thinking skills in university businessstudents (Canziani & Tullar, 2017). Some online learning platforms can be as effective
as traditional classroom settings. Critical thinking skills can be developed in interactive,
collaborative learning environments, including online university courses that requireself-reflection (Hermond & Tanner, 2020). University courses can also promote criticalthinking, rational analysis, and objective evaluation through class discussions and

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debates.
Problem-solving exercises that require the use of design, creativity, and technology can
improve critical thinking skills (Matthee & Turpin, 2019). The ability to evaluate thetruth, accuracy and value of online information and online sources is becoming
increasingly important. A clear methodology combined with increased self-awarenessof thinking processes allows students to improve critical thinking skills (Petrucco &Ferranti, 2017). University courses and research projects connected to real-world
problems and digital information literacy prepare graduates for careers in a constantly
changing, evolving, and increasingly technological work environment.
Conclusion
In conclusion, critical thinking is of vital importance in both educational and working
environments in an increasingly complex, interconnected, and technological world. An
objective awareness of one’s own thinking processes and patterns and the ability toengage in Socratic dialogue are key aspects of effective critical thinking (Braun, 2004).
Cognitive development is influenced and enhanced by critical thinking skills. Logicalreasoning, problem-solving skills and related skills are important elements in criticalthinking. The role of emotions in critical thinking needs to be acknowledged, monitored,
and self-evaluated. Critical thinking has become an important topic in education
systems in many countries, and the need for self-aware, resilient, and resourcefulstudents and employees who can think critically, flexibly, creatively, and independently
is increasing.

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References
Astleitner, H. (2002, June). Teaching critical thinking online. Journal of Instructional
Psychology, 29(2), 53. Retrieved August 26, 2019 from EBSCO Host database.
Braun, N. M. (2004, March). Critical thinking in the business curriculum. Journal of
Education for Business, 79(4), 232-236. Retrieved August 26, 2019 from ProQuest
database.
Canziani, B., & Tullar, W. L. (2017). Developing critical thinking through student
consulting projects. Journal of Education for Business, 92(6), 271–279. Retrieved
July 15, 2019 from EBSCO Host database.
Carroll-Johnson, R. M. (2001, April). Learning to think. Nursing Diagnosis, 12(2), 43.
Retrieved August 26, 2019 from EBSCO Host database.
Cheung, C., Rudowicz, E., Kwan, A. S., & Yue, X. D. (2002, December). Assessing
university students' general and specific critical thinking. College Student Journal,
36(4), 504. Retrieved August 27, 2019 from ProQuest database.
Coufal, K. L., & Coufal, D. C. (2002, Winter). Colorful wishes: The fusion ofdrawing, narratives, and social studies. Communication Disorders Quarterly, 23(2),109. Retrieved August 26, 2019 from ProQuest database.
Duplass, J. A., & Ziedler, D. L. (2002, September). Critical thinking and logicalargument. Social Education, 66(5), 10. Retrieved August 27, 2019 from EBSCO Host
database.
Hermond, D., & Tanner, T. (2020). Mastering critical thinking competencies in online
graduate classes. Administrative Issues Journal: Education, Practice & Research,
10(1), 47–58. Retrieved July 17, 2020 from EBSCO Host database.
Kirby, G. R., & Goodpaster, J. R. (2002). Thinking (3rd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ:
Prentice Hall.
Leasa, M., Corebima, A. D., & Batlolona, J. R. (2020). The effect of learning styles on
the critical thinking skills in natural science learning of elementary school students.
Ilkogretim Online, 19(4), 2086–2097. Retrieved July 20, 2020 from EBSCO Host
database.
Manzo, A. V. (1998). Teaching for creative outcomes, why we don't, how we all can.
The Clearing House, 71(5), 287-290. Retrieved August 26, 2019 from ProQuest
database.
Matthee, M., & Turpin, M. (2019). Teaching critical thinking, problem solving, anddesign thinking: Preparing IS students for the future. Journal of Information Systems
Education, 30(4), 242–252. Retrieved July 21, 2020 from EBSCO Host database.

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McDaniel, C. (2004). Critical literacy: A questioning stance and the possibility forchange. The Reading Teacher, 57(5), 472-481. Retrieved August 26, 2019 from
ProQuest database.
Petrucco, C., & Ferranti, C. (2017). Developing critical thinking in online search.
Journal of E-Learning & Knowledge Society, 13(3), 35–45. Retrieved July 22, 2020
from EBSCO Host database.
Ruggiero, V. R. (2004). Beyond feelings: A guide to critical thinking (7th ed.). Boston:
McGraw Hill.
Schwarze, S. & Lape, H. (2001). Thinking Socratically: Critical thinking about
everyday issues (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
Steininger, D. J. (1994). Why quality initiatives are failing: The need to address thefoundation of human motivation. Human Resource Management, 33(4), 601.
Retrieved August 26, 2019 from ProQuest database.
Thayer-Bacon, B. J. (1997). The nurturing of a relational epistemology. Educational
Theory, 47(2), 239. Retrieved August 26, 2019 from ProQuest database.

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Transformative Pedagogy: A Twenty-First Century Perspective Towards Improving
Education
Alisha Souza, Don Bosco College, India
The Asian Conference on Education 2020
Official Conference Proceedings
Abstract
Education in the twenty-first century needs to break existing boundaries and adopt a
new blend of teaching to meet the evolving demands of students. The need for teachers
to unlearn instructional methods that were consistently being used over the last few
years and move towards perceiving not just education, but their role as well, in adifferent way, lies at the crux of this paper. This paper critiques the current form ofteaching and learning happening in institutions and emphasizes the need for a shift inthis structure, outlining methods that are more likely to be effective in the twenty-first
century. The methodology used to gather information for this paper was a survey ofdifferent people associated with the education sector. It followed a qualitative andquantitative approach towards obtaining information to prove that there needs to be atransformation in the pedagogical approaches towards education in the twenty-first
century. The study unearthed the necessity to cater to the diverse needs of students bymaking education specific to individuals rather than providing a one-size-fits-all formof instruction. A focus on individuality and skill development is essential and a shift
towards a mixed method of outcome-based education coupled with choice-basedlearning will be beneficial to promote all-round development and make them capableof adapting to the changing world.
Keywords: Mixed Education, PROSPER Framework, Outcome-Based Education,
Technology, Choice-Based Learning

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Introduction: The Evolution of Learning
When communities were nomadic and relied entirely on hunting and gathering to meettheir daily needs, the process of learning for children was centred around their ability
to explore the world around them. They would entertain themselves with stones, leaves,
sticks, and other resources that they could access. Post the Middle Ages and the onsetof feudalism, this self-exploratory lifestyle of children would take on a drastic change.
With agriculture soon becoming the dominant form of survival, children were required
to work in fields to contribute to feeding the family. This shift resulted in wanderingcommunities settling down and the arrival of permanent housing structures. With thesechanges, the exploratory freedom children once enjoyed began to wane. They were now
expected to develop knowledge about the land they lived in, the type of animals they
could rear, crops that would grow – all of which would facilitate this new lifestyle thatthey had evolved into (Gray, 2008).
With the arrival of the Industrial Revolution in the mid-18th century, the poorer anddisadvantaged children were required to work in dirty, crowded factories as labourers.
Thus, their innate tendency to learn and discover things on their own, came to be
replaced by the need to adhere to instructions. “A good child was an obedient child,
who suppressed his or her urge to play and explore and dutifully carried out the ordersof adult masters” (Gray, 2008). As industrial development gained momentum and theneed for child labour began to decrease, the idea of childhood as a crucial time forlearning began to circulate. Public schools surfaced, each with the idea of indoctrinating
students with values that the elders of the time considered important. While some
focussed on teaching the histories of the land, others believed morals and lessons ofmathematics and Latin would turn them into scholars. By this time, the idea of
education was considered a system of inculcating certain truths and facts into young
minds. The idea of leaving children to their own devices to learn was long forgotten.
Children were now taught things that the adults considered important and theirintellectual prowess was determined by how well they regurgitated that matter backafter a few days. This system slowly made students grow out of their inherent creativity
instead of growing into it and this was where the problem began.
Education today follows the same paradigm as it did back then. Despite theincorporation of technology, the purpose that education aimed at achieving so many
years ago continues to persist. It continues to train students to learn things not for thebigger purpose of creating better equipped individuals that are society-ready, but toreproduce content at the end of the teaching term, thus showing its limited progressdespite the gap of time.
The Merriam- Webster Student Dictionary defines education as “knowledge, skill, anddevelopment gained from study or practice” (Webster, 2007). While education has
always attempted to provide knowledge of an academic specialty, the need to foster
independent learning and an enquiring spirit in students has often been side-lined. With
compact syllabi and a structured system of teaching laid down, the need to thinkcritically and creatively is not given enough emphasis.
The main purpose of education has always been to incorporate values into the lives ofpeople and stimulate their intellect. However, the current system of education seems to
be failing when it comes to catering to the needs of the twenty- first century. This paper

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attempts to throw light on pedagogical transformations that can be utilised to produce
better results, enabling teachers to cater specifically to the needs of individual students
rather than continuing to test all students on a simplistic, unvaried scale.
Challenges of education in the twenty-first century
The needs of the twenty-first century demand that teachers move away from a systemthat merely inculcates knowledge towards a system that inculcates skill-based training.
A report released by The World Economic Forum in 2016 stated that by 2020 “morethan a third of the desired core skill sets of most occupations will be comprised of skills
that are not yet considered crucial to the job today” (James, 2016). According to thereport, complex problem solving and social skills needed to be given more attention tocreate individuals who are ready to face society. Being in 2020, this prediction is seen
to carry truth in it. Keeping a uniform scale to ascertain the intelligence or potential ofa child does not make sense in a world where students are exposed to so many different
skills.
For a long time, education systems have been driven by a system of conformityconformity to a prescribed syllabus, conformity in testing methods, in assessment andso on. It is now time that this approach towards learning changes. There needs to be ashift in the kind of assessment being done. A system that shuns those who are notacademically ahead is no longer a system that makes sense. Academic excellence is nolonger being seen as the main focus of education and allowing such an archaic system
to persist will serve to be detrimental to the growth and development of students.
Another potent challenge that needs to be tackled is in the teaching-learning process.
Right from an early age, students have access to a wide variety of information at theirfingertips. Thus, the role of teachers in the twenty-first century needs to undergo an
upheaval. In these constantly evolving times, teachers must transform into something
greater. With technology providing students easy access to knowledge, the role of ateacher can no longer be limited to knowledge provider, but requires the adoption of agreater responsibility – which encapsulates becoming a guide, mentor, and facilitator.
Another major challenge for teachers, particularly in a country like India, is the vast
number of students in a classroom which makes it difficult to utilise varied strategies tomake classes more engaging due to paucity of time and the demands of an over-packed
curriculum. Embracing the use of technology by moving towards a system of blended
learning can help tackle this issue. Students of the twenty-first century are an
exploratory generation, eager to question, challenge, and even prove their greater
knowledge of the subject. The responsibility of the teacher should be to fuel the firethat drives this generation. They should avoid belittling students who do not conformto the norm that was being followed all these years. Instead, teachers should attempt toidentify the skills and interests that drive today’s students, as vast as they may be, andpush them towards developing in that direction.
Until recently, the job market still valued good grades over skills but the world is
experiencing a drastic shift from this mindset. Today, the upcoming start-up industry is
openly opting for people with certain skillsets and the capability of performing,
irrespective of their educational grades.

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Analysing the way forward
A survey of about fifty people was conducted to ascertain what they felt about thecurrent education system and whether it should be revamped to better meet the needsof young people. The sample included teachers, students, parents, and other working
professionals from rural as well as urban areas. It employed a qualitative andquantitative approach to obtain in-depth responses to the questions posed in thequestionnaire. The hypothesis was that the education system is ill-suited to meet thedemands of the twenty-first century and needs to undergo a major change if it is tobetter prepare students for the future. The responses were varied but augmented the
hypothesis and emphasized small yet impactful changes that need to be incorporated
into the system.
A majority of those surveyed felt that education needs to focus more on imparting
practical knowledge. Essential topics like managing money, doing taxes, dealing withpeople, handling stress, developing good interpersonal relationships need to be given
greater importance in today’s world. Respondents further opined that a regularly
updated syllabus that collaborates with the requirements of the working world wasessential.
It is important to note that the children of the twenty-first century are growing up in aworld where very often both parents are breadwinners, single parenting is becoming
more the norm than the exception and families are constantly on the move for better
jobs and educational prospects. These issues of increasing individualism, forced
displacement, and digitalisation affect the mental health of children and in turn, hamper
the process of learning (University, 2019). Thus, it is imperative for teachers to lookbeyond the covers of their textbooks and understand students for who they are, helping
them tackle and battle these insecurities that research indicates is becoming increasingly
prevalent in twenty-first century adolescents (University, 2019). By addressing theseissues from a young age, it will lead to the development of free-thinking, intelligent
people who will transform into well-rounded members of society.
On being asked what education in the twenty-first century should include, many feltthat research and self-learning should be given priority. Instead of merely assimilating
information, developing in students the need to question or critically analyse situations
and problems was prioritized. A few were of the opinion that, particularly in today’s
world, classroom learning needed to include the imparting of values and morals while
ensuring that individuality and creativity are not stifled but given sufficient priority.
This opinion holds weightage as society is far from its best, which indicates that
education is not serving the purpose of creating better individuals. The need to teachvalues so that people become better human beings, before all else, seems to be the needof the hour.
Educationist Ken Robinson once said, “If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll nevercome up with anything original” (Robinson, 2007). The fear of being wrong is dominantfrom the moment students enter schools because schools follow a strict ‘factory line’
system of grading and categorising potential. The current education system is so
disruptive that it “stigmatises mistakes” (Robinson, 2007). This attitude needs tochange. Students should be encouraged to speak their minds and voice their opinions
without the fear of being chastised. Teachers must understand that intelligence is

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diverse and creative and should not restrict but be open to the array of multiple
intelligences that students possess- be it in music, art, problem-solving, etc. A recent
situation in a Class 9 English language class proved this point. Students were instructedto come up with a two-minute speech on an ‘artist’ for a class exam. While some chosethe likes of Picasso and Michelangelo, others surprisingly picked classical writers like
Wordsworth and Shakespeare. When questioned, their rationale was simple – writers
are artists too. They paint pictures with their words and create something beautiful fromtheir imagination. Thus showing that while some students understood the term ‘artist’as it is generally used - a person who creates paintings and sculptures- others tried to
expand this term to mean “someone who creates things with great skill or imagination”(Dictionary, 2020). These are small ways in which creativity is manifested right from ayoung age. When this is suppressed and students are told their reasoning does not makesense or are outright chastised for not following instructions, it gives rise to fear or selfdoubt that prevents future experimentation thus slowly killing that inherent spark ofcreativity and individuality.
This indicates that there is a need to revitalize the way in which learning has been
happening over the years. When exploring the role of an educator, teachers need to takea personal interest in students to ascertain strengths and weaknesses, individual learningneeds and thereafter craft a lesson plan that can be utilised to meet those differing needs.
The process is not easy but by adopting technology it is certainly possible. Students
possessing moderate and higher intelligence can focus on problem-solving,experimenting, and learning through pre-created tasks and assignments given to themthrough online resources, while the teacher can focus on the weaker students in the class
who are in need of individual attention.
Classrooms need to be turned into collaborative zones where students are put into
smaller groups and allowed to take charge of the learning process. In the earlier days,
teachers played a central role in the learning process but the twenty-first century
demands a different approach – one where classrooms are more student-centric. With
the help of technology, personalizing education can become a reality. Teachers canutilise technology to varying extents to guide students in the process of acquiringknowledge. This can happen effectively if learning becomes a more proactive process.
To foster individuality and skill development, the existing mode of assessment needs
to be relooked at. Utilisation of digital assessment options will enable teachers toanalyse the comprehension and concept grasping capacity of students through different
forms – whether it is pop-up quizzes, essays or virtual presentations – each assessment
being tailored to the skills and strengths of individual students. All of these changes
need to begin at the grassroots level. The current system judges a student’s memory nottheir understanding of concepts or their skills, which is a step in the wrong direction.
There is an essential need to devote more time to proactive, self-driven learning rather
than assessment being the crux of the education process.
Educationist Joe Ruhl emphasizes the need for choice as an essential component of
every classroom (Ruhl, 2016). Students of today have landed right in the midst of atechnological boom, in a world filled with distractions but also, a world full of options.
Right from receiving phones at an early age and having technology dominate so many
spheres of their lives, to the availability of diverse job avenues after their education –the options are numerous. The moment choices are provided in a classroom, students

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feel a sense of control. They will choose the option that they best like to work on thus
making them more active in the learning process. By providing choices and conducting
technology-rich activities, teachers will be able to hold the attention of students, making
the process of learning more personalised to meet individual needs (West, 2013).
The PROSPER framework proposed by Noble and McGrath, which focusses on
inculcating Positivity, Relationships, Outcomes, Strengths, Purpose, Engagement, andResilience, into students is an ideal way forward. (Noble and McGrath, 2015). Thismodel focusses on fostering positivity, developing good relationships, yielding concrete
outcomes, developing strength to tackle life’s hardships, having a well-defined purpose,
facilitating better engagement, and developing resilience – tools that are essential forstudents to deal with the ever-changing world around them. If teachers are able to attend
to these needs within the confines of the curriculum, it would boost student well-being
which in turn, would cause education to become more purpose-oriented creating
students who are well-equipped to face the changing times. Using these sevencomponents of PROSPER within the classroom space will create a new and different
learning environment – where goal-attainment is achieved through cooperative learning
tasks which better prepare students for the real world (Noble and McGrath, 2015).
Once students have purpose, the process of learning will take on a new meaning. Thisdevelopment of purpose or an objective prior to the imparting of knowledge is also at
the core of the Outcome-Based Education proposed by William Spady which is beign
adopted by some institutes of higher education. It focusses on students attaining certain
concrete, measurable skills by the end of their academic journey. By researching andunderstanding the demands of the future, teachers can create a course that is alignedwith the broader objectives of the discipline or area, and will focus on developing
measurable performance outcomes, that is, things that can be ‘done’ by the student
rather than just ‘learnt’ thus preparing them for effective adult functioning. The proper
planning and implementation of outcome-based education as conceptualised byWilliam Spady will automatically enable students to learn the skills that prepare themfor life, which is currently what education systems are criticised for not catering to.
Conclusion
To address the concerns of education in the twenty-first century, it is important torecognise that all human interaction is based on diversity thus the need to move awayfrom a system that demands conformity. Extending education beyond the classroom isimportant to transform education. Technology and online learning make this possible,
enabling students to access notes from home, communicate with teachers and work at
a pace they are comfortable with. It also addresses the challenge of having diverse
students and catering to the interests of each one. Numerous methods of constructive
teaching can be applied to the classroom setting with the help of technology, however,the lack of appropriate infrastructure in educational institutions, improper internet
connectivity and a packed syllabus are the limitations likely to be experienced whenmoving towards such a system.
Thus, the transformative pedagogy that is needed for the twenty-first century is not
something new and innovative, it is merely developing a new outlook towards
education and what it should seek to achieve. The methods and models to make itimpactful already exist but the success lies in the implementation of an effective blend

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student, irrespective of where their talent or skill lies.
By combining elements of outcome-based education and aligning it with the concepts
spoken of in the PROSPER framework with equal attention paid to individual needs
and choice-based learning, education will take on a newer and more meaningful
dimension that is well-suited for the twenty-first century. Moreover, the use oftechnology will enable educators to find unique and personalised ways of getting
students to contribute in class and in turn, achieve the outcomes set out for them.
Utilising technology to ensure that no student feels that they are incompetent will help
boost feelings of positivity, which in turn, will turn them into resilient individuals as
since “people who frequently experience and express positive emotions tend to be more
resilient” (Noble and McGrath, 2015).
To conclude, education in the twenty-first century needs to adopt an integrated
approach to foster holistic learning which includes the proper usage of different
methods that already exist. Education needs to be personalised where content iscustomized based on the passions, interests, and learning capacity of different children.
This is undoubtedly a challenging task and would demand teachers being trained anew
to understand such a system. However, the need for skilled individuals is surpassing theneed for knowledgeable students in today’s workforce and it is the job of educators toensure that education achieves this outcome. The move towards positive innovation in
the classroom begins with a teacher thus it is expected that teachers dedicate themselvesto catering to the holistic needs of students- developing skills, values and an attitude ofenquiry that will motivate students to become life-long learners. Only by doing this will
we create students who are well-balanced and ready to take on the challenges of the realworld, thereby transforming education.
Acknowledgements
I would like to express my gratitude to Assistant Professor Jovi D’silva for his constantguidance and support during the writing of this paper. Without his timely help andmotivation, this paper would still be in the process of being written. I am also indebted
to my parents for their patience and encouragement which enabled me to focus on
finishing the paper. I cannot forget Ms. Amrita Iyer, Mr Sandeep Doifode and Ms.
Delilah Pacheco who were kind enough to read and review the work, providing useful
inputs that helped shape the paper into a more comprehensive piece.

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References
Adolescents and the new challenges of the 21st century. (2019, November 18).
Utrecht University. Retrieved May 02, 2020, fromhttps://www.uu.nl/en/news/adolescents-and-the-new-challenges-of-the-21st-century
Artist meaning in the Cambridge English Dictionary. (2020). Retrieved May 03, 2020,
from https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/artist
Francis, J. (2019, November 14). Everything You Need to Know About Education
4.0. QS. Retrieved March 28, 2020, from https://www.qs.com/everything-you-needto-know-education-40/
Gray, P. (2008, August 20). A Brief History of Education. Psychology Today.
Retrieved May 02, 2020, from http://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/freedomlearn/200808/brief-history-education
Noble, T., & McGrath, H. (2015, July 21). (PDF) PROSPER: A New Framework for
Positive Education. Psych Well-Being 5, 2. Retrieved March 28, 2020, fromhttp://www.researchgate.net/publication/282556489_PROSPER_A_New_Framework_for_Positive_Education
Ted. Do schools kill creativity? Sir Ken Robinson [Video] YouTube, uploaded 6
January, 2007. Retrieved March 28, 2020,
from www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY
Tedx Talks. Teaching methods for inspiring students of the future: Joe Ruhl [Video]
YouTube, uploaded 12 September 2016. Retrieved 29 March, 2020, fromwww.youtube.com/watch?v=UCFg9bcW7Bk
Webster, M. (n.d.). Education meaning. Retrieved March 27, 2020, fromhttp://wordcentral.com/cgi-bin/student?education
West, D. (2016, July 28). Mobile Learning: Transforming Education, Engaging
Students, and Improving Outcomes. Retrieved March 28, 2020, fromhttp://www.brookings.edu/research/mobile-learning-transforming-educationengaging-students-and-improving-outcomesContact email: alisouza94@gmail.com

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A Materials Library Created by Students, for Students: A Valuable Learning
Resource
Faith Nightingale, Queen Mary University of London, United Kingdom
Andrew Spowage, Queen Mary University of London, United Kingdom
The Asian Conference on Education 2020
Official Conference Proceedings
Abstract
A materials library, like other curated collections, contains valuable reference“materials”. It is highly desirable for universities, especially those with strong
engineering and materials science programmes like Queen Mary University of
London Engineering School (QMES). Access to a materials library allows students tosee, touch and experience a wide range of materials first-hand. QMES incorporates
the comprehensive materials library project as part of its 2nd year Personal
Development Planning module. The original project requires students to researchpotential materials, select one, and competitively market it to their peers, build a
website about the material and finally apply appropriate techniques to prepare asample for display in the library. In year 3 the project is expanded in another module.
Students carry out characterisation experiments on their materials and expand theirwebsites with primary test data. This affords an opportunity for students to integrate
additional knowledge they have gained in other modules and to see how it might beused in in real world applications. To test the effectiveness of the project in terms ofstudents’ self-assessed skills development, and to enhance the pedagogy of the
project, a survey was conducted on the original material library project and the year 3
additional developments. The results showed that skill development was high, which
supported transferable and technical skills for young engineers, and factors such asdelivery and support need to be considered when developing the project.
Keywords: Materials Library, Materials in Design, Materials Selection, ProblemBased Learning

iafor
The International Academic Forumwww.iafor.org

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Introduction
Materials libraries are a valuable reference for engineers to truly understand materials
and to provide support when selecting appropriate materials for a specific application(Akin & Pedgley, 2016). In an educational setting, a materials library provides
students with the opportunity to see, touch, feel and experience the materials. As atactile resource, a library can be used to engage all the senses, in a way that virtual or
paper-based analogues simply cannot do. A materials library allows students to fully
engage with the material, providing a learning opportunity which facilitates
immersion and deepens appreciation of the unique character of each material.
Materials selection has components of both art and science. The science part isrelatively easy for engineers to internalise. For example, if an engineer needs to selecta material for a beam, (Figure 1) students can use well known equations to work out
how stiff the material needs to be to support the load. However, it is much morechallenging to work out how the beam “feels” and how it will be perceived by theuser. These “aesthetic attributes” may be analogous to materials properties in somecases. However, they are often impossible to calculate and very challenging forengineers to visualise. Aesthetic attributes require first-hand experience. A materials
library allows the students to experience the materials with their own senses, todevelop an appreciation of how the material will behave and be perceived by the user.

Figure 1: Balance beam (Pixabay, 2020)
Universities are always looking for ways to engage the students and enhance theirlearning experience. This becomes increasingly important when academics recognise
different learning styles. A popular approach to promote active learning andengagement is to introduce problem-based learning, (Helle, Tynjälä, & Olkinuora,2006). Problem-based learning (PBL) is an approach that at its core fosters
collaboration and communication. The materials division at Queen Mary Universityof London were early pioneers of PBL and have continued to refine and expand thepractice (Bushfield & Peijs, 2003). Crucial aspects of PBL projects involve
developing solutions to a problem, they require students to use initiative and they
commonly result in an end product (Blumenfeld, Soloway, & Marx, et al., 1991). The
problem should be significant in terms of grades, substantial in terms of effort andduration required. They should serve to organise and drive activities that allow
exposure to a variety of educational activities.
In PBL teaching staff are involved in an advisory role and should not to provide
answers / solutions as the process of working through the problem is an important part

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modules to be built into the project. PBL enables practical application of learned
knowledge into the degree programme which is a vital ingredient as graduates often
cannot recall the knowledge or how to use it (Ruhanen, Axelsen & Bowles, 2020).
This is especially important if the knowledge is difficult to appreciate throughtraditional teaching approaches. Together, the experience gained through discipline
specific practice enhances capability and ultimately employability of our students.
The advantages offered by PBL and the fact that QMES students are well versed indelivering projects, provided an obvious choice to use this approach to deliver thelearning objectives required from the materials library component of the module.
Interdisciplinary competence is something which is highly sort after in engineering
education. It is part of engineering accreditation requirements (ABET, 2019) and a
distinguishing factor embraced by many leading universities. The ability to be a highfunctioning member of a multidisciplinary team is an essential skill and highly prised
by engineering companies.
QMES students are exposed to PBL in a wide range of modules including
experimental modules which consist entirely of projects, teaching modules whichcontain projects that support traditionally delivered content, and, modules whichcontain a wide range of projects delivered using flipped classroom methodologies.
The projects within the PDP module are aligned with the “Project Component” model
described by (Morgan, 1983), they are interdisciplinary in nature and have a realworld objective. The project integrates concepts learned in the various PDP modules
but also requires students to integrate knowledge from a range of other modules. As
the materials library project is linked to the students’ core area of expertise and theoutput of the project will be used by students, it most closely aligns with the“professional motives” category defined by Heitman (1996).
Enhancing students’ employability skills is a vital learning outcome of PDP. All too
often undergraduate students are concerned only with their academic performance.
Skills such as time management, critical thinking, research, employability andpresentation skills are often undervalued by students. However, as they are highly
prized by engineering companies, students need to be given the opportunity todevelop them. Similarly, support for life-learning and professional practice frequently
take a back seat to academic grades, but are essential for all engineers. It is also key
that students can effectively communicate within their discourse community as
students, but also later as engineers. Engineers are required to communicate with avariety of people including stakeholders, customers, suppliers and also otherengineers globally, so an ability to code switch is important. Oral communication is
so important that employers are very selective when it comes to potential engineering
employees (Irdus, Salleh and Abdullah, 2011). STEM graduates are often criticisedfor their lack of transferable skills (Riemer, 2002), perhaps because students do notrealise the value of these transferable skills to their future careers.
This work aims to address three research questions:1.
How well does the materials library project enhance the (self-evaluated)transferable skills of the student?

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2.
How effective is a materials library project in supporting undergraduate
engineering programmes?
3.
What are the main factors in developing a pedagogically sound materials
library project delivered by PBL?
Materials & Methods
Participants
At QMES, the materials library project was initiated in 2019 with the inauguralsecond year cohort (240 students) and further developed in 2020 to better meet theacademic needs of students. In the third year, the materials library project is used as abasis for a project within the materials characterisation module. The second cohort ofstudents completing the materials library project consisted of 227 students. The main
challenges with this year’s delivery was associated with the Covid-19 pandemic. This
meant the format of the project needed to be adapted to reflect a blended learning
approach.
Course structure and design
Year 2 Materials Library ProjectThe year 2 materials library project runs for 26-hours. The project is divided into fourparts:
1.
Completion of a poster (pairs)
2.
A poster competition (pairs)
3.
A recruitment fair (group)
4.
Building a website (group)
Table 1 shows an outline of the project schedule. The two columns on the left-handside shows the teaching plan of in-class activities and the learning objectives. The twocolumns on the right-hand side shows students’ out of class activities, groupings andthe skills students develop at each stage of the project.
In-class

Table 1: Project scheduleLearning
After classobjectives

Week 1:
To understand theIntroductory lecture requirements of thematerials libraryand safety aspectsof materials.
Weeks 2, 3 and 4:
To understand the
Guided,features of a
independent study
scientific poster.
on posters
To be able to write
an appropriate
poster literature

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Students choosematerial and makecontact withcompanies.
Students work oneach section of theposter and add it to
the Wiki.

144

Student grouping
and skills
developed
Pair work
Skills: networking
and written
communication
Pair work
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review andabstract.

Weeks 5 and 6:
Tutorials
Week 7: Poster
assessment
Week 8:
Recruitment fair

To use engineering
judgement todecide on poster
SDS information.
To be able toimprove work
based on feedback
and discussion.
To be able to assessother’s work as askill for a future
manager/mentor.
To practisecommunication andinterview skills tosell yourself.

Week 9: Lecture on To understand how
website design
to build webpages.

Students receive
feedback and make
improvements toposters.
Students prepare
for the recruitment
fair
Students hold ateam project
management
meeting.
Students start
website creation.

Skills: academic
writing
Pair work
Skills: interviewing
skillsGroup work (8)Skills: project
management,
teamwork
Group work (8)Skills: website
design andacademic writing

To think about theimportance ofdesign and layoutof webpages.
To be able to use
the 7 step plan
during this project.
Week 10: Guided,
To understand how
independent study
to manage a larger
on project and team group of people.
management
To be able to use aprojectmanagement tool
(Gantt chart) toplan a project.
Weeks 11 and 12:
To be able toTutorials
improve work
based on feedback
and discussion.
Week 13: Website To practise oral
assessment
communication andpresentation skills.

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Pair work

Students hold teammeeting to arrange
tasks.

Group work (8)Students receive
feedback and make
improvements to
websites.

Group work (8)145Skills: project
management andteamwork

Skills: academic
writing
Group work (8)Skills: presentationand spoken
communication

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Students are given the full timetable at the start of the project so they understand the
expectations from the beginning. This approach combined with a student-centreddelivery supports students’ time management, project management and organisational
skills as they are entirely responsible for completing the deliverables within the
project requirements, according to the defined timeline.
The first deliverable was a poster. Pairs of students researched potential materials andselected their material, and then created a scientific style poster about it. In the poster,
students needed to consider technical aspects of the material, health and safety
regulations as well as applications. The second deliverable, the poster competition, ishighly competitive; the choice of materials, quality of the poster and the students pitch
are important elements in the competition. During the learning process, members ofeach pair provided support both linguistically (they are required to speak English inall sessions) and with technical knowledge, research / transferable skills competence(Ohta, 2001) to their partner.
The poster competition is peer assessed. The posters which gain the most support are
the materials which progress to the next stage of the project. Students take part in theposter competition by listening in groups to presentations from each pair before
asking questions. At the end of the session each student votes for their favourite
posters; this makes them potentially eligible to become part of the team who will takethat material to the next stage of the project. The peer evaluation process promotes
learner autonomy (Yang, Badger & Yu, 2006) and builds significant buy-in fromstudents.
The 2020’s poster presentation had a total of 112 posters across the cohort, with 28
being chosen as the winning posters. In more normal times the presentation is held ina traditional face-to-face setting. This generates a high energy environment withstudents “selling” their concept and developing transferable skills while doing so.
This year as the students were in their family homes, the event was hosted throughTencent/VooV meetings with voting taking place on WeChat. The academic team
involved noted that the same energy and degree of interaction was not possible withthe online approach. However, more time was available for students to listen topresentations and ask many more questions than during face-to-face delivery.
The winning 28 pairs then held a recruitment fair to select 6 other team members.
This gave students the opportunity to practise “selling” themselves by outlining what
they could contribute to the team. The event was designed to be reflective of aninterview of the students’ first engineering job. Students had the opportunity topractise the interview techniques they had learned in earlier PDP projects. The poster
competition and subsequent interviews gives students additional opportunities todevelop their communication and other transferable skills. A larger groups size thanwould be typical in QMES was selected to better reflect authentic, interdisciplinary
projects. Having a larger group gave students the opportunity to work in smaller, subteams which would be required to deliver within the tight timeline. Sub-teams allow
more students to take a leadership role. Similarly, all students were able to practise
time management and working with diverse actors, an essential workplace skill.
Websites were created through QMUL’s customised Moodle deployment. Students all
had experience of creating individual webpages pages but had not created multiple

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page website and certainly had no experience of contributing to a collective, curated
database i.e. the materials library. This meant that design and layout, navigation andaccess were new areas that needed to be considered to fully exploit the technology.
Using a tool that students were familiar with, but enhancing their skills meant thatthey were able to improve their technological skill set while focusing on the coreengineering aspects of the project.
To ensure easy access to the websites, students created a QR code for each display inthe materials library. This was linked directly to the specific website for the individualmaterials which allowed direct access to the websites by scanning the QR code on any
mobile device. The sites can also be accessed through the QMES Materials Librarylanding page1.
Guided, independent study (GIS) sessions gave information on a specific topic suchas how to write an abstract or a literature review for the posters. Topics wereintroduced in lecture style classes followed by a question and answer session from thestudents and group work to put what they have learned into practice. This gave thestudents opportunities to clarify any points, helped the students feel supported andguided throughout the project, as well as to reinforce the learning objectives byapplying the concepts.
Additionally, in both the poster and website elements of the project, students received
tutorial sessions where they completed work and received feedback before thesession. Tutorials helped manage time effectively by clarifying any misunderstoodpoints and asking thoughtful, relevant questions. This helped students develop andimprove their work throughout the project, which is important for learnerdevelopment (Ferguson, 2011).
Throughout all of this, students complete weekly project management forms to track
their progress and develop their project management skill sets. Group portfolios werealso created to assist in the knowledge transfer between the group and teacher, sogroup progress could be tracked as well as identifying any potential problems. All ofwhich are essential elements of project management (PMI, 2017).
Year 3 Materials Characterisation Project
The materials characterisation sub-project is a 10-hour project, consisting of threeparts: writing a proposal for characterising the material, characterising the material
and then adding that information to the material’s existing website. The proposal
contained 2 or 3 characterisation techniques, no more than a page in length. Eachtechnique needed to include the following points:•
Briefly state the principle on which the technique works.
•
How well could you identify the material? How precise and accurate is themethod? Does the technique give you quantitative or qualitative information?
•Show some example data that is representative of the type of material and a
description of what the data shows (due to COVID it was not possible to actually1

https://hub.qmplus.qmul.ac.uk/view/view.php?homepage=qmes-materials-libraryproject&page=qmes-materials-library-2020

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characterise the materials this year so students were tasked with sourcing appropriate
data from relevant journals)
All work was conducted in self-assigned groups of 5 or 6 students. Students were
given the option to deviate from their original materials library group which helped
groups that had not worked harmoniously or were interested in a different material to
explore other avenues. The group was also required to complete project management
forms and peer assessment of contributions.
Experiment design and research instruments
For each project, a survey was conducted with each year group of students. The year 2
survey consisted of 9 questions: 3 Likert scale questions, 2 multiple choice questions
and 1 ordering question related to the project and its structure, how useful the project
was and what skills were developed, and 3 open ended questions relating tofavourite/least favourite parts of the project.
Similarly, the year 3 survey consisted of 6 questions: 3 Likert scale questions, 1 ratingand 3 open-ended questions, related to the aspects of the characterisation project,favourite/least favourite parts of the project and future use of the materials library.
Results
Year 2 Materials Library Project
168 students answered this survey. Figure 2 shows that 43% of students’ favourite
stage of the project was working with their material, followed by 26% indicating thatworking on the poster was their favourite part.

Figure 2: Question 1 results- My favourite stage of the projectStudents were asked to consider their improvement of skills/abilities and knowledge
in question 2, figure 3. In all cases except the ‘ability to sell myself’, more than 73%
of students agreed or strongly agreed. Improvement of written ability andimprovement of research ability rated agree or strongly agree for 84.5% and 87.5%
respectively. Whilst 67.9% of students agreed or strongly agreed that their ability tosell themselves had improved; this is the only factor that also received a high neutral
response (28%).

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Figure 3: Question 2 results- The project has improved…
Question 3 asked students to rank their skills in order of the level of improvement
during the project. Figure 4 shows that students ranked their research ability as themost improved skill, project management second, and written and spoken
communication were the least improved. Teamwork ability also featured highly infirst and second position and time management featured consistently throughout.
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
First

Second

Third

Forth

Fifth

Project Management

Research Ability

Spoken Communication

Teamwork Ability

Time Management

Written Communication

Sixth

Figure 4: Question 3 results- Skills improvement order

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Figure 5 shows that other than ‘working in different size teams’, the majority ofstudents rated all other structural aspects of the project as either strongly agree oragree, 81.5% or higher. 73.8% of students did agree or strongly agree with working indifferent size teams, but over a quarter (26.2%) rated it in the lower ranges; more thanany other aspect of the project structure.

Figure 5: Question 4 results- Structure of the project
Year 3 Materials Characterisation Project
127 students answered this survey. Figure 6 shows that 78% of students agreed orstrongly agreed that their development of materials knowledge had developed as aresult of this project and 89% agreed or strongly agreed their engineering knowledge
developed. Additionally, 71% agreed or strongly agreed that revisiting the materials
library showed the students their weaknesses in the original project and 74% agreed
or strongly agreed that it gave them an opportunity to improve it.

Figure 6: Question 1 results- Adding materials characterisation to the original
materials library project…

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From question 5, ‘tell me how you have used or plan to use the materials library
project in other modules and outside QMES’, clearly shows the positive impact thematerials library project has had on the students in terms of their current studies,
future employment, study or in extra-curricular activities, as shown below.
• “In composite materials and metals I&II, it's a good resource to refer toinformation and have a practical contact”.
• “It can help me to review the knowledge without carrying a textbook”.
• “I often went to the library in QMES to touch and see the materials. Additionally,
my resume is enriched by the material library. During the interview of my master
degree, I also mentioned it”.
• “It will be a good way to show others what we learnt in undergraduate degree,which could be a more vivid way compared with describing those courses”.
• “I used to go to the library to see how the material look like actually and touch it.
In other modules, we may need to find some materials' data, I went to the website tofind useful information. Outside QMES, I will show my material webpages to otherpeople”.
• “The knowledge and methods I learned were applied to the QMES ICTL
competition, and our group won third place in the final”.
Discussion
From the results section above, the majority of the students found the year 2 materials
library project useful. Students were able to improve their skills sets, figures 3 and 4,
with research ability being the most improved.
Due to the multiple components in this project, an incremental approach to thecompletion of this project is important. By taking this approach, students are able tobuild on the skills they have developed in previous year’s PDP modules. It also gives
them an opportunity to work with varying numbers of peers which can improve
communication skills and help those students who are shy to develop a strong
relationship with their partner before moving to a larger group. Chinese students inparticular struggle with oral presentation skills (Davey and Higgins, 2005). They lackconfidence and cultural sensitivities about ‘losing face’ often hinders their progressand can affect them in their professional lives (Cardon and Scott, 2003). The methodof teach to test (Lu, Goodale and Guo, 2014) also hinders their progress as when
given freedom to speak the teacher can often be met with silence due to cultural
Confucianism (Sit, 2013). Therefore, giving students the opportunity to progress incommunication with smaller to larger number of peers builds confidence anddevelops rapport within the groups.
However, from figure 4 it can be seen that both spoken and written communication
were seen as skills that were the least improved. This is interesting as written andspoken communication feature heavily in this project. One reason that students may
feel spoken communication had not improved as much as other skills could be thatstudents feel they already communicate efficiently in English. Another reason could
be the use of online communication in this iteration of the project. Students prefer tocommunicate face-to-face on group projects so may have found online
communication more difficult and therefore felt their communication skills did not
improve as much as other skills. Finally, it could be that students were

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communicating mostly together in Mandarin. This could be because of the distanceelement or students reverting to Mandarin because of ease and time constraints.
Further research would be needed to understand why the students feel this way andthis could influence further development of the project.
It is important that students are supported through each part of the project. As the
project progresses the tasks become more complex and students also have additional
challenges such as working in larger groups and learning to use software in differingways. Therefore, tutorials were provided for students, so they were able to have theirquestions answered and feedback explained thoroughly. Students were expected tocomplete certain sections of the project prior to the tutorial session. Completed work
was required to be added to the group’s website where the teacher could preview it
and prepare feedback before the tutorial. This enabled the students to view the
feedback and ask specific questions during the tutorial, meaning the tutorial was used
more constructively and was therefore a more valuable resource for the students.
From figure 5 it seems that the structure of the project is sufficient for the students’needs. The project ran extremely well considering it was run online, due to thepandemic. However, one of the students least favourite aspects of this project waspresenting of posters online. Informal discussions with students suggest this is due tothe difficulty in the audience participation. From observations during this activity,
some meeting rooms had little to no audience at some points. It was also difficult forthe students to talk to people they could not see (as most students switched theircameras off). This was mostly due to the bandwidth of students in their homes.
Whilst this project can be run online, it is better to run this face-to-face as students
have more opportunities to enhance their face-to-face communication skills in theposter presentation and recruitment fair. As the materials library project has been run
previously and was highly structured, it was relatively easy to translate it to online
delivery.
In the characterisation module students were unable to enter the labs to tests theirmaterials. Consequently, they only gained a theoretical knowledge of thecharacterisation techniques rather than first-hand experience which is a significant
disadvantage of online delivery.
One further point that needs developing is the students’ teamwork ability. Fromteacher observations of this project, students still struggle to complete work in groups,
especially large groups, even though they do rate this skill as being improved. Thismeans that more teaching needs to be done on this subject. To try to address this, anadditional teamwork lesson has been added to an earlier PDP course in addition topeer evaluation of the group performance to ensure students are fully responsible forthemselves and their performance.
Conclusions
As the materials library project has been running for two years, there are now over 75
items on display and a second materials library display is being constructed to reflect
the diverse range of materials on offer.

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The materials library project and the additional characterisation aspect are valuable
and enjoyable activities for students. Students developed their engineering knowledge
and transferable skills as well as creating an invaluable resource for the school. Thismet and even exceeded the aims and objectives of the project.
Revisiting the characterisation addition to the project needs to be reviewed once faceto-face teaching is possible to enhance students’ practical skill set. In their final year,
students study a module which focuses on materials in design, complete final year
project and a number of design related projects. The materials library acts as avaluable resource for students in all these modules. These points show that thematerials library is an effective project for developing student engineers and also
improves the skills of the students, which makes them more employable.
The research on this project has highlighted that the main factors in developing apedagogically sound materials library project. These include creating tailor madelearning objectives for the students, choose an appropriate approach, teamwork andreflection on the project. It is important to reflect, identify weaknesses and modify the
project in order. For example, the research has indicated that the recruitment fairneeds some work to fully meet the needs of the students and the students do need that
face-to-face interaction of being at university provides, especially in thecharacterisation aspect.
Overall, the library itself acts as a legacy for the students, it provides a lasting part oftheir work which will stay in the school long after they have graduated. It is also a
focal point for visitors to the school which enhances the image of QMES. The libraryalso supports a number of other modules as students have free access to the library,so, for example, in the module materials in design, students need to select materials
for a product, they can go to the library touch and feel the materials to better
understand the aesthetic attributes and judge how suitable the material will be for their
specific product.

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References
ABET. (2019). Criteria for accrediting engineering programs. Retrieved October 12,
2020, from https://www.abet.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/EAC-Criteria-20202021.pdf
Akin, F., & Pedgley, O. (2016). Sample libraries to expedite materials experience fordesign: A survey of global provision. Materials & Design, 90, 1207-1217. doi:
10.1016/j.matdes.2015.04.045
Blumenfeld, P.C., Soloway, E., Marx, R.W., Krajcik, J.S., Guzdial, M. & Palincsar,
A. (1991). Motivating project-based learning: Sustaining the doing, supporting thelearning. Educational Psychologist, 26(3-4), 369398. doi: 10.1080/00461520.1991.9653139
Bushfield, J., & Peijs, T. (2003). Learning materials in a problem based course.
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terials_in_PBL.pdf
Cardon, P.W. & Scott, J.C. (2003). Chinese business face: Communication behaviors
and teaching approaches. Business Communication Quarterly, 66(4), 9-22.
Davey, G. & Higgins, L. (2005). Chinese students’ self-evaluation of their study skills
for English learning and overseas courses. Retrieved October 12, 2020, fromwww.readingmatrix.com/conference/ pp/proceedings2005/davey_higgins.pdf
Ferguson, P. (2011). Student perceptions of quality feedback in teacher
education. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 36(1), 5162. doi: 10.1080/02602930903197883
Heitman, G. (1996). Project-oriented study and project-organisized curricula: A brief
review of intentions and solutions. European Journal of Engineering Education, 21,
121–132.
Helle, L., Tynjälä, P., & Olkinuora , E. (2006). Project-based learning in postsecondary education – Theory, practice and rubber sling shots. Higher Education, 52,
287-314.
Idrus, H., Salleh, R. & Lim Abdullah, M.R.T. (2011). Oral communication ability in
English: An essential skill for engineering graduates. Journal of Educators &Education/Jurnal Pendidik dan Pendidikan, 26.
Lu, R., Goodale, T.A. & Guo, Y. (2014). Impact of videoconference with native
English speakers on Chinese EFL learners’ oral competence and self-confidence.
Open Journal of Social Sciences, 2(2), 54-60.
Morgan, A. (1983). Theoretical aspects of project-based learning in higher education.
British Journal of Educational Technology, 1, 66–78.

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Ohta, A. S. (2001). Second language acquisition processes in the classroom:
Learning Japanese. Routledge.
Pixabay. (2020). Pixabay.com. Retrieved November 25, 2020, fromhttps://pixabay.com/photos/gymnastics-female-performance-583672/
Project Management Institute, Inc.. (2017). Guide to the Project Management Body ofKnowledge (PMBOK® Guide) (6th Edition). Retrieved fromhttps://app.knovel.com/hotlink/pdf/id:kt011DX1J2/guide-projectmanagement/project-integration-management
Riemer, M. (2002). English and communication skills for the global engineer. Global
Journal of Engineering Education, 6, 91.
Ruhanen, L., Axelsen, M., & Bowles, L. (2020). Engaging students through authentic
learning: Connecting with international tourism partners. Journal of Hospitality,
Leisure, Sport & Tourism Education. doi: 10.1016/j.jhlste.2020.100291
Sit, H.H.W. (2013). Characteristics of Chinese students' learning styles. International
proceedings of economics development and research, 62, 36.
Contact email: f.nightingale@qmul.ac.uk, a.spowage@qmul.ac.uk

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The Effect of College Service Quality on the Learners' Satisfaction
at English Department of Higher Education
Sabarun, IAIN Palangka Raya, Indonesia
Hamdanah, IAIN Palangka Raya, Indonesia
The Asian Conference on Education 2020
Official Conference Proceedings
Abstract
The research was to measure the effect of college service quality on the learners'
satisfaction of English Department at IAIN Palangka Raya. Quantitative method wasused to survey 173 L2 learners using 35-items of self- developed questionnaire to
determine the most influential factor of the college service quality. The validity andreliability were ensured.
Assumption tests, such as normality, linierity,
multicolinierity, heterokedasticity, autocorreltion, was also counted before analyzing
data. The data were analysed using multiple linier regression, t test, F test andcorrelation. The finding revealed that: (a) the variables of tangible, reliability,
responsiveness, assurance, empathy, gave effect simultaneously to the learners’
satisfaction (F= 27.880, p= 0.000). (b) Partially, each variable gave contribution to thelearners’ satisfaction as follows: tangible (x1), 02.23% reliability (x2) 16.86%.
responsiveness (x3) 12.88%, assurance (x4), 05.40% empathy (x5), 09.20%. (c) The
most influential contributed to the satisfcation was reliability, followed byresponsiveness, empathy, assurance and tangible. The total effective contribution of
those variables to the learners' satisfaction was 40.50%. The rest (50.50%) was
affected by other variables out of investigation. The result suggested that the college
increase service quality in terms of learning facilities, teaching laboratory, language
laboratory, dormitory, cleanlines, safety, giving appropriate treatment and having
more empathy and understanding the learners’ needs. Similar studies at higher
education with broader scope and sample size was recommended.
Keywords: Learners’ Satisfaction, Quality Servive, Higher Education

iafor
The International Academic Forumwww.iafor.org

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Introduction
Service quality is a vital part of promoting higher education. It is the highest
influential instruments for university development. Improving quality service to thelearners’ satisfaction is vital for today’s universities. They recognize the importanceof service quality in serving of learning process, accrediation level, college facilities,
visiting lecturers, laboratory, dormitory, research colaboration, double degree
program, student exchange and other services. This is caused by the improving
numbers of learners enrolling universities (Shago, 2005). Service quality is considered
as of key strategic value by every organization, uncluding educational institutions(Rashid and Jusoff, 2009). Although there has been an increasing number of
researches investigating quality service and learners’ satisfaction in university level
all over the world (Agyapong 2011; Lee & Hwan 2005; Kuo et al. 2009; Greiner,
2000; Knight, 2002; Mai, 2005; Deshields et al, 2005; Rashidi & Moghadam, 2014),
there was still limited number of research examining quality service and the learners’
satisfaction on L2 classes in Kalimantan context. Therefore, this study attempts to fill
those gaps.
In case of higher education, quality of service is a vital thing motivating colleges tocompetition and learners are directed to assess on services provided by university(Golder, Mitra, & Mooman, 2012, p.1). Service quality is a clients’ attitude andperceived of a service (Parasuraman et al., 2005). Eshghi, Roy, & Ganguli (2008, p.
121) define it as a service assessment performed by clients. Service quality is a vitalthing considered by institution management. Nalini et al., (2011, p. 52) state service
quality has an vital position in every business, including educational institution.
Arambewela and Hall (2009) confirm the core idea of quality is the match between
expectation and perception of customers. To increase quality service, the institutions
should analyze the factor contributing to service quality. Parasuraman et al. (2005)
argued five factors of quality service. (a) Tangibles. This is in accordance with thephysical environment. It includes physical material, technology equipment, person
and information materials. It represents the service physically. It deals withperformance of physical facilities, tools, and staff performance. (b) Reliability. It
deals with customer perceptions. It is the capability to provide to the offered service
accurately. (c) Responsiveness, being willing to help. It deals with client perceived on
the willingness of service. It is a desire of employees to assist clients and to give
service. (d) Assurance, inspiring trust and confidence. It deals with customer
perceptions. (e) Empathy, treating customers as individuals. It is in line with client
perceived on service provider to care and give attention.
Referring to those factors, a scale named Service quality (Serqual) was initiated by(Parasuraman et al., 2005). This idea focuses on the philosophical framework thatclients assess quality of service by making comparison between perception and
expectation of service. In other words, quality service can be fomulated as Q (quality)
equals to P (perceived) minus E (expectation) (Bennett and Barkensjo, 2005).
Generally, many studies revealed that service quality is the customers’ perception on
quality (Parasuraman, 2000). Kilbourne et al. (2004, p.529) argued that service quality
becomes potential as a reliable measurement instrument. In the present study, service
quality is all services given by the institute to fullfil the learners’ satisfaction. The
construct of service quality is as follows:

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Table 1. The construct and indicator of questionnaire on of service quality.
Tangible (x1)Assurance (x4)a.
The class rooms are clean and tidy.
a.
The administration staffs areb.
The classes are comfort andpolite and kindly to the learners whenconvenient.
giving services.
c.
The learning equipment are available b.
The academic supervisors
in the class.
handle the learners’ problems.
d.
The toilets are available and clean.
c.
The counseling guidancee.
There is a Mushalla near the class.
lecturers help learners when needed.
f.
There are many referrence book ind.
All assignments given are
the faculty library.
returned to the learnersg.
Parking area are available in college. e.
The lecturers spend the timeh.
ATMs are available in the college.
effectively and efficiently in class.
i.
Sports area are available in thef.
The sanctions are given tocollege.
every learners who obey the collegej.
Internet connections are available inregulation.
the college.
Reliability (x2)a.
The lecturers explain the material
clearly.
b.
The lecurers give a question-answer
session during the classc.
The learning materials are given to
the learners.
d.
The lecturers give feedback to theassignment given.
e.
The lecturers come on time.
f.
The lecturers teach the material basedon their competence.
g.
The lecturers distribute the lessonplan and make a contract agreement with thelearners at the beginning of semester
program.

Empathy (x5)a.
The faculty is concerned withthe learners’ needs.
b.
The tuiton fee iscommunicated with the learners’
parents.
c.
The faculty monitor thelearners’ learning progress throughthe academic advisors.
d.
The lecturers are willingly tohelp the learners when having
academic problems.
e.
The lecturers are open andcooperative to the learnersf.
The faculty attempts tounderstand the learners’ interest andtalent.
g.
The faculty attempts tounderstand the learners’ need.

Responsiveness (x3)a.
The faculty provides couselingguidance to the learners.
b.
The faculty offers scholarship thepoor learners.
c.
The faculty gives academic aid tolearners when having academic problemsd.
The dean and staffs gives opportunity
for learners’ parents to consult.
e.
The faculty gives assurance aid to thelearners who get an accident.

Learners’ Satisfactiona.
Satisfaction on facilities andinstra structureb.
Satisfaction on academic andnon-academic servicesc.
Satisfaction to get information.
d.
Satisfactiononserviceassurance.
e.
Satisfaction to get attention
specificly.

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There are many researchers interesting to investaigate the service quality and learners’
satisfaction. For example, Yusoff et al, (2015) classified 12 variables that influencelearners’ satisfaction. Then, Douglas (2006) found that physical facilities ofuniversity do not give significant effect to learners’ satisfaction but it plays as key
factor of learners’ choice. Then, Kanan & Baker (2006) revealed that academic
programs make significant effect on learners’ satisfaction. Palacio, et al., (2002)
revealed that college image makes an important effect on learners’ satisfaction.
Hassan et al (2008) found that service quality measurement had a high correlation
with learners’ satisfaction. Nasser et al (2008) also revealed that learners having highknowledge on university rules and regulation, tend to obtain higher satisfaction.
Asaduzzaman et al (2013) found that there was a high relationship among all
dimensions with learners’ satisfaction. In addition, Sultan and Wong (2010) revealed
that the dimensions of dependability, assurance, unusual management and syllabus
gave facilititative effect on learners’ satisfaction. Annamderula and Bellamkonda(2012) indicated a high effect of teaching and course content, on the students
perception of service quality. Similarly, Tuan (2012) found that service quality on
administrative has high correlation with student’s satisfaction. Then, Andrea andBenjamin (2013) found that that students perceive accommodation as most urgent
factors of college area.
The present study differs from the above studies. This study has a self-developed
construct composed of five variables. In addition, this research concentrates on theinfluence of college’s service quality to the learners’ satisfaction in the context of
EFL classes in Central Kalimantan province. The data analyisis also differs. The data
were analysed using multiple linier regression, t test, F test and correlation. This
study applied a survey research design using documentation and questionnaire as
research instruments. It was an investigation of a sample to investigate the incidence
and distribution of variables (Ary, Lucy, Chris, and Asghar, 2010, p.651). The
documentation was used to gather the data about the learners’ characteristics; andquestionnaire was used to examine the learners’ satisfaction toward the quality service
provided by the college. The objective was to explore the influence of quality service
on learners’ satisfaction in university level in L2 Kalimantan learners. In the present
study, the SERVQUAL model was used. Finally, the study determined, which service
quality dimensions were most important to the students. The research question can bestated as follows: Do the variables of tangible (x1), reliability (x2), responsiveness(x3), assurance (x4), empathy (x5), gave effect simultaneously to the learners’
satisfaction. Of the five variables, which one has the highest influence on the learners’
satisfaction?
Research Framework
This study applied Parasuraman’s service quality. The dimensions included in thisvariable are tangible (x1), reliability (x2), responsiveness (x3), assurance (x4),empathy (x5), learners’ satisfaction (y). The framework of thinking as follows:

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Figure 1. Framework of thinking
Participants
The samples were the L2 learners at IAIN Palangka Raya. A total number of 173
questionnaires were distributed. This number represented the population about 325
learners.
Data Collection
The self-developed questionnaire consisted of some aspects to calculate the learners’
satisfaction on service quality provided by the college. This questionnaire covered 35
items represented five dimensions. To measure the learners’ satisfaction, a five-point
Likert scale was used. The collected data were analysed using multiple linier
regression, t test, F test and correlation with the help of SPSS program. The result of
Cronbach alpha was 0.84, on scale reliability indicating good internal consistency forthe 35-item.
Conclusion
Before testing the hypotheses, the assumption test for multiple linier regression
analysis, namely normality, linierity, multicolinierity, autocorrelation, andheterokedasticity, was ensured. The output of Kolmogorov Smirnoff indicated that thevalue of Asymp. Sig. (2-tailed) was 0.684. Since it was greater than 0.05, the data
were in normal distribution. The output indicated that the value of Deviation fromLinearity on satisfaction and (a) tangible was (0.000< 0.05; F 16. 486); (b) reliability
was 0.000< 0.05; F 20.808). It was said that there were no linierity among variables.
Then, the output of tolerance and VIF mutlicolineirity test indicated that the tolerance
value of variables: tangible (0.954> 0.10; VIF 1.048<10.00), reliability (0.890> 0.10;
VIF 1.124<10.00), responsiveness (0.870> 0.10; VIF 1.150<10.00), assurance(0.983> 0.10; VIF 1.017 <10.00), empathy (0.958> 0.10; VIF 1.044 <10.00). It wassaid that multicolinierity was not violated. Next, the output of heterokedasticity test
using Glejser test indicated that the sigficant value of tangible (0.001< 0.05; t value
3.338), reliability (0.000< 0.05; t value 6.205), responsiveness (0.000< 0.05; t value
5.765), assurance (0.001< 0.05; t value -3.8523.338), (0.983> 0.10; VIF 1.017<10.00), empathy (0.046< 0.05; t value 2.007). Then, the output indicated that thevalue of Durbin Watson was 1.894 (5; 173)> du 1.8114. it was said that
autocorrelation was not vilolated.

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Testing hypothesis
To respond the sixth research questions, the multiple linier regression analysis wasapplied. The study measured whether the five independent variables in this study
gave facilitative effect simultaneously to the learners’ satisfaction, as shown in Table
2.

The table showed that the R value of 0.675 and an R-square value of 0.455. The Rsquare value showed how well a model fitted the data. It showed that the fivevariables gave 45.50 % of college satisfaction. It meant that the relationship of bothvariables was statistically significant, which was also explained in Table 3 (F=27.880, the p value was 0.00), as shown below.

Partially, The significant efect of each variable on the learners’ satisfaction was
explained below:
a. The tangible variable gives facilitative effect on the learners’ satisfaction.
The output indicated that the t value of Tangible was higher than t table (3.338>
1.973) and p-value< 0.05 (0.001<0.05). It meant that ho stating that there was no
significant efect of tangible variable on the learners’ satisfaction was rejected; and hastating that there was a significant efect of tangible variable on the learners’
satisfaction was accepted. It meant that at the signicant level of 0.5%, the tangible
variable gave facilitative effect to the learners’ satisfaction (see Table 4 for moredetail).

Model
1 (Constant)
Tangible (X1)
Reliability (X2Responsiveness(X3)
Assurance (X4)
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Table 4. Coefficientsa
UnstandardizedStandardized
Coefficients
Coefficients
B
Std. Error Beta
27.792
9.481
.177
.053
.195
.330
.053
.376

t
2.931
3.338
6.205

Sig.
.004
.001
.000

.277

.048

.353

5.765

.000

-.191
.093

.050
.046

-.222
.117

-3.852
2.007

.000
.046

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The reliability variable gives facilitative effect on the learners’ satisfaction.

The output indicated that the t value of Reliability was higher than t table (6.205>
1.973) and p-value< 0.05 (0.000<0.05). It meant that ho stating that there was no
significant efect of Reliability variable on the learners’ satisfaction was rejected; andha stating that there was a significant efect of Reliability variable on the learners’
satisfaction was accepted. It meant that at the signicant level of 0.5%, reliability
variable gave facilitative effect to the learners’ satisfaction as shown in Table 4.
c.

The Responsiveness variable gives facilitative effect on the learners’ satisfaction.

The output indicated that the t value of Responsiveness was higher than t table(5.765> 1.973) and p-value< 0.05 (0.000<0.05). It meant that ho stating that there wasno significant efect of Responsiveness variable on the learners’ satisfaction was
rejected; and ha stating that there was a significant efect of Responsiveness variable
on the learners’ satisfaction was accepted. It meant that at the signicant level of 0.5%,
responsiveness variable gave facilitative effect to the learners’ satisfaction (see Table
4 for more detail).
d.

The Assurance variable gives facilitative effect on the learners’ satisfaction.

The output indicated that the t value of Assurance was higher than t table (3.852>
1.973) and p-value< 0.05 (0.000<0.05). It meant that ho stating that there was no
significant efect of Assurance variable on the learners’ satisfaction was rejected; andha stating that there was a significant efect of Assurance variable on the learners’
satisfaction was accepted. It meant that at the signicant level of 0.5%, Assurance
variable gave facilitative effect to the learners’ satisfaction (see Table 4 for moredetail).
e.

The Empathy variable gives facilitative effect on the learners’ satisfaction.

The output indicated that the t value of Empathy was higher than t table (2.007>
1.973) and p-value< 0.05 (0.046<0.050). It meant that ho stating that there was no
significant efect of Empathy variable on the learners’ satisfaction was rejected; andha stating that there was a significant efect of Empathy variable on the learners’
satisfaction was accepted. It meant that at the signicant level of 0.5%, Empathy
variable gave facilitative effect to the learners’ satisfaction (see Table 4 for moredetail).
f. There is no interaction effect among variables of Tangible (X1), Reliability (X2),
Responsiveness (X3), Assurance (X4), and Empathy (X5) on the learners’
satisfaction.
The output of Anova Table indicated that the F value was higher than F table (27.880> 2.27) and p-value< 0.05 (0.000<0.050). It meant that ho stating that there was nointeraction effect among variables on the learners’ satisfaction was rejected; and hastating that there was an interaction effect among variables on the learners’
satisfaction was accepted (see Table 2 for more detail). The table showed the value of
determinant coefficient or the influence of Empathy (X5), Assurance (X4), Tangible(X1), Responsiveness (X3), Reliability (X2) correlated simultaneously to the learners’

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satisfaction (See Table 9 for detail). The R square was 0.455 or 45.50%. It ,meant that
Empathy (X5), Assurance (X4), Tangible (X1), Responsiveness (X3), Reliability (X2)
gave effect simultaneously to the learners’ satisfaction as 45.50%. The rest (50.50%)
was influenced by other variables out of the study. To see the contribution of eachvariable, it was explained in Table 5.
Variable

Table 5. Table summary
Regression
Coefficient R
coefficientcorrelation squre

Constant
Tangible (x1)
Reliability (x2)
Responsiveness (x3)Assurance (x4)Empathy (x5)27.792
0.177
0.330
0.277
-0.191
0.093

0.126
0.511
0.465
-0,2830.99

0.455

Contributionof eachvariable
02.23%
16.86%
12.88%
05.40%
09.20%
46.57%A regression analyses was performed to measure the effect of the five SERVQUAL
dimensions to the learners’ satisfaction. The summary table (Table 10) showed that
reliablity and responsiveness were the most predictors of learners’ satisfaction. The
output showed that the effective contribution of each variable was Tangible (x1)02.23%, Reliability (x2) 16.86%, Responsiveness (x3) 12.88%, Assurance (x4)05.40%, and Empathy (x5) 09.20% on the learners’ satisfaction. Therefore, it was said
that reliability was the highest variable to give effect on the learners’ satisfaction
about 16.86%. The total effective contribution was 45.50%. It was concluded that
overall service quality gave facilitative effect to the learners’ satisfaction. The
regression coefficient was 0.675 and overall service quality gave 45.50% of learners’
satisfaction. In addition, F- value for the relationship between service quality andlearners’ satisfaction was (p < 0.000).
Discussion
The findings confirmed that: (a) the variables of tangible, reliability, assurance,
resopnsiveness, and empathy gave effect simultaneously to the learners’ satisfaction(F= 27.880, p= 0.000) at the 5% siginificant level. (b) Partially, each variable gave
contribution to the learners’ satisfaction as follows: tangible (x1), 02.23% reliability(x2) 16.86%. responsiveness (x3) 12.88%, assurance (x4), 05.40% empathy (x5),
09.20%. (c) The most influential contributed to the satisfcation was reliability,
followed by responsiveness, empathy, assurance and tangible. The finding was inaccordance with Mai (2015), Douglas et al. (2006), and Gibson (2005). The finding
was in accordance with that by Mariani et al. (2015) Hanssen and Solvoll (2015),
Nasser et al. (2008), and Kusumandari (2006). The finding was also in accordancewith Hassan et al (2008), Sabarun (2020), Asaduzzaman et al (2013), and Sultan andWong (2010). In contrast, the finding was not in accordance with Zeithaml et al.
(2012).

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Recommendation
The study measured the learners’ satisfaction on quality service provided by IAIN
Palangka Raya. The dimensions of the learners’ satisfaction were tangible, assurance,
responsiveness, reliability, and empathy. The finding confirmed that the learners weresatisfied by the college services. This finding could be a consideration to identify
areas of strength and weakness of quality service provided by the college. The finding
related to the learners’ satisfaction could also help college leaders in providing
service to the learners. Despite the fact that the findings contributed to knowledge,
the study had some restrictions. There were four limitations to this study. First, thesample was small and limited to only 173 L2 learners majoring English Education
Study Program. This limitation must be considered when generalizing the finding.
Therefore, the future researcher was recommended to have more sample size.
Second, the questionnaire of the study (SERVQUAL) includes only perception scale
not involving expectation one. The future researchers should consider the expectationand perception sections. Other researchers were advisable to conduct the similar
studies in other colleges to validate this findings. The further researches with wider
samples would be useful to validate this findings. Third, the study focused only on
service quality. For future rsearchers, there might be other factors influencing
learners’ satisfaction such as gender, cultural difference among learners, and otherresearch model to have depth insights. Fourth, as this study only used the service
quality model, there were other variables such as, learning atmosphere, curriculum
design, acrreditation, international cooperation and so forth that were not included in
the study.
Acknowledgments
The researchers expresses great thanks to the rector of IAIN Palangka Raya for
publishing this manuscript in international reputed journal. The appreciation is also
addressed to the academician contributing valuable works to complete thismanuscript.

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Cognitive Representation of Social Identity of Collectivist and Individualistic
Oriented Primary School Students
Alla Gudzovskaya, Institute for Research on Social Phenomena, Russia
Michail Goryachev, Institute for Research on Social Phenomena, Russia
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Abstract
Collectivistic and individualistic cognitive orientations are considered as a result of
the influence of the factors that led to their development on the one hand, and, on theother hand, as a mechanism of their carriers' perception and understanding of theworld. The objective of the empirical study was to identify the cognitive
representation of identification features of primary school children who have acollectivistic (CO) or individualistic (IO) orientation.The study involved 54 examined
Russian children aged 9-10 years, 63.0% of them were identified with a collectivisticorientation, the rest ones – with an IO (individualistic orientation). To assess
identification features a content analysis of the narrative "I am a person" was used. IO
children use a significantly greater number of words in the narrative. The value isbased on a greater frequency of verb forms, indications of desires and preferences.
The category of еvaluation is used by 90% of the IO group, and 29.4% by the СOgroup. The data are consistent with the studies on emphasizing differences inindividualistic cultures and on smoothing contradictions in collectivistic ones.The useof components of social identity in the narratives – family, age, friends, territory –occurs approximately at the same rate in both groups (64.7% of СO, 60% of IO).
Significant differences were noted in the "I am a person" identity (63.6%, 36.4%).
Such level of in-group requires a shaped ability to generalize in social space and canbe considered as a sign of a higher level of social identity development.
Keywords: Identity, Collectivistic, Individualistic Orientation, In-Group, Primary
School Children, Social Identity

iafor
The International Academic Forumwww.iafor.org

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1. Introduction
Ideas about the structure of identity are based on the distinction between a
psychological sense of continuity (synonyms: "I", selfity, ego-identity), a set ofindividual personality traits (personal or personal identity) and a set of social roles
that a person learns when becoming a member of certain social groups (social
identity).
With the development of cognitive psychology, identity begins to be seen as a resultof self-reflection, as a cognitive representation of self-categorization (Tajfel et al.,1971). Self-categorization is understood through the perception of one's own
belonging to a significant category of the social world. The content structure of social
identity is formed as a result of categorization as the cognitive grouping of oneself
with a certain class of identical objects and allows people to navigate in the socialworld, distinguishing between members of an ingroup and outgroup (Turner, 2010;
Twuyver et al., 1995). Social identity is defined as "that part of an individual's selfesteem that results from an individual's awareness of belonging to one (or more)social group, as well as an emotional attitude towards that belonging" (Tajfel et al.,1971).
The tendency of a person to focus on their own interests or the interests of an ingroupis defined by the concepts of "individualism"and " collectivism". In individualism, thelevel of personal identity dominates; in collectivism, the leading components in theidentity configuration are its social components. The criterion of individualism by G.
Hofstede (1980), the creator of the typology of cultural dimensions, is included in thelist of six main criteria for evaluating cultures along with distancing from power,
masculinity, avoidance of uncertainty, strategic thinking, and the assumption of
freedom (Hofstede, 1980). Individualism is expressed in the attraction to personalgoals, to the protection of private interests, in interpersonal relationships that arealmost free from obligations to act together, in the awareness of oneself as a separate
subject (Hofstede, 1980). In addition, individualism manifests itself in the fact thatrights are valued above duties, life is built with an emphasis on personal autonomy
and self-realization, as well as the foundation of one's identity on personal
achievements.
Collectivism is opposite to individualistic orientation-on cohesion, on unity, onawareness of group subjectivity, the experience of a sense of "we", on responsibility
for maintaining group norms, achieving group goals. Individualistic / collectivistic
cognitive orientation is manifested in ways of solving mental, creative and behavioral
problems (Markus et al., 1991).
Collectivistic and individualistic cognitive orientations are considered, on the one
hand, as a result of the influence of factors caused their development, and on the other
hand, as a mechanism for perception and understanding of the world by their owner(Nisbett, 2001). A. P. Fiske, S. Kitayama, H. R. Markus, R. E. Nisbett, and G.
Hofstede discover relationships between styles of cognitive processes and features ofsocial categorization in different cultures. Thus, Westerners who live in the "cultureof independence" are individualistically oriented (personal identity prevails oversocial identity). In Asia, with its "culture of interdependence", the inhabitants arecollectivistically oriented and have a predominant social identity (Fiske et al., 1998).

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In individualistic cultures the selfity is defined as an independent unit that can survive
outside the group (Schwartz, 1990).
In alternative cultures the selfity is defined in terms of group membership, social
identity is more important than personal identity (Triandis, 1994). In their empirical
study K. K. Dion, K. L. Dion found differences in the manifestations of romantic loveand the importance of emotional intimacy in marriage, depending on collectivism /individualism. In individualistic societies (Canada and the USA), romantic love ismore often as the basis for marriage, in contrast to countries with collectivist societies(China, India and Japan) (Dion et al., 1993). According to them, in individualistic
countries, psychological closeness in marriage is more important for family
satisfaction and personal well-being. However, although individualism encourages theappreciation of romantic love, certain aspects of individualism at the psychologicallevel make the development of intimacy problematic (Dion et al., 1993).
The correlation of the number of people with collectivistic / individualisticorientations is a distinctive feature of a particular culture (Norenzayan et al., 2007).
For example, for modern Americans being an individualist means being an American(Oyserman et al., 2002).
A meta-analysis of research of the impact of collectivism / individualism on selfesteem, well-being, the nature of cognitive processes, the value of personal
independence and a sense of duty to one's group, conducted in 2002 by D. Oyserman,
H. M. Coon, and M. Kemmelmeier, allowed them identify several patterns that were
sub-damaged by different authors. (Oyserman et al., 2002). As for self-esteem,
individualism means that: (a) creating and maintaining a positive self-awareness is abasic human effort; (b) well-being, personal success, and having many unique or
distinctive personal views and opinions are valuable (Oyserman, 2002; Triandis,1994); (c) abstract traits (opposed to social, situational descriptors) are central to selfdetermination (Fiske et al., 1998).
The basic element of collectivism is the assumption that groups connect and mutually
oblige individuals. According to S. H. Schwartz, collectivist societies arecharacterized by diffuse and mutual obligations and expectations based on attributed
statuses (Schwartz, 1990). In these societies, there are social units with a common
destiny, shared goals, and shared values; the personal is simply a component of thesocial (Triandis, 1994). Collectivism as a social way of life is focused on one's owngroups, which may include families, clans, ethnic, religious or other groups(Oyserman, 2002). A collectivist society is a diverse structure that unites culturally
separate focuses of different types and levels of reference groups (Triandis, 1994).
Thus, collectivism can refer to a broader range of values, attitudes and behaviors than
individualism. Collectivism as a personal trait implies that (a) group membership is acentral aspect of identity (Hofstede, 1980; Markus et al., 1991) and (b) valuable
personal qualities reflect the goals of collectivism, such as making sacrifices for thecommon good and maintaining harmonic relationships with loved people (Markus etal., 1991; Triandis, 1994; Oyserman, 2002). As for well-being and emotional
expression, collectivism implies that life satisfaction comes from successfully
fulfilling of social roles and obligations and avoiding failure in these areas (Markus etal., 1991). The relations corresponding to collectivism imply that the boundaries
between internal and external groups are stable, relatively impenetrable and

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important; intra-group exchanges are based on the principles of equality or evengenerosity (Triandis, 1994).
To what extent are the cognitive orientations of collectivism/individualism
represented at the age of 9-10? Are there differences in the identity characteristics ofchildren with different orientation? The aim of the empirical study was to identify theidentification features of younger students who make collectivistic or individualistic
choices.
2. Methodology
MethodThe Definition of cognitive self-esteem by A.V. Zakharov (subtest"Individualization") method was used to identify cognitive collectivistic /individualistic orientation. The subtest allows identify the child's preference to be
similar to others (collectivistic orientation, CO) or different from others (to be unique)(individualistic orientation, IO). Diagnostics is performed individually. According to
the instructions, in the "Individualization" subtest, the child is asked to consider adrawing with two rows of figures (Fig. 1.).

Figure 1: Methodology form
Each child was given a picture of circles. He/she was asked to imagine being one of
the lower circles and choose which one he/she was – left or right? The left circle
represented an actual desire to be like others (CO). The right circle represented an
actual desire to be different from others, unique (IO).
To diagnose identification features, the content analysis of the narrative story “I am ahuman” was used. (2) The child is asked to think and write what the expression "I amhuman" means to him. The time and volume of the text are not limited. The task wascompleted in groups of 5-7 people. More than 60 categories were developed forcontent analysis, and combined into 14 types.
Category type examples:•
activity (actions, interests, abilities, etc.)•
uniqueness (personal, communicative and intellectual qualities, behavioral
characteristics, knowledge, individuality)•
social identity (group membership) membership in different groups - close andwide

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In addition, a large number of words in the essay indicates the proximity of the topic
for the author and its thoughtfulness (Turusheva, 2014).
SampleThe study involved 54 students of the 3d grade of a secondary school. They are – 32boys and 22 girls. The average age is MX = 9.3±0.54.
3. Results
Almost two-thirds (62.9%) of the surveyed students preferred a figure similar to therest, which indicates a focus on inclusion in the group, collectivistic orientation (CO).
37.1% of third – graders preferred a shaded figure that differs from the restindividualistic orientation (IO). The same trend is observed in gender subgroups.
Figure 2 presents data on the preferences of boys and girls.

Figure 2: Effect of gender on preference of the shape
Both girls and boys in most cases prefer the left figure, symbolizing the current desire
to be similar to the group. Boys are more collectivist oriented (more than 14.3%) than
girls.
The average volume of narrative texts was MX = 30.1±16.9 words. The volume
consists of a greater frequency of verb forms of words that reflect the "Active Self" inpersonal identity (I will go to the English lesson today), desires (I want a cat),preferences (I really like to go in for gymnastics). The predominance of verbs inspeech in stories about yourself, mentioning specific actions and desires is more
typical for children aged 6-8 years. Along with growing up, they are replaced by moregeneralized characteristics (I go to school) (Burns, 1982).
Further analysis of the results is carried out in a comparative way. We considered theidentification features of collectivistic and individualistic oriented schoolchildren

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Officilal Conference Proceedings(table 1-2). In the IO group, narrative stories have a significantly larger volume(student's t-test). Individualistically oriented people talk about themselves more fully
and verbally.
Certain categories are used by children from different experimental groups inapproximately the same way. For example, verb forms that reflect the "Active Self" inidentity (IO 6,1, CO 4,8); personal identity reflected in desires and preferences (IO
0,8, CO 0,5).
Parameter, average
numberCollectivistically
Oriented

Individualistically
Oriented

P-value
Student's t-test

Mx

σ

Mx

σ

Words in the text:

25,5

10,1

37,7

14,4

0,017

- Verbal forms

4,8

2,9

6,1

2,5

0,187

- Desires andpreferences

0,5

0,8

0,8

1,1

0,555

- Assessment of others

0,3

0,4

1,6

0,8

0,000

Table 1. The parameters of narrative stories in IO and CO groups
The "Assessment of others" parameter differs significantly in groups.
Individualistically oriented students give ratings to others (people, phenomena) more
often than 5 times than collectivistically oriented students. The evaluation category
was used by 90% of IO children.
Third of 90% of IO children used the assessment category (I play football well. The
Emirates is a very beautiful country.) Only 29,4% of CO schoolchildren use the rating
category. These data are consistent with research by R. E. Nisbett, K. Ping, I. Choi,and A. Norenzayan on emphasizing differences in individualistic cultures andsmoothing out contradictions in collectivistic ones (2001).
We also consider the features of social identity in a comparative way (see Table 2).
The category Social identity was mentioned almost equally in both subgroups (64.7%
CO, 60% IO). Spontaneously named components of social identity in essays - family,
age group, circle of friends, territorial group. The presence of a large number ofidentity groups can be a criterion for successful socialization (Martsinkovskaya,2012).

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Parameter,
average number

Collectivistically
Oriented

Individualistically
Oriented

P-valueχ2 test,Social identity

64,7

60,0

0,466

Human identity

63,6

36,4

< 0,001

Other people, aperson in general

82,4

40,0

< 0,001

Educational sphere

23,5

30,0

0,263

Table 2. Percentage of people using social identity categories in IO and CO groups
Significant differences were noted in self-identification with the "I am a person"
community (63.6% KO, 36.4% IO). This level of the group requires a developedability to generalize in the social space, which is a sign of a higher development ofsocial identity. According to J. C. Turner, the level of universal identity is the highest,
along with the group components of identity and personal identity (Turner, 1985).
Experimental groups differ significantly in the number of people who mentioned
other people in their narrative stories, such as teachers, classmates, friends or people"in general". The data obtained coincide with studies conducted on adults by D.
Oyserman, H. M. Coon, and M. Kemmelmeier. Self-image in collectivist cultures
includes more group-related elements and an emphasis on values that promote wellbeing within the group. Individualistic cultures emphasize values that promotepersonal goals, uniqueness and personal control. (Oyserman et al., 2002).
4. Conclusion
CO and IO of children aged 9-10 is related to their identification characteristics. CO
and IO have their own advantages and limitations in the development of children's
personality.
Psychological and pedagogical assistance in the socialization of children should
include two directions: actualization of the desire to have something similar to otherrepresentatives of their in-groups; actualization of the desire to appreciate their own
uniqueness, to develop personal identity. The social identity "I am a human “ includes
these two directions.
The connection of collectivistic and individualistic cognitive orientations with thepeculiarities of social and personal identity in childhood, at the age of 9-10 years isrevealed.
The diagnostic technique of choosing the same or different figure based on an implicit
desire for similarity or difference from others reflects some identification features inprimary school age.
Social identity and the category "person" is relevant for the cognitive representationof the world around collectivistically oriented children.

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Officilal Conference ProceedingsChildren's age allows set tasks for planning psychological and pedagogical assistancefor children's social development. Collectivistic and individualistic orientations havetheir own advantages and limitations in the development of the child's personality.
Psychological and pedagogical assistance to the socialization of children should
include two directions: actualization of the desire to pay attention to the similarity
with other representatives of their group; actualization of the desire to appreciate theirown uniqueness, to develop the uniqueness of the individual. The universal identity "I
am a person" includes these two directions and can become a leading direction in thesocialization of children.
Acknowledgements
The reported study was funded by RFBR, project number 19-513-22010.

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References
Burns, R. B. (1982). Self-concept development and education Holt. Rhinehart &Winston, London.
Dion, K. K., & Dion, K. L. (1993). Individualistic and collectivistic perspectives ongender and the cultural context of love and intimacy. Journal of Social Issues, 49(3),53-69.
Fiske, A. P., Kitayama, S., Markus, H. R., & Nisbett, R. E. (1998). The cultural
matrix of social psychology.
Hofstede, G. (1980). Culture's consequences. Beverly Hills, Calif.
Markus, H. R., & Kitayama, S. (1991). Culture and the self: Implications forcognition, emotion, and motivation. Psychological Review, 98(2), 224–253.
https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.98.2.224
Martsinkovskaya, Т. D. (2012). Informational socialization in changing information
space. Psikhologicheskie Issledovaniya, 5(26), 7-7.
Nisbett, R. E., Peng, K., Choi, I., & Norenzayan, A. (2001). Culture and systems ofthought: holistic versus analytic cognition. Psychological review, 108(2), 291.
Norenzayan, A., Choi, I., & Peng, K. (2007). Perception and cognition.
Oyserman, D., Coon, H. M., & Kemmelmeier, M. (2002). Rethinking individualism
and collectivism: evaluation of theoretical assumptions and meta-analyses.
Psychological bulletin, 128(1), 3.
Schwartz, S. H. (1990). Individualism-collectivism: Critique and proposed
refinements. Journal of cross-cultural psychology, 21(2), 139-157.
Tajfel, H., Billig, M. G., Bundy, R. P., & Flament, C. (1971). Social categorizationand intergroup behaviour. European journal of social psychology, 1(2), 149-178.
Triandis, H. C. (1994). Culture and social behavior.
Turner, J. C. (2010). Social categorization and the self-concept: A social cognitive
theory of group behavior.
Turusheva, Y. B. (2014) Features of the narrative approach as a method of studying
identity. Psikhologicheskie Issledovaniya, 7(33), 6-6.
Twuyver, M., & Van Knippenberg, A. (1995). Social categorization as a function ofpriming. European journal of social psychology, 25(6), 695-701.
Contact email: aag_1@rambler.ru

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Teaching (and Learning) in the Time of Epidemics:
Reflection on Humanities Teaching in Higher Education
Amy Lee, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong
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Abstract
During the global Covid-19 situation, there was a general shutdown of daily
operations, including education. In Hong Kong, which was among the first locations
to be hit by the epidemic, face to face teaching stopped early in February 2020, which
was the beginning of the second semester of the academic year. The higher education
sector was the first to respond to the situation by shifting to online teaching
immediately, and finally extending to the end of the semester. The sudden shift to theeLearning mode posed a lot of challenges to both teaching and learning, including
feasibility and effectiveness. This presentation is a sharing of my professional practicein Hong Kong higher education during this second half of the academic year 20192020. Although it was generally felt that the humanities subjects encountered fewer
challenges shifting to the eLearning mode, the outcomes of this semester was a strong
reminder to us to review the current practice in teaching and learning, and to rethink
how to engage with the new generation of learners and new circumstances. It is hopedthat the presentation can share some observations about the challenges of e-learning,
and facilitate some new thinking about how to conduct eLearning in higher education,
more specifically relevant to the Hong Kong’s unique cultural environment.
Keywords: eLearning Feasibility, Humanities Teaching and Learning, Challenges toin-Class Interaction, International Exchange, Alternative Modes

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Introduction
What I am to share in this presentation is a reflection upon an on-going situation in
the higher education sector globally, the disruption of face-to-face teaching andlearning, and various responses to this disruption. My location is Hong Kong, whichshares similar inconveniences in many aspects of daily life such as restricted services
both public and private, and the social distancing required for public health purposes.
There are other factors which make Hong Kong unique in its experience of covid-19,
including the months of social unrest that started in June 2019, and the subsequentfeelings of vulnerability and isolation many young people felt since then. At the timeof my writing this paper, Hong Kong had more than 6000 confirmed cases of covid19 and over 100 deaths,1 people had been wearing masks for prevention everyday formonths, and social distancing policy had been in place for more than 10 months too.
Although public services and private business sectors are generally operating, daily
life does not look at all normal. Many of the usual entertainment and leisure activities
that citizens enjoy are either closed or restricted in opening hours and size ofattendance. Restaurants, a place for socializing while also providing daily sustenance,
had been hit hard by different phases of Social Gathering Ban issued by thegovernment – at the moment it is restricted to only 2-people gatherings and meals.2
Daily life continues, of course, in what some people referred to as the “new normal”
way. In higher education, our new normal takes the form of e-learning occupying
centre stage, with mixed-mode teaching and learning either as a transitional orcompensatory measure before full face-to-face teaching and learning can be safely
adopted again. In Hong Kong, eLearning was fully used in the universities to replace
face-to-face teaching since early February 2020 because of the outbreak of covid-19.
At the beginning of the new academic year in early September 2020, we were still
fully using the eLearning mode, and only at the end of September did my university
announced the adaptation of a mixed-mode teaching and learning. The more than 5months eLearning experience had inspired us educators to reflect a lot about the way
we used to teach, the way we designed assessment, and also the way we communicate
with our students. This paper, although made at a time when many parts of the world
are still in the throes of covid-19, is meant to be a reflective sharing of practice, in thehope that some positive thoughts can at least come out of the global pandemic.
Once Upon a Time, though Not That Long Ago
Hong Kong’s experience of covid-19 has its own unique story, and to understand theapproach and development of measures being used in higher education during thisperiod, one has to look back a few more months to the time before the outbreak. In

1

At the time of the ACE conference, which was end of October 2020, the total number of confirmed
cases in Hong Kong was just over 5000. By the time this paper was revised for the proceedings, it was
the beginning of December, and the 4th wave of covid-19 attach in Hong Kong. The number ofconfirmed cases had risen to over 6000. The numbers were announced by the Centre for Health
Number of cases according to Centre for Health Protection (CHP) of the Hong Kong Special
Administrative Region (HKSAR) Government.
2
At different stages of the 10-month long epidemic, the HKSAR government had announced different
measures in response to the seriousness of the covid-19 condition, and its impact on daily practices.
Social distancing, banning large crowd gatherings, and work-from-home arrangements had beenpracticed.

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mid-June the protest against the Extradition Bill3 became increasingly forceful, andfinally escalated to the point when roads in some areas were blocked and normaltransportation was simply impossible. When the academic year 2019-2020 started in
September, there were already talks of possible class boycott, and the University
advised us to be as accommodating as possible when students could not make it to theclasses. We began the first semester seeing most students in the classroom, but wealso made audio recordings of the lectures and shared them on the eLearning platform
for those who could not make it to the classes for various reasons. Disruptions tovarious aspects of life continued and escalated. Finally on 12 November 2019, ouruniversity announced the suspension of all face-to-face teaching and learning, andshifted to eLearning immediately until further notice. Students were asked not tocome to campus, although staff who could travel were still allowed to work on
campus. With that announcement, the semester concluded in eLearning in the final 3
weeks, the final examination was suspended and replaced by alternative forms of eassessment. I did not even have a chance to say goodbye to my students, before a few
of them left Hong Kong hurriedly back to their home countries.
Stepping into year 2020, different parts of the world had been thrown into confusion
one after another with the outbreak of covid-19. Our second semester started on 13
January 2020 (until 28 May 2020), and two weeks later on 26 January 2020 wecelebrated the Lunar New Year, followed by a week-long holiday. Just before theresumption of class after the holiday, the University announced the suspension of
face-to-face classes on campus, until further notice. The rest of the story, as we allknow, is still on-going. In Hong Kong, February to May were months of complete
lockdown in the sense that WFH was the official mode,4 schools across all levels wereclosed, even public examinations were postponed or cancelled,5 and the street was soquiet that it was like a dream. Beginning in June, life resumed a quasi-normal
appearance as we had maintained low number of cases during the months-long strictmeasures of containment. Early July saw a sudden surge of cases scattered over anumber of districts in Hong Kong – our Centre for Health Protection announced
officially that this was the most dangerous time since the beginning of the outbreakhalf a year ago – and this third-wave of outbreak lasted until the middle of August.6
Universities started their academic year as usual in early September 2020, but theteaching and learning mode was fully online for most programmes. The mixed mode3

Beginning in June 2019, there had been an Anti-Extradition Bill movement in HK. Protestors’ action
escalated to major disruptions of road traffic, and damages to some buildings. The scale of the
disruption was such that for a period of time schools and universities were closed, and special
arrangements for work had to be arranged with some employees. The protestors’ action continued into
the last months of 2019.
4
Work-from-home was practiced in most public sectors to avoid gathering of crowds and to lower therisk of infection. In our University, the administrative units also practiced WFH, and seeing that thealternative mode of working and learning might have an impact on the progress, the second semester
was extended for 4 weeks for academic programmes to complete the intended learning in alternativeways.
5
The Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education (HKDSE) which was the annual public
examination for university entrance, had been postponed for three weeks because the risk of infection
was still high during the original schedule.
6
Towards the middle of June, the daily confirmed cases had shown a decline, and the government
announced a loosening of anti-infectious measures at the end of June. At the beginning of July there
was a sudden upsurge of daily cases, which many people regarded as the direct result of the release of
preventive measures.

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teaching finally continued until the end of the semester in early December 2020
although there was a surge in number of confirmed cases – the 4th wave.
Looking back, teaching Humanities in an extended semester
Looking back, our experience of eLearning (replacing face-to-face classes) went
through several stages. In mid-November when the university suddenly announced
the suspension of face-to-face teaching, many of us were unprepared. One of the mostcommonly used methods then by academic colleagues was adding voice recordings to
the PowerPoint slides we used, and put the PowerPoint with voice recording onto oureLearning platform Moodle. I remembered colleagues sharing tips of how best topresent the lectures which are normally 2 hours long in our university. For those of us
using PowerPoint with voice recordings, there was no real-time interaction with ourstudents. We could only inform them that all the lectures were there, and invite themto ask questions by sending us emails, or make an appointment for real timeinteraction over the phone or other social media. The first phase of eLearning at theend of the first semester came about too suddenly for us to re-design the learning
experience according to the situation. Even the end-of-semester final examination
could not take place as usual, and we had to design an alternative assessment method– for us Humanities teachers, doing assessment online meant asking the students tosubmit a paper to the eLearning platform within a certain period.
The three weeks went by quickly, with us doing our best to cope with the situation, atthe same time hoping that the social conditions would allow for a gradual return tonormal so that teaching and learning in the second semester could be conducted in theway we were used to. As it turned out, we did start the semester normally, only to be
hit by the outbreak of covid-19. This time when the university announced that online
teaching and learning was to be fully implemented right after the Lunar New Yearholiday, we were more prepared psychologically as well as availability of tools wereconcerned. The Zoom platform quickly became the choice of many colleagues, andin-house training workshops were organized to prepare everyone for this move to thevirtual teaching and learning space completely. In hindsight, I think that the earlier
experience of sudden movement to eLearning had become a rehearsal of some kind.
We were still grappling with the features of Zoom at the beginning, but after thehurried implementation in the previous semester, we knew the most essential features
to learn, and how to monitor not just teaching but also students’ expectations, which
was a very important component of the learning experience.
Virtual Teaching and Learning: Humanities via Zoom
When the second time our university suspended face-to-face teaching, it was
beginning of February 2020. We had just completed two weeks of teaching – the firsttwo weeks were the “add/drop period” when students could still decide to remain in acourse they had already registered, or drop that and add another one that they foundmore appealing in their first two weeks of “course-shopping”. In that sense, the basic
preparation for the semester had been done, for all the course information andassessment requirements and so on were already explained and the class should be
relatively stable after that. I thought that the only problem would be adjustingteaching material and in-class exercise given that students were no longer sharing thesame physical space where I talked.

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Very soon, however, I encountered the first problem in relation to the travel ban inmany countries due to covid-19 outbreak. Every semester we have students going on
exchange – joining a university overseas for one semester or a year – but due to travel
restrictions and safety issues they could not start their journey in the foreseeable
future. In order to ensure that they would still be able to graduate as originallyplanned, they were encouraged to cancel their exchange registration and take courses
here at their home university together with the rest of the students.7 Thus I had anumber of students from various disciplines joining my course, which was a seniorlevel major required course with loads of reading materials, in the third and evenfourth week of the semester. These students had never met me, and had never taken
any course from our department, their main reason for joining was simply that thecourse title sounds general and inclusive enough to look creditable on their transcript.
Certainly I had had out-of-discipline students taking my courses in the past, but thelateness of their joining, and the circumstances of their “choice” made it very difficult
for me to feel connected to everyone in my class in the way that I used to feel when I
shared the same space with them.
The second difficulty had to do with the wifi connection, which was essential ifclasses were to be conducted according to the scheduled timeslots. At the time, mostof our non-local students had already gone home, and the smoothness of their wifi
connection varied. Some of our non-local students had a hard time getting connected,
and maintaining a stable connection through the duration of the classes which were
two hours normally. Some colleagues mentioned that it was impossible to show avideo clip in the middle of the lesson, either the sound and the image did not match,or the video came out in a staccato sequence with distorted sound. (Actually acolleague who taught interpretation said it was almost impossible to teach it via Zoom,
but it was not my own experience.) Many students who managed to logon at thescheduled time were reluctant to switch on the camera, for probably their domestic
setting was not ideal for individual members to engage in academic interaction while
the rest of the family were going about their daily business. For us the teachers too,
the ideal setting to conduct Zoom classes was our own office, with all the materials
handy, and the relatively stable University wifi network. Despite the government’s
encouragement that staff members should work from home, not everyone of us could
do that and still maintain a reasonable level of effectiveness.
In a time such as this, clear and accurate communication, together with someflexibility, is the most important approach to overcoming those difficulties mentioned.
Non-local students who had already gone home could still attend my classes via
Zoom, and local students who were stranded and had to cancel their overseas
exchange had to rely on the Moodle platform for getting course materials andinformation. Although we were advised to follow the original schedule to conductclasses via Zoom, I proposed to my students that I would pre-record all the lectures
every week, and put the recording on Moodle two days in advance of the schedule.
During the pre-scheduled lecture time, I would open the Zoom meeting room fortutorial discussion instead, and students were invited to ask any questions they had
about the content of the pre-recorded lecture, or the reference materials. This
7

Students intending to go on exchange had to make their application in December every year, nomatter whether they were going for one or two semesters. Those due to fly to their host university forthe spring semester had already made their preparations in 2018 December, and not being able to go
had completely unsettled their course planning, and in some cases graduation.

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arrangement ensured that everyone could access the full content materials, including
the non-local students, and that they had a chance to talk to me if they had questions.
From the results of the assignments, and the final take home examination, I believedthat it was an arrangement that maintained the quality of teaching and learning.
Students welcomed this too, as they did not need to worry about turning on or nottheir cameras.
Having pre-recorded materials put on Moodle also helped to alleviate possible
problems with wifi connection. In my course I had a number of films to be shown –instead of showing clips during the lecture, I found online sources for students so thatthey could see the movie in their own time before referring to the lectures. To mimic
the real-time in-class interaction as much as possible, I broke up the 2-hour lecture
into 20-minute sections, each one around one topic/focus. Therefore, instead of one
recording of a 2-hour lecture, I made 5 or 6 recordings each around one topic, but all
related to the main title of the lecture. It was similar to my lecture arrangement
because during face-to-face interactions, I had in-class activities every 20 minutes or
so to maintain student interest and attention. I believed it would be very difficult to
ask any student today to sit at home and listen to a pre-recorded lecture for 120
minutes. Having short sections helped them grasp the focus of each section, and also
made it easier for them to ask questions during the scheduled Zoom tutorials. In the
end-of-semester teaching evaluation, students mentioned this as something mosthelpful to their learning despite the fact that almost the entire semester was eLearning.
The assessment was perhaps the most surprising aspect (for me) of the learning in thisunusual semester. Normally I had three in-class quizzes, which contained direct shortquestions to test whether students had read the assigned text before coming to thelectures. Often half of the students came to the lectures without reading the materials
and failed these simple quizzes of facts. Because of the arrangement of having prerecorded lectures put on Moodle ahead of the actual schedule, I found that students
actually read the materials before accessing the quizzes that I put online, andcompleted them satisfactorily on time. Since the entire purpose of the quizzes was tomake sure that they prepared for class and read the materials, this online mode ofteaching actually achieved one of the intended learning outcomes better than the faceto-face teaching mode. The group oral presentation, which was another standard
assignment, had to be revised also because students no longer made the presentationin the same space. I asked them to prepare a detailed PowerPoint presentation with
explanatory notes, to replace the oral delivery. Again, from the work delivered over
the weeks, this teaching and learning mode actually encouraged the students toperform better, for various reasons.
The two biggest pieces of assignment were the individual Term Paper and the Final
Examination, which was usually a real-time event in the examination hall. Asking
students to submit their own term paper via Turnitin at Moodle was not very different
from the usual practice, and I was careful to give instructions about the topics andcontent, so that it was not easy to final ready-made essays online. The overall
performance of the students in the term paper had shown no significant difference
from that of previous years. The only compromise I made was the final examination –instead of giving them a choice, I set compulsory questions and required the students
to submit their work strictly within the timeframe I set. Most of the students submitted
on time and again the overall performance did not show major difference from that of

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the previous years. Having compulsory questions in the examination had never been
my practice, but to reduce the possibility of plagiarism I wished to contain the topic
areas, especially when students were given more time than the usual 2-hour written
examination they attend. This was not an ideal replacement, but it served the purposeof assessing students’ learning about those specific topics I included. Overall I foundthat acceptable.
Conclusion: And then …
At the time when this paper was written, we were in the throes of the 4th wave of theoutbreak, and the semester ended in mixed-mode teaching, which is also the reason
the ACE conference was held entirely online. International travel is still restricted,
and because of that in our university we had to ensure that overseas students could
continue their learning. Local students are welcomed to enter the campus again, we
conduct our teaching in the classrooms which are all equipped with audio-visual
recording facilities while non-local students or those who still do not feel safe enoughto return to campus can access the lecture via Zoom at the same time. For the time
being, we manage as best we can, although there are challenges about facing two
different audiences (one sharing the same physical space, and one on the other end of
the internet) at the same time. This mixed-mode interaction and related issues will be
the subject of another discussion that should take place sometime later as the covid-19
situation develops and hopefully resolves in time.
What I have shared in this paper is a reflection mainly on how higher education in
Hong Kong (with my own experience as an example) responded to the outbreak of
covid-19 in the early months of 2020. Daily life in our city had been disrupted formonths previous to the pandemic attack, and the psychological and emotional
conditions of young people (in fact of all people) were still to be calmed and healed.
Social distancing had meant reducing contact to an absolute minimum, which in manycases had deprived us of sources of emotional support such as our friends and evenprofessionals. From my position as a teacher in higher education in Hong Kong, thisexperience has encouraged me to rethink not only the academic side of myprofessional duties, such as how to convert my face-to-face teaching into a learning
experience that works in virtual reality, or to design assessment tools that can evaluate
how much students have learned via this new experience. Right from the beginning of
the covid-19 outbreak, when we could not meet our students on campus, the firstquestion had to do with taking care of their feelings – how to ensure that they stayemotionally calm and psychologically healthy enough to maintain goodcommunication with us. It is only when such a mutually trusting relationship has been
established right at the beginning that we can work together to create the most suitable
and reliable experience through such unusual experience.

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ReferenceCentre of Health Protection, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government
https://www.chp.gov.hk/tc/index.html
Contact email: amylee@hkbu.edu.hk

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Emergent Curriculum Practice in Malaysian Kindergarten
Masayu Dzainudin, Sultan Idris Education University, Malaysia
Faridah Yunus, National University of Malaysia, Malaysia
Hamidah Yamat, National University of Malaysia, Malaysia
Iylia Dayana Shamsudin, Sultan Idris Education University, Malaysia
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Abstract
The development of children's learning is stimulated through a learning environmentthat gives them the opportunity to explore. This article discusses the improvement ofchildren's learning process as it shifts from academic-oriented to emergent form oflearning. Improvements also include changes into the use of textbooks and materials
as child learning aids. Action research is applied to gain insights that help stimulate
the development of children's learning without drastically affecting the learning
environment. Naturalistic observation is the main source of data for analyzing. Everyobservation of children is recorded in the researcher’s observation notes. Children's
journal books are also used in analyzing the outcomes of children enhancement
before, during and after the improvement of their learning process. The findings arereported with narrative and visual analysis in the analysis table. The findings showthat improvements in the learning process of children gave them the opportunity tocreate and explore their learning more meaningfully in terms of active involvement,social interaction, self-confidence and the ability to voice the ideas and, opinions, allof which showed marked improvements.
Keywords: Emergent Curriculum, Project Work, Early Years

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Introduction
The initial learning experience is cumulative, and curriculum delivered during the firstseven years of life should help integrate a child’s holistic development domains(Bredekamp & Copple, 1997). Bredekamp's (2014) brain studies show that, earlychildhood learning experiences between 0 and 72 months are important for the growthof their holistic development. Fun teaching activities, creating challenges, promoting
responsibilities, diversifying ideas, and providing feedback can enhance the level oflearning of children in terms of cognitive, physical, emotional, and social
development (Bandura, 1997; Roger, 2011). Thus, early education is an opportunity
for children to become active and to develop creative and critical thinking in
exploring their learning environment (Mendoza & Katz, 2013).
Bredekamp (2014) also notes that the key to the effectiveness of Early Childhood
Education is based on a practiced approach to teaching and learning of children. The
learning environment is also important in the development of children's learningespecially the environment that enables active and positive interaction and gives
children the opportunity to explore spontaneous learning (Hedges, 2011). A study by
Li (2012) suggests the project work which is learning activity in the project approach
help children learn to understand their role and be independent during the learning
process. In addition, Li also stated that children can explore and build knowledge
when they seek information to meet the needs of learning. Besides, project work is a
designed to guide children experience experiences and heighten the senses throughevents and phenomena in their own environment (Katz, 1993; Katz & Chad, 2000;
Mendoza & Katz, 2013).
In addition, the process of learning through project work can shape children’s skills interms of cognitive aspects of analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. Activities involving
projects as proposed by Katz & Chard (2000) include collecting information fromdirect observations, interviews with related experts, experiments on topics of interest
to projects, collecting artefacts and visual presentation and verbal reports based on asa results of the study. Through such activities, children can apply their investigativeskills, record, and report on the results of their learning or ‘research’. Indirectly
children are actively involved in the process of learning through real phenomena intheir own environment. In fact, the emergent process also happens spontaneously.
The emergent curriculum is a curriculum based on the growing interest of children to
explore their early learning environment (McLachlan, Fleer, & Edwards, 2013;
Nxumalo, Vintimilla, & Nelson, 2018; Sunday & Conley, 2020). Throughout the
emergent learning process, active involvement and the interest of children areencouraged compared with academically oriented approaches. Boyer & Ruth (2006)
states that teaching has the 'emergent' nature that results through interaction withindividuals, tools, and reflections, where it acts as a topic and learning resource.
Schwartz & Copeland (2010) describes the concept of emergent curriculum as two
curriculum modules with an equality of curriculum goals. The difference between
each curriculum lies on the theoretical view on the development of early childhood
learning that determines the designs of a program. The skill-based, action-based andchild-centered curriculum approaches, haves a common goal (Goffin & Wilson,
2001), namely driving the interest of the children themselves for the development of
their learning progress (Schwartz & Copeland, 2010).

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The action-based curriculum module covers the development of socio-emotional,
cognitive, and physical development of children. The strength of this approach is tofostering children's learning through their own efforts (Schwartz & Copeland 2010).
Some action-based learning standards are outlined by Schwartz & Copeland (2010).
Among them is that when children choose their own interests, they gain knowledge
and improve their skills. Similarly, the knowledge of children and the use of academic
skills can be extended through a set of interrelated activities. A typical program of thiscurriculum module is Reggio Emilia's early childhood program and the Project
Approach (Edwards, Gandini, & Forman, 1993; Katz & Chard, 2000).
In this regard, the purpose of this study is to enhance the development of children's
holistic learning through emergent curriculum in a private kindergarten situated in
Bangi, Malaysia. In the early stage of the study, field kindergartens practiced
academic-oriented teaching and learning processes. This emphasizes the use of
textbooks and written exercises as the primary learning method of children. Thus, inthis study, emergent curriculum is used as in practice to reduce the gap between ofexisting teaching and learning processes with those that have incorporated recent
improved and innovative approaches. Therefore, the objectives are 1) observing theexisting practices (interaction, teaching and learning, aids); and 2) introduce projectwork in teaching and learning.
Methods
This study employed an action research to obtain findings that are opened formodifications and improvements to achieve the objectives of the study. Four phasesof the action cycle are adopted based on recommendation by MacNaughton & Hughes(2009). The four phases as follows:
Phase 1 - Understanding the learning process of children
Naturalistic observation is conducted in the kindergarten to understand the process ofteaching and learning of children and to see the child's response to the academicorientation practiced before performing improvements. Furthermore, naturalistic
observations form the basis of this study in making improvements according to thesuitability of the development of children's learning without highlighting the changes
that taking place. Children are the subject of a major study, so their emotions andbehaviors on changing learning processes need to be minimized in order for
emotional, mental, and social stability to be balanced in alignment with theimplementation of the changes made.
Phase 2 – Planning the improvements of learning process for children
To change from academic-oriented to emergent, project work is seen as appropriate
learning process for children. The emphasis on the use of textbooks and workbooks isalso gradually reduced, in favor of hands-on experience.

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Phase 3 - Implementation of changes
The implementation of emergent processes for children’s learning practice lasted forsix (6) months. Starting from January and ending in June 2016. Throughout the
improvement of learning process, the topic of project work gradually developed, andemerged based on children’s interest. The emergence of new topics is either from theplanned topic by the teacher or the children’s direct exploration of the learning
environment or spontaneously through peers and teacher interaction. Particularly,
children’s self-confidence in expressing ideas and views on learning process is
considered to form harmonious emergent processes.
Phase 4 – Reflection on intervention
Reflection helps in deepening understanding of the improvement of children’s
learning process. Researcher observation notes and children’s journal books are
critically reflected. To identify any improvements needed to enhance children’sholistic learning development. The reflection notes are then used to analyze thefinding of the study.
Participants
The children involved in the study were 5 years old, consisting of three boys and three
girls, all had different backgrounds. These children were labelled as C1, C2, C3, C4,
C5 and C6 to simplify the individual observation of changes in their learning
progress. Three boys (C1, C2, and C3) were children who had followed the process ofteaching and learning in the kindergarten since they were three years old. A girl (C4)
had been studying in the kindergarten since the age of four. Meanwhile, another girl(C5) had been studying at another kindergarten before enrolling in the current
kindergarten. Before enrolling to the current kindergarten in 2016, one girl (C6) was
under the care of family members at home and had never followed any form of formal
early education.
Analysis procedures
Naturalistic observation was the main procedure of this study. Observation notes are
sources of raw data recorded in writing. Children's journal books are also used as
references to be observing the learning changes that they had developed individually.
The data obtained is then reported in the form of table analysis (Table 1).
EthicsParents' consent had been requested to respect the rights of the guardians of thechildren. The consent letter was given before starting the first observation. All six
parents had given their consent on behalf of their children to be observed for the
purposes of this study. The children also were notified that their learning activities
will be observed throughout this study.

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Conclusion
The action research process is in the form of a cycle. Each phase is constantly
overlapping to seek a change in the socio-cultural context of the study which can
influence the research participants to change. The implementation of each phase isalso repeated, but the findings of this study are discussed in phases so that the
progress of the changes on children’s learning development can be seen in sequence.
Table 1 summarizes the whole process of naturalistic observations whereby emergent
processes were observed during the period of the study.
Phase 1 - Understanding the learning process of children
In the beginning of naturalistic observation, children were seen using workbooks
continuously. All children were only following instructions from the teacher about thelearning that needs to be done in the workbooks. At the beginning of the first minuteof the learning process, children were observed as being focused. A few minutes
later, children (C1 and C2) began to show movements like standing up and teasing
their peers (C3). One child (C6) also looked at the empty workbook, without moving
her hands to write, neither did she nor shows any interest in doing so. There were also
children (C4 and C5) who did not know how to write and needed the teacher’s help.
In the first month of observation, hands-on activities were rarely practiced.
Phase 2 – Planning the improvements of learning process for children
The planning for improvement is based on the observations and reflection in phase 1.
The learning process and children’s learning development were considered whenplanning for improvement. Children’s involvement, interest and dispositions towards
their own learning were also taken into consideration. Hence, project work waschosen as learning activity for children. The idea of project work is used as it
encompasses the four learning goals of the Project Approach (Katz & Chard, 2000).
The four learning goals are knowledge, skills, dispositions, and feelings. Each of thesegoals is intertwined in connecting the holistic development of children's learning.
Besides, the focus goals are also integrated between the academic (indirectly) andpractical (hands-on experience) practices. Thus, the project work is appropriate for
improving or changing the practice of the kindergarten from academic oriented toemergent.
Phase 3 - Implementation of change (Observe child reactions towards learning
process changes)
In the first month, textbooks and workbooks were still used as the main learning
process by children. Gradually academic- oriented practice was minimized in thesecond month, when project work kicks into place. The learning aids also improved,from workbooks to hands-on experiences through nature exploration, physicalobjects, and field trips. The active involvement of children in learning exploration
appears to occur throughout the process of improvement. Children were also seen
excited to explore the topic of project work for the whole learning session, generating
various and unexpected questions and answers. Among the topics were, ants, worms,
banana trees, soil, and wild grass. The topic started with an ant, then the children

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moved on to a new topic, to which they found connectivity with the previous topic.
This showed the development of emergent process in children’s learning.
Phase 4 – Reflection on intervention
The children provided positive responses and active involvement throughout theimplementation of the emergent learning process. They were also able to express theiropinions to understand the topic of the project work rather than before theimprovement. In fact, some (C1, C2 and C4) demonstrated self-reliance and selfesteem during project work activities. However, there were still some children who
needed time to adapt to the emergent learning process especially children C3, C5 andC6, who merely followed other peers as well as waiting for directions for the next
learning process. However, the changes and enhancement of children’s attitudes andinterests towards their learning process were flourishing much better than before theemergent implementation. However, there is still room for improvements that need to
be done to empower children’s holistic learning development.
Phases1

Objective ofobservation
Identify
children’s
learning
process

Learning
activity
Write andcount using
textbooks
andworkbooks

Children’s
reaction
Followingteacher’s
instruction
without question
Waiting forteacher’s
instruction fornext activity

2

Identify
children's
learning
interests

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Project work
- ants

Reflection

Analysis

The children are
not given theopportunity to
explore their own
learning
Encourage childcenteredactivities tostimulatelearning progress

Workbooks
discouragechildren’s
learning
interest
Child-centeredactivities need
to be practiced
shaping holistic
children's
learning
The learning
process needs
to be hands-on

Losing focus on
preparing
exercises in the
workbook
Making noiseand playing withpeers, until they
were told by theteacher tocomplete thegiven workbook
activity

The children's
attention span ofacademic activity
declines rapidly
Rigid learning
activities, making
the children
always look foropportunities toescape fromdoing works

Excited to seethat ants live inbottlesTrue examples
can appeal tochildren to
respondpositively

194

Learning
activities need
to attract
children’sinterest andencourage
exploration andinvestigation
Nature's
resources areteaching aidsthat stimulate
the formationof children's
learning

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Looking at
the child's
response to
the emergent
learning
process

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Start searchingfor ants in theclassroom
environment

Children are
given theopportunity to
explore learning

Tracked the pathof the ants, andasked questions
about habitat ofants

Lots of questions
and curiosity ofchildren,harmonize theirlearning process

Asked teacher's
permission to
explore aboutants

The opportunity
for children toplan theirlearning topics is
supported byteachers

Voluntarily
telling stories
about ants foundoutside thekindergarten

Encouragechildren to begin
their learning
process

Kindergarten Looked for ants,
playgroundfound threedifferent typesof ants - red
ants, small ants,
and big ants
Project work Comparing the- types oftypes of ants
ants
found by peers

Emergent
processes occur
when children
identify various
types of ant

Project work
- antsAsked fellow
peers about the
food eaten by

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processes
Positivelearning
environment isimportant tosupportemergent
processes
Children's
curiosity makes
the learning
process moremeaningful andinterestingChildren's
interests can be
an interestinglearning topic
and enhance
theirconcentration
during thelearning
process
Encouragement
and support,
empoweringchildren's
interest tocontinue
exploring theirlearning
The emergent
process occurs
spontaneously,as children
explore a new
discoveryThedevelopment oflearning occurs
spontaneously,
in integrated
and holisticmanner

Sharing resultswith peers canimprove thesocialdevelopment –child’sinteraction andcuriosity
Interaction
Emergent
between peers led learning
to emergent
process occurs

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ants

Phase
4

Objective ofobservation
Changes in
the learning
process ofthe children
are taking
place

processes andnew learning
topics which thechildrendeveloped
without
consciously
doing soBefore the change

in everyinteraction,
exploration,and search of
information by
the child
himself

During the change

The use of workbooks isemphasized as a learning
process for the children
The opportunity for the children
to express ideas and opinions islimitedThe children only follow the
topic of learning set by theteacher
A learning topic for a given
learning time

Use of workbooks is reduced andthe children are more interested inlearning
The children are more active andconfident in suggesting their own
learning process
The children have the freedom toform their learning topics based on
their dispositions and interests
Hands-on activity gives thechildren the opportunity to explore
as many learning topics as theywanted toTable 1. Summary of naturalistic observations on child’s responses during theimprovement of the learning process from academic orientation to emergent
according to the phase of action research
Discussion
The focus was the implementation of emergent learning processes, driving children toplan and explore their own learning although at first, the children did not say
explicitly that they wanted to explore in detail. However, children’s curiosity of manyquestions led them to explorative learning, exploration without they themselves
realizing it. In addition, children could work together with their peers in harmony
through the process of discussion and investigation. Emergent process also happened
when children brainstormed their ideas among themselves as well as when performing
their own observation towards their learning environment.
Children’s interest and active involvement towards their own learning process also
increased. The change result from the implementation of emergent teaching andlearning processes, which is not rigid in determining the teaching process and learning
outcomes. In fact, the process of teaching and learning experienced by children is theresult of their learning achievements, rather than the emphasis of giving grades A, B
or C that determines the ability and excellence of children's learning development.
Most important is children’s disposition to explore during their learning, that will
determine the excellence of their holistic learning progress.
Based on the findings of naturalistic observations, the improvement of teaching andlearning process from academic-oriented to emergent could stimulate children’s

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interest to learn. Researchers are convinced that with the ongoing implementation of
the emergent learning process in this kindergarten, children’s intellectual and social
dispositions can be enhanced. Besides, holistic development also can be enrichedwithout emphasizing on academic oriented methods solely. The development ofholistic learning is not a skill that can be achieved in a short time. Through theappropriate practice of project work towards the improvement of children’s learningof this study, researchers believe that these children can achieve a better level ofholistic learning progression as they grow older.
Summary
Early Childhood Education is a foundation to any level of education. Therefore, theteaching and learning process should encourage and stimulate the active involvementof children. In the early stages of education, children need to be exposed toknowledge that includes exploration, investigation, inquiry, and explanation skills.
The findings show that exposure to all these skills can be learned through the
emergent teaching and learning process. An opportunity for children to be actively
involved in planning, developing, and creating their own uniqueness of learning
process is thereby made available. The improvement made in the kindergarten is also
an attempt to change the general perception in which children must learn to read,
write, and calculate using textbooks and workbooks solely. However, these skills andabilities can be trained easily through emergent learning processes such as
exploration, investigation, and hands-on experiences. Thus, the process of emergent
teaching and learning is seen to be enhancing to the stimulation and development ofchildren's learning as a whole.

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References
Bandura, A. (1997). Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control. Worth Publishers.
Boyer, L., & Roth, W.-M. (2006). Learning and Teaching as Emergent Features ofInformal Settings: An ethnographic study in an environmental action group. Science
Education, 1028-1049.
Bredekamp, S. (2014). Effective Practices in Early Childhood Education: Building aFoundation (2 ed.). USA: Pearson Education.
Bredekamp, S., & Copple, C. (1997). Developmentally Appropriate Practice in earlychildhood programs. Washington DC: National Association for the Education ofYoung Children.
Edwards, Carolyn; Gandini, Lella and Forman, George. (1993). The Hundred
Languages of Children: The Reggio Emilia Approach to Early Childhood Education.
USA: Ablex Publishing Corporation.
Goffin, S., & Wilson, C. (2001). Curriculum models in early childhood education:
Appraising the relationship (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall
Publisher.
Hedges, H. (2011). Connecting 'Snippets of Knowledge': Teachers' understandings ofconcept of working theories. Early Years: An International Journal of Research andPractice, 31(3), 217-284.
Katz, L. (1993). What can we learn from Reggio Emilia? In the Hundred Languagesof Children (pp. 19-37). New Jersey: Ablex Publishing Corporation.
Katz, L. G., & Chard, S. C. (2000). Engaging Children's Minds: The Project
Approach (2nd ed.). Stamford: CT Ablex.
Li, Y.-l. (2010). The negotiated project-based learning: understanding the views andpractice kindergarten teachers about the implementation of projecct learning in HongKong. Education, 40(5), 473-486.
MacNaughton, G., & Williams, G. (2009). Teaching Young Children: Choices in
Theory and Practice. Berkshire: Open University Press.
McLachlan, C., Fleer, M., & Edwards, S. (2013). Early Childhood Curriculum:
Planning, assessment and implementation (2nd ed.). Singapore: Cambridge
University Press.
Mendoza, J. A., & Katz, L. G. (2013). Nature Education and the Project Approach. In
D. R. Meier, & S. Sisk-Hilton (Eds.), Nature Education with Young Children:
Integrating Inquiry and Practice (pp. 153-171). New York: Routledge.

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Nxumalo, F., Vintimill, D, C., & Nelson, N. (2018). Pedagogical gatherings in earlychildhood education: Mapping interferences in emergent curriculum. Curriculum
inquiry, 48(4), 433-453. DOI: 10.1080/03626784.2018.1522930
Rogers, S. (2011). Play and Pedagogy: A conflict of interests? In S. Roger, Rethinking
Play and Pedagogy in Early Childhood Education (pp. 5-18). Abingdon: Routledge.
Schwartz, S. L., & Copeland, S. M. (2010). Connecting Emergent Curriculum andStandards in the Early Childhood Classroom: Strengthening content and teachingpractice. New York: Teachers College Press.
Sunday, K., & Conley, K. (2020). Drawing at the center of an emergent preschool
curriculum. Art education, 73(6), 18-23. DOI:10.1080/00043125.2020.1785794
Contact email: masayu@fpm.upsi.edu.my

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A Study to Investigation the Role of Universities to Promote the Entrepreneurial
Culture in Pakistan
Huma Kausar, International Islamic University Islamabad, Pakistan
Anjum Naz, University of the Punjab, Pakistan
The Asian Conference on Education 2020
Official Conference Proceedings
Abstract
Higher educational institutes are playing an effective role to encourage entrepreneurial
activities by developing entrepreneurial attitudes and capabilities among students. The
purpose of the current study was to identify the role of universities to promote theentrepreneurial culture among students. A quantitative inquiry was planned tounderstand the roles and responsibilities of universities to enable the students to beentrepreneurs. Survey technique was used to collect the data. Purposive samplingtechnique was applied to draw the sample from the targeted population i.e. final
semester students of Master and Bs (Hons) programs from the faculties of management
sciences and social sciences of Sargodha University. A questionnaire was developed
and distributed among 300 participants of the survey. Data was coded and analyzed byusing statistical techniques e.g. frequencies, mean, and standard deviation were applied
to analyze the descriptive data while the Pearson correlation test was applied to
calculate the inter-factors relationship. It was found that there is an insignificant
relationship between the role of University and students’ attitudes to embrace
entrepreneurship, whereas a moderate positive correlation was found between thecontent of management and students' entrepreneurial intentions. Keeping in view thefindings of the study, researcher suggested that there is a dire need that universities
should pay more intention to conduct entrepreneurial activities to develop theentrepreneurial attitude to start new ventures. Further, it was suggested that universities
should teach entrepreneurship as a separate subject in non-business sciences to develop
entrepreneurial attitudes and capabilities among their students to encourage theentrepreneurial culture in Pakistan.
Keywords: Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurial Activities, Entrepreneurial Attitudes,
Entrepreneurial Capabilities, Entrepreneurial Culture, Students, Universities

iafor
The International Academic Forumwww.iafor.org

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Introduction
The new trends of globalization and the emergence of a knowledge-based economy
have forced attention towards entrepreneurship. Many studies argue that
entrepreneurship improves economic growth through productivity and economic
competitiveness with advanced technology and economic liberalization (Drucker,
1985; Acs, 2006. Progressively, entrepreneurship emerged as one of the mostwidespread research realms in the academic world to study the contribution andsignificance of entrepreneurship (Lee & Chang et al. 2005). More researches onentrepreneurship are mainly focused at higher education level. Entrepreneurshipcourses are also attracted (at higher education level) colleges and universities (Brown,1999). Entrepreneurship has the potential to generate employment opportunities
through starting up new ventures; utilization of the available resources to increase theeconomy and national GDP, this initiative makes it possible to overcome the relianceon social welfare programs (Acs, 2006). Hence education plays a vital role in thedevelopment of entrepreneurial culture and equips students with advanced skills and an
adaptive mindset to embrace entrepreneurship. Education and entrepreneurial successprobably depended on undetected variables such as the ability of oversight which leads
to unfair approximations of revenues. Thus, many universities and colleges around theworld are responded to fulfill this demand by offering entrepreneurial courses topromote entrepreneurship as a professional career (Postigo & Tamborini, 2002). The‘‘major purpose of entrepreneurship education at higher education level is to develop
entrepreneurial capabilities and mindsets among students’’ and it is suggested toemerge entrepreneurship additional fully into university curricula (European
Commission, 2008).
Literature Review
Volkmann (2009) reported that universities also play an important role in hitchingendowments of students, graduates, and researchers. Universities can be seen as
scientific & technical invention engines and major contributors to transmuting
technological development and invention into innovation. University is considered as asocial innovation system when entrepreneurship education involved in such system as
the result it produces more capable entrepreneurs, not just creates job opportunities forindividuals but also reinforces and facilitate to birth and development of businesses associal mechanisms (Petridou, Sarri, & Kyrgidou, 2009). It has recognized andaccredited that higher education is needed to equip the graduates better. However, abroad range of skills is required to fulfill this requirement, while it is considered that
self-employment is increasing among university graduates. Also, graduates are creating
job opportunities in the market (Carey & Naudin, 2006).
Utmost researches are focused on entrepreneurship at graduation level (Raposo,
Ferreira, Paco, & Rodrigues, 2008; Sanchez, 2013) as well at secondary school level(Paco, Ferreira, Rodrigues, & Dinis, 2008; Rodrigues, Dinis, Paco, Raposo, & Ferreira,2011). The economic development of a country is connected with productivity; several
studies have argued that entrepreneurship improves economic growth throughproductivity. Therefore, entrepreneurship education is pivotal for the development ofentrepreneurial skills, mindsets, and behaviors. At the university level, the promotionof entrepreneurship is a useful and valuable career prospect for graduates. Also, it has
a positive impact on students’ attitudes towards entrepreneurship by giving

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entrepreneurship education (Galloway & Brown, 2002). Apart from this, universities as
an entrepreneurial nucleus play an important role in connecting students, researchers,
business enterprises, and other stakeholders.
The main objectives of entrepreneurship education are 1) to change student's behaviors
and intentions, in like manners, 2) to enable them to understand the concept ofentrepreneurship. Furthermore, it encourages students to become entrepreneurial and to
become entrepreneurs, as the result it pursues the formation of new business enterprises,
also creates new job opportunities in the market (Fayolle & Gailly, 2005). In the samemanner, entrepreneurship education also plays a major role to develop entrepreneurial
traits among students (Jesselyn & Mitchell, 2006).
Entrepreneurship education educates the students about drawbacks and risks to keep
the crises away from them, as they can alleviate the feelings of trepidation ofdisappointment of potential entrepreneurs, while the courses of entrepreneurship inuniversities can prepare the individuals with a tremendous commitment to beentrepreneur i.e. by starting a new business enterprise. Entrepreneurship as aphenomenon enables students to make a complete understanding of it and without any
doubt turn out to be more skillful partners at any level in entrepreneurship i.e.
employees, investors, and managers, or entrepreneurs (Maranville, 1992).
In numerous parts of the world, entrepreneurship has engaged to discover scholarly
authenticity. So, entrepreneurship should not only be seen as a part of Business
Management or part of an interdisciplinary field, it ought to be standing separately as a
subject. Thus, the university should need to nurture the individuals as active
entrepreneurs by giving them assignments, by arranging entrepreneurs gathering,external lectures, and workshops. In this way, instructors should also ready to modify
the mindsets of students who can successfully show their business aptitudes and create
imaginative reasoning in their research work. Likewise, it would be great and well tohave visitor teachers and visitor speakers to offer a measure of association withentrepreneurial specialists, while this isn't generally enough yet. The content of thecourse should have a focus on the skills and knowledge which an entrepreneur will needto succeed (Zeng & Honig, 2016). The support of higher education institutions towards
entrepreneurship creates an environmental awareness about entrepreneurship and its
aspects. In this new century, business is evolving, and learning to engage the individuals
in society with long-lasting earning (Drucker, 1995). Besides, entrepreneurship helps
society to become self-managing and provides huge potential, in the same way, it also
furnishes people with career choices (Scott, 2003). Thus, it amplifies the capabilities
among individuals and empowers them with a feeling of interest and inspiration,
whereas they ought to wind up alarm and mindful about opportunities, whereas teachingshould encourage students’ attitudes towards entrepreneurship (Kirzner, 2009).
Most importantly, Universities ought to be viewed as spots to promote entrepreneurial
activities and attitudes amongst students and academics with cooperation. The
workplace and group-based work is increasing the new arrays of the work organizations
which showing up with low levels of management and monitoring, multi-testing, notmulti-schooling, and a more noteworthy requirement for effective communication skills(Probert, 1999).

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It has been considered that entrepreneurial culture improves by entrepreneurshipeducation. It’s again highlighted the necessities of entrepreneurial culture to promote
Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs), such as beliefs, values, attitudes, and behavioral
norms (Gibbs & Lyapunov, 1996). According to Deci and Ryan (2000), ‘‘the abler you
are, the more willing you are’’. At present, an entrepreneurial culture is necessary to be
sure of the success of entrepreneurship. Blokker and Dallago (2012) exposed that
entrepreneurship develops entrepreneurial behavior among youth, especially university
students, thus it is more important to focus on entrepreneurship education andinstructional methodologies to encourage just in time learning and learning by doing.
Mugione (2011) as chief of entrepreneurship advisor at United Nations Conference on
Trade and Development, has emphasized that students can become entrepreneurial evenin their study field those are enrolled in other programs or courses, so at the university
level entrepreneurship education should not be limited to only business schools’
individuals.
Accordingly, it is not only mean to promote youth’s entrepreneurship throughentrepreneurship education but to train youth with entrepreneurial attitude and skills at
the same time (Schoof, 2006). Entrepreneurship education is a way to promote
entrepreneurial culture. Entrepreneurial culture can be achieved by several factors.
While enterprise culture also delivers advantages in society, even beyond the businessactivity (Liikanen, 2004). Indeed, the qualities of an individual, i.e. innovation,
creativity, and inventiveness are relevant to entrepreneurship and can be useful foreveryone in their everyday life and work activities. Ngosiane (2010) discovered during
his work to promote an entrepreneurial culture in Kenya, according to him,entrepreneurial culture can be promoted through the formation of clubs in universities
to support entrepreneurial activities.
A country where the majority of citizens are youth and raises their own business as acareer, such a nation has strong belief to establish an enterprise or earn money rather
than the employment of wage (Gibb & Li, 2003). In the modern world, the uses ofentrepreneurial and innovative thinking are inescapable in organizations. Whereasorganizations' development and survival depend on the innovation, creativity, andcapacity of human resource and management, the birth and death of organizations also
rely on vision, knowledge, and their organizers’ capabilities (kazemi, Rasekh, & Navid,2016). Kirzner (2009) stated that entrepreneurship is an awareness of the invisible
profitable opportunities.
Learning and innovation are essential for organizations that are trying to survive andachieve efficiency. Numerous organizations are progressively searching for inventive
and entrepreneurial ways to improve their viability, effectiveness, and adaptability. Insuch a manner, entrepreneurship is quickly turning into a decision of organizations,especially for substantial organizations (Hagh et al., 2013). Entrepreneurial
development is one of the apparatuses of economic development by reinforcing andcreating a suitable environment for its advancement, particularly in developing
countries like Pakistan.
Pakistan has extreme disregard in many areas of entrepreneurship education for
instance communication and marketing. Government has the meddling part in deters
innovation, marketing, and risk-taking (Haque, 2007). In any case, the substance ofentrepreneurship is an outsider for the faculty and syllabuses. Approximately there is

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the nonappearance of any entrepreneurial instructional faculty in Pakistan. In Pakistan,there are 128-degree awarding institutes and universities; of which seventy (70) are
public universities and fifty-eight (58) are private universities (HEC). Though, just a
few of them offer courses of entrepreneurship in their postgraduate and undergraduate
degree programs, for instance, Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS),
Institute of Business Administration (IBA), and Islamia College University. In thisbaffling circumstance, it is respecting that the Higher Education Commission (HEC) of
Pakistan has understood the noteworthiness of entrepreneurial education with thechanging worldwide financial patterns and has begun taking steps forward in such amanner. Inside the university frameworks to promote entrepreneurship and innovation,
HEC has propelled a noteworthy program which included the introduction ofentrepreneurship and innovation, changes in curricula, technology hatcheries, and theestablishment of technology parks. Also, HEC is giving access to funding and delicate
advances to new ventures (Rehman, 2006). Nevertheless, a reasonable concurrence on
the idea of entrepreneurship education is required for its compatibility, whereas theissue of curricula and faculty improvement should be tended to with more concern(Khan, 2008).
Universities are also facing an alarming situation to support the entrepreneurial culture.
Studies have discovered some barriers that disturb the development of entrepreneurial
culture in universities, which incorporate into collegiate, proficient, and bureaucratic
nature of universities (Hay, 2003). Zaharia and Gibert (2005) A university can’t beentrepreneurial easily from the creation of modern structures; it must be changed insociety to change its concept of the university mission. The entrepreneurial transfer
procedure is long and different from one university to the next. It is affected byeconomic development, traditional and cultural elements, and legal structures.
Statement of the Problem: Higher education system produces a large number ofgraduates every year whereas unemployment is increasing because our economy is notin a position to engage the pass-out graduates or provide them job opportunities. So,
the numbers of graduates are more than the number of jobs in the market. This study
addresses to stress on the need to promote entrepreneurial culture among students andhigher educational institutes to create job opportunities rather than to seek job
opportunities. This study aims to investigate the role of Education to promote
Entrepreneurial culture among students who are studying management as a major
subject at the higher education level at University of Sargodha. This study is an
endeavor to find out the connection and correlation between educational institutes andsubjects taught in it which could be responsible for the emerging culture.
Objective of the Study: The current study was intended to identify the role ofuniversities to promote the entrepreneurial culture among students at higher level of
education.
Key Research Questions: The following two research questions examine theuniversities’ role in perspective to encourage entrepreneurial intentions among students
at higher level of education.
Q1. To what extent Universities are playing their role to promote entrepreneurial
activities among students.

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H1 "There is no significant relationship between the role of universities andentrepreneurial activities to promote the entrepreneurial culture"Q2. Does there exist concerns between students’ entrepreneurial intentions and thecontent of management as a subject taught at BS and Master level in universities?
H2 " There is no significant relationship between entrepreneurial intentions of students
and the content of management as a subject which is taught at BS and Master level"
Research Methodology
Research Design: The nature of the study was descriptive. A quantitative inquiry wasplanned to understand the roles and responsibilities of universities to enable the students
to be entrepreneurs. Survey is a basic strategy of engaging the quantitative research
approach thus survey technique was applied to collect the data from the participants.
Participants: The target population of the study was all those students who haveenrolled in the BS Hons and Master programs under the faculties of social sciences andmanagement & administrative sciences of Sargodha University. And all the students
who were enrolled in the final semester of BS Hones and Master programs of the abovementioned faculties’ departments at the time of data collection to examine theuniversities' role in the contribution to encourage entrepreneurial culture wereconsidered accessible population of the study. Further, the study was delimited to thosedepartments where management had been taught as a major subject and the content
related to business management and entrepreneurship in one or more than one course
taught to the faculties of social sciences and management and administrative sciences.
Departments were selected keeping in view the context of the study i.e., department ofeducation, department of social work, and department of sociology were selected fromsocial science, while the department of economics, department of commerce,
department of business and administration were selected from management andadministrative sciences as well.
Sampling Technique: Keeping in view the context of the study purposive samplingtechnique was applied to draw the sample from the population. It is a type of nonrandom sampling. The purposive sampling technique is also called judgmental
sampling because its sample is selected keeping in view objectives of the study and thecharacteristics of the population. It is stated that the researcher decides what
information needs to know and sets to find individuals who can and are willing toprovide the required data through the purity of knowledge and experience (Bernard,
2002; Lewis & Sheppard, 2006).
Initially, no specific sample size was decided. Master and B.s final semester students
of six selected departments were requested to participate in the researcher. While thequestionnaire was given only to those students who showed their willingness toparticipate in the study. In this way, the researcher got 300 volunteers who agreed toparticipate in the research and gave their responses on research tool.
Research Instrument: The research method in this research was survey method, thus
the main data collection tool was a questionnaire. A self-developed questionnaire wasapplied as a research tool to collect data from participants. The questionnaire was based

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Officilal Conference Proceedingson three factors such as entrepreneurial capacities, attitude, the role of Universities tobe an entrepreneur, which included eighteen (18) closed-ended questions to explore theanswers of the respondents. A seven-point Likert scale (strongly disagree to strongly
agree) was used to measure eighteen (18) questions related to entrepreneurial capacities,
the attitude of students towards entrepreneurship, and the role of the University topromote entrepreneurial culture among students. The number of questions falling undereach factor varies, depending on how many questions were required to sightsee one
factor. Questionnaire was validated by discussion with supervisor, getting expert
opinion, and pilot testing.
Data collection and Analysis: After taking the permission from the concerned
departments, questionnaire was distributed among volunteers who were willing to fill
the questionnaire survey to investigate the role of universities to promote
entrepreneurial culture in Pakistan. Required guidelines were given to the participants
and a total of 300 questionnaires were filled from both faculties. Afterward, data wereanalyzed by using SPSS which is a statistical program for data analysis. Data was coded
and analyzed by using statistical techniques e.g. frequencies, mean, and standard
deviation was applied to analyze the descriptive data while Pearson correlation test wasapplied to calculate the inter-factors relationship.
Table 1: Correlation between educational program and students’entrepreneurial capacities
Variables
NR
P-value
ProgramCapacities
300
0.063
0.278

Table 1 shows that Pearson correlation the value of (r) is .063, which depicts that
insignificant relationship was found between educational programs where management
is taught as a major subject or the content related to entrepreneurship and businessadministration and entrepreneurial capacities (confidence, resourcefulness, opportunity
recognition, innovativeness, creativity, competence, Delegation, Risk taking, Selfmotivated, Leadership, Ability to resolve crises, Communication skills, Networking
and Practical approach) of students’ at university level and this value is insignificant
with p value i.e. 0.27 while n= 300.
Table 2: Correlation between educational program and students’ attitude
towardsentrepreneurship
Variables
NR
P-value
ProgramStudents attitude
300
-.015
.792

Table 2 shows that Pearson correlation the value of (r) is -.015, which depicts that
insignificant relationship was found between the educational programs and university
students’ attitude towards entrepreneurship after completing their graduation and thisvalue is insignificant with p-value i.e. .792 while n= 300.

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Table 3: Correlation between educational programs and the role of University topromote entrepreneurial culture
Variables
NR
P-value
Program
University role
300
-.091
.117

Table 3 shows that Pearson correlation the value of (r) is -. 091, which depicts that
insignificant relationship was found between the educational programs and the role ofuniversity to promote the entrepreneurial culture among students at higher educationlevel and this value is insignificant with p-value i.e. .117 while n= 300.
Table 4: Correlation between the role of University and students’ attitudes
VariablesR
P-valueN
University role
Students’ attitude
300
.403
.000

Table 4 shows that Pearson correlation the value of (r) is .403, which depicts that there
was a moderate positive relationship between the university role and students’ attitudes
to be entrepreneurs after completion of their studies and correlation was statisticallysignificant with p-value i.e. .000 while n= 300.
Findings and Discussion•
The first research question was ‘‘To what extent Universities are playing theirrole to promote the entrepreneurial activities among students at higher education level’’.
It was explored through the two factors named ‘‘the university role to promote
entrepreneurial culture and the students’ attitude’’. The null hypothesis is rejected basedon results:
H1. "There is no significant relationship between the role of universities andentrepreneurial activities to promote the entrepreneurial culture". Insignificant
relationship (r = -. 091, sig. =.117) was found between the role of University andentrepreneurial activities to promote the entrepreneurial culture among students.
Whereas, a moderate positive relationship (r = .403, sig. = .000) was found between theuniversity role and students’ attitudes to be entrepreneurs after completion of theirstudies. Moreover, universities also provide a platform for networking new businesspeople. On these occasions, potential entrepreneurs meet stockholders who enable themto pitch their thoughts. Moreover, universities help their students to get to privatebudgetary openings. Universities utilized entrepreneurial thoughts and makeconnection to the ventures and universities play a role to nurture the facilities withentrepreneurial thoughts to staff and students. This incorporates the arrangement of
preparing, access to financing, mentoring, instructing, IT services, research anddevelopment services, research centers, and sponsored premises (Byrnes, Peas,
Blacker, Jackson, & Dwyer, 2010). Entrepreneurship education has been a priority inuniversities (Kuratko, 2005; Busenitz West, Shepherd, Nelson Chandler, & Zacharakis,

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2003; Hannon, 2006; Heinonen & Poikkijoki, 2006; Klein and Bullock, 2006; Matlay,
2008; Matlay, Martiz, Jones, & Shwetzer, 2015). Moreover, formal university
education prepares students for the tough market game (Robinson & Sexton, 1994).
•
The second question was ‘‘Does there exist concerns between students’entrepreneurial intentions and the content of management as a subject taught at BS and
Master level in universities”
H2 " There is no significant relationship between entrepreneurial intentions of students
and the content of management as a subject taught at BS and Master level" It was
discovered through inter factors correlation between educational programs andentrepreneurial capacities as well as the correlation between educational programs andstudents’ entrepreneurial intentions. The null hypothesis is rejected based on results:
Results of data indicated that the insignificant correlation (r= .063, p= .278) was foundbetween “educational programs” and “students’ entrepreneurial capacities” to be future
entrepreneurs those were studying the content of management and entrepreneurship or
business at the higher educational level. The result of other factors also depicts similarfindings as to the insignificant relationship () between the “educational programs” andthe “students’ attitudes” those were studying the management and content related tobusiness or entrepreneurship. It is contradictory that an academic entrepreneurshipprogram can be introduced as any instructive program or process used to create
entrepreneurial states of mind, skills, and capabilities with a specific end goal todevelop the necessary capacities to start new ventures (Fayolle, Gailly, & Lassas, 2006).
This is also evident by one of the action mainstays of the European Commission’s
Entrepreneurship 2020 Action Plan is entrepreneurial education and training forbusiness creation and development. Either they establish an enterprise or not, thoseyoungsters who got entrepreneurship education to enhance their basic skills, attitudes,
and business knowledge that incorporate taking decisions, risk-taking, initiative-taking,creativity, teamwork, and a sense of responsibility. Such entrepreneurial capacities
empower entrepreneurs to put their thoughts into reality and expand their employability(EC, 2013). Othman, Hamzah, Zahari, and Amri (2015) found a moderate relationshipbetween entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial spirit by individuals' internal
locus of control (Othman et al., 2015). Apart from this, Bakotic & Kruzic (2010)
discovered that 67% of entrepreneurship students have strong entrepreneurial intentions
towards entrepreneurship. Whereas, entrepreneurship programs significantly increaseindividuals’ intentions toward entrepreneurship by motivating them to choose
entrepreneurship as a career (Wilson, Kickul, & Marlino, 2007). A study was conductedat the faculty of Economics, University of Split on the entrepreneurial source of
motivation and aspiration towards entrepreneurship on a sample of first and final year
graduate students. The results of this study revealed that few students who had previous
entrepreneurial experience showed a very positive (1.88%) and a positive (2.68%)
attitude toward entrepreneurship.
Conclusion
Knowledge-based economy has forced attention towards entrepreneurship. Most of thestudies on entrepreneurship are mainly focused at higher education level, whereas thecontent of entrepreneurship is also attracted at higher education level in colleges anduniversities. Entrepreneurship courses develop entrepreneurial capabilities andattitudes among students to select entrepreneurship as a career choice. Although, higher

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educational institutions have the responsibility to provide skills, training, andopportunities to students through education to encourage students’ entrepreneurial spirit
and prepare them to start new business ventures or invent something beneficial for theworld. Findings of the study showed that universities are required to play a more activerole to promote entrepreneurial culture. However, there is still a need to pay more
intentions on the curriculum to develop the entrepreneurial capacities among students
and institutes' role to support the entrepreneurial activities. So, there is also a need totake some serious decisions to encourage students through practical entrepreneurial
activities, such as there is no lake of talent among students but it is needed to promote
this culture through the support of higher education system, educational policies,
entrepreneurial courses, and students loan schemes. Likewise, there is also a need to
pay attention to teaching methods that support students’ innovative skills and attitudes
which make them proficient entrepreneurs.
Recommendations
Keeping in view the major findings and conclusion of the study the researcher has
suggested that there is a dire need to encourage entrepreneurial culture among students
to meet the new trends of globalization and the emergence of a knowledge-based
economy. So, universities should pay more intention to conduct entrepreneurial
activities i.e. career awareness seminars, entrepreneurial training programs, andinternship opportunities across the campus to develop the entrepreneurial skills, andattitudes among students at higher level of education. Universities should teach“Entrepreneurship” as a separate subject at the graduate level to develop entrepreneurial
attitudes and capabilities among their students to start new ventures. Additionally,“Entrepreneurship” should also introduce as a subject in non-business sciences toencourage the entrepreneurial culture in Pakistan.

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Contact email: humachudri@yahoo.com

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University Speaking Assessment as Collaborative and Self-Reflective Skill
Development
James Herbach, University of Shizuoka, Japan
Kinsella Valies, University of Shizuoka, Japan
The Asian Conference on Education 2020
Official Conference Proceedings
Abstract
The impetus of this research is deeply rooted within the immediate needs of students at
the University of Shizuoka and their future professional goals, as suggested by student
comments gathered from previous Language and Communication Research Center
workshops and course evaluations. The aim of this action research is to improve
confidence and communicative ability by implementing classroom-based speaking
assessment tools that provide students with opportunities for ongoing speaking
advancements and feedback. Research questions are: 1) To what extent can speaking
assessments help students better express themselves in English? 2) To what extent canteaching towards this assessment help improve self-efficacy and confidence in students’ability? 3)To what extent can the speaking assessment tool aid in advancing students’critical thinking skills? This study took a mixed method approach where data fromboth student grades and survey results were collected and analyzed. Results showedthat student confidence in their ability to express themselves in English increased
significantly. The median grade differential between finals and midterms wasapproximately 6%. Future research will focus on the design and implementation ofsimilar speaking assessment tools for first graders across all departments.
Keywords: EFL, Speaking, Assessment, University, Japan

iafor
The International Academic Forumwww.iafor.org

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Introduction
The motivation for this project emerged from the recent interest in the idea of
supporting the speaking skills of learners in the field of English language education as
well as from the management of the Language and Communication Research Center(LCRC) at the University of Shizuoka. As Reinbold (2017) states, “in the current world,many non-native speakers are using English as a tool for communication (p.246).
Reading comprehension and essay writing skills have traditionally been assessed so as
to provide both students and instructors with concrete data showing students’ learning
progress. The objective of this project was to, first, afford students and instructors withtangible evidence of speaking development on three specific categories of skills andabilities and, second, evaluate speaking assessment tools created inside the department.
Both objectives support students who in the future may be faced with authentic
situations in which they may have to interact with non-Japanese speakers and express
themselves effectively. The three categories which were targeted for this project
included Reading a text aloud, Describing a picture and Giving an opinion.
The decision to target the three aforementioned speaking categories was based upon thelarge class sizes involved, up to 35 students per class, as well as the amount of timerequired to assess students’ speaking abilities in a face-to-face environment. In order toprovide results of speaking progress both a mid-term and a final speaking test werescheduled. The project initially targeted one group of second year pharmacy students
which four members of the LCRC all taught during the same day and period. Focusing
on this particular group of students provided instructors with the opportunity to assesseach other’s classes so as to remain as objective in the assessment process as possible.
Along with the rational for initiating this project, the methodology, the steps to
production and the implementation of the assessments are also addressed. In addition,
the results of the assessments, the limitations of the project and future implementations
are further investigated. As the project is now an ongoing element in the LCRC
curriculum, many additional revisions have been and continue to be made.
The research questions that guided our investigation were:
1) To what extent can speaking assessments help students better express themselves
in English?
2) To what extent can teaching towards this assessment help improve self-efficacy
and confidence in students’ ability?
3) To what extent can the speaking assessment tool aid in advancing students’ criticalthinking?
Methodology
The researchers probed tertiary foreign language students of English regarding theirexperiences taking an English Communication course and interpreted forthcoming
answers making connections to the RQs that guide this study.
The paradigm at the base of this study is an interpretivist one. Additionally, this study
was both classroom-based and collaborative as all the data was collected by Language
and Communication Research Center’s (LCRC) instructors teaching in classrooms and

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working together to create and implement assessment tools and distribute the surveys
to the participants.
The methodology supporting the project is both quantitative and qualitative in nature.
Students’ test scores were compiled to provide quantitative results of their speaking
abilities, while pre- and post-assessment surveys were implemented to offer qualitative
results for both the overall course satisfaction of students and the speaking assessment
in particular.
Participants
Based on the similar scheduling of both day and time for English Communication
classes, one group of second year pharmacy students were targeted for the project. Fournative members of the LCRC all taught one class of approximately 29 to 35 students
representing a total of 146 participants. All of the classes used the Lecture Ready
textbooks; however, students had been divided into two groups based on their TOEIC
test scores the previous semester. The participants starting scores ranged between 500600 points. The equivalent CEFR level was between A1 and A2, in other words, theycan express themselves “in simple and routine tasks requiring a simple and direct
exchange of information on familiar and routine matters (Council of Europe, 2001,p.
74).” As a result, two of the groups were assigned with the Lecture Ready 1 textbook
while the others used Lecture Ready 2. Clear and concise instructions were drafted for
all three sections of the assessment and all members of the LCRC distributed theinformation to their students in an attempt to ensure consistency. Practice andpreparation of students towards the assessments, however, were left to the discretion of
the individual department members.
Steps to Production
Timeline
The impetus for the project was initiated by Dr. Atsushi Fujimori and was originallypresented to the LCRC members approximately two weeks before the beginning of thesemester. The target group was second-year pharmacy students who met once a weekduring a 15-week semester. Planning meetings began immediately in order to create aclear goal and an outline for the project’s implementation. The three target areas of theassessment, reading a text aloud, describing a picture and giving an opinion were
finalized. This was in part due to the fortuitous occurrence of professor Valies having
previously used these categories for implementation in some of her classes. The
categories have been inspired by their use in the TOEIC test, however they have been
modified and revised so as to fit the semester schedule and the level of the students at
the University of Shizuoka.
In addition, a rubric was drafted to provide students with specific details for what theywould be required to achieve in each of the five scoring levels for all three sections of
the assessment. Students would then be given a result out of a possible 15 total points.
The rubric was also translated into Japanese. Copies of both the English and Japaneseversions were then printed double-sided and distributed to students at the beginning of

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the semester. In addition, the testing instructions were handed out at this time to allparticipants.
One result of the compacted timeline was that once the semester started, all of thematerials for both the mid-term and final assessments had to be created in between
preparing for and teaching classes. This led to a redefinition of the criteria for materials
creation after the mid-term and before the implementation of the final assessment.
Subsequently, some of the project limitations appeared at this time, and althoughaddressed, will be illustrated in more detail later.
Step 1
Materials for the three target categories were created and evaluated by the four
participating instructors. Each member collected six examples of texts, pictures andopinion questions. Materials were discussed during meetings and a selection was madeas to which items would be used for midterms and finals on the one hand, and which
would be used for in-class practice on the other. Material selection guidelines required
instructors to match materials to themes found in the class textbook they used. As the
speaking assessments took the shape of individual student-instructor interviews,
previous students might have the opportunity to pass on information to the following
test-takers. To mitigate this circumstance, six assessment packets were made for each
assessment moment for the instructors to cycle through during the test period.
For the final speaking test instructors proctored each other’s groups in a bid for
impartiality. This added both a level of anxiety and motivation for students as they
could not count on their usual teacher’s familiarity with their mannerisms and worduse to make themselves understood. As a result, participants had to really attempt to
express themselves clearly and succinctly.
Assessment Examples
The speaking assessments were initially designed to be implemented in a face to faceenvironment. According to Qian, (2009), “such a test is believed to offer a much better
test validity because, in a properly designed oral test in the direct testing mode, every
effort is supposed to be made for the tasks to be as authentic as possible (p.115). As aresult, all of the materials were printed on paper and laminated so that students could
be presented with hard copies during their individually scheduled testing sessions. In
addition, each instructor was provided with six different versions of each of the threeparts of the assessments. In an attempt to prevent students from sharing details of theassessment materials with their classmates, a different version of the assessment
materials was used after approximately five students were tested.
The printed and laminated assessment materials all included the same instructions inboth English and Japanese to ensure that all students could clearly understand whichskills and abilities they were being assessed on. The following are examples of part I
and III of the assessments.

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Part I (Read a Text Aloud) 文章の音読
In this part of the test, you will read the text aloud. You will have 45 seconds to prepare.
Then you will have 45 seconds to read the text aloud.
このテストでは、下の文章を声に出して読んでもらいます。まず 45 秒間で黙読し準備をしてください。その後、45 秒間で声に出して読み上げてください。
Mass media refers to the distribution of impersonal information to a wide audience,such as what happens via television, newspapers, radio, and the Internet. With theaverage person spending over four hours a day in front of the TV, and children
averaging even more screen time, media greatly influences social norms. People learn
about objects of the material culture, like new technology and transportation options,as well as the nonmaterial culture. For example, what is true, what is important, andwhat is expected.
Part III (Express an Opinion) 考えを述べる
In this part of the test, you will give your opinion about a specific topic read by the
instructor. Be sure to say as much as you can in the time allowed. You will have 15
seconds to prepare. Then you will have 60 seconds to speak.
このテストは、講師が読んだある話題について意見を述べてもらうものです。
時間内にできるだけ多くのことを言うようにしてください。スピーチの前に
15 秒間で準備をしてください。その後、60 秒間でスピーチをしてください。
1.
Do you think that the government should add a 10% tax on all fast-foodrestaurants to pay for national health costs?
Grading system
All students in the four separate second year pharmacy classes were evaluated using
the same grading system. Both the mid-term and the final speaking tests were assigned
a value of 20% of the final grade, composing a total value of 40% of the class grades
for students’ speaking abilities. Additional assessment included comprehension quizzes
at 20%, weekly writing journals at 20% as well as out of class assignments andparticipation which were both valued at 10% respectively. The following table (1)illustrates the breakdown of grades for the class.

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Table 1: Course grade breakdown
RubricEach section of the test required the students to attain a certain number of speaking
goals to be awarded maximum points. This was done supplying the instructors with abilingual English-Japanese grading rubric. It was modified for implementation and has
been under continuous review resulting in several rewrites since its first implementation.
Most adjustments were made to facilitate fairness and give students clearer insight into
what aspects of their speaking they can work on to improve proficiency. It is a 15-point
rubric (see appendix A), distributed to students as a double-sided handout. Eachcategory is rated up to five points. Students were expected to range between 3-4 with
3 being the average. Students were assessed by their peers during in class practice aswell as their instructors using the same rubric.
Step 2In-class instructions were focused on the upcoming mid-term and final assessments andrequired students to produce specific types of speech acts. Information was given bothin oral and written format. Class handouts described the test format providing some
instructions for the test day.
Both the mid-term and the final speaking tests were proctored using the instructors’
offices to afford students with privacy during the assessment process. All students were
given a testing schedule which divided the entire assessment slate into 30-minute blocks.
The result was to limit the number of students waiting to be assessed outside of
instructors’ offices to four at any one time. In addition, each instructor examined acolleague’s class which were comprised of a different level of students in an attempt toretain objectivity in the assessment process.
Both the midterm and the final were scheduled on the same days and the same classperiods for all four groups. The assessment schedule required the use of two class

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periods as well as three lunch periods in order to accommodate the larger class sizes.
Some additional time was also deemed necessary in the case of emergency absences.
The result was that four classes out of a 15-class semester were needed for the
implementation of both the mid-term and final speaking tests.
Clear and concise testing instructions were drafted and distributed to all students acrossthe four second year pharmacy classes. In addition, the assessment schedules along witha detailed description of the testing environment were handed out to each student about
2 weeks in advance of the assessment dates.
Implementation
Instructors worked autonomously in class to practice and prepare students for the
speaking assessments. However, all four instructors used the textbooks to target thethree specific parts of the text to support students’ knowledge and abilities and to
maximize their individual results on the assessments. In order to implement theassessments, instructors used voice recorders and timers to collect data for the project.
Through the use of group work and task-based activities targeting the three categoriesof the speaking assessments, students were able to receive feedback from both theirinstructors as well as their classmates as to their knowledge and abilities while
practicing in class. In addition, subsequent to the mid-term speaking test students were
given their scores on a printed copy of the test rubric. The combination of in-classfeedback and the mid-term speaking assessment feedback afforded students theopportunity to target areas in need of improvement for the final speaking test.
Instructors met post mid-term assessment to discuss the implementation of theassessment as well as the results for their respective classes. One outcome of these
discussions was that all instructors agreed to clarify and modify the rubric in order toprovide students with a more detailed range for their performances on the test. It wasalso agreed that the statements for the giving your opinion section of the assessment be
trimmed down to a one sentence explanation. Revisions were then undertaken to modify
and revise materials for the final speaking test. The use of the number of class periods
necessary for the implementation of the speaking assessments and the ensuing loss ofclass instruction time was also a concern for all instructors.
Limitations
This study focused on the creation and implementation of speaking assessment
materials to help students improve their speaking skills, increase their confidence andhelp them to think more critically. As for implementation of the assessments the teamof instructors came across differences in grading between instructors. It was concluded
that norming was required. Future norming endeavors would take the shape of having
a secondary instructor evaluate group recordings of speaking tests.
Inconsistencies in text materials and instructions were found; instructions and materials
printed on opposite sides, including Japanese instructions. These elements werecorrected for the final assessment. Consistency in the presentation of materials also

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became a concern. This concern was addressed by standardizing text-font, text-size,text-spacing, single-side / double-sided printing, paper-type.
The Describe a Picture-section also required standardization and guidelines were added
for selecting photos. Important aspects to look for in an image were thought to be theamount of details in the background, ability to infer the environment, the minimum
number of people in the photo, the amount of details regarding the people’s appearance
and actions.
One of the project limitations discovered post mid-term assessment was the quality ofphotos used for the describing a picture category of the test. After closer inspection anddiscussion, it was agreed that some of the photo examples did not provide students withenough detail to be able to describe logically and accurately. The concern was thatstudents might unfairly receive a lower grade on this criterion of the assessment if asked
to describe an inferior photo. One example is as follows;

Figure 1: Poor example

Figure 2: Good example

Students were asked to provide details of the photos in a logical order, ensuring thatanyone who could not see the photo would be able to clearly understand the images
through the words and phrases spoken by the students. Students were moreover
instructed to provide details of each photo using three steps which included: describe
the location/setting/place, describe the people/physical dimensions/clothing anddescribe their actions using verbs+ing.
Additionally, the test section related to critical thinking, Giving your Opinion, turned
out to give students the most trouble during the midterm. Many were unable to answer
the question because they either did not understand it and/or did not have enoughthinking time. Instructors believed that this problem was caused by the length of theOpinion question. The questions were simplified so that students had enough time toread and understand the question and then consider their answers.
An example phrase from the midterm:
4. It is important to be mindful of gender-biased marketing laws, which arerightly getting stricter worldwide. As a result, do you think that all public
services, such as train cars should be provided in a gender-neutral manner. Givereasons for your opinion.

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A renegotiated phrase from the final:
2. Do you think that the health benefits of organic foods are worth the extra
cost?
The Do you think…?-format proved easier to understand and yielded better results.
Students seemed less stressed and fewer students ended up with a could-not-answer
score of 1 on the rubric. In addition, instructors changed the timing parameters from 15
seconds thinking time to 30 seconds thinking time.
Conclusion
This project saw many beneficial additions to classroom work and adjustments to theassessment materials. Students who were part of this development reacted positively tothe speaking test.
Results: Mid-term vs. Final
After the data from both the mid-term and final speaking assessments were collected
and calculated it was clear that there was an improvement on students’ total scores post
final test. Nevertheless, some anomalies also became apparent. For the lower levelgroup, the scores for the reading a text aloud category dropped slightly between the
mid-term and the final tests. One factor resulting in this drop may have been the
instructors increased familiarity with the assessment and the rubric culminating in astricter assessment of each student. Another factor may have been that students weremore focused on the describing a picture and giving an opinion sections of the test as
they required more critical thinking processes.

Figure 3: Grades Midterm vs. Final assessment
Results: Pre- and Post-course surveys
The findings show an increase in perceived value of speaking skills, and perceived
opportunities to speak in class as well as confidence. The perceived value of speaking

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skills increased by 7%. Student perception of the opportunities to speak English in-classwent up by 10.2%. In addition, the most valued assessment section throughout the year
was Giving your Opinion. One could conclude that students appreciate the chance todo targeted speaking practice and share their opinions and ideas (in English).
Insights into student confidence in-class were gleaned from the questions: “How would
you rate your English-speaking ability?” and “How difficult is it to express yourself inEnglish in class?” There was a 13.9% increase in student confidence in their ability to
speak English. There was a total increase of 4.2% in student confidence in the ability
to express themselves. In comparing the pre- and post-course responses one can observethat students who thought it very difficult decreased by 0.4%, difficult decreased by 4.2%, Somewhat difficult increased by 2.9%. One could conclude that many just had not
had a chance to practice targeted speaking in-class before and that they would assume
that it was difficult. Having tried it, some found it was not as daunting, while others
found their skills to be less than hoped for at this stage (See figures 4 and 5).

Figure 4: Pre-course survey- Difficulty expressing oneself in English.

Figure 5: Post-course survey- Difficulty expressing oneself in English.

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Discussion
Through the initiative of the instructors and the support of the LCRC the desire to
implement a speaking assessment and ensure the equality of testing across all aspectsof language learning has been successfully administered. This classroom-based project
in its quantitative approach delivered positive outcomes through the acquisition of
student scores on both a mid-term and a final speaking test. In addition, student survey
responses were compiled which in a qualitative manner provided conclusive results inreference to student course satisfaction and an improved confidence in their speaking
abilities.
Subsequent to the collection of all data, the calculation of student scores and theevaluation of student surveys the results of the project both answered and supported theoriginal research questions. As to the question, to what extent can speaking assessments
help students better express themselves in English, the data showed that students’ total
scores for the assessments improved from the mid-term test to the final exam by a valueof 13% on average. In answer to the question, to what extend can teaching towards theassessment help students to improve their self-efficacy and confidence in their speaking
abilities, the survey results detailed a 13.9% increase in their confidence levels. In
addition, addressing the question of, to what extent can the speaking assessment tool
aid in advancing students critical thinking skills, responses indicated that the mostvalued aspect of the assessment was the, Giving Your Opinion section of the test.
Future Implementations
This study is part of an ongoing speaking project in development within the LCRC
curriculum. Future changes to second year materials include the removal of all proper
nouns and slang in reading texts and opinion questions. With the next collegiate year
in mind, there is a plan to expand the project to include the creation of speaking
assessment tools for all first-year students across all departments. This time theassessment tools would be produced so that they could be implemented by any
instructor using any textbook. As a result of the addition of first years to the project, thedifficulty level of the second years materials would have to be adjusted to reflect student
level progression from the previous year. Criteria in the rubric may require further
adjustment as well to reflect additional speaking goals.

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References
Council of Europe (2001). Common European Framework of Reference for
Languages: Learning, teaching, assessment. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press. Retrieved from<http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/source/Framework_EN.pdf>
Reihbold, Lorraine (2017). English Pronunciation: Intelligibility, Comprehensibility,
and Accentedness. Faculty of Education, Hakuoh University, Retrieved from theInternet, August 6, 2019.
Qian, David, D. (2009). Comparing Direct and Semi-Direct Modes for Speaking
Assessment: Affective Effects on Test Takers. Language Assessment Quarterly,
Retrieved August 6, 2019, from, https://doi.org/10.1080/15434300902800059
Pixabay (2019). Couple [Photo]. pixabay.com. Retrieved September 24, 2019 from,https://pixabay.com/
Stockvault (2019). Granville Island [Photo]. stockvault.net. Retrieved September 24,
2019 from, https://www.stockvault.net/
Stockvault (2019). Cafe [Photo]. stockvault.net. Retrieved September 24, 2019 from,https://www.stockvault.net/

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Appendix A

Appendix B

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Understanding the Role of Mary in the Catechetical Documents Issued in thePhilippines
Andrew Joseph S. Chanco, University of Santo Tomas, Philippines
The Asian Conference on Education 2020
Official Conference Proceedings
Abstract
The Blessed Virgin Mary plays a vital role in the history of salvation. She was chosen
to become the Mother of God and given by Christ to become the Mother of All. The
Church in the Philippines is called Pueblo Amante de Maria, which means people inlove with Mary. It is one of the characteristics of the Christian Faith of the Filipino
people, wherein their approach to Christ is through and with Mary. Mary becomes thecentral inspiring force in bringing about a deeper evangelization for the people topreserve and have a fuller maturity in the faith. This paper seeks to look at Mary's
place in the Catechetical Documents issued by the Catholic Church in the Philippines.
In presenting the said theme, the following topics are discussed: first, Mary in
Catechesis by having a general outlook on her role and mission; second, theCatechetical situation in the Philippines by looking into its context; and third, theplace of Mary in the Philippine Catechetical documents by presenting her as theInspirational Model that must be emulated especially by the Filipino people.
Keywords: Mary, Catechesis, Philippines

iafor
The International Academic Forumwww.iafor.org

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Introduction
In the course of the history of salvation, a woman plays a vital role in fulfilling thepromise of sending forth the Messiah that was revealed after the fall of man. The
name of the woman was Mary. She was chosen to become the Mother of God as
revealed to her at the Annunciation (Luke 1: 26-38). This was made possible throughher consent and cooperation with the plan of God. Mary continued to journey with her
Son's work and reached its peak at the foot of the Cross (John 19: 25-27), where she
was given by Jesus to humanity to become the Mother of All.
The Church in the Philippines has a special bond with the Mother of God. It was evencalled Pueblo Amante de Maria – a nation in love with Mary due to the numerous
invocations, titles, and devotions that pertain to her by the Filipino people. Stripping
off her regal titles and adornments, what remains is the personal and collective
devotion of the Filipino people through which they ask the intercession of the Blessed
Virgin Mary, especially in their approach to her Son, Jesus, as described by theCatechism for Filipino Catholics (1997) which is "through and with" her. Thisapproach became a vehicle for catechesis, "initiating the hearers into the fullness ofChristian life"(Congregation for the Clergy, 1997, 18). The Blessed Virgin Mary iscalled the "compendium of catechesis. She is the living catechism" (Carberry, 1997),
for the faith of the faithful became incarnate through her, which is Jesus Christ.
This paper seeks to look at the place of Mary in the Catechetical documents issued by
the Catholic Church in the Philippines. In presenting the said theme, the following
topics are discussed: first, the Place of Mary in Catechesis by having a general
outlook on her role and mission; second, the Catechetical situation in the Philippines
by looking into its context; and third, the place of Mary in the Philippine Catechetical
documents by examining and presenting her as the Inspirational Model who must be
emulated by the Filipino people leading them to a fuller maturity in the faith.
The Place of Mary in Catechesis
Jesus Christ was sent by the Father to proclaim the Good News to the people byinviting all to conversion and faith. From Him, the task was entrusted to the apostles
through which the essential mission of the Church and the reason for her existence isto evangelize. As the primary motive of evangelization is the "love of Christ for theeternal salvation of all." (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, 2007, 8) To
evangelize "does not mean simply to teach a doctrine, but to proclaim Jesus Christ by
one's words and actions, that is, to make oneself an instrument of his presence andaction in the world." (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, 2007, 2). In
fulfilling the task, under the "ministry of the word" (John Paul II, 1979, 27) of
proclaiming the good news is catechesis, which "matures initial conversion to make itinto a living, explicit and fruitful confession of faith" (Congregation for the Clergy,
1997, 82). The primary and essential object of catechesis is the "mystery of Christ"(Congregation for the Clergy, 1997, 41), revealing the person of Jesus because
everything that must be taught should be about Him.
The Blessed Virgin Mary plays a vital role in catechesis. She unites and mirrors
within herself the central truths of the faith (Vatican II, 1964, 65). As the first
formulas of faith would mention that "Jesus is acknowledged as the Son of God and

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Son of Mary." (John Paul II, 1998, 1) As the goal of catechesis is to know anddevelop an intimate relationship with Jesus, who is her Son, it will be useful to look
up to the person who has raised the Son of God, who is then her mother, Mary. The
mystery of Christ is unveiled with the Incarnation. The Second Person of the Blessed
Trinity took up the human form and lived with us as a fellow human. This was madepossible through the cooperation and consent of Mary to become the Mother of God
through which also opens up the door of faith for her. After a long expectation of thepromise, the fullness of time had come that God sends forth His Son into the world.
The plan was enfolded at Annunciation. The angel revealed that she was chosen by
God to become the Mother of His Son, and through her cooperation, this became
possible. When she knew that her relative, Elizabeth, was pregnant, she went in haste
to where she was staying to take care of her. At their meeting, she was acclaimed by
Elizabeth, at the prompting of the Spirit as "the mother of my Lord." Hence the
Church confesses that Mary is truly the "Mother of God" (Theotokos).
During the start of the public ministry of Jesus, Mary makes notable appearances. At
the wedding feast at Cana, she was moved with pity for the newlywed couple andasked for the intercession of her Son to help them. Her role as the Mother of God did
not stop there but fortified it, mostly when she was at the foot of the Cross when she
was entrusted to John and became the Mother of All. The Blessed Virgin Mary is
intimately united with the Church as she continuously intercedes for her beloved
children. Radiating from Christ as the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992) 487
would mention that "what the Catholic faith believes about Mary is based on what it
believes about Christ, and what it teaches about Mary illumines, in turn, its faith inChrist." The teachings of the Church on the Blessed Virgin Mary draw its source fromthe Sacred Scriptures, which is always in relation with Jesus.
The Blessed Virgin Mary remains an "important priority for Catechesis" (Baumbach,2017). She is seen in the light of being the Mother of God and the Church.
The Catechetical Situation in the Philippines
In the estimated Catholic population in the year 2020, according to the Global
Catholic Population, there were about 85,470,000 Filipinos who are Catholic, whichmakes 81% of the total population. This number made the Philippines third among theworld with the largest number of Catholic members and the only predominantly
Christian nation in Asia.
The Second Plenary Council of the Philippines was conveyed to examine the comingof the 500th year anniversary since the arrival of Christianity in the country, if thefaith that was planted in the Philippine shore makes any difference in the life of thepeople and the nation, especially with the many things that are happening around. The
quantity of Catholics in the Philippines affects the catechetical activity through which
also other aspects of society are involved, namely: economic, political, educational,
and religious landscapes. This then calls for a contextualized catechesis for theFilipinos that would make the message and its resources adaptable to the needs of thepeople. This would also mean that the Gospel message must be preached in thelanguage understood by the people (Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines,
1992).

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Catechesis to become systematic (Legaspi, 1982), must be a program that has
a definitive goal, it should focus on the essentials of the faith, and it is a means to
introduce and develop the whole Christian life of the faithful. The specific goals ofcatechesis in the Philippines are: to help people understand more fully the faithbecause many are ignorant of God's word and it is the right of the people to know theWord of God; to educate and catechize the people about the basic principles ofmorality; to develop the ability to pray and participate actively in the Church's liturgy;
to create a sense of personal belonging to the Church, and to educate the catechize intranslating the faith in their everyday lives.
One of the fruits of reflection of the Second Plenary Council was the primary priority
on the Integral Faith Formation of the Filipino people. The importance given during
the 1991 convocation was once again emphasized in the Pastoral Letter issued by the
Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (2013), mentioning that one of therealities that are faced by the Filipino people is the weakening of the faith, whichneeds to be renewed to have an encounter with a person who is Jesus Christ.
The principal purpose of this is mentioned in the Pastoral Letter issued by the
Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (2012) which is to “gradually
introduce the baptized person to “the knowledge of the mystery of salvation, become
ever more aware of the gift of Faith they have received, and that they learn in addition
how to worship God the Father in spirit and truth (cf. John 4:23) especially in theliturgical action, and be conformed in their personal lives according to the new man
created in justice and holiness of truth (Eph. 4:22-24); also that they develop into
perfect manhood, to the mature measure of the fullness of Christ (cf. Eph. 4:13) andstrive for the growth of the Mystical Body; moreover, that aware of their calling, theylearn not only how to bear witness to the hope that is in them (cf. Peter 3:15) but also
how to help in the Christian formation of the world that takes place when natural
powers viewed in the full consideration of man redeemed by Christ contribute to thegood of the whole society.” (Vatican II, 1965,2)
The Blessed Virgin Mary in the Philippine Catechetical Documents
The Church in the Philippines has issued 3 Catechetical documents that complement
each other, used as a reference for contextualized catechesis. The Catechism for
Filipino Catholics (CFC), which is the "National Catechism for the Philippines"(Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, 1997, 1), the Acts and Decrees of
the Second Plenary Council of the Philippines which provides the specificcatechetical situation in the Philippines and points of renewal especially in terms ofintegral faith formation, and the National Catechetical Directory for the Philippines
which foster within the Philippine context the universal catechetical goals andmethodologies in presenting the faith. The twofold role of Mary is as Mother andModel, as mentioned by Pope John Paul II (1987, 2), which is emphasized in the
Magisterial Documents, is close to the hearts of the Filipino people.
Mary co-journeys with her beloved Filipinos from the time it was discovered in 1521
through the Spanish Christian evangelization. Every epoch of Philippine history, she
was already there present: As early as 1571, the image of Nuestra Señora de Guia wasfound and venerated by early Filipinos to the surprised of Spanish people. She is also
venerated as Nuestra Señora del Santísimo Rosario de La Naval de Manila back to

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1593, which commemorates the miraculous victory of the Spanish fleet against theDutch Protestant invasion in 1646 through the power of the Rosary. The same victory
took place over the peaceful rallying of the people to end the term of a dictator in1986. The millions of Filipinos at EDSA were not looking out for appearances of Our
Lady because they believed she was already with them. They brought her with themand enthroned her in the many altars that sprouted along the length of the highway
and in every other nook and cranny. (Villegas, 2008). Like a mother who takes care of
his/her children, Mary in every era of Filipino history, whether it is in times of trouble
and need, of darkness and loss of hope, whenever we prayed to her, she always cameto be with us and raise us up (Catholic Bishops Conference (Catholic Bishops
Conference of the Philippines, 2013). Filipinos call Mary as Ang Mahal na Birhen(Catholic Bishops Conference on the Philippines, 1975, 53). This is the title by which
Filipinos very often address Mary. The Filipino tradition has nuanced this title with all
the reverence paid to Mary as Mother of God and all the childlike trust with which we
can call her our own Mother.
The Catechism for Filipino Catholics has pointed out some Filipino traits, which are
an inculturated presentation of the faith of the Filipino Catholic today. This is greatly
influenced by the deep devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, especially throughvarious Marian devotions and pious exercises related to her. The different forms of
devotions and pious exercises become vehicles in educating the faith of every
follower of Christ. The following were the five characteristics that lead the Filipino
believer to Jesus with Mary.
First, Filipinos are family-oriented (Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines,
1997, 34). They give importance to every member of the family. This even includes
those members that are part of the extended family. It is, in the same way, the attitude
towards Jesus and her mother, Mary, Filipinos call Jesus as brother and Mary as
Mother. Second, Filipinos are meal-oriented (Catholic Bishops Conference of thePhilippines, 1997, 37). They give importance to celebrations, which are a form of
thanksgiving and an opportunity to bond together as family and friends. The
organization of fiestas, as called in the Philippines, falls during May, which is a
Marian month. An expression of the people's gratitude to the Mother of God for herintercession to God. Third, Filipinos are kundiman-oriented (Catholic Bishops
Conference of the Philippines, 1997, 39). They have a positive attitude in accepting
suffering, which is an expression of love. Filipinos can relate this with the various
titles of our Lady as Mater Dolorosa and Perpetual Help, which are invoked in times
of sorrow and distress; fourth, Filipinos are Bayani-oriented (Catholic Bishops
Conference of the Philippines, 1997, 41). They tend to look up to someone who candefend those who are weak and oppressed. This relates to Mary as a liberator thatwould free the people from the hands of their enemies as she brought and proclaimed
the good news in her womb, the Messiah; and Fifth, Filipinos are spirit-oriented(Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, 1997, 43). They have a deep belief
in the supernatural. Mary is venerated as the woman whom the Holy Spirit
overshadowed and conceived Jesus in her womb without sexual relations with a man.
The devotion to Mary is intertwined with Christ and the mystery of Incarnation and
Redemption (Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, 1975, 72). The faith ofFilipino Catholics is described as Marian in character, for it is already embedded in
the life and culture of the people. This is evident with the various manifestations of

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popular piety towards the Mother of God not only in churches, the liturgicalcelebration of her feast but even to the religious calendars that bear the picture of ourLady, in the most humble nipa huts or the slums of the cities, to her picture in publicvehicles, buses or jeepneys. Grottoes dedicated to the Immaculate Conception under
the invocation of Our Lady of Lourdes which are found in private gardens or various
public places, along the roads or in corners of modest dwellings (Catholic Bishops
Conference of the Philippines, 1975, 14). Also, almost all our favorite pilgrimage
places all over the country are Marian shrines and sanctuaries.” (Villegas, 2008) The
popular religiosity of the people becomes a vehicle in growing deeper in the faith. The
recitation of the Rosary, together with Angelus, is the core of Filipino devotion to
Mary (Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, 1997, 1546). Also, the novena
to Our Lady of Perpetual Help. Through the various devotion to the Blessed Virgin
Mary, it helped the Filipinos to remain Catholic.
In the National Catechetical Directory for the Philippines, Mary was called the Modelof Faith. A faith that draws back to the Annunciation to her, being chosen as theMother of God. Her response was complete cooperation with the plan of God, which
opened herself to the promptings of the Holy Spirit. Every Christian is called to
become a missionary. In realizing the vision of the Church in the Philippines tobecome a missionary community of disciples, it turns its gaze to Mary, who is the
Model of Discipleship as presented in the Acts and Decrees of the Second Plenary
Council of the Philippines. Learning from her it may lead the Filipino people towards
the right way to personal and social transformation.
Mary is fully and truly human (Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, 1997,
525). Everyone can relate to the experiences that occurred in her life, and we canlearn from those occasions. When the angel announced that she would be the motherof God, she was puzzled about what was revealed to her, yet because of her faith, sheholds unto what was revealed to her. She is also a woman who discovers the joy of thecompany of other people when she visited her relative Elizabeth. She is also able torelate to "realities of ordinary, daily living; in family crises; in moments ofuncertainties and inability to understand; and in times of distress, worry, anguish andsuffering" (Episcopal Commission on Catholic Education, 2017, 204) when her Son
was lost for three days in the Temple. The same was the experience when she saw her
Son carrying the cross on his shoulders and crucified on the cross. She is someone
who can identify the concerns of the people in the same way also are the people. A
faith that liberates, which fosters the value of spiritual joy as Mary pronounced in her
Magnificat (Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, 1997, 140). The virtues
exemplified by Mary are imitated by the people, especially in uplifting the state of thepoor. Mary was honored because of her virtues in following Christ (Catholic Bishops
Conference of the Philippines, 1997, 738). She is like a mirror that reflects the mighty
works of God (Congregation for Catholic Education, 1988, 22). A mirror ofcontemporary men and women that aspires for the betterment of humanity.
As a fruit of contemplation on the Mother of God, it should lead the people to givejustice to those that are oppressed, be charitable, especially in assisting the needy, an
active witness to the love of God in the hearts of the people (Paul VI, 1974, 37).
Devotion to Mary shows itself in works, and the works which we needed in thePhilippines today are the works of justice and freedom from oppression (Catholic
Bishops Conference of the Philippines, 1975, 96).

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Lumen Gentium 65 encapsulates that Catechesis aims that in "Mary unites in her
person and re-echoes the most important doctrines of the faith." For example, her
divine maternity has always been the touchstone of an authentic understanding of the
Incarnation: her Immaculate Conception helps us to see more clearly the gratuity andthe power of God's redemptive love; her Assumption clarifies the teaching of the
Church on eschatology by giving us hope that the ultimate victory of Jesus over deathwill be shared by our own bodies. (Carberry, 1997) The devotion of the Filipino
people to Mary safeguards the faith and leads to a deeper and fuller evangelization of
the people (Evangelization in Asia Today, 1974).
Conclusion
In communicating the tenets of faith, the Blessed Virgin Mary plays an importantrole, especially in the discussion of the mystery of Incarnation and in the work of
Redemption brought by Jesus Christ. It becomes an avenue for her to become theMother of God and the Mother of All people. The Catechetical activity in thePhilippines is greatly influenced by the different aspects of society through which thegift of faith received by the Filipino people, whether it is social, economic, political,
or educational dimensions. Amidst this, one of the distinct characteristics that remain
is the Marian character of the faith of the Filipinos. The Filipino approach is to Jesus
through Mary, invoking the intercession of our Lady in presenting our prayers to herSon, Jesus. In the Philippine Catechetical Documents, Mary is characterized as a
Mother of the Filipino people who takes care and journeys with her children. She isalso a Model of Faith as Christ calls everyone to Discipleship. A model that is worthyof being emulated, especially the virtue of faith that she has exemplified and as adisciple that learns from her master. The Blessed Virgin Mary is venerated as the"realization of faith" (Congregation for the Clergy, 1997, 80). Every Filipino faithful
can draw inspiration from Mary by following her attitude, "In her heart, more than in
any other, faith in the risen Christ acquired its most complete and authentic aspect,that of joy." (John Paul II, 1998, 5) The veneration to the Mother of God is a way toimitate what she had achieved while still here on earth and as she is in heaven guiding
her children (Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, 1975, 98). As a
response to the invitation of following the example of the Blessed Virgin Mary, every
Filipino faithful is called to fully and responsibly accept the will of God and lead one
to become charitable and be of service to other people (cf. Catholic Bishops
Conference of the Philippines, 1975, 91). Mary is a mother and teacher of the spiritual
life (Paul VI, 1974, 21).

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References:
Carberry, J. (1977). The Role of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Catechetics. The
University of Dayton. https://udayton.edu/imri/mary/c/catechetics-marys-role.php
Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines. (1975). Ang Mahal na Birhen: Maryin Philippine Life Today. Kadiwa sa Pagkapari Foundation, Inc.
Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines. (1992). Acts and Decrees of theSecond Plenary Council of the Philippines. Paulines Publishing House.
Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines. (1992). Lord, increase our faith! –Integral Faith Formation: Towards Maturity in Christ.
http://cbcponline.net/lord-increase-our-faith-integral-faith-formation-towardsmaturity-in-christ/
Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines. (2012). 400 Years of Catholic
Education in the Philippines.
http://cbcponline.net/a-pastoral-letter-of-the-cbcp-on-the-occasion-of-the-400-yearsof-catholic-education-in-the-philippines/
Episcopal Commission on Catechesis and Catholic Education. (2017). New National
Catechetical Directory for the Philippines. Catholic Bishops Conference of thePhilippines.
John Paul II. (1979, October 16). Catechesi Tradendae. Vatican.
http://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/apost_exhortations/documents/hf_jpii_exh_16101979_catechesi-tradendae.html
John Paul II. (1998, April 28). Mary, our Mother- At the General Audience ofWednesday. Vatican.
http://www.vatican.va/jubilee_2000/magazine/documents/ju_mag_01101998_p28_en.html
John Paul II. (1998, May 6). Mary is our model and guide in faith - At the General
Audience of Wednesday. Vatican.
http://www.vatican.va/jubilee_2000/magazine/documents/ju_mag_01101998_p29_en.html
Legaspi, L.Z. (1982). Evangelization and Catechesis. Boletin Eclesiastico deFilipinas, (58)636-637, 60-68. University of Santo Tomas Library.
http://digitallibrary.ust.edu.ph/cdm/compoundobject/collection/boleccledef/id/24679/r
ec/7
Paul VI. (1975, December 8). Evangelii Nuntiandi. Vatican.
http://www.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/apost_exhortations/documents/hf_pvi_exh_19751208_evangelii-nuntiandi.html

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Paul VI. (1974, February 2). Marialis Cultus. Vatican.
http://w2.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/apost_exhortations/documents/hf_pvi_exh_19740202_marialis-cultus.html
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. (2008). National Directory for
Catechesis. USCCB Publishing.
Vatican II. (1964, November 21). Lumen Gentium. Vatican.
https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vatii_const_19641121_lumen-gentium_en.html
Vatican II. (1965, October 28). Gravissimum Educationis. Vatican.
http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vatii_decl_19651028_gravissimum-educationis_en.html
Villegas, S. (2008). Our Lady of Edsa. Balanga Diocese.
http://www.balangadiocese.com/Bishop'sMessages/ourladyofedsa.html
Contact email: aschanco@ust.edu.ph

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Exposure Therapy as an Intervention for Social Anxiety Disorder: A Case Study ofa College Student
Josephine Indah Setyawati, Universitas Indonesia, Indonesia
Adhityawarman Menaldi, Universitas Indonesia, Indonesia
The Asian Conference on Education 2020
Official Conference Proceedings
Abstract
Social anxiety disorder or SAD is defined as intense fear or anxiety of one or moresocial situations where one might behave embarrassingly or be observed and be
negatively evaluated by others. This clinical case study examines a 21-year-old
college student, “Deasy”, who presents symptoms of SAD based on the DSM-5,
including avoidance and excessive anxiety of social situations, difficulties in dailysocial functions, fear of being in crowds, and excessive anxiety to interact with others.
The in vivo exposure therapy was given to the subject, she directly facing her feared
situations to attack her anxiety toward five social situations. This therapy also
included various relaxation exercises and mantra reciting exercises to help her feel
more ready to confront her fears. During the exposure therapy, she graduallyconfronted fear-inducing social stimuli from the least to most feared. Nine sessions
conducted for this case, including a pre-treatment session, five sessions of exposure, awrap-up session, and a follow-up after two weeks. Deasy was given a pre-post
assessment using the Social Phobia Inventory to see the differences in the anxiety
level before and after the treatment. Results of the research show that the level ofanxiety for every five feared-social situations is decreased, and the SPIN score goesfrom 49 or categorized as “severe” to 38, categorized as “moderate”. This resultshows that exposure therapy, along with the relaxation exercise, was effective todecrease the level of social anxiety and reduce the symptoms of social anxiety.
Keywords: Exposure Therapy, Intervention, Social Anxiety Disorderiafor
The International Academic Forumwww.iafor.org

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Introduction
Social anxiety disorder is a type of intense, persistent, and unrealistic fear of social
situations involving strangers (Kring, Johnson, Davison, & Neale, 2014). SAD iscurrently the third most prevalent mental disorder following substance use anddepression (Yuniardi, 2019). Based on the DSM-V, this disorder is marked by anindividual’s anxiety or fear towards one or more social situations whereby anindividual is exposed and is likely to be observed by other people (American
Psychiatric Association, 2013). The DSM-V suggests that this disorder’s main feature
is fear or excessive worry in social environments that may elicit observations or
negative evaluations from other people in the same environment (Spence & Rapee,2016). As a consequence of focusing their attention to signs related to other people’s
negative evaluation, an individual with social anxiety disorder tends to avoid
situations where they might receive evaluations by other people or be humiliated inpublic (Kampmann, Emmelkamp, & Morina, 2018). Situations that these individuals
fear, among others, are public speaking, speaking in meetings, meeting new people,
and speaking to authority figures (Kring et al., 2014).
Many SAD symptoms cause individual distress and also affect daily life (Dryman,
Gardner, Weeks, & Heimberg, 2016). Individuals with SAD may also experience
reductions in quality of life and various significant limitations or hindrances in many
areas of living, including working and socializing (Wittchen, Fuetsch, Sonntag,
Müller, & Liebowitz, 1999). Compared to people without SAD symptoms,
individuals with SAD may also experience barriers in friendly relations and dating,barriers in social functioning, and tend to enjoy being single (Dryman et al., 2016).
SAD also happened to many college students in Indonesia. This disorder can be abarrier for them to study. Individuals with SAD are easier to feel incapable when
getting feedback. With this anxiety, a student may have no courage to do apresentation because they are afraid to be judged negatively. This anxiety also can bea barrier for them to speak up their opinion because they are worry to looked foolish.
This anxiety even can lead college students to be dropped out because they donʻt dotheir task as they are worried too much with peopleʻs judgment about them.
Interventions given to individuals with SAD are usually aimed at minimizing
symptoms that reduce an individual’s quality of life (Dryman et al.,2016). Many
forms of evidence-based psychological interventions are available to reduce social
anxiety symptoms, such as cognitive therapy, social skills training, relaxation, and a
combination of these therapies (Acarturk, Cuijpers, van Straten, & de Graaf, 2009).
One intervention that is frequently applied and has shown to significantly reduce
anxiety levels among individuals with social anxiety is exposure. Exposure is atechnique that serves as a key component in various anxiety therapies (Olatunji,
Cisler, & Deacon, 2010). It is an intervention that requires an individual to enter andwithstand fear-inducing situations that trigger distress, whereby feared stimuli areconfronted until anxiety levels subside (Rodebaugh, Holaway, & Heimberg, 2004;
Kampmann et al., 2016). Such feared stimuli may be in the form of a moving object
such as a balloon or insect; static objects such as knives and toilets; situational fears
such as darkness; cognition such as sex; or physiological states such as a rapid
heartbeat (Abramowitz, 2013).

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Exposure begins with creating a hierarchy or ranking of fear-inducing situations that
individuals usually avoid, with the last hierarchy (most anxiety-provoking situation)
marking the last exposure (Rodebaugh et al., 2004). Exposure techniques require
individuals are left to withstand anxiety-inducing social situations for certain amountsof time, with an aim to habituate the individual to the situation, therefore reducing theindividual’s anxiety levels. This exposure intervention can be delivered in two ways,
the first being in vivo, and the second being imaginary exposure. For in vivo
exposure, individuals directly deal with anxiety-inducing situations and are given theopportunity to confront actual feared stimuli, whereas imaginary exposure requires
individuals to visualize feared situations (Olatunji et al., 2010). A study conducted by
Bouchard et al. (2017) for clients with SAD demonstrated no differences in theeffectiveness between the two exposure techniques. Both are adequately effective inlowering SAD symptoms, when assessed with behavioral measures and measuresrelated to fear of social situations, fear of negative evaluations, and depressive mood.
Pilling et al. (in Chesham, Malouff, & Schutte, 2018) also asserted that CBT isusually a first-line therapy for individuals with social anxiety, consisting of exposure,cognitive restructuring, social skills training, and relaxation training. However,exposure is usually the key method for the treatment of social anxiety itself. Other
than this, exposure therapy is considered equally as effective as other cognitive
therapies or CBT for individuals with SAD (Kampmann, Emmelkamp, & Morina,2019). Considering the structure and elements of this method as well as its soundevidence-base, the exposure technique is considered appropriate for Deasy’s case.
As case studies on the use and effectiveness of exposure for social anxiety disorders
in Indonesia is limited, this study’s objective was to provide an account on themechanisms of change of a client who has suffered from a longstanding disorder. A
qualitative description of the sessions is provided, with data collected from thecounselor’s session notes, assessment results, and supervision notes.
Case Introduction: Deasy
The subject in this research is “Deasy”, a 21-years-old female. She is of Sundanese
ethnicity and resides in Bogor, West Java, and currently a student at a university in
Depok, West Java. Prior to consulting, Deasy experienced weight loss, loss ofappetite, and loss of interest in various activities. After further assessment, Deasy
revealed anxiety in dealing with daily social situations, in which she experienced
tremors, loss of words, a rapid heartbeat, and difficulty breathing. She experienced
these symptoms across various situations, such as in classrooms and public areas,
primarily ones that are novel for her. In the classroom, she had no courage in
expressing her opinion in large forums, was nervous when she had to present in frontof the class, and worried that she might receive poor judgment from other people. At
campus, she did not have many friends and felt anxious when she has to meet new
people in her environment. Outside the campus, Deasy also felt anxious if she had tocommunicate with other people, such as passing by a group of people. Deasy also felt
uncomfortable to begin communicating with other people in public, such as shopping
centers, stations, and other public spaces. Deasy always assumed that other people
around her, especially by new people in her environment, view her as a ‘weird’person.

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The design of this research is a pre-post single-subject design. Prior to theintervention, Deasy was assessed for a proper diagnosis and to justify that theintervention would be appropriate in addressing her symptoms. The diagnostic
assessment consisted of a clinical interview with a DSM-5 basis, the Social Phobia
Inventory (SPIN), and projection tests that showed indications of social anxiety
disorder. Based on the DSM-5-based clinical interview, her condition met all the
diagnostic criteria. As a tool that measures the severity of social phobia or Social
Anxiety Disorder (SAD) (Antony, Coons, McCabe, Ashbaugh, & Swinson, 2006), thecounselor’s diagnosis was substantiated after the SPIN test generated results – a scoreof 49 was classified as a severe disorder. The entailing aspects were fear of
authoritative figures, fear of criticism, avoidance of activities in which Deasy would
be the center of attention, avoidance of speech, avoidance of criticism, fear of
performing in activities that draw people’s attention, and fear of looking “foolish” infront of others. The changes of anxiety are monitored before the session, during thesession (anxiety level being self-measured twice for each specific social situations,
before and after the session), and after the treatment (Table 3). The changes The
intervention was preceded with an informed consent signed by Deasy. In planning andexecuting the intervention, Deasy’s safety and well-being were reassured. Theintervention was supervised by the co-author, a certified clinical psychologist,
Adhityawarman Menaldi, M.Psi., Psikolog.

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Session
Pre-Treatment
Session 1

Session 2 – 6

Wrap-Up Session

Follow-Up Session

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Activity
Initial counseling session.
Motivational interviewing.
Preparation session.
Set five situations for exposure
session with the subject.
Preparing the subject with safety
net and various relaxation techniques,such
asdiaphragm-breathingandprogressive muscle relaxation therapy(PMR).
Pre-treatment assessment.
In vivo exposure sessions toward
five situations.
Self-assessment
tomeasuresubjectʻs level of anxiety in each situation,
before and after treatment.
Post-treatment assessment.
Having a discussion with thesubject of her lesson-learned during
sessions.
Making a “what-to-do” list to help
the subject decide what to do if her
anxiety level increases again in the future.
Termination session.
This session is conducted after two weeks
of termination. The subject would be
asked about her progress and how shedeals with her anxiety by herself.
Table 1. Session Plan

The Intervention: Exposure
The intervention given to Deasy was exposure, a therapeutic technique in behavior
modification. During exposure, Deasy is directly confronted with a real-life situationthat was a source of her anxiety, until Deasy eventually was habituated to the situationand could invalidate her anxiety. The anxiety-inducing situation was paired with arelaxation technique trained in prior sessions. In early exposure stages, Deasy was
required to list 5 social situations she usually becomes anxious over, then asked torank each situation, ranking from most to least manageable sources of anxiety. Fromthe list’s ranks, Deasy would then deal with each situation starting from the easiest to
the hardest situation. The exposure intervention was given for seven sessions that
included a wrap-up session to self-rate the anxiety level and its reductions in eachsocial situation.
Pretreatment Process
Before the intervention with exposure therapy began, an initial counseling session
was provided to raise and strengthen Deasy’s motivation to change for six sessions.
During these initial six sessions, Deasy was also given a CBT approach by discussing

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thought recording and learning to counter negative thoughts that Deasy had in various
social anxiety-inducing situations. She was also given relaxation training throughprogressive muscle relaxation and diaphragm breathing relaxation that can
immediately be applied when her anxiety appears. The counselor also attempted toprovide an in vivo systematic desensitization intervention, but with no success asimagining anxiety-inducing social situations overwhelmed her.
Session I
In this first session, Deasy exercised diaphragm-breathing relaxation that could be
immediately applied each time by physical reactions occur, such as shaking andfeeling weak in each social situation she encountered. This session also included
preparation by creating a mantra that Deasy could recite to reinforce herself. The
mantra was “it is alright; people could be wrong.” Deasy then created a list of social
situations that were sources of her anxiety and ranked them, starting from most to
least manageable. From each situation, she was asked to make an anxiety scale andthe targeted reductions in each scale. Together with the counselor a ‘safety net’ wasestablished – things Deasy could do as a code to the counselor that a situation was
becoming too overwhelming for her to deal with, so that the counselor can approach
her and terminate the exposure (Table 3).
The following is a list of situations Deasy’s anxiety is rooted in, ranked from most to
least manageable, including her anxiety ratings within a 10-point scale:
Scale of Anxiety
Situations

Pre Treatment

Push a pedestrian crossing button at
6
Universitas Indonesia (UI) station
Asking a location to a stranger
6
Sit alone in the cafeteria
8
Get on and off the yellow bus alone at UI
8bus stop
Presentation
10
Table 2. Scale of Anxiety for Five Feared-Situations

Target Post
Treatment
0
4
1
2
4

Safety Net
Draw deep breaths 8 times and exhale 10 times
Look towards the counselor
Call the counselor to be approached
Table 3. Safety Net
Session II
In the second session, the exposure exercise started from the most manageable
situation with an anxiety rating of 6, which was pressing a pedestrian crossing buttonin front of the UI station. For this situation, Deasy aimed at reducing her anxiety to 0.
Prior to the exposure, Deasy was asked to think of the possible events that might
happen when she pushes the button, as a justification point on whether the possible

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events actually happened or not. Deasy began the session with a breathing exercise
and progressive relaxation to compose her self.
Following this, the counselor accompanied Deasy to push the crossing button. Deasy
was asked to pay attention to her surroundings and justify whether everyone aroundher was staring at her when she pushes the button. At first, Deasy declined to push the
button, and the counselor gave her time to calm down. Deasy exercised relaxation andrepeated the mantra as a reinforcement. This session took 2 attempts at pushing the
button; the first attempt with the counselor by her side, and the second attempt withthe counselor standing half a meter away from Deasy. After the second attempt,
Deasy felt overwhelmed and the session was terminated.
After this session ended, a short evaluation was done and Deasy was asked to evaluate
her anxiety on a scale after both attempts. After the first attempt, her anxiety was
reduced to 5 and at the second attempt, reduced to 4. Deasy expressed how she did
not tremble as much during the second attempt after she observed her surroundings,
there were only 1 or 2 people looking at her, and they did not say anything to confirm
that Deasy appeared “weird”.
Session III
In the third session, exposure for the next most manageable situation was done, which
was asking a location to a stranger. Communicating with other people was also asocial situation that hindered and provoked Deasy’s anxiety – for this situation, heranxiety over being judged as “foolish” for asking questions. She was also worried that
she might not ask clearly and cause a person to misunderstand. Prior to the exposure,
Deasy was asked to recite the mantra, exercise progressive relaxation, and think ofwhat she could do if her fears do occur. The exposure was then done gradually. First,
the counselor accompanied Deasy to approach a security guard to ask about abuilding’s location and observe the person’s reaction. After seeing that the responseof the person she inquired was acceptable and that Deasy was fine after she had
asked, her anxiety rating was reduced to 2.
In the next attempt, Deasy was asked to approach two people who were sitting
together to ask for a location. Deasy was anxious at first, with her palms starting tosweat, and was hesitant as she thought one of them seemed to not want to bebothered. However, after Deasy drew deep breaths and recited the mantra repeatedly,
she then made the inquiry. After succeeding, Deasy expressed that her anxiety rating
further reduced to 1.
The final step for this session was to approach a few people who were gathering toalso ask for a location. For this stage, the counselor stood next from a one-meter
distance from her. Deasy ‘blanked out’ for a moment before she made the inquiry andbecame anxious for hesitating to ask. The counselor observed Deasy’s facial
expression turn into a panic state, however, she took a deep breath and repeated her
inquiry. In this stage, Deasy demonstrated progress and did not give the counselor any
code for help despite briefly having difficulty inquiring. Following this, an evaluation
was done and Deasy asserted that her anxiety rating increased to 2, but her body did
not react with a tremble, she had the courage to look a person in the eye when
speaking, and was no longer sweating.

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Session IV
In the fourth session, Deasy was faced with the next moderately manageable situation,
which was sitting in the cafeteria alone. Deasy rated her anxiety scale at 8 as she felt
very uneasy when other people looked at her. Sitting in the cafeteria alone was astrange thing for her and she felt that other people would also see her as ʻweirdʻ, infear of looking stiff or confused. The session took 2 attempts. The counselor sat with
Deasy in the first attempt and asked Deasy to observe her surroundings, to justify
whether everyone around her was in fact look toward Deasy’s table. The first attempt
took 10 minutes. The counselor instructed Deasy to sit still, to just observe her
surroundings.
At first, Deasy appeared very anxious. She kept on playing with the ring on her finger
and looked downwards without observing her surroundings. The counselor theninstructed Deasy to take a deep breath and recite the mantra to reinforce herself. After
Deasy appeared calmer, she was able to look at her surroundings. The first attempt
ended after Deasy told the counselor she wished to stop. An evaluation was done, andDeasy stated how her concerns were invalid, seeing that every person in the cafeteria
was preoccupied. After this attempt, Deasy’s anxiety rating dropped to 6.
A second attempt was done with the counselor observing Deasy from a 2-meter
distance. Deasy appeared uneasy, with her feet tapping the floor, and continuously
fidgeting with her ring. She also appeared to observe her surroundings and thenobserved the greenery beside the cafeteria. After 10 minutes, the counselor
approached Deasy for an evaluation. From this evaluation, Deasy expressed that after
the counselor left her to sit alone, her body trembled, palms were wet from sweat, andfelt like crying. She then drew a deep breath and focused on reciting the mantra. Aftercalming down, she looked around, and when she saw two people looking towards her,
she trembled again, then distracted her view to the greenery next to the cafeteria. Thiswas discussed with the counselor. After discussing the alternative conditions as towhat people could be thinking when they look towards her, she concluded that it ispossible they may just be looking around as well, just like she was, and it did not infer
negative thoughts about her. After the evaluation, Deasy rated that her anxiety was
reduced to 4.
Session V
In the fifth session, the exposure was confronting Deasy’s anxiety over getting on andoff the yellow bus at a bus stop near campus grounds with only her (no otherpassenger) getting on or off. She was anxious over the thought of other people seeing
her as ‘weird’ for getting on and off the yellow bus alone. Similar to previous
sessions, Deasy exercised progressive relaxation to ease down and relax during theexposure. Her anxiety rating for this situation was at 8. This session took two
attempts, in which a specific timeframe was selected whereby not many students wereusing the bus on campus.
In the first attempt, the counselor accompanied Deasy to get on the bus from one of
the bus stops, to get off at the next two stops. In this first attempt, Deasy only looked
downwards during the ride, and repeatedly asked the counselor, “Do we look weird
for doing this?” In this first attempt, Deasy reported that her anxiety did not reduce at

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all. Prior to the second attempt, the counselor instructed Deasy to take a deep breath,exercise relaxation, and continuously recite the mantra. After Deasy felt more
prepared, she and the counselor got back on the bus. This time, the counselor asked
her to observe her surroundings and prove whether there was anybody paying
attention to her while she got on the bus. After two bust stops, Deasy and thecounselor got off the bus and made an evaluation. Deasy reported that her anxiety was
unjustified, as nobody appeared to observe Deasy while she got on or off the bus.
Following this, Deasy was asked to give her anxiety scale a rating, which had dropped
to 6.
The exposure ended with a reflection from her experience in completing this fifthsession. Beyond the session setting, apparently Deasy tried to get on the campus bus
by herself, then made a report to the counselor and rated her anxiety lowered to 4
during this self-attempt. According to Deasy, getting on the busy alone was not athreat that needs to be avoided, although her trembling bodily reacting still occurred
while getting on or off the bus.
Session VI
The exposure for this session was Deasy confronting a situation that provoked thestrongest anxiety, which was presented in front of strangers. Deasy briefly wished toback out and not do the presentation, although she had prepared the materials for overa week. Deasy was also momentarily unable to be contacted by the counselor.
However, she eventually showed up for the session and discussed her anxiety with thecounselor. Throughout the session before presenting, Deasy cried and expressed how
unprepared she was. She was concerned about being judged poorly by the audience.
She was also worried that the way she presents will make the audience misunderstandor consider her ‘foolish’, or that her speech would be unclear and thus confuse her
audience. However, after discussing her anxiety with the counselor and a motivational
interview, Deasy eventually agreed to carry out this last exposure.
Before the exposure, Deasy was instructed to exercise diaphragm-breathing relaxationand progressive muscle relaxation continued with rehearsing her presentation material
in front of the counselor. When Deasy was ready, the counselor asked a colleague
who was pre-arranged as an audience to pay attention and listen to Deasy’spresentation, which lasted for approximately 5 minutes.
Throughout the presentation, Deasy exhibited many signs of progress. She no longer
played with the ring on her finger as she usually does and did not look at thecounselor when she misspoke during the presentation. When she did misspeak, Deasy
was able to smile to the viewers, took a moment to breathe, and repeat her
presentation. After the presentation, Deasy took the initiative to ask for feedback fromthe audience without the counselor’s instruction.
After feedbacks were given and the audience exited the room, an evaluation was
made. Deasy stated how she felt proud of herself for overcoming her greatest anxietyinducing obstacle. Following this, the counselor asked Deasy to rate her anxiety scale,and it was lowered to 4, meeting the targeted anxiety scale reduction.

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Wrap-Up Session
An evaluation of all five exposure sessions was made. This session also discussed thethings Deasy could have done if her anxiety re-emerges beyond the treatment setting.
In this session, Deasy’s anxiety-provoking beliefs were identified, which were, “I am
not good, I am wrong, I am stupid”. Of these beliefs, the session also discussed new
beliefs and a new belief was generated - “I am stronger than I think”, which will beapplied after the end of the session. The counselor also asked Deasy to reflect on allcompleted sessions and the progress she has experienced.
Follow-Up Session
Follow-up was done two months after the intervention. Deasy kept communicatingwith the counselor for up to two months after the intervention was completed. Basedon the follow-up record, Deasy reported that she was already able to manage heranxiety in asking for information to strangers without fear of judgment. The follow-up
also indicated that Deasy occasionally still feels anxious when she has to deal withother people. However, Deasy was more aware of the signs of her anxiety’s
emergence and attempts to manage them by reciting her mantras. For two months
after the intervention, Deasy still exercised breathing techniques that she deemed was
effective in helping her anxiety.
ResultFor a case of social anxiety disorder, the exposure intervention appeared to beeffective in reducing Deasy’s anxiety level toward daily social situations. Based on
the wrap-up session that also included a discussion on Deasy’s efforts beyond theclinical setting, it was reported that Deasy had the courage to push a pedestriancrossing button in front of a station, ask a security guard for directions, and make aphone call to a government official. Of five situations, her anxiety level for sitting in acafeteria and doing a presentation was reduced to the expected level. Based on the
SPIN-INA test, the result shows that the score of anxiety was decreased from “severe
anxiety” (40-50) to “moderate anxiety” (30-40) after the treatment as seen in Table 4.
The decrease level of anxiety in exposure therapy can be explained with emotional
processing theory (EPT). This theory explained that when an individual confronts afeared stimulus during exposure, it will activate a fear structure. During exposure
sessions, the activation of the fear structure will be integrated with information that is
incompatible with it, resulting in the development of a new non-feared structure as areplacement, and fear reduction which represents a change in cognitions(Abramowitz, 2013). For Deasyʻs case, this model of learning also happened. Deasy
was habituated with her feared stimuli, which was a basis for corrective learning(Abramowitz, 2013). When she was exposed to her feared stimuli, she activated herfear structure, and this process integrated with information which very different fromher previous beliefs, and this process developed a new non-feared structure of her
feared social situations. Decreasing of Deasyʻs anxiety level was in line with the EPT
model since she found that her feared stimuli were not that dangerous, she changed
her cognitions, so her fear toward those situations was reduced.

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Psychological Measure

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Post-treatment
ScoresScale of Anxiety
2Pre-treatment Scores

Self Measure about Situations
1.
Pushing the pesestrian 6
crossing at UI Station
2.
Asking a location to a 6
4stranger
3.
Sitting alone in the 82cafeteria
4.
Getting on and off the 84yellow bus at UI bus stop alone
5.
Doing a presentation
10
4
SPIN-INA Score
49
38
Table 4. Pre-treatment Scores and Post-treatment Scores

In Deasy’s case, her lack of disclosure toward her closest environment regarding theissues she has in dealing with social situations may have served as a complicating
factor that affected the intervention’s outcomes. Deasy’s lack of disclosure may havealso caused her surroundings to not help Deasy develop. Her closest environment was
her family in particular. The minimum awareness of her own condition may have also
caused her to further avoid social situations. Deasy also reported that her family wasunaware of her avoidance from the environment, including her extended family, as
she was concerned about being seen as ‘weird’ or would receive negative judgmentsfrom her family. This in fact caused her family to reprimand Deasy when she declined
to attend a large family gathering. This type of criticism could have exacerbated
Deasy’s anxiety and further reinforce her self-blame in various situations.
Conclusion
Exposures for anxiety disorders are known to help reduce an individual’s anxiety
levels in dealing with trigger situations, and this case was reported strategically for its
clarity and simplicity in justifying the efficacy of exposure therapy and the rapidity oftreatment. Specifically, for Deasy’s social anxiety disorder, the intervention using
exposure was considered effective in helping Deasy lower her anxiety. It was known
that her anxiety manifested because of her avoidance of such situations, therefore she
was unable to directly experience or justify whether the situation was safe for her.
This finding is in line with previous research findings that exposure therapy, even in a
one-session of in vivo exposure, also proven significantly to reduce social anxiety.
(Knutsson, Nilsson, Eriksson, & Jarild, 2020; Scheurich, Beidel, & Vanryckeghem,2019). Through exposure, individuals with SAD may become habituated to a social
situation and learned to justify the irrationality of their fears. Through exposure,clients may also learn through exposure to the steps they can take when their fears do
occur. Especially for this case, exposure therapy was combined with relaxation
techniques and a safety net planner. Observations toward Deasy during the session,
safety net planner, and relaxation exercises helped to prepare herself to encounter the
exposure session, because when the subjects are learned how to relax, for example
relax their muscles deeply, they learn to banish thoughts, feelings, and bodily
sensations of anxiety (Conrad & Roth, 2007). Although this kind of therapy has to be
adjusted differently to each client, exposure therapy is worth applying, especially in aschool or college contexts like Deasyʻs case. Besides, it is widely accepted that case

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studies cannot be generalized because this case is very specific. The intervention
given to the subject was a very specific custom-made adjusted to Deasyʻs condition.
Therefore, further research using this method and procedure needed to be applied tosimilar demographics or symptomatology to strengthen the result of this research.

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References
Abramowitz, J.S. (2013) The practice of exposure therapy: Relevance of cognitivebehavioral theory and extinction theory. Behavior Therapy, 44(4), 548–558.
Acarturk, C., Cuijpers, P., van Straten, A., & de Graaf, R. (2009). Psychologicaltreatment of social anxiety disorder: a meta-analysis. Psychological Medicine, 39(2),241-254.
American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual ofmental disorders (5th ed.). Washington, DC: Author.
Antony, M. M., Coons, M. J., McCabe, R. E., Ashbaugh, A., & Swinson, R. P.
(2006). Psychometric properties of the social phobia inventory: Further
evaluation. Behaviour research and therapy, 44(8), 1177-1185.
Bouchard, S., Dumoulin, S., Robillard, G., Guitard, T., Klinger, E., Forget, H., ... &Roucaut, F. X. (2017). Virtual reality compared with in vivo exposure in the treatmentof social anxiety disorder: a three-arm randomised controlled trial. The British
Journal of Psychiatry, 210(4), 276-283.
Chesham, R. K., Malouff, J. M., & Schutte, N. S. (2018). Meta-analysis of theefficacy of virtual reality exposure therapy for social anxiety. Behaviour
Change, 35(3), 152-166.
Conrad, A., & Roth, W. T. (2007). Muscle relaxation therapy for anxiety disorders : Itworks but how?. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 21, 243-264.
Dryman, M. T., Gardner, S., Weeks, J. W., & Heimberg, R. G. (2016). Social anxiety
disorder and quality of life: How fears of negative and positive evaluation relate tospecific domains of life satisfaction. Journal of anxiety disorders, 38, 1-8.
Kampmann, I. L., Emmelkamp, P. M., Hartanto, D., Brinkman, W. P., Zijlstra, B. J.,& Morina, N. (2016). Exposure to virtual social interactions in the treatment of social
anxiety disorder: A randomized controlled trial. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 77,
147-156.
Kampmann, I. L., Emmelkamp, P. M., & Morina, N. (2018). Does Exposure Therapy
Lead to Changes in Attention Bias and Approach-Avoidance Bias in Patients withSocial Anxiety Disorder?. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 42(6), 856-866.
Kampmann, I. L., Emmelkamp, P. M., & Morina, N. (2019). Cognitive predictors oftreatment outcome for exposure therapy: do changes in self-efficacy, self-focused
attention, and estimated social costs predict symptom improvement in social anxiety
disorder?. BMC psychiatry, 19(1), 80.
Knutsson, J., Nilsson, J., Eriksson, A., & Jarild, L. (2020). Imagery rescripting andexposure in social anxiety: A randomized trial comparing treatment techniques.
Journal of Contemporary Psychotherapy, 50. 233-240.

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Kring, A. M., Johnson, S. L., Davison, G., & Neale, J. (2014). Abnormal Psychology,
12ed., New Jersey: Wiley.
Olatunji, B. O., Cisler, J. M., & Deacon, B. J. (2010) Efficacy of cognitive-behavioral
therapy for anxiety disorders: A review of meta-analytic findings. Psychiatric Clinics
of North America, 33, 557–577.
Rodebaugh, T. L., Holaway, R. M., & Heimberg, R. G. (2004). The treatment ofsocial anxiety disorder. Clinical Psychology Review, 24(7), 883-908.
Scheurich, J. A., Beidel, D. C., & Vanryckeghem, M. (2019). Exposure therapy forsocial anxiety disorder in people who stutter: An exploratory multiple baseline design.
Journal of Fluency Disorders, 59, 21-32.
Spence, S.H., & Rapee, R. M. (2016). The etiology of social anxiety disorder: An
evidence-based model. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 86, 1-18.
Wittchen, H. U., Fuetsch, M., Sonntag, H., Müller, N., & Liebowitz, M. (1999).
Disability and quality of life in pure and comorbid social phobia–Findings from acontrolled study. European Psychiatry, 14(3), 118-131.
Yuniardi, M. S. (2019). Cognitive Risk Factors Predicting Social Anxiety Among
Indonesian Adolescents. ANIMA Indonesian Psychological Journal, 34(2), 85-92.
Contact email: josephine.indah81@ui.ac.id
a.menaldi@ui.ac.id

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Teachers’ Characteristics, Teacher Burnout and Motivation to Leave
Sukritta Preechawong, King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi, Thailand
Anusit Anmanatrakul, King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi, Thailand
Pichet Pinit, King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi, Thailand
Ravinder Koul, Pennsylvania State University, United States
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Abstract
A lack of teachers especially vocational field is one of the most important problem ofThai education. The report from the Office of Vocational Education Commission 2019
revealed that Public vocational institutions lack teachers around 18,846 persons. There
are many factors affects to teachers’ retention such as welfare, stability, job position andburnout. This research aimed to study the variables correlate motivation to leave of
vocational teachers such as teachers’ characteristics (age, gender, position) and teacher
burnout. Questionnaire used in this study including 3 parts; 22 items of Burnout
Inventory in teachers adopted from Maslasch’s (1981), 3 items of motivation to leave
adopted from Skaalvik (2011) and teacher demographic such as age, gender, position. In
this study, data were collected by 424 vocational teachers (from 10 provinces inmetropolitan, north, northeast, east and south of Thailand. The results showed that
position of teacher and burnout (emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and personal
accomplishment) were correlated with motivation to leave while age and gender were
not. Moreover, age of teachers correlated with emotional exhaustion anddepersonalization whilst teachers’ position correlated only depersonalization. It wasrecommended that Ministry of Education should consider about policy for teachers ineach position which got different welfare and should support early career teachers toretain in their profession.
Keywords: Teachers’ Characteristics, Teacher Burnout, Motivation to Leave

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Introduction
Vocational teachers are an important force in Thailand now which are facing a problemof teacher shortage of many rates. From the report of Vocational Education Commission
2019 showed that Public vocational institutions lack teachers around 18,846 persons. Thisis partly due to the retired teachers and other reasons for the lack of teachers for example
teachers mismatched the field of teaching or under qualified, problems with heavy
workload make teachers want to quit their profession, lack of support from colleagues
and administrators or position and welfare disparities. When we aimed to focus on inservice teachers why they want to leave profession or change their career. Burnout is one
important factor that might cause this issue. As Brunsting et.al (2014) said the outcomesof burnout associated with teacher attrition, teacher health issues, and negative student
outcomes. Some studies showed that teacher with burnout affects to personal health,education systems and environments. Teachers who feel higher levels of burnout report tobe more stressed, less effective in teaching and classroom management, less connected totheir students and dissatisfied with their work. (Aloe et al., 2014, Brouwers and Tomic,
2000). In addition, they study about factor that might be cause of burnout which arecortisol levels due to age, gender, and time of awaking, higher morning cortisol levels in
students could be significantly predicted from higher burnout levels in classroom teachers
as well (Oberle and Reichl, 2016). From the reason of the above, it shows how important
to investigate teacher burnout especially in Thailand which face the problem about lackof teachers and burnout might be cause of this issue.
In context of vocational teachers in Thailand who work for government college, they
have a hierarchy which separate position of teachers into three types which aregovernment officer, employee of government and temporary officer. The other two types
which are employee of government teachers and temporary officer teachers have got
difference welfare and support while doing the same duties as government officer
teacher. So, this study aimed to investigate the variables correlate motivation to leave
profession of vocational teachers such as teachers’ characteristics (age, gender, position)and teacher burnout. This research may help the administrators and Ministry of Education
to look back and consider about the significant of teachers’ development and how toretain teachers by support their emotional issues.
Literature Review
Burnout
Burnout concept was begun in the early 1970’s via the ideas of Herbert Freudenberger in
New York and Christina Maslach and Ayala Pines in California. Burnout is used todescribe a stress-related syndrome. The definition of burnout is defined by Maslach andJackson (1981) conceptualized burnout as composed of three distinct factors: emotional
exhaustion described as loss of energy, depletion, impairment and fatigue,
depersonalization is a negative change in attitudes and responses toward others, and lackof feeling of accomplishment dimension lends negative responses to personal

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accomplishments typified by depression, low morale, interpersonal withdrawal, reduce
performance.
Teacher burnout is the feeling of dissatisfied with responsibilities of teaching. Teacher
burnout can lead to uninspired to keep going in profession and emotional drain (Bessmanet.al, 2018). Burnout is one of symptom that effect to teacher profession.
Motivation to leave profession
In 2016, the data was collected from 523 Norwegian teachers in senior high school. It
reported that two main routes to teachers’ motivation to leave the profession were 1) timepressure via emotional stress and exhaustion to motivation to quit and 2) lack ofsupervisory support and trust, low student motivation and value conflicts via lower selfefficacy and lower engagement to intention to quit (Skaalvik & Skaalvik,2016). For otherreasons why teachers left teaching profession, the study reported that 160 Australianprimary and secondary teachers with lower job satisfaction demonstrated a strong
intention to leave the teaching profession (Arnup and Bowles,2016).
Teacher burnout and motivation to leave teaching profession
For the study about teacher burnout and intention to quit profession, there was reportfrom 112 Australian teachers working in their first or second academic year. There is acorrelation between serious intentions to leave the teaching profession and burnout levels
reported by teachers who are at the beginning of their teaching careers (Goddard andGoddard, 2006). Moreover, In the study of Leung and Lee (2006) reported that 379
teachers which provided data on the associations among social support, burnout, andintention to quit. Results confirmed by using Structure Equation Model that the threecomponents of burnout demonstrated differently on intention to quit, with emotional
exhaustion as the dominant factor, while the other two components exerted no effect. A
study in academic comprising of lecturers in Turkey indicated that there are positive andsignificant relationships between emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and intention
to leave, there is no significant relationship between personal accomplishment andintention to leave (Altunoğlu and Sarpkaya,2012).
Research question
1) What are the variables that correlate to motivation to leave of vocational teachers
such as teachers’ characteristics (age, gender, position) and teacher burnout?
Methodology
The population size of this study were 29,915 teachers in vocational college. The data
were collected 424 vocational teachers in Thailand. The participants included both male204 (48.1%) and female 220 (51.9%) vocational teachers. The ages of the teachers ranged
from 23 to 60 years and the mean age of the participants was 38.3 years. 25.9% of theteachers were in the age less than 30 years (n = 110). 38.7% of the teachers were between

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31 and 40 years of age (n = 164). 19.8% were between the age range of 41 to 49 years (n= 84) and 15.6% were between the age range of 51 to 60 years (n = 66). The data wascollected from teachers in 5 areas; 30.4% from metropolitan area including Bangkok (n =129), 21.2% from north area (n = 90), 25.2% from northeast area (n = 107), 11.6% fromeast area (n = 49) and 11.6% from south area (n = 49). There were three positions ofteachers shown in this study; 48.3% from government officer (n = 205), 17.7% from
employee of government (n = 75), 34% from temporary officer (n = 144).
Questionnaire used in this study including 3 parts; 22 items of Burnout Inventory inteachers adopted from Maslasch’s (1981) translated into Thai version which divided into
3 constructs which were emotional exhaustion e.g. “I feel emotionally drained from mywork.”, depersonalization e.g. “I feel I treat some students as if they were impersonal
objects.”, personal accomplishment e.g. “I can easily understand how my students feel
about things”. All questions had 7 scales (0 = Never 1 = A few times a year or less 2 =Once a month or less 3 = A few times a month 4 = Once a week 5 = A few times a week
6 = Every day). For emotional exhaustion and depersonalization, high mean scores
correspond to higher degrees of burnout. In contrast to another subscale, lower meanscores on personal accomplishment correspond to a higher degree of burnout.
Table1. Response Categories for Emotional Exhaustion, Depersonalization and Personal
Accomplishment on the Maslach Burnout Inventory – Educators’ Survey
Response Category
High
Moderate
Low

Emotional Exhaustion

Depersonalization

Personal Accomplishment

27 and over
17 - 26
0-16

13 and over
7-12
0-6

1-31
32-38
39 and overFor motivation to leave profession, there were 3 items adopted from Skaalvik (2011) with
5 scales (5 = Strongly agree 4 = Agree 3 = Unsure 2 = Disagree 1 = Strongly disagree)e.g. “I often think of leaving the teacher profession”. And the last part were teacher
demographic such as age, gender, position. For mean, standard deviation and Cronbach
Alpha have shown in table 2.
Table 2. Items and reliability coefficients (Cronbach’s alpha)
Emotional Exhaustion
Depersonalization
Personal accomplishment
Attention to leave profession

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0.94
0.87
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Results
Table 3. Mean score and standard deviation of variables (Emotional Exhaustion,
Depersonalization, Personal accomplishment and motivation to leave profession)Note. The numerical values for the personal accomplishment subscale are reversed. A
score of less than 32 on the personal accomplishment sub-scale indicates a high degree of
personal accomplishment.
From table 3 shows the differences level of perception about subscales in burnout
between gender, age and position. In terms of gender, it shows that emotional exhaustionin male is slightly higher than female (mean = 18.03, SD = 0.25/ mean 17.41, SD = 0.45).
Depersonalization in male is higher than female (mean = 6.63, SD = 0.24/ mean = 5.21,
SD = 0.21). For reduced personal accomplishment, male is higher than female (mean =38.44, SD = 0.47/ mean = 39.94, SD = 0.47). It indicates that both male and female got
emotional exhaustion in moderate level but depersonalization and reduced personal
accomplishment in low level. intention to leave profession in female is slightly higher
than male (mean = 2.39, SD = 1.16/ mean = 2.32, SD = 1.14). In terms of age, high scoreof emotional exhaustion is age under 30 years old (mean = 19.79, SD = 0.36) and age of
31-40 years old (mean = 18.33, SD = 0.39). It demonstrates that these 2 ranges of age arein moderate level of emotional exhaustion. It corresponds to depersonalization that bothage group of under 30 and 31- 40 years old are in high score (mean = 6.44, SD = 0.24/
mean = 6.95, SD = 0.23) when compare with other two groups of age but it is still in low
level. For reduced personal accomplishment, it shows the age under 30 years old is inhigh level. Besides, age of 31- 40 years old shows the highest score of intention to leave
the profession (mean = 2.50, SD = 1.17). In terms of position, the result indicates that
employee of government had the highest score in every aspects in burnout (emotional
exhaustion mean = 18.77, SD = 0.20/ depersonalization mean = 8.13, SD = 0.20 andreduced personal accomplishment mean = 37.52, SD = 0.52). All aspects are in moderatelevel of burnout. Moreover, the employee of government shows the highest score in
motivation to leave profession as well (mean = 2.65, SD = 1.23).

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Table 4. Pearson’s correlation coefficients of any variables

From table 4 Correlation coefficient between age and emotional exhaustion shows
negative correlations at the significant of 0.01 meanwhile age and depersonalizationshows negative correlation at the significant of 0.05. It corresponds to table 3 shows thatwhen age of participants increased, emotional exhaustion and depersonalization got lower
scores. In terms of position, it shows positive correlation with depersonalization at thesignificant level of 0.05 and motivation to leave profession at 0.01. For subscales ofburnout in this study show that emotional exhaustion and depersonalization had positive
correlation with intention to leave profession at the significant level of 0.05. Besides,
personal accomplishment demonstrates negative correlation with intention to leave
profession at the significant level of 0.05.
Conclusions
This research aimed to study the variables that correlate motivation to leave in vocational
teachers such as teachers’ characteristics and teacher burnout. The results reported that
correlation coefficient between age and emotional exhaustion shows negative correlations
at the significant of 0.01 meanwhile age and depersonalization shows negative correlation
at the significant of 0.05. It means when the age of teachers increased, emotional
exhaustion and depersonalization decreased. It assumed that when teachers were inhigher age, they had more maturity and can cope their stress or situation that effected totheir emotion. This study did not correspond to the result of Bayani et.al. (2013) thatteachers had level of emotional exhaustion and depersonalization in differences age and it
did not show the same direction. In terms of position, it correlated to depersonalizationand motivation to leave profession. It can assume that position of vocational teachers in
Thailand effects to their feeling of negative change in attitudes and responses toward
others. When we see in table 4, it showed that the position of employee of government
had the highest score of depersonalization and motivation to leave profession. It
mentioned that the administrators or government should focus on this position which got
the differences allowance and support. Followed by position of temporary officer which
had the lowest allowance when compare with other two positions. In addition, the results
reported that emotional exhaustion and depersonalization had positive correlation withintention to leave profession. Besides, personal accomplishment demonstrates negative
correlation with intention to leave profession. It did not correspond to the study of
Altunoğlu and Sarpkaya (2012) that there are positive and significant relationships

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between emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and intention to leave, there is no
significant relationship between personal accomplishment and intention to leave.

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References
Ali Asghar Bayani, Hossein Bagheri, Ali Bayani (2012). Influence of Gender, Age, andYears of teaching experience on Burnout. Annals of Biological Research, 2013, 4(4):239-243
Ali Ender Altunoğlu and Pınar Sarpkaya (2012). Effects of burnout and job satisfaction
on intention to leave. African Journal of Business Management Vol. 6(29), pp. 85648571, 25 July, 2012
A.M. Aloe, L.C. Amo, M.E. Shanahan (2014). Classroom management self-Efficacy andburnout: a multivariate meta-analysis Educ. Psychol. Rev., 26 (1) (2014), pp. 101-126.
Brouwers, W. Tomic (200). A longitudinal study of teacher burnout and perceived selfefficacy in classroom management Teach. Teach. Educ., 16 (2000), pp. 239-253
Doris Y.P. Leung & Wincy W.S.Lee (2006). Predicting intention to quit among Chineseteachers: differential predictability of the components of burnout. Anxiety, Stress, andCoping, June 2006; 19(2): 129-141
Einar M.Skaalvik and Sidsel Skaalvik (2011). Teacher job satisfaction and motivation toleave the teaching profession: Relations with school context, feeling of belonging, andemotional exhaustion. Teaching and Teacher EducationVolume 27, Issue 6, August 2011,
pp. 1029-1038
Eva Oberle and Kimberly A.Schonert-Reichl (2016). Stress contagion in the classroom?
The link between classroom teacher burnout and morning cortisol in elementary school
students. Social Science & Medicine. Volume 159, June 2016, pp. 30-37
Jessica Arnup and Terence Bowles (2016). Should I stay or should I go? Resilience as aprotective factor for teachers’ intention to leave the teaching profession. Australian
Journal of Education 2016, Vol. 60(3) pp. 229–244
Maslach, C. and Jackson, S.E (1981). The measurement of Experienced burnout. Journalof Occupational Psychology. 2., pp. 99-113
Nelson C. Brunsting and Melissa A. Sreckovic (2014). Special Education Teacher
Burnout: A Synthesis of Research from 1979 to 2013. Education and treatment ofchildren. Vol.37, No.4, 2014.
Richard Goddard and Marion Goddard (2006). Beginning Teacher Burnout inQueensland Schools: Associations with Serious Intentions to Leave. The Australian
Educational Researcher, Volume 33, Number 2
Sherri Bessman et al. (2018). Next generation mentoring: Supporting teachers beyond
induction. Teaching and teacher education. Vol.73, pp. 162-170.

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Skaalvik, E. M., & Skaalvik, S. (2016). Teacher Stress and Teacher Self-Efficacy as
Predictors of Engagement, Emotional Exhaustion, and Motivation to Leave the Teaching
Profession. Creative Education, 7, 1785-1799

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Performing Arts: Assessment of Learning in Grade 7 Mathematics
Ruth M. Revilla, Bicol University Graduate School, Philippines
Jocelyn F. Goyena, Bicol University, Philippines
The Asian Conference on Education 2020
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Abstract
This descriptive-developmental study determined the effect of performing arts as an
assessment in Grade 7 Mathematics in the academic achievement of the Grade 7 students at
Bicol University College of Education Integrated Laboratory School, the school year 20192020. It focused on the developed lessons with performing arts as assessment, performing arts
presented by the students during the assessment of the lessons, mathematical concepts evident
in the performing arts performed by the students, and the effect of the developed lessons on
students’ conceptual understanding, 21st century skills, and motivation in learning
mathematics. The researcher employed a pre-experimental research design particularly

a pretest-posttest design. Both qualitative and quantitative methods were utilized inanalyzing the results in the lesson implementation. The qualitative data were obtained
from the students’ journals and teachers remarks on the observation sheets. In thequantitative method, data were obtained from the juror’s evaluation on the developed
lessons in Grade 7 Mathematics with performing arts as an assessment, and the pretestand posttest scores of the students. The results revealed that students’ conceptual
understanding, 21st century skills, and motivation in learning mathematics wereenhanced and improved. Based in the teacher-observers, the students participatedactively in the class discussions and performed well during the assessment of thelesson. With these, the students’ 21st century skills such as communication,
collaboration critical thinking, and creativity were developed and enhanced throughperforming arts in the assessment of the lessons for Grade 7 Mathematics.
Keywords: Assessment, Performing Arts, Conceptual Understanding, 21st Century
Skills, Motivation in Learning

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Introduction
To be mindful on how the students learn best and to satisfy the needs of diverse
students has always been a great challenge to every educator. New teaching strategies
and approaches are used by the teachers to make teaching-learning effective. Also,changes in the way teachers conduct classroom assessment is seen as one of themethods to meet present’s curriculum goals. In the changes brought about by the K to
12 Curriculum, classroom assessment is emphasized as an integral part of curriculum
implementation. Relatively new assessment concepts and strategies such as thealternative assessment or performance-based assessment are given much weight in the
K-12 grading system. Performance-based assessment measures students’ ability toapply the skills and knowledge learned from a unit or units of study and challenges
the students to use their higher order thinking skills to create a product or complete a
process (Chun, 2010). Thus, it enables students to demonstrate specific skills andcompetencies by performing or producing something and it also rates students’learning process.
On the implementation of performance-based assessments, the teachers are required toplan a performance task. Performance tasks are any learning activity or assessmentthat asks students to perform and/or demonstrate their knowledge, understanding andproficiency (McTighe, 2015). Students do not passively receives\s concepts andknowledge, but also actively apply and demonstrate learning. Students yield a tangible
product and/or performance that serve as evidence of their learning. Students havemore of an ability to create and share learning with others. Everybody should
understand that in the process of sharing others through assessment, a ton of learning
happens (Couros, 2018). Students can show their learning through different mediumsin the process. Students can create a podcast so you can hear how they speak
languages. They can also make videos of themselves showing how to solve different
mathematics problems, etc. When teachers limit students to all doing test or project,learning is restricted through the assessment process. This study focused on
assessment of learning to measure students’ ability to apply the skills and knowledge
learned from a unit or units of study and utilize performing arts to demonstrate theselearnings.
In the pedagogical process, having a new variation in teaching and assessing students’learning in Math is a necessity especially when addressing the needs of varied
students. Students differ in their profile, interests, learning styles, cognitive andaffective development, and abilities. Having diverse learners inside a classroom is nota new scenario in the country. However, the problems involved in it are yet to besolved. Learning styles and preferences were not given attention; thus, learning
becomes difficult and ineffective. According to the theory of Howard Gardner’s
multiple intelligence, all people have different kinds of intelligences. Gardner (1983)
theorizes that people do not have just an intellectual capacity but have many kinds ofintelligence including visual-spatial, linguistic-verbal, logical-mathematical, bodily
kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalistic intelligences(Cherry, 2018). Students have their own strengths, and to maximize learning, teaching
and assessment should be focused on the strengths of the students. Thus, this study
focused on students’ performance showcasing their skills and talents in assessing theirlearning.

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In this study, the focus is on the assessment of learning in mathematics using
performing arts. Elver (2014) performing arts provide a creative escape for children,
introducing them to the imaginative worlds of theatre, music and dance. Exposure to
the performing arts at an early age provides fond memories that children will cherish
for a lifetime. More importantly, an introduction to the performing arts initiates thedevelopment of invaluable life skills in children. Performing arts can have a great
effect on students’ performance in mathematics. Students performed to demonstrate
their knowledge, understanding and proficiency of the lesson that has been discussed
through their abilities and interests. Performing arts include performing music, dance,and drama and the skills in these performing arts are mostly common to students. Thiscan be of great advantage to use performance-based assessment and use performing
arts as a mean to assess students’ learning.
Performing arts is said to be one of the certain disciplines in which performance tasks
are routinely used. A performance task is any learning activity or assessment that asks
students to perform to demonstrate their knowledge, understanding and proficiency.
Performance tasks yield a tangible product and/or performance that serve as evidenceof learning. Performance task presents a situation that calls for learners to apply theirlearning in context. Since performance tasks establish authentic contexts that reflect
genuine applications of knowledge, students are often motivated and engaged inmeaningful learning (McTighe, 2015). When used as assessment, performance tasks
enable teachers to gauge student understanding and proficiency with complex
processes (e.g., research, problem-solving, and writing/creating), not just measurediscrete knowledge. They are well suited to linking content knowledge with the 21st
century skills such as critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, and communication.
And that is why this study implements performing arts as performance task in theassessment - to improve learning the concepts, develop 21st century skills, motivate
students and impact their overall achievement.
The study was conducted at Bicol University College of Education Integrated
Laboratory School. The institution offers a complete set of programs starting fromelementary, junior, and senior high school. In the high school department, there are a
maximum of two regular sections per grade level. Each section contains an average of
30 students. Although the school is known for providing quality education, it cannot
be denied that some students are academically challenged, especially in Mathematics.
Since the subjects of this study were Grade 7 students, there was no guarantee thatthey grasped and understood basic mathematical concepts in elementary which arevery essential to learning higher mathematics. Teachers in the said school utilize
different strategies to teach the students, and some of those are through singing,
acting, dancing, etc. That is why this study took the opportunity to include and use
this as assessment since these types of techniques are introduced to students because it
is used in instruction. Through this, not only students’ performance in math will
improve, but also their talents and skills will be enhanced.
Research Methods
This study employed a descriptive-developmental research method to describe thedevelopment of the lessons with performing arts as assessment and determine its
effect on students’ learning. Pre-experimental research design was used by the
researcher in this study. This design contains a single group which is often studied but

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no comparison between an equivalent non-treatment group is made. This study also
required a pretest and posttest design that measures the dependent variable once
before and after the intervention was implemented. The design was used in order toevaluate the effect of the lessons using performing arts as assessment on students’conceptual understanding, 21st century skills, and motivation in learning mathematics.
The respondents in this study were given a test prior and after the implementation of
the developed lessons. The change between the scores of the students in the two tests
was attributed to the effect of the lessons with performing arts as assessment in grade
7 mathematics.
This study utilized both quantitative and qualitative methods in the analysis of thedata. The researcher gathered the quantitative data using results from the pretest andposttest and from the juror’s evaluation of the developed lessons with performing arts
as assessment. The qualitative data were gathered from the students’ performing arts
presented during the assessment of the lesson, teacher-observers’ remarks, andstudents’ responses in their journals.
Results and Discussion
There were twelve (12) lesson plans developed for Integers and Rational Numbers
based on the competencies included in the Curriculum Guide. The learningcompetencies include : (1) representing the absolute value of a number on a umber
line as the distance of a number from 0, (2) performing the fundamental operations on
integers, (3) illustrating the different properties of operations in the set of integers, (4)expressing rational numbers from fraction form to decimal form and vice versa, (5)arranging rational numbers on a number line, and (6) performs operations on rational
numbers.
The lessons developed utilized a performance-based assessment which enables thestudent to demonstrate the knowledge, skills, and/or material that they have learned.
This type of assessment measures how well a student can apply or use what he or sheknows, often in real-world situations. Research has shown that performance-based
assessment provides a means to assess higher-order thinking skills and helps teachers
in supporting students to develop a deeper understanding of content. Because
performance-based assessment requires students to demonstrate their knowledge andskills with the concepts that they have learned, this assessment requires them to createa product or response, or to perform a specific set of tasks.
The developed lessons with performing arts as an assessment focused on how thestudents would learn the concepts and at the same time develop performances or
outputs through performing arts by working as a group. Lessons developed wereincorporated with a guided-inquiry approach, cooperative learning, and experiential
learning strategy to give the students the opportunity to learn effectively and work
cooperatively with their groups. All the lessons that were developed give the students
the chance to conduct group discussions, brainstorming, and sharing of ideas as thestudents accomplish the activities and create performing arts that demonstrate
mathematical concepts that have learned.
Table 1 presents the summary of the developed lessons with performing arts asassessment. The table presents the topics of the twelve lessons developed. The

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learning competencies which are to be achieved by the students are also given
together with the performance tasks that need to be accomplished in each competency.
The performing arts which includes music, dance, and drama performances which are
expected to be created and presented after each lesson is also projected in the table.
This presents the possible outputs and presentations of the music, dance, and drama
group during the assessment of the lesson.
Table 1. Summary Table of the Lessons with Performing Arts as Assessment
Lesson/Topic

Learning
Competency

Performance Task

Absolute Valueof a Number

The learner
represents theabsolute valueof a number ona number line as
the distance of anumber from 0.

Students present
performing arts todemonstratelearning on theabsolute value ofa number.

The learnerperforms
fundamental
operations on
integers

Students present
performing arts todemonstratelearning on thefundamental
operationson
integers.

Addition ofIntegers
Subtraction ofIntegers
Multiplicationof Integers
Division ofIntegers
Properties ofOperations on
the Set ofIntegers

Conversion of
Rational
Numbers

Rational
Numbers on a
Number LineThe learner
illustrates thedifferent
properties ofoperations on
the set of
integers.
The learner
expresses
rational
numbers fromfraction form todecimal form
and vice versa.

Students present
performing arts todemonstratelearning on theproperties
ofoperationson
integers.
Students present
performing arts todemonstratelearning on theconversion
ofrational numbers.

The learnerarrangesrational
numbers on anumber line.

Students present
performing arts todemonstratelearningonrational numbers
on a number line.

The learnerperforms
operations onrational
numbers.

Students present
performing arts todemonstratelearning on theoperations
onrational numbers.

Addition of
Rational
Numbers
Subtraction of
Rational
Numbers
Multiplicationof Rational
Numbers
Division of
Rational
Numbers

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Music
Students
areexpectedtopresent song/s
that convey themathematicalconcepts
involved in thelessons. They
are expected tocompose lyrics
and may adopt
tunes of theirfavorite songs,
nursery rhymes,
or any music of
their choice inwhich they are
comfortablewith. Or canalso arrange andcreate their own
tune for theirsong.

Performing Arts
Dance

Drama

Students
areexpectedtopresent dancechoreographythat represents
mathematicalconcepts
involved in thelessons. They
may create or
adopt
dance
steps that canrepresent
theconcepts
andmay use any
music for the
tempo and beatof their dance.

Students
areexpectedtopresent
drama/plays thatshow
themathematicalconcepts
involved in thelessons. They
are
free
to
choosetheir
own topic ortheme for theirplays as long as
it is suitable andacceptable for
their age and theaudiences’.

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During the assessment of the lesson, the students are expected to perform and present
performing arts in which mathematics concepts are evident. In the lessons, thestudents are tasked to present performing arts – music, dance, and drama todemonstrate learning in each of the lesson. Students identified their skill and groupthrough the performing arts inventory. The inventory is divided into three sections.
Section one describes skills and interests for music, section two – drama, and section
three – dance. The instrument has sentences and descriptions that will be rated by
students as to how often it is applied to them. Students will rate 4 if it always applies
to them, 3 – sometimes applies to them, 2 – seldom applies to them, and 1 – neverapplies to them. The section that has the highest score will determine students’ skill
and group. Twelve students belonged to the music group, eight students belonged tothe drama group, and ten students belonged to the dance group. Throughout thetwelve lessons, the groupings of the students are fixed and steadied
Table 2 presents the summary of the performing arts created the students during theassessment of the lesson. In each lesson, music, dance, and drama group performed
songs, dance, and plays demonstrating what they have learned in the discussions. The
groups were given enough time to discuss what to perform and how to put theconcepts into performance. While creating performances, students developed skills incommunication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity. On the first lessons,and performances, students encountered different challenges as they are adjusting to adifferent method implemented in mathematics. But as they go through it, they put
greater effort and enjoyed it.
Table 2. Summary of the Performing Arts Presented by the Students
Lesson/Topic

1. Absolute Valueof a NumberMusic
The students presented two songs in
the tune of Christmas in our Heartsand Mary had a Little Lamb,containing the definition, concepts,
and methods to find the absolutevalue of a number.

Performing Arts
Dance
The students performed dance steps
and a chant presenting some example
of integers and their absolute values.

The students presented two songs in
the tune of If you’re Happy and you
Know it and Row Row Row yourBoat, presenting the steps and rules
in adding integers.

The students performed a song in thetune of Sway and dance along with it.
The song presents the steps and rules
in adding integers.

3. Subtraction ofIntegers

The students presented two songs in
the tune of Ang mga Ibon na
Lumilipad, presenting the CopyChange-Change Rule, and Row Row
Row your Boat, presenting thenumber line method.

The students performed a song in thetune of Attention and dance along with
it. The song presents the two methodsof subtracting integers and include
some reminders and encouragement tolearn the lesson better.

4. Multiplicationof Integers

The students performed a song in
the tune of Mary had a Little Lamb,presenting the rules in multiplying
integers.

The students presented a song in thetune of Treat you Better, presenting
the rules in multiplying integers.

5. Division ofIntegers

The students presented two songs in
the tune of Stand by me and Twinkle
Twinkle Little Star, presenting therules in dividing integers.

The students presented a song in thetune of Itsy-Bitsy Spider, presenting
the rules in dividing integers.

6. Properties of
the Operations on
Integers

The students performed a song in
the tune of What Makes you
Beautiful, presenting the six
properties of the operations on
integers and their descriptions.

7. Conversion of
Rational Numbers

The students presented a song in thetune of Jingle Bell Rock, presenting
the steps in converting decimal into
fraction and vice versa.

8. Rational
Numbers on the

The students performed a song in
the tune of The Alphabet Song,2. Addition ofIntegers

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The students presented a song in thetune of Say you won’t let go,
presenting the six properties of theoperations on integers and theirdescriptions.
The students presented a song in thetune of Row Row Row your Boat,
presenting the steps in converting
fraction to decimal form and viceversa.
The students presented a song in thetune of London Bridge, presenting the

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Drama
The students had a role playing of a teacher
and the students inside the classroom
discussing the absolute value of a number
The students performed a scene of a mother
who asked her son to buy salt and fishsauce and promised to give him the change.
The
performance
demonstrates
theapplication of adding integers in real life
scenarios.
The students performed a play of two
siblings who visited their grandpa in thehospital and were asked to buy medicine for
their
grandpa.
The
performance
demonstrates the application of subtracting
integers in real life scenarios.
The students played a scene of a group offriends who went to a funfair to unwind
after the examination. They applied
multiplication of integers to compute forthe payment of the tickets.
The students performed a skit play of afamily who went to theme park to bond andenjoy. The performance includes theapplication of division of integers in reallife and some comical lines that added
humor to their performance.
The
students
presentedadialogue/conversation among the six
properties of the operations on integers. The
description of each of the properties was
related to different types of love.
The students performed a play of a motherand daughter who went to the market to buymeat. The performance demonstrates theapplication of the conversion of rational
numbers in real life scenarios.
The students had a role playing of a teacher
and the students inside the classroom

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Number line

9&10. Addition
and Subtraction of
Rational Numbers
11. Multiplicationof Rational
Numbers

12. Division of
Rational Nmberspresenting the steps in plotting andarranging rational numbers on
number line.
The students presented a song in thetune of The Alphabet Song,
presenting the steps in adding andsubtracting
rational
numbers,
particularly fractions.
The students presented a sing in thetune of Leron Leron SInta,
presenting the steps in multiplying
rational numbers: fractions anddecimals.
The students performed a sing in thetune of BINGO, presenting the steps
in dividing fractions.

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steps in plotting and arranging rational
numbers on number line.

discussing how to plot and arrange rational
numbers on the number line.

The students performed a song in thetune of Ako ay may Lobo, presenting
the steps in adding and subtracting
rational numbers, particularly decimal
numbers.

The students performed a play of ahousehold preparing for the fiesta. The
performance demonstrates the applicationof addition and subtraction of rational
numbers in real life.
The students performed a play about the
preparation of a class for their Christmas
party. Application of multiplication on
rational numbers was demonstrated in theperformance.
The students performed a play about agroup of friends who roam around the malland applied the division of rational numbers
to divide the cake evenly and the total costequally among them.

The students performed a sing in thetune of Baba Black Sheep, presenting
the steps in multiplying rational
numbers: fractions.
The students presented a song in thetune of Fly Fly Fly the Butterfly,
presenting the steps in dividing
fractions.

Since performance task asks students to perform and/or demonstrate their knowledge,
understanding and proficiency - creating outputs and tangible products and/or
performances served as evidence of students’ learning. The discussion above and thetable presented, clearly show that students successfully created performing arts during
the assessment of the lesson to demonstrate their learnings in mathematics. Students
learned not only the concepts in mathematics but also enhanced their skills in music,
dance, and drama.
Students demonstrated their learning in Mathematics through performing music,
dance, and drama presentations. To charge whether they learned the concepts,
mathematical concepts must be evident in their performances, thus must be relevant to
the lessons.
Table 4 presents the summary of the mathematical concepts evident in the performing
arts created by the students. Students demonstrated the mathematical concepts which
they have learned in lessons in the form of songs, dance, and plays. Performing arts,
being used as an assessment, and is placed on the evaluation part of the lesson, mustsatisfy the objectives of the lesson. The performances and outputs created by thestudents satisfy the objectives and demonstrated mathematical concepts which areneeded to achieve the competencies. Students include the steps and procedures in eachcompetency which was presented correctly and coherently. Students also included therules on the fundamental operations on integers and rational numbers, meaning, they
really grasp the concepts. Students also include some examples and demonstrations
that show how they really understood the lessons. And lastly, students were able tocreate performances that show scenarios in real life wherein these mathematicalconcepts are perceived to be useful. Having these evidence, it clearly shows that theperforming arts created by the students, correctly demonstrates the mathematicalconcepts learned by the students.
Table 3. Summary of the Mathematical Concepts Evident in the Performing Arts Created by
the Students
Lesson/Topic
1. Absolute
Value of a
Number2. Addition ofIntegers

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Music
The definition of absolute value of anumber and the methods in finding
the absolute value were presented in
the lyrics of the song performed by
the group.
The steps/procedure and the rules inadding integers with the same anddifferent signs were presented in the
lyrics of the song performed by thegroup.

Dance
Key terms about integers and sample
of integers and their absolute value
were presented in the lyrics of thechant and demonstrated in the dance
steps performed by the group.
The steps/procedure and the rules inadding integers that are both positive,
both negative, and have different
signs were presented in the lyrics ofthe song performed by the group.

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Drama
The definition of integers and theabsolute value of a number were
presented in the play performed by
the group.
The steps/procedure and the rules inadding integers with the same anddifferent signs and the application ofadding integers in real-life were
presented in the play performed by
the group.

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3. Subtractionof Integers

4.
Multiplicationof Integers

5. Division ofIntegers

6. Properties of
the Operations
on Integers

7. Conversionof Rational
Numbers

8. Rational
Number on the
Number line

9&10. Addition
and Subtractionof Rational
Numbers
11.
Multiplicationof Rational
Numbers
12. Division of
Rational
Numbers

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The steps/procedure in subtracting
integers using the number line andthe copy-change-change rule were
presented in the lyrics of the song
performed by the group.

The steps/procedure in subtracting
integers using the number line andthe copy-change-change rule were
presented in the lyrics of the song
performed by the group.

The rules in multiplying integers
with the same and different signs
were presented in the lyrics of thesong performed by the group.

The rules in multiplying integers
with the same and different signs
were presented in the lyrics of thesong performed by the group.

The rules in dividing integers withthe same and different signs were
presented in the lyrics of the song
performed by the group.

The rules in dividing integers withthe same and different signs were
presented in the lyrics of the song
performed by the group.

The properties of the operations on
integers:
closure,commutative,
associative, distributive, inverse andidentity property were presented in
the lyrics of the song performed by
the group.
The steps/procedure in converting
rational numbers from fraction todecimal form and vice versa were
presented in the lyrics of the song
performed by the group.

The properties of the operations on
integers:
closure,commutative,
associative, distributive, inverse andidentity property were presented in
the lyrics of the song performed by
the group.
The steps/procedure in converting
rational numbers from fraction todecimal form and vice versa were
presented in the lyrics of the song
performed by the group.

The steps/procedure in plotting andarranging rational numbers: fraction
and decimals on the number line
were presented in the lyrics of thesong performed by the group.

The steps/procedure in plotting andarranging rational numbers: fraction
and decimals on the number line
were presented in the lyrics of thesong performed by the group.

The steps/procedure in adding andsubtracting similar and dissimilar
fractions were presented in the lyricsof the song performed by the group.

The steps/procedure in adding andsubtracting decimal numbers were
presented in the lyrics of the song
performed by the group.

The steps/procedure in multiplying
fractions and decimal numbers were
presented in the lyrics of the song
performed by the group.
The steps/procedure in dividing
fractions were presented in the lyricsof the song performed by the group.

The steps/procedure in multiplying
fractions were presented in the lyricsof the song performed by the group.
The steps/procedure in dividing
fractions were presented in the lyricsof the song performed by the group.

The steps/procedure in subtracting
integers using the copy-changechange rule and the application ofsubtracting integers in real-life were
presented in the play performed by
the group.
The rules in multiplying integers withthe same and different signs and theapplication of multiplying integers inreal-life were presented in the play
performed by the group.
The rules in dividing integers withthe same and different signs and theapplication of dividing integers inreal-life were presented in the play
performed by the group.
The properties of the operations on
integers:
closure,commutative,
associative, distributive, inverse andidentity property were presented in
the play performed by the group.
The steps/procedure in converting
rational numbers from fraction todecimal form and vice versa and its
applicationinreal-life
were
presented in the play performed by
the group.
The steps/procedure in plotting andarranging rational numbers on thenumber line and example anddemonstration of plotting andarranging them on a number line
were presented in the play performedby the group.
The steps/procedure in adding andsubtracting rational numbers and its
applicationinreal-life
were
presented in the play performed by
the group.
The steps/procedure in multiplying
rational numbers and its applicationin real-life were presented in the play
performed by the group.
The steps/procedure in dividing
rational numbers and its applicationin real-life were presented in the play
performed by the group.

Students correctly demonstrated mathematical concepts on the twelve lessons
developed in their performances. From the analysis of the concepts and the results ofthe scoring rubric on the outputs and performances of the students, it can beconcluded that students understood and learned the concepts during theimplementation of the developed lessons using performing arts as assessment.
The effects of the Performing Arts to the students in terms of conceptual
understanding was assessed using the researcher-made test. The test was a multiplechoice type test with a total of 50 items. The table of specifications follows therevised Bloom’s Taxonomy of Cognitive Domain.
Table 4 presents the statistical data gathered from the pretest posttest results of thegroup. Mean, mean gain, standard deviation and t-test for paired observations were
the statistical treatment used. The individual competency was also presented to show
the areas in which the conceptual understanding of the students shows progress or no
improvement at all. The performance level was also included for comparison
purposes.

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Table 4. Conceptual Understanding Results Summary Statistics
Learning Competency
Represents the absolute value ofa number on a number line as
the distance of a number from
0.
Performs
fundamental
operations on integers
Illustratethedifferent
properties of operations on theset of integers.
Expresses rational numbers
from fraction form to decimal
form and vice versa.
Arranges rational numbers on anumber line.
Performs operations on rational
numbers.
Mean
Standard Deviation
Mean Gainp-valueSignificanceMeanof thePretestPerformance Level
Descriptive%
Equivalence

1.33

66.67

Near Mastery

1.53

76.67

Mastery

6.77

48.33

Low Mastery

11.03

78.81

Mastery

1.87

31.11

Low Mastery

3.8

63.33

Near Mastery

1.53

38.33

Low Mastery

3.33

83.33

Near Full
Mastery

1.43

35.83

Low Mastery

2.57

64.17

Near Mastery

6.83

34.17

Low Mastery

12.7

63.5

Near Mastery

19.77

42.41
Low Mastery
7.94

34.97

71.63
9.26

Near Mastery

Mean ofthe
Posttest

Performance Level
Descriptive%
Equivalence

+15.2
0.00
Significant (α=0.05)

Table 4 shows that there was a significant difference between the students’ pretest andposttest scores (𝑝 < 0.05). This means that the students’ performance in the posttest
was better than their performance in the pretest. In addition, the scores of the group
become more varied after the implementation period. The mean scores of the group
have increased from 19.77 to 34. 97 (+15.2). It was evident that the mean scores ofthe students in the posttest were higher than the mean scores in the pretest. The result
implies that the students’ conceptual understanding in mathematics 7 has improved
through Performing Arts.
The performance level of the group has also increased from 42.41% (low mastery) to
71.635 (near mastery). The students gained the highest performance level on thecompetency under expressing rational numbers from fraction form to decimal form
and vice versa. The pretest is only 38.33% which was interpreted as “Low Mastery”
and the posttest is 83.33% which was interpreted as “Near Full Mastery”. This showsthat the implementation of the developed lessons with performing arts as assessment,
the students developed a greater understanding on this competency.
Overall, the results suggest that the students’ conceptual understanding was enhanced.
The students learned the different concepts on Integers and Rational numbers. The
result implies that performing arts as an assessment of learning helped the students
gain knowledge in the twelve lessons.
For the effect of the developed lessons on students’ 21st century skills and motivationin learning mathematics, qualitative data were utilized in this study. Students’ journal
entries and responses in the questionnaires, and teacher-observers’ remarks were thesources of these data. 21st century skills are the skills that the students need in order tosucceed in today’s fast-changing world. Educators and workforce experts alike often
warn that our children need improved 21st century skills. Without these skills, they
will not be able to successfully participate in the global economy. They will not be

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adequately prepared for college and work. This is also known as the four C’s (4C’s)
namely: communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity. These skills
are crucial for deep and effective learning that enables the students to thrive at present
and in the future.
In this study, the effect of the performing arts to students’ communication skills wasassessed and identified through their responses on their journals. By reading andanalyzing their responses, there are seven (7) major effects of the performing arts
identified. Performing arts affected communication skills of the students in terms of(1) Friendliness, (2) Confidence, (3) Patience, (4) Listening, (5) Open-mindedness, (6)Critical thinking, and (7) Teamwork. Collaboration, according to the journal entries,
improved students’ relationships. It helped in clearing up misunderstanding andhelped them to develop trust. It also taught them to understand and respect differences
in capabilities, weakness, and views. Data from students’ journals and teachers’
observations were also used to identify the effect of performing arts in the criticalthinking skill of the students. Most students responded that performing arts enhanced
their thinking skills and intelligence. It helped them in being aware of what ishappening and to think faster and efficient. Teachers said that performing arts led
students to developing their skills such as higher level of concentration, more in-depth
analytical abilities, and improved thought processing. These, being demonstrated by
the students, confirmed that performing arts developed students’ critical thinking skill.
On the effect on creativity, performing arts caused student to think deeper and to becreative. Students learned to solve problems creatively, to thinks outside the box, andto try something that they have not tried before. It also helped them finding andlearning new skills like creating songs, dance, and drama plays.
Qualitative data were also used to identify the effects of performing arts to students’motivation in learning mathematics. Students responded that performing arts, madethem excited in learning the lessons. They also had fun in creating and presenting
performances that they love to do. It also helped them to understand the lesson easierand be motivated to study and learn more. They also included that their performances
helped them to retain information because they presented what they have learned fromtheir own understanding of the lesson.
The overall findings of this study on the effects of the developed lessons using
performing arts as assessment, in the students’ conceptual understanding, 21st century
skills, and the motivation in learning mathematics suggest that the intervention
enhanced their academic performance under each criterion. The impact of thedeveloped lessons has been proven as an aid to reckon with in the context of teachingmathematics.
Conclusion
Twelve (12) lessons under Competency 5 (Absolute Value of a Number),Competency 6 (Fundamental Operations on Integers), Competency 7 (Properties ofOperations on the Set of Integers), Competency 8 (Conversion of Rational Numbers),
Competency 9 (Rational Numbers on the Number Line), and Competency 10(Fundamental Operations on Rational Numbers) of the K to 12 Curriculum Guide for
Grade 7 Mathematics were developed. The implementation of performing arts
enhanced students’ music, dance, and drama skills. Students understood and learned

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the concepts during class discussions and successfully demonstrated these concepts
through performing arts. And the developed lessons in Grade 7 Mathematics was
effective in developing and enhancing students’ conceptual understanding,communication skills, collaborative skills, critical thinking skills, creative skills, andmotivation in learning.
Acknowledgment
Immeasurable appreciation and deepest gratitude for the help and support are also
extended to those who have contributed in making this study possible. To the DOSTCBPSME, thank you for believing in my potential and for giving me the opportunity
to be one of your scholars. Your assistance has helped me to finish my master’s
degree. To Dr. Lorna M. Miña, project director of CBPSME for Bicol University, forall the guidance and advice given to me since day one of pursuing my master’s degree
in mathematics education. To my panel members and my thesis adviser, Dr. Jocelyn
F. Goyena, thank you for sharing your expertise in the field to further improve theoverall quality of my study. To my jurors/evaluators, thank you for your well-roundedexpertise that helped me improve my research instruments. To my family, friends, andloved ones, thank you for being my inspiration, for always offering perspectives,
advice and unconditional love and support. Above all, the author is incredibly grateful
to God Almighty, for without His grace, blessings, and guidance, this study would nothave been possible.

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References
Cherry, K.: Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences. Retrieved November 18,
2018 from https://www.verywellmind.com/gardners-theory-of-multiple-intelligences2795161/
Chun, M. (2010). “Taking teaching to (performance) task: Linking pedagogical andassessment practices.” Change: The Magazine of Higher Education.
Couros (2018). The Principal of Change. Retrieved fromhttps://georgecouros.ca/blog/archives/8131 on June 3, 2019.
Elver (2014). Products of the Performing Arts: Effects of the Performing Arts on
Children’s Personal Development and How to Use Research to Initiate Policy
Change. Retrieved fromhttps://oneill.indiana.edu/doc/undergraduate/ugrd_thesis2015_bsam_elver.pdf on June
5, 2019.
McTighe, Jay (2015). “Implementing performance-based assessment in the EFL
classroom” ETAI Forum, English Teachers’ Association in Israel, XVI(4).
Contact email: ruth.revilla@bicol-u.edu.ph

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Embracing Differences through Dialogue and Engaged Learning
Maria Guajardo, Soka University, Japan
Mandeep Taneja, Soka University, Japan
Swati Vohra, Soka University, Japan
The Asian Conference on Education 2020
Official Conference Proceedings
Abstract
This paper presents the elements of an engaged learning experience, with the aim ofembracing differences through a pedagogical lens that uses dialogue as a process andcontent. A qualitative exploratory case study was conducted that included a structured
dialogue methodology. Class dynamics and engagement from an online classroom of
30 Japanese and international students represented a microcosm of society. The
structured dialogue included three-key participants – the professor, a graduate student,
and a facilitator. The key findings revealed a four-stage Embracing Differences
Change Model based on the themes of conformity, vulnerability, exploration, andlearning. Eight actions for embracing difference are presented based on the key
elements of sharing, listening, personalizing, and creating.
Keywords: Engaged Learning, Dialogue, Humanism, Critical Inquiry

iafor
The International Academic Forumwww.iafor.org

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Introduction
The year 2020 forced dramatic changes across society, and within higher education.
The impact of the pandemic posed acute and long-term effects, reaching across a
broad section of society, including work, family, and school. The personal impact onloss and restrictions changed how young adults are experiencing major developmental
milestones such as graduations, job hunting, and relationships; all contributing to adifficult transition into adulthood (Powell, 2020). The impact is also changing how
students experience higher education. With the threat of a pandemic caused by Covid19, universities in Japan quickly shifted to emergency remote learning in April, thestart of a new academic year. Japanese students, engaged in study abroad, returned toJapan, and international students who returned to their home countries took classes
remotely, along with domestic Japanese classmates, via Zoom. The challenges ofadjusting to online instruction were compounded by separation from friends, and a
disconnect from participation in a living and learning community on campus.
Simultaneously, social activism in the United States encapsulated by the Black Lives
Matter movement revealed deep schisms in the historical and current discriminationand institutional racism against Blacks, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC).
The pandemic and social movement for justice brought to the forefront an opportunity
to address the human divisions that exist in society, locally and globally, within thearena of higher education. The value of creating an inclusive and equitableenvironment on university campuses has been recognized, although credible andauthentic change has been slow in taking hold (Pasquerella, 2016). Therefore, at theintersection of the pandemic and the social justice movement, the challenge was tocreate an engaged learning experience for university students attending classes online,
where assumptions could be juxtaposed against new ways of thinking about the‘other.’This paper presents an exploratory case study of a teaching and learning experiencebased on a model of engaged learning, focused on fostering dialogue as a pedagogicalstrategy of transformation with the aim of embracing differences. The literature
review presents the theoretical model of praxis and humanism as a lens for creating acontext to engage differences. The case study is presented from the perspective of
three key participants, engaged in a dialogic model of analysis. Findings present amodel capturing the process of engagement, along with eight actions for embracing
differences.
Literature Review
How can the learning experience embrace a process of transformation? To reach thisoutcome, it becomes necessary to turn to educational pedagogies centered on praxis
and humanism (Burger, 2019; Freire, 1998; Palmer, 1998; Torres, 2014). Freire(1973) espoused the importance of the purpose of education, moving from atransactional banking model where students are blank slates waiting to be filled withteacher’s information; to a praxis pedagogy where students and educators are bothtransformed through the impact on one another. Based on the key ideas of freedom,democracy, and critical participation (Gadotti & Torres, 2014), Freire’s pedagogy
directly responds to his question, “for what reasons do I practice education” (1998, p.
46)? In this study, this defining question is then coupled with the caveat, how can this

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experience be created when emergency online teaching is the mode of delivery, as
opposed to face-to-face teaching?
Freire’s educational pedagogy is aimed at social change, explicitly recognizing that
education is not neutral, and thus, scholarship and activism are deeply connected inpurpose. He also describes the persona of the educator. For Freire, “criticalintellectuals should live passionately their own ideas, building spaces of deliberationand tolerance in their quest for knowledge and empowerment. They love what they
do, and they love those with whom they interact” (Torres, 2014, p. 113). To create
spaces of deliberation, building a community of trust allows for questions to emerge(Burger, 2019; Palmer, 1998). Palmer shared, “The courage to teach is the courage tokeep one’s heart open in those very moments when the heart is asked to hold morethan it is able so that [you] can be woven into the fabric of community...” (p. 11). Like
Freire and Parker, Wiesel’s goal of teaching is to humanize, and he shared with his
students, “Whatever you learn, remember: the learning must make you more, not less,human.” (Burger, 2019, p. 26)
When an educational pedagogy centers on praxis and humanism, the work ofembracing differences necessitates creating a learning space of deliberation, thatconnects head and heart. An exchange between students and the professor that fosters
new ways of thinking of the other, with a goal of expanding one’s perspective. Burger(n.d.) shared, “When we examine our assumptions and ask difficult questions about
our beliefs and behaviors, when we practice humility, we can avoid the traps ofdemonizing others, which so many of us seem to fall into” (p. 2). Palmer’s definitionof the ‘other’ involves appreciation, recognizing that a stranger has much to teach us(2005). To advance in embracing differences, Palmer states that there is a, “need to
become discerning and doubtful about stereotypes” (p. 21).
Based on Freire’s belief that students develop a critical awareness of the world basedon the concrete experience of their everyday lives, the development of criticalawareness serves to transform the learning experience (Guajardo, in press). Thus, theprocess of knowing is relational, and engaging in dialogue is a pathway for learning.
The work of personalizing current events, and the history of discrimination, isnecessary in order to forge a connection to social change. The awareness and skills
needed to relate to the ‘other’ calls for this educational engagement to be relevant tothe students’ lives. The importance of relevance counteracts the concept of subtractive
schooling, and requires validating racial, ethnic, linguistic, and cultural realities andways of knowing (Caldwell, 2004; Valenzuela, 2017).
Guajardo (in press) shares, “In the classroom, the process of dialogue can be used toengage students to become curious about the world, about issues, and to connect withthemselves and others; to begin to form [a] bridge.” Dialogue as a pedagogicalstrategy is more than conversation. Freire viewed dialogue as transformational, not as
an act of verbal ping pong. Rather, dialogue was a pathway for learning that involved
reflection (Freire, 1973). Teaching students how to engage in dialogue is anintentional strategy, along with how to practice listening, engage in reflection, andlearning how to share. Through this process of dialogue, students learn how to beauthentic. This authenticity leads to strengthened relationships that emerge from
dialogues where there is sustained, constructive tension. Palmer states that the work
necessitates “hold[ing] perhaps the most subtle and yet most difficult tension of all:

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the tension between reality and possibility...standing in the tragic gap, the gap
between our knowledge of what is and our knowledge of what might be” (2005, p.
27). In the work of embracing differences, we are reaching to move beyond realities
and toward possibilities.
With the goal of creating an engaged learning experience to address embracing
differences through dialogue, three research questions were posed for this exploratory
case study.
Research Questions
1.
What elements of an engaged learning experience lead to embracing
differences?
2.
How can one challenge assumptions about self and the other?
3.
What is the role of dialogue as a process and as content?
Methodology
Thirty Japanese and international students - undergraduates, graduates, and alumni
from 12 countries engaged in a 14-week course. The formation of small groups, called
Tribes, were consistent groupings of 4-6 students that remained intact for six weeks.
Tribes engaged in small group discussions 1-2 times per class and worked on joint
projects. Content themes in the course, including democracy, dialogue, community,
creativity, power, and freedom were the base upon which to build new, and innovative
perspectives related to differences in culture, beliefs, values, and language.
This exploratory case study relied on three key informants: the professor, a graduate
student assistant, and a facilitator. Their roles are shared in the key informant
perspective below and presented in first person. Initially, weekly reflections on theclass process, class dynamics, and challenges, revealed insights related to the impactof creating an experience for engaged learning. At the completion of the course, adialogic process (Bradley, 2017) between two dialogue partners, or key informants,
guided by a facilitator, captured the process of transformation and engaged learningthat was experienced in the course.
The dialogue partners and the facilitator, individually, and then collectively, identified
pedagogical elements that surfaced through the course experience. These elements
were summarized as engaged learning, reflection, developing agency, critical inquiry,
and the strengthening of relationships. These elements served as the basis for thedevelopment of questions that would be utilized in a 2 and ½ hour structured
dialogue, intended to explore the process of change that had occurred in the course.
The dialogue partners were the professor and the student assistant, with a designatedfacilitator. The structured dialogue was recorded and transcribed. The content was
analyzed for themes and process of change.

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Key Informants’ Perspectives
Swati Vohra – Facilitator
As a participant of the Democracy and Dialogue course that began under
unprecedented circumstances, I did not anticipate the impact experienced in the faceof an online format where Zoom became a space for experiential learning. Class
assignments had a newfound meaning and value - reading to reflect personally,
sharing to connect, listening to understand, and learning to practice. Earnestness of
pre-class preparation through weekly reflection assignments allowed personal
engagement with the content, and this was reflected in class contributions. In class,the engagement extended to other students, especially within the tribe discussions. I
self-identified as a facilitator within my tribe, creating a space that included
everyone’s voices and at the same time as a bridge, desiring to connect to others. The
inner transformation sparked curiosity to retrace and unpack the different phases ofengagement within the class. For me, inquiry emerged in wanting to understand thecognizance of one’s agency, help in embracing differences, the role of critical inquiry
and the balance between identities of self and others in tribes. I considered myself aclass student/participant first, and my role as a facilitator for the structured dialogue
benefitted highly as a result. Overall, it added greater depth and meaning to the
dialogic process.
Mandeep Taneja - Dialogue Partner/Student Assistant
It was fortuitous to be both a student and a student assistant through the course. The
opportunity allowed me to participate with the students, be part of a tribe, and engage
in collaborative creative activities. Additionally, while supporting technically, I
interacted with the Professor before and after the class. I had a sneak preview of classstructure and assignments' objectives before the class began and reflected on thelearnings and experience from multiple perspectives at the conclusion of each class.
Thus, I was present in the evolving dynamics, both as a class participant and as a
student assistant, learning and reflecting on how the class was structured. These
multiple perspectives contributed to our structured dialogue and our learnings
contributed to the engaged-learning model.
Maria Guajardo - Dialogue Partner/Professor
The prospect of teaching online was daunting and challenged every fiber in my body.
As I stumbled through the initial classes I understood that the fundamental building
blocks of my teaching needed to be translated into a synchronous teaching experienceof engaged learning. My passion for social justice connected deeply with my belief
that students needed to connect to their personal, cultural narrative, and then reachacross to their classmate on the computer screen - the question was how to create thisexperience.

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Conclusions
Main Findings
Four themes emerged from an analysis of the dialogue; themes that described thestages of change observed and experienced in the class. The four stages were
Conformity, Vulnerability, Exploration, and Learning. Transitioning from one stage tothe next involved one of three agents of change: trust, deep dive, and respect for self
and others. Students began the class in the conformity stage. Then, through the classexperience that included a dialogue process, students moved to a stage ofvulnerability, then exploration, and then the final stage of learning. As students
transitioned through the stages, the agents of change were evident and appeared toallow for the transition from one stage to the next. The structure of this change modelis presented in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Stages of Embracing Differences Change Model
1. Conformity Stage. The first stage in the process of embracing differences begins
with a pull towards conformity. This stage reflects a desire to conform, to not verbally
express or name differences between individuals. It is an avoidance or inability to see
the differences in the ‘other.’ Conformity becomes a challenge in embracing diversity,where there is a fear of the unknown, and a fear of being vulnerable.
Discussion on controversial topics featured differences among classmates, and apathway for embracing differences emerged. Creating a learning space for criticalthinking was encouraged through questions that were posed in pre-class assignments,
often tapping into a student’s lived experience. In the structured dialogue Guajardo
shared, “My challenge was to form questions that would allow students to connect totheir own experience. I want to hear students' voices sharing who they are and whatmatters to them.” Students were empowered to ask questions. To encourage curiosity
in class, students were reminded that there were no right or wrong answers. Guajardo
posed the question, “When you don’t feel cornered to answer correctly, can a sense of

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curiosity be developed?” To move from the Conformity stage to the stage ofVulnerability, students needed to develop trust. Trust was identified as a change
agent.
Change Agent - Trust
Swati Vohra – Facilitator
Trust for me first showed up in my tribe where one of us took the lead to share ourpersonal reflections/experiences in relation to the class readings. The catalyst to thiswas observing a professor who led and exemplified the way. Listening to others
intimate narratives alleviated one’s adherence to standards of guardedness. I wasn’t
the only one who challenged through the seclusion of ‘being different/socially nonconfirmative.’ An implicit trust was built through such exchanges that permeated theclass, making me secure, and opening a path that allowed me to discover myself. The
class was a perfect example of a nurturing field where ideas, creativity and cocreation flourished. Sharing happened as a genuine desire to reflect, connect withothers, and develop mutually without vying for a position. It was for the first time that
I experienced and recognized vulnerability as power which was embodied by both, thestudents as much as by the professor. This, however, wouldn’t have happened if the
discussion themes were placed at a safe distance from us.
In one of our tribe discussions, we were reflecting on the theme of ‘exclusion’ looking
through our past experiences. The stories grew personal with each sharing, until thelast member in my tribe, who, as she narrated her story of exclusion, broke down
leaving all of us pensive.
This class is where I have experienced unconditional trust, shared laughter, worries,
anxieties, tears without a fear of judgement. One of the most empowering realizations
has been to own who ‘I am’ with all my flaws and my power.
2. Vulnerability Stage. In the second stage in the process of embracing differences,
as the dialogue process allows for trust to develop, individuals allow themselves toexperience vulnerability. This involves suspending one’s flight reaction and learning
to share one’s narrative. Dialogue exercises required students to listen forunderstanding, not to formulate a response; and to learn how to share their own
narrative. Through the class dialogue exercise conducted in dyads, students had an
opportunity to share their narrative, to be seen by the other. Personalizing the dialogue
allowed students to both be vulnerable and to develop trust with their classmates.
One underlying assumption of the teaching and learning modeled in the class was thatlearning should not be competitive. Team assignments reflected community
collaboration. The virtual classroom was a learning laboratory that made it safe to see
individual differences. Without stripping students of their individual strengths, thegoal was to reflect a global community and create connections that were not based oncompetition, but a community built on the strengths of the individual and thecollective. Guajardo shared, “The strength of diversity comes from being able to say
who you are, being able to share your personal narrative [because] everyone has anarrative.” To move from the stage of Vulnerability to the third stage of Exploration,
students needed to go deep in reflection to connect with their own narrative. By doing

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this deep dive into self-awareness, allowed students to then explore the differences
between themselves and others.
Change Agent - Deep Dive
Mandeep Taneja - Dialogue Partner/Student Assistant
The final assignment as a tribe was to dialogue on a controversial topic presenting
both sides of the argument, motivating an experience exemplifying the transition
between the stages of Vulnerability and Exploration. As the topic had to be chosen by
students themselves, there were discussions on a wide array of issues. In my tribe, westarted by discussing euthanasia and nuclear weapons; however, either side of theargument was acceptable. The change emerged when we discussed topics personal tous, like animal consumption versus environmental crises, and connected with being
vegetarian or non-vegetarian. We had both perspectives present in our tribes, and the
dialogue led to cross-examining our opinions. For example, while India was presumed
a vegetarian country, I was not. Another tribemate had chosen to be vegan due toenvironmental reasons. This dialogue experience led us to explore each other's
personalities and then do a deep dive into examining our diverse opinions on aseemingly simple topic impacted by culture, personal experience, and education.
Maria Guajardo - Dialogue Partner/Professor
At the beginning of class I explained to my students that my job is to teach in a waythat allows them to connect head and heart. When content and knowledge find a way
to their personal interests and experience, I know that the relevance of the learning
experience will sustain their interest. This provides the students an opening to go
deeper within the experience of learning. Posing questions prior to class are intended
to challenge students to connect to the material in a personal way, asking them tovoice their opinions on broad topics connected to ethics, power, and racism. While atthe same time I am asking them to think about other questions such as, how does
culture shape the way you view the world? I also recognize that this deep dive createsan opening to connect to the memories and emotions connected to time and space.
3. Exploration Stage. The third stage in the process of embracing differences is
exploration. This stage entails self-awareness, exploring differences in perspective,
and personalizing the ‘other.’ At the root of embracing differences is an understandingof the collective identity versus the individual identity. Within tribes, students wereintentionally presented with opportunities to define their individual identity, and thenalso asked to form and define a group identity. The balance between ‘We’ and ‘I’demonstrated the idea of a global community that is defined by both. The Ubuntu
saying, I am because we are, and we are because I am, was introduced to underscore
the need for self-definition and the concept of interdependence. The professor’s role
was to consciously role model, encourage, and nurture the value of “I” and “We”
through student engagement and class structure. To move from the Exploration stage
to the fourth stage, Learning, students needed to embody respect for themselves andfor others.

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Change Agent - Respect self and others
Swati Vohra – Facilitator
There was an unparalleled depth to the journey of self-exploration and awarenessthroughout the course. It brought to light my internalization of other’s interpretationof my identity as a complex being with a negative connotation. It weighed on me andI wrested through, trying to reject aspects of self. The process of dialogue andreflection – what has shaped me, my beliefs and my worldview revealed an intricate
interconnection of culture, values, experiences, and encounters. The understandingthat every perspective had a story and we needed to delve deeper, began to make me
comfortable and respect myself. It was not merely an intellectual understanding,however, a living reality experienced through the class. Because everyone has theirjourney, it was also present for others in my tribe.
Noticeable differences emerged among the students within my tribe as we conducteda dialogue on, “Should women join the workforce post maternity?” The topic for
dialogue was personally close to all the tribe members and everyone had their own
perspectives that made some of us uncomfortable. However, since it was a dialogue
and not a debate to win, each participant was committed to go deeper into
understanding, to learn about the source of those perspectives without attempting toforce a change. The culmination of our dialogue resulted in one student, who had
initially voiced strong opposition, acknowledging that the process had made her more
open to having the difficult dialogue with others and understanding their story. We
appreciated the roles each of us played, making us more aware, open, and willing toengage in an exchange with differences. As I was able to value and respect my own
journey, I could do the same for others.
4. Learning. The fourth stage in the process of embracing differences, Learning, isshaped by a sense of belonging, creating meaning from differences, and developing
agency. Personalizing the work within the tribes and in class, working collaboratively
in tribes, and feeling safe in sharing one’s narrative and learning about differences
through the other’s narrative, allowed students to make meaning of the ‘other.’ The
absence of fear allowed for learning to occur. Through a process of self-exploration,
students delved deeper into understanding themselves, their assumptions, and their
new learnings about others. Taneja shared, “I am curious now to learn…I have adesire and a hope…I want to go through this experience again to confirm a new sideof my life and my emotions.” Through the process of developing agency students
began to create meaning on how they are influenced by the past and present. As
Guajardo shared, “If we can know and understand how our place in space defines andshapes us…I then emerge in a space where I can love and care [about the other].”Role of Dialogue
Mandeep Taneja - Dialogue Partner/Student Assistant
The role of dialogue starts with creating the desire to identify, observe, understand,and learn amongst the students. We began by looking at differences as a source of
conflict and then moved on to celebrate these differences as the source of learning.
Teaching reading skills and developing the desire to read are identified as unique

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critical elements for a student's growth (Beers & Aliteracy, 1998). Similarly, the classthemes and the process of critical inquiry were like teaching to read, however the roleof dialogue was to develop the desire to read, the willingness to embrace thedifferences that exist.
The learning is not limited to another person or situational learning but extends toself-learning, through reflection and corresponding action in that minuscule society
created in the classroom and within tribes. Through the engaged learning model, wewere able to identify that the transition from conformity to vulnerability guided theearly stages of the dialogue process.
Implications
This four-stage Embracing Differences Change Model is a process that can be
introduced to enhance engaged learning through dialogue. Engaged learning is atransformational experience where students courageously step into their vulnerability,
to connect to and deepen their understanding of themselves, in order to then approach
the other. This process of discovery allowed students to make meaning of the process
and their experience of the ‘other.’ Through dialogue that was intentional in
deepening critical inquiry and heightening self-awareness, students engaged inexperiences that allowed them to co-create with others.
The platform of emergency online teaching, while introducing challenges, did notdisable or impede the transformational work experienced by students. As a result, theemergence of a model, facilitated by the change agents of trust, deep dive, andrespect, offers promise and possibilities to the work of teaching and learning. The
pedagogies of praxis and humanism create a learning context of possibility. Tosummarize, the engaged learning experience for embracing differences throughdialogue is captured in eight action steps.
Eight Actions for Embracing Differences
Share
1.
It begins by connecting to your own personal story. Everyone has a personal
narrative that matters. A narrative that makes meaning of who we are and whatmatters to us.
2.
There is value in sharing your story. Trust that in sharing your cultural
narrative the first step is being taken towards your own openness to connecting tosomeone else.
Listen3.
Listen to others with the intention of understanding. Listen to understand andlearn. This does not mean that one must agree with what is being shared. That is not
the purpose of listening. The goal is to ‘see’ the other.

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4.
Listen to differences with the intention of learning. Setting one’s intention caneither open or close the learning pathway. This learning is aided by curiosity. Learn tobe curious about the other.
Personalize
5.
Personalize the experience of embracing differences by heightening therelevance of the connection. To remain distant and aloof closes the pathway toconnection and knowing.
6.
Find relevance in the experience. Strive to find connections at the physical,
emotional, and spiritual level. This is aided by connecting head and heart.
Create7.
Create meaning in the experience of embracing differences and allow fortransformation to guide the process. Remember that true dialogue is transformational,
therefore anticipate change.
8.
Create a sense of belonging by allowing connections of the heart. The
differences we are seeking to embrace are those features that make us human. When
we allow ourselves to see the other, we are in fact allowing our heart to be open andallowing our humanness to guide us.
LimitationsFirst, the limitations of qualitative research methodology are bounded by the
subjectivity of the participants, both the dialogue partners and the facilitator. To
address this limitation, all three co-researchers (dialogue partners and facilitator)
engaged in exploratory discussions, seeking agreement in the naming of thepedagogical elements, as well as the dialogue questions. As research participants wesought member checks of the content, the questions, the process, and the model. The
process of dialogic inquiry utilized in this study necessitated an interdependent
relationship between the three researchers. To allow for validation of the emerging
concepts, process, and model, the three co-researchers allowed for independent workand then sought checks and balances through collaborative exchanges.
Acknowledgements
We express our heartfelt gratitude to the thirty dedicated students, many of whom
participated from different locations outside Japan, at odd time zones amidst
challenging circumstances. Nevertheless, they engaged wholeheartedly and devoted
themselves to each activity and assignment that has led to development of ameaningful this paper.

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Teacher’s Life. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Palmer, P. (2005). The Politics of the Broken Hearted: On Holding the Tensions of
Democracy. Kalamazoo, MI: Fetzer Institute.
Pasquerella, L. (2016). Erasing the Problem of the Color Line: A Collaborative Vision
for the Future. Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation, AAC&U, Fall 2016, 102(4).
Retrieved from https://www.aacu.org/liberaleducation/2016/fall/president
Powell, A. (2020). Outbreak forced changes big and small, some of which are here tostay. The Harvard Gazette, November 24. Retrieved fromhttps://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/11/our-post-pandemic-world-and-whatslikely-to-hang-round/
Torres, C. A., (2014). First Freire: Early Writings in Social Justice Education. New
York, NY: Teachers College Press, 1-11.

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Valenzuela, A. (2017). Subtractive Schooling: U.S. – Mexican Youth and the Politics
of Caring. New York, NY: State University of New York Press.
Contact email: maria.guajardo.phd@gmail.com

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Study on Computer-Adaptive Testing: Proposal of a Scaffolding Tool
Hirotaka Azuma, Tokyo Denki University, Japan
Hironobu Takenouchi, Tokyo Denki University, Japan
Tatsuyuki Takano, Kanto Gakuin University, Japan
Osamu Miyakawa, Tokyo Denki University, Japan
Takashi Kohama, Tokyo Denki University, Japan
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Abstract
A multiple-choice method is one of the major methods in Classical Testing Theory
used at university, in certification exams and so on. This method enables faculty toscore a test easily while requiring a certain amount of quizzes to estimate examinees'abilities with a certain accuracy. This also requires time to answer for examinees andtime to create quizzes for faculty. Then it can be considered to adopt CAT,
Computer-Adaptive Testing. CAT is another testing theory that reduces the number ofquizzes to theoretically half compared to the existing multiple-choice method while
keeping the accuracy of estimating examinees' abilities almost the same; however, itis necessary for each quiz to have its own difficulty. In this study, a programming
exercise tool with a scaffolding method is going to be suggested aiming at generating
quizzes with various difficulties automatically. A scaffolding method is a method thathelps examinees to solve problems by providing some hints gradually. By using thistool, what elements are associated with reduction in difficulty can be examined, andthey will be used to a quiz generation. Students will be required to answer half thenumber of quizzes and faculty will need to create much less ones than before. This
tool also supports beginners to avoid bias in a difficulty distribution by providing very
basic quizzes so that the beginners will be encouraged to brush up their skills andmore detailed classification will be acquired.
Keywords: Computer-Adaptive Testing, Item Response Theory, Scaffolding

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Introduction
At university and in certification exams, there are a lot of testing methods to estimate
examinees’ abilities. One of the most popular ones is a multiple choice. A multiple
choice provides some options for an examinee and let him/her to choose one of them.
By using this method, it is easy for faculty to score a test. But to estimate examinees’
abilities correctly, it is necessary to create a lot of quizzes in a single test. That means
this method takes a long time for examinees to answer and also for faculty to create
quizzes. Since these reasons, it can be thought to adopt a CAT.
CAT stands for Computer-Adaptive Testing. CAT is one of the computer-based
testing methods. By adopting CAT, both faculty and examinees can enjoy the fruit of
its traits. First, quizzes given to examinees vary according to individuals. Second, thenumber of quizzes also varies. Because of these reasons, CAT can contribute topreventing cheatings and decreasing the time to answer quizzes theoretically to half
compared to the multiple choice. But examinees cannot go back to the previous
quizzes since CAT decides which quiz should be next based on the examinee’s
answer to the previous one. And most importantly, each quiz in a test must have its
own difficulty beforehand. Thus before using CAT, a lot of quizzes are necessary, thedifficulties of which are well distributed.
Our study has gone through a plenty of experiments to calculate the difficulty of aquiz and to create a hard one by using some source code metrics or calculating
coefficients. And some of them have been found to be related to the difficulty. But
nothing can prove that it is truly effective. Because of these, this study’s way has beenchanged slightly. This study’s hypothesis is that if some hints are given, the difficultyof a quiz goes down to a certain degree, in other words, hints make a quiz easier. Thus
quizzes with various difficulties will be gained.
Since minute changes to the difficulty of a quiz are hoped to be obtained, ascaffolding method has been introduced. A scaffolding method is a method to support
examinees to achieve their goals that they cannot solve by themselves alone. This
study proposes a tool that gives hints gradually.
Related Studies
Wood says the roles of instructions including “scaffolding” are getting attentions,limiting the options, keeping motivations, highlighting points, managing frustrations,and doing demonstrations (Wood, 1976). Getting attentions is to orient an examinee’s
attention towards a task to let him/her concentrate on it. Limiting the options is for
reducing the options so that an examinee can focus only on necessary things. Keeping
motivations is to maintain an examinee’s motivation on a task for his/her stableconcentration. Highlighting points means showing some points are related to eachother to give further information to an examinee. Managing frustrations is foravoiding an examinee’s strong dependence on an instructor. Lastly, doing
demonstrations means showing an ideal result or way to solve and let an examinee doin the same way.
Collins says “scaffolding” is included in classical apprentice system (Collins, 1991).
In classical apprentice system, trainees (in this case, examinees) used to observe what

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their instructors do, and to try to learn. But today, modern apprentice system has beenchanging that instructors support their trainees to achieve some tasks. And their helps
gradually decrease as the trainees are getting skilled.
Stone says “scaffolding” can be divided into four steps: Firstly, orienting an
examinee’s attention to a task where the difficulty of it is a little bit harder comparedto the examinee’s ability. Secondly, deciding how helps are necessary for an
examinee to solve a problem. Thirdly, instructors should use various ways of helps
according to a task. Lastly, supports should be decreased as an examinee gets skilled(Stone, 1998).
Ueno proposes a system that uses a scaffolding method for programming learners(Ueno, 2015). Ueno suggests that the learning effect becomes the highest when a hintthat enables an examinee to answer it correctly almost fifty percent is given.
A Scaffolding Tool
In this study, a scaffolding tool provides a platform where examinees can train theirprogramming skills. This tool gives a quiz, then gives the next one that is chosen to fit
with the examinee’s ability adaptively based on his/her answer to the previous one.
More concretely, this tool constructs of GUI and background functionality showing asource code to solve, left time to answer, statement texts to make sure how to answer
the quiz, an answer column to type in, and further information.
In order to estimate an examinee’s ability and a quiz’s difficulty, this tool uses IRT toachieve them. IRT stands for Item Response Theory. In IRT, it is assumed that eachexaminee has his/her own ability that is hidden and independent from each other. IRT
can calculate an item (in this case, a quiz)’s difficulty independently from statistical
population, and also calculate an examinee’s ability as well. IRT provides threemodels to estimate. In this study, two-parameter model that uses an examinee’s ability,
an item’s difficulty and discrimination factor has been adopted. This theory is used forvarious ways such as analysis (Nakashima, 2017) and assessment (Tsutsumi, 2018).
This tool also provides some hints to implement a scaffolding method. Steps of thehints are: Step1, no hints are given. The tool gives only a source code and statements.
Step2, trace information is given. This means the tool highlights a line for each step ofexecution to show which line works at each time. Step3, trace and variables
information are given. In addition to the step2, it shows variables’ information so thatan examinee can know what each variable contains. Step4, trace, variable andstandard output information. In addition to the step3, it shows what outputs will beshown in a console except last one.
This scaffolding tool runs as a following flow. It shows a source code and statements
to let an examinee to solve with no hints. When the examinee answers the quizcorrectly, the next quiz that is a little bit harder will be shown. When answering
wrongly and not the all hints are given, the next hint will be provided. Whenanswering wrongly and all the hints are already given, the next quiz that is a little bit
easier will be shown. When the fluctuation of estimating the examinee’s ability
converges, the test ends.

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The GUI of this tool is shown in Figure 1. The largest area is for showing a sourcecode. Under the source code area, there are the statement area and the answer column.
The button written as “Send” is to send the answer when the examinee pushes this. On
the right-hand side, there are an area to show left time to answer, hint status and a
trace button (but the last two are hidden because the test has not begun yet), thevariable-information area and the standard output area. An examinee can choose a test
file selecting “Open” (it’s hidden in this figure) menu item in the “File” item in themenu bar on the upper area and can change the language in the “Settings” item.

Figure 1: GUI of the scaffolding tool
When the test begins, each area works as shown in Figure 2. The source code is being
shown with leading numbers. The statements are also shown. And the left time begins
ticking. The hint status indicates what hints are available saying “No hints.” The trace
button also activates (but in this case, it is disabled and saying “No hints given” since
there are no hints available).

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Figure 2: GUI when the test has begun
Each examinee is required to answer the correct output in console when a programwith the source code runs. This is a reason why this study chooses two-parametermodel in IRT since three-parameter model needs guessing information (this is mostly
used in such as a multiple choice quiz) while this type of answers (free description)
gives very low probability for examinees to answer it correctly when he/her type in byguessing.
After an examinee answered wrongly, the tool updates its hints. The trace information
hint provides a highlighted line. The examinee can proceed the line by pushing thetrace button that says “Click here to the next line” line by line. Regardless of therepetition, branching and method calls, the whole executions will be shown. GUI of
this case is shown in Figure 3.

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Figure 3: GUI when the trace information is given
When an examinee answers it wrongly even after the first hint was given, the tool
updates its hints again as shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4: GUI when the variable information is given

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In this step, variables information is provided with the types and values contained inthem until theline executed at that time. Even if the line is in another method, it shows
correct information showing only variables available at that time.
When an examinee reaches the last step of hints, the standard output information is
given to see as shown in Figure 5. Thus the examinee can know which line shows
what output in console. But the last output line is not be shown because the whole
outputs are the quiz’s answer themselves. If the source code contains only a single
line to show output, the standard output area gives no information. This is the last stepof the hints. So when the examinee answers it wrongly even if all the hints were
provided, the tool provides the next, a little bit easier quiz.

Figure 5: GUI when the standard output information is given
Through these gradual hints, the tool estimates an examinee’s ability and the difficultyof a quiz to show the next one adaptively.
Additional Tool for True Beginners
This study assumes that true beginners may not solve easiest quizzes that theirinstructors prepare. This is actually an important factor to avoid because their answers
may cause raising the average of the difficulty of each quiz.
To prevent this problem, an additional tool is provided in this study. This additional
one provides quizzes that mainly consist of very basic knowledge.
This additional tool is implemented as Web service. The UI of the tool is shown in
Figure 6.

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Figure 6: UI of the additional tool
The statement on the top says “Choose the source code that contains wrong
indentation from 1 and 2 below.” Proper indentation is of grave importance, but thescaffolding tool assumes that all the examinees have already known it. Thus thisadditional tool supports the basics.
Another example of the additional tool is shown in Figure 7. The statement says
“Choose the source code where grayed areas indicate the type of parameters from 1
and 2 below.” Ability to decide which is a type of parameter is also a very importantfactor.

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Figure 7: Another example of the additional tool
Conclusion
A scaffolding-included tool for programming learners is introduced to obtain quizzes
with various difficulties. This study aims for gathering variety of quizzes
automatically, and for being part of functionality in CAT system.
This study focuses on not only a source code itself but also other pieces of
information such as statements and hints. Our past experiments tried to create adifficult source code without any other factors. But this study considers a quiz, whichcontains various factors, so that an easier one can be generated by providing somehints.

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References
Wood, David, Jerome S. Bruner, and Gail Ross. (1976). The role of tutoring in
problem solving. Journal of child psychology and psychiatry 17.2, pp.89-100.
Collins, Allan. (1991). A Cognitive Apprenticeship for Disadvantaged Students.
Stone, C. Addison. (1998) The metaphor of scaffolding: Its utility for the field oflearning disabilities. Journal of learning disabilities 31.4, pp.344-364.
Maomi Ueno, Junya Matsuo. (2015). Scaffolding System Provides Adaptive Hints
Using Item Response Theory. The Journal of the Institute of Electronics, Information
and Communication Engineers D98.1, pp.17-29.
Yasuhiro Nakashima, Yoshikatsu Sasaki. (2017). Koumokuoutouriron ni yoru
suugakukisoryoku kakunintesuto no kaiseki [Analysis of Tests that Confirm BasicMathematic Ability by using Item Response Theory]. Bulletin of Kurume Institute ofTechnology 39, pp63-71.
Emiko Tsutsumi, Masaki Uto, and Maomi Ueno. (2018). Dainamikku asesument notameno kakure marukohu irt moderu [Hidden Markov IRT model for Dynamic
Assessment]. The Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence 32.
Contact email: 19JKM02@ms.dendai.ac.jp

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Exclusion of Persons with Impairment: Role of Language Vocabulary
Mansi Pandey, National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration, India
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Abstract
The aim of this research was to examine the role of language in the lives of persons
with impairment and how meanings get attached to words that make it discriminatory
against a certain section of the society. The paper questions routinization andnormalization of the insulting words used for persons with impairment. The objectiveof the research was to study the evolutionary change in disability vocabulary and to
explore the exclusion of persons with impairment through language. The researchhighlights various themes such as normalization and acceptance of words like
'cripple', 'freak' and 'abnormal' etc. in our everyday vocabulary, the dichotomy
between 'normal' and the 'other/deviant' and differences between the terms handicap,
disabled and impairment. It highlights the importance of the social model of disability
in creating an inclusive environment. Mixed method approach (sequential
explanatory) was chosen for this research. Semi-structured in-depth interviews wereconducted and a questionnaire was circulated to record data. The findings revealed
that the meanings of these words have not emerged in a vacuum and it is important tothen trace their origin and understand the context in which they were used. The
participants suggested that the best way to approach a person with impairment is tosimply ask what they would be comfortable in while referring to them and that would
only help in breaking the rigid segregations that have existed not just in physicalspaces but also in our vocabulary, language, culture and mind.
Keywords: Impairment, Disability, Handicap, Inclusive Education, Normative,
Segregation, Integration, Inclusion, Stigmas, Stereotypes, Labels, Socialization

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Introduction
Whenever a car bumps into another on a busy road, the first phrase that one gets tohear generally is “Are you blind?” or “Are you deaf”. This phrase that is so loosely
used gets unnoticed and is never critically analyzed. What one can observe here is
how someone’s impairment is being used to denote another individual’s dumbness or
ignorance and this negative connotation attached to various impairments has become“Normalized “or “Routinized”.
An individual’s ideas and thoughts find expression through the powerful tool of words
and language. A meaning that gets attached to any word heavily impacts andinfluences the attitudes formed toward the subjects of discussion. All the words andconcepts which are used to describe persons with impairment have their own histories
and implications for them, giving validity to the assertion that language is constitutiveof social practices and culture. Language possesses the power to transform economic,
political and social practices but its power flow spreads out in uneven currents. The
way we use our language in everyday lives impact our thinking and how we interact
with others in our society. There are various social institutions such as family, school,religion etc. which shape the way in which individuals use language in their daily
lives.
This paper throws lights on the various terminologies (including derogatory terms)
used for persons with impairment and how the various social institutions play a role inshaping them. It helps us to “de-normalize” various derogatory and insulting terms
that are used for persons with impairment. A conscious choice has been made in thepaper to use the terminology ‘Impairment’ which refers to the temporary or
permanent loss or abnormality of psychological, physiological or anatomical structure
or function as per World Health Organization. However, it also important todistinguish it from two terminologies such as ‘Disability’ which refers to functional
limitation with regard to special activity and ‘Handicap’ which refers to disadvantage
in filling a role in life relative to a peer group.
This topic was chosen out of concern for the increasing normalization and usage ofinsulting terms for persons with impairment. “Persons with impairment” are not ahomogenous category and there are vast differences amongst them as well which
results to variation in the use of “derogatory” and “insulting” words against them.
This paper will help enhance understanding of the terms ‘Impairment, Handicap andDisability’ and the various negative connotations attached to it with their origins andhow they impact the lives of persons with impairment. Hence, the aim of this paper is
to examine the role of language in the lives of persons with impairment and how
meanings get attached to words that make it discriminatory against a certain section of
the society.
Thus, the research objectives of the study are:
• To study the evolutionary change in vocabulary used for persons with
impairment.
● To explore the inclusion/exclusion of Persons with Impairment through language.
● To understand the role of social institutions and processes in the stigmatization of
persons with impairment.

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To understand the objectives of the study, the following research questions were
explored:● What are the derogatory /insulting terms used to discriminate against persons
with impairment?
● How has the vocabulary used for persons with impairment evolved with thechanging meanings of various terminologies?
● What role does socialization play in establishing such stigmas and stereotypes inthe society?
Impairment, Disability and Handicap
Terminologies used in our society are inscribed in language and culture. It is
important to understand how meanings get attached to words and what is the root
cause of discriminatory terms used for persons with impairment.
The World Health Organization defines Impairment as any loss or abnormality ofpsychological, physiological, or anatomical structure or function. Disability is defined
as any restriction or lack (resulting from an impairment) of ability to perform anactivity in the manner or within the range considered normal for a human being andHandicap as a disadvantage for a given individual, resulting from an impairment or adisability, that limits or prevents the fulfilment of a role that is normal. Although thesedefinitions have been provided to distinguish between the terminologies, they are stillinterchangeably used. However, before these definitions gained ground, there wereother terminologies and often with derogatory connotations used for addressing
persons with impairment.
Historically, words like “infirmity” and “affliction “as well as phenomenon likepoverty, ugliness, weakness and sickness have been associated with persons with
impairment and continues even till date. Words having supernatural connotations like“monstrosity” or ones likes “Deformity” representing a detachment from godlinessand entrance into physical and moral ugliness have also been attached to persons with
impairment. Since the nineteenth century, discourses on medicines, law and statistics
started linking persons with impairment and their lives as firmly connected to words
such as “deviance”, “abnormality” and “disorder” (Davis, 1995). Human bodies havealways been compared and measured against the idealized standards of what a perfectindividual should look and behave like, hence the modern conception of “normalcy”
that has been formed and against which Persons with Impairment are measured
against has emerged from this ideology (Davis, 1995). It is also important to analyze
the origin of the various negative connotations given to terminologies used for
persons with impairment. These terminologies do not emerge in a vacuum, they are a
result of the beliefs, practices, interactions, values, attitudes and culture of a society
and its social structures and institutions.
Language- A Reflection of Social Interaction and Culture
Any kind of linguistic utterance or expression can be understood as the product of therelation between a “linguistic market” and a “linguistic habitus.” The language that anindividual uses originate from their accumulated linguistic resources leading to
attaching meanings to words that meet the demands of a social field or market that istheir audience/listeners (Bourdieu,1991). Hence every linguistic interaction, however

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personal or insignificant can be traced to the social structure out of which it emerges
and helps to reproduce (Bourdieu, 1991). Language can also be understood as one
which represents, manifests, and symbolizes power (Bourdieu, 1991). The choice ofwords used by both persons with impairment and non-impaired are clearly guided bytheir social structure and culture (Bourdieu, 1991).
Similar notions on the intersection of culture and language are given by
Anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski who argues that “language and culture areindivisible; our language is our culture and how we use it reflects on our culture”.
Throughout history, culture has played a major role in dismissing and discarding
those seen as different from the “normative”.
To get a better understanding of how these negative terminologies used for persons
with impairment get accepted by the society, it is essential to examine the concept of
performativity of language. Social reality does not emerge in a vacuum, instead gets
continuously created through the use of language, gesture, and various kinds ofsymbolic social sign. A speech act gets its meaning only with reference to the existing
and accepted norm, code and contract which gets repeated through its
performance/pronouncement (Butler, 1997). By using words with predefined
meanings, our reality is thus socially constructed and by citing the conventions andideologies of the social world around us endlessly, we contribute to the reproductionof that very reality. Speaking can thus be seen as a performative act where we"incorporate" that reality by enacting it with our bodies (Butler, 1997). The hegemonyof heteronormative standards maintains their power by our continual repetition ofwhat is considered as the “normative” and “dominant” in the most mundane of daily
activities (the way we walk, talk, gesticulate, etc.) (Butler, 1997). Thus, thecontinuance of the discriminatory words against persons with impairment contributes
in the maintenance of the oppressive status quo where the most personal acts are
regularly scripted by hegemonic social conventions and ideologies (Butler, 1997).
Bronislaw Malinowski also suggested that “language and culture are indivisible, ourlanguage is our culture and how we use it reflects on our culture (G.W Hyatt, 2005).
Through history, culture through its norms, rules, law and language has dismissed,
discounted, and discarded those seen as different.These labels degrade individuals by
focusing on their differences or incapability, rather than on the individuals
themselves, they link individuals to stereotypes, and often trump other indicators ofidentity. Until recently, the prevalent model of disability had been the medical modelin which the impaired person is seen as the problem, a social model of disability
language is thus seen as one which would bring with its language of equality andinclusion. The social model of disability has also helped in the movement towards
building inclusive environment and changing perspectives of the society whenlooking at persons with impairment.
Defining ‘Inclusion’
A shift was seen from the Medical Model of Disability to a Social Model with the
Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) 1995. The Medical Model emphasized that is
the individual who is the problem and it is their “impairment” that is the cause for
their exclusion from the society and the negative associations attached with the
Persons with Impairment. However, the Social Model recognized that it is the lack of

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facilities in the surrounding and infrastructure, insensitive attitudes, culture and valuesof the society as well as the process of socialization which needs improvement.
Society must be aware of their responsibility of creating an inclusive environment.
Figure 1: Medical Model of Disability

Figure 2: Social Model of Disability

The social model also influenced greatly the schooling system for children with
impairment. Before Inclusion, as a movement gained momentum, it was believed that
segregated special education supported by the medical model of disability was ideal
for children with impairments. As people with impairments showed theirdissatisfaction and anger with segregated education, issues of equality of access andeducational opportunity gained impetus. Integration soon replaced the Segregation
Model however; it was realized that it was also not a complete attempt for attaining
full inclusion of all students. However, Inclusive model of education encouraged thesociety to be aware of their responsibility of creating an inclusive environment inwhich everyone can live. Starting from making changes in the physical environment,
for example ramps for wheelchair users to the need for changing negative attitudes

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about Persons with Impairment so that they are not discriminated against, theinclusive model based on social model of disability promoted it all.
In the backdrop of such developments, ‘Inclusive Education’ as a movement started togain momentum with the United Nations Salamanca Statement which was signed by
92 member countries and came into existence (1994). The Statement debated that
“Regular schools with this inclusive orientation are the most effective means ofcombating discriminatory attitudes, creating welcoming communities, building an
inclusive society and achieving education for all.”In India, various policies and reports have attempted to define inclusive education.
The recent Rights of Persons with Impairment Act, 2016 (RPWD) defined inclusive
education as “a system of education wherein students with and without disability learn
together and the system of teaching and learning is suitably adapted to meet thelearning needs of different types of students with disabilities”.
Even though a universal definition of ‘Inclusive Education’ has not been established,
the ideas of equity and accessibility have been the underlying themes of allinterpretations. They all emphasize that children with or without impairments have thesame rights to educational opportunities. However, one also needs to observe thebarriers of the successful inclusion of children with impairment, one of which is theattitude and language used in the society for them which leads to labels and stigmas.
Here, it becomes essential to analyze the role school as a social institution.
An institution such as a school is not just a physical space but can be conceptualized
as a shared system of meaning (Skrtic 1991). It plays an important role in thedevelopment of students as well as the society, however it can also become a sourceof exclusion by failing to promote equal participation, access and also by the use oflabels and stigmas for children with impairment.
Methodology
To overcome the limitations of a single design, mixed method approach (sequential
explanatory) was chosen for this research. The research involved collection andanalysis of quantitative data followed by a collection and analysis of qualitative data.
Interview
Semi-structured in-depth interviews were selected to carry out this research study. In
choosing the sample of participants the researcher used a convenience sampling
method. The researcher chose to interview 20 individuals aged between 20-35 years.
Questionnaire
Questionnaires are a good way to get quick results at a low cost and can produce
reliable, quantitative results if the right questions are asked. In choosing theparticipants of this survey, snowball sampling method was selected. A total of 70
responses were recorded and the age selection was restricted between 20-50.

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Findings and Analysis
Role of Vocabulary in Enforcing Social Domination
Through the responses to the survey, a list of derogatory names used commonly for
Persons with Impairment came out, some of them being Apahij, Autistic Person,
Abhanga, Andha, Behera ,Retarded ,Psycho , Divyangjan, Dumb, Mand Buddhi,
Crippled, Lame , Dwarf and Apang etc Disability discourse and its intersection withlanguage can then be seen as a vocabulary which is created to maintain certain formsof social domination as Foucault elaborates in his book, Madness and Civilization.
Similarly, terminologies with negative connotations such as “cripple”, “retard”,“spastic”, “handicapped” is one aspect of knowledge that contributes to the social
construction of disability and these terms create stigmas around Persons with
Impairment which are then seen as acceptable because being labeled as one of theseterms’ means being labeled as “Different’ and the “Deviant other”.
Figure 3: Percentage of people considering “feeble” and “dumb” as derogatory

In the figure 3 we observe the responses to the question ‘if people considered words
like “feeble”, “weak” and “dumb” as derogatory and insulting, although 46 out of 65
people acknowledged them as derogatory and discriminatory, there were around 17
people who considered these terms as normal and common. Since these terminologies
have become extremely normalized in our society and culture, there is no space left toeven question their usage which clearly discriminates against a significant section of
the population.
These terminologies are not just single words used to address a section of the society
but express very strong ideas about what is desirable and undesirable in a particular
culture. The words "disabled", "cripple", "spastic", "invalid", "weak" and "abnormal"
manage to evoke very intense, very negative images. However, one need to observe
the framework within which these words are embedded, the sentences that areformulated and the discourses which inform their use and their possibilities, whichbring us to intimate connection that lies between language and power. If one hears theword "disability” for instance, it conjures up a certain kind of image as it mediates
between the recipient of the word and the larger discourse within which disability isframed. This discourse includes certain sites like media representation, medical

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models, sociological discourse, education syllabus and political programs that
contribute in the vocabulary and knowledge creation/dissemination about Persons
with Impairment. Therefore, it is essential to understand not only how language
functions symbolically, but also how these symbols are tied, through discourse, tosystems of power.
All social practices have meanings attached to them and these meanings have thepower to shape and influence our conduct and activities, hence all practices can thensee to be having a discursive aspect. Discourses can then be observed as production ofknowledge through language and they cannot be seen as separate from each other as
each plays a major role in the operation of the other.
What has been examined is how labels stigmatize but what needs to be paid attention
to is how discourses also silence. Discourse have silenced Persons with Impairment invarious ways as it rejects personal tragedy narratives and identifies impairment as partof human experience to be valued on its own terms. It leaves them with no languagewith which to express themselves, it invalidates their narratives and, therefore, theirsubjective realities, and it renders them invisible. Discourse, in creating the space forsubject formation by marking the boundaries of exclusion instead creates a "silent
majority" who has no way of telling their stories and articulating their subjecthood orlack of it. In some cases, it also creates a ‘culture of silence’ which has been discussed
by Paulo Freire where a negative, passive and self-image is instilled onto theoppressed such as persons with impairment.
Stigmas and Stereotypes
Stigma as a form of negative stereotyping has a way of neutralizing positive qualities
and undermining the identity of stigmatized individuals. This kind of social
categorization has also been described by one sociologist as a "discordance withpersonal attributes". Thus, many stigmatized people are not expected to be intelligent,
attractive, or upper class (Coleman 1997: 221 222). This stigmatization becomes
more apparent with the usage of certain discriminatory and insulting terms for Persons
with Impairment as they propagate the creation of stereotypical identities. In this way
key words, such as "cripple”, “disabled", "handicapped" are attached to a set ofimages which, regardless of whether they describe the person in question are assumed
to do so because they are associated with persons with impairment in general.
One of the interview participants was quoted as saying “It is very common for people
in my surrounding be it friends, relatives and even neighbors to show sympathy to myparents for my condition and also discouraging them from letting me go to school or
pursue higher education, go on vacations and wanting to go out for an event or
simply a movie. There have been all kinds of judgments and stereotypes formed
around what am I capable of doing and what all should i not even be thinking about
doing”.
Stereotypes become very powerful political tools in their concise and incisive ability
to subjectify as it emanates from and contributes to the process of normalization
through the construction of binary oppositions. For the norm is also represented by a"stereotypical" image of an active, independent, achievement-oriented worker who isusually male, wealthy, non-disabled and heterosexual. Through this negative

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become representative of what not to be. Stereotyping, in other words, is part of themaintenance of the social and symbolic order as it sets up a symbolic frontier between
the 'normal' and the 'deviant', the 'normal' and the 'pathological,' the 'acceptable' andthe 'unacceptable', what 'belongs' and what does not or is 'Other', between 'insiders'and 'outsiders', Us and Them. It facilitates the 'binding' or bonding together of all of
those who are 'normal' into one 'imagined community'; and it sends into symbolic
exile all of them- ‘the Others’ who are in some way different or ‘beyond the pale'(Hall 1997: 258).These stigmas have an adverse effect on the self-esteem andconfidence of Persons with Impairment making it extremely hard for them to comeout of it.The experience of persons with impairment is thus far more often of
exclusion and, segregation and prejudice than it is of integration and welcome.
What Role Does Socialization Play?
Socialization is the process and the result of the inclusion of an individual in social
relations [Nikitin, 1998]. However, socialization is a multidirectional process.
Socialization takes place both as the process of integration of an individual in thesocial system (T. Parsons, R. Merton), and as a self-actualization process of “selfidentity”, self-actualization of one’s potentialities and abilities as the process ofovercoming the environmental influences that hinder self-development and selfassertion of a concrete personality (A. Maslow, C. Rogers).
In one of the interviews, a participant narrated how during her school education there
was always a gap and awkwardness that existed between the other students and her as
they were uncomfortable in approaching her. She explained how students around her
had been brought up in able-bodied ghettos and if one sees a body that varies fromone’s own nation of the “normal body “then it is considered as “abnormal” and“pathological”.
Language then becomes a double-edged sword as it can play a role of both easing out
the process of socialization for both Persons with Impairment and the rest of the
population or make it even more difficult by not being able to use the right andappropriate kind of words to address Persons with Impairment. Since majority of theindividuals haven’t been socialized in being comfortable with Persons with
Impairment around them, they tend to make a lot of assumptions like Persons with
Impairment cannot speak for themselves.
Is Formation of New Vocabulary the Solution?
While interviewing, one of the participants showed discontent with the newterminology for Persons with Impairment - “Divyang” (bodies are possessed by
divine power or divya shakti). She was quoted as saying “Mere change ofterminology is not going to bring about any change in the manner in which people
with disabilities are treated. Invoking divinity will in no way lessen the stigma anddiscrimination that Persons with Impairment have been historically subjected to andcontinue to encounter in their daily lives. Disability is not a divine gift. And the use ofphrases like ‘divyang’ in no way ensures de-stigmatization or an end to
discrimination on grounds of disability”. What one examines is how exclusion and

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marginalization cannot be addressed by using patronizing terms like ‘divyang’. On thecontrary, they will only invoke sympathy and underline that charity is what counts.
While closely examining the new terminologies used for Persons with Impairment, it
has proven to be largely ineffectual as a strategy for resistance as it sometimes
actually serves to mask some of the more deeply oppressive realities that frame
disabled people's lives (Marks, 1999). The adoption of terms such as "special needs"
for the resources required by Persons with Impairment to function independently, and"self-advocate" for people who have intellectual impairments can conceal the very
real problems faced by Persons with Impairment by suggesting that they are enjoying
equity in society. But, whether politically correct language derives from well-meaning
attempts to reverse discrimination or from those who wish to conceal oppressive
ideologies, the important thing to recognize here is that an elementary semiotic
approach is doomed to failure because the introduction of simple labels on their own
cannot dismantle deeply rooted discrimination. What is also wrong with many of the
new words which have been developed to describe Persons with Impairment is thatthey have not been chosen by Persons with Impairment themselves and are not seenby them to reflect their identities or political desires. Words such as "physicallychallenged," "able disabled," "handicapped”," "special people/children," "differently
abled," and "people with differing abilities" are all attempts to raise the status of
Persons with Impairment by providing more positive sounding labels but they havebeen rejected by Persons with Impairment as undesirable.
All of these adjectives used as abstract nouns contribute to the process ofstigmatization by reinforcing the tendency to "see" Persons with Impairment only interms of those disabilities. These labels rivet attention on what is usually the mostvisible or apparent characteristic of the person. They obscure all other characteristics
behind that one and swallow up the social identity of the individual within that
restrictive category (Dajani, 2001: 198 199). They are rarely used by activists whoare impaired and scholars. Although they may be considered well-meaning attempts
to inflate the value of people with disabilities, they convey the boosterism and dogooder mentality endemic to the paternalistic agencies that control many disabled
people's lives' (Linton, 1998:14). These euphemisms have the effect of depoliticizing
our own terminology and devaluing our own view of ourselves as Persons with
Impairment (Gilson, Tusler and Gill, 1997). These attempts of formulating new
terminologies have been seen as rehabilitation moves or efforts but they have not beenvery successful because they place responsibility for change on the individual when
the problem is in fact a social one. What needs to be questioned then are the words
and phrases which are used to describe persons with impairment, to unearth theconcepts which inform the meaning that they carry and to reshape and restructure theculture and orientation of social institutions such as schools, family, workspaces tobecome more inclusive.

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Figure 4: Preference on People First or Identity First Language.

In figure 4 we examine that in the survey, 82.8% of the participants preferred PeopleFirst Language while addressing Persons with Impairment while there were 17.2% of
the participants who advocated for Identity First Language. Whereas interviews with
Persons with Impairment gave mixed responses as some preferred People-First
Language and others preferred Identity First Language. Those who advocated theformer believed that this is one such category of terminologies that can foster positive
attitudes about Persons with Impairment and lead to major improvements incommunicating with and about people with impairment. People-First Languageemphasizes the person, not the impairment. By placing the person first, theimpairment is no longer the primary, defining characteristic of an individual, but oneof several aspects of the whole person. People-First Language is an objective way of
acknowledging, communicating, and reporting on impairments. It eliminates
generalizations and stereotypes, by focusing on the person rather than the impairment.
Conclusion
The findings of the research are relevant to the wider study of the role of language in
exclusion and inclusion of Persons with Impairment and its implication on them. The
research examines the evolution of terms to contextualize how the negative
connotations were attached to them. The formation and culmination of such negative
meanings and connotations of terminologies used for Persons with Impairment arethen found in the society, within its culture and the process of socialization andconditioning of individuals. Because most individuals are brought up in “able-bodied”
ghettos, the bodies that do not confirm to their version of the “normal” are labeled as“different” and “abnormal”. The use of such words is not just discriminatory but also
have stigmas and stereotypes attached to them that highly affect the lives of Persons
with Impairment as it makes them feel that they are not a part of the society andlowers their self-esteem and confidence. The meanings of these words have not
emerged in a vacuum and it is important to then trace their origin and understand thecontext in which they were used. Only when one identifies the origin of such words
can one refute its usage in the present context. Individuals might not even know
where and for what did a terminology emerge but increasingly use the actual
conditions of Persons with Impairment as derogatory terms or to define “abnormality”
or “defect” in any kind of situation. Starting from bickering on the roads, scholarly

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literatures to even school curriculum and textbooks, the various conditions that
Persons with Impairment have has been used to define the “restrictive” and “limiting”
aspects of the society, not acknowledging the role that it is not the individual but thesociety that makes Persons with Impairment’ activities restrictive and limited. It is thelack of infrastructure, lack of sensitivity and awareness on how to appropriately
address Persons with Impairment, social conditioning to not accept anything thatdeviates from our ideals of “normative” and then forming prejudices and excluding
them from being part of the society is what makes them the “others”.
The question that then emerges from all these findings and analysis is what is then theappropriate way to address Persons with Impairment? What vocabulary is the mostsuitable? While there is no fixed universal answer to this, however the society and its
structures must start becoming more inclusive in their approach. The participants of
the research suggested that the best approach is to approach a person with disability
and simply ask what they would be comfortable in while referring to them and thatwould only help in breaking the rigid segregations that have existed not just in
physical spaces but also in our vocabulary, language, culture and mind.

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References
1) Addlakha, R. (2009). Disability and society: a reader. New Delhi: OrientBlackswan.
2) Adams, R., Reiss, B., & Serlin, D. (2015). Keywords for disability studies. New
York: New York University Press.
3) Albrecht, G.L. and Devlieger, P.J. (1998). The disability paradox: high quality oflife against all odds. Social Science &amp; Medicine 48, 977-988
4) Berger, J. (2014). The disarticulate: Language, disability, and the narratives ofmodernity. New York: New York University Press.
5) Bourdieu, Pierre. (1991). Language And Symbolic Power. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press.
6) Butler, J. (2010). "Excitable speech": a politics of the performative. New York:
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7) Cherney, J. L. (2011). The Rhetoric of Ableism. Disability Studies Quarterly.
8) Coleman, L. M. (1997). Stigma. In Davis, L. J. (1997) The Disability Studies
Reader. New York: Routledge.
9) Corbett, J. (1997). Independent, proud and special: Celebrating our differences.
In Barton, L & Oliver, M. (eds) Disability Studies: Past, Present and Future. Leeds:
The Disability Press.
10) Davis, L. J. (2017). The disability studies reader. New York, NY: Routledge, an
imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group.
11) Davis, L. J. (1995). Enforcing normalcy: disability, deafness, and the body.
London ; New York :Verso.
12) Fishman, J. A. (1977). Readings in the sociology of language. The Hague:
Mouton.
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in the Age of Reason New York, NY: Vintage Books.
14) Freire, P. (1972). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Herder and Herder.
15) Goodenough, W. (1963). Cooperation in change. New York: Russell Sage
Foundation.
16) Goffman, E. (2008). The presentation of self in everyday life. New York: Anchor
Books.

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identity: Self-determination and community. Journal of Vocational Rehabilitation, 9,
7 17.
18) Linton, S. (1998). Claiming Disability: Knowledge and Identity. New York: NewYork University Press.
19) Marks, D. (1999). Disability: Controversial Debates and Psychosocial
Perspectives. London: Routledge.
20) Nussbaum, Martha C. (2006). Frontiers of justice: disability, nationality, species
membership. Cambridge, Mass: The Belknap Press.
21) Pateman, T. (1987). Language in Mind and Language in Society. Oxford
University Press.
22) Rogers, L. J., & Swadener, B. B. (2001). Semiotics and dis/ability: Interrogating
categories of difference. Albany: State University of New York Press.
23) Saussure, F. D. (1959). Course in general linguistics. New York: PhilosophicalLibrary.
24) Thomas, C. (1999a) Narrative identity and the disabled self. In Corker, M. &French, S. (eds) Disability Discourse. Buckingham: Open University Press.
25) Wilson, J. C., & Lewiecki-Wilson, C. (2001). Embodied rhetorics: disability inlanguage and culture. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
26) Woodward, K. (1997). Concepts of Identity and difference. In Woodward (ed)Identity and Difference. London: Sage.

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Officilal Conference ProceedingsInternational Student Migration: Pre-COVID Educational Paths of Chinese
Undergraduate Students at Emory University
Hong Li, Emory University, United States
Levin Arnsperger, Emory University, United States
Michael Cerny, Hertford College, United Kingdom
The Asian Conference on Education 2020
Official Conference Proceedings
Abstract
According to the Open Doors report published by the Institute of International
Education (IIE), over 372,000 students from the People’s Republic of China wereenrolled at a U.S. college or university in the 2019-2020 academic year (IIE, 2020).
Often employing a ‘push-pull’ model of international student migration, prior academic
research has sought to identify the primary factors which motivate Chinese students’desire to receive an overseas education. However, the recent deterioration in U.S.-China
relations, along with the COVID-19 pandemic, are expected to both alter and depress
international patterns of Chinese student migration. Combining two datasets collected
at Emory University in the past three years, our study investigates the pre-COVID
educational paths of Chinese students from high school to American colleges and theirmotivations for pursuing undergraduate education in the U.S. Drawing from 190 survey
responses and 15 interviews of Chinese students, our study highlights how Chinese
students navigate the complex application process and identifies the key factors
influencing students’ decisions, particularly with regards to the political and economic
status quo of the United States and China, parent-student aspirations, and the perceived
value of higher education in the U.S. At the end of the paper, we will discuss anotherset of 20 recent interviews with Chinese students at Emory, which provided insights
into challenges and concerns of the students during COVID-19; these insights in turnprompt reflection of future patterns of international student migration.
Keywords: Overseas Education, International Students, Chinese Students in the U.S.

iafor
The International Academic Forumwww.iafor.org

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Introduction
A long-established phenomenon dating back to Chinese imperial period, international
student exchange from China to the United States can be traced to 1854 with thegraduation of Yung Wing from Yale University. Although hundreds of Chinese would
be educated in the United States in subsequent decades, student exchange would decline
to near zero by Mao Zedong’s death in 1976 (Yan & Berlinger, 2016). It was not until
1978, more than a century after Yung Wing’s graduation 1854, that Chinese enrollment
at United States universities would begin to accelerate to the levels that characterize
American higher education today (Lampton et al., 1986; Yan & Berlinger, 2016).
Rising sharply following Deng Xiaoping’s 1978 agreement with the Carter
administration to conduct student exchanges with the United States, the number ofChinese students in American higher education soared to approximately 20,000 by
1988 (Yan & Berlinger, 2016). By 2008, this number had quintupled to more than
98,000 and continued to rise across the following decade to over 372,000 in 2019/2020(IIE, 2020). China has been the largest source of international students in the U.S. in
the last 10 years. However, the recent deterioration in U.S.-China relations, along with
the COVID-19 pandemic, are expected to both alter and depress international patternsof Chinese student migration. In fact, Fall 2020 enrollment of international students in
the U.S. dropped by 43% (IIE, 2020).
Recent studies about the motivations of Chinese students’ decision to pursue education
abroad have revealed important insights into the factors that influence their decision,
including high levels of competition for university entrance in their home country due
to overpopulation (Bodycott & Lai, 2012, p. 254), recommendations by peers andrelatives, and the ability to work in the host country (Mazzarol, Soutar, & Thein, 2001).
Drawing from 190 surveys and 15 interviews of Chinese students at Emory University,
our two interconnected studies investigate the pre-COVID educational paths of Chinese
students from high school to American colleges and their motivations for pursuingundergraduate education in the U.S. The data collected from 2018 to 2020 reveals
important social, political, and academic factors Chinese students consider whenchoosing their schools and majors, with regards to the political and economic status quoof the United States and China, parent-student aspirations, and the perceived value ofan overseas education. Furthermore, based on recent, separate interviews with over 20
Chinese students at Emory, we will discuss the challenges and concerns of Chinese
students studying in the U.S. during COVID-19 that provide insights into how online
learning might shape future patterns of international student migration.
Our Studies
1. Background of Our Studies
Emory University is a private research university located in Atlanta, Georgia. In recent
years, enrollment of international undergraduate students has been steadily increasing.
According to data released by Emory’s Office of Undergraduate Admissions, in Fall2019 international students hailed from 105 countries, and they made up 22.7% of thetotal undergraduate student body. Among them, 1,196 (46.3%) were from Mainland
China.

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Why did the Chinese students decide to pursue their undergraduate education in the
U.S.? What factors did they consider in their decision making process? How did they
prepare for this journey? To answer the questions, we conducted two sets of surveys
and interviewed 15 Chinese students. The first survey (“Study 1”) described in thispaper investigates Chinese students’ motivations to study in the U.S. and factors
influencing their choices of schools. The second set and the interviews (“Study 2” here,
though actually conducted earlier) focus on Chinese students’ experiences preparing
their applications, completing high school, and starting college in the U.S. The two
projects thus illuminate how Chinese students navigate the spaces and roads leading toa transnational career. Students endeavor to understand the opportunities and challenges
in both the U.S. and the Chinese educational systems, and once they decide to moveabroad, they seek support from their families, teachers, and consultants to succeed inentering American colleges.
2. Literature Review
Deep academic research has sought to identify the primary factors which motivate
Chinese students’ desire to receive an overseas education. Often analyzed within a‘push-pull’ model of international student migration, these studies assess a variety of
influential socioeconomic, political, and outcome-based factors (Mazzarol & Soutar,
2002; Chen, 2018; Fang & Wang, 2014; Lee, 2017; Lo et al., 2019). For example,
McMahon (1992) investigates what might ‘push’ students from their home countries,
such as a low degree of home-country prosperity or government emphasis on foreign
educational attainment, and what might ‘pull’ students to other countries, such as ahigher degree of economic prosperity or cultural linkages (Mazzarol & Soutar, 2002).
In their highly influential study, Mazzarol, Kemp, and Savery (1997) employ a ‘pushpull’ model to identify six primary motivational factors behind the decision by
Mainland Chinese, Taiwanese, Indian, and Indonesian students to pursue overseas
education. These include the reputation of the host country, personal recommendations
from parents, relatives, and friends, issues related to cost, such as the ability to find parttime work, the local environment, geographic proximity to the host country, and social
links to the host country, such as resident contacts (Mazzarol, Kemp, & Savery, 1997;
Mazzarol & Soutar, 2002). These macrolevel factors, along with a host of otherinstitutional factors identified by Mazzarol and Soutar (2002), have inspired significant
application of the ‘push-pull’ model in the context of international student migration(Fang & Wang, 2014). Although the ‘push-pull’ model has helped scholars unpack what
factors might influence the decision-making of students as they choose to study abroad,the model has notable limitations. For example, Wen and Hu (2019), along with manyothers, write that the focus of the ‘push-pull’ model on macrolevel social and economic
factors tends to overlook important microlevel motivations, such as those associatedwith socioeconomic status, gender, age, and personal aspiration (Wen & Hu, 2019;
Fang & Wang, 2014). Additionally, Chen (2017) notes that the model does not clearlyaccount for differences between destination countries, such as how varying immigration
policies may alter student calculations about post-graduation employment. Most
pertinent to this study, the model grants little insight into who drives the considerationof these factors during the study abroad decision-making process. Regarding theprocess of student decision-making, Mazzarol and Soutar (2002) identify three distinct
stages during which ‘push’ and ‘pull factors are evaluated. During the first stage, ‘push’
factors motivate a student to look outside the country for education. In the second stage,‘pull’ factors increase the relative attractiveness of a particular country compared to

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another. During the final stage, a student selects an institution of higher education based
off factors like the reputation for quality, market profile, and the university alumni base(Mazzarol, 1998). However, Mazzarol and Soutar’s (2002) evidence of a layered
decision-making process, which seems to require careful cost-benefit analysis, offers
an interesting question about the suitability of the ‘push-pull’ model in the context ofChinese student mobility.
In the context of the previous research, our Study 1 seeks to identify the complex
macrolevel and microlevel factors about studying abroad that Chinese students evaluate
in making the decision, examine their perspectives about the American and Chinese
higher education systems, and pinpoint the concerns they have about studying/living in
the U.S.
Study 2 owes a great deal to the scholarship of Vanessa Fong, Anni Kajanus, Steven
Fraiberg, Xiqiao Wang, Xiaoye You, and many others, who have explored theexperiences of young Chinese women and men seeking or realizing their dream ofstudying abroad. Some of these scholars completed case studies on Chinese students,
tracing their personal journeys: discussing their decisions, their academic andprofessional achievements, and the prejudices they encounter. Fong (2011) and Kajanus(2015), for instance, interviewed hundreds of individuals in Dalian and Beijing over thecourse of several years. Fong addresses the quest for “world citizenship” or “flexible
citizenship” of these transnational students; Kajanus talks about the economic, political,
and cultural factors that affect the migration flows. Fraiberg, Wang, and You (2017)
explore the lives of Chinese international students at the University Michigan,presenting the resources, communication channels, and communities that they draw onfor support. Similar to Zamel, Spack, and their contributors (2004), Fraiberg et al. also
discuss in their book, Inventing the World Grant University, how English language
learners (ELLs) approach academic writing assignments in classes across thecurriculum. There are of course hundreds of articles and books on teaching and tutoring
ELLs at universities, occasionally with a focus on the interests and needs of students
from China. Few people though, with a couple of exceptions (e.g. Yang, 2016), haveexamined the support Chinese students receive as they prepare for American college
and as they work on applications, and there is little research on the challenging pathfrom Chinese high schools to American colleges.
Based on the two studies, we propose that the decision by a Chinese student to receive
undergraduate education overseas is complex, intrafamilial, and one that entails
significant parental involvement, the assistance of often-expensive consultants andagencies, and extensive evaluation of the U.S. and Chinese educational systems.
3. Methods
Two studies (Study 1 and Study 2) were conducted over the span of two years between
2018 and 2020. Study 1 was a survey of Chinese students’ motivations to study in the
U.S. The survey, shared with students in Spring 2020, included 34 questions in theformats of filling in blanks, multiple choice, ranking of importance, and short essays.
Questions were divided into the following sections: demographic information of
students and parents, parental and student role in making the decision to study in the
U.S., factors influencing the decision and their choice of schools, their evaluation of the
U.S. and Chinese educational systems, and finally their concerns about studying and

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living in the U.S. We received 56 partial/complete responses from Chinese international
students at Emory University. At the time of completing the survey, they were pursuinga wide range of majors in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences,including business, math, economics, biology, psychology, art history, and music, andmost of them came from so-called tier 1 and tier 2 cities in China (South China Morning
Post, 2016).
Study 2 employed a mixed-methods approach with 136 completed surveys and 15
interviews of Chinese undergraduate students at Emory about their experiences
preparing their applications, completing high school, and starting college in the U.S.
(most enrolled in 2016 or 2017). Students were asked in the survey if they would beavailable for a follow-up interview, and a number of the respondents were open to
discussing their journeys in some detail, with the semi-structured interviews lasting
between 25-35 minutes. A writing tutor, herself originally from Qingdao, China,
assisted in transcribing the interviews. A few excerpts from the interviews are sharedbelow. In the future, the goal for us will be to code and more closely analyze theseinterviews, but also to talk to and survey additional students; interviews will likely be
structured going forward to allow for better comparisons. Especially as we havecollected some data and can present initial findings (discussed in this paper), it willarguably be sensible to conduct such structured interviews to facilitate more meaningfulcomparisons between students and refine our conclusions - and reflect on our researchquestions. After all, to quote Noam Chomsky (2002), “Maybe in doing research you
only understand what you were doing LATER ... first you do it and later, if you arelucky, you understand what you were trying to do and these questions become sort ofclarified through time.”
4. Findings of Study 1
With regard to the decision for a Chinese student to pursue undergraduate education in
the U.S., 55% of the participants reported that their parents first proposed thepossibility; however, more than 65% of the students indicated that they themselves
made the final decision. This demonstrates a collective decision-making process, inwhich parents played a guiding role while students exerted individual autonomy. On
average, the possibility was first raised when students were 15 years old. This is the age
Chinese children are typically finishing junior high and starting senior high school. Our
results reveal that the possibility of attending college in the U.S. has a deciding effecton the types of high school students attended. Over 65% of the students attended
international high schools in China that provide choices for international curriculum
models, English as a language of instruction, and AP/IB courses, while a small numberof them came to the U.S. to receive their high school education. Nearly 90% of thestudents did not participate in Gaokao, the Chinese college entrance examination.
When comparing the suitability of attending university in the U.S. vs. in China, we
asked students to consider several aspects of the higher education systems in China andin the U.S., including academics, instructional methodology, expenses, social life, andcareer prospects for the time after graduation. Among the most important characteristicsof the U.S. higher education system considered and valued by the participants were thepossibility to choose academic paths/majors (100%), the relatively small teacherstudent ratios (100%), the experience of studying abroad, and universities’ academic
reputation (both at 95.83%). In contrast, only 33% of the students considered the

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prospect of immigrating to the U.S. when deciding to study in the U.S., and the only
prevalent factor for considering attending college in China was expenses (95.83%).
In terms of academic training in specialized fields and personal development,
participants also overwhelmingly favored universities in the U.S. compared to China.
Higher education in the U.S. was perceived as more suitable because it not only
promises a higher quality of academic training in their chosen fields (87.5%), but alsoenables students to develop translingual and transcultural competencies (95.83%),
dialectical and critical thinking skills (95.83%), and interpersonal communicative skills(83.33%).
Participating students also ranked the relative importance of factors that they consideredwhen choosing universities in the U.S. Importance was placed on academic rigor(91.66%), career prospective ((87.5%), crime rate and safety (87.5%), gaining English
proficiency (79.16%) and cultural connection (62.5%).
Since the survey was conducted during the spring semester 2020, when COVID-19 was
spreading in the U.S. and when U.S.-China relations were worsening, a majority of thestudents expressed concerns about their personal safety, racial discrimination, andinterference in their education by the U.S. government, which includes the possibilityof not being able to obtain a visa or of not being able to return to the U.S. from China,
or an increasing difficulty to obtain an Optional Practical Training work authorization
or work visa.
5. Findings of Study 2
A significant number of students that responded to the survey for Study 2 attended
traditional public Chinese schools, but as Figure 1 shows, many of them also chose to
go to boarding schools in the U.S. or attend international schools in China, as they andtheir parents decided early in their educational career, usually in middle school, to study
abroad. Most of the students in this survey, and at Emory more generally, are from thelarge cities in northern, eastern, and southern China, especially Beijing, Shanghai,
Nanjing, and Shenzhen.

Figure 1: Which term best describes your high school? (Q3)

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Figure 2: Why did you decide to study abroad? (Q6)
Similar to the Study 1 respondents, the Chinese students that completed the 2018 survey
for Study 2 made the decision to pursue an education abroad for a variety of reasons,
including to grow personally and to gain an advantage on the job market (see Figure 2).
As mentioned earlier, Among the key reasons mentioned was also the “escape” fromthe Gaokao or the fear that the Gaokao scores might not suffice for a top-tier university.
Strikingly, the desire to work in the U.S. after graduation was listed by a third of the
respondents.
Most students relied on several resources, primarily outside consultants/agencies,
teachers, and in-schools counselors (Figure 3). Another question asked about the
support provided by the agencies, which ranged from evaluating the applicant’s
strengths and weaknesses, informing the applicant about extracurricular activities(including volunteer opportunities and competitions), all the way to determining aschedule for the student and reminding them of deadlines.

Figure 3: Which resources did you use to prepare your various application materials?
(Q6)
While each of the students contacted for Study 2 followed a distinct path, the optional
written comments left on the survey but also of course the interviews revealedcommonalities and both complicated and clarified the data. One clear finding was many

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students’ dependency (coupled occasionally with skepticism) on agencies or
consultants that operate outside of the school. These agencies frequently hire native
speakers of English, with college or graduate degrees, to attract and then support
students. One student wrote in response to a survey question: “They [agencies] helped
me navigate the application process and offered me useful advice for preparing for
TOEFL and SAT tests. Since I was from a traditional Chinese high school, and theeducation systems of U.S. and China are quite different, it's important to have someone
experienced in applying for US universities to ask for advice.” Another student
explained: “The advice I get from the outside consultant is to make up my mind to apply
to both Universities and Liberal Arts Colleges, and choosing majors I like rather thanwhat my parents liked.” And another recalled in a representative statement that theconsultant “assists [sic] me on the college selection process, helps me stay organizedthroughout the application process, and proofreads my application essay.” Theagencies, charging typically thousands of dollars for guiding their clients, permit
students to understand - and succeed in - the challenging, complex college application
process. Multiple interviewees explicitly called out some agencies for providing
improper assistance and controlling the application completely, though almost all
students said that they had only heard about such practices: “It’s really convenient
because it is the fact that many chn families are not familiar with American educational
system and application process, so it is good to have those agencies to lead them throughall the process, but it’s definitely not healthy that those essays are written by theagencies.” (JH, personal communication, May 3, 2018). This statement reflects theconflicted attitude seen among at least some Chinese students towards the agencies thatassist individuals unfamiliar with the U.S. system.
On another level, the experiences of many interviewees and respondents also reflect theimbalance or disparity of available resources each individual can access, based on
hometown, attended school, and family. Whether a student successfully navigates theapplication process, is obviously not only related to someone’s motivation andacademic skills, but also to the resources. These resources inside and outside a school,
as well as the advice given to Chinese students and the strategies they use to study forexams and revise essays have arguably an impact on their college preparedness,
including their approach to college writing.
We do not have the space here to adequately address such inequalities and disparities which certainly prevent students from attending their school of choice - but it is worth
noting that we as instructors and administrators can help students tap into theknowledge and skills students (those who did manage to enroll in colleges abroad) may
have gained throughout the application process. After all, as they apply for college,
students have to navigate many different tasks, social interactions, and processes, andthey also have to consider (consciously or not) rhetorical concepts such as audience,
genre, argument, and organization. It would be valuable to assist students in reflecting
on these concepts, for instance, and on their many newly developed skills andknowledge, and to facilitate the transfer of learning when they arrive in college classes.

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Conclusions
1. Key Take-Aways
Our findings shed light on a few important issues related to Chinese students’ decision
to study abroad in the U.S.
First, they clearly articulated their preference for pursuing higher education in the U.S.
based on their perception of the U.S. educational system. As the data indicates, thispreference is largely motivated by the academic reputation and rigor of U.S. universities
as well as their desires to gain diverse scholarly, social, and cultural experiences.
Although career prospects are important, immigrating to the U.S. is not a major
consideration. This finding coincides with the growing homeward trend ofinternationally educated Chinese graduates and is indicative of a shift in theirperspective. In recent years “between 70 to 80 percent of students and graduates comeback to China; the ratio of departees to returnees has now nearly flattened to one-to-one(1.28 to 1, to be precise)” (McCarthy, 2017). Sissi Chen, an international education
specialist working with Chinese high schoolers preparing for college in the U.S., wasquoted as saying, “More and more people are having this idea to explore the world, they
are not thinking, ‘I just want to go to America and never come back.’ That’s not thementality anymore. … They want to open another door to see a bigger world and get
an educational advantage” (McCarthy, 2017). In the survey for Study 1, nearly allparticipating students (95.83%) expressed that gaining an internationalized perspective
through the experience of studying abroad is an important consideration.
Second, the data reveals an overwhelming discontent with the higher education system
in China, except in terms of cost of attendance. Having had the experience of attending
elementary and middle schools in China, these students experienced the rigidity of an
exam-oriented education system. Avoiding the extremely competitive Gaokao and even
the Zhongkao, the high school entrance exam, was mentioned by students as a reason
to seek education abroad. When interviewed for Study 2, one student said: “I know that
Gaokao is even more competitive and crucial than Zhongkao, so I think I should findanother way to escape from this.” (JH, personal communication, May 3, 2018). One
student wrote in response to the Study 2 survey, referring to his resistance to Chinese
education, and his decision to go abroad: “Because the same amount of effort can getme into a better school (in terms of international ranking).” Research has also shownthat the emphasis on testing can potentially “stifle a student’s imagination, creativity, asense of self, qualities crucial for a child’s ultimate success in and out of the classroom”(Kirkpatrick and Zang, 2011, p. 36). Their discontent with the Chinese education
system is clearly a “push” factor in their decision to study in the U.S., particularly inregard to their appreciation for the academic rigor and reputation of universities in theU.S.
Lastly, Chinese students are increasingly concerned about their safety, racial tensions
in the U.S., and the impact of Sino-U.S. relations on their education. As one student
explained, “Even though there are policies restricting racial discrimination in American
society today, as a Chinese male international student, I personally still have certain
concerns about American society’s overall racial discrimination against Asia. This isbecause racial discrimination may negatively impact our education, employment, andlife at critical times. Apart from racial discrimination, the deterioration of Sino-US

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political relations in recent years has also made me more worried about the hatred
American people have towards the Chinese people. As an international student at theforefront of exchanges and cooperation between the two countries, I sincerely hope that
China-US political relations will develop steadily to promote further cultural andacademic exchanges and cooperation between the two countries” (J. Fan, personalcommunication, September 24, 2020). This statement is quite significant in the context
of COVID-19 and the shift to online learning in 2020. Many Chinese international
students at Emory were not able to return/come to the U.S. in the fall semester of 2020.
One student told us in an email, “My parents are extremely worried about my healthand security situation in the US due to the increasingly dangerous Covid-19 situation...,as well as the worsening US-China relationship. They played a very important role inmaking this decision [of not returning to Emory], but I'm the one who finalized it” (J.
Fan, personal communication, September 24, 2020).
All these findings provide preliminary support for the application of the ‘push-pull’model in studies of motivational factors for Chinese students to consider studying
abroad. Consistent with the findings of Mazzarol, Kemp, and Savery (1997), parents
recommending this step is one of the primary “push” factors. Other important “push”
factors center around various aspects of higher education in the U.S., such as academic
reputation, rigor, quality of training, teacher-student ratio, and the possibility to choose
majors. Finally, the potential for greater development of critical thinking skills,
transcultural and translingual competencies, and communicative skills are also highly
valued.
Mazzarol, Kemp, and Savery (1997) identified social links to the host country, such as
resident contacts, as one of the six motivational factors. In our studies, however, social
contacts were not a major “pull” factor. 75% of the respondents reported that social
contacts, such as having family members or friends in the U.S., are “not important” or“not considered.”
The “pull” factors identified in our studies are at the macro level, including crime rate
and racial tensions in American society, the deterioration of Sino-U.S. relations, andthe tightening of U.S. policies towards international students. In the post-COVID era,
will these “pull” factors eventually outweigh the “push” factors and result in a declineof Chinese students in U.S. universities? This is a relevant question that remains to beanswered.
2. Limitations and Future Directions
Our studies only generated responses from a relatively small number of Chinese
students at Emory University and therefore cannot be considered representative ofChinese international student bodies at other universities across the U.S. While webelieve that the two studies demonstrate the pre-COVID educational pathways ofinternational students at Emory, we are aware that the factors Chinese students and theirfamilies consider when making decisions about studying abroad will likely change in a
post-COVID environment. The shift to learning online, the ongoing pandemic in the
U.S., the uncertainty surrounding U.S. policy towards international education, and thedeterioration of Sino-U.S. relations will undoubtedly alter the post-COVID educational
pathways for Chinese students.

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In Spring 2020, we contacted Chinese international students about their experiences oftaking classes online in order to better understand their challenges and identify
solutions. Their answers offered a glimpse into the extraordinary situations of Chinese
students. In addition to challenges posed by the 12-hour time difference and the 14-day
mandatory quarantine period in Chinese hotels, Chinese students were also wary of
discussing sensitive topics related to Chinese politics and society due to China’s internet
censorship and surveillance and Zoom’s flawed security standard (Lee, 2020). They
also experienced difficulty conducting research and assessing resources within China’s
great firewall. Students we spoke with in the spring overwhelmingly expressed thedesire to return to campus in the fall semester of 2020. However, most of the students
we spoke to were unable or unwilling to return to the U.S., as the pandemic continued
to affect the country. How will this alter Chinese students’ educational pathways inregard to the possibility of studying abroad? A recent survey of over 100 Chinese
agencies specializing in preparing students for education abroad reported that the
epidemic had caused 40% - 60% of Chinese students experienced interference from
U.S. authorities in their visa application and country entry and exit process; 66% of theagencies forecast a decline in students going abroad this year as a result (BOSSA and
COSSA, 2020).
To understand the sustainable impact of COVID-19 on Chinese students’ willingness
to study abroad, we plan to streamline the two studies into one survey, focusing on
identifying post-COVID push and pull factors. We will seek responses from current
Chinese students in the U.S. and prospective high school students in China.
Additionally, we hope to conduct interviews either in person or online to elicit extended
narratives about their decision-making process. By cross-examining the qualitative andquantitative data in pre- and post-COVID contexts, we hope to identify the shifts andtrends in their educational pathways.
Acknowledgements
The section of “Literature Review” is reproduced from an unpublished draft paper
written by Michael Cerny for a department symposium at Emory University in April
2020.

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Zamel, V., & Spack, R. (Eds.). (2004). Crossing the Curriculum: Multilingual
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Contact Email: hli01@emory.edu
larnspe@emory.edu

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Effectiveness of Using Smartphone Instant Messaging (IM) App for Academic
Discussion in an Undergraduate Chemistry Course
Mei Xuan Tan, Singapore University of Technology and Design, Singapore
Eng Ying Bong, Singapore University of Technology and Design, Singapore
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Official Conference Proceedings
Abstract
In this study, the effectiveness of using a smartphone instant messaging (IM) app(WhatsApp) for academic discussion for a first year half-credit Chemistry course in
SUTD was examined. Academic discussion during and after instructional teaching is
an integral part of learning. However, only 32% of the student participants had usedonline platform, such as Piazza and forums in Learning Management System (LMS),
for after-class academic discussion with their instructors and peers. At the end of thisstudy, over 83% of the participants felt that WhatsApp was a more effective platform
compared to other online forum. The study also looked at the challenges of using
WhatsApp for academic discussion and its effect on face-to-face interaction between
instructors and students. In conclusion, the use of IM platform for academic
discussion was desirable for the students, but it should not be the only channel as
face-to-face consultation and online forum for lengthy discussion are still important
for after-class learning of students.
Keywords: Pedagogical Tools, Student Engagement, Academic Discussion,
Smartphone App, Instant Messaging, Undergraduate

iafor
The International Academic Forumwww.iafor.org

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Introduction
Academic discussion during and after instructional teaching is an integral part oflearning. Such discussion between the instructor and student or peer-to-peer
discussion can be in several different forms. It could be face-to-face discussion, via
email, use of online discussion forum or instant messaging (IM) platform such as
WhatsApp (Bere, 2012).
Many universities and education institutes have taken advantage of the easy
accessibility of smartphones and convenience of smartphone apps to enhance theirteaching (Jimoyiannis et al, 2013). Smartphones apps can be used in addition to
traditional classroom or lecture teaching for sharing of information, files anddiscussion (Barhoumi, 2015; Ally & Prieto-Blázquez, 2014). In a study by Gon and
Rawekar, they found that the learning outcomes of mobile-learning (or m-learning)
through text, photos, audio and small video clips via WhatsApp is as effective as
traditional instruction through lectures (Gon & Rawekar, 2017). In addition, students
attributed their heavy use of WhatsApp to its ease of use, speed, real-timecommunication, sharing media content (e.g. images, videos etc.) and low cost (Ahad& Lim, 2014).
The use of smartphones has become ubiquitous and most university students in
Singapore possess a smartphone (Tan & Teo, 2015). Smartphones have increasingly
become part of our lives and students who own smartphones spend a considerable
amount of time on their smartphone devices (Lin, Chiang, & Qiang, 2015). Whenteaching the Chemistry courses of Freshmore (Year 1) in SUTD, we noticed lower
activity in online forums for academic discussions. These include forum features inLearning Management Systems (LMS) and specialised online forums used byinstructors for their course. We attribute the lower activity in online forums to being amore formal platform, being less accessible and requiring login info on web browser.
We seek to find a frequently accessed and less formal platform for academic
discussion with the students. Instant Messaging (IM) apps are popular amongst
smartphone users. The most widely used IM app in Singapore during the period of
this research is WhatsApp, with 70% of the Singapore population being users(Hootsuite, 2018). The use of WhatsApp in education does not require special
infrastructure as students own the hardware (i.e., smartphones) and they candownload the software (i.e., WhatsApp) for free. In this study, we examine theeffectiveness of using WhatsApp for academic discussion for a first year half-credit
Chemistry course that runs over 6 weeks during the Term.
Methods
Use of WhatsApp
The Chemistry course is a core module for first year students. About 450 students
enroll in the course each year. This study was run over two years with two different
batches of students. Participation in the study was voluntary and were recruited within
the first week of the term. They signed a consent form and given a choice to remain
anonymous by removing their WhatsApp profile photo and profile name during theactivity. Participants provided their contact details and were added to a WhatsApp
group that is managed by the course instructors. For the study, the number of

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participants for each run was capped at 50. The study was announced at the start of
the term, and students sign up on a voluntary basis. A total of 15 students volunteeredin the first year of this study and 24 students volunteered in the second year. The
activity of the WhatsApp group was monitored by two instructors, who are also themoderators of the group chat. The instructors responded to questions and encouraged
discussion amongst the students. Students could respond to any discussion or the
instructor could also prompt answers from specific students by replying to specificmessage in WhatsApp. Practice questions in the form of files and images were also
shared via WhatsApp by the instructors to encourage and motivate active discussion
among the students. Solutions to the practice questions were released at the end of the
discussion. The additional practice questions are supplementary; students could
choose not to study the materials if they felt they were familiar with the topics. This
platform is not only limited to academic discussion, but also extended to any form ofadministration of the course such as homework due date and course announcements.
SurveyAt the end of the course, the students participated in an online survey to evaluate theirexperience of using WhatsApp for academic discussion. There are a total of 26
questions. The survey has a total of four sections with regards to the use of WhatsApp
for academic discussion: 1) Familiarity with WhatsApp, 2) Effectiveness of using
WhatsApp for discussion, 3) Challenges and 4) Overall Experience. There are fivequestions related to the familiarity of the students on the use of WhatsApp. These
questions include asking for their frequency of usage prior to this study, previous useof WhatsApp in education setting and their preference of the type of discussion
forum. Ten questions, including one open-ended feedback question, were asked toevaluate the effectiveness of using WhatsApp as a discussion forum. The questions
include asking participants if the group chat and use of multimedia (photos, files,
hyperlinks) helped them in better understanding of the concepts and clarifying thequestions asked. They also had to evaluate if this platform has encouraged or hindered
face-to-face interaction with their instructors during and after class. In the section of
Challenges, students are asked if their participation in this study affected the timespent on mobile devices and whether it has distracted them during lesson time. Other
challenges being evaluated include whether participants have difficulty referring backto a previous discussion and whether they find some discussion irrelevant to them.
Lastly, for overall experience, five questions including an open-ended question wereasked to evaluate the overall effectiveness of using WhatsApp as a discussion forum,
whether they have actively participated during the study and whether they would
recommend this form of discussion forum to other courses and their peers.
Results and Analysis
Familiarity with WhatsApp
Based on the survey results, all the participants have installed and used WhatsApp on
their smartphones prior to the study. Over 85% of the participants use WhatsApp
frequently, more than 8 times a day or every 1 to 2 hours. 23% of the participants
have previously used IM platform for academic discussion between instructors andstudents; 50% have used IM platform for relaying course information, but not for

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academic discussion; while the remaining 27% have not used IM group chat with
their instructors before. (Figure 1a)
32% of the participants have used other online platform, such as Piazza and forums in
LMS, for after-class academic discussion with their instructors and peers. This is alow percentage considering that some courses use such online platform as their main
forum amongst instructors and students. 83% of the participants felt that WhatsApp isa more effective platform compared to other online forum. (Figure 1b)

Figure 1. Responses of participants in survey: (a) Section 1 on Familiarity with
WhatsApp, Question 3: “Have you previously used WhatsApp or other smartphone
instant messaging platform for academic purposes between faculty/ teachers andstudents?” (b) Section 2 on effectiveness of using WhatsApp for academic discussion,
Question 5: “Which of the following platform do you feel is more effective as an
educational tool for after-class academic discussion?”
Effectiveness of Using WhatsApp for Discussion
The main purpose of using an IM platform for academic discussion is to encourage
after-class discussion amongst the students. 59% of the participants agreed that afterclass discussion on WhatsApp has helped them better understand certain concepts
taught in class. 31% were neutral about this and 10% disagreed. 37% of theparticipants agreed that WhatsApp group chat has facilitated them to ask morequestions or participate in more discussion than without the group chat. 55% were
neutral, which indicated that the use of WhatsApp did not change the frequency of
their participation throughout the course.
Previous studies have found that the use of IM has increased the face-to-faceinteractions between instructors and students in a lecture-based course (Cifeuentes &Lents, 2010). To find out if the WhatsApp group chat has affected how the students
interacted face-to-face with their instructors, participants were posed two survey
questions. The first question (Question 9) asked if their participation in WhatsApp has
encouraged them to approach their instructors for face-to-face interaction. 18%
disagreed while 27% agreed or strongly agreed that they were encouraged to approach
their instructors. A second question (Question 10) asked if after-class academic
discussion on WhatsApp has reduced the frequency of face-to-face interaction thatthey could have with their instructors. Interestingly, a total of 36% strongly disagree
or disagreed with this, 27% were neutral and 36% agreed or strongly agreed withhaving reduced frequency of face-to-face interaction with their instructors. This result

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is an interesting aspect of this study. 27% of the students agreed that the use of
WhatsApp as a discussion forum has encouraged them to approach their instructors
during or after class. 55% of students answered neutral. This can be interpreted thatthe use of WhatsApp has not affected the frequent (or lack of) face-to-face interaction
with their instructors. The 18% who disagreed found that they were not encouraged toapproach the instructors with the use of WhatsApp. A second question, similar but
phrased differently from the first, was asked to evaluate the aspect of face-to-faceinteraction with instructors. 36% disagreed that the use of WhatsApp had reduced thefrequency of face-to-face interaction. This could imply that the frequency remained
the same or might have increased. A similar portion of 36% who agreed to a decreasein face-to-face interaction have either asked the questions in WhatsApp or had theirquestions answered by a query from another student in the group chat. These
outcomes suggest that the use of technology aids and complements face-to-faceinteraction between instructors and students.

Figure 2. Responses of participants in Section 2 on Effectiveness of Using WhatsApp
for Discussion of survey: (a) Question 9: “After-class academic discussion on
WhatsApp has directly or indirectly encouraged me to approach my instructors forface-to-face interaction.” (b) Question 10: “After-class academic discussion on
WhatsApp has reduced the frequency of face-to-face interaction that I could havewith my instructors.”
Challenges
There were some challenges with using WhatsApp as a platform for academic
discussion. The main challenge was the messaging layout, which was not designed for
Question & Answer format. Despite having a search function in WhatsApp, 45% ofparticipants agreed that they find it hard to refer back to a previous discussion in the
WhatsApp group chat, while 32% were neutral regarding this. 23% did not find it
difficult to refer back to a previous topic. At the start of the study, instructors wereconcerned about students’ privacy issues. However, we found that a vast majority ofparticipants were comfortable (24% strongly agreed, 62% agreed and remaining 14%
neutral) with revealing their identity or contact number in the WhatsApp group chat.
Regarding the relevance of discussion, 64% did not find the discussion topics
irrelevant. 13% were neutral, while 23% agree that most of the discussion was
irrelevant. 77% disagreed that WhatsApp discussion caused distraction during lesson
time, while 14% were neutral and 9% found it distracting.

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Overall Experience
The overall experience from the participants were positive. Most students foundthemselves actively participating in the discussion, with about 23% of students not
actively participating. (Figure 3a) A majority of participants indicated that they would
recommend the use of WhatsApp as an academic discussion platform for othercourses. (Figure 3b)
On the overall effectiveness, 27% strongly agreed that WhatsApp group discussion
was effective for academic discussion, 50% agreed to this, 18% were neutral and 5%
disagreed. (Figure 4)

Figure 3. Responses of participants in Section 4 on Overall Experience of survey: (a)Question 23: “I would recommend the use of cohort-based WhatsApp in SUTD forother subjects.” (b) Question 24: “I actively participate in the after-class academic
discussion on WhatsApp.”

Percentage (%)

WhatsApp is Effective for Academic
Discussion
60
50
40
30
20
10
0

50.0
27.3
18.2
0.0

4.5

Strongly Disagree
disagree

NeutralAgree

Strongly
agree

Figure 4. Responses of participants in Section 4 on Overall Experience of survey.
Question 22: “I find the use of WhatsApp effective for academic discussions.”

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Discussion
An Informal and Effective Channel for Academic Discussion
From this study, we found that using IM platform for academic discussion provided
an informal channel for students to clarify theoretical concepts. This format ofdiscussion is also easily accessible via their smartphone. There is an added advantage
to use an app that is already installed and in frequent use by the students, as studies(Tan & Teo, 2015) have found that not all students would install a new app foracademic discussion unless it is compulsory to do so. Besides academic discussion,
the IM platform is also used by students to check course related information with the
instructors and their peers. Practice questions in the form of files and images werealso shared through WhatsApp to initiate engagement and discussion among students.
Additionally, the advantage of IM platform using smartphone was that users could
easily take a snap shot of written work/solutions and shared it through WhatsApp. It
was a convenient alternative compared to typing out the solutions using keyboard.
Some of the downsides of using IM platform would be getting spammed withmessages and sometimes the discussion may not be relevant to all students. Although
there is a search function in the app, participants had to scroll through long messages,
and instructors were not able to group or classify queries into specific topics unlike indiscussion forums. There were certain cases where a student expected an instant reply
to their queries or found the reply of an instructor to be slow, although the participants
had been informed in the beginning that replies from instructors are expected within aday. We also found that the discussion in IM platform tends to be more concise; there
were seldom heated discussion as both the instructors and participants felt thatmessaging was not the best platform for lengthy discussion. As with most platforms,
there were active participants (about 41% in our study) and some silent observers. In
terms of privacy, students were unable to remain anonymous when they post
questions through WhatsApp as their contact number is revealed.
Effects on Face-to-Face Consultations
Although the participants agreed that academic discussion is made more easily
accessible and indicated their preference to have IM platform for other courses, thismode of communication has not significantly changed the extend of face-to-faceinteraction that a student would have with his instructors. Those who prefer face-toface consultation indicated that they continued to have face-to-face consultations with
their instructors, while those who are silent observers in discussion platforms
remained as observers most of the time.
Advantages and Disadvantages: Instructors’ Perception
The two facilitators of the group chat are also instructors teaching the course. The
instructors evaluated the use of WhatsApp as a tool for academic discussion during
and after the study. The main advantage of using WhatsApp that the instructors
experienced over online forum is convenience. Students have easy access toWhatsApp on their smartphone and could post questions as and when it comes to theirmind. Unlike in an online forum, students do not have to login through a browser inorder to post a question. The setting of a WhatsApp group chat is also less formal than

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an online forum. This could improve the perception of the approachability of the
instructors and also encourage students to clarify any concepts. One of thedisadvantages of using WhatsApp for academic discussion is the layout and userinterface. As the app is designed for instant messaging and not forum discussion,
topics cannot be organised and grouped together. Users have to scroll through or use
the search function with keywords to refer back to a previous topic. Instructors foundthat not all students are active in the group chat and often, they have to prompt
students to ask more questions. As such, in the second run, a short lesson summarythat highlighted the main topics was posted by the instructor after each lesson. Extra
practice questions were also shared via pdf files through WhatsApp. The use of
instant messaging app for academic discussion has its benefits of easy access andencouraging more interaction between instructors and students. And this extends toother aspects such as face-to-face interaction as the students find the instructors more
approachable.
Conclusion
With the increasing popularity of IM apps such as WhatsApp and Telegram, thefrequent use of an informal channel such as IM platform, could provide a channel forstudents to clarify concepts learnt. 59% of participants agreed that using WhatsApp
for academic discussion had helped them better understood concepts. Such informal
platform could improve the visibility of instructors. Instructor are more approachable
and instructors could get to know the students more personally. Instructors could also
monitor students learning progress throughout the course of the study. The use of thechat group had encouraged face-to-face interactions for one group of students.
Another group of students had reduced face-to-face interactions after their questions
were answered through WhatsApp. The main challenge was difficulty in referring
back to a previous discussion topic. Overall, 87% of participants found WhatsApp
effective for academic discussion.
In conclusion, the use of IM platform for academic discussion is desirable for the
students, but it should not be the only channel as face-to-face consultation and online
forum for lengthy discussion are still important for after-class learning of students.

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References
Ahad, A. D., & Lim, S. M. A. (2014). Convenience or Nuisance?: The ‘WhatsApp’
Dilemma. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 155, 189-196.
Ally, M. & Prieto-Blázquez, J. (2014). What is the Future of Mobile Learning in
Education? Mobile Learning Applications in Higher Education [Special Section].
Revista de Universidad y Sociedad del Conocimiento (RUSC), 11(1), 142–151.
Barhoumi, C. (2015). The Effectiveness of WhatsApp Mobile Learning Activities
Guided by Activity Theory on Students’ Knowledge Management. Contemporary
Educational Technology, 6(3) 221 – 238.
Bere A. (2012). A Comparative Study of Student Experiences of Ubiquitous
Learning via Mobile Devices and Learner Management Systems at a South African
University. Proceedings of the 14th Annual Conference on World Wide Web
Applications; Durban.
Cifuentes, O. E.; Lents, N. H. (2010). Increasing Student-Teacher Interactions at an
Urban Communter Campus through Instant Messaging and Online Office hours.
Electronic Journal of Science Education, 14(1), 1–13.
Gon, S. & Rawekar, A. (2017). Effectivity of E-Learning through Whatapp as a
Teaching Learning Tool. MVP Journal of Medical Sciences, 4(1), 1 –25.
Hootsuite (2018). 4 Million Singaporeans Say WhatApp is their Most Used App.
https://www.messengerpeople.com/whatsapp-is-singaporeans-most-used-app/ (lastaccessed Nov 2020)
Jimoyiannis, A.; Tsiotakis, P.; Roussinos, D.; Siorenta, A. (2013). Preparing Teachers
to Integrate Mobile in School Practice: Toward a Framework for Pedagogy 2.0.
Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 29(2), 248–267.
Lin, T. T. C.; Chiang, Y.-H.; Jiang, Q. (2015). Sociable People Beware? Investigating
Smartphone Versus Nonsmartphone Dependency Symptoms Among Young
Singaporeans. Social Behavior and Personality: an international journal, 43(7),1209-1216.
Tan, E. S. Q. & Teo, D. J. L. (2015). Appsolutely Smartphones: Usage and Perceptionof Apps for Educational Purposes. Asian Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and
Learning, 5(1), 55-75.
Contact email: meixuan_tan@sutd.edu.sg

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A “BIG” PBL Problem: What Supports or Hinders Student Motivation?
Shyamli Mehra, Republic Polytechnic, Singapore
Emilia Idris, Republic Polytechnic, Singapore
The Asian Conference on Education 2020
Official Conference Proceedings
Abstract
This study examines student perceptions and motivations toward solving a “Big”
Problem over multiple lessons in problem-based learning (PBL) environment, bothfrom student and staff perspective. It was conducted as a mixed methods research,
involving quantitative student surveys and qualitative in-depth interviews. A big
problem was introduced as an intervention in ‘Qualitative Research Methods’ module
where Year 2 polytechnic students were given 4 weeks to solve it. The online survey
measured student (N=71) motivations using three subscales- Intrinsic goal orientation,
Extrinsic goal orientation and Self-Efficacy for Learning and Performance, adaptedfrom Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (Duncan & McKeachie, 2005).
It also included some open-ended questions to explore the reasons behind the
responses. Lecturers’ perceptions of student engagement with a big problem, gathered
through class observations and review of reflection journals, were explored using indepth interviews (N=2). Triangulating the findings, it can be inferred that bothstudents and staff see value in including big problems in the curriculum, despite
facing some problem solving/ facilitation challenges respectively. Further statisticalanalysis reveals, there is no correlation between mean motivation scores andassessment grades for this problem. Spearman’s Rank correlation analysis was done
as the grades data was not normal. The study gives educators the conviction to design
big problems of higher difficulty, where relevant. It also provides impetus to conduct
research to help staff and students adapt to big problems, where students get a
combined grade across multiple lessons. Follow-up research may be done to study
student motivation towards large problems using other subscales such as task value,
and/ across multiple disciplines.
Keywords: Problem-Based Learning, Big/Large Problem, Student Motivation

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Introduction
Problems are the starting point of students’ learning process in problem-basedlearning (PBL) (Sockalingam, 2011). Problems typically describe a set of situations or
phenomena set in real-life context and require the students to explain or resolve them
(Hmelo-Silver, 2004). Educators employing problem-based learning are constantly
rethinking of how to craft interesting and challenging problems to trigger students’learning. Authentic PBL education requires the student to go through the sameactivities during learning that are valued in the real world. The intent is to challenge
the students with a problem that he/she will be facing in practice both as a stimulus
for learning and a focus for organizing what has been learned for later recall andapplication to future work (Barrows, 2000). Since not all future work problems may
come in bite sizes, in PBL context as well, “all problems are not equal” (Jonassen &Hung, 2008). This naturally creates space for big problems in the curriculum to enable
authentic learning.
A big or large problem is designed to be of higher difficulty allowing students tosolve it across multiple lessons without the pressure of daily grading. Problem crafters
increase the difficulty level by varying complexity and structuredness. Problem
complexity refers to the breadth, attainment level, intricacy, and interrelatedness ofproblem space while problem structuredness represents the intransparency,
heterogeneity of interpretations, interdisciplinary, and dynamicity of problems(Jonassen & Hung, 2008).

Figure 1: Factors affecting Problem Difficulty
If learning can be considered as a cycle where students constantly visit and revisit
ideas (Kolb, 1984), big problems should enable learning by allowing students torevisit them over a few days. The underlying premise is that this extended interaction
with the problem would allow them to internalise the concepts to propose better
solutions. This paper attempts to study student response to a big problem that mirrors
a demanding industry context.

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Objectives of the Study
The aim of this study was to examine student perceptions a “Big” PBL problem to besolved over multiple lessons and motivations for answering it. It took into
consideration the viewpoint of students and lecturers both. The study addressed thefollowing research questions:
1.
What is the extent of students’ motivations, in terms of intrinsic goal
orientation, extrinsic goal orientation and self-efficacy for learning and performance,
towards solving a big PBL problem?
2.
Based on staff and student perspective, what are the factors that motivate andhinder students in engaging with a big PBL problem?
Methods
This study was designed to be a mixed methods research, involving a quantitative
student survey and qualitative in-depth interviews to study student repsonse to a big
problem. The curriculum for Year 2 polytechnic students taking ‘Qualitative Research
Methods’ module included a big problem and they were given 4 weeks to solve it.
The online survey measured students' (N=71) motivation through statements on
Intrinsic goal orientation, Extrinsic goal orientation and Self-Efficacy for Learning
and Performance, adapted from Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire(Duncan & McKeachie, 2005). The survey included some open-ended questions to
explore the reasons behind the responses. In-depth interviews were conducted withlecturers (N=2) to gather their perceptions of student engagement with a big problem.
Lecturers shared their perceptions based on the class observations and review ofstudent reflection journals.
The intervention used in the study was a big problem, which required students to
prepare a market research proposal to meet the company's needs and design relevant
research materials over four weeks. Students had to break it down into smaller tasks
such as defining research objective, recommending an appropriate research method,
designing a screener questionnaire, developing a focus group discussion guide andpreparing a fieldwork plan. The intricacy of problem solving procedures for preparing
the proposal and materials added complexity to it. Relational complexity was alsohigh as they had to process several stakeholder relations in parallel including agency,
company and respondents. It was highly ill-structured due to the legitimacy ofcompeting alternatives at each step of the research process- research approaches/
methods/ materials/ projective techniques. To add to the challenge, in the last week,
the students were asked to extend the fieldwork plan to multiple countries, making it
dynamic. The students were assessed using reduced continuous assessment grade(CAG) awarded at the end of 4 weeks.
Statistial techniques employed to analyse the survey data include descriptive measures
such as mean ratings for each subscale, reliability testing of subscales by computing
Cronbach's alpha to measure how closely related the statements were on each subscaleand correlation analysis to study if there was any relationship between mean
motivation scores and assessment grades of students. To analyse the open-ended
responses to the survey and interviews, in-depth content analysis was done using
thematic coding.

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Quantitative Findings
As illustrated in the graphs below, overall mean scores for the motivational
orientation subscales (Intrinsic goal orientation, extrinsic goal orientation and selfefficacy for learning and performance) are from 4.55 - 5.12, with a standard deviationfrom 1.03 - 1.11. Since the overall mean scores are above mid-point on a 7-point
scale, we can infer that most students have a favourable response to the big problem.

Figure 2: Student Motivation in terms of Intrinsic Goal Orientation
Students are intrinsically motivated most by satisfaction they obtain in understanding
the content as thoroughly as possible, followed by arousal of curiosity, challenges tolearn new things and lastly opportunity to learn more even if it does not guarantee agood grade. This shows grade are quite important for them.

Figure 3: Student Motivation in terms of Extrinsic Goal Orientation
Students are extrinsically motivated most to improve GPA, followed by better grades
than others, satisfaction of good grade and lastly importance of showing their ability
to lecturer. This reiterates the value they place on GPA and grades.

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Figure 4: Student Motivation in terms of Self-efficacy for Learning and Performance
It seems natural that students are most confident of understanding basics, followed bymore complex things such as mastering skills, doing well considering difficulty andlastly getting an excellent grade.
The subscales have been subjected to reliability testing using Cronbach's alpha (α),
which measures internal consistency to show how closely related the items are in thesubscale. Intrinsic goal orientation subscale consists of 4 items (α = 0.72), extrinsic
goal orientation subscale consists of 4 items (α = 0.73), and the self-efficacy forlearning and performance subscale consists of 8 items (α = 0.93). A reliability
coefficient of 0.73–0.95 is considered high. Hence, we can infer that the item
statements within each subscale are closely related and measure it. Further statisticalanalysis shows there is no correlation between mean motivation scores and grades ofstudents.
Qualitative Findings
Thematic analysis of the open-ended responses to survey questions reveal student
perceptions in terms of key motivators such as good grades and more time. It also
brings forward some key concerns such as ill-structuredness and complexity. The key
motivators and concerns have been summarised in Figure 5, in the order of mentions
made by the students.

Figure 5: Student Motivators and Concerns for a Big Problem
Reduced grade was a motivator for some and a concern for the others. A student
mentioned “thinking of the possible final grade I could get, I wanted to solve the big
problem as effectively and as efficiently as I can….” On the other hand, another

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student had a concern “If I am unable to make it for one lesson, I will not be able toget an A grade… if concepts applied in the previous lesson are wrong, it would be
hard to continue to the other concepts for the next lesson.”
Having more time to solve the problem helped students revisit and build on to theirlearning as some of them mention, “…helped me understand & focus on concept
better…no need to re-understand the problem every week; …able to follow up andlink the different topics together for a finalised understanding; able to work withteammates over 4 weeks, feels like we are doing a group project...”
The authentic problem mirroring real life gave students a drive to solve it as they were,“able to replicate what market researchers do in their everyday life/ apply to otherthings/ mid-semester assignment (MSA).”The big problem challenged some to push themselves to achieve higher potential as
one student said “... It satisfies me, the bigger the problem, the bigger the tasks but
the bigger the satisfaction.”
Students also expressed some concerns regarding the big problem. It was purposely
designed to be of higher ill-structuredness and complexity, so students obviously
struggled to decide what to do and how to do it. Some of them mentioned, “I’m a lostchild in Neverland; …when presenting solution… confused about how to go about
it … do I use every concept…; …hard to grasp concepts to solve the big
problem…took me some time to break (it) down into smaller issues to better
understand it.”
The students also reported issues in retaining and relating concepts across weeks. “I
am used to having one problem a day, I often forget that the four weeks areconnected; …sometimes I have difficulty linking the previous theories to the next
week's lesson…”
Similar sentiments were also reflected in staff perceptions of student responses to thebig problem, categorised below as positive and not-so-positive.

Figure 6: Staff Perceptions of Student Responses towards a Big Problem
Lecturers shared some positive observations such as “some students enjoyed when
they see it in totality; the stronger students enjoyed it as it challenged them; …the illstructuredness caused them to ask more questions...allows them to think through...”They also shared some not so positive observations such as “…some students found it
unnerving…there was a lot of uncertainty; …. concerned about how they were going
to be graded...how much to do each week...”

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These inputs provided deeper insights into student perceptions and motivations which
can help strengthen big problems in future.
Discussion and Recommendations
It is encouraging that the big problem enables some students to see the big picture andthey make effort to cope with it by asking more questions. It is also a reality checkthat some students are unnerved by the difficulty. Since high difficulty and illstructuredness are purposely planted in the problem design, it is natural for students tostruggle with it for the first time. However, problem crafters need to assess if the
difficulty level is suitable or not. If not, either scope it to be of appropriate difficulty
or develop measures to prepare students to handle higher difficulty. Characteristics ofgood problems include suitable difficulty and relevance (Sockalingam & Schmidt,
2011). Problem difficulty plays a role in the effectiveness of students’ learning
outcomes in all types of instructional methods that use problems. A problem with anappropriate difficulty level is within learners’ cognitive readiness and therefore
solvable, while an inappropriate difficulty level of problem may exceed the learners’
readiness and result in failure (Jonassen & Hung, 2008). Building in and reiterating
the problem relevance would be useful in helping students see the rationale behind thebig problem.
Based on the above discussion, following recommendations have been made to enableeducators to include large problems in curriculum:1.
To acclimatise students to the difficulty and overcome the issue of retention
and relation of concepts over a long period, scope big problems across 2-3 weeks to
begin with.
2.
To balance the challenge of ill-structuredness, provide appropriate scaffolding
and revisit the problem analysis regularly so that the students can become increasingly
confident about their progress towards the challenging goal.
3.
To allay the concerns about reduced CAG, explain the rationale behind it andprovide regular feedback which would give them a reassurance they look for in a
grade.
Conclusion
Triangulating the findings, it we infer that both staff and students see value inincluding big problems in the curriculum, despite facing some facilitation andproblem-solving challenges. For this problem, there is no correlation between mean
motivation scores and grades of students. The study gives educators the conviction to
design big problems of higher difficulty, where relevant. It also provides researchers
the impetus to conduct research to help staff and students adapt to big problems with a
combined grade across multiple lessons. Follow-up research may be done to study
student motivation to large problems using other subscales such as task value, acrossmultiple disciplines.

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References
Barrows, H.S. (2000). Problem-based Learning Applied to Medical Education,
Springfield, Illinois: Southern Illinois University School of Medicine.
Duncan, T. G., & McKeachie, W. J. (2005). The Making of the Motivated Strategies
for Learning Questionnaire. Educational Psychologist, 40(2), 117-128.
Hmelo-Silver, C. E. (2004). Problem-based learning: What and how do students
learn? Educational Psychology Review, 16(3), 235-266.
Jonassen, D. H., & Hung, W. (2008). All Problems are Not Equal: Implications for
Problem-Based Learning. Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-Based Learning, 2(2),6-28.
Kolb, D. A. (1984). Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning anddevelopment. Englewood Cliffs, N.J: Prentice-Hall.
Sockalingam, N., & Schmidt, H. G. (2011). Characteristics of Problems for ProblemBased Learning: The Students’ Perspective. Interdisciplinary Journal of ProblemBased Learning, 5(1), 6-33.
Contact email: Shyamli_Mehra@rp.edu.sg

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Learner Responses to Language Exchange Activities in a Technology-MediatedEnvironment in the COVID-19 Era
Mizuki Mazzotta, Emory University, United States
Yutaka Yamauchi, Soka University, Japan
The Asian Conference on Education 2020
Official Conference Proceedings
Abstract
In response to the pandemic, language teachers around the globe are transforming
their face-to-face courses into online courses and developing technology-mediatedonline activities has become one of the pressing tasks. While the body of research on
online teaching addressing current day issues is rapidly growing, research exploring
students’ reactions to technology-mediated online activities in the COVID-19 Era isstill limited. The goals of this paper are to (1) present a technology-mediatedcollaborative language exchange activity which connected collegiate language
learners internationally using VoiceThread (an Internet-based interactive
collaboration tool), and (2) report learners’ experiences and reactions to this activity
along with changes in their motivation and perception of language learning. Fivelearners of English at a Japanese university and ten learners of Japanese at an
American university participated in this study. They were students of a course at each
institution in 2020. Learners participated in two asynchronous activities in which
they exchanged video comments using VoiceThread. In the first activity, everyone
spoke in Japanese, and in the second, English. Then, questionnaires containing
multiple choice and short-answer questions were distributed and analyzed
quantitatively (descriptive statistics) and qualitatively. Results indicate that mostlearners had positive experiences in these exchanges, perceived benefits for language
learning, increased motivation, and felt connected with students overseas though there
were some individual differences. Proficiency level appears to be a factor influencing
individual differences. The findings of this study lend support to the claim ofprevious studies that technology-mediated online collaborative activities facilitate
language learning and community building.
Keywords: Technology-Mediated Collaborative Activities, Online Language,
Exchange Learning, Learner Responses

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Introduction
In early 2020, foreign language (FL) courses were forced to transition to online
teaching due to campus closures of many universities and school systems in the worldin response to the COVID-19 pandemic. To cope with the abrupt transition, manyteachers had no choice but to employ crisis-prompted remote teaching (Hodges,
Moore, Lockee, Trust, & Bond, 2020) instead of planned online teaching. In fall2020, the end of the crisis does not appear to be near, and many FL teachers are now
working hard to transition to planned online teaching. One of the challenges
particular to online language teaching is incorporation of speaking activities. As
González-Lloret (2020a) noted, the online environment affords us to provide language
input easily and thus online FL activities tend to focus on the provision of input, yet
we should not neglect speaking activities because “output, interaction, and feedback
are also crucial to develop an L2 (Gass,1997; Long, 1981; Swain, 1995; Swain &Watanabe, 2013)” (González-Lloret, 2020a, p.261). While learning from the previous
research base is certainly helpful and important, we must also consider our current
context of teaching in which students are facing many challenges due to the crisis.
Regarding this point, Sykes (2020, p. 207) argues that “a human-centered approach to
the research enterprise” is a necessity. In response to Sykes’ call for a humancentered approach to research, we examined collegiate FL learners’ experiences andreactions to a technology-mediated online speaking activity which we developed byincorporating elements that are known to be effective for FL learning. In theremainder of this paper, first we review studies that report effective elements oftechnology-mediated online language activities and discuss current issues intechnology-mediated online activities. Then we introduce our study, report findings,
and share conclusions.
Literature Review
Interaction in technology-mediated language learning activities
As FL teachers endeavor to redesign their face-to-face courses as planned online
courses amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, González-Lloret (2020a) reminds us
the importance of creating technology-mediated activities or tasks grounded in thefindings of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) research that input, output,
interaction and feedback all play an important role in second language (L2)development while pointing out that technology-mediated FL learning activities tend
to focus only on providing input. Moreover, she advocates the use of technologymediated collaborative tasks in planned online language courses as they can provide
opportunities for output and meaningful interaction while motivating students to learn
the target language. Collaborative learning has been reported to facilitate language
learning by reducing anxiety and fostering relationship among participants (Panitz,
1999), and authentic communication with real people increase motivation (GonzálezLloret, 2020b).
Online teacher-run language exchange, which connects learners internationally, is an
example of technology-mediated collaborative language learning activity that canfacilitate meaningful interactions among participants. Online language exchange
activities can be synchronous or asynchronous. While synchronous option may bebetter for feeling the social presence, an important element of effective online

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learning (Lomicka, 2020), asynchronous option may be a more suitable option incertain contexts. As reported by Tabira and Goto (2018), time difference poses
difficulties for online language exchange which can easily be solved by making theinteraction asynchronous.
Guillén, Sawin, and Avineri (2020) explain thatasynchronous activities using the recording tool are beneficial for language learningas it can “increase language learning awareness, complexity, and automaticity” (p.
324). Furthermore, asynchronous activities have additional benefits of alleviating
Zoom fatigue as many people are experiencing fatigue caused by excessive use ofvideoconferencing as a result of the COVID-19 crisis.
Technology-mediated communication and learner affect
As many of us have already experienced, technology-mediated interaction differs
significantly from face-to-face interactions, and we must take these differences into
consideration to create effective technology-mediated L2 learning activities.
Although video conferencing tools such as Zoom affords us to see each othersynchronously, it cannot replace face-to-face human encounters in which we can readeach other’s body language and engage in conversations easily. Yet, we cannot
simply assume that technology-mediated interaction is inferior to face-to-faceinteractions because technology-mediated interaction enables us to connect withpeople outside of our classrooms, and provides multiple options to create meanings
through linguistic mode (e.g., content of speech), visual mode (e.g., pictures, text
layout), and aural mode (e.g., music).
Central concerns of technology-mediated multimodal interaction research, identified
by Chanier & Lamy (2017), are to investigate (a) what aspect of learning can befacilitated by technology, (b) by what technology, and (c) the affective experience oflearners in technology-mediated interactions. Similarly, understanding affective
experience of learners is an important aspect of research in the field of SLA as it is
widely acknowledged that learning experience strongly influences FL learners’
motivation (Dörnyei, 2009) and that motivational intensity is a prerequisite to learning(Lambert, 2017). Previous language learning studies found that a key element that
contributes to effective language learning through technology-mediated interaction isthe choice of the tool (e.g., Cheng & Wang, 2018) and that learners’ affective
experience is influenced by the tool. Satar and Özdener (2008) found that the use of
text-based computer-mediated communication tool reduced foreign language anxiety
while the use of voice-based tool made no difference to the initial anxiety level.
Earlier studies found that video-based interactions were perceived as stressful (e.g.,
Goodfellow et al., 1996; McAndrew, Foubister, & Mayes, 1996). However, videobased interaction has become a preferred form of communication in technologymediated learning activities in recent years as video-based communication became
significantly easier and more accessible (O’Dowd & O’Rourke, 2019). These studies
indicate that learners’ affective experiences with respect to the use of tools intechnology-mediated interaction change over time, which in turn suggest theimportance of understanding how learners of the COVID-19 era experience the use oftools in a technology-mediated learning environment.
Learning context has drastically changed for many, if not all, collegiate FL learners
since the spring of 2020. Many students are facing challenges related to the pandemic
and struggling with isolation. Due to these hardships, some students are losing their

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motivation to study in an online learning environment, which is a conspicuous
phenomenon of online learning in the COVID-19 era. It has been reported in the
media that the gap between students of higher academic performance and students oflower performance is widening. That is, students who performed well before the crisis
continued to do well or even better, while students who did not perform so well before
the crisis performed much worse in the online learning environment during the crisis(e.g., Fairfax County Schools Office of Research and Strategic Improvement, 2020).
With this situation as a backdrop, understanding the affective experience of today’s
learners in technology-mediated interactions is imperative in order to guide effective
online FL learning.
Thus, what tools are appropriate to learners and how they experience technologymediated interaction in the COVID-19 era is an area that requires more research. The
aim of this study, therefore, is to address this research gap. We developed technologymediated activities by incorporating elements that promote language learning basedon this review of literature, and then investigated FL learners’ experiences andreactions to these activities.
Research Question
This exploratory study was guided by the following research question:
How do collegiate FL learners in the COVID-19 era respond to technology-mediatedonline collaborative language exchange activities?
In particular, we focused on the following three areas of learner responses:
1.
Affect (enjoyment, motivation)
2.
Perception (language learning and culture learning benefits)
3.
Difficulties and preferences (technology and overall experience)
The Study
The study outlined in this paper is teacher-conducted classroom research referred to as
action research which “seeks to clarify and resolve practical teaching issues andproblems” (Richards & Farrell, 2005, p. 171). Through our action research, we
endeavored to understand how learners today respond to technology-mediated online
language exchange activities for the purpose of improving our teaching of online
language courses. The research was conducted virtually at the two authors’ homeinstitutions, Emory University and Soka University after both institutions transitioned
to remote learning in response to the COVID-19 crisis. At the beginning of the study,
students of both institutions were already familiar with remote learning.
The language exchange activity was designed to promote interaction and use of thetarget language as a social practice. Among existing technologies, we utilized
VoiceThread, an Internet-based interactive collaboration tool designed forasynchronous engagement. We chose VoiceThread because it was already widelyused and was accessible via Canvas, a learning platform used at Emory University. In
addition, the asynchronous engagement helped avoid complications caused by thetime difference as our students were located at several different time zones.

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We created two activities, one using Japanese and the other using English so that both
English learners and Japanese learners can benefit from the activities. In addition, wewere interested in observing changes (or the lack thereof) in learner perception byalternating their role between a fluent user of a language and a novice user of alanguage. Details of each activity is provided in Table 1 below.
Activity 1: Self-introduction in Japanese•
Soka students posted their self-introduction video comments.
•
After watching Soka students’ video comments, Emory students posted
response video comments.
•
Some students continued their video comment exchanges.
Activity 2: Japanese culture learning in English•
Soka students in consultation with their instructor chose one Japanese culture
topic.
•
Soka students worked together to prepare the content, and one student createda video comment explaining the cultural topic. This group work format was requested
by Soka students to reduce each student’s workload.
•
Every Emory student posted video comments to comment on the culture
introduction video of Soka students.
•
Soka students viewed Emory students’ video comments
Table 1: Description of Two VoiceThread Activities
Methods
Participants
The participants of this study were authors’ students at Emory University in the
United States and Soka University in Japan. Emory University students (n=10) were
novice level learners of Japanese who received approximately 100 hours of formal
instruction at the start of this study. Soka University students (n=5) wereintermediate-advanced learners of English with TOEIC scores ranging from 500s to
800s. When this study was conducted, students were learning remotely from theUnited States, Japan, China, South Korea, and Saudi Arabia. To maintainparticipants’ anonymity, details of the participants are intentionally omitted, andpseudonyms are used. The activities reported here were all part of the course
activities.
Instrument and analysis
The data source of this study consisted of an online questionnaire and a learningreflection essay. The 52-item questionnaire was composed of five-point Likert scaleclosed-ended questions and open-ended short answer questions which were designed
to elicit information about students’ affective responses, perception, and difficulties
and preferences. Soka students responded to a questionnaire written in Japanese, andEmory students in English to ensure their understanding of the questions and also toallow them to fully express their opinions when responding to short-answer questions.

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The learning reflection essay was an optional assignment for Emory students to write
about their learning experience of the entire course. The questionnaire wasdistributed electronically using Google Forms and the responses were entered andrecorded into Microsoft Excel worksheets. Data analysis included descriptive
statistics and qualitative content analysis of short answer questions and a learning
essay. We did not conduct statistical analysis because the total number of participants
was small (n=15).
Procedures
The preparation and execution of our action research took place in summer 2020 asshown in Table 2. After collaboratively designing the framework of the language
exchange, we spent a little over one month for preparation. As we chose the learning
platform (Canvas) and the tool familiar to Emory University students (VoiceThread),the initial preparation involved creating guest Canvas account for Soka University
students, which automatically granted access to VoiceThread. Then, the first author
created Canvas and VoiceThread (VT) user manuals in Japanese for Soka students. In
addition, the first author of this paper trained one Soka student so that he could teachhis classmates how to use Canvas and VoiceThread. The students participated in two
language exchange activities in July in successive weeks. After the second activity,
Emory students were encouraged to review activity one as a preparation to thelistening comprehension section of their final exam. The students responded to thequestionnaire a few days after the completion of the second activity.
June, 2020

Preparation
Deciding the contents of language exchange activities with acolleague in JPN
Creating guest accounts for Soka students
Canvas and VT training for Soka students

July, 2020

Language exchange activities using VT through Canvas
Activity 1 (Self-introduction in Japanese) – 7/24
Activity 2 (Japanese culture discussion in English) – 7/31

July-August,2020

Reviewing Activity 1 (Emory students only)
Students reviewed Activity 1 in order to prepare for the final
exam listening comprehension questions

August, 2020

Data collection
Questionnaire about the language exchange activities – 8/5
Learning reflection essay about the entire course (comments
on VT activities were not required) – 8/6
Table 2: Research Timeline

Findings
The following subsections are organized according to the three areas we focused in an
attempt to answer the research question: How do collegiate FL learners in the
COVID-19 era respond to technology-mediated online collaborative language

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exchange activities? Due to space limitations, we mainly report quantitative data withsome qualitative data to provide in-depth information.
Affect - Enjoyment
Quantitative results indicate that the language exchange was highly enjoyable. 12
students agreed and 2 somewhat agreed to the statement ‘I enjoyed participating inthis activity.’ One student selected ‘neither.’ The response pattern was about thesame for the statement ‘If a similar activity is offered in my future courses, I want toparticipate.’ 12 students agreed, 2 somewhat agreed, and one somewhat disagree.
It appears from qualitative data that authentic communication with real students madethe language exchange enjoyable. To illustrate this point, James wrote in his learningreflection essay: “All the activities we did in class and outside of class were
impressive, but personally, the best activity was communication with students at
Soka University. I have traveled to Japan several times, but I have nevercommunicated with Japanese students. However, through this activity, I even learned
how to communicate with students from all over the world with different
languages, and I could understand their culture.” Also, it appears that relationshipamong students was fostered through language exchange which was the source ofenjoyment. For example, Frank wrote in the questionnaire, “I enjoyed it. Everyone
was very kind, and I felt like I wanted to interact with those students more. It would
have been great if we could meet up.”
The student who selected ‘neither’ and ‘somewhat disagree’ for the two questions
above is Cathy, a learner of Japanese. She consistently provided negative responses
in the questionnaire, which sharply contrasted with the responses of her peers. Her
primary reason for not wanting to participate in the language exchange was that she
did not have the time to do so (5/5, 5 indicating the strongest agreement). Secondary
reasons (4/5) include not interested in language exchange, not interested in the topics
chosen for language exchange, preparing a video comment was too difficult, andcould not understand language exchange partners’ opinions or thoughts. As Cathy’s
L2 speaking proficiency was lower than her peers, based on the observation of thefirst author, it is possible that language exchange activities were too difficult for
Cathy, which made them less enjoyable for her.
Affect - Motivation to learn and communicate using the target language
Quantitative results indicate that most learners’ (11/15) language learning perception
and motivation changed after participating in language exchange activities. Fourlearners reported that they did not change. Those who indicated change were asked
more questions regarding their perception and motivation. All 11 learners indicatedthat their motivation to improve their ability to communicate using the target language
and learn about the target culture increased. In addition, almost everyone (10/15)
realized that they need to deepen their understanding of their own culture.
Furthermore, everyone except for Cathy, reported that they now have a stronger desire
to communicate with people living abroad, and that they wanted to meet theirlanguage exchange partners in-person. This finding is consistent with findings ofprevious studies claiming that online language exchange can foster relationship.
Qualitative results showed strong motivational energy emerged through the language

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exchange. To illustrate this point, Alice’s comment from her learning reflection essay
is shown below:
One of the things that contributed most to my motivation for learning Japanese wastalking to real students through the VoiceThread assignments. At first, I found it very
difficult to understand and follow along with what the Soka University students were
saying. I tried my best to relate to them, but the language barrier made me feel alarge distance between us (not just physically). However, even after just a couple
weeks, when I went back to the VoiceThread to study for the test, I realized that I had
learned so much more Japanese already. I felt that much of the distance between us
had disappeared because I practiced and learned more about the language. I wish tocontinue learning so that I can further shrink this distance between me and people
that speak Japanese as a whole. This activity also allowed me to directly experience
how I can use these studies in the future.
Alice’s comment lend support to the findings of previous studies; her motivation
increased by talking to real students. Also, Alice commented that the difficulty she
had in comprehending her partners’ video comments in Japanese motivated her. In
addition, Alice’s comment showed a benefit of asynchronous communication. By
participating in video comment exchanges and reviewing them at a later time, Alicewas able to perceive her Japanese proficiency improvement, which seems to havecontributed to her motivation.
Perceived benefits for language and culture learning
Most students indicated that language exchange was helpful in improving theircommunicative competence (14/15) and their Japanese or English abilities (11/15).
With respect to specific skills, everyone (15/15) reported that language exchange
facilitated improvement of their listening skill. Many students indicated that it
facilitated improvement of their speaking skill (13/15) and writing skill (10/15).
Regarding culture learning, everyone (15/15) indicated that language exchange helped
improve their ability to explain their own culture, and to understand other culture.
Qualitative results indicate that students valued language exchange as an opportunity
to apply the knowledge they gained in class to real conversation settings.
Difficulties and preferences – Overall difficulties
Quantitative results showed that six students found it difficult to participate inlanguage exchange activities, one neither and seven not difficult. The main cause ofdifficulties includes making the time for language exchange. In addition, students
found understanding their partner’s speech and expressing themselves in the target
language were difficult. Overall, technology was not the main cause of difficulty.
Difficulties and preferences – Technology difficulties
Regarding technology-related difficulties, we asked about the difficulty level
experienced with internet connection, logging into Canvas periodically, and learning
to use the video comment function of VoiceThread. The data indicated that Soka
students had more difficulty. The mean value of the internet connection difficulty for
Soka students was 3.2 and Emory student 1.8, where 5 indicates the highest level of

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difficulty. Logging into Canvas periodically for language exchange was difficult forSoka students (mean value 4) while it was not for Emory students (mean value 1.5),
which is understandable as Canvas is the learning platform used at Emory and not at
Soka. Learning to use the video comment function within VoiceThread was not very
difficult for both students. The mean value for Soka students was 2.6 and Emory
students 1.7.
Difficulties and preferences – Technology preferences
In response to a question asking about the learners’ preference between the videocomment tool and the voice comment tool, 14 learners indicated that they prefer thevideo comment tool and one learner the voice comment tool. This result that most
students prefer the video comment tool is consistent with O’Dowd & O’Rourke’s(2019) claim that video-based interaction is preferred by learners today. Qualitative
data indicated that primary reasons for preferring video comments are that videocomments are similar to in-person communication and thus it is possible to feelhuman connection and also it is easier to understand the interlocutors by looking attheir facial expressions, their mouth movements, and gestures. Below is a written
response from the questionnaire which represents many students’ opinions.
I think that using video comments encourages friendship between people
participating in the language exchange activities. Being able to see the person you
are interacting with makes the activities much more personal despite the online
setting and physical distance. It feels less like a homework assignment and more likea chance to meet new people from different places. Video comments also make iteasier to convey emotions and see how these emotions affect speech in different
languages.
Conclusions
This study is one of the first studies that aimed to explore collegiate language
learners’ experiences and reactions to technology-mediated online language exchange
activities in the COVID-19 era. This study makes contributions to the field by
revealing collegiate language learners’ responses to online learning during the current
crisis in which many students in the US filed a lawsuit against their university fortuition reimbursement on the grounds of pedagogical inferiority of their online
learning (Anderson, 2020). Findings of this study strongly suggest that online
language exchange that utilizes video comments facilitates effective instructedlanguage learning in a remote learning environment. Majority of participants of thepresent study reported that they enjoyed language exchange, appreciated theopportunity to communicate with students who attend a school where the target
language is spoken, perceived language learning benefits by participating in language
exchange, and increased their motivation to learn the target language and culture.
Furthermore, we found that participants preferred video comments over voicecomments because video comments are similar to in-person communication, and thatparticipants felt social presence of their partners.
The study reported here is a small-scale action research and therefore transferabilityof our findings to other population and contexts may be limited. Yet, it is noteworthy
that students in America and students in Japan both responded very similarly to the

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online language exchange. Also, we observed that one participant’s response sharply
contrasted with her peers. As the widening gap between higher performing students
and lower performing students in remote learning has been reported, future research
may want to look at individual differences in remote learning environment moreclosely.
Based on the powerfully positive learning experiences of majority of the participantsof our study, we advocate for the use of language exchange activities in online
language courses but with a caveat that teachers need to pay special attention toindividual differences. It is hoped that future research deepens our insights on our
understanding of the benefits and effectiveness of language exchange in collegiate
online language courses.

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Contact email: mmazzot@emory.edu

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Faculty Mentoring and Unmasking Gender Biases and Influences for Pakistan
Returnee Doctoral Graduates from Abroad
Maleeha Ashraf, University College London, United Kingdom
Denise Hawkes, University College London, United Kingdom
Maryam RabDirector, British Council, Pakistan
Wilson Eduan, University College London, United Kingdom
The Asian Conference on Education 2020
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Abstract
The mentoring of faculty is an important aspect in higher education for countries
investing in training faculty abroad. This study explores the key challenges faced byyoung female faculty returning from doctoral studies abroad and assuming leadership
positions in higher education without prior mentoring. The participants of this study
were doctoral graduates who completed studies in the UK and USA and working inuniversities overseen by Higher Education Commission (HEC) of Pakistan. A thematic
analysis was conducted for interview data obtained from the British Council in Pakistan
and consisting mainly of young female academics. The findings reveal cases of outright
discrimination against females, a lack of support systems for female faculty and the roleof socio-cultural context in constraining them. Remedial mechanisms in the form of
appropriately matched mentoring is needed to address the emerging concerns.
Keywords: International Doctorates, Mentoring Female Academics, Academic Career,
Higher Education, South East Asia

iafor
The International Academic Forumwww.iafor.org

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Introduction
Developing world class research universities is a strong drive for many countries inSouth East Asia. For Pakistan, the ambition is enshrined in a program of providing
scholarships for faculty to undertake doctoral studies abroad. The Higher Education
Commission (HEC) connects gifted students and faculty with world class research
universities through an international scholarship program. The HEC provides
scholarships that include among others; the Overseas MS/MPHIL leading to PhD, UKPakistan knowledge corridor PhD scholarship program, Academic and researchlinkages under Bilateral Agreement, Learning opportunities abroad, Faculty
development program, and a Split PhD and postdoctoral Fellowship program withFrance. Others include the overseas scholarship Aghaz-e-haqooq-e-Balochistan projectand partial support scholarships offered to students at completion stages of PhD. The
large number of scholarships not only provides opportunity to study in the world’s top
universities but also a rare opportunity for young female academics to access positionsof leadership especially with the creation of women only universities in Pakistan.
According to the Higher Education Commission-Pakistan Annual Report 2013-2014),
an increasing number of beneficiaries of the government scholarship program are
returning. For instance, in a period between 2003 and 2013 a total of 9,895 scholarships
were awarded through 22 scholarship schemes. By 2014, there were 12,895
scholarships from the projects and the Fulbright scholarship support schemes awarded.
The returnees from the PhD programs during the period were 1,985 graduates. Clearly,
an enduring outward mobility and inflows into the higher education system ensures that
universities under the HEC will continue being fed with fresh young graduates fromthe best universities across the world.
The main challenge however lies in the limited capacity to mentor them into higher
education tasks given the shortage of mentors or the difficulty of finding willing
mentors (Bonawitz & Andel, 2009). Considering the scanty literature on the experienceof young female academics and cognisant of the absence of prior mentoring, we posequestions; how do young female academics in Pakistan higher education describe theirexperience of being in leadership? How do the social and cultural roles of patriarchy
affect the experience of the young academics? Such evidence would inform policy
debates and practice on developing mentoring approaches for incoming young female
academics returning from universities abroad.
Mentoring women in higher education
The issue of women participation in higher education has gained scholarly attention
over the years. On the one hand, studies on mentoring for women in higher education
focus on the challenges to mentoring and establishment of mentoring relationships.
Recent studies attempting to understand the “glass ceiling” on women academic careers
highlight exploitation and harassment of female academics often with a male line
manager as a factor (Yousaf & Schmiede 2016). The idea of a glass ceiling is often
used to explain the absence of women in the senior roles of medical education(McKimm et al 2015). In related studies women academics complain about teachingoverload and mentoring is suggested as a possible mechanism of improving thesituation (Bower 2012).

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Debates still exist about the ideal mentoring relationship. Some perspectives on
mentoring relationships still prefer female to female mentoring arrangements despite
the apparent low numbers of female professors. Worse still, no data is available on
Higher Education staffing and the little available data indicates female participation at
PhD level was reported at 28% by 2003-04, from 22% in 2001-2002 (Batool, Sajid &Shaheen 2013). Despite the emphasis on female mentors for female faculty, others
prefer a cross-gendered mentoring. For instance, Bower (2012:7) states;“I do not agree that women seeking full professorship need to be mentored solely
by other females. I believe a female associate professor needs to be mentored byindividuals, regardless of gender, who will provide her with the most beneficial
guidance in obtaining her desired position. I was fortunate to have two mentors
provide me with the guidance necessary to achieve promotion and tenure”.
Therefore, considering the diversity of views on mentoring relationships, we need amore context specific evidence to enrich this debate.
Despite many studies recommending mentoring as a solution to career progress for
women, a key obstacle is the few numbers of female academic mentors. Studies showthat female faculty can access mentors to negotiate through the tenure process but
academics progressing to positions of professorship report fewer opportunities formentorship than men (Bonawitz & Andel 2009). Women in STEM disciplines findgreater problems because some institutions hardly accept women for STEM positions
with tenure and the reason is the social and family demands that hampers their
participation. Unmarried women often find themselves encumbered by social and work
obligations. To cope with social difficulties, Bonawitz and Andel (2009) suggests
female mentees request a female mentor and where possible, a full professor. However,
women face barriers of finding female mentors in higher education due to a shortage ofwomen in leadership positions. Bower (2013), recommends having cross gender
mentoring so that one provides career support and another on psycho social support. As
Bower states; “I think being mentored by a man and a woman is an advantage because
each has a different perspective”. The proposed arrangement is consistent with findings
from a study of faculty in international physical education departments (Bower & Hums
2008). The study supports a mentoring relationship helping mentees obtain knowledge
and skills to do their career functions of teaching, scholarship, and service. The second
aspect important for women is to nature the psychosocial or emotional benefits of thementoring relationship. The authors further suggest a closer look at career andpsychosocial functions with women in other industries.
Most available studies focusing on the experience of mentoring relationships for
women are quantitative. Gender-related attributes were seen as impacting on the typeof mentoring received. In the study conducted by Obers (2014), women with malementors were more encouraged to apply for promotion than women who had female
mentors. Masculine mentors were more goal-orientated and able to teach the mentee tobe more “single-minded in approaches to projects, competitive, strategic and focused”
and were more likely to provide challenging assignments (Khan 2013). Meanwhile,
women role models were seen as being more aware of the need to build self-esteem inwomen and they are also known to offer advice on managing domestic and work
obligations (Obers 2014). Therefore, having few women role models poses the risk of

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disadvantaging women as men may be ill prepared to build self-esteem among womenfaculty.
Same gender relationships are perceived as providing two psychosocial functions.
Ragins & Cotton (1999) quantitative study examined all possible combinations ofgender and reported diverse results. Female to female mentoring were more likely toengage in social activities than female to male mentors. Moreover, compared to all theother mentoring gender combinations, male mentees were less likely to report that their
mentors provide acceptance roles. They were also less satisfied with their mentors.
While male mentors were expected to provide more career development functions thanfemale mentors, there was no evidence to support it. However, mentees who had abackground of male mentors received more compensation and promotions than mentees
with female mentors. Male to male mentoring also reported mentee satisfaction. Males
with female mentors however reported less psychosocial and career development
functions than the other gender combinations. In particular, males were less satisfied
with their female mentors on the mentor contribution to professional development orprovision of challenging assignments and or exposure (Ragins & Cotton 1999).
Socio-Cultural influences of patriarchy
Exploring gender dynamics is a pertinent issue in the higher education context
especially given the negative stereotypes against women in South East Asia. Morley etal (2014) reveals cultural perspectives as impediments to the success of women. Citing
typical examples, Morley study observes attitudes in China view that an educatedwoman has no virtue and a parallel Japanese perspective that women should conformto patriarchal norms or risk unhappiness. The perspectives all have social and affective
consequences (Morley et al 2014). Although in Pakistan, the women only universities
are recognized for changes in female participation (Morley & Crossouard 2015; Shahet al 2013), that is only a small success that allows women to move up the university
hierarchy. Despite the changes, more recent quantitative studies still connect gender tofamily and organisational barriers that fall outside the institutional domain. A priorstudy conducted among women managers in academia across four public and four
private universities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad suggested women in management stillencounter familial and organizational barriers and more especially in private
universities (Ghaus 2013).
Analysis of the more context specific literature on Pakistan reveals little on the social
cultural influences of patriarchy on young female academics. Similarly, Shah (2008;2010) study of the patriarchal nature of Pakistani culture within which sex-segregatededucation is conducted and Durrani (2008) study of gender in Pakistan focusing on
sexual harassment address issues affecting than specific mentoring challenges foryoung faculty. Studies of senior women academics including a Vice-Chancellors, deansor heads of the department in public sector universities in Rawalpindi and Islamabad
contain descriptions of their professional experiences and framing by Patriarchal
cultures and the family support roles in women’s career advancement Rab (2010a andb). Building on existing studies,
In summary, while existing studies address issues of senior academics in leadership, no
studies address the concerns of young academics. Furthermore, the quantitative studies
tell us about the relationship between gender pairing and expected mentoring outcomes.

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Nevertheless, such studies lack detail and sometimes cover up the actual experiencesthat lead to observed outcomes. We need a qualitative description of the experiences offemale academics in the work environment. Moreover, aware that most studies arelargely conducted in western societies and a few focusing on participant backgroundcharacteristics, a study is needed that specifically addresses the position of women inalternative higher education settings.
Methodology
In this paper we investigate the importance of gender in establishing mentoring
relationships for young academics by exploring their work experiences as leaders inhigher education. The focus of the study is the experiences of female academics serving
under the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan. A qualitative methodology was
found to resonate with the study objective as it provides detailed descriptions ofparticipant experiences.
In-depth interviews were considered appropriate data collection method that would
allow access to participant perspectives on mentoring needs as lived experiences.
Fortunately, the study founded available secondary data from in-depth interviews
collected by the British Council in Pakistan. The secondary data resulted frominterviews at university campuses in Pakistan. The secondary data provides 25
interviews of senior faculty members from ten public and private universities inPakistan targeting issues and challenges they face as young academics. The data wascollected from both senior and junior faculty members although it is evident that the
majority of the participants in the study (76%) were junior academics. The British
Council report by Hawkes and Rab (2018) indicates that the data consists; 24%
respondents with more than 12 years’ experience in higher education. Therefore, morethan half of the sample was early researchers and mid-career researchers. The
transcripts were obtained for the study and subjected for analysis.
To analyse the data, a thematic analysis as a general framework for analysis ofqualitative data was followed. Consistent with the procedures proposed by Braun and
Clark (2006), the analysis involved familiarising the data, generating initial codes,
searching for themes, reviewing themes, defining and naming themes and thenproducing the report. The transcripts were read several times to gain familiarity. Data
identifying barriers experienced by academics was given codes and themes assigned to
specific codes. In the current analysis, a theme was defined by a process or activity thatshape the mentoring needs of young academics. Finally, a report was produced. The
method was found useful and adequate in developing the main themes constituting key
findings of the study.
Efforts were made to ensure the credibility of the account, the British Council provided
original interview transcripts. While maintaining anonymity of participants in line withethical standards, thick descriptions were used so that citations made in the text areauthentic extracts and can be traced back to interview transcripts (Erlandson, Harris,
Skipper, & Allen, 1993). The language in the extracts was retained in its original form
without attempts to correct errors. External refereeing of the paper was done using
academics with firsthand experience of the gender situation in Pakistan higher
education. Finally, bias was minimized in the analysis by ensuring that alternative

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views about the experiences of young male academics as well as accounts concerning
the global context were included and original text cited as it appears in the transcripts.
Findings
Experience of young female academics in higher education
The analysis of the experiences of young female academics in Pakistan higher
education reveals two main constraints to performance. The system is characterised byoutright bias against female academics and the absence of support systems for female
faculty. In the next paragraphs, we explain how young female academics discuss theirexperiences in higher education.
Gender based discrimination against female academics
Women academics in Pakistan higher education often face discrimination and rarely
given opportunity to demonstrate and express their knowledge even among equals.
They are relegated into passive receivers of the male perspectives. The bias iscompounded by the very nature of the Pakistan society where men are expected to be
the leaders and women as followers. This is clearly illustrated in the statement echoedby a respondent relating to own experiences in meetings where the males were thedominant category.
“So, you go and you sit and like the general concept is that they say “… apko nhepta” (…. you don’t know) whenever I talk something the vice chancellor say ...
apko nhe pta” (… you don’t know). Aor mujhe dekh dekh ke kehtay hai aap chup
hojayiye (And looking at me he says you stay silent) let him talk.”
The statement suggests that the Vice Chancellor with prejudice despite the abilities,
knowledge and accomplishments of the female academic. Many women experiencesuch bias and it is not only reflected in meetings but extends to promotions andallocation of responsibilities in higher education. Women perceptions are that, for anyof them to rise into positions of leadership, they have to work harder than men.
“Reaching senior positions, they [women] have to struggle harder and one andhalf times more than men because men are very threatened. And because of thatclick of school tie network they would promote men only.”
While some see hard work per se as a means to overcoming male prejudice, others see
their success in terms of cultivating a work culture that shows seriousness. “Also, being
taken seriously, that is something I will really cherish after my retirement, I don’t think
there were too many times when I was not taken seriously.” However, it takes a lot ofwork discipline to establish such image. According to this academic, you cannot walkaway from a meeting because it is time for children to be back home and you have togo and supervise meals. Instead, ensuring that children get picked from school andhaving lunch brought to the work place for the child are some of the small things that
ensure that others take you seriously. Breaking the barrier therefore, takes more thanqualifications but may require additional mechanisms that can be learned from female
faculty with similar experiences and have managed to gain respect.

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Absence of support systems for female academics
In terms of academic support, women express the lack of support in careerdevelopment. Women complain over the little support they get compared to their malecolleagues and in particular, it is difficult for women to get support from men and yet
men support fellow men. Such practices are attributed to socialisation patterns in the
Pakistani context where the men are given more attention as reflected in the following
remark;“there are many but sometimes I feel not many but the biggest challenge is when
you are working as women the stories are much different because the male setupthat we have in terms of socialisation and they have their names and their seniors’
names and they can be easily supported by one another but being a woman you
are not supported by these men in terms of getting some funding or supportingyour research or guiding you in a positive manner so that’s a big challenge”
The lack of support from the male side is also compounded by the absence of support
even from female faculty. So female faculty not only face challenges from the maleside but also from the fellow females. Females from the same field where one would
expect support are also a source of hurdles for progress to higher positions. Respondents
have a feeling that the lack of mutual support among the female faculty contribute to
the lack of progress of females to senior positions. Moreover, in some cases women areblamed for undermining one another and promoting male domination. Reflecting on
her own experiences, one of respondents observed females never supported her in her
career and their contribution was often negative. She indicated that she was often being
reported to the vice chancellor by fellow female faculty with a view that she does notgain promotion.
Networks are important for peer mentoring. Unlike the men who networked throughhistorical links, the few women in higher education positions are undermined by apathy
and fear of women to form beneficial networks of their own. Realising the importanceof networks, female faculty in one of the universities came up with a social networking
group. Given the absence of support for female faculty, some of them beganparticipating in networks that support female academics but networks are few and withchallenges. While explaining about women tendencies on network formations, this
respondent observed;“Women have no networks and they are not willing to create networks. I think ina coeducation atmosphere women side with women only not openly, they don’t
want to do it openly because they see it as a kind of a weakness or they see thatmen will comment on it and men are never shy on taking sides of their friends, ortheir friends’ friends, their brothers’ friends or whatever.”The perception is that, the women are afraid to form or join such networks. Amongothers, they feared the comments that would come from the men. Such fears indeed
have a negative effect on mentoring relationships.
An attempt to form a women club in one of the universities to allow women cometogether once a month and speak about women issues revealed a weakness of fear
among women. At the initial stage, women were not forthcoming and were lessenthusiastic in it. Some women even began to question why they were being organised

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and so many nasty remarks were made but gradually the group continued to grow andbecame strong.
“When the women realised that we had no political agenda, we were just wanted
to have caucus of women voice to be audible and visible gradually and just assoon as I mean out of those 50 women 35 started coming, the men started best
coming after us, are you starting to create an association do you want it get
registered, do you want it to be a part of the ASSA to you want to be registered.
We said no nothing this is just like a sorority so that we can just understand eachother.”
Although the group was under pressure from male faculty, it was a useful way ofaddressing some of the concerns of the members including personal difficulties faced
by individual members. In the absence of formal mentoring arrangements, women
wanted access to information contributing to professional careers development.
“…there are some issues you know, how I apply for a scholarship, where do I go
and some professional and some personal but it was airing your issues &understanding your issues and men were very threatened by it.”
The absence of information inhibits planning for career development among womenfaculty. The group that was formed had no political intentions and was never registered.
It was aimed at addressing women concerns. One such concern is the absence of
information sources due to weakness in female networks. The women point out the caseof a career search in Pakistan which they say is informal. Unlike the public sector wherejobs are properly advertised, few posts get advertised in the private sector andinformation often passes through networks. In the private sector someone working in abank spreads the word around that a bank is recruiting. Female networks for job search
are weak in Pakistan and women are more likely to miss out on important job
opportunities. Even though the social media has bridged the gap but the female working
age population in the labour force remains low hence limiting information access. The
establishment of networks for women helps the women to cope and forge a head in theiracademic careers, access to information is still low.
The Socio-Cultural influences of patriarchy
In the analysis done in response to the question about the social and cultural influences
linked to patriarchy, female faculty face family obligations as a key impediment on
academic role. However, some respondents downplay the influence of patriarchy anddismiss it as neither unique to women nor to Pakistan. The next part of the findings
describes the details.
Female roles
Mentoring relationships are also influenced by women social roles. The family plays acentral role in the lives of academics in career for women in Pakistan. For instance, noresidential facilities are offered and this is partly explained by lack of willingness offemale faculty to take residence in the university due to family obligations and evenfamilies do not grant them permission to take up residence in the university. Obviously,
the disparities in facilities among societies would account for reluctance of faculty to

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move. For some of the female faculty, nobody would want to come from Lahore unless
for a very senior position or under serious problems in their own institutions. So, in
addition to family obligations, availability of facilities would have an influence on thedecision to move to an institution and therefore would affect potential mentoring
relationships across universities.
Residential concerns for married women not only impose restrictions on women but
also the recruitment potential of universities. It has partly contributed to the failure to
fill up some positions where women have no accommodation provisions. Commenting
on the influence of accommodation on gender participation, the respondent remarked;“We have no residential facility so there are departments which we haveadvertised for women for about 32 times we never had an application of a senior
women. Business administration, computer sciences, public administration
defence and diplomatic studies, you name it you know.”
The absence of university accommodation and the reluctance of the female faculty to
relocate frustrates university development. Owing to the social roles of women, theuniversity is unable to attract applicants. Although the university has a few mid-level
PhD graduates and Associate Professors, it needs Professors to generate projects andattract funding so as to develop the research profile of the university.
Other than residence, academics are affected in diverse ways. On one hand, maleacademics are perceived as privileged in some respects. They are free to decide on what
they prefer to do and this happens even at home. If a man is working on a project, hewould not take interruptions and the children would not disturb him. A woman cannot
do the same. To illustrate the point a woman academic remarked that, “For a woman, it
is very difficult to tell her husband do not disturb me, I’m working on this or to kids not
to disturb me.” Although tactics might have evolved to achieve just the same, womenthan men often find it challenging to cope with family and work pressures at the sametime. On the other hand, women do not enjoy similar privileges and sometimes have toweigh options before deciding even on marital life. With care, women have to deliberate
on decisions concerning completion of studies before getting married because of
uncertainties of the potential impact it might have on academic life.
“I was going to marry in 1992, on the day of my Mehndi and Ubtan I submitted
my thesis with the threat of what will happen after marriage, maybe the in-laws
are not willing to support you or the husband might have different point of view.”
Not willing to risk her academic career in the event of negative marital outcomes, therespondent decided to have the PhD thesis submitted prior to the marriage. Fortunately,
she found support and eventually was able to do the corrections and go for her career.
However, the fear of marital outcomes represents the kind of decisions that Pakistani
women face and could greatly affect mentoring relationships. This is not to imply thatthe male faculty are free of specific challenges. Quite the opposite was evidenced bysome of the respondents.

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Males are as vulnerable as females
Although socio-cultural background in Pakistan affected suggest differences inmentoring needs for females, it also came out that socio-cultural roles also affectedmale faculty. Contrary to common perceptions that only females face challenges inhigher education, gender also has negative consequences for male faculty. Despite theexpectations of high performance for males by higher education authorities, patriarchy
places high demands on male faculty and undermines male career development.
Patriarchy includes non-working vibes, expectations on number of children and theextended family obligations. Academics argue that gender roles impact equally on both
female and male faculty. Patriarchal attitudes are rampant and stifle faculty aspirations
and especially when they are deployed as tools to establish the importance of a position.
“In fact, young male faculty members are victims of male patriarchy as well. And
I have to break the shackles for them to move. There should be institutionalcounselling services for male faculty members because many of them are caught
up in different social setups there is no one for them to go and talk to.”
While patriarchy is understood to have a negative impact on young male academics, it
is also difficult to break barriers and pinpoint the actual cause of the problem due todiverse social setups at play. The social expectations undermine meaningful mentoring
relationships. For example; a leading faculty member who was mentoring a young
faculty recalled that;“a young faculty member didn’t publish anything because he had twins right after
his marriage & he has to support his wife in taking care and now he has nothing
to show in mid-career review so he might have to leave the university”
Having the first child at a time when of great demands to publish and prove yourself isperhaps no good decision. Given the negative impact of patriarchy on performance andcareer progress, it therefore inevitable that male academics could face difficulties
without relevant mentoring relationships in a changing academic culture. Men who aretrying to help their working wives, are also affected more as they spend more time onother roles. For instance, academics argued that supporting a wife is the responsibilityof a husband. Men who are trying to support working wives are affected even more,because they are trying help wives write the PhD dissertation. Taking leave andsacrificing own classes. So, this whole concept of the nuclear family, surviving asworking couple and having a limited family size and making choices which family
gathering to attend and which not to attend are all challenging issues for males caught
up in such extended family setups.
Supporting parents is considered the role of the son and not for a daughter. Therefore,
having sick parents, having to look after them is responsibility of the son. Moreover,for the married daughters, the in-laws will not even allow it. Besides, attending funerals
is considered an obligation and she stated;“Deaths and funerals, I mean I had to walk out of meetings to take a bus to Lahore
to attend a funeral. I do it out of my own free will but it’s a choice that has to bemade”

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Given the circumstances, a struggling young faculty member who has to publish or
perish, applying for family holidays could impede on professional development
because there is no understanding at the family level about what it takes to survive in ahigher education. It is not the years of service in university; it is what you put in those
years of service in university that matter. In those circumstances, patriarchy has could
have an immense influence on the nature of mentoring relationships. Patriarchal
influences lead to suggestions of career and family counselling.
Patriarchy as a global phenomenon
Even with the evident socio-cultural differences for male and female faculty.
Participants advance arguments against attempts to localise the overall importance ofgender roles in shaping mentoring relationships. While acknowledging the negative
consequences of gender roles in society, respondents were quick to place the Pakistan
gender situation into global context. They argued that the influence of gender cannot
be localised but is a global problem that manifests itself even in other countries.
“Developing and hampering career in other countries manifests in different ways
and of course it’s the multiple burden which a woman carries anywhere in theworld to justify being a professional, being a wife, being a mother, maybe notbeing a daughter in-law in the west but here in the south Asia in India,
Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka so it’s a regional thing”
According to some of the respondents, the situation is not much different. The multiplesocial roles and expectations for women are global and the only exception for the Westare the roles of the daughter in-law but which are the same for the women in South
Asia. This opinion was supported by views from other respondents who argued that
there is no difference for the women in Pakistan and other countries. The only uniquedifference might be the attachment to the family for married women. They reason thatwomen in Pakistan are unable to relocate and take up accommodation in the university.
They prefer to remain where their support systems are located.
Global differentiation of patriarchy is perceived as a case of cultural relativism thatevery country has its own culture. Women are facing different issues in different
cultures. In Pakistan, the family environment has more influence than the work
environment. Therefore, when you are living with your in-laws in joint family system,“you had to take care of your work and your husband & mother n law & bla bla”. This
is in contrast with the West where family consists of husband, wife and children only.
The extended family is considered an important part of life. Therefore, academic life
requires striking a balance between your work assignments and at the same time taking
care of your family and relationships.
The importance of contexts was noted as the main source of gender differences between
countries. Every country has a unique culture and women have different experiences.
For instance, although women in the West have greater freedom as a result of a classstruggle challenges still exist. One respondent pointed out that, among the top 500 bestorganisations, Harvard University is among institutions where females are made Headof Department only in crucial times. Compared to women in the third world, women inWest are struggling and talking about achievements. Despite some degree of success,

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females in the west continue facing discrimination at a time when upper-class womenin Pakistan are actually more liberated.
Discussion and Conclusions
The study explored the experiences of young female academics who completed doctoral
studies abroad and returned to senior positions of higher education in Pakistan. One of
the key revelations from the interviews includes discrimination against women where
women are not expected to freely discuss their views even in formal academic settings.
Yousaf and Schmiede (2016) while addressing issue of harassment and discriminationof women in higher education echo the same view by stating that behind the glassceiling effect on women, there is a male manager responsible for the ceiling. Like in
the China context where the virtue of a woman lies in her ignorance and in Japan wherea woman’s knowledge is perceived as a source of unhappiness (Morley et al 2014),
female academics in Pakistan are expected to remain silent even in faculty meetings
because they are assumed ignorant (June, 2009). Therefore, it is by no surprise thatfemale academics have to work twice better to prove their worth and gain respect as
leaders. Compounding the situation is the absence of female networks that provide
support on issues affecting female faculty. Female also complain about male faculty
giving no support on access to research funding and even information on scholarships.
Unlike the male faculty who enjoy peer support on the basis of their previous school
links, the women are few and therefore lack such connections. In a unique way, womenacademics in Pakistan are sometimes unable to develop a strong network due to mutualsuspicion and intrigue. Such problems could still be due to lack of mentoring and as aresult, female academics find difficulties in access to information on available
opportunities. Female faculty would need to request for mentors.
Participants in this study were also concerned about the socio-cultural challenges ofpatriarchy in Pakistan higher education. Surprisingly, the difficulties were reported toaffect both male and female faculty. Moreover, some participants, they view genderchallenges linked to patriarchy as a global rather than a problem unique to Pakistan.
However, it impacted the young female faculty in unique ways and therefore the needfor a specific approach for the female faculty. For instance, the availability ofaccommodation, marriage and the support of the husband, and the support of the large
extended family with many in-laws. Such a situation may not necessarily be reflectiveof the global situation and each specific context has its unique ways it affects female
faculty. It could have elements of a regional context though some studies have indicatedvariations even within regions and countries (Jejeebhoy 2001) Therefore, mentoring
systems need to be sensitive to contextual variations.
Given the circumstances, mentoring by female academics would be strongly
recommended for the young female academics. More important, female mentors areneeded to provide the psychosocial aspects of mentoring. However, considering theimportant role that both male and female academics play in providing wider qualities
of an academic role to the mentee (Obers 2014) and the importance of the level ofsatisfaction reported by mentees in mentoring relationships (Ragins & Cotton 1999), it
would be better to arrange for cross gender mentoring relationship involving male andfemale mentors for a female mentee as suggested by Bower (2013). Perhaps, thearrangement would cater for career and psychosocial development of the young female
academics returning from abroad to positions of leadership.

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References
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Bower, G. G. (2012). Gender and mentoring: A strategy for women to obtain full
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Bower, G. G. & Hums, M. A. (2013) Career paths of women working in leadership
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Hawkes, D & Rab, M. (2018). ‘Understanding Academic Careers in Pakistan:
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Rab, M. (2010a) The Life Stories of Successful Women Academics in Pakistani
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Shah, S. (2010) Re-thinking educational leadership: exploring the impact of culturaland belief systems. International Journal of Leadership in Education, 13(1), 27-44.
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Touchton, J. G., Musil, C. M., & Campbell, K. P. (2008). A measure of equity:
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Attitudes of Filipino Senior High School Students Towards English: Implications
for Teaching English
Jerusha Eve F. Ong, Centro Escolar University, Philippines
The Asian Conference on Education 2020
Official Conference Proceedings
Abstract
Attitude towards a language is a crucial factor in learning the target language.
Language attitude can be behavioral, cognitive or affective. This study aimed todetermine the attitudes of senior high school students towards English according totheir dimensions and compare them according to the learners’ gender and type ofschool, which could provide valuable insights to the teachers of English. Descriptivecomparative method was utilized with the use of mean, standard deviation, frequency
distribution, and t-test. There was a total of 133 respondents enrolled in the STEM
strand in Marcelo H. Del Pilar National High School and Montessori De Sagrada
Familia. A survey questionnaire was given to the respondents to determine theirattitudes towards English. The study revealed that senior high school students have apositive attitude in each dimension of attitude towards English. Furthermore, there
was no significant difference in each dimension of attitude when grouped according togender and type of school. Since the results yielded only a positive attitude, these
imply that further enhancement is necessary to achieve a highly positive attitude
among the students through the help of teachers, parents, schools, and curriculum
developers.
Keywords: Dimensions of Attitude, English Language Attitude, Gender, School Type,
Senior High School Students

iafor
The International Academic Forumwww.iafor.org

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Introduction
English is widely used in many countries, but in most Asian countries, it is considered
as a foreign language. However, in some countries like the Philippines, it isconsidered a second language. In the Philippine educational system, English is not
only taught as a course from basic education to tertiary education; it is also used as themedium of instruction.
Learning English entails practicing the language, but some learners find it difficult
because of their native language or other languages. Even though English isconsidered as a second language and is taught in schools in the Philippines, not all
Filipinos are proficient in using it. Khastgir and Neogi (2017) pointed out that “theimportance of being educated in English cannot be denied” (p. 13634). This is true
especially in the Philippines where English is used as a means of communication in
the schools and in the workplace.
English competence is a must if one wishes to be hired by any company since job
interviews are conducted in English. Even entrance examinations for schools anduniversities are in English. Textbooks in courses like Science and Mathematics are in
English as well. In short, if one wants to be successful in the Philippines, be it inacademics or in one’s career, proficiency in the English language is one of the keys.
It is for this reason that English is considered “the language for economic
advancement, academic pursuits, and globalization” (Koo, 2008, p. 22).
The English language is widely recognized as the international language (Gomez &Perez, 2015, p. 315). In fact, as mentioned earlier, English is considered as a medium
of instruction in the Philippines, unlike in other Asian countries where it is merely asubject taught in their schools. According to Alam (2017), research has shown that tobe successful in language learning and teaching, it is important to have an
understanding of the attitudes of the learners towards learning a language. Since
English is used as a second language in the country, attitudes of learners towards thelanguage play an important role in the success of learning the language (Tanni, 2015,
p. 139). Because of this, teachers need to “acknowledge and respect the attitudes andbeliefs of the learners towards learning a language” (Mantle-Bromley, 1995, as citedin Tanni, 2015, p. 139).
There are different factors that are related to the attitudes of the learners towards a
language. Baker (1992, as cited in Navarro-Villaroel, 2011) mentioned that attitude
towards a language is related to different factors such as gender and type of school (pp.
5-6). In addition, Lamb (1997, as cited in Alieto, Rillo, & Lucas, in press) stated that
research has revealed a gender difference in attitude towards languages (p. 9).
Meanwhile, attitudes have three components (Wenden, 1991, as cited in Tanni, 2015,
p. 139). As mentioned by Wenden, these components of attitudes are behavioral,cognitive, and affective, which led to the three dimensions of language attitudes andwere discussed further by Abidin, Pour-Mohammadi, and Alzwari in their study(2012).
It is for this reason that the researcher undertook this study to determine the attitudesof Filipino senior high school students towards English and whether genderdifferences and types of school lead to any change in the attitudes of the learners

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towards English. Furthermore, the researcher looked into the three dimensions ofattitude of the learners that could provide implications to the teaching of English.
Literature Review
1. Attitude
As early as the 1930s until the present time, many researchers have come up with
their definition of attitude. According to Krech and Crutchfield (1948, as cited in
Ianos, 2014), “Attitude is an enduring organization of motivational, emotional,
perceptual, and cognitive processes with respect to some aspect of the individual's
world” (p. 96). Sarnoff (1970, as cited in Ianos, 2014), on the other hand, stated that
“attitude is a disposition to react favorably or unfavorably to a class of objects” (p. 96)
While for Baker (1992, as cited in Ianos, 2014), it is “a hypothetical construct used to
explain the direction and persistence of human behavior, which means attitudes haveto be inferred from their manifestations” (p. 97).
2. Language Attitude
In the study conducted by Goktepe (2014), he mentioned that attitudes encompass theset of beliefs that the learner has towards the second language (p. 324). Ryan andGiles (1982, as cited in Alieto & Rillo, 2018) explained that “language attitudes are
any of the person’s affective, cognitive, or behavioral index of evaluative reactions”(p. 87). Moreover, Alam (2017) stated that “attitude towards a language is a crucial
factor that can have an impact on the learning of that language” (p. 30). According to
Arda and Doylan (2017), language learners may develop different attitudes towards
language learning (p. 180). In addition, the attitudes of the learners affect theiracademic performance since “attitudes have an effect on how much they become
interested in learning the language” (Inal & Evin, 2006, as cited in Arda & Doylan,
2017, p. 179).
Prominent researchers have conducted studies regarding attitude towards a language.
One of them is Baker (1992, as cited in Navarro-Villaroel, 2011) who introduced theidea that attitude towards a language is related to different factors such as age, gender,and even type of school (pp. 5-6). Gardner and Lambert (1972, as cited in NavarroVillaroel, 2011) also conducted a study to measure students’ attitudes towards a
language (p. 5).
3. Dimensions of Attitudes
Most studies conducted by researchers focused on the three dimensions of attitudes,
i.e. behavioral, cognitive, and emotional dimensions. Wenden (1991, as cited in Tanni,2015) stated that attitudes have behavioral, cognitive, and affective components (p.
139). As mentioned by Abidin, Pour-Mohammadi, and Alzwari (2012), the three
dimensions are based on the three theoretical approaches: behaviorism for behavioral,cognitivism for cognitive, and humanism for affective (p. 121).
Abidin, Pour-Mohammadi, and Alzwari (2012) pointed out that the behavioral aspectof attitude, which is the first dimension of attitude, is the way the learner behaves andreacts in particular situations (p. 121). Moreover, cognitive dimension deals with the

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beliefs of the language learner about the knowledge that he or she receives in schooland his or her understanding of the process of language learning (Abidin, PourMohammadi, & Alzwari, 2012, p. 122). The third dimension of attitude which isaffective, as defined by Feng and Chen (2009, as cited in Abidin, Pour-Mohammadi,& Alzwari, 2012), is the emotional factors that affect language learning (p. 122).
Van Els et al. (1984, as cited in Hosseini & Pourmandia, 2013) mentioned that therelationship of the three dimensions is so close that even if only one dimension ismeasured, sufficient information regarding the learners’ attitudes can be obtained (p.
68). They also stated that it does not matter which of the dimensions of the attitudes
will be measured (p. 68).
4. Attitudes towards English
Many studies regarding attitudes towards English have been conducted before. Thesestudies explored the different factors that might have an effect on the attitudes of the
respondents. A recent study conducted by Coşkun and Taşgın (2018) explored theattitudes of students towards English and factors that might affect students’ attitudes
such as gender, year level, and school type. Results revealed that freshman students inthe university had higher attitude scores towards English compared to higher year
levels’ scores.
Filipino bilingual students have very high positive attitudes towards English, as
revealed by the study of Sicam and Lucas (2016). The general attitudes of the learners
towards English showed that they are aware of the personal impact of English in theirlives. They concluded that the positive attitudes have not changed over the years.
When it comes to students’ attitudes towards English and their English language
performance, the study conducted by Nyamubi (2016) revealed that the students’performance in the said language is related positively to their language attitudes.
5. Attitudes and Gender
As introduced by Baker (1985, as cited in Navarro-Villaroel, 2011), one of the factorsthat are related to language attitude is gender (p. 5). The study conducted by Coşkun
and Taşgın (2018) examined the attitudes of students towards English and gender as acontributing factor that might affect the attitudes of the students. Results revealed thatthe female students’ attitude scores towards English were higher than those of themale students.
This is also the same with Nyamubi’s study in 2016. The study revealed that female
respondents had consistently stronger positive attitudes towards English compared tomale respondents. A reason for the differences provided in the study was explainedthat this might be because of “the socio-cultural behaviors of the two sexes” (Kidenyi& Getui, 2011, as cited in Nyamubi, 2016, p.129) “with girls more inclined to like thearts subjects while boys go for the sciences and mathematics” (Nyamubi, 2016, p.
129).
However, this is not always the case. The study conducted by Alieto, Rillo, and Lucas(in press) and Alieto and Rillo (2018) yielded a different result with the gender. Their

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study revealed that gender does not influence the attitudes of the respondents towards
the language.
6. Attitudes and Type of School
Another factor related to language attitudes is the school type (Baker, 1985, as cited inNavarro-Villaroel, 2011, p. 6). The study of Coşkun and Taşgın (2018) revealed thatthe attitudes of the students did not differ according to their type of school. This issimilar to the research conducted by Çimen (2011, as cited in Coşkun & Taşgın, 2018)
where the study revealed that there was no significant difference between the students’attitudes towards the English course according to school type. In addition, the study of
Ibnian (2017) revealed that students from both public and private schools had apositive attitude towards learning English as a foreign language (EFL); however,students from the private schools showed more positive attitudes than those from thepublic schools. The students pointed out that the physical environment and education
setting of the school affected their attitudes towards learning EFL.
However, Doğan’s (2016) study opposed this, stating that there was a significant
difference in the attitudes of the students towards English when grouped by school
type. This is also true with the work done by İnal, Evin, and Saracaloğlu (2000).
Statement of the Problem
The study aimed to determine the attitudes of Filipino senior high school students
towards English according to their dimensions, and compare them by gender and by
type of school, in order to provide valuable insights to the teaching of English.
Specifically, this study sought to answer the following questions:
1.
What was the profile of Filipino senior high school students according to:
1.1
gender
1.2
type of school?
2.
What were the attitudes of the respondents towards English according to thefollowing dimensions:
2.1
behavioral
2.2
cognitive
2.3
affective?
3.
How did the attitudes of the respondents in each dimension compare whengrouped according to:
3.1
gender
3.2
type of school?
4.
What are the implications of the findings of the study for the teaching ofEnglish?
Methods of ResearchThis study used the descriptive method because it describes the attitudes of the
respondents. Likewise, comparative method of research was utilized in the conduct of
the study since the attitudes according to gender and type of school were compared.

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Setting of the Study
This study was conducted in Marcelo H. Del Pilar National High School (MHPNHS).
Originally, its name was Bulacan High School. The name was then changed toMarcelo H. Del Pilar High School until it has achieved its national status, which gave
the name Marcelo H. Del Pilar National High School. It is a public school located in
the city of Malolos, Bulacan, Philippines.
This study was also conducted in Montessori De Sagrada Familia (MDSF). It is a
private, basic education institution located in Tangos, Baliwag, Bulacan, Philippines.
Respondents of the Study
The researcher conducted the study to grade 11 students enrolled in the STEM strand
in MHPNHS and MDSF for the School Year 2018-2019. There were 71 respondents
in MHPNHS while 62 respondents in MDSF, totaling to 133.
Sampling Technique
There were two sections for the STEM strand in MDSF. The entire population of 62
was chosen as respondents. Meanwhile, there were eight sections for the STEM strand
in MHPNHS with 35 to 40 students in each section. Fishbowl technique was used todetermine the sample population for MHPNHS which totaled to 71 respondents.
Research Instruments
In order to obtain the information needed, the researcher utilized a survey
questionnaire adapted from the study of Abidin, Pour-Mohammadi, and Alzwari(2012) using Likert Scale with four criteria, namely: Strongly Disagree, Disagree,
Agree, and Strongly Agree to determine the attitudes of the students. The instrument
is composed of 29 statements which were contextualized. This underwent validation
and reliability testing.
Validation of the Instruments
The survey questionnaire was shown to and checked by an expert in the field of
linguistics. The corrections, suggestions, and recommendations were properly
incorporated in the instrument used in this study. Furthermore, the survey
questionnaire was administered to grade 11 students from other strands not included
as the respondents of the study for reliability testing. The gathered data were thensubmitted to the CEU center for data processing and computation. Originally, theobtained Cronbach’s alpha was 0.683. Consequently, one of the statements in theaffective dimension was removed to obtain a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.725 which can beinterpreted as Acceptable.
Research Protocol
The study was guided by the following steps:
1.
The researcher prepared the survey questionnaire regarding the attitudes
towards English. This was validated by an expert in the field of linguistics.

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2.
The survey questionnaire was administered to a group of grade 11 students notincluded in the study for pilot testing.
3.
The survey questionnaire was then administered to the respondents.
4.
The results of the survey questionnaire were tallied according to gender, typeof school, and dimension of attitude.
5.
Statistical data were submitted to the CEU center for data processing andcomputation.
6.
Findings were analyzed and interpreted.
Statistical Treatment of Data
The researcher used the following:
1.
Mean, to describe the attitudes of the students towards English.
2.
Standard Deviation, to identify the homogeneity or heterogeneity in theattitudes of the students.
3.
Frequency Distribution, to describe the profile of the respondents.
4.
T-test for Independent Samples, to describe the significant difference in theattitudes of the students by gender and type of school.
Presentation, Analysis, and Interpretation of Data
1. Profile of ESL Learners
1.1 Gender
Frequency
Female
62
Male
71
Total
133
Table 1: Gender Profile

Percent
46.6
53.4
100.0

Majority of the 133 respondents were male with a frequency of 71 or 53.4 percent
while female respondents were 62 or 46.6 percent.
1.2 Type of School
Frequency
Percent
Private School62
46.6
Public School
71
53.4
Total
133
100.0
Table 2: Type of School Profile
Seventy-one (71) of the respondents came from the public school with 53.4 percent
while 62 respondents came from the private school with 46.6 percent.

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2. Attitudes of the Respondents towards English

The scores for the negative statements in all of the dimensions of attitude wereconverted to positive to get the overall mean scores; however, the original scores wereretained for the computation of the individual negative statements.
Statements

Mean

1. Speaking in English anywhere makes me
2.29
feel worried.
2. Studying English helps me to have good
2.73
relationships with friends.
3. When I hear a student in my class speaking
3.00
in English well, I like to practice speaking
with him/her.
4. Studying English helps me improve my
3.07
personality.
5. I put off my English homework as much as
2.29
possible.
6. I am not relaxed whenever I have to speak
2.39
in my English class.
7. I feel embarrassed to speak in English in
2.29
front of other students.
8. I like to practice English the way native
3.08
speakers do.
9. When I miss the class, I never ask my
1.74
friends or teachers for the homework on what
has been taught.
10. I do not feel enthusiastic to come to class
1.92
when English is being taught.
Overall
2.89
Table 3: Behavioral Attitude

Std.
Deviation
.669

V.I.
Disagree

.664

Agree

.628

Agree

.642

Agree

.724

Disagree.796

Disagree.796

Disagree

.654

Agree

.623

Disagree.652

Disagree

.32

Agree

The statements in Table 3 are behavioral attitudes since they show the behavior of the
respondents in certain situations related to language learning. As shown in the table,
statements such as: studying English helps the respondents to have good relationships
with friends; when they hear a student in the class speaking in English well, therespondents like to practice speaking with him/her; studying English helps the
respondents improve their personality; and they like to practice English the way
native speakers do are positive behavioral items demonstrating a verbal interpretationof Agree. Among these positive behavioral items, the statement that the respondents
like to practice English the way native speakers do got the highest mean score (3.08).
The rest of the statements are negative behavioral items showing a verbal
interpretation of Disagree. Overall, the statements for behavioral attitude had a meanscore of 2.89 (SD = .32) which manifests a verbal interpretation of Agree. Thisimplies that the respondents had positive behavioral attitudes towards English.

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Coronel-Molina (2009) mentioned that based on the definitions given by different
scholars, one’s language attitudes theoretically should influence his or her behavior(p. 9). The studies of Saade (2007) and Pierce, Stacey, and Barkatsas (2007, as citedin Kara, 2009) revealed that students who had a positive behavior towards the coursesof study absorbed themselves in the courses and strived to learn more. This implies
that the behavioral attitude of the learners affects their academic performance,
particularly in English. When it comes to teaching English, teachers should emphasize
the importance of learning English to develop a positive behavioral attitude among thestudents.
Statements

Mean

1. Being good at English will help me study
3.41
other subjects well.
2. I have more knowledge and more
2.89
understanding when studying English.
3. Frankly, I study English just to pass the
2.02
exams.
4. In my opinion, people who speak more than
3.07
one language are very knowledgeable.
5. Studying English helps me communicate in
3.41
English effectively.
6. I cannot apply the knowledge from English
1.68
subject in my real life.
7. Studying English makes me able to create
3.32
new thoughts.
8. I am not satisfied with my performance in
2.66
the English subject.
9. In my opinion, English language is difficult
2.22
and complicated to learn.
10. English subject has the content that covers
3.22
many fields of knowledge.
Overall
3.07
Table 4: Cognitive Attitude

Std.
Deviation
.551

V.I.
Agree

.654

Agree

.712

Disagree

.855

Agree

.605

Agree

.715

Disagree

.542

Agree

.748

Agree

.772

Disagree

.541

Agree

.35

Agree

The statements in Table 4 are cognitive attitudes since they talk about the beliefs of
the learners about their acquired knowledge and understanding of the language.
Statements such as: being good at English will help the respondents study othercourses well; they have more knowledge and more understanding when studying
English; in their opinion, people who speak more than one language are very
knowledgeable; studying English helps them communicate in English effectively;
studying English enables them to create new thoughts; and English subject has thecontent that covers many fields of knowledge in Table 4 are positive cognitive items
showing a verbal interpretation of Agree. Among these positive cognitive items,
statements regarding being good at English will help the respondents in other subjects
and studying English helps them communicate in English effectively got the highest
mean score (3.41). This means that there was an application of what they had learned
in English. The rest of the statements are negative cognitive items which reflect a
verbal interpretation of Disagree except for one statement which is, the respondents

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are not satisfied with their performance in the English subject, which has a verbal
interpretation of Agree. Majority of the respondents were not satisfied with how they
performed in their English subject. Generally, the statements for cognitive attitude hada mean score of 3.07 (SD = .35). This dimension of attitude also has a verbal
interpretation of Agree which implies that the respondents had positive cognitive
attitudes towards English.
According to Abidin, Pour-Mohammadi, and Alzwari (2012), cognitive attitudeconsists of four steps: “connecting the background knowledge and the new one;creating new knowledge; checking new knowledge; and applying the new knowledge
in many situations” (p. 122). These steps were shown in the statements used in thequestionnaire such as being good at English will help the students study other subjects
well for the first step; studying English helps them create new thoughts for the second
step; they are not satisfied with their performance in the English subject for the thirdstep; and I cannot apply the knowledge from English subject in their real life for the
fourth step. Shah (2008) pointed out that attitudes derived from the cognitive
dimension “may block or hinder the current process of learning” (p. 23). Thus, having
positive cognitive attitude may influence the students’ process of learning.
Statements

Mean

1. I prefer studying in my mother tongue (e.g.
2.47
Tagalog, Kapampangan) rather than any otherlanguage.
2. To be honest, I really have little interest in
2.35
my English class.
3. Studying English is enjoyable.
3.12
4. I feel proud when I can express myself in
3.44
writing and speaking in English.
5. Studying English subject makes me feel
3.31
more confident.
6. I am interested in studying English.
3.20
7. Studying English is important to me
3.68
because I think it will someday be useful ingetting a job.
8. I look forward to the time I spend in
3.05
English class.
9. Studying English makes me have good
2.95
emotions (feelings).
Overall
3.10
Table 5: Affective Attitude

Std.
Deviation
.765

V.I.
Disagree.828

Disagree

.616
.513

Agree
Agree

.605

Agree

.600
.501

Agree
Agree

.562

Agree

.716

Agree

.35

Agree

The statements in Table 5 are affective attitudes since they show the feelings andemotions of the students towards English. The affective attitudes include having
positive emotions, confidence, and a sense of enjoyment. Positive emotions, as
revealed in the study of Quinto (2015) include being happy, excited, comfortable, andproud. Statements such as: the respondents prefer studying in their mother tongue
rather than any other language and they really have little interest in their English
class have a verbal interpretation of Disagree. The last seven statements, which are

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positive affective items, all have a verbal interpretation of Agree. Among these
positive, affective items, the statement regarding the importance of studying English
in getting a job someday got the highest mean score (3.68). This means that the
respondents knew the importance of English for their future. In addition, studying
English gives them positive emotions. The last dimension of attitude has a mean scoreof 3.10 (SD = .35) which gives it a verbal interpretation of Agree. This implies thatthe respondents had positive affective attitudes towards English.
Choy and Salah (2006, as cited in Charoensuk & Jaipetch, 2017) explained that theaffective attitudes of learners influence their perspectives towards the target language(p. 44). In addition, Popham (2011, as cited in Olatunji, 2013) stated that the affective
dimension of attitude is important since it influences the learners’ future behavior (p.
100). Therefore, having positive affective attitude helps the learners respondpositively to the tasks given to them.
Among the three dimensions, the affective dimension had the highest mean score,followed by the cognitive dimension and behavioral dimension as the last. Although
the three dimensions differed in their mean scores, Tables 3 to 5 revealed that thestudents had a positive attitude towards English. However, it is worth mentioning that
although all dimensions of attitude were rated as positive, none of the dimensions was
rated as highly positive. Similar to the study conducted by Charoensuk and Jaipetch(2017), there is still room for improvement in all dimensions of attitude.
3. Comparison of the Dimensions of Attitudes According to the Respondents’ Profile
3.1. Gender

Gender MeanS.D.
t- value
p-value
Female
2.93
.33
1.047
P = 0.297 > 0.05
Behavioral
Male
2.87
.31
Female
3.13
.37
1.799
P = 0.074 > 0.05
Cognitive
Male
3.02
.32
Female
3.15
.36
1.379
P = 0.170 > 0.05
Affective
Male
3.06
.34
Table 6: Comparison of Attitudes According to Gender

Sig
NS
NS
NS

There was a total of 133 respondents in this study, 62 female and 71 male respondents.
As seen in Table 6, there was no significant difference between male and female
respondents’ attitudes in each dimension. However, looking at the mean scores ofmale and female respondents in each dimension, the female respondents had slightly
higher mean scores than the male respondents. Similar studies were conducted andfound that there was no significant difference between male and female attitudes
towards English using t-test (Çimen, 2011; Nyamubi, 2016; Alieto, Rillo, & Lucas, inpress; and Alieto & Rillo, 2018). However, results of some studies showed that there
was a significant difference in the attitudes of male and female students. Female
students had a higher positive attitude (Coşkun & Taşgın, 2018; İnal, Evin, &Saracaloğlu, 2009). Kidenyi and Getui (2011, as cited in Nyamubi, 2016) explainedthat the reason why female students have a higher positive attitude is probably due to“the socio-cultural behaviors of the two sexes” (p. 129).

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3.2 Type of School
School
Mean
S.D.
t-valuep-value
Private School 2.87
.32-.844 P = 0.400 > 0.05
Behavioral
Public School 2.92
.32
Private School 3.10.37.886 P = 0.377 > 0.05
Cognitive
Public School 3.05
.33
Private School 3.06
.37
-1.420 P = 0.158 > 0.05
Affective
Public School 3.14
.33
Table 7: Comparison of Attitudes According to Type of School

Sig
NS
NS
NS

Table 7 shows the difference of the students’ attitudes by dimension when grouped
according to type of school. For the behavioral and cognitive dimensions, there wasno significant difference between the attitudes of students from the private school andthe public school; although looking at the mean scores, the public school students had
slightly higher positive attitudes towards English in behavioral and affective
dimensions. Having no significant difference between the attitudes of students fromthe private school and the public school could stem out from the respondents as being
part of the Generation Z (Gen Z) since the study of Schwieger and Ladwig (2018)
revealed that those who fall under Gen Z are known for being self-educated, selfsufficient, self-aware, and pragmatic (pp. 46-47).
A study conducted by Coşkun and Taşgın (2018) also looked into the attitudes ofstudents towards English according to school type. Their study revealed that there wasno significant difference between the students’ attitudes in general when grouped
according to type of school but did not explore the dimensions of attitude. A similar
study was conducted by Ibnian (2017) which revealed that the students from public
and private schools had a positive attitude towards learning English.
4. Implications of the Findings for the Teaching of English
The findings revealed that the students in grade 11 in general had positive attitudes
towards English. However, as mentioned previously, none of the dimensions obtained
a verbal interpretation of Strongly Agree. This implies the need for teachers of English
to aim for highly positive attitudes. They can help the students improve their attitudes
towards English from positive to highly positive.
As for the improvement of each dimension of attitude, Johnston (2014, as cited in
Charoensuk & Jaipetch, 2017) noted that “the affective attitude is the most difficult
dimension to change” (p. 55). Teachers should provide students with enjoyable
experiences in studying English to increase the students’ affective attitude. As
suggested by Charoensuk and Jaipetch (2017), they should continue putting more
effort into helping the students develop more positive affective attitudes. Holding
programs like language-related competitions within the school and joining interschool competitions can help establish closer relationships and promote camaraderie
among students.
Other improvements may also be suggested for teachers of English from the public
and private schools, like creating a more encouraging atmosphere, highlighting the

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importance of learning English, and utilizing up-to-date materials and resources topromote the students’ positive attitudes towards English (Abidin, Pour-Mohammadi,& Alzwari, 2012). In addition, curriculum developers may review the current
curriculum guide as implemented by the Department of Education “to meet the needs
and interests of the students” (Abidin, Pour-Mohammadi, & Alzwari, 2012).
Lastly, parents also have an important role in helping their children develop a positive
attitude towards English. They should realize this and take an active role as schools’
partners in their children’s education. They are also advised to give encouragement,
offer help, and show concern to their children in learning English as parental
encouragement boosts motivation (Khastgir & Neogi, 2017).
Conclusion
Summary of Findings
The following are summarized based on the results of the study:
1. Profile of the Respondents
1.1. Gender
There were 133 respondents, 71 male and 62 female.
1.2. Type of School
Respondents of the study came from two types of school involved in the study: theprivate school with 62 respondents and the public school with 71 respondents.
2. Attitudes of the Respondents towards English
This study delved into the three dimensions of attitude, namely: behavioral, cognitive,
and affective dimensions. The results revealed that the respondents have positive
attitudes in all dimensions, with the affective dimension having the highest meanscore, followed by cognitive and behavioral dimensions.
3. Comparison of the Dimensions of Attitudes According to the Respondents’ Profile
3.1. According to Gender
There was no significant difference in each dimension of attitude between male andfemale respondents.
3.2. According to Type of School
When grouped according to type of school, there was no significant difference
between the attitudes of students in each dimension of attitude.

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4. Implications of the Findings for the Teaching of English
Teachers should aim to help the students develop a highly positive attitude towards
English instead of being satisfied with a positive attitude only. To do this, teachers
should provide students with meaningful activities. In addition, schools can help by
providing language-related programs that would increase the emotional attitude of thestudents. Curriculum developers may also review and revise the current curriculum
guide used nationwide. Moreover, parents may provide a home environment thatinspires learning English. They should give their children good reading and viewing
materials in English.
Conclusions
Based on the findings of the study, the following conclusions were drawn:
1. Senior high school students have a favorable attitude in each dimension towards
English.
2. Male and female senior high school students have the same attitudes towards
English.
3. Senior high school students from the private and public schools have the same
attitudes towards English in each dimension of attitude.
Recommendations
The following are recommended based on the conclusions:
1. For teachers
1.1 Teachers should understand the beliefs and respond to the needs of their students
by providing meaningful activities that would make the English class an enjoyable
experience. Since Karahan (2007) reiterated that attitude is a key element for learninga language, teachers of English have a huge role in helping the students develop a
positive attitude towards English. Teachers do not just have to understand thelanguage being taught but also take into consideration the students’ beliefs, because
learners with realistic beliefs are more likely be productive in the class (Hosseini &Pourmandnia, 2013).
1.2 They should also help the students improve their English performance by
providing remedial instructions. Burgos and Perez (2015) stated that teachers should
act as agents to motivate their students and that they should stress that personal
development could encourage students to improve their English. Furthermore, this is achallenge to teachers of English, to respond to the specific needs of students (Quinto,2015).
2. For schools
Schools should provide co-curricular English activities and language-related programs
that will make the students improve and be interested in English.
3. For curriculum developers
Curriculum developers may review the content of the current curriculum guide in
English and revise, if necessary, to meet the current needs of the students.

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4. For parents
Parents may provide a home environment that encourages learning English by reading
to and with their children, and providing good reading and viewing materials in
English as early as pre-school age.
5. For future researchers
Future researchers may conduct further studies regarding students’ attitudes towards
English and factors that affect their attitudes which may include the teachingstrategies used by their teachers.
Acknowledgments
I would like to extend my sincerest gratitude to the following:
Dr. Mildred B. Go for her unending support, patience, insights, and guidance rightfrom the start;
The panel of evaluators for their valuable insights to improve my study, especially Dr.
Edward Jay M. Quinto for always being ready to answer my questions forclarifications and Prof. Richard M. Rillo for his insights regarding the topic;
Pastor Peter Hoyam A. Ong and Mrs. Felicitas F. Ong, my parents, for their moral
support and prayers and for always encouraging me to finish this study;
The teachers who helped me especially in data gathering;
The respondents for their cooperation and participation;
Last but not the least, our Almighty God for the wisdom, knowledge, understanding,and patience that He has bestowed upon me.
This study would not have been possible without their help.

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References
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Burgos, E. G. & Pérez, S. P. (2015). Chilean 12th graders’ attitudes towards English
as a foreign language. Colomb. Appl. Linguist. J., 17(2), 313-324. doi:
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Charoensuk, V & Jaipetch, D. (2017). Attitudes toward English: A study of first-year
students at King Mongkut's University of Technology North Bangkok. Journal ofAdvances in Humanities and Social Sciences, 3(1), 42-57. doi: 10.20474/jahss-3.1.4
Coronel-Molina, S. M. (2009). Definitions and critical literature review of language
attitude, language choice and language shift: Samples of language attitude surveys.
Unpublished manuscript.
Coşkun, G., & Taşgın, A. (2018). An investigation of anxiety and attitudes ofuniversity students towards English courses. Journal of Language and Linguistic
Studies, 14(2), 135-153.
Doğan, Y. (2016). Examination of prep-class students' metacognitive awareness, selfefficacy beliefs, foreign language anxiety levels, foreign language attitudes andacademic achievement in foreign language (doctoral dissertation). Fırat University,
Elazığ, Turkey.
Goktepe, F. T. (2014). Attitudes and motivation of Turkish undergraduate EFL
students towards learning English language. Studies in English Language Teaching,2(3), 314-332.
Gomez, E. & Perez, S. (2015). Chilean 12th graders’ attitudes towards English as aforeign language. Colomb. Appl.Linguist. J., 17, 313-324. Retrieved from:http://dx.doi.org/10.14483/udistrital.jour.calj.2015.2.a10

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Hosseini, S. B. & Pourmandnia D. (2013). Language learners’ attitudes and beliefs:
Brief review of related literature and frameworks. International Journal on New
Trends in Education and Their Implications, 4(4), 63-74.
Ianos, M. A. (2014). Language attitudes in a multilingual and multicultural context:
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dissertation). Universitat de Lleida, Lleida, Spain.
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learning EFL. International Journal of Education, 9(2), 70-83.
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East Timorese students in the Philippines. The Southeast Asian Journal of English
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Schwieger, D. & Ladwig, C. (2018). Reaching and retaining the next generation:
Adapting to the expectations of Gen Z in the classroom.

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Shah, T. (2008). An exploration of attitudes towards the English curriculum in
educational establishments in urban and rural Pakistan (Master’s thesis). University ofGlasglow, United Kingdom. Retrieved fromhttps://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/9653633.pdf
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Filipino bilingual learners towards English and Filipino. Asian Englishes, 120. doi: 10.1080/13488678.2016.1179474
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10.5430/wje.v5n3p139

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Teaching Music in the Times of the Pandemic: Pedagogical Pathways for Online
Learning
Kris Ho, United International College, China
Victor J. Rodriguez, Beijing Institute of Technology, China
The Asian Conference on Education 2020
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Abstract
The online learning environment demanded by pandemic conditions in China hasoffered opportunities for teachers to engage internet-savvy students, but alsopresented serious obstacles to unmediated face-to-face teaching. The possibilities forstudent collective collaboration in real time, the difficulties of teachers to connect
with the sheer immediacy of music performance and its physical nuances, and theperceived loss of sound fidelity lost through Internet connections, have plagued
teachers in the mainland. Teachers have had to adapt to a new online environment thathas moved the classroom to the student’s bedroom through the use of laptops andmobile devices. In this paper, we analyze these trends and others through anexperiential study and analysis of the teaching of strings, percussion and piano in a
mainland university music programme. We argue that performance teaching depends
for its success on intimacy and proximity, its physical conditions, as well as emotional
and personal closeness, its more psychological dimensions. Online teaching seems torepresent their very opposites. While we find that teachers have struggled to correct
student performance, foster concentration, demonstrate appropriate methods to play
instruments, and guide ensemble performances, the avenues for correcting these
problems rely on the establishment of classroom collaboration much more than justtechnical adjustments. In this respect, Carol Johnson has argued for a “transformationof pedagogical practice” that establishes cognitive, social and teaching presence. We
find that what is needed is not a total transformation of pedagogy, but the means totranslate the traditional classroom into the new online classroom.
Keywords: Online Teaching, Online Learning, Music Performance, Pedagogy, China

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Introduction
We have titled our project Teaching Music in the Times of the Pandemic:
Pedagogical Pathways for Online Learning. It focuses on how the online learning
environment demanded by pandemic conditions in China in 2020 has offered
opportunities for teachers to engage internet-savvy students, but also presented
serious obstacles to unmediated face-to-face teaching particularly in music
performance. These times have been specially challenging for music teachers. Student
collective collaboration in real time has been difficult, a loss of connection with thesheer immediacy of music performance and its physical nuances has affectedteachers, and a perceived loss of sound fidelity lost through Internet connections haveplagued teachers in the mainland. In these circumstances, teachers have had to adapt
to a new online environment, moving the classroom to the student’s bedroom, andmediating interaction through laptops and mobile devices.
In our paper, we analyze these trends and others through an experiential study andanalysis of the teaching of strings, percussion and piano performance in a mainland
university music programme. We have gathered data from over 10 courses in applied
instrumental lessons, chamber and orchestral performance, choir as well as history ofmusic, at a college in Zhuhai, Guangdong, China for a period of one semester in theyear 2020. Approximately over 300 students were involved in this study. We
performed a mostly qualitative study of music pedagogy online through interviews
with students and teachers, ethnographic immersion in music classes, and an analysisof assessment and evaluation criteria, leveraging this information with our evaluationof student progress in class. Our guiding questions were: how have faculty designed
and implemented specific strategies for online teaching? What obstacles did theyencounter in the online classroom? What strategies, if any, resulted in positive
learning outcomes? How do these successful strategies relate to the scholarship on
online music pedagogy?
We found that while performance teaching depends for its success on intimacy andproximity—its physical conditions—as well as emotional and personal closeness, its
psychological dimensions, online teaching seems to represent the very opposite. Thus
teachers struggled to correct student performance, as well as foster concentration,
demonstrate appropriate methods to play instruments, and guide ensemble
performances. We find that the avenues for correcting these problems rely on theestablishment of classroom collaboration much more than just technical adjustments.
We argue that what is needed is not a total transformation of pedagogy, but the means
to translate the traditional classroom into the new online classroom.
Literature review & theory
The salience of physicality in the teaching of music has led scholars into an
investigation of how such presence might become a factor in online teaching. Carol
Johnson (2017) identifies how a "transformation of pedagogical practice" in the moveto online pedagogy requires cognitive, social and teaching presence. “There is apedagogical shift,” she argues, “that happens to faculty members when they transition
from a traditional face-to-face model of music teaching to the fully online
environment” (Johnson, 2017). Other scholars have argued that focusing on apedagogical approach provides a crucial nexus to a successful transition to the online

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environment and its asynchronous and synchronous possibilities as well as design
strategies and student motivation (Palloff and Pratt, 2011; Garrison, 2011; Picciano,
2002; Bowman 2014). Online course design requires choices distinct to those of the“traditional music classroom” (Johnson, 2017).
Research shows that presence is crucial in online teaching in China, but that“computer mediated communication (CMC) is unable to deliver social context cues
crucial to Chinese students’ communicative practices.” Scholars have noted that“when integrating CMC into an online learning environment, it is [thus] necessary toconsider the student's local culture, language skills, keyboarding skills, format of
CMC, face saving, computer literacy, use of paralanguage and emoticons,
responsiveness of asynchronous communication, use of stylistic communicationstyles, and feelings of private/public” in order to respond to how students’ perceptionof CMC is affected by “social presence, social context, online communication andinteractivity” (Tu 2010).
Students’ preference for reading rather than online discussion has also been discussed
as an important factor affecting learning productivity (Fung 2007) as well as colocation: on-campus and off-campus locations for online learning becomes animportant factor in learning (Xie et als. 2010). Research on the online experience in
China also show that increases in online learning productivity are tied to intrinsic aswell as extrinsic motivation. Enjoyment enhances acceptance of web-based online
learning systems and are deeply connected to a participatory model of education thatrecognizes that objective motivations are only partially linked to a successful
pedagogical strategy (Zhang et als. 2008).
This research does not indicate how far we can go in applying these findings to theonline teaching of music. Our research seeks to fill in this gap.
Methods: Case study
The case university is here given the pseudonym of “South China University” or“SCU.” SCU has been described as an international private university with partners inHong Kong, the United State and other western nations. SCU’s brochures describes
its programme in Music Performance as well as a minor in Music as provides musictraining to students with the goal of producing world-class, global leaders in themusic industry. The school possesses world-class facilities, state-of-the-art rehearsal
rooms, and highly-engineered performance and rehearsal venues for this purpose. Its
faculty has received extensive training in the use of online tools and teachingmaterial, but no workshops on online methods. All music faculty are members of awider Division of Culture and Creativity. During the semester pertaining to our
research, all faculty taught online and shared experiences in informal fora. This was afirst-time experience for all of them.
Ethnographic and class immersion data gathering took place in the courses“Songwriting,” “Compositional Technique,” “Classical Music,” “Traditional Music,”“Chamber Music,” “Music Theory,” “Orchestral Studies,” “Performance—Choral,”“Tonal Counterpoint,” and “Keyboard Performance.” Over five teaching staff
participated in the study, teaching courses with over 500 students in total. We

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consider the study to be quite exhaustive for this institution and a good sample of theonline music teaching experience in China’s higher education system.
Findings
Introduction
Our research took place in the times of the 2020 pandemic during the Winter andSummer semesters of the 2020 academic year. The urgency of the times was reflected
in extraordinary increases in online search engines in China as educationalorganizations including universities, colleges and private studio launched online
system to deliver instruction. Most of the faculty interviewed for this research agreed
that although existing platforms such as Zoom, Panopto, or WeChat Work potentiallyserved the purposes of online instruction, the demise of face-to-face interaction
required urgent responses to new demands. This response is similar to that of faculty
overseas(https://www.nationaltribune.com.au/australian-institute-of-music-seesonline-teaching-as-a-new-frontier/).
Faculty identified the erosion of presence as the most pressing issue as online
instruction got underway. Although foreign-trained faculty were familiar withsuccessful online music programs (Berklee College of Music, Australian Institute ofMusic (AIM)), this method of instruction was new for most of their Asian students at
SCU. With the learning environment transformed from the normal classroom to thestudent’s bedroom, faculty and students attempted to adapt to a new mode of delivery.
For faculty, the major questions pertained to how to improve the student’s
performance skills? How would intonation, live performance, stage manner be
evaluated if online teaching were not to provide a good implementation of ensemble
performance? How would students respond to the new environment? If one could notsee muscle and body movement, if sound systems were to malfunction, if
transmission delays were to interrupt evaluation, if one could not see students’ faces,
how could music be produced? Thus translating face-to-face interaction to online
instruction structured faculty and student’s responses to the new challenges.
Technological challenges as challenges In mediating learning interactions
Technological challenges complicated execution in performance-oriented classes(text-based courses in music history, songwriting, and music theory performed betterin this regard because it was easier to preserve intimacy and thus presence). Internet
instability plagued online teaching leading to student disengagement. As video
resolution and sound quality deteriorated, especially in large virtual classrooms,
student concentration ebbed. As students removed themselves from the video feed,anonymity increased leading to further loss of concentration. This proved lethal tomusic online instruction. Students could not properly follow the instructor‘s
performance online. Student course evaluations confirmed that the low quality of live
broadcasting impeded students from seeing their instructors’ precise or uniqueplaying skills on the screen even when instructors would set their camera close to
their hands or to the instrument in order to show students as clearly as possible; thesound and the live broadcasting will not synchronize.

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As a result, student collaboration in music production suffered and deteriorated. In
chamber music performance, ensemble work faltered. Time delays in sound presented
a technical challenge to all concerned. Students could be playing together as theycounted beats with the metronome, for example, yet sound delivery to eachperformer’s headphones (students employed standard headphones, or studio
headphones or mobile phone headphones) would be delayed for a few seconds
making such ensemble work impossible. Instrument tuning and intonation problems
aggravated under the technical demands of online chamber music performance. In
chamber music classes, students in duets, trios and quartets, four-hands piano
performance suffered as the range of tuning sounds oscillated between 436 and 439,
much lower than the standard tuning of 440 to 442. The frequency of the sound mightchange slightly either higher or lower.
Students labored counting beats in the Orchestral Studies class. Although studentscounted beats simultaneously, video signal delays muddied performance. In such alarge class—approximately 70 students—it became laborious to even play shortstretches of three to five bars. Large-size classroom teaching differed qualitatively
from small-classroom instruction. Faculty toiled to identify individual errors andcorrect students’ mistakes. Listening to various sections playing together tested
student and faculty patience and stamina. In physical classroom instruction, allinstruments could properly play together as the instructor ran separate sections andbrought them all together by the end. In online instruction, this became an
impossibility. Faculty and students agreed that studio work requires specialized
technology and equipment support. Students can only rely on the computer and use
software to write their music; they cannot really record all instruments as if they haveto record drum kit or string quartet performance. Furthermore, it just took more time
to conduct one simple exercise such as how to submit the answer or how to conduct
team work.
Technology, mediation and loss of presence
Technology became the crucial factor in the loss of presence that ultimately explains
the failure to translate the physical classroom into the digital one. In other words, it
was not just simply temporary difficulties in adjusting to the use of new technology.
There was an overall perception that technological mediation undermined the physicalproximity that lend music teaching its effectiveness and joy. Faculty overwhelmingly
expressed their displeasure at the impossibility of midi sounds to replicate the fidelityof instrumental music sounds. Although experienced in the use of specialized
software and midi, extended periods of online teaching led to frustration at theincapacity of midi to capture the nuances of instrumental play, changes in dynamics
and tempo, the idiosyncrasies of performance, and the erosion of sentiment. The useof electronic instruments to facilitate sound transmission accentuated this sense ofloss.
Performance classes were deeply affected as collaboration, rather than beingenhanced by digital technologies, struggled. Performance students could not playmusic together live. To correct for these deficiencies, each student recorded separate
tracks in order to combine them in one single performance. Yet all faculty agreed thatthe quality of music production lagged significantly at the same time that the ability torecord and submit the best tracks made evaluation difficult for faculty used to live

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performances. They expressed the immense difficulties in judging whether a video
had been edited or if it was a one-take recording, for example. Furthermore,
instructors could not pick up wrong notes or stop the performance immediately as
errors occurred. In face-to-face interactions, the instructor can circle wrong notes ormark the score immediately; once students complete the piece, the instructor thenreviews all missing details followed by clear explanation and demonstration. In online
teaching, faculty had to write down the note and correct the student only after playing.
The consequent disruptions in the rhythms of everyday teaching exacerbatedconfusions especially when students could not easily pick up the bar number or did
not fully understand what mistake they made in the performance. For ensemble
course, this problem is very clear and not all students are on the same standard or
know the piece very well. For vocal, brass and woodwind students could not reallyfeel or see how the instructor breathed and moved the mouth or adjusted the bodyenergy to make the sound different. Similarly, piano students could not see how the
instructor adjusted the pedal on different pieces. The dynamics of teaching andplaying piano were not as precise as live person-to-person instruction.
These complications afflicted students in string and percussion acutely. In string
instruction, students needed to see how the instructor demonstrated various bowing
and playing skills on the right hand or left hand. In online teaching, faculty noted they
were not be able to show all precise details to students. The instructor had to see how
students move fingers and adjusted their muscle on the left hand to interpret music
patterns, particularly high finger positions, vibrato, double stops or chords. With somevery tiny finer movements on the right hand, teachers were not be able to see how
students moved their fingers, as for example in spring bowing, the bowing would
request good control of thumb, middle and little finger. For bow contact on dynamics
changes, if the student had the problem, teachers could only judge it by watching thevideo and could not see the exactly problem.
Percussion students were not able to see how the instructor adjusted wrists and fingers
to control different size of mallets. Students were not be able to practice at home. Not
everyone could have access to all types of percussion instruments at home and could
only practice with the iPad and learn how to control mallets designed for different
percussions. Playing real instruments is very different from the playing on the practiceboard or virtual instrument particularly, the sound and the feeling of the instrument.
Conclusion
We conclude that the erosion of physical immediacy constitutes the main obstacle fortranslating the physical classroom into the digital classroom. This situation isespecially acute in the teaching of music where all faculty noted that teaching of
performance is an intimate endeavor where face-to-face proximity means no
mediation by technical means. While all faculty agreed that as instruction got
underway, they improved in their teaching techniques, many felt that a fully online
course could never replace the intimacy that characterizes teacher-student pedagogy
in music. The intimacy of sound production, the proximity and sheer physicality of
instrumental performance, and the immediacy of teacher feedback could not be
reproduced. Yet, all faculty agreed that innovative applications and software could
conceivably begin to reduce that gap. They all emphasized that technical support and

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training is pivotal for the success of online pedagogy. Some agreed with Rick Broene
who said that, “what makes for effective online learning is exactly the same thing that
makes
for
good
in-classroom
learning.”(https://www.bowdoin.edu/news/2020/07/fall-2020-how-to-achieve-continuity-inteaching-and-learning.html). As Peter J. Perry (2020) has opined, most existing
platforms are very useful for either instructors and students to prepare online lecture
for history or theory classes. With the right applications and technical support, online
teaching can become a useful tool for music instruction, but whether it can fully
replace the physical classroom remains to be proven.
Acknowledgements
This research is sponsored by the Beijing Normal University-Hong Kong Baptist
University United International College. Our debt of gratitude to all the faculty from
the Music Performance Programme. Our special thanks to the Hong Kong-based
pianist, Jacqueline Leung, for sharing valuable teaching experience with us.

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References
Australian Institute of Music Sees Online Teaching as a New Frontier. (2020, June21.) The National Tribune. https://www.nationaltribune.com.au/australian-instituteof-music-sees-online-teaching-as-a-new-frontier/Bowman, J. (2014). Online Learning in Music: Foundations, frameworks, andpractices. New York: Oxford University Press.
Fung, Y.H,. Li, C. H. and W. K. Cheung. Online Discussion Participation Prediction
Using Non-negative Matrix Factorization. 2007 IEEE/WIC/ACM International
Conferences on Web Intelligence and Intelligent Agent Technology, Silicon Valley,CA, 2007, pp. 284-287, doi: 10.1109/WI-IATW.2007.116.
Garrison, D.R. (2011). E-Learning in the 21st Century: A framework for research andpractice. 2nd. ed. New York: Routledge.
Johnson, Carol. (2017). Teaching music online: changing pedagogical approach whenmoving to the online environment. London Review of Education, 15:3, 439-456.
Tu , Chih-Hsiung. (2001) How Chinese Perceive Social Presence: An Examination ofInteraction in Online Learning Environment. Educational MediaInternational, 38:1, 45-60.
Palloff, R.M and Pratt, K. (2011). The Excellent Online Instructor: Strategies for
professional development. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Picciano, A.G. (2002). Beyond student perceptions: Issues of interaction, presence,and performance in an online course. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks,
6:1, 21-40.
Perry, P. J. (2020, April 2). Online Learning in the Assemble Class: Use Technology
and Distance Education to Teach Ensemble Class Remotely. National Association forMusic Education. https://nafme.org/online-learning-ensemble-class/Porter, T. (2020, July 2). Fall 2020: How to Achieve Continuity in Teaching and
Learning. Bowdoin. https://www.bowdoin.edu/news/2020/07/fall-2020-how-toachieve-continuity-in-teaching-and-learning.html
Xie, X., Lin F. and Tao Zhang. (2001). Comparison between on- and -of-campus
behavior and adaptability in online learning: A case from China. Behaviour andInformation Technology, 20:4, 281-291.
Zhang, S., Zhao J. and W. Tan. Extending TAM for online learning systems: An
intrinsic motivation perspective. Tsinghua Science and Technology, 13:3, 312-317.

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Vocational Skill Training Model to Embody Social Independence of MildIntellectual Disability People
Zubaedah Wiji Lestari, Universitas Islam Nusantara, Indonesia
N. Dede Khoeriah, Universitas Islam Nusantara, Indonesia
Nani Nur'aeni, Universitas Islam Nusantara, Indonesia
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Abstract
Vocational skills for people moving towards adulthood, including for mild intellectual
disability people, are requisite competencies. By having vocational skills, mild
intellectual disability people may empower themself and raise their confidence to live
in society as it will become the power to increase their social independence. Mild
intellectual disability people have the right to work appropriately follow their abilities.
However, mild intellectual disability people face the problem in terms of their skills
that do not meet the required skills and standards needed in the business and industrial
world. Based on that problem, this study aims to develop a vocational skills training
model that appropriate for post-school mild intellectual disability people. The
participants of this study are post-school mild intellectual disability people, instructors,
and social workers in the rehabilitation service for disabilities in West Java Province,
Indonesia. The research followed stages proposed by Borg & Gall by collecting the data
through observation, interviews, and focus group discussion. The research conductedsuccessfully developed a vocational training model for mild intellectual disability
people based on their competence and environmental conditions. Furthermore, thestudy also found that vocational skills training model for mild intellectual disability
people has some components, namely: identification, assessment, focus on the abilitiesof persons with environmental conditions, implementation of training,andimplementation of cooperation.
Keywords: Vocational Skills Training Model, Mild Intellectual Disability, Social
Independence

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Introduction
Mild intellectual disability people are one of the classifications of intellectual disability
people who have the highest intelligence among other intellectual disability people
groups, they experience difficulties in academic fields and contain abstract things, while
in non-academic subjects, they do not experience difficulties. According to Somantri(2006) that, “children with mild intellectual disability people are: Children with mild
intellectual disability people have an IQ of 68-52 according to the Binet scale andaccording to the Weschler scale (WISC) have an IQ of 69-55. They still get training inreading, writing and simple arithmetic ”. Furthermore, people with mild intellectual
disability people stated by DSM-5 that: “A person with intellectual disabilities has ascore of about two standard deviations or more below the demographic average,
including the margin for measurement error (generally + 5 points). On a test with astandard deviation of 15 and a mean of 100, this involves a score of 65-75 (70 ± 5). "From the statements above, it can be concluded that people with mild intellectual
disability people are classified as people who have a low level of intelligence, namely
IQ 55 to 69. However, if mild intellectual disability people are given appropriate
services through guidance and training with their immediate needs, their development
will be achieved optimally. Based on the condition of their intellectual potential,
effective training for mild intellectual disability people must be carried out through avocational skills training approach.
Vocational skills are work-related skills and competencies that every individual,
including intellectual disability people, must have to be independent. According to
Siregar, Iswari and Efendi (2019),vocational skills for children with special needs aim
to improve the ability to do certain jobs according to their talents, interests and needs,
so that later they can achieve and create various types of work, including instilling an
attitude of entrepreneurial spirit, learning work ethic and productive attitude”. It isnecessary to practice vocational skills for intellectual disability people to prepare
themselves for getting a job. Vocational skills will be accepted more quickly by children
by giving repetitive training, so that children will get used to it even though they do notunderstand in theory but master it in practice (Rakhmania, 2019).
Vocational skills training as an exercise to gain proficiency in the work carried out as aseries of activities in a systematic, directed and gradual manner. The planned andtargeted training activities provided by the trainer to individuals actually have a purposein producing graduates who have the skills and ability to be independent (Anwar, 2015).
Training can be done individually and in groups, and it is hoped that intellectual
disability people will have work dexterity and can take advantage of it. According to
Kamil (2010), important work dexterity is the skills that can be achieved in order toacquire the skills to do productive activities.
Productive activities are intended so that people with intellectual disability people as
training participants can maintain their skills to lead their lives to be independence withthe hope that other things will follow. Hopefully in the future, mild intellectual
disability people can be be accepted in society. In reality, many intellectual disability
adults are still dependent on their parents or other adults, because they do not have work
skills that are in accordance with standards and or the skills they have are not inaccordance with the existing work field and job standards. Job standards is one criteria

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employee or worker in doing their job (Billet, 2011).
Nowadays, there is still a lack of institutions that provide vocational skills training forpeople with intellectual disability people after finish school or drop out, due to a lackof understanding of the existence and conditions of intellectual disability people. Even,
people who live in residential areas and in village areas give a negative response tointellectual disability people children (Sudjana, 2005). This situation needs to find asolution, namely by research to find a model of vocational skills training for people
with mild intellectual disability people.
This study aims to find an effective vocational skills training model with its
characteristics to obtain the effectiveness of the vocational skills training model and in
the end can obtain the final model, meaning that the model can be used in vocational
skills training for intellectual disability people persons.
Methodology
In line with the proposed research focus, the research design used is the Research andDevelopment Model design (Borg, Gall, and Gall, 2003), with some modifications.
This research is basically the final step of development research that carried out todevelop the appropriate training program model for mild intellectual disability people.
The number strategies in research aims to test the same research problem so that it will
increase attention to the validity of conclusions enriched with data. In the data collection
process, the qualitative approach emphasizes the role of the researcher as the main
instrument, through in-depth observation and interviews. The data sources are people
with mild intellectual disability people, instructors and social workforce. The research
location was carried out at the Social Service of Social Institution for the Rehabilitationof Persons with Disabilities.
Findings and Discussion
The Vocational Skills Training Model is a training which can apply in developing skills
and insights for intellectual disability people persons. It is the process of self-relianceand about the values of rules that must be obeyed. In designing the model it requires aplan or design of training activities that are integrated with work tasks according tostandards based on the type of work.
Training at the Social Service Office of Social Intsitution for the Rehabilitation of
Persons with Disabilities in West Java Province
Based on the results of observations and in-depth interviews, an actual picture is
obtained systematically that the researcher sees by using a training management
function approach which includes the stages, namely planning, implementing, assessing
and developing by clearly sorting out the components, processes, and objectives of the
Vocational Skills Training program paradigm. The training to embody the
independence of mild intellectual disability people was carried out at the Social Serviceof Social Institution for the Rehabilitation of Persons with Disabilities West Java
Province, the training outline are as follows:

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1. Training Planning
In planning the training, the researcher and team did several activities to make thetraining program run well, those are:1) Identification of training participants
Identification is one skill that must be mastered by staff, teachers or instructors assignedby training providers for people with special needs. Appropriate identification will havea positive impact on training participants, because they will get services that are inaccordance with their training needs, (Rizky, 2014). Training participants are raw input
in activities at the West Java Social Institution for the Rehabilitation of Persons with
Disabilities. In the context of this study, identification try to find and recognize abilities,
interests and talents related to the types of skills of people with mild intellectual
disability people.
The researchers saw that what was done by the training organizers had been
administratively fulfilled, where they first collected data on prospective trainees, then
the training managers and organizers invited the training participants to convey their
willingness to join the program. However, this system is not yet optimal, because not
all service managers, and training instructors know more about the characteristics oftraining participants, both internally and externally. This absolutely violates what isreally needed as stated by Anwar (2015) that in recruiting training participants it isnecessary to pay attention to the internal and external characteristics of the training
participants as prospective trainees.
Furthermore, the researchers also conducted a survey on the teachers and intructors tofind out whether identification of recruitment was carried our to determine the conditionof the prospective participants. The results are as follows.

Figure 1. Prospective Participants’ Identification
From all respondents, no one (0%) responded that they always did identification to theprospective participants, while 8% said that many times they identify the prospective
participants, 11% responded said that they sometimes identify the prospective
participants, 34% responded that they rarely identify the prospective participants and47% said they never identify the prospective participants.

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The results of interviews and documentation show that the training providers review
various potential industries and institutions around their area, which include: types ofbusiness world and industry; production process activities which include goods andservices produced by the said company or institution; workforce qualifications which
include existing workforce positions, tasks performed, as well as any skills / skills that
may be obtained in the company; availability of practical or production facilities;
industrial power or the probable number of participants that could be accepted fortraining; and qualification of the institution, whether it is classified as a large, medium,or small company.
Furthermore, the service manager conducts an assessment of all the appropriate skills
that can be obtained in each industry. In this case, in what parts or divisions andsubsections in the industry can the appropriate skills be obtained for each skill program.
The Social Service of the West Java Province PSRPD, through the service management
section of the student distribution division, has initiated cooperation with industries orcompanies that match the standards of expertise or skills of each skill program. In thiscase, the West Java Province Social Service collaborated with world industry regarding
the implementation of an internship by signing Memorandum of Understanding (MoU).
3) Assessment
Assessment is a variety of procedures used to obtain information about a person. The
results of the assessment are used to provide the required training services based on themodalities and potentials that the individual has needed in developing a training
program (Smith, 2002). The results of the assessment are for training planning andmonitoring progress of participants. With this assessment, the instructor or teacher canmake decisions regarding the problems of the training participants.
The components that must be covered in the assessment namely: task selection,
response observation, and make a conclusion. The skills assessment area for training
participants with special needs focuses on the area of vocational skills which isdetermined from the results of identification and assessment. It is possible that theassessment area will intersect with other areas such as academic assessment that
supports vocational skills.
The results of observations and interviews show that service managers, instructors andsocial workers have carried out an assessment but have not followed the assessment
steps and have not been maximized. This can be seen in the documentation that there is
no documented data from the assessment results. The available programs are still
standard, not based on assessment results, individualized transition program (ITP)
documents have not been written, and instructors still do not understand the conditionsof people with intellectual disability people. The social worker explained that eachparticipant had identified their family environment, also the data collection anddistribution section had prepared partner institutions including parents.
Furthermore, the researchers also conducted a survey on the teachers and intructors tofind out the assessment given to participant. The results are as follows.

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Figure 2. Participants’ Assessment
Giving question about the assessment, from all respondents no one (0%) responded thatthey did to the participants, 8% said that sometimes they assess the participant, 35 %responded that they assess the participant, while 57 % responded that they never assess
the participants.
2. Training Implementation
Based on observation, interview and questionnaire, in implementing vocational skills
training techniques the social workforce and trainer instructors were trying to
implement the individualized transition program (ITP) even though it has not been
administered. Training activities are carried out by instructors, social workers, training
participants, and service managers in continuous collaboration. According to Abdulhak
and Suprayogi (2012), the training process is basically an educational interaction
between training participants and other training components. The descriptions andinformation collected by researchers are as follows:
In fact, instructors, social workers and service managers who carry out their duties tend
to treat trainees like students in school both in choosing methods, techniques, using
media, utilizing time for practice and theory. The principles of special education withindividual and andragogical approaches, as well as participatory methods have not been
implemented optimally. Sometimes in the opening activity, the instructor has not built
closeness, and in the core activity the instructor does not use task analysis but tries touse a competency approach.
However, when the training is running, the instructor provides motivation andreinforcement as a realization of the social-constructive approach even though it is not
optimal and sometimes does not conduct evaluation reviews and conclusions of the
training material. This training condition is not in accordance with the principles ofSpecial Service Education training, including individual and participatory approaches
oriented to the individual character of the training participants.
The training participants take part in a training program for eight months, stay in guest
houses under the supervision of the social workforce, even though they live in the
Office of Social Affairs complex, but there are still trainees who arrive late, cry, andthere are trainees who go home before the activity is over. In addition, there were also
training participants who were less focused, did not participate in activities, evenpassively such as in question and answer, active in class in carrying out tasks bothindividually and in groups. this condition shows that the motivation of the trainees is

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still low. To increase this motivation, the role of the instructor is very important.
According to Surya (2000), the main function of an instructor is to facilitate or provide
convenience so that each training participant is an effective source.
3. Assessment activities
This activity is carried out in a non-test form during the training process and ends before
the apprenticeship to determine the competency, skills and readiness to work. The
results of this assessment have not been well documented, they are still fragmented.
This condition indicates that the scoring system is not optimal. Evaluation activities arevery important because it is used to determine the quality of the training implementation
process carried out, the results of the training and post training.
On the other hand, this assessment activity is needed as a reference for improvement in
the preparation of follow-up programs. Evaluation is an activity to collect, obtain, andprovide information for decision making, (Arikunto, 2014). The assessment of nonformal education includes aspects of environmental inputs, instrumental inputs, raw
inputs, processes, outputs, other inputs and outcomes. The results of this assessment
become the basis for training participants to take part in an internship (Hadari, 2006).
4. Internship Activities
Internship is a mutually beneficial partnership arrangement voluntarily carried out by
two or more business fields. One aspect of internship is the target or goal to be achieved.
Seeing this, it is clear that with the internship, it is hoped that the the activity will
beneficially for all parties. Okoye et al (2013) state that the benefits of internship seenfrom these targets are both financial and non-financial.
The forms of cooperation arrangements used in Social Institution for the Rehabilitationof Persons with Disabilities are: Joint services, namely arrangements for cooperation inproviding public services, including internships. The issue of Apprenticeship and Dual
System Education has been regulated in Law No. 13 of 2003 concerning Manpower,
especially articles 21 - 30. And more specifically regulated in the Minister of Manpower
and Transmigration Regulation no. Per.22 / Men / IX / 2009 concerning the
Implementation of Domestic Ganda System Education (Undang-undang
Ketenagakerjaan and Sistem Pendidikan Nasional).
Based on the results of the interview, the West Java Social Institution for the
Rehabilitation of Persons with Disabilities has made an MoU to carry out an internshipat the end of the three-week training. The internship were done in several agencies suchas the garment industry, electronics, screen printing, salons, home industry, beautysalons, cullinaire industri, and center of learning activity. The internship program at theend of the training is consistent with the statement of OECD (2010), that schoolcompany collaboration with world indusctry is an effective method, especially in
preparing graduates to enter the workforce. The internship program is essensial since it
is a form of education and job training which can shape the competence of students sothat they can bridge schools with world indusctry as graduate users (Muslih, 2014).
However, the internship program carried out by the Social Service has not been
implemented optimally due to time constraints.

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trained on the training participants. Internships are only carried out for three weeks, thetime set for mentally retarded people is inadequate, considering their abilities require
repeated experience and training. Based on this, in the training implementation processmodels 1 and 2, it is necessary to increase again to make improvements: 1) initialactivities. plate process friendly, Try to get used to it, build optimal familiarity, makeperceptions, and convey training objectives; 2) core activities, delivery and provisionof ability-based materials, using task analysis as an individual approach in the training
process, training participants are given a stimulus to ask questions or dialogue (question
and answer), evaluate the process, provide motivation and ongoing guidance as a social
approach approach - constructive, build and socialize an integrative approach with theappropriate types of skills; 3) final activities, provide reviews and conclusions, andconduct final evaluations / absorption
The activities of the training participants, in the initial conditions of the training, there
were still several shortcomings, including:a. training participants are late in attending the training activities
b. some broke down at certain hours
c. Do not take the opportunity to ask questions / do not have the courage to ask questions
d. the mastery of skills of the training participants is not optimale. the motivation of the trainees is only to get certificates and training opportunities
Based on this, in the implementation of training models 1 and 2, the participation andactiveness of training participants should be further enhanced to absorb the training.
These efforts include:a. obliging training participants to be disciplined in writing a letter of willingness totake part in the training and obeying the rules for activities that were compiled together
as motivationb. create rules for training participantsc. held a dialogue or question and answer to dare to communicate
d. optimize the mastery of dexterity by providing motivation to training participantse. motivating trainees not only to get certificates and training opportunities but also toincrease APK (-Attitude-Practice-Knowledge)
f. Optimizing training activities by applying an individual approach, andragogy andparticipatory methods.
5. Implementation of Vocational Skills Training Model
Based on the implementation of training, the results of limited trials (stage 1) and more
extensive trials (stage 2), researchers made adjustments to the training model developed
so as to produce the final formulation of the development of a vocational skills training
model. as the following description:a). Planning, in the initial conditions of vocational skills training, there are still
weaknesses in terms of planning, namely:−
understanding of vocational skills trainers, service managers, and world
industry for intellectual disability person as one aspect of instrumental input.
−
the preparation of vocational programs oriented to programs carried out by thegovernment, in this case the Social Service, so that sometimes it tends to be less relevantto the needs of society and the ability of mentally retarded persons (instrumental input).

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planning for indicators of work ability results not in accordance with the needsof the job field.
b). Socialization with partner institutions and parents.
Given these weaknesses, the researcher tried to implement the steps as an effort todevelop the following phase 1 training model (limited trial).
−
prepare a biodata format and identification form to obtain information about theharacteristics of training participants, in this case people with mental retardation−
prepare assessment instruments for vocational skills and independence todetermine the strengths and needs needed−
the vocational skills program is jointly prepared by managers, organizers,
instructors, world industry, and training participants as an Individualized Transition
Plan.
c). Preparation of programs and planning for achievement indicators based on the
results of assessment and identification of needs, which are formulated with service
managers, instructors, business and industrial world, and training participants. Training
material consists of vocational skills practice material that is in accordance with theability of mentally retarded persons and is needed in the home industry, theindependence that is taught meets the activities of daily life.
This activity is also applied to the development of the stage 2 model (more extensive
trials). With the development of the model at the planning stage, however, there is aslight change in the provision of training materials consisting of vocational material
taught with more specific skills based on task analysis to be able to work productively.
This has provided knowledge and understanding for vocational managers, especiallyinstructors and training participants to carry out training activities.
d). Implementation. In the initial conditions of vocational skills training, in terms of
implementation activities, researchers feel that they are still not optimal in
implementing the training, namely:−
readiness in preparing training facilities, such as delays in reproducing anddistributing instructional media, room facilities that do not match the number of training
participants.
−
the implementation of the curriculum and the achievement of the expected
targets, based on the assessment is not yet appropriate. Based on this, in theimplementation of training models 1 and 2, the implementation of training will further
optimize in terms of:−readiness in preparing training facilities before the training begins.
−
Cooperate to compile and implement Individualized Transition Program (ITP).
There are still some shortcomings in the training process, among others: 1) initialactivities include friendly learning, building familiarity, sometimes not doing
perceptions, and not conveying the training objectives; 2) core activities. Not using task
analysis as a realization of the individual approach, training participants are sometimes
not given a stimulus to ask questions, process evaluation is still not visible, motivation
or reinforcement as a social-constructive approach is not optimal, competency-based
training is not optimal, and the integrated approach is still limited with several

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institutions; 3) the final activity, sometimes the instructor does not make a review andconclusion.
6. Evaluation
Process and final evaluation have not been documented in an orderly manner,
instruments for obtaining competency skills are not standardized, instruments are
In this study, the concept of the vocational skills training model aims to realize theindependence of mentally retarded persons in PSRPD which is carried out in its
implementation to achieve the target so that to test the effectiveness of the model
developed by this researcher assumes that by analyzing the results of the training given
to wider trials and limited trials.
Based on testing the average difference in the results of the training model field test, it
was found that there was a significant difference in the independence of mentallyretarded persons, training participants in the PSRPD, between before and after training
in the experimental group. The overall test results illustrate that the vocational skills
training model is proven to be effective in realizing independence, which includes thefollowing aspects: a) the ability to adapt to community norms; b) ability to interact withother people; c) the ability to respect others; d) ability to obey norms / rules of work in
work; e) ability to communicate effectively to carry out work; f) the ability to work
together to carry out certain jobs / tasks.
Based on the results of interviews and questionnaires, a) before participating in training,mentally retarded persons lack the ability to adapt, but after participating in the training
and even after working they appear to have a good ability to adapt to their work
environment, and try to adapt well-accepted habits at work as well as in the wider
community; b) Likewise in interacting with other people, before participating in
training. Some of them are very rigid to interact with new people they know, but after
training, let alone getting a job, they show harmonious, friendly and pleasantinteractions with their own will; c) the ability to respect others; mentally retarded
persons are able to respect other people according to those exemplified by parents,
teacher instructors and managers to people they know, with the increase in experienceand the wider environment, an increased respect for everyone and loves the younger
ones; d) ability to obey norms / rules of work in work; in fact, the discipline ability ofmentally retarded persons is very limited according to their environment, but after
attending training, let alone getting a job, they follow the rules that have been set, evenmuch more obedient than normal people.
Criteria for those who work very well in following the predetermined time rules, andmeet the targets that have been set; e) ability to communicate effectively to carry out
work. At the beginning of the training, most of them showed limited communication,
due to limited vocabulary / sentences, but after attending the training, their abilities
increased, namely being able to convey ideas or wishes and hope smoothly, and of his
own accord; f) increased ability to work together to carry out good work with peers
individually or in groups.

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Conclusion
The vocational skills training model, applicable skills to achieve independence, and theinsights of mentally retarded persons about the process of skilled work by following thevalues of the applicable rules to support their work ability as prospective workers is amodel designed by identifying and assessing and implementing it. in an integrated
manner with the MOU process between training institutions, parents and world
industry. This integration is manifestly realized starting from the design process ofmodel development and training activities including internships, placement to work in
a complete series of carrying out training tasks as a whole by optimizing the active roleof instructors and coordinating with world industry, and parents.
The vocational training model model for mentally retarded persons is effective to use
based on data: the results of the implementation of the model (very good), also theresults of realizing the social independence of mild intellectual disability people.

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References
Abdulhak, Ishak. and Suprayogi, Ugi. 2012. Penelitiantindakan dalam pendidikan nonformal. Jakarta: PT. Raja Grafindo Pustaka,Anwar. (2015).Pendidikan Kecakapan Hidup, Konsep dan Aplikasi, Bandung:
Alfabeta.
Arikunto, Suharsimi. & Safrudin Cepy A.J. (2004). Evaluasi program Pendidikan
panduan Teoritis Praktis bagi Praktisi Pendidikan. Jakarta: Bumi Aksara.
Billet, Stehen. (2011). Vocational Edication (Purposes Traditons and Prospect).
Griffith University. QLD, Australia: Springer.
Borg, W.R., Gall, D.M., Gall, J. (2003). Educational Research: An Introduction.
British Journal of Educational Studies, DOI: 10.2307/3121583.
Creswell, J.W. (2012). Research Design: Qualitatif, Quantitative and Mixed Methods.
Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, Inc.
Hadari, Nawawi. (2006). Evaluasi dan Manajemen Kinerja di Lingkungan Perusahaan
dan Industri,” Gajah Mada Univ. Press,
Kamil, Mustofa. (2010). Model Pendidikan dan Latihan (Konsep dan Aplikasi).
Bandung. Alphabeta.
Muslih. (2014). Analisis Efektivitas Program Magang untuk Sinkronisasi Link andMatchPerguruan Tinggi dengan Dunia Industri.” Jurnal Manajemen dan Bisnis.
Volume 14. Nomor 01, April.
OECD, (2010). Learning for Jobs, Synthesis Report of the Organisation for Economic
CoOperation and Development (OECD) Reviews of Vocational Education andTraining.
Okoye, K.R.E., Chijioke, Okwelle, P. (2013). Private Public Partnership andTechnical Vocation Education and Training (TVET) in a Development Economy.
Arabian Journal of Business and Manajement. Volume 2. hh. 5161.
Smith, M. Beirne., and Ittenbach, F. Richard. (2002). Intellectual disability people.
Columbus: Universitas of Texas.
Rakhmania, Anisa,. (2019). Orangtua Anak Tunagrahita Dalam Memaknai Stigma
Masyarakat Kepada Anak. IR-Perpustakaan Universitas. Airlanga.
Rizky, Ulfah Fatmala. (2014). Identifikasi Kebutuhan Siswa Penyandang Disabilitas
Pasca Sekolah Menengah Atas, Indonesian Journal of Disability Studies. Vol. 1 Issue
1 pp. 52-59 | June 2014 ISSN: 2355-2158. Avalaible online athttps://ijds.ub.ac.id/index.php/ijds/article/view/10
Somantri, S,(2006). Psikologi Anak Luar Biasa. Bandung: PT Refika Aditama.

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Siregar, Gelora., Iswari, Mega., Efendi, Jon, (2019). Pemberdayaan Tunagrahita
Ringan Sebagai Tenaga Kerja Penjaga Kantin. Jurnal Pendidikan Kebutuhan Khusus
Volume III Nomor I Tahun 2019 ISSN: Print 2598-5183 – Online 2598-2508. Open
Acces Jurnal: http://jpkk.ppj.unp.ac.id.
Sudjana, Djuju. (2005). Manajemen Program Pendidikan untuk pendidikan nonformal dan Pengembangan Sumber Daya Manusia. Falah Production: Bandung.
Surya, Muhammad. (2000). Psikologi Pembelajaran dan Pengajaran. Bandung: PT
Remaja Rosda Karya.
Undang-Undang No. 13 tahun 2003 tentang Ketenagakerjaan
Undang-Undang Nomor 20 Tahun (2003) tentang Sistem Pendidikan Nasional
Contact email: zubaedah.wijilestari@gmail.com

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Teaching Strategies Guidelines to Foster the Computational Thinking Ability inHigher Education
Virawan Amnouychokanant, King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi,
Thailand
Surapon Boonlue, King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi, Thailand
Saranya Chuathong, King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi, Thailand
Kuntida Thamwipat, King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi, Thailand
The Asian Conference on Education 2020
Official Conference Proceedings
Abstract
The purpose of this research was to identify teaching guidelines to cultivate thecomputational thinking ability of higher education students. This qualitative researchstudy focused on seven Thai instructors from public and private institutions(Chulalongkorn University, King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi,
Kasetsart University, Silpakorn University, Assumption University, and Microsoft(Thailand) Limited). All instructors have had teaching experiences in universities formore than five years and some always have used technologies in their classrooms to
improve learners’ computational thinking ability. Data were collected throughinstructor focus group interviews. A semi-structured interview protocol was used as a
guide. From the interview, we found that three elements for teaching guidelines tocultivate the computational thinking ability of higher education students were 1)
learners’ and instructors’ role 2) learning strategies and 3) teaching tools. The
instructor should use learner-centered teaching approaches. In classroom activities,
the instructor should be a coach who provides guidance and give powerful questions
that help the learners reflect and find a way to get the solution. Besides, this paper
gathered learning strategies and teaching tools that were often used in computational
thinking courses.
Keywords: Computational Thinking Ability, Instructors Role, Learners Role,
Learning Strategies, Teaching Guidelines, Teaching Tools

iafor
The International Academic Forumwww.iafor.org

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1. Introduction
The term computational thinking (CT) has been in academic research for decades. In
2006, Jeanette Wing published the viewpoint essay “Computational Thinking” inCommunications of the ACM (Wing, 2006) and used CT to describe a set of thinking
ability that learners in all fields require to succeed (Czerkawski & Lyman, 2015).
Wing’s definition of CT ability is proper for application across multiple fields.
“Computational thinking is a way that humans solve problems; it is not trying to gethumans to think like computers” (Wing, 2006, p. 35). CT is also a key skill forlearners in the 21st century (Wing, 2016).
CT has become more important in various fields, and many countries have attempted
to integrate CT concepts in other courses (Angeli et al., 2016). For example, the UK
has carried out a set of CT courses, including computer science, information
technology, and digital literacy throughout all disciplines (Brown, Sentance, Crick, &Humphreys, 2014). Another example is Australia, where CT training was set up as
one of the national teaching courses for making the learners familiar with using
technology to solve complex problems (Falkner, Vivian, & Falkner, 2014; Armoni,2012). Poland has also developed computer courses for learners. The main purpose of
the development is to help learners understand and analyze the problem, use
computers to solve problems, and apply CT to their daily lives (Sysło &Kwiatkowska, 2015).
CT is implemented in courses to train learners’ CT ability in many countries. It is
tough to imitate CT teaching methods because of the differences in the educational
systems and culture (Heintz et al., 2016). However, the key to developing CT is theteachers who have to cultivate their students. Ministry of Education needs to train theteachers in how to design CT learning activities so that the learners can improve their
CT systematically and apply CT to other subjects (Orvalho, 2017). Besides, CT alsoenables learners to become more capable of problem-solving and helps learners
develop skills that are attractive for future employment opportunities. (Czerkawski &Lyman, 2015). Computer science is the fast-growing job market and learners who
have the ability in coding are highly sought by employers (Dishman, 2016).
For the reasons mentioned above, the purpose of this research was to identify teachingstrategies guidelines to foster the computational thinking ability of higher education
students.
2. Background
Computational Thinking (CT) is one of the skills that can be useful not only forlearners of Computer Science but for other people. CT relates to solving problems,
designing systems, and understanding human behavior by connecting the fundamental
concepts to computer science (Wing, 2006). In the past studies, CT can be classified
into various thinking processes (Table 1), including decomposition, patternrecognition, abstraction, algorithm design, debug and error detection, data collection,
data analysis, data representation, automation, simulation, and modeling.

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Thinking processes
Decomposition

Pattern Recognition

Abstraction
Algorithm Design

Debug anderror detection
Data Collection

Data Analysis

Data Representation

Automation
Simulation
Modeling

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Explanation
Breaking down a complex
problem or system into smallerparts that are more manageable
and easier to understand.
Finding the similarities orpatterns among small,decomposed problems that canhelp us solve more complex
problems more efficiently.
Focusing on the important
information and ignoring
unnecessary details.
Creating a set of step-by-step
instructions for solving similar
problems or for performing atask.
Finding mistakes and fix themGathering and measuring
information from a variety ofsources to get a complete andaccurate picture of an area ofinterest.
Inspecting, cleaning,transforming, and modelingdata to discover useful
information for decisionmaking.

References
Hsu, Chang, & Hung, 2018;
Curzon et al., 2014;
Kazimoglu et al., 2012
Hsu, Chang, & Hung, 2018;
Kazimoglu et al., 2012;
Ismail, Ngah, & Umar, 2010

Grover & Pea, 2013; Wing,
2006
Mishra & Yadav, 2013;
Basu, Biswas, & Kinnebrew,
2017; Choi, Lee, & Lee,2016
Atmatzidou & Demetriadis,
2016; Yadav et al., 2014
Rouse, 2020; Barr &Stephenson, 2011

Choi, Lee, & Lee, 2016;
Atmatzidou & Demetriadis,
2016; Angeli et al., 2016;
Magana & Silva Coutinho,
2017; Cesar et al., 2017;
Basu, Biswas, & Kinnebrew,
2017
Organizing information in the
Stefan, Gutlerner, Born, &form of graphs, charts,
Springer, 2015; Weintrop et
pictures, letters, symbols, andal., 2016; Benakli et al.,numbers.
2017
Having computers execute
Kim, Kwon, & Lee, 2014;
repetitive tasks.
Forrest & Mitchell, 2016
Using a model to study theKim, Kwon, & Lee, 2014;
performance of a system.
Grover & Pea, 2013; Wing,
2006
Creating a model which
Kim, Kwon, & Lee, 2014;
represents a system including
Basu, Biswas, & Kinnebrew,
their properties.
2017; Barr & Stephenson,
2011
Table 1: The classification of CT

Brennan and Resnick (2012) also proposed three dimensions of CT: computational
concepts, computational practices, and computational perspectives. See Table 2.
Many instructors use programming languages to teach CT although it can be

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integrated with various subjects. In facts, CT has been used in different subjects,
including mathematics (Snodgrass, Israel, & Reese, 2016; Benakli, Kostadinov,
Satyanarayana, & Singh, 2017), biology (Libeskind-Hadas & Bush, 2013; Rubinstein& Chor, 2014), language (Evia, Sharp, & Pérez-Quiñones, 2015), computer science(Shell & Soh, 2013; Grover, Pea, & Cooper, 2015), and programming (Bers,
Flannery, Kazakoff, & Sullivan, 2014; Wolz, Stone, Pearson, Pulimood, & Switzer,
2011).
DimensionComputational concepts

ExamplesSequences
Loops
Conditionals
EventsParallelism
Operators
Computational practices
Incremental and iterative development
Testing and debugging
Remixing and reusing
Abstracting and modularizing
Computational perspectives
Expressing and questioning about thetechnological world
Table 2: Summary of the CT dimensions
3. Method
3.1 Participants
Seven Thai instructors were invited to take part in the focus group interview. Eachlecturer has different proficiencies: CT, coding, and learning strategy. The
information of the participants is shown in Table 3.
Gender Academic
position

Workplace

Male
Male
FemaleMale
Male

Assoc.Prof.
Assoc.Prof.
Asst.Prof.
Asst.Prof.
Dr.

Male

Dr.

P
Kasetsart University
P
Assumption University
Chulalongkorn University
P
Silpakorn University
P
Microsoft (Thailand)
LimitedP
PKing Mongkut's
University of Technology
ThonburiThai MOOC
Table 3: The participants’ information

Female Dr.

CT

Proficiency
CodingLearning
strategy
P
P
P
P
P
P
P
P
P
P

3.2 Instrument
A semi-structured focus group interview was designed for finding teaching strategies
guidelines to foster CT ability in higher education. Poorly worded, biased, or

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awkward questions can derail a focus group interview and spoil the quality of data.
On the other hand, asking good questions makes powerful information so the focus
group interview consisted of six open-ended questions which each of them did not ask
dichotomous questions (yes or no) and use “think back” questions for taking
participants back to their experience. IOC of each item was 0.67 and 1.00 (See Table
4).
Items
IOC
1. What is the role of the instructors in
1.00
the CT course in higher education?
2. What is the role of the learners in the
1.00
CT course in higher education?
3. Studying in groups, pair, or individual: 0.67
which way is better to enhance CT?
4. Which way is better to divide learners
0.67
into groups (random, up to learners, ordifferent performance-based)?
5. What learning strategies can be applied 1.00
for the development of CT in higher
education?
6. What teaching tools can be used to
1.00
improve CT of learners?
Table 4: IOC of each item
3.3 Procedure
We divided the procedure of Focus Group Discussion (FGD) into three parts: Before
conducting FGD, During FGD, and After FGD.
3.3.1 Before conducting FGD
We designed the opened-ended questions for FGD and reserved the meeting room.
After we set the location, date, and time, we sent the invitation letters to experts incomputational thinking, coding, and learning strategies. The invitation letter consistedof FGD detail such as topic, venue, date, and time. We chose the location of FGD thatis in a convenient place for all participants. We set the duration of the focus groupinterview one and a half hours. If the FGD is shorter than 60 minutes, it is often
difficult to fully explore the discussion topic. If the FGD is longer than 90 minutes,
the discussion can become unproductive (as participants get weary).
3.3.2 During FGD
After welcome all participants, we asked them for permission to record the audio
during the discussion. One of the researchers was a moderator and the others are notetakers. The moderator allowed all participants to express their opinions andexperiences. If someone had given a general answer, the moderator would have asked
them to specify by giving an example.

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3.3.3 After FGD
Transcribe the audio recorded on the smartphone, cutting out anything unnecessary.
Enter the answers to each question into a spreadsheet and begin to analyze the data byorganizing the responses into categories. We wrote a report by outlining the major
findings and conclusions, as well as the recommendations of participants.
4. Results
From FGD, it can be summarized into various issues to prepare in teaching strategies
guidelines to foster the computational thinking ability in higher education.
4.1 The role of the instructors in the CT course in higher education
4.1.1 Knowledge and understanding of CT teaching
The instructors should have experience, expertise, and understanding of CT teaching.
Learners can learn from the material at any time, so they are less dependent on the
instructor. Teaching materials help learners to learn better. The instructors should act
as a coach or facilitator, need not tell everything about the solution, so that learners
can solve problems by themselves, leads to systematic thinking. The instructors
should connect real-world problems with CT teaching so that learners can understandand apply CT to their real-life more easily. The instructors need to know the different
learning styles of learners from several ways such as observation, interview, andquestionnaire to properly organize teaching activities.
4.1.2 Preparation and development for CT teaching
CT Training is crucial for CT development. The instructors should realize theimportance of CT and always would like to develop themselves to learn new things.
Educational institutions should provide CT training for instructors to apply ideas andcreate new CT instructional materials, which help the teaching and learning to bequality and to increase the interest of learners. With regular CT training, instructors
can develop their ability to design learning to enable learners to develop CT
sustainably. When learners cannot solve the problems or follow some steps of theprocess, the instructor must diagnose and guide the way to solve problems. These are
the reasons why the instructors must practice or train about CT before teaching.
4.2 The role of the learners in the CT course in higher education
Developing CT ability does not depend on only the instructors but also cooperationfrom the learners. From FGD, it can be concluded that learners’ role in the CT course
is to be keen on what they are being taught. The learners need to be active participantsin virtually everything that happens in the CT classroom. Learners can help theirinstructors make decisions such as how a lesson will be delivered or even what istaught. The learners should take responsibility for what is learned and be accountable
for the results of the learning process. Their responsibility is demonstrated in theirchoices and actions, which could lead them to their goal or astray. Therefore, learners
should be responsible for everything they are tasked to do by their instructors andattempt to contribute to the CT learning process. Besides, learners should help each

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other while working to achieve common learning goals. The learners should findpassion in their project or assignment to exceed expectations. Not necessarily go overthe-top, but be able to apply their ability, ask questions, and understand theimportance of CT. And most importantly, learners should learn to understand CT andfind ways to apply what they have learned in CT class in their daily life, notmemorize the CT theory or concept to pass the examinations. To make CT learning
effective, learners should make sure they inquire more about particular issues,
especially when they feel they need to know more or haven’t fully understood.
4.3 Studying in groups, pair, or individual: which way is better to enhance CT?
The instructors need to know the characteristics of the learners (previous experiencesof the learners, personal learning styles, cognitive abilities of the learners, personality,
aptitude, or intelligence of learners) before choosing the method (studying in groups,
pair, or individual). For example, the learners in Mathematics-Science Program canlearn by themselves so they like to learn individually while the learners in LanguageArts Program like to learn in a group. Besides, the instructors should pair high andlow performers; the learners can learn from their friends. If the instructors would liketo group the learners, do not make them more than five people per group because
excessive group members can make group work inefficient. The optimal number ofmembers per group should be three to five people. When making the learners into thegroup, the instructors should let each learner think individually about a topic or
answer and then comes back to share ideas with the whole group.
4.4 Which way is better to divide learners into groups (random, up to learners, ordifferent performance-based)?
Each grouping method has its own advantages and disadvantages. For example, if
learners can choose their own group, it will make them happy and feel comfortable
when working together. On the contrary, high performers will be in the same group.
This may make low performers be ignored.
Random Grouping Strategies is a method of teaming learners when grouping is notdependent on factors such as achievement levels or common objectives. This method
may make learners excited about member in group, but this method is no clear
standard and criteria for grouping.
Different performance-based grouping (high, medium, and low) is reasonable method
because it creates learners helping each other within the group to achieve the same
goal without ignoring low performers.
4.5 Learning strategies for the development of CT in higher education
Learning strategies are what learners do in their learning process to get a better
understanding of the lesson and enhance their own learning. Learning strategies are
particularly significant for CT courses because they are tools for active, self-directed
involvement, which is essential for developing CT ability. Learners need to use
learning strategies as tools to achieve their goals because everything cannot be taught
in the class, then learners have to study by themselves. Therefore, learning strategies
help learners to study with or without instructors effectively. From FGD, we list the

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learning strategies that the instructors have been used for the development of CT. The
advantages and disadvantages of each learning strategy are shown in Table 5.
One instructor explained why the instructors should not deliver CT content by using asingle method (learners are passively listening):“When the lecturers read a pre-prepared script with little or no scope for interaction, it
makes learners less eager to study. Passively listening to a lecture can be useful at
encouraging learning to remember and understand but is not good at encouraging
higher-level skills like apply, analyze, and evaluate.”
It can be assumed that ‘Delivery mode’ lectures, where students listen rather thaninteract, are not good at encouraging higher-level learning and skills.
Learning strategies
Problem-basedlearning

Advantages
It is helping learners to
improve CT through aproblem scene.

Project-basedlearning

Complex tasks allow learners
to look at problems with CT,
asking questions, and coming
up with possible solutions fortheir project.

Game-basedlearning

The interaction involved ingames can help learners
understand CT better.

Inquiry-basedlearning

It allows learners to develop
CT and research skills. Good
questions can open theirminds and help develop
learners into creative
thinkers.
It trains the learners to solve
problem independently andhelps the learners learn the
new knowledge.

Scaffolding

Design-basedlearning
Digital storytelling

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It helps learners to set up
their own goals and to create
ideas to achieve them.
It can help learners practiceCT ability. Digitalstorytelling empowers
learners to be confident
communicators and creatorsand reach a deeper

420

Disadvantages
Creating suitable problem
scenarios is difficult for the
instructors and it requires more
preparation time.
It gives a loss of time to the
instructors. it also wastes
money to buy the supplies forthe project.
If games are not designed
correctly, it could be adisadvantage to the learner’s
thinking.
If instructors do not absolutely
understand, they are unable toengage with their students on a
deeper level.
Instructors are not trained
specifically in this method are
improbable to deliberately
allow learners to makemistakes in the process oflearning.
It is time-consuming and poses
pedagogical challenges.
Digital storytelling takes a lotof time to complete the CT
project. If the learners had
known the assignment at the
beginning of the CT course sothat they would have had

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understanding of the CT
curriculum.

sufficient time to prepare forthe assignment.

Because of copyright, thelearners can not show their real
ability and exert their utmost
effort only with copyright-freematerials.
Table 5: The advantages and disadvantages of each learning strategy
4.6 teaching tools for improving CT of learners
The most teaching tools which the instructors used for designing CT learning
activities were block-based programming because most instructors believed that using
block in coding can eliminate syntax error which is a barrier for learners to better
understand the main programming concepts and block-based programming is suitable
for learners who are just starting to practice coding or have little programming
experience. It is also found that Scratch is one of the most popular programming
languages to learn.
The main reasons why many instructors used Scratch to promote CT are 1. Scratch
can be used by people of all ages, including learners from elementary to high school
and adults in various settings; 2. Scratch allows users to integrate creativity instorytelling, games, and animation. Learners can collaborate on projects and share
their projects online; and 3. Scratch is a free program so people can access and utilize
Scratch for both personal and academic use. Apart from Scratch program, it is also
having other programming tools for being applied in teaching for cultivating CT tolearners such as Alice, LEGO, and code.org (similar to Scratch), etc. Apart fromblock-based programming, unplugged activities using free exercises from Code.org.
This is especially helpful in countries with limited resources, but also in developed
countries, where CT is regarded interesting, but there is a lack of resources andexperienced instructors.
The instructors also described logical thinking as an integral aspect of CT. One ofthem stated:“Whether the learners are giving each other instructions in unplugged activity or
creating a game in block-based programming, they are doing it in logical steps andthrough logical thinking. It makes them more logical for decision-making andproblem-solving.”
5. Discussion
This study is conducted to better understand the teaching strategies guidelines tofoster computational thinking ability in higher education. The results show thatdeveloping CT ability does not depend on only the instructors but also cooperationfrom the learners, the instructors should have an understanding of CT teaching andthey need to practice or train about CT before teaching. They should also connect
real-world problems with CT teaching so that students can understand and apply CT
to their real-life more easily. In the same way, the learners should be responsible for

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everything they are tasked to do by their instructors and attempt to contribute to the
CT learning process.
Supportively, results from the past studies reported that the most frequently suggested
method for improving CT ability is using real-world problems (Berikan & Özdemir,2020). It is helping learners to set their own learning goals through a problem in theirreal-life. Learners will explore the solution by themselves and report their own
conclusions to the team. Using real-world problems is not only used to solve problems
but also to enhance learners’ understanding of computational thinking throughappropriate questions (Wood, 2003).
6. Limitations and future studies
Both instructors and students are crucial for CT development. This study collects the
instructors’ perspectives that may reflect only one side of view. As we work to fill ingaps in understanding and design class activities for our students, future studies
should also collect students’ views because learners’ voices are a powerful tool forCT development.
7. Conclusion
The Focus Group Discussion (FGD) was carried out with seven Thai instructors. The
purpose of FGD was to identify teaching strategies guidelines to foster thecomputational thinking ability of higher education students. A 6-item semi-structured
focus group interview was developed and validated. From FGD, it can be summarized
into various issues, including the role of the instructors and the learners in the CT
course in higher education. The instructors should have an understanding of CT
teaching and practice or train about CT before teaching while the learners should be
responsible for everything they are tasked to do by their instructors and attempt tocontribute to the CT learning process.
This study gathers the learning strategies (advantages and disadvantages) for thedevelopment of CT in higher education, including problem-based learning, projectbased learning, game-based learning, inquiry-based learning, scaffolding, designbased learning, and digital storytelling. FGD also suggests that using block-based
programming is useful for learners who are just starting to practice coding or havelittle programming experience. Besides, using block in coding can eliminate syntax
error which is a barrier for learners to better understand the main programming
concepts.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to express sincere thanks to Petchra Pra Jom Klao Ph.D.
Research Scholarship for supporting the expense of research.

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Wood, D. F. (2003). ABC of learning and teaching medicine: Problem based learning.
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Analytics of Behavior Semantics for Understanding Constraint Conditions Hidden
in Formative Process of Real-world Learning
Koryu Nagata, Shizuoka University, Japan
Masahiro Tada, Kindai University, Japan
Masaya Okada, Kyushu University, Japan
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Abstract
An alternative to classroom learning is situated learning by behavior in the world(e.g., environmental learning in a natural setting). Among the various types of human
intelligence, this research is interested in understanding the process mechanism bywhich human intelligence is formed through learner–learner and learner–environment
interactions. Here, we assume that a learner’s cognition, interpretations, and behavior
in the world are positively or negatively affected by various levels of constraint
conditions determined by his/her body, cognition, and surroundings. For example, alearner may not generate a certain type of effective real-world behavior if he/she does
not have basic knowledge (i.e., a cognitive-level constraint). In a place whereinteresting objects do not exist, a learner’s active inquiry will be restricted (i.e.,environment-level constraint). To mine a learner’s prospective behavior for obtaining
a multi-view understanding of the world, we developed technologies (1) tomultidirectionally sense a learner’s behavior in the world, (2) to parameterize timeseries behavior with various different semantics, and (3) to extract constraint
conditions hidden in the formative process of real-world learning. We applied ouranalytical framework in experiments on environmental learning with 30 participantsin an experimental forest. Our initial results showed that the semantic-level data of
behavior enabled us to understand the cognitive state and constraints of learners, andto find the change points of the learning situation. These results illustrate that ourframework can be a theoretical basis for understanding the mechanism of situatedintelligence emerging in the real world.
Keywords: Real-world Learning, Situated Intelligence, Behavior Semantics,
Multimodal Analytics

iafor
The International Academic Forumwww.iafor.org

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Introduction
There are two different types of learning when a person acquires knowledge. The firstincludes classroom learning as a typical example of learning methods by whichlearners learn from teaching materials or teachers. Classroom learning is a traditional
learning method through which a learner receives guidance and knowledge fromteachers and books. Classroom learning has been widely studied all over the world(Weinstein, C. E., Acee, T. W., & Jung, J. 2011; Berger, J. L., & Karabenick, S. A.
2011; Felder, R. M., & Silverman, L. K. 1988).
The second type is real-world learning (e.g., environmental learning in a natural
setting), which is a type of situated learning (Lave, J., & Wenger, E. 1991) byinteracting with the real world. In real-world learning, learners can acquire knowledge
derived from various situations by their behavior in the real world. However, for realworld learning, many research issues remain because it is not known how to assess
mutual influence among the real-world situation, environmental objects, and thelearner's behavior. Among the various types of human intelligence, the present study
focused on real-world learning and was aimed at understanding the process
mechanism by which human intelligence is formed through learner–learner andlearner–environment interactions.
In this study, we consider that human intelligence has the above structure in whichhumans behave so as to learn from real-world situations. Thus, our study was aimed atunderstanding how human intelligence emerges from the generation structure of alearner's behavior. The main focus of our analysis is the interaction between the realworld and the learner, with special attention on the generation structure of thelearner's behavior.
As a basis of our analysis, we assume that a learner’s cognition, interpretations, andbehavior in the world are positively or negatively affected by various levels of
constraint conditions determined by his/her body, cognition, and surroundings. For
example, a learner may not generate a certain type of effective real-world behavior if
he/she does not have basic knowledge (i.e., cognitive-level constraint). In a place
where interesting objects do not exist, a learner’s active inquiry will be restricted (i.e.,environment-level constraint).
Let us consider this point in detailed. In real-world learning, different interests are
elicited at different locations and the exhibited behaviors are based on those interests
in order to acquire different knowledge (Okada, M., & Tada, M. 2012). For example,
when studying in the area shown in the left photograph in Figure 1, learners will see
autumnal trees and ponds. As a result, learners may be wondering, "Why do trees turnred?" and "What kind of aquatic organisms live in the pond?" On the other hand,when studying in the area shown in the right photograph in Figure 1, learners will see
tall trees and protrusions growing from the ground. In this setting, the learner will notthink about the aquatic organisms that he/she had previously focused on. Instead,he/she will think, "What are the protrusions growing around the tree?"As explained above, in real-world learning, it is thought that there is a structure that
promotes or restrains different questions and behaviors. However, these constraint
conditions are difficult to observe from the outside, and a framework for research and

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analysis has not been established. In this paper, we propose a research method forunderstanding the structure of the constraint conditions that generate and determine alearner's behavior. In addition, we will explain our technical implementation of our
method for practical data analysis.

Figure 1: Real-world learning as a typical example of situated learning.
Research Framework
Modeling human intelligence to understand constraint conditions in real-worldlearning
We propose a real-world oriented research framework for understanding theconstraint conditions in real-world learning. Under the proposed framework, aresearcher first creates hypotheses and models for real-world phenomena, and thenreconstructs a better model by obtaining new knowledge while experimentally
evaluating the first assumed model. The present paper explains the findings acquiredby implementing the proposed framework.
At phase 1 of our framework, participant observation (DeWalt, K.M. & DeWalt, B.R.
2011) is conducted by going on site to where real-world learning is taking place. In
this observation, we watch to determine what kind of behavior is performed and what
learners are thinking. Based on the results, we form a qualitative hypothesis about thelearner's actual behavior, and then modeled it as a computational expression to be
integrated into our analytical method (phase 2). At phase 3, we plan and carry out
experiments to evaluate the model. Phases 4 and 5 are for evaluating theappropriateness of our assumed model in the actual setting of the world, which
promotes the re-design of our research method (phase 6). These phases are conductedin an environment with ecological validity (i.e., an experimental setting that there is
no external control over the learner's behavior, such as no interventions by
experimenters or no pre-defined scenario that the learner has to strictly follow). The
next section concretely explains how we actually conducted our research procedure,
beginning from phase 1.

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Figure 2: Real-world oriented research framework.
Hypothesis as the basis of computational modeling
Based on our participant observation at phase 1 in Figure 2, we formed the following
two hypotheses. The first hypothesis is that the role of a learner’s sensory functions
and his prior knowledge determine the learning. As a simple example, we often foundthat when learners were walking along the waterside, they observed the fact that there
was no moss there. We consider that this observation behavior was influenced not
only by the range of vision when the learners are at the water's edge but also by their
existing knowledge that water is necessary for plant growth.
The second hypothesis is that learners’ behavior is constrained by their surrounding
environment. As a typical example, we found that after the observation at thewaterside, learners hypothesized that the moss was adapted to a different
environment, and then moved to other places to look for different features of thegrowth of moss. We consider that the observation result that moss was not seen at thewaterside became a new constraint condition of learners. This constraint condition
encouraged learners to make a hypothesis and to generate behaviors to verify it.
From these hypotheses, we achieved the idea that a behavior is made under ageneration structure with multi-step constraint conditions. Figure 3 shows our modelof behavior generation based on multi-step constraint conditions. First, we assume
that a learner acquires real-world information from the real world based on humanderived restrictions ((i), (ii) of Figure 3), such as restrictions on the visual range andthe range of movement of the body. Based on real-world information, the learnerinterprets his/her situations using prior knowledge and hypotheses ((iii) of the model).
Then, the learner internally produces a list of possible behaviors for the situation ((iv)
of the model). However, in the real world, not all behaviors can be performed underthe various restrictions, such as those on the body, time, and place. He/she predicts
how his/her possible behavior will work ((v), (vi) of the model), and then uses theprediction results as a new constraint to select and perform one behavior that is
expected to be the most effective ((vii) of the model).
Importantly, each step of human real-world processing is limited and promoted byvarious constraints derived from the world, a learner's internal cognitions, and his/herbehavioral situations (Const. 1-4 in the figure).

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Figure 3: Model of behavior generation based on multi-step constraint conditions.
Technological Development
By considering the behavior generation structure with multi-step constraint
conditions, phase 2 of our research was conducted to make computational modeling at
the level of behavior semantics, not just at the level of body motion.
Methods to reproduce and analyze the formative process of real-world learning
To mine a learner’s prospective behavior for obtaining a multi-view understanding of
the world, we defined the requirements as follows: (1) to multidirectionally sense alearner’s behavior in the real world, (2) to parameterize time-series behavior withdifferent semantics, and (3) to extract constraint conditions hidden in the formative
process of real-world learning.
Our activity map and audio-visual recording can be used as a basis to capture
cognitive and behavioral activities of real-world learning (Okada, M., & Tada, M.
2012; Okada, M., Kuroki, Y., Nagata, K. & Tada, M. 2020). To perform advanced
data mining, this present paper has developed three additional methods to reproduce
and analyze the formative process of real-world learning. The first is the real-world
jigsaw method, and the second is the real-world introspection method (Figure 4). In
addition to our previous techniques, these two methods were complementarily used in
the experiment for the purpose of encouraging a learner to externalize his/her
cognitive processing. As a third, we developed a method to express behavior
semantics for the purpose of representing behavioral data in a computable format(Figure 4).

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Figure 4: Methods to extract the semantics of real-world learning.
Method to externalize the learner's cognitive processing
By extending the conventional jigsaw method (Aronson, E. & Patnoe, S. 1997)
frequently used in classroom learning, we developed a real-world jigsaw method. Our
real-world jigsaw method provides each learner with a separate memo to be used inreal-world situations. Each memo includes the academic theories of real-world
phenomena. Importantly, the memos differ between learners; specifically, the memo
contents that different learners can view in the real world do not overlap. The contentsof the memo are, for example, the survival strategy of a plant and the community
ecology of plants. This experimental control provides each learner with informationfrom different perspectives and information at different abstraction levels. This task isdesigned to be used as a part of the experimental design at the phase 3 process inFigure 2.
Next, the real-world introspection method requires each learner to carry a tablet
device in order to take notes of what they consider and observe during real-worldlearning. A learner’s introspection can be written in separate UI (User Interface) fields
corresponding to the essential phases of real-world learning, such as observation
records, relationship findings, hypothesis construction, hypothesis verification, andthe applicability of a hypothesis. We adopt this method to our experimental design sothat each learner can be encouraged to meta-cognize the tasks included in the learning
separately. The method also promotes the learner externalizing each cognitive process
occurring inside him/her.
These first two methods capture the internal state of a learner who acquires andexamines real-world information from multiple perspectives.
Method of expressing behavior semantics
Third, regarding the method of expressing behavior semantics, note first thatsemantics in the present study is considered as structured expression of the essence of

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Officilal Conference Proceedingsa target for the purpose of calculating the characteristics and relationships of theinformation to be modeled. For this study, we developed a parameter vector for
semantic expression based on the findings of our participant observations. We
subdivided and defined the different roles played in the behavior generation process inorder to perform a practical analysis of a behavioral generative model.
Trial Analysis
Objective
We made an initial trial analysis as phases 4 and 5 of our research framework so that
we could obtain basic and qualitative findings about the mechanism of real-worldlearning.
MethodWe applied our analytical framework to experiments of environmental learning
involving 30 participants in an experimental forest. Specifically, our experiment took
place at the Kamigamo Experimental Station, Kyoto University, Japan. The 30
experimental subjects were adults (20–29 years old) who all participated voluntarily.
The target task of the experiment utilized our real-world jigsaw method. Learners
formed groups for collaborative learning in the real world (three learners per group).
The duration of each experiment was 1 hour for each group. For our hybrid analysis,
we constructed the data of the process and result of real-world learning from theexperimental data by the following three methods.
The first method is formative evaluation of multimodal data such as video and audio
records (Figure 5). Multimodal data were acquired using the wearable sensor set
developed in our previous research (Okada, M., Kuroki, Y., Nagata, K. & Tada, M.
2020). In addition, data on human cognitive processing were obtained using our realworld introspection method with a tablet device. Based on these data acquisitions, weanalyzed how behavior and real-world information at a certain point affected thelearner's activities.
The second method is summative evaluation of the retrospective learning datacollected by which each learner summarized his/her on-site activities in a structured
format. These retrospective data were obtained in the form of our activity map, which
is a network style representation of a learner’s knowledge (Okada, M., & Tada, M.
2012). This summative evaluation is for quantitatively and qualitatively analyzing thefinal learning results. By considering the aim of the real-world jigsaw method, we
evaluated the data from the viewpoint of whether a learner could obtain a multiviewpoint and integrated description.
Finally, we compare and integrate the results of the above two evaluations, construct asequence of parameter vectors of behavioral semantics, and extract the constraint
conditions hidden in the real world. Then, we analyzed how formative assessment oftime-series learning process was related to the summative assessment of the learning
result, and vice versa. We examined how various behaviors changed the learner's
cognitive state and influenced the learning results.

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Figure 5: Hybrid evaluation of time-series multimodal data.
Results
One basic achievement of this study was that we could frequently observe that our
new task utilizing the real-world jigsaw method promoted the learner actively andautonomously behaving so as to construct, compare, and integrate hypotheses among
the learners and generating new collaborative knowledge to explain the mechanism ofreal-world phenomena from multiple perspectives. The fact that our new task design
was effective is important as a research basis for examining the self-directedmechanism of real-world learning in a natural setting with ecological validity, which
is different from well-defined classroom learning or laboratory experiments. We
consider that our real-world introspection method was helpful not only forencouraging each learner to realize what step he/she is engaged in, but also whathe/she should do at his/her current or subsequent steps. We expect that this type ofenhanced meta-cognition is effective for learners to generate behavior adapted to
his/her learning state.
Let us consider how each of our techniques worked. Video-based observation enabled
us to trace the time series of behavior externalized as a learner’s body movement.
Learners’ activity maps enabled us to read the semantic relationships describing howlearners formed their cognition, thinking, and behavior in the real world, for example,
the observed objects and phenomena, and the theories and hypotheses that connect theobservation results. Our real-world introspection method enabled us to read learners’
internal cognitive processing consisting of multi-step cognitive activities such as
examination of the relevance of observation results, generation of hypotheses,
hypothesis verification, etc. These were our ground data to construct the semantics ofinformation processing ((i), (ii), (iii) in Figure 3) and behavior generation ((iv)-(vii) in
the figure) that were both performed under multi-level constraints 1-4.
Behavior semantics data constructed by our multimodal measurement enabled us tounderstand the cognitive state and constraints of learners, and to find the change
points of the learning situation. For example, we extracted several patterns of themain behavior sequences to explain the success or failure of a real-world learning
task. When learners performed particular types of behavior corresponding to thedifferent constraint levels illustrated in Figure 3, their intellectual achievement of

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learning was heightened. When they did not conduct enough time amount of suchtypes of behavior, their achievement levels were low. To be concrete, learners could
behave so as to obtain high intellectual achievements when they compared andintegrated others’ hypotheses, questions, and predictions as a means for clarifying
their own cognitive grounds to reflect on real-world phenomena. This comprises theco-related functions of behavior generation under multi-step constraints (assumed in
Figure 3).
In the current paper, we have outlined the development of our research frameworkand technical measurement methods for capturing the constraint conditions in realworld learning. Currently, our research is at the stage of accumulating evidence about
the applicability of our model through qualitative observations of actual learner
behavior. As initial achievements of us, we found that (1) it is possible to measureinternal cognitive data for estimating semantic-level data of behavior by encouraging
introspection during real-world learning, (2) behavior semantics can be expressedfrom the correspondence between learning results and internal or representational
behavior, and (3) semantic-level data of behavior enables us to extract and understandthe constraint conditions hidden in the formative process of real-world learning.
Our model of the interaction process in Figure 3 was a clue for considering how theprocess of real-world learning is affected by the double constraints of both human–
environment physical interaction and a human’s cognitive perspectives of real-world
observation. This means that our model can be a theoretical prediction forunderstanding the mechanism of situated intelligence emerging in the real world. We
expect that this model will supply basic knowledge for context-aware learning support
in the world, but quantitative verification of the model is important future work.
Conclusion
We consider that human intelligence is formed through learner–learner and learner–
environment interactions. Thus, we conducted research with the idea that learners'
behavior is determined by various constraint conditions imposed on the body andcognition. In order to extract and understand the constraint conditions hidden in theformative process of real-world learning, we developed and put into practice thefollowing methods: a method for reproducing and analyzing the formative process oflearning and a method for expressing behavioral semantics by formative andsummative evaluation of learning. Based on these techniques, we acquired findings
essential for supporting context-aware learning in the world.
Acknowledgements
The authors thank the staff at the Kamigamo Experimental Forest of Kyoto University
who supported our experiments. The authors also express our thanks to Mr. Yasutaka
Kuroki, a recent graduate of Shizuoka University, Japan, for his basic study. This
research was funded by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP19K12064.

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References
Aronson, E. & Patnoe, S. (1997). The Jigsaw Classroom: Building Cooperation in theClassroom, Longman, New York.
Berger, J. L., & Karabenick, S. A. (2011). Motivation and students’ use of learning
strategies: Evidence of unidirectional effects in mathematics classrooms. Learningand instruction, 21(3), 416-428.
DeWalt, K.M. and DeWalt, B.R. (2011): Participant Observation: A Guide for
Fieldworkers, AltaMira Press, Lanham, MD.
Felder, R. M., & Silverman, L. K. (1988). Learning and teaching styles in engineering
education. Engineering education, 78(7), 674-681.
Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation.
Cambridge university press.
Okada, M., Kuroki, Y., Nagata, K. & Tada, M. (2020). Estimating Spatiotemporal
Features of Collaborative Observation to Activate Scientific Inquiry in the World,
IPSJ Journal, 61(4), 1006-1022.
Okada, M., & Tada, M. (2012). Multimodal Analysis of Spatial Characteristics of a
Real-world Learning Field. Proc. WMUTE2012, (pp. 25-32).
Weinstein, C. E., Acee, T. W., & Jung, J. (2011). Self-regulation and learning
strategies. New directions for teaching and learning, 2011(126), 45-53.
Contact email: m.okada@acm.org

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A Real-Time Engagement Assessment in Online Learning Process Using
Convolutional Neural Network
Shofiyati Nur Karimah, Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Japan
Shinobu Hasegawa, Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Japan
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Abstract
This paper proposes a framework of the practical use of a real-time engagement
estimation to assess learner’s engagement state during an online learning activity suchas reading, writing, watching video tutorials, online exams and online class. The
framework depicts the whole picture of how to implement an engagement estimation
tool into an online learning management system (LMS) in a web-based environment,
where the input is the real-time images of the learners from a webcam. We built a facerecognition and engagement classification model to analyse learners’ facial feature andadopt a convolutional neural network to classify them into one of the three engagementclasses, namely, very engaged, normally engaged, or not engaged. The deep learningmodel is experimented on open Dataset for Affective States in E-Environments(DAiSEE) with hard labeling modification. Extracting images from every 10 seconds
snippet video is done to prepare the dataset then to be fed into the convolutional neuralnetwork (CNN). The engagement states are recorded into a file to evaluate the learner’s
engagement states during any online learning activities.
Keywords: Engagement Estimation, Learners’ Engagement, Online Learning,
Convolutional Neural Network

iafor
The International Academic Forumwww.iafor.org

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Introduction

Learners’ engagement included behavioral engagement (defined as effort andperseverance in learning) and emotional engagement (defined as a sense of belonging),
is significantly affecting academic performance (Lee, 2014). Likewise, engagement isan essential component in a learning process to provide personalized intervention
pedagogy. The long-term absence of engagement in a learning leads to academic failure
and increasing drop-out (Alexander et al., 1997). Therefore, educators, policy makers,
and the research community need to pay more attention to learners’ engagement andways to enhance it (Lee, 2014).
Due to the rapid development of information and communications technology (ICT) on
education and the strike of coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19), where social distancing is
becoming a necessity, there is a paradigm shift of the learning process from a traditionalclassroom to distance learning system, e.g., massive open online courses (MOOCs) orother online learning activities.
In this term, online learning includes reading, writing, watching video lectures, online
exams and real-time online classes through conference applications such as Zoom,
Webex, Google Meet, etc.
Nevertheless, unlike in the traditional classroom, the educators in the online learning
could not see whether all the learners are engaged during the lectures. On the other hand,real-time engagement assessment benefits the educators to adjust their teaching strategy
the way they do in a traditional classroom, e.g., by suggesting some useful readingmaterials or changing the course contents (Woolf et al., 2009). Therefore, several kindsof research on automatic engagement estimation for online learning have been proposed.
Based on the input features to be analyzed, the engagement estimation methods are
categorized into three groups, namely, log-file analysis, sensor data analysis, andcomputer vision-based methods. Computer vision based methods are promising
compared to the other two methods because of their non-intrusiveness in nature andcost-effective hardware and software (Dewan et al., 2019). Therefore, in this paper, we
work on computer vision-based engagement estimation for online learning, where a
convolutional neural network (CNN) is adopted for the engagement level classification.
Although the proposed techniques for automatic engagement estimation have been
proposed, in most cases, the recommendation of how to implement the models/tools tothe actual learning process is omitted. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a frameworkthat shows the whole picture of real-time engagement estimation from the input data,
data processing, classification model, and recommendation of how to implement thetools in a learning management system. We use a publicly available engagement dataset,i.e., Dataset for Affective States in E-Environments (DAiSEE), to train the model andclassify the images into one of three engagement levels: very engaged, normallyengaged, or not engaged.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: In Section 2, related works on
computer vision-based engagement estimation are introduced. Section 3 outlines our
proposed framework and conclude this work in Section 4.

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Related Work

Several methods have been proposed to automatically estimate the engagement level in
online learning by extracting various traits captured from computer vision analysis(e.g., facial expression, eye gaze, and body pose), physiological and neurologicalsensors analysis, and analysis of learners’ activities record-files in online learning(Dewan et al., 2019). Cocea and Weibelzahl (2009, 2011), Sundar and Kumar (2016),
and Aluja-Banet et al. (2019) used data mining and machine learning approaches toanalyze learners’ actions in online learning such as total time spent for study, numberof posts in forum, the average time to solve a problem, number of pages accessed, etc.,
which is stored in log-files, for engagement estimation. However, in log-files analysis,
the annotation is not straight forward since many attributes need to be analyzed. Cocea
and Weibelzahl (2009, 2011) analyzed 30 attributes, Sundar and Kumar (2016)combined with user profile and Aluja-Banet et al. (2019) added 14 behavioral indicatorsin analyses.
Another method possible for engagement estimation is analyzing biological data
extracted from sensors such as heart rate, electroencephalogram (EEG), blood pressure,and galvanic skin response. Chaouachi (2010) studied the correlation between theengagement index with emotional state by implementing EEG in a learning
environment to record the learners emotional elicitation. Goldberg (2011) also provedthat the data analysis extracted from EEG provides a reliable measure of engagement.
Furthermore, Fairclough and Venables (2006) used a multivariate approach to predict
subjective states from psychological data, while Monkaresi (2017) also used heart ratemeasurement to detect the engagement. However, these measures required additional
equipment and online learning hardware requirements that are not convenience to use
in actual education settings.
On the other hand, computer vision-based methods offer several ways to estimate
learners’ engagement by optimizing the appearance features such as body pose, eyegaze, and facial expression. Grafsgaard et al. (2013), Whitehill (2014), and Monkaresi(2017) using machine learning to estimate engagement from facial expression features.
They used machine learning toolboxes, e.g., Computer Expression Recognition
Toolbox (CERT) and WEKA, to track the face and classification. However, using thetoolboxes for engagement estimation will automate a part of the classification process
but not the implementation in the real-time education process since humans manually
input the extracted features. On the other hand, Nezami et al. (2017, 2018) and Dewan(Dewan et al., 2018) using deep learning to build their own classification model toestimate the engagement of online learners which possibly enable to make thepreprocess both in the implementation process and the training process is done in thesame way so that the input for engagement prediction is in the same distribution as the
input for classification model training.
Therefore, in this work, we focus on utilizing deep learning for the real-time
implementation of automatic engagement estimation. First of all, we draw theframework to show the whole mechanism of how the learners are joining online
learning while the tool is capturing their face through a webcam or a built-in camera
PC and record the engagement state into a file. The file contained all the learners’
engagement state records, which can be downloaded anytime by the educator toevaluate their teaching or course planning. For the engagement classification model, in

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this work, we are using a convolutional neural network (CNN) to classify the real-time
image into very engaged, normally engaged, or not engaged class.
To train the model, we use the DAiSEE dataset with the feature extraction, in the sameway, to extract the learners’ face features while joining online learning. We use CNN
because it is relatively simple and one of the deep learning methods broadly used inliterature (Gudi et al., 2015; Li & Deng, 2020; Murshed et al., 2019; Nezami et al.,2017). Furthermore, we believe that simplicity and cost efficiency are the keys to areliable implementation of engagement estimation in the actual online learning process.
3.

Real-time Engagement Estimation for Online Learning Process

In this section, we propose the framework of automatic real-time engagement
assessment in online learning. As shown in Figure 1, the term automatic is not only
automatic in the annotation or engagement classification. Instead, it includes the entire
process from when the learner joins online learning through a learning management
system (LMS), where the engagement estimation tool is installed, so that the educatorreceives an engagement log file.
As shown in Figure 1(b), in the output part, the engagement log file contains theinformation of the learner’s engagement state with respect to the time it records thestate and the average engagement state of the learner when the learner sign-out fromthe LMS or the course content page.

(a)

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Figure 1: (a) The Proposed Framework of engagement assessment system where theclassification system generically depicted in (b).
3.1.

Pre-process

The term pre-process in this work refers to the processing of the input video to be fed
as an input for the classification model both. For fully automatic engagement
estimation, the pre-process is not only required in building the classification model,
where the input is a set of references with engagement state label, but also when thesystem is running, where the input is the real-time video stream of a learner joining
online learning and need to be classified its engagement state. The pre-processing when
the system is online needs to be done in the same way as the pre-process for training
the classification model so that the input images to be predicted are in the same
distribution as the input for training the model.
In this work, the pre-processing comprises Viola-Jones (V&J) face detector (Paul Viola& Jones, 2004), where rectangle features are used to detect the presence of that featurein the given face images. Figure 2. shows three types of rectangle features used in V&J
face detection, i.e., two-rectangle feature, three-rectangle feature, and four-rectangle
feature. The sum of pixels under the white rectangle is subtracted from the sum of pixels
under the black rectangle, resulting in a single value in each feature.

Figure 2: Rectangle features used in V&J face detection
The rectangle features are computed rapidly using integral images to be processed inreal-time (P. Viola & Jones, 2001; Paul Viola & Jones, 2004). Given the base window

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is 24x24, the dimensionality of the set of rectangle features is quite large, e.g., 160,000+
features. Therefore, Adaboost is used for dimensionality reduction (from 160,000+
features to 6,000 features) and to find the single rectangular feature and threshold thatbest separates the positive (faces) and negative (non-faces) images. Then, by using
cascade classifier, all the features are grouped into several stages where each stage hasa certain number of features to form complete face images while discarding the negative
images. The face images are then represented in a rectangular region of interest (RoI)
to be then fed to the Neural Network for training.
3.2.

Classification Model

The classification model in this work employs a convolutional neural network (CNN)
for engagement classification using the image features obtained from V&J facedetection. We use the typical CNN architecture which contains an input layer, multiple
hidden layers, and an output layer. The hidden layers combine convolutional layers,
activation layers, pooling layers, normalization layers, and fully connected layers that
we classified into convolution blocks and fully connected block as depicted in Figure
1(b).
3.3.

DatasetTo build the classification model, we used a dataset for affective states in eenvironments (DAiSEE (Gupta et al., 2016)) for training. DAiSEE is “in the wild”
dataset, which captured students’ faces watching videos in unconstraint environment,such as dorm rooms, laboratories, library, etc., and in three different illumination
settings, i.e., light, dark and neutral. Figure 3 shows the structure of DAiSEE. There are
112 participants, where each participant was recorded in approximately 13 to 20
minutes. Each video was then split into several 10 seconds snippet videos so that there
are 9068 videos in total, and 8925 of them were labelled. Originally, the dataset islabelled into four different affective states (i.e., boredom, engagement, confusion,
frustration) with levels ranged between 0 to 3 for each state. We focus on theengagement label in this work, and modify it into three engagement classes, namely,
very engaged, normally engaged, and not engaged, for the engagement level 3, 2, andless than 2, respectively. Figure 4 shows the sample of the extracted images after preprocessing to be fed into the neural network. In the DAiSEE dataset, the data have been
split into training, validation, and test folders, where after the pre-processing, we got
the number of face images as shown in Figure 5.

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Figure 3: The structure of DAiSEE dataset and the pre-process

Figure 4: Samples of extracted images from DAiSEE dataset. (a)-(e), (d)-(h), and (i)(m) are images with labelled as very-engaged, not-engaged and normal-engaged,
respectively.

Figure 5: Number of images per class from DAiSEE dataset
3.4.

Experiment Result

As shown in Figure 1(b), to build an engagement estimation tool prototype, we
experimented 2432 face images for training and 654 face images for the validation test
and then exported the model and the weights into a JSON and H5 files, respectively.
We set the number of convolution and filter layers in the convolutional blocks as the

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primal hyper-parameters, i.e., 64 (3,3), 128 (5,5), 512 (3,3) 512 (3,3) for convolutional
blocks 1,2,3, and 4, respectively. For fully connected blocks and softmax layers, we use
Dense layer 256,512, and 3. Other hyper-parameters we also set are Max Pooling (2,2),
dropout (0.25) and rectified linear unit (RELU) activation in all convolutional blocks,
while for optimization we used Adam optimizer with learning rate 0.0005 and L2
regularization 0.0001.
From the network and hyper-parameters set above, we got the training accuracy is 71%
and the validation accuracy is 62%. To build a web-based application with the classifiermodel we have obtained, we used the Flask app from python, and the screenshot of therunning application is shown in Figure 6.

Figure 6: Screenshot of the running engagement estimation tool4.

Discussion and Conclusion

In this section, we conclude this paper with a brief discussion of our main contribution
based on the description in the previous sections and consider the limitation future
work.
4.1.

Contribution and Findings

The main goal is to introduce the automatic engagement assessment of learners inonline learning, where the term of automatic not only regards the classification method
but also includes the real-time process when the learner is conducting the online
learning. Therefore, we proposed the framework in Figure 1 to give an image for
implementing real-time engagement assessment in an actual online learning scenario.
Figure 1(a) helps to easily see the workflow where the engagement estimation tool isimplemented and how it works during online learning. While from the Figure 1(b), we
can see the pre-process is needed to build the classification model from the dataset andto estimate learners’ engagement from the streaming video. Therefore, both pre-ISSN: 2186-5892

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processes should be done in the same way so that resulting in the input for theengagement classification is in the same distribution as the input for building theclassification model. This finding motivated us in this work to extract the grayscale
image and treated it as the feature to be classified due to its simplicity. The
implementation of the framework in Figure 1(a) is the engagement estimation tool
prototype as a web-based application, as shown in Figure 6.
4.2.

Limitations and Future WorkIn developing the prototype of engagement estimation tool prototype, we found thatdataset preparation to the build the classification model is the most challenging issue.
In this work, we use the DAiSEE dataset because it includes an engagement label andhas been used for engagement estimation research in some literatures (Dewan et al.,2018; Kaur et al., 2019). However, we found that there is a significant difference in thenumber of images between the classes. As shown in Figure 5, the number of images ina very engaged class is much larger than other in classes, especially not engaged class.
Furthermore, as shown in Figure 4, it is difficult to distinguish between the images withdifferent class labels. Additionally, since there are three different illumination settings
in the data, there is a possibility that the extracted features we obtained are not in thesame distribution. Therefore, we expected these to cause the data variance and result
the overfitting in prediction even though we have applied regularization and dropout
methods during the training.
For future work, to the more in-depth analysis of the dataset, it considers its annotation
method and data distribution. Furthermore, intensity normalization can be consideredin feature extraction to solve the illumination problem. In addition, trying out otherengagement datasets such as EmotiW2018 (Dhall et al., 2018; Niu et al., 2018) is
another possibility.
Another limitation of this work is associated with the neural network we used forengagement estimation, where the result far from perfect. We acknowledge thislimitation because using a typical CNN model that works with minimizing a loss
function, which is computationally feasible but represents inaccurate prediction(Murshed et al., 2019). Some other features such as head pose, eye gaze, and distance
between the monitor and the face can be further considered for input features for better
accuracy.
4.3.

Concluding Remarks

It is our hope that the engagement state can be included in student assessment in online
learning, where the engagement can be fully automatically estimated. The fully
automatic estimation is expected to lead to more effective learning and teaching,especially in an online learning environment. To that end, we presented the frameworkof how to build an online learning scenario with the in-built engagement estimation
tool, wherein future improvement on the dataset training and pre-process, both forbuilding classification model and when the system is online running, might increase theaccuracy and overcome the overfitting.

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Contact email: sn-karimah, hasegawa@jaist.ac.jp

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Self-Regulated Learning Recognition and Improvement Framework
Minh-Tuan Tran, Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Japan
Shinobu Hasegawa, Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Japan
The Asian Conference on Education 2020
Official Conference Proceedings
Abstract
Self-regulated learning (SRL) is a learning approach whereby learners actively set
learning goals, then monitor, control their learning progress, and finally reflect on
their learning performance. In the last four decades, SRL has drawn attention fromresearchers, schools, and universities that aim to equip their learners with self-study
ability. With the development of distance learning and e-learning technologies, SRL
has become a crucial ability for learners. Profoundly, in the last several months, thestrike of COVID-19 has isolated students, teachers and dramatically challenged thecurrent learning and teaching approaches; COVID-19 seems to force learners to selfregulate their own study without options. Understanding SRL maturity is necessary
for the educational growth and knowledge fulfillment of individuals. Although there
have been increasing studies and models about how SRL works and is measured, it
still remains a challenge for research on the principles on which SRL exists andoperates and the foundation for SRL intervention for improvement. Aiming for theseprinciples, we propose the SRL Recognition and Improvement Framework, which isconstructed on the foundation of metacognition and cognition, the philosophical habitof the mind, and existing SRL models and measurement methods, to support theprocess of recognizing one’s SRL maturity level and improving SRL ability. Based on
the solid principles, the framework will provide a reference point to assess thevalidation of SRL models and to design procedures, methods, exercises for supporting
individuals to evaluate their SRL ability and improve it.
Keywords: Self-Regulated Learning, SRL, SRL Ability, SRL Maturity, SRL
Recognition, SRL Character, SRL Habit, SRL Improvement, Self-Regulation,
Framework, Cognition, Metacognition, Mind

iafor
The International Academic Forumwww.iafor.org

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Introduction
Consciously or not, we all want further education. Almost all of us desire broad anddeep knowledge and have a passion for life-long learning. In the internet era, we canbypass space and time constraints to approach high-quality educational programs.
Thus, we can choose to learn the subjects in which we are interested. However, it
poses another great challenge. Since we learn in our own paths, we might neither
always have instructors nor direct guidance; thus, we must know how to learn
effectively. In other words, we need to become self-regulated learners. Profoundly, inthe last several months, the strike of COVID-19 has isolated us – students as well asteachers - and dramatically challenged the current learning and teaching approaches;
COVID- 19 seems to force us to self-regulate our learning without options.
With the above background that introduces us to self-regulated learning, let us start
the path of SRL recognition and improvement framework development with thequestion: What is it mean that we self-regulate our learning?
Self-regulated learning (SRL) is a crucial way of leading oneself in education. SRL is
not a new thesis. It originated from ancient times, is known as the human’s ability ofself-consciousness (Smith, 2020), and has continuously grown in research over thelast four decades. Professor Barry Zimmerman, the leading figure in Self-regulated
learning, defines that “Self-regulated learning involves metacognitive, motivational,
and behavioral processes that are personally initiated to acquire knowledge and skill,such as goal setting, planning, learning strategies, self-reinforcement, self-recording,and self-instruction” (Barry J Zimmerman, 2015, p. 541).
Boekaerts, also a profound contributor in SRL research, expresses that the ability tocontrol and direct one’s learning is the most noticeable characteristic of a selfregulated learner (Boekaerts & Cascallar, 2006). In other words, SRL is a learning
approach whereby learners actively set learning goals, then monitor, control theirlearning progress, and finally reflect on their learning performance.
SRL research has gained breakthrough discoveries of models, methods for measuring
and improving SRL ability (Panadero, 2017; Panadero et al., 2016). However,different researches investigate SRL from only a single insufficient perspective, suchas social-cognitive, psychological, or metacognitive viewpoints. Hence, there isconfusion about applying these models and gaining benefits from them in practice. To
argue and develop reliably universal SRL related strategies and models, we mustbuild the SRL related strategies and models on a sound foundation and principles. For
that reason, this research introduces an SRL framework based on which ones’ SRL
maturity levels can be adequately measured, and then ones receive appropriate
exercises, advice, and supports to improve their SRL ability.
Research Objectives
We specify this research into three research questions:
RQ1: What factors construct SRL ability?
RQ2: What are the measurement units of these SRL factors?

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These questions articulate the essence of SRL. The factors are principles that cause
SRL to come into existence and grow in maturity. The factors will be the SRL
framework’s building blocks from which SRL recognition and improvement activities
are developed.
RQ3: What intrinsically and extrinsically motivate individuals to self-regulate theirlearning?
This question shows the motivations that start from individuals themselves and thattrigger from the outside world, promoting them to self-regulate their learning.
Answers to this question provide an essential source of SRL improvement methods.
In the next section, this paper will review the current SRL models for theiroutstanding contributions and the missing pieces, which encourage introducing the
SRL recognition and improvement framework. The process of developing theframework is then illustrated in detail. The authors will conclude with the benefits andpotential application of the proposed framework.
Literature review
The outstanding achievements of research on SRL are the SRL models, each of which
describes the operation of SRL at individuals from a specific viewpoint. Panadero(2017) described, analyzed, and compared several popular SRL models to the extent
of their underlying theories, processes, and empirical evidence about the application
and associated measuring tools. We would like to journey through six outstanding
SRL models to analyze the viewpoints from which the models are constructed.
Winne’s model of SRL
Professor Phillip H. Winne’s research on SRL provides a view of SRL from ametacognitive perspective, which is demonstrated in his following model (see Figure1). Winne and Hadwin’s model (1996) emphasizes the role of metacognition in the
self-regulation of cognitive tactics and strategies. This model demonstrates a 2-phase
SRL process to accomplish a learning task. The first phase is planning, and the second
phase is executing the plan, monitoring the progress, and making the adaptation.
Though sharing the same SRL patterns, individual learners’ SRL ability differs in 5
points; they are (i) domain knowledge that the individual has accumulated from his or
her educational background and history, (ii) knowledge of tactics and strategies,
which is a reservoir of learning methods and techniques, (iii) performance of tactics
and strategies which are the proficiency of applying learning techniques, (iv)regulation of tactics and strategies that monitor how well ones learn and makeappropriate adaptations, and (v) global dispositions which are pathways to learn.

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Figure 1. Winne's model of SRL (Winne, 1996)
Boekaerts’s dual processing model and six-component model
Professor Boekaerts’ research on SRL can be dated back to the 1980s. Her researchmainly investigates the role of goals and self-esteem in SRL (Boekaerts & Niemivirta,
2000). Boekaerts introduces 2 SRL models, the six-component model of SRL and thedual processing model.
In the Boekaerts’ dual processing model (see Figure 2), the SRL pattern isdetermined by a learner’s selection of goals; and there are two main pathways ofgoals: the growth of knowledge and skills and the well-being self-esteem. Dependingon the level between those pathways, learners will gather, align resources, and selfregulate their learning to balance learning performance and self-esteem (Boekaerts &Cascallar, 2006).

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Figure 2. Boekaerts' Dual Processing Model (Boekaerts & Niemivirta, 2000)
Boekaerts’ six-component model of SRL (see Figure 3) views SRL as theinteroperation of cognition and motivation throughout the aspects of goal setting,strategy use, domain knowledge (Boekaerts, 1996). In this model, cognition andmotivation function simultaneously when self-regulated learners set goals, prepare
cognitive and motivational strategies, and recall prior related knowledge to learn new
knowledge, which is domain-specific, effectively.

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Figure 3. Boekaerts' six-component model of SRL
Pintrich’s Framework of Phases and Areas for SRL
Pintrich’s crucial contribution to SRL research is that he points out the common
attributes shared by all existing SRL models, which are the following:Self-regulated learners are active in terms of setting learning goals, reviewing priorknowledge, preparing cognitive strategies and learning environment for their learning
process,
Self-regulated learners have the potential to monitor, control, and regulate internaland external factors of the learning process,All SRL models have criteria against which self-regulated learners reflect theirprogress in order to adjust their learning progress,

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Self-regulatory activities are the means that self-regulated learners apply to reach theirlearning goals (Pintrich, 2000).
Pintrich illustrates these common attributes in his SRL framework (see Figure 4),
called the framework of Phases and Areas of SRL (Pintrich, 2000). The frameworkcomprises four phases of SRL, which are forethought planning and activation,
monitoring, control, reaction and reflection, and regulation activities on each phase in
the areas of learners’ cognition, motivation, behavior, and context. Running
throughout the framework and joining self-regulatory activities are learning goals andmotivations (Pintrich, 2000), the two key factors that Pintrich pays special attention toin his explanation of the framework.

Figure 4. Pintrich's Framework of Phases and Areas for Self-Regulated Learning(Pintrich, 2000)
Zimmerman’s cyclical phase model
Professor Zimmerman is one of the pioneer SRL researchers and mainly bases his
SRL models on professor Albert Bandura’s well-known socio-cognitive theory(Bandura, 1989).
Viewing self-regulation as a result of the intertwine among an individual’s
consciousness, behaviors, and the environment where he or she is working on aparticular task, The cyclical phase model emphasizes the process aspect of SRL. It
illustrates the paths of interaction between learners, learning tasks, and the learning
environment in a specific context defined by learning contents and environment
settings.
Among Zimmerman’s SRL models, the most popular is Zimmerman’s cyclical phasemodel. The model demonstrates that individuals self-regulate their learning via a 3stage process (Barry J. Zimmerman, 2000) (see Figure 5). The process starts with the

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forethought phase, in which learners begin their learning journey by analyzing
learning tasks, setting learning goals, planning cognitive strategies, and motivating
themselves into learning. Then, the learners proceed to the performance phase, where
they put their learning plan into action with conscious self-control over how theylearn and a self-observation over how well they have been learning. Finally, thelearners wrap up their learning with the self-reflection phase in which they judge thelearning journey by comparing the learning performance against the goals set in thefirst phase, analyzing factors that contribute to learning achievements, and in which
they seek adjustments and alternative approaches to help them learn more effectively
and productively.

Figure 5. Zimmerman's cyclical phase model (B.J. Zimmerman & Moylan, 2009)
Efklides’s Metacognitive and Affective model of SRL
One of the latest SRL models is the Metacognitive and Affective model SRL(MASRL) of professor Efklides (see Figure 6), which illustrates the intervention of
metacognition, motivation, and affect into the SRL process when an individual learns
specific tasks.
Efklides (2011) demonstrates that an individual’s SRL manifests at two levels; one is
the Person level, which is a general SRL level or about SRL characteristics of anindividual revealing regardless of learning contents or context, and the other is Task
x Person level, which is about the ability the individual to apply specific SRL
behaviors within a particular learning task. When individuals, following the MASRL
model, are engaged in a learning task, their Person level sets learning goals andestablishes top-down self-regulation based on their metacognitive knowledge,
metacognitive experiences, and metacognitive skills (written as MK, ME, MS in
Figure 6). Those metacognitive strategies have been accumulated and built up into

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the learners’ SRL traits. In the Task x Person level, their cognitive strategies are
regulated in a bottom-up self-regulation manner to meet the task requirements andreorganize the Person level.

Figure 6. Metacognitive and Affective model of SRL (Efklides, 2011)
From the models mentioned earlier, each of them presses SRL on specific angles fromprocess orientation to components orientation, from metacognition to motivation.
They demonstrate how individual learners self-regulate their learning but have yet
fundamentally explained why such an SRL process can lead to learning efficiency.
Furthermore, starting from a specific perspective, the models might not provide acomprehensive ground on which SRL ability is evaluated.
The development of SRL Recognition and Improvement Framework
Principle of the mind
To be generic, reliable, and time-withstanding, the SRL framework must be laid on
principles of the mind. The mind has two faculties (see Figure 7): the intellect, whosefunctionality is to understand knowledge, and the will, whose functionality is to drive
the intellect and to choose to achieve knowledge (McInerny & O’Callaghan, 2018).
The intellect operates as we cognize the world and its knowledge via what we usuallycall cognition. The activities that signify the operation of the intellect are analyzing,
judging, abstracting certain target knowledge. Specific behaviors of the intellect canbe recognized via Bloom’s taxonomies (Krathwohl, 2002). The will operates as weare aware of our learning process.

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Figure 7. Two faculties of the mind
This statement gets clear when we compare the unconscious way a child learns withthe conscious way a graduate learns. In either case, both absorb knowledge; however,a child does not recognize his or her in-progress growth of knowledge while an adultdoes recognize it. A sign for the recognition of the learning process is that adults
doubt, reason over the new knowledge, and adjust their learning approach whilechildren tend to assent new knowledge and follow instructions. To obtain intricate
knowledge, one needs to be aware of his or her learning process in order to control
their cognitive activities. In order words, the stronger one is aware of his or her will
and uses it, the more fulfillment one has towards knowledge. The will manifests itself
via metacognition.
The philosophical habit of the mind
Whether we have noticed, our mind has a habit of desiring to know. The more weknow the world, the more we realize that the extension of knowledge is beyond ourcurrent understanding, and the more we desire to know. This routine is, as Saint John
Henry Neuman (John Henry Newman, 1852, as cited in Tillman, 1990) puts it, thephilosophical habit of the mind (see Figure 8). Thanks to this habit, we know more
about the world, assimilate knowledge, and apply it for evaluation, creation of avariety of fields of science, art, literature, and so forth. The philosophical habit of themind manifests in our learning process, and most clearly, when we are the regulator of
our own learning process, which is self-regulated learning.

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Figure 8. The philosophical habit of the mind
SRL is a conscious learning approach by which one plan, manage, and reflect on theirlearning process. Looking at its characteristics, we can see that SRL operates on theinter-operation of cognition and metacognition, which follows the principles of themind.
Causes of SRL
SRL is a learning pattern that operates on the principles of the mind. Why does itexist? Everything must have reasons for its existence; otherwise, it has no use, cannot
be recognized or improved. How can we recognize and evaluate our SRL? Whatcauses SRL into existence? It is recognized based on two types of causes (see Figure9): intrinsic causes, which construct the essence of SRL, and extrinsic causes, which
explain the sources of SRL and the end goals where SRL leads us (Shields, 2020).
The intrinsic causes contain the formal cause that defines SRL structure and thematerial cause that personalizes the individual's SRL quality. The extrinsic causes
comprise the efficient cause that explains where SRL comes from and the final causethat shows how SRL grows to its end goal.

Figure 9. Four causes of SRL
When one determines and realizes these four causes of SRL, one knows how to
improve SRL ability and fully benefits SRL.

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Principles of SRL
Starting from 2 faculties of the mind, their inter-operation, which molds into SRL
learning pattern, we can form the principles of SRL (see Figure 10). As stated in a
sentence, SRL is grounded in the operation of the mind, grows with the developmentof the mind, has a nature designed to reach the goal of understanding, andpersonalizes to each learner.

Figure 10. Principles of SRL
SRL Recognition and Improvement Process
Over the last two decades, there has been a wide range of research on SRL
measurement and intervention for improving SRL. There are two SRL measurement
approaches: SRL trait and SRL context-based skills. SRL trait describes the SRL
character of a learner in general. SRL context-based skills illustrate a learner’s ability
to apply specific SRL skills in particular learning tasks.
SRL has been measured traditionally by data from self-reports, interviews, andquestionnaires, which are usually known as the offline form of measure, and in recent
years by data from learning behavior observation, which is known as the online formof measure. S. F. E. Rovers et al., in their review of SRL measurement methods, showthat the offline form tends to give insight into learner’s overall level of SRL while theonline form evaluates specific SRL strategies (Rovers et al., 2019). These two forms
of SRL measure, though often analyzed separately, are related to each other. The
offline form describes a learner’s SRL character, while the online form illustrates thelearner’s ability to apply specific SRL skills in particular learning tasks. In order that
the SRL measurement provides accurate and meaningful data for SRL intervention
and improvement purpose, there is a need for a firm theoretical model, grounding, orframework of SRL strategies so that the nature of SRL can be understood at the
principle level and the SRL intervention can be offered to learners to support themfrom that fundamental basis (Araka et al., 2020; Rovers et al., 2019).
Interventing learners’ learning process to improve their SRL ability is the purpose of
all the SRL measurement activities. SRL intervention has been conducted via two
approaches, one is that teachers help learners with specific learning tasks, and theother is that teachers provide learners with metacognitive feedback and the learners
then reflect and make adaptation to their learning process (Araka et al., 2020). In theformer, the assistance the learners receive is personal and related to concrete learning
tasks. In the latter, the assistance is a kind of reminders and tips about learning
methods. Relating to the SRL measurement approaches mentioned in the previous
section, the former intervention is performed after the data collected from the online

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form of intervention while the latter intervention uses the data from the offline formof intervention. The former approach is usually applied in traditional school settings.
In e-learning environments, the latter approach is provided with the support ofeducational data mining and learning analytics tools (Araka et al., 2020).
One’s SRL ability is recognized by one’s SRL character, which comprises one’s SRL
characteristics and habits of regulating his or her learning. Derived from the principles
of SRL, the SRL character is fivefold: (i) wisdom, which is the ability to see the startand the end, (ii) knowledge, which is the ability to use prerequisite knowledge toacquire new knowledge, (iii) understanding which is the ability to apply cognitive
strategies, (iv) counsel which is the ability to seek helps and reflect, and (v) fortitude,
which is the ability to persevere during hard times. The more consistency the SRL
character demonstrates, the more maturity the SRL ability is. The development of
SRL character is constructed via SRL habits, which are the habits of applying
cognitive and metacognitive strategies, tactics, and skills to the learning process. For
that reason, the improvement of the SRL ability begins with habituating learning
strategies, both cognitively and metacognitively (see Figure 11).

Figure 11. SRL Recognition and Improvement Process
Conclusions: the SRL Recognition and Improvement Framework
To establish a stable foundation for the SRL framework, we have traced the existenceof SRL from the basic principle of the mind and its operation. We then have walked
through reasons for the existence and development of SRL. And we havedemonstrated the process by which an individual’s SRL can be qualitatively andquantitively recognized and improved. Setting the SRL recognition and improvement
process on the principles of SRL, we introduce the SRL Recognition and
Improvement Framework (abbreviated as SRL framework), as shown in Figure 12.

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Figure 12. SRL Recognition and Improvement Framework
Let us return to the research questions. The SRL framework provides the following
answers.
RQ1: What factors construct SRL ability?
SRL is an entity that actually exists and operates on the basic functionalities of themind; therefore, its ability can be explained by specifying the causes of SRL for eachlearner. In general, the factors constructing SRL ability are the source, form, the goal,
and the pattern of SRL at each learner. Each learner has his or her educational
background, learning experiences, personality and therefore has his or her path orsource of SRL development. SRL operates to enable individuals to approachknowledge effectively and efficiently; hence, it possesses a form for achieving that
aim. Since SRL does not end for itself but supports the learner to a goal in knowledge
achievement, the goals to which SRL is directed also shape the SRL ability. Finally,
individuals develop their cognitive and metacognitive strategies differently and shape
their SRL habits and character in different paths; thus, the SRL pattern is thenpersonalized to each individual. Thus, SRL converges in the form but varies
according to individuals’ background, learning goals, and cognitive andmetacognitive habits.
RQ2: What are the measurement units of these SRL factors?
SRL ability reveals via a learner’s SRL habits and character, which are currently
evaluated by learning behavior observation and different types of self-reports.
Frequency of behavior application should be as the measurement unit for learning
behaviors, and for measuring the quality of self-reports, such measurement scales as
Likert scale is reasonable.

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RQ3: What intrinsically and extrinsically motivate individuals to self-regulate theirlearning?
Although motivation is one of SRL's critical components (Efklides, 2011), a learner
may find it unintriguing or unnecessary to develop the SRL ability since the benefits
that SRL delivers are vaguely visible. However, understanding SRL from theprinciples of the mind, a learner can be motivated to self-regulate his or her learning
extrinsically by progress to knowledge and intrinsically by the perfection of theintellect and will, cognition and metacognition.
The purpose of this SRL framework, as we stated, is not to replace the existing SRL
models, which play a crucial role in guiding and shaping SRL from an idea into
concrete components and processes. This SRL framework provides a reference point
to argue the appropriate scope where the SRL models can apply.
To demonstrate this purpose, let us briefly review the above SRL models from thisSRL framework viewpoint. Reflecting on the principles of the mind, all SRL models
above shows the interoperation of cognitive and metacognitive activities, thoughsome SRL models pay more attention to metacognition or motivation while the others
focus on cognition. Checked against causes of SRL, some SRL models illustrate the
SRL form as processes, components; the other shows SRL elements to personalize
SRL toward individual learners. All SRL models somehow describe the intrinsic
causes of SRL, but they have not discussed extrinsic causes of SRL, which play a
directive role for the SRL improvement approaches. Viewed from different
perspectives and unified within this SRL framework viewpoint, applying these SRL
models following a particular arrangement will help learners comprehend their SRL
ability cognitively and metacognitively, and show them the quality of their SRL
character and the frequency of their SRL habits.
In summary, throughout this paper, we have walked through several popular SRL
models, journey the path of the mind, and ended with a framework based on simple
but solid principles of the mind to illustrate the process to recognize and improve SRL
ability. The SRL framework is beneficial for use as a reference point to assess thevalidation of SRL models and to design procedures, methods, exercises for supporting
individuals to evaluate their SRL ability and improve it. Since this framework isdeveloped via arguments, future work must involve applying the framework to design
empirical SRL recognition and improvement tools, programs, and exercises. Suchempirical evidence will demonstrate the validity of the framework.
Acknowledgments
The authors wish to express gratitude and thanks to Japan Advanced Institute of
Science and Technology and Research Center for Advanced Computer Infrastructure
for sponsoring this research and providing valuable insights and feedback.

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References
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Contact email: tran.minh.tuan@jaist.ac.jp
hasegawa@jaist.ac.jp

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Transforming International Pre-Service Teachers’ Pedagogy with Technology inthe Era of Multiliteracy
Huijing Wen, Moravian College, United States
Valerie Harlow Shinas, Lesley University, United States
The Asian Conference on Education 2020
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Abstract
Higher educational institutions in the US witnessed a growing number of international
students on campus. This group of students brought with them diverse linguistic,
cultural backgrounds that are distinct from the mainstream American teacher
candidates. It is necessary, then, for faculty to create experiences for international
teacher candidates that support the development of the knowledge and skills for their
future roles. The case study examined how an international pre-service teacher from
China enrolled in a graduate-level literacy and technology course that aimed to develop
the pedagogical and technological knowledge, negotiated her cultural and professional
identity in a Caucasian-dominated classroom through coursework and how she used
innovative digital tools to support her future ESL students in language and literacy
learning. The course artifacts of blog posts, digital storytelling product, unit plan, endof-course reflections in addition to interview data were analyzed. Results showed that
1) the opportunities of exploring and using technological tools allowed international
students’ expression of their cultural and sociocultural perspective using culturallyspecific images, sound, and language; 2) the course’s scaffold and hands-on nature of
project-based learning effectively supported international students to develop theknowledge and skills for their future roles by preparing them to create similar
opportunities for their students.
Keywords: Case Study, International Student, Literacy Instruction, Teacher Education,
Technology Integration

iafor
The International Academic Forumwww.iafor.org

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Introduction
Today’s teacher candidates have grown up fully immersed in digital technologies(Prensky, 2001). Born during the digital age, they are skilled users of handheld devices
and Internet-connected computers, we might expect them to readily integrate digital
tools into their instruction. However, teacher candidates have also grown up in a worldof state-mandated, scripted curriculum and standardized assessments that deterred theirteachers from integrating emerging technologies into their instruction (Hutchison &Reinking, 2011). Thus, we cannot assume that teacher candidates have the knowledgeor the pedagogical skills needed to integrate technology into their instruction without
explicit preparation that highlights its powerful potential for instruction. In other words,
teacher education courses must prepare candidates to design literacy instruction for adigital world, especially in times of pandemic.
Higher educational institutions in the US witnessed a growing number of international
students on campus during the past decades, posing challenges to the teacher education
programs. This group of students brought with them diverse linguistic, cultural
backgrounds that are distinct from the mainstream American teacher candidates.
Inherently, it poses challenges to the teacher education programs in the US how to best
prepare them to be day-1 ready classroom teachers. Their status as international
students prevent them from engaging in field-based experiences. It is necessary, then,for faculty to create experiences for international teacher candidates that support thedevelopment of the knowledge and skills for their future roles.
This exploratory case study examined the effect of a graduate-level literacy andtechnology course in transforming the pedagogical thinking of a teacher candidate from
China relative to integration of technology in literacy instruction. We were interested
in understanding how the coursework helped her negotiate her cultural identity in an
American teacher education program and how she used innovative digital tools to
support her English as Second Language students in language and literacy learning. The
following question guided this work: How did an international graduate student
enrolled in a teacher education program in the United States define and express her
understanding of 21st century literacy instruction?
Theoretical Framework
Multiple related perspectives combining technology and literacy informed thisresearch: Situated Sociocultural Approach (Gee, 2010); Pedagogy of Multiliteracies(New London Group, 1996); TPACK (Mishra & Koehler, 2006); Planning Cycle(Colwell & Hutchison, 2014) all point toward the interactions between literacy andtechnology in and out of schools and they shape how we analyze our data.
The situated, sociocultural perspective allowed us to examine how this international
students’ cultural identity framed our participant’s perspectives about teaching andlearning. The Pedagogy of Multiliteracies (New London Group, 1996) was identified
as an appropriate and useful lens. It describes the complex nature of teaching themultiple literacies students need to be fully literate in an interdisciplinary, multimodal,and digital world. It allowed us to examine the critical features of Tina’s digitalstorytelling project, including how she expressed her cultural identity throughintentional design that “transforms knowledge by producing new constructions and

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representations of reality” (New London Group, 1996, p.76). This perspective allowed
us to closely examine the ways Tina applied course content to her digital story (Cope& Kalantzis, 2016) as well as how modes were used to communicate a coherent, unified
message (Jewitt, 2009).
This research is also framed by the Technological Pedagogical and Content Knowledge
theoretical framework (TPACK; Mishra & Koehler, 2006; see Figure 1) and theTechnology Integration Planning Cycle for Literacy and Language Arts (see Figure 2),
an instructional planning framework developed by Hutchinson and Woodward (2014).
These two frameworks provide theoretical and practical guidance for studying
technology integration in the context of literacy education.

Figure 1: TPACK Framework, http://tpack.org

Figure 2: The Technology Integration Planning Cycle for Literacy and Language Arts
The TPACK framework, developed from Shulman’s (1986) notion of PedagogicalContent Knowledge (PCK), describes three bodies of knowledge required for effective
teaching: content knowledge (CK), pedagogy knowledge (PK), and technology
knowledge (TK; Mishra &Koehler, 2006), and how these combine to create synthesizedknowledge domains: technological content knowledge (TCK), pedagogical content
knowledge (PCK), technological pedagogical knowledge (TPK), and TPACK. TPACK
is a useful lens for examining the ways preservice teacher knowledge developed
through participation in a literacy and technology course. The TPACK-influenced
Technology Integration Planning Cycle (Hutchinson & Woodward, 2014) describes the
key elements in a teacher's decision-making process when designing literacy instruction
with technology.

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Literature Review
Teaching with technology “is complicated, multi-faceted, and a developmental
process” (Foulger, Graziano, Schmidt-Crawford, & Slykhuis, 2017, p. 10), yet it offers
numerous benefits to learners. Technology offers classroom teachers more
opportunities to establish an active and constructive learning environment wherestudents engage in inquiry, explore and construct ideas, and solve problems (Goss et.,2016).
However, a persistent challenge for teacher education is preparing
technologically skilled teachers who thoughtfully integrate digital tools withinstandards-based literacy instruction (Harris & Hofer, 2009; Hutchison and Woodward,2014). The challenge lies in the complex nature of preparing preservice teachers to use
technology in their classroom since it must address all the domains of effective teaching– pedagogical knowledge, content knowledge, and technology knowledge (Koehler &Mishra, 2005).
There are ways to address these challenges. Educational technology courses wereshown to benefit teacher candidates by providing an overview of the use of technology
in teaching and improving the foundation of technology skills (Kay, 2006). Lesson
planning is one promising approach for the teacher education classroom (Koehler &Mishra, 2005; Lee & Lee, 2014).Specifically, preservice teachers benefit from many
opportunities to apply coursework and to design instruction that integrates digital tools
in meaningful ways (Hutchison & Colwell, 2016). Teacher candidates who have notyet obtained substantial teaching experience benefited from support and scaffolds
throughout the lesson planning process (Harris & Hofer, 2009).
Although some research showed preservice teachers failed to integrate technology
knowledge in classroom practices using these approaches, researchers suggested that it
might be the result of teachers' limited design capacity (Polly, Mims, Shepherd, & Inan,
2010).
In addition, teacher education programs must consider their roles in shaping teachers’
identities (Beauchamp & Thomas, 2009). Teacher identity is considered as both a resultof influences on the teacher and a process of ongoing interaction within teacher
development (Oslen, 2008). Identity is multi-dimensional in nature and can be
represented in multiple ways. Teachers constantly construct their own ideas of ‘how tobe’, ‘how to act’ and ‘how to understand’ their work and their place in society. Throughthe ongoing negotiation with the experience, it has a dynamic, shifting nature (Sachs,
2005). Wenger (1998) argued that by participating in a community of professionals, ateacher is subject to the influences of this community on identity development.
Literature in teaching stresses such ways of conceiving and exploring aspects of identity
as examining the role of teacher reflection, using narratives of teachers about
themselves and their practice, as well as the discourses in which they engage (Connelly& Clandinin, 1999). Given that teacher identity is at the core of the teaching profession,
it is of great necessity to tell the specific stories and consider the needs of transnational
students, enrolled in education programs, through their narratives and reflections asways to examine their growing understanding of their professional identities withinchanging contexts (Rose & Garner, 2010).

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MethodThis research used a case study design to examine one international teacher candidate’schange of perceptions, skills and TPACK development in planning and implementing
technology-integrated literacy lessons as she participated in a technology-based literacy
course. The case study, with its rich data and in-depth analysis, can provide important
insights (Gerring, 2004) and an opportunity to explore the design of literacy teacher
education coursework, especially for international students in teacher education
programs.
Educational Context
This study was conducted at a small, private university in the Northeast region of theUnited States with a small but growing School of Education that offers undergraduate
and graduate teacher licensure and graduate degree programs. The study is situated ina required literacy and technology course designed to prepare teacher candidates toteach standards-based literacy instruction that integrates technology, use online tools
and information resources to promote students’ reading, writing, speaking, listening,and visual communication skills.
The first author, who designed and taught the course, introduced students to the TPACK
theoretical framework (Mishra & Koehler, 2006) and the Technology Integration
Planning Cycle for Literacy and Language Arts (Hutchinson & Woodward, 2014) anddesigned a series of assignments focusing on technology exploration and integration.
Participants
Tina is a 25-year-old pre-service teacher candidate from China enrolled in the graduate
program in Education Technology. Before coming to the U.S., Tina took college
education in China and majored in Japanese language and Literature. Tina is fluent in
Chinese and Japanese and has strong communication skills in English. Before taking
this course, Tina was exposed to limited educational technology theories throughanother course in her graduate program. Currently she is a second-year full time
secondary ESL teacher in an international school in shanghai, China.
The participant presented in this case study was identified from a larger data set of 26
teacher candidates enrolled in the course. The case was identified because Tina was
the only international student from east Asia and her work served as exemplars for
future students as identified by project rubrics created by the researcher for her course.
Data Sources
The data sources are multiple-layered, including quantitative and qualitative data. Table
1 shows the data sources for the study that were embedded in the course projects.
Quantitative data were collected using the Survey of Preservice Teachers’ Knowledgeof Teaching and Technology (Schmidt et al., 2009), a validated, self-report survey
instrument. The survey measures preservice teachers’ knowledge across the sevendomains of TPACK. It includes eight items specific to demographic data, 59 Likertscale items that collect self-report data for each of the domains of TPACK, and six
open-ended questions that yield qualitative data.

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Sources
Blog

Digital storytelling &reflection
Unit plan and reflection

End of course reflection
TPACK survey

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Description
Create a 10-week blog about your exploration orapplication of specific digital tools that promote student
learning while addressing literacy skills. Blog entries
were collected throughout the 10-week span.
Create a digital story about adhering to the fundamental
elements and process of this medium. Write about areflection on the process of creating a digital story andits potential instructional applications.
Design a 10-day unit plan with two detailed scripted
technology-integrated lesson plans addressing target
skills in CCSS. Reflect upon unit plan design and lesson
delivery.
Write a reflective essay in response to the prompt “Whatdoes it mean to teach literacy in the 21st century?”
The Survey of Preservice Teachers’ Knowledge of
Teaching and Technology (Schmidt et al., 2009); preand post-surveys
2-hour interview to understand the experience anddesign choices for digital storytelling
2-hour interview about current teaching position

Follow-up interview for
digital storytelling
Member-check
Interview Spring 2020
Table 1: Description of Coursework-embedded Data Sources

Qualitative data included the following: 1) the digital portfolio artifacts from the course,
including the blog posts, digital storytelling project, and her unit plan design (see figure3) 2) multiple written reflections about course assignments; 3) interviews during andafter taking the course. Tina’s blog documented her efforts and curiosity while
exploring digital tools that support literacy and learning for English language learners
in China. In her blog (see figure 3), Tina discussed how technology can be used toengage students when teaching a foreign language. Tina’s digital storytelling (see figure4) is an imagined story based on her own life story. It is a story about how a girl named
Krystal set her mind on achieving her dream in Shanghai, one of the most developed
cities in China. After many failures in her job when she was about to give up, she had
an epiphany, guided by a magical star on a night trip in her dream, about how to be
upbeat in bad times. Tina’s unit plan focused on a literature study for six-graders.
Throughout the unit plan, she used URL, audio-assisted reading, movie clips, digital
portfolio, digital graphic organizers to teach the literary devices and help students build
background knowledge for deeper comprehension.

Figure 3: Screenshots for Tina’s artifact of digital storytelling

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Figure 4: Screenshots for Tina’s artifact of blog posts
Data Analysis
The study has both the qualitative and quantitative data. The survey data were analyzed
for evidence of change from pretest to posttest, which measured preservice teachers’
knowledge across the seven domains of TPACK. Unit plan measured the participant’slevel of technology of integration (TPACK) with a range of score from 1-4 for eachdomain with 4 indicating the highest level of TPACK knowledge in application while
1 indicating the lowest level of TPACK knowledge.
Tina’s other coursework artifacts including blog entries, digital storytelling product,
and multiple reflections on course, lesson implementation, and interviews were coded
and analyzed using qualitative methods. All qualitative data were coded with the
TPACK domains and guided by multiliteracies framework. The coding process started
with both researchers coding independently. An open-coding method was used for the
first rounds of data analysis. Data were read multiple times by both researchers to
identify codes emerging from the data. Independently-derived codes were discussed
and themes identified. Next, both researchers independently coded and analyzed
additional reflections using the established codes. To support this work, a codebook
was created and was used by both researchers. Following this round of coding, theresearchers met again to determine inter-coder reliability and discuss emerging themes.
The coding was compared and all disagreements were discussed until consensus wasreached and emerging themes were confirmed. This iterative process continued until alldata were coded and themes were affirmed. By using a constant comparative approach,coders agreed by consensus to achieve 100% inter-coder reliability.
Findings
Data analysis yielded three important findings: Tina’s participation in the course
resulted in moderate increase in reported TPACK knowledge and emerging skill in
TPACK application due to the limited access to field experience, an expanded
understanding of literacy and instructional technology and the improved self-efficacy
through finding her voice through using multimodality.
A moderate increase of TPACK knowledge.
From the pre and the post of TPACK surveys, Tina showed moderate increase ofknowledge in several domains of TPACK, such as Technological Knowledge (TK,from 2.83 too 3.5), Technological Content Knowledge (TCK, from 3.00 to 3.50),
Technological Pedagogical Knowledge (TPK, from 3.22 to 3.33) and TPACK (from2.5 to 2.75). However, the reported data did not show any increase in her Content
Knowledge (CK, 3.0), Pedagogical Knowledge (PK,3.29) and Pedagogical content
knowledge (PCK, 4). The domains of TPACK related to technology development

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showed growth but not in the pedagogical and content knowledge domains. In
comparison to this self-reported data, Tina’s unit plan showed that she presented
emerging but rather limited skills in applying TPACK knowledge when designinglessons. Unit plan measures showed her level of technology of integration (TPACK)
with a range of score between 1-2.5 for the four domains, indicating an emerging but
limited application of TPACK.
In her unit plan, Tina integrated appropriate digital tools in her literature study on Gone
with the Wind. These included websites, audio-assisted reading, movie clips, and digital
graphic organizers. However, most were used for presentation purposes rather thantools to extend and deepen students’ thinking. Her unit plan reflection and interview
analysis suggested that her status as a teacher candidate and her limited field-experienceinterfered with her ability to develop the pedagogical knowledge needed to design
pedagogically-sound, standards-based, and technology integrated instruction.
In contrast, qualitative analysis of Tina’s multiple artifacts showed that Tina expanded
her understanding of “texts”, the role of technology in instruction, and improved
efficacy with technology use along with a renewed expression for her cultural andprofessional identities as an international student when English language proficiency
was a potential obstacle for her identity as a teacher-to-be.
Expanded understanding of literacy and instructional technology.
During the course, Tina demonstrated her growing understanding of how technology
can be used to support literacy learning. In her blog posts, Tina reflected on many digital
tools she explored as she completed course assignments and how this exploration
helped her understand that the same piece of information can be presented in a variety
of ways, forms, and media. She recognized that multimodal digital texts were important
to integrate into literacy instruction centered on meaning-making and semiotic
interpretation. She pointed to other benefits of multimodal texts, such as increasing
learner motivation and promoting collaboration and creativity among students. Tina
remarked:
Text in modern days should go beyond the traditional printed word to include images,
videos, audio recordings, and texts that include a combination of thesemodes…Multimodal is a term meaning a text that uses multiple modes, like writing,images, audio, visual, color, etc., to create meaning. Students are exposed to multimodal
texts often in their out-of-school experiences with technology - videos, social media
posts, and other communication means include multiple modes of meaning that must
be interpreted and understood. These texts should be addressed in the classroom as well.
Other than having a better understanding of literacy, her reflections and interview data
revealed her more nuanced understanding of technology use in the classroom.
Although she reported skepticism and low levels of self-efficacy about using
technology in instruction at the beginning of the course, Tina’s post-course reflection
suggested she felt prepared to integrate digital tools and teach digital literacies throughmodeling effective and responsible technology use in the classroom.
Before this class, I [had] no confidence in successfully integrate technology into myfuture classroom and have no clue concerning how to integrate it. But now, I can

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confidently say I will use technology as a powerful tool to engage and motivate mystudents. Through the learning of this whole semester, I learned a lot about "whattechnology to implement" "how to implement". The knowledge I learned in this classand the experience I have gained through hands-on activities give me a lot of
inspirations about how to design my language class, how to interact positively with mystudents and how to carry out objective assessment by the aid of technology.…Also,
this class provides me great opportunities to explore the technology by myself. If not
for this class, I would not be interested in exploring the various functions of thetechnologies and make full use of it for my instruction since as I mentioned at the
beginning, unlike most of the "after 90s", I am very bad at technology and I was
definitely not confident in using it. This class ignited my passion for technology and
now I think it is so cool for me to probe into the "fascinating world" of the technology.
Although I have made many mistakes when I use the technologies for my assignments
and presentations for this class, I learned from the mistakes I have made. Now I am
fully prepared to probe deeper into potentials of technologies because after the learningand practicing of the whole semester and guidance by our professor I am really excited
to use the technology in the literacy classroom.
Meanwhile, Tina realized that technology use in the classroom was not for the sake ofusing technology, but to serve instruction. For Tina, the key is how to use it effectively.
She remarked,“technology is a tool. Whether it can benefit students or not depends on how we use it
and how we guide students.”
More importantly, she viewed technology not only as a tool for enhancing learning, but
as a means for social justice. On her blog, Tina wrote “Technology should serve as
equalizer rather than a divider.” For Tina, technology is both a tool that facilitates
differentiated instruction and has great potential to close the digital divide beyond theclassroom if the teacher used it effectively.
Although Tina recognized the potential of technology to level the field for all thelearners, she also acknowledged the challenges associated with technology integration,such as the need to abide by regulations concerning student safety and privacy as wellas the need to remain abreast of the ever-changing digital tools available for theclassroom. She commented:
Technology is helpful in promoting collaboration, facilitating struggling learners,
differentiating lessons, and increasing motivation. However, with so much variety cancome confusion and uncertainty about which tools to use for any given lesson. Since somany of them are relatively new, a teacher may find herself overwhelmed with the
choice and with a desire to revert back to the days of "paper and pencil" just for thesake of staying within their comfort zone.
In addition, Tina stressed the importance of external factors that impact the effective
application of digital tools within literacy instruction. Interview data revealed thatTina’s current teaching practices aligned with her reflections during the course, inwhich she stressed the importance of easy access to technology, school support, andteacher autonomy in technology use. She remarked:

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actually pushed me to think out of the box to use technology by asking me to serve asa team leader among my colleagues. He even asked me to work on the help desk teamso I can help troubleshoot the technology issues in the classroom. Although it is not myareas of expertise and I felt very stressed sometimes, I do feel it pushed me to stay tunedin the field of instructional technology.
Improved self-efficacy through finding her voice through using multimodality.
Digital portfolios that include authentic learning activities such as blogs and digitalstorytelling allowed Tina to explore and express her cultural identity and provided
opportunities to do cross-cultural comparisons in instructional practices withtechnology use. The symbols in her digital portfolio showcased her cultural identity.
Throughout the digital storytelling, she heavily used Chinese and Japanese images andmusic. The symbolism and animations that are typical of oriental in their features. These
venues for self-expression allowed her to communicate her culture and her identity to
her peers. At the beginning of the class, Tina was very concerned about her English.
The class required students to engage in discussion, something Tina was unfamiliar
with given her educational background outside the U.S. Her lack of confidence in her
English made her feel inferior in class and she reported feeling nervous in class. The
chance for her to express herself in online writing, communicate with her peers throughonline tools and design her digital storytelling not only allowed her peers to better
understand her, but also gave her an edge of what she does. Through these open-ended
course work, Tina showed a shift in the sense of self-efficacy and a growing comfort
level with digital tools in the classroom, recognized its affordances and challenges in
instruction, especially the cultural context of teaching in China where teachers take on
the role of “sage on the stage” and students passively participate during classroom
instruction. Tina explained:
Traditional teaching mode in China is dominated by teachers, from the teaching content,
teaching strategies, teaching methods to teaching steps, students can only passively
participate in the process. If we can use technology like blogging, students can gain themost up-to-date learning resources. Teachers can tailor teaching content, methods, andgoals when they get a better picture of students' levels and interests. As teachers, weshould create a cooperative learning environment for our students, it is a great platformstudent-student interaction, teacher-student interaction. Teachers can also use thetechnology to organize teaching activities. …. Compared to American students,
Chinese students are more conservative and quieter in class. They are more likely topretend to understand the lesson instead of speak aloud and raise questions, so it is very
difficult for teachers in China to grasp every student's problem about the lesson quickly
and conduct targeted guidance in class. Learning difficulties and conducting targetedguidance. I think Chinese classrooms can definitely try to make good use of the
blogging strategies to carry out education effectively.
Overall, Tina demonstrated TPACK growth, increasing self-efficacy for using
technology in the classroom, and understanding of the importance of technology
integration in the literacy classroom through hands-on experiences that created spacefor self-exploration and expression of her cultural and professional identity.

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Conclusions
The case study examined how an international pre-service teacher from China enrolled
in a graduate-level literacy and technology course that aimed to develop the pedagogicaland technological knowledge, negotiated her cultural identity in a Caucasian-dominatedclassroom through coursework and how she used innovative digital tools to support her
future students of English in China for language and literacy learning. Our findings
showed that Tina benefited from course readings and supported experiences (Colwell& Hutchison, 2015) that allowed her to “try out” digital storytelling and to reflect onher course experiences in her blog. Tina also expressed her sociocultural perspective
and her identity as an international student in her blog and in her digital story(Vasudevan, Schultz, & Bateman, 2010). Given the low levels of technology integrationin many literacy classrooms (Hutchison & Reinking, 2011), teacher educators must
create opportunities for candidates to explore digital tools and texts. This is especially
important for international students, who may not have regular opportunities to engage
in field-based experiences. Assignments such as the digital storytelling project and theblog allowed international students for transformation into inspiring teachers: shifting
perspectives, increasing self-efficacy, plan for technology-integrated instruction in
purposeful and intentional ways.
Our study suggests ways for practical application. First and foremost, teacher education
courses must prepare candidates to design literacy instruction for a digital world. The
sentiment about fear to use technology in the classroom at the beginning of Tina’s blog
underlies the idea that teacher preparation programs and professional developments inschools should focus on how to properly integrate technology into all types of
instruction. Since digital resources are constantly changing, it is up to teacher educators
and administrations to keep up instead of letting the teachers and teachers-to-be fallbehind or feel like they don't have the proper knowledge and tools needed to meet theirlearning objectives. Second, transformation takes intentional and purposeful course
design, scaffold and a lot of hands-on practice. The intentional course design intechnology-integrated literacy instruction supported pre-service teachers inunderstanding relationships among technology, content and pedagogy. When designing
the course, projects with hands-on experience, a more structured and scaffolded
guidance, are needed to establish a good community of practice for developing
knowledge and skills in effective technology integration in classroom instruction.
Opportunities of exploring and using technological tools also allowed international
students like Tina in expressing their cultural and sociocultural perspective using
culturally-specific images, sound, and language. The course’s scaffold and hands-on
nature of project-based learning also effectively supported international students todevelop the knowledge and skills for their future roles by preparing them to create
similar opportunities for their students.
It is important to note that although this study had rich data for analysis, it had inherent
limitations due to the nature of case study. Future research efforts may focus on
examining if and how a larger sample of international students matriculating in teacher
education programs apply coursework into their teaching in their home countries. In
addition, there is evidence pointing to the need for multidimensional assessment of preservice teachers’ TPACK knowledge (Mouza, 2016; Mouza & Karchmer-Klein, 2013;
Wen & Shinas, 2020). Given that there is a gap between Tina’s reported TPACK
knowledge and its application, the sources of this variability in the reported knowledge

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and applied knowledge need to be further investigated. Finally, more research is neededon examining the effect of hands-on digital portfolio projects (such as digitalstorytelling, blog, etc.) and how teacher candidate can benefit from different types ofscaffolds, ranging from modeling, discussion to specific guidelines for class projects.
In conclusion, the study examined how an international graduate student enrolled in ateacher education program in the United States defined and expressed herunderstanding of 21st century literacy instruction through participating a technologyfocused literacy course. By examining our sample’s course artifacts, we found the effectof the teacher preparation course, though moderate, in transforming her pedagogicalthinking regarding her knowledge, skills and disposition to integrate technology inliteracy instruction. Tina’s interview and reflection also helped us understand how thetransformation happened: the coursework helped her negotiate her identity, bothprofessional and cultural. We learned that her experiences with exploring and using
technological tools in and beyond her class community allowed her to express her
cultural and sociocultural perspective. We also found that the course’s scaffold andhands-on nature of project-based learning deepened her knowledge and skills asteachers-to-be. Thus, the study provided teacher educators with the deeper
understanding of how to build coursework that supports preservice teachers in building
more sophisticated thinking about technology use in instruction and how their new
understanding potentially affected their future teaching.

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The Role of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy on Self-efficacy and Worry in College
Students
Qaishum Masturoh, Universitas Indonesia, Indonesia
Adhityawarman Menaldi, Universitas Indonesia, Indonesia
The Asian Conference on Education 2020
Official Conference Proceedings
Abstract
Academic performance is influenced by many factors. Anxiety and self-efficacy are
two factors that may contribute to academic performance in college students (Sarirah& Chaq, 2019; DordiNejad et. al, 2011). Students with strongly perceived selfefficacy are more likely to success in academic settings (Sarirah & Chaq, 2019). On
the contrary, anxiety acts as barrier for students to perform well (DordiNejad et. al,2011). As the main component of anxiety, worry is a chain of intrusive thoughts that
results in maladaptive behavior. Worry influences student’s perception of a situationor their outcomes as threatening. Facilitating students in identifying and altering their
cognitive processes may help them in decreasing their worry and increasing their selfefficacy (Smith, Berry, Tart & Powers, 2008; Situmorang, 2018). Cognitive
Behavioral Therapy (CBT) method helps the individual to identify their irrational
thoughts and alter them into more adaptive. This study aimed to evaluate the impactof CBT on student’s worry level and self-efficacy level. CBT was conducted in agroup of six college students for five weeks via video conferences. The measurementof student’s worry and self-efficacy was carried out three times using Student Worry
Questionnaire and General Self Efficacy Scale. Friedman ANOVA analysis was
conducted to evaluate the changes that occur within participants (X2(2)=7, p<.05). The
main results showed there was a significant change in worry level and there’s nosignificant change in self-efficacy. This finding suggested CBT method has goodpotential to help college students in overcoming their worry. The limitation andimplications of this study are discussed.
Keywords: Worry, Self-Efficacy, Cognitive-Behavioral Group Therapy, College
Students

iafor
The International Academic Forumwww.iafor.org

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Introduction

College life can be stressful for students. As a young adult, they face several changes
that demand them to adapt. College students as a young adult are expected to be more
independent and responsible for their academic life. Meanwhile the academic burdenin this level of education is higher than the previous level. Those challenges may
affect student’s academic performance in college.
Academic performance is influenced by many factors. Anxiety is one of the predictorsof academic performance (Vitasari, Wahab, Othman, Herawan & Sinnadurai, 2010;
DordiNejad et. al, 2011; ). Clark and Beck (2010) define anxiety as a complex
cognitive, affective, physiological and behavioral response. Anxiety arises when an
individual perceives a neutral situation as threat that beyond his control. The diversityof challenges in the academic setting may trigger academic anxiety in college
students.
According to a survey in Jakarta, more than 80% college students experiences severe
to extreme level of anxiety (El-Matury, Herlina & Lestari, 2020). Anxiety can acts as
a barrier for students to perform well when the level is high. Academic anxiety is anintrusive thought that accompanied by physiological and behavioral responses that
occur due to worry about the possibility of experiencing an unacceptable poor
performance when facing academic responsibility (Ottens, 1991). The main
component of cognitive process in anxiety is worry. Worry is a chain of intrusive
thoughts that emerge from cognitive process involved in anxiety that serve tomaintain certain levels of vigilance for personal threat (Matthews, 1990). In academic
setting, worry influences student’s perception of a academic situation or theiroutcomes as threatening. High levels of worry among college students may have anegative impact on psychological conditions and affect their academic performance.
Another factor that contribute to academic performance of college students is selfefficacy. Self-efficacy is one's belief in their capacity to execute certain behavior inorder to attain specific performance. One’s belief can be the main basis for
motivation, effort to achieve, and emotional well-being. College students withstrongly perceived self-efficacy are more likely to cope with problems effectively andsuccessfully adapt to new environment. Self-efficacy is also known as a buffer
anxiety in the academic environment in students (Nie, Lau, & Liau, 2011). Students
with strongly perceived self-efficacy face adversity as challenges that can bemastered, not as a threat (Bandura, 1990). Thus, those who strongly perceived selfefficacy are most likely to have better academic performance (Lent, Brown, & Larkin,
1986; Agustiani, Cahyad & Musa, 2016; Fitri & Kustanti, 2018; Sarirah & Chaq,
2019; Mamesh & Kusmiati, 2019).
An appropriate intervention is needed to help college students who have worry
problems. The intervention may help students to overcome their worry and at thesame time improve or maintain their self-efficacy that will have positive impact on
their academic performance. Cognitive-behavior based intervention such as Cognitive
Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is an applicable intervention to overcome worry problem
and enhance self-efficacy for college students. CBT is based on cognitive model’sthat emotions and behaviors are influenced by thoughts such as perception of anevent. Based on that model, emotional and behavioral changes can be determined by

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the perception of an event. Thus, disturbing emotion or behavior can be changed byreconstruct the cognitive process toward a situation (Cully & Teten, 2008; Fenn &Byrne, 2013).
CBT can be applied in a group. CBT group therapy is effective to overcome worry
and improve self-efficacy in college students. Both worry and self-efficacy are root on
one’s belief in their cognitive process. According to Bandura (2010), individual
beliefs about their abilities develop from four basic sources of information. The
sources consists of mastery experience (The success experience of doing certain
performance), social modeling (observing other people who are similar perform
certain behavior), social persuasion (assessment, suggestion or input that were given
by significant people), and physiological and emotional state. Group therapy provides
each its members those basic sources of information to support the member’s
development.
Rose (1999) said that CBT group therapy refers to a group of approaches that use
behavioral (such as modeling and reinforcement), cognitive (such as cognitive
modification), relationship relationships, and group procedures to improve the coping
abilities and relational abilities. The coping ability refers to a set of behaviors andcognitive aspects that facilitate adaptation to problems and situations that givepressure on daily life.
CBT are mostly consists of cognitive reconstruction and relaxation techniques (Rose,
1999). Cognitive reconstruction encourage someone to think and evaluate theirthought effectively when responding to problematic situations. Facilitating students in
identifying and altering their cognitive processes may help them in decreasing theirworry and increasing their self-efficacy (Smith, Berry, Tart & Powers, 2008;
Situmorang, 2018). Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) method helps the individual
to identify their irrational thoughts and alter them into more adaptive. Meanwhilerelaxation is a strategy that can be used to help someone cope with strong emotional
responses, such as anger, stress, anxiety or depression. This strategy provides groupmembers to practice relaxation techniques such as deep breathing, meditation, andprogressive muscle relaxation. Each group member can help other members byproviding suggestions and input related to relaxation practices that are carried out bythem (Rose, 1999). In order to understand the role of Group-CBT on college’s
students worry and self-efficacy level, the current study aimed to evaluate the impactof CBT on college student’s worry level and self-efficacy level.
2.

Method

2.1 Participant
Six college students who experienced academic worry (proven by student’s worry
questionnaire total score were above 40). All participants were ages 20-22. The
participants gave their full consents to participate the group therapy.

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2.2 Design
The study used quasi-experimental and time series design. The participant’s level ofworry and self-efficacy were measured in three times, before the intervention (pretest), after the latest session (post-test), and two weeks after the intervention ended(follow-up).
2.3 Measurements
This study used The Student Worry Questionnaire – 30 (SWQ) and General SelfEfficacy Scale (GSES). SWQ consists of 30 items that measure student’s worry levelin academic setting (Osman, Guttierez, Downs, Kopper, Barrios, & Haraburda, 2001).
The participants completed SWQ items using likert-scale. This study used SWQ
Indonesian language version that was adapted by Wulandari (2019). This study also
used General Self-Efficacy Scale (GSES) to measure participant’s self-efficacy level.
This study used GSES that has been adapted to Indonesian language by Novrianto,
Marettih, and Wahyudi (2019). GSES consists of 10 items with likert-scale.
According to Schwarzer and Jerusalem (1995) GSES has good reliability (cronbach’s
alpha= 0.76-0.9). Based on confirmatory analysis, GSES are unidimensional construct(Novrianto, Marettih, & Wahyudi, 2019).
2.4 Procedure
The therapy were conducted in five sessions in a group video conferences due topandemic period. The intervention was carried out for 120 minutes for each session in
five weeks. The following table showed the activities that were included in theintervention.
Session
1

2

3
4
5

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150’

AgendaGroup forming
Sharing problems
Anxiety and Worry in academic•••
setting•
Introduction ABC models as basic
cognitive process
100’•
Introduction
andIdentifying
Negative automatic thought (NAT) as an
intrusive thought•
Relaxation
technique:Deepbreathing training•
Grounding technique training
120’
Evidence hunting and dispute as a strategy
to overcome intrusive thoughts
120’
Creating alternative thoughts and mantra asa strategy to overcome intrusive thoughts
120’Managing setbacks
Table 1: Summary of Intervention Module

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2.5 Statistical Analysis
Friedman’s ANOVA and Wilcoxon signed rank test were performed to evaluate theimpact CBT on participants worry and self-efficacy levels. Wilcoxon signed rank test
were used to evaluate the effect size from the CBT in this study.
3.

Results

Table 2 showed participant’s worry level and self-efficacy level at pre-test, post-test,
and follow up. The descriptive analysis showed there’s change in mean ofparticipant’s worry level and self-efficacy level through the time stamp
measurements. At the pre-test the mean score for participant’s worry level was 79.17(SD=5.23), the mean socre at the post-test was lower than the pre-test mean score(M=70.17, SD=22.14), and the lowest mean score was found at the follow-up period(M=58, SD=14.64). Participant’s mean score for self-efficacy at post-test period(M=38.83 SD= 3.31) was higher than the pre-test period (M=34 SD=1.67).
Meanwhile, at the follow-up period the mean score for self-efficacy (M=37.5
SD=5.35) was lower than the post-test. The figure 1 and figure 2 showed that all theparticipants’ worry level and self-efficacy level were changed across the measurement
period. Most of the participant’s showed lower level of worry at the post-test andfollow-up period. Meanwhil for the self-efficacy, the graph showed improvement on
participant’s score.

Worry
level
Self
Efficacy
Level

Pre-test
N
Mean

SD

Post-test
N
Mean

SD

Follow-up
N
Mean

SD

6

79.17

5.23

6

70.17

22.14

6

58.00

14.64

6

34

1.67

6

38.83

3.31

6

37.50

5.35

Table 2: Descriptive analysis results

Figure 1: Paticipant’s Worry Level

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Figure 2: Participant’s Self-Efficacy Level
Table 3 showed there’s signifficant changes in in participant’s worry level (X2(2)=7,
p<.05) The additional analysis using Wilcoxon's test showed that the most significant
improvement of worry occurred between pre-test to follow up period (Z=-2.2, p<0.05,
r=.64). Meanwhile, there’s no significant change in self-efficacy (X2(2)=5.3, p>.05).
Table 4 showed that the effect sizes of CBT intervention on participant’s worry level
were ranged from moderate to large.
Variables

Asymptotic Sig. (2sided test)
Worry
7,00
2
0.03*
Self-efficacy
5,3
2
0.07
Table 4 Wilcoxon’s test of parcticipant’s worry level
Measurement
Pre – Post
Pre – Follow Up
Post – Follow Up

Statistical Test

Degree Of FreedomZp-value
-1.05
.29
-2.20
.03*
-1.89
.06
Table 3: Friedman ANOVA analysis

Effect Size (r)
0.30
0.64
0.55

Table 4 showed that there were also belief changes within participant’s after the CBTintervention in this study. Based on follow-up results, most of the participantsevaluated the intervention as helpful and useful for them. All the participants
practiced the strategies that were learnt in the therapy independently after the lastsession ended. All the participants reported they feel calmer, know themself better,and feel confident they can overcome the intrusive thoughts. The deep breathing was
nominated as the most helpful techniques by the participants. The participants also
reported the presences of others in the group therapy helped them to learn new
perspectives and feel supported.

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Participant
Old Belief
AP“My grade didn’t show any improvement.
If I didn’t meet certain standard it means
I’m a failure.”HE“I can’t finish my study because the ELearning isn’t effective. I’ll fail to finish
my study”
HB

HA
ST

WY

4.

“I’m in wrong major and wasting my time.
It’s too late to just realize it now. I can’t
fulfill the expectations from my parents
and lecturer”“I’m a perfectionist. I have to get perfectscores for all courses and I have to finish
all assignments according to my plan.”“I’m not competent to do this exam or
academic activities”

New Belief
I’m a human not God, I’m not perfect.
I realized I improved in several
courses, I’m not a failure.”“Things that I worry before didn’t
happen at all. I realized worry iscommon and I have control toovercome it.”“I realized the time and effort that I
spent in this major is not a waste. I
belief there must be a reason forsomething that happen in my life”“There’s situation that are beyond mycontrol, I accept that. At least there’s
something that I can learn.”“I just don’t feel confidence about
myself. I can be more focus on myself
than someone’s accomplishment.
There are things that I can’t change
and beyond my control.”“It’s okay If I failed. One becomes anexpert after they keep on trying.”“I’m a procrastinator because I don’t haveenough confidences. I’ll fail, it’s better todepend on my friend’s assignment”
Table 4: Participant’s belief changes
Discussion

This study aimed to evaluate the impact of cognitive behavioral group therapy oncollege’s student worry level and self-efficacy level. The results of this study showedthat the majority of participant’s worry level after the therapy were lower than the pretherapy period. The results also showed the improvement on participant’s selfefficacy level after the therapy. The statistical analysis showed that the changes onparticipant’s worry level in this study were significant and the pre to follow-up period
as the most significant changes occured. Meanwhile, the statistical analysis results
showed that participant’s self-efficacy level changes were not signifficant. The
participants in this study reported the change of belief after the group therapy. The
participants also reported positive experiences during group therapy in this study.
In this study, The participants had lower worry level after participated in grouptherapy. These changes cannot be separated from the existence of cognitive
reconstruction and relaxation as strategies used in the group CBT approach (Rose,
1999). Cognitive reconstruction occurs through the process of identifying disturbing
thought patterns and turning them into self-statements that can facilitate adaptive
behavior and reduce anxiety (Rose, 1999).
The negative reconstruction process is followed by relaxation strategies that can beapplied to deal with their anxiety. According to Rose (1999) relaxation techniques are
strategies that can help participants cope with strong emotions such as anxious
emotions. In this study, participants learnt and practiced deep breathing andgrounding techniques. The majority of participants rated deep breathing as the most

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helpful relaxation technique. Deep breathing techniques are considered more practicaland provide a direct relaxing effect than grounding technique.
Besides changes in the participants' academic anxiety levels, there was an increase in
the self-efficacy scores of all participants. Although the statistical analysis results
showed there was no significant changes on participant’s self efficacy level. This canbe due to the fact that in this study, the intervention focuses more on managing worry
in an academic context. Therefore, after the therapy ended the participants reported
they feel more confident in their ability to face difficult situations only in an academic
context. In addition, the insignificant changes could be caused by the masteryexperience factor that was not fully obtained by the participants in this study.
According to Bandura (2010) mastery experience is the most effective way to instill astrong belief in individual abilities. Mastery experiences cannot occur because theparticipants are not directly dealing with their anxiety triggers. Despite the statisticalinsignificant on self-efficacy level, the improvement of participants 'self-efficacy
scores was in line with the decrease in the participants' worry levels. This is in linewith Situmorang's (2018) statement that high self-efficacy in students has an impact
on reducing disturbing thoughts which directly reduces the level of academic anxiety.
Based on the qualitative evaluation, the participants reported possitive experiences
during the therapy session. Participants reported that they got support and new
perspectives of their problems from the therapy session. This evaluation is inseparablefrom the presence and role of participants to participate in group therapy which
triggers other participants to openly share their problems. Group therapy with the
CBT approach allows participants to get input on how they deal with problems and to
introspect on these ways. Even with various backgrounds and characteristics, thepresence of other people in group therapy provides benefits for individuals who are
involved in the group. According to Forsyth (2018) group therapy gives individuals
the opportunity to get support and become more active in playing a role inovercoming their problems and achieving their goals.
5.

Conclusions

The results of this study showed CBT gave positive impact on college’s student worry
and self-efficacy level. The mental health provider in unversity may consider to apply
CBT for their college students who experience worry or anxiety problems. This study
showed that CBT is applicable in virtual setting with quiet satisfying results. The
online delivery method can be an alternative options for mental health profesionals,
particularly in pandemic period where student’s vulnerability to psychologicalproblems might increase.
There are several suggestions for further study. First, regarding the delivery method inthis study. Online delivery through video conferences were made as an adjustment
based on pandemic situation during the therapy period. Further study is needed toevaluate the effect of therapy with online delivery. Second, further study may use
more group samples to evaluate the effect of CBT on worry and self efficacy.
Experiemental design with control group is recommended to evaluate theeffectiveness CBT method in decreasing worry level and increasing self-efficacy ofcollege students.

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References
Agustiani, H., Cahyad, S., & Musa, M. (2016). Self-efficacy and self-regulated
learning as predictors of students academic performance. The Open Psychology
Journal, 9(1).
Bandura, A. (1990). Perceived self-efficacy in the exercise of personalagency. Journal of applied sport psychology, 2(2), 128-163.
Bandura, A. (2010). Self-efficacy. The Corsini encyclopedia of psychology, 1-3.
Clark, D. A., & Beck, A. T. (2010). Cognitive theory and therapy of anxiety anddepression: Convergence with neurobiological findings. Trends in cognitive
sciences, 14(9), 418-424.
DordiNejad, F. G., Hakimi, H., Ashouri, M., Dehghani, M., Zeinali, Z., Sadegh, M.,
Daghighi, M. S., Bahrami, N. (2011). On the relationship between test anxiety andacademic performance. doi:10.1016
El-Matury, H. J., & Lestari, F. (2018). Depression, Anxiety and Stress among
Undergraduate Students in Jakarta: Examining Scores of the Depression Anxiety andStress Scale According to Origin and Residency. Indian Journal of Public HealthResearch & Development, 9(2), 290-295.
Fenn, K., & Byrne, M. (2013). The key principles of cognitive behaviouraltherapy. InnovAiT, 6(9), 579-585.
Forsyth, D. R. (2018). Group dynamics (7th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage
Learning
Fitri, R., & Kustanti, E. R. (2018). Hubungan antara efikasi diri akademik dengan
penyesuaian diri akademik pada mahasiswa rantau dari Indonesia bagian timur di
Semarang. Empati, 7(2), 66-77.
Lent, R. W., Brown, S. D., & Larkin, K. C. (1986). Self-efficacy in the prediction ofacademic performance and perceived career options. Journal of counselingpsychology, 33(3), 265.
Mamesah, T. S., & Kusumiati, R. Y. (2019). Hubungan antara efikasi diri akademik
dengan penyesuaian diri pada mahasiswa baru provinsi ntt yang merantau diuniversitas kristen satya wacana salatiga. PSIKOLOGI KONSELING, 14(1).
Mathews, A. (1990). Why worry? The cognitive function of anxiety. Behaviour
research and therapy, 28(6), 455-468.
Nie, Y., Lau, S., & Liau, A. K. (2011). Role of academic self-efficacy in moderating
the relation between task importance and test anxiety. Learning and Individual
Differences, 21(6), 736-741.

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Novrianto, R., Marettih, A. K. E., & Wahyudi, H. (2019). Validitas Konstruk
Instrumen General Self-efficacy Scale Versi Indonesia. Jurnal Psikologi, 15(1), 1-9.
Ottens, A. J. (1991). Coping with academic anxiety. The Rosen Publishing Group.
Osman, A., Gutierrez, P. M., Downs, W. R., Kopper, B. A., Barrios, F. X., &Haraburda, C. M. (2001). Development and psychometric properties of the Student
Worry Questionnaire–30. Psychological reports, 88(1), 277-290.
Rose, S. D. (1999). Group therapy: A cognitive-behavioral approach. In A guide tostarting psychotherapy groups (pp. 99-113). Academic Press.
Schwarzer, R., & Jerusalem, M. (1995). Generalized Self-Efficacy scale. In J.
Weinman, S. Wright, & M. Johnston, Measures in health psychology: A user’s
portfolio. Causal and control beliefs (pp. 35-37). Windsor, UK: NFER-NELSON.
Sarirah, T., & Chaq, S. A. (2019). Academic self-efficacy as a predictor toward
decisional procrastination among college students preparing a thesis inIndonesia. Journal of Advanced Research in Social Sciences and Humanities, 4(1),23-28.
Situmorang, D. D. B. (2018). Keefektifan konseling kelompok cognitive behavior
therapy (CBT) dengan teknik passive dan active music therapy terhadap academic
anxiety dan self-efficacy (Doctoral dissertation, UNNES).
Smits, J. A., Berry, A. C., Tart, C. D., & Powers, M. B. (2008). The efficacy ofcognitive-behavioral interventions for reducing anxiety sensitivity: A meta-analytic
review. Behaviour research and therapy, 46(9), 1047-1054.
Vitasari, P., Wahab, M. N. A., Othman, A., Herawan, T., & Sinnadurai, S. K. (2010).
The relationship between study anxiety and academic performance among
engineering students. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 8, 490-497.
Wulandari, S. (2019). Intervensi kelompok menggunakan pendekatan kognitifperilaku untuk menurunkan worry pada mahasiswa S1 Universitas Indonesia yang
memiliki masalah kecemasan akademik. Unpublished manuscript.
Contact email: amrasmin@gmail.com

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Using Constructivist Pedagogies to Support Foreign Language Teaching in Remote
SpacesValerie Harlow Shinas, Lesley University, United States
Huijing Wen, Moravian College, United States
Lijing Luo, Conrad Schools of Science, United States
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Official Conference Proceedings
Abstract
This paper discusses the experiences of one teacher’s experiences as she pivoted toremote teaching in response to the pandemic. In the spring of 2020, schools across theglobe were thrust into emergency planning as they pivoted from face-to-face teachingin brick and mortar classrooms to remote instruction in response to pandemic-related
school closures. Using a combination of video conferencing, online composition tools,
and asynchronous learning tasks, teachers redesigned their instruction to address district
mandates and to meet the needs of their students. Ms. Luo, a Chinese language andculture teacher in a public school in the United States, re-envisioned her constructivist
teaching practices for fully online instruction. She leveraged evidence-based practices
including Project-based Learning (PBL) and jigsaw strategies to engage and motivate
the secondary students in her Chinese language and culture classes. Her experiences
uncovered recommendations for teachers as they plan remote and hybrid foreign
language instruction.
Keywords: Remote Teaching, Foreign Language Teaching, Constructivist Pedagogies,
Problem-Based Learning

iafor
The International Academic Forumwww.iafor.org

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Introduction
In the early spring of 2020, schools across the globe were thrust into emergency
planning as they pivoted from face-to-face teaching in brick and mortar classrooms toremote instruction. Using a combination of video conferencing, online composition
tools, and traditional paper-pencil tasks, teachers cobbled together curricula to address
district mandates and meet the needs of their students. The effectiveness of this
instruction has not been measured but we speculate that the shift to remote teaching has
been difficult for teachers, parents, and students (Heubeck, 2020).
The backdrop for this watershed moment in K-12 education is a decades-longconversation about if and how teachers integrate digital tools within their instruction.
Although most teachers in the United States report good access to technology for
instructional planning and teaching, before the pandemic mandated that all instruction
be delivered in remote spaces teachers tended not to integrate these resources into theirinstruction (Ertmer et al., 2012; Hutchison & Reinking, 2011). We know that teachers’
beliefs about technology have important impacts on their use of digital tools (Ertmer,
Ottenbreit-Leftwich, Sadik, Sendurur, & Sendurer, 2012) yet it is not clear why manyteachers did not use available digital resources to support teaching and learning(Beschorner & Woodward, 2019; Hutchison & Reinking, 2011). This is striking when
we consider that in the winter and spring of 2020, teachers were asked to immediately
pivot to online teaching with little time to prepare. Not surprisingly, even the mosttechnologically savvy teachers experienced challenges (Heubeck, 2020).
Teaching Chinese Language and Culture Remotely: Responding to a Pandemic
The purpose of this paper is to describe the experiences of one teacher, the third authorof this paper, during pandemic-related school closures in 2020. During the spring of
2020, Ms. Luo was teaching Chinese language and culture classes in a public school inthe mid-Atlantic region of the United States. In March, she and her colleagues wereforced to pivot quickly to 100% online teaching. Shortly after Ms. Luo began teaching
remotely, the authors of this paper engaged in informal conversations about her
experiences. What began as a collegial conversation became a process of collaborative,reflective inquiry aimed at understanding how Ms. Luo, a digital native who frequently
employed digital tools and constructivist pedagogies to support student learning in her
brick-and-mortar classroom, responded to the rapid shift to fully online instruction. As
we reflected on the effective practices Ms. Luo used to engage and motivate students
and the subsequent challenges she encountered, we identified important implications
for other foreign language teachers who design and deliver hybrid and remote
instruction for K-12 students.
Our collaborative journey was framed by the understanding that effective teaching is
intimately bound to the content and the contexts of the curriculum (Hodkinson, 2005).
This was further contextualized by evidence that teaching Chinese language and culture
as a second language outside of China presents a specific set of challenges, such as theimpact of teachers’ pedagogical schema and beliefs about education on their practice(Moloney & Xu, 2012). Evidence suggests that Chinese-born educators demonstrate adeep appreciation and respect for education; this view shapes their teaching and theirperceptions of students. Although this is a generally favorable stance, it may beproblematic during pandemic-related school closings when many adolescents reported

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already complex learning environment.
When considering the challenges of remote teaching, it is also important to keep inmind the unique challenges content-specific teachers may face when preparing for
online learning. In the language classroom, we know that students benefit from regularand authentic opportunities to use their developing language in meaningful ways. The
teacher must create many opportunities for them to read, write, listen, and speak in the
new language (Wright, 2019). Designing instruction that includes many opportunities
for students to communicate and learn in a new language may be more difficult in thevirtual classroom where students must engage in a variety of activities that allow themto use their developing language skills (Zhang, 2009).
Another complexity of pandemic-related teaching was the reality that families weresuddenly tasked with supporting their students’ learning with little time to prepare. This
made planning for remote teaching more complex, especially for foreign language
teachers who relied on families to support learning of a language not spoken at home.
Teachers and families were ill-prepared for the many challenges of remote learning(Richmond, Bartell, Cho, Gallagher, He, Petchauer, & Curiel, 2020). However, careful
review of the literature points to tools and evidence-based practices to help teachersplan for those challenges.
Extant literature provides strong evidence that language instruction is most effective
when it is framed by a strong set of standards and activities that leverage students’ owninterests and prior knowledge (Wright, 2019). The World-Readiness Standards for
Learning Languages provide a framework for designing language instruction framedby the following: communication, cultures, connections, comparisons, andcommunities (National Standards in Foreign Language Education Project, 2006).
Communication, the first and the foremost of the five standards, highlights thedevelopment of students’ interpersonal, interpretive, and presentational communication
skills in the target language. The culture standard provides guidance for curriculum thattargets culturally-connected language development and the connections standard refers
to the interdisciplinary nature of effective foreign language instruction. Integrating
many opportunities for comparisons allows students to engage in the deep thinking
about cultural and language differences. Finally, the communities standard describes
the ways teachers prepare students to become active participants in multilingual
communities. These standards may serve as the starting point for pedagogical decisionmaking and, when paired with pedagogies that support remote learning, provide thefoundation for rigorous, engaging instruction.
Pedagogies that Support Remote Teaching and Learning
Effective pedagogical strategies for the remote classroom are, in many ways, the sameas those we use to engage and motivate learners in physical spaces. For example,
teachers can inspire and support learning using constructivist pedagogical approaches
such as accountable talk strategies in face-to-face class discussions or video meetings.
Similarly, project-based learning (PBL), a student-driven, teacher-facilitated approachto learning (Bell, 2010), is a pedagogical approach that creates a framework for

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effective teaching and is well suited for the remote classroom. Evidence suggests that
PBL promotes meaningful learning in language and literacy classes (Stroller, 2002).
PBL encourages in-depth investigation of learning objectives through meaningfulhands-on projects while it provides autonomy for students. The key elements of PBL
include collaboration, curricular content, authentic tasks, multiple expression modes,
and innovative assessment. It offers numerous benefits including increased content
knowledge acquisition, motivation, knowledge retention, and academic achievement(Hernandez-Ramous and De la Paz, 2009; Karacalli and Korur, 2014).
One promising pedagogical approach aligned with PBL, Task-Based Language
Teaching (TBLT; Yildiz, 2020), is well suited for instruction of language and culture
in remote spaces. In TBLT, language teachers design engaging and authentic tasks thatallow students to practice their developing language skills. The TBLT approachprioritizes meaning over mechanics, thus motivating students to communicate in the
new language. Importantly, language instruction is framed within the history andculture of the language; this allows students to make authentic, real-world connections
to their own experiences (Lai & Li, 2011).
Finally, any discussion of remote teaching must include consideration of the role oftechnology integration. Today’s adolescents are technologically savvy and use
technology to communicate, play online, and learn about the world (Li, Snow, andWhite, 2015). Evidence suggests that when technology is used to support language
instruction, language production and motivation increase (Lai & Li, 2011). Given thehighly motivating nature of technology (Gee, 2010) and the strong relationship between
language learning and motivation (Ranjan & Philominraj, 2020), students benefit when
their teachers create authentic opportunities for students to use technology for learning(Alvermann, 2002; Beach, 2012). One effective way to integrate technology within
instruction is through PBL (Lee & Blanchard, 2019). With the availability oftechnology in classrooms, technology-integrated PBL has great potential to havepositive impacts on student learning.
Teaching about Chinese Language and Culture: Ms. Luo’s Virtual Classroom
Ms. Luo has taught Chinese language and culture to secondary students in a sciencemagnet school in an urban area of the mid-Atlantic region of the US for six years. A
passionate and dedicated educator, her teaching is framed by theories of motivation andengagement with a particular emphasis on drawing deep connections to students’ own
experiences. Before COVID-19, this was accomplished through project-based learningand peer-to-peer collaboration in her physical classroom. In the spring of 2020, Mr.
Luo recognized the urgent need to reimagine her curriculum. She leveraged theconstructivist pedagogies that worked well in her face-to-face teaching as she designed
a project-based approach that built on students’ interests and made strong connections
to Chinese language and culture.
Although Ms. Luo’s instructional plans were engaging, Ms. Luo’s students
demonstrated low levels of participation and engagement. In response, she explored
new ways to draw students into the virtual learning space. Ms. Luo explored digital
tools and online resources that she hoped would capture students’ interest and enhance
language learning. Although this was time consuming, Ms. Luo created relevant,authentic language learning experiences for her students, such as jigsaw activities to

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strengthen their listening and speaking skills, that invited full participation. In addition,
she drew on students’ shared experiences with youth culture to build bridges into
Chinese language and culture learning activities. Finally, Ms. Luo used a project-basedlearning approach to incorporate peer-to-peer collaboration and group work, thus
creating authentic interaction among students.
The lessons Ms. Luo learned have implications for language teachers as they plan for
an uncertain year that will likely include remote and hybrid learning in some capacity.
Therefore, we share this list of recommendations, informed by Ms. Luo’s experiences
and supported by the literature. It is important to note, however, that teachers mustbuild remote instruction based on their own experiences and the needs of their students.
1.
Use project-based learning to engage and motivate students. Ms. Luo
reimagined her project-based approach to instruction and redesigned her curriculum forthe virtual classroom. For example, the online, group project, “My Trip,” was easily
re-designed for virtual learning for her intermediate level students. Over the course of
several weeks, students worked together to conduct research and to plan a virtual sevenday trip to China. A truly interdisciplinary project, students created a budget, researchedand booked hotels and flights, and planned sightseeing activities. Small groups worked
together outside of the remote class time to complete the project in Google classrooms;
the final projects became the performance-based instrument Ms. Luo used to assess
students’ learning. At the conclusion of the project, Ms. Luo invited students to reflect
on their own learning and their experiences. Students were motivated by their interestin planning a trip, particularly at a time when many of them were not free to leave theirhomes regularly, and the opportunity to work with classmates online.
2.
Select technological tools that students know and enjoy using. Ms. Luo is a techsavvy teacher who regularly used available digital tools in her brick-and-mortar
classroom to engage students and support her instructional goals. When teaching
remotely, Ms. Luo selected tools she had used before the COVID-19 school closuresuch as Edpuzzle, Kahoot, Quizlet, Flipgrid, and Duolingo. By integrating these tools,
Ms. Luo created content-specific activities and assessed students’ language
development from a distance. For example, when teaching a Chinese song “Listen toMom”, Ms. Luo used Edpuzzle and a teacher-edited YouTube video with embedded
questions about the song to activate and build students’ background knowledge. Digital
tools that allowed for authentic collaboration, Kahoot and Quizlet, were used forvocabulary instruction and review.
3.
Embed instruction within interactive, dynamic activities. When learning alanguage, students benefit from collaborative and interactive experiences (Wright,2019) with their peers. These authentic opportunities for rehearsal build oral language
skills and strengthen vocabulary knowledge. To create interactive experiences tosupport students’ learning of longer songs and texts, Ms. Luo often implemented thejigsaw strategy using the breakout room feature of Zoom. The jigsaw approach invited
students to flexibly collaborate and support one another as Ms. Luo grouped andregrouped them throughout the learning activity (Aronson, 2002).
4.
Build bridges for students between American and Asian culture (music, pop
culture, etc.). Many young adolescents are familiar with aspects of modern Asian
culture and may be eager to learn more if they can draw connections to their own lives.

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One way Ms. Luo did this in her remote classroom was through the Chinese zodiac.
Specifically, Ms. Luo taught students the Chinese words for their zodiac signs and thoseof their family members in Chinese and introduced the history and culture behind theanimals and icons of the zodiac. To build personal connections, she invited students to
explore personality traits based on the Chinese zodiac and compared them to theconstellations they are named for. These lessons allowed students to make personal andcultural connections as they learned Chinese vocabulary.
5.
The teacher must take on the role of cultural ambassador in the Chinese
language and culture classroom. When language teaching is embedded in cultural
immersion, students are more engaged and learn more (Celik, & Yıldız, 2019). To dothis, Ms. Luo served as a cultural ambassador for Chinese language and culture in many
ways. For example, she created a Chinese club to introduce students to Chinese history
and culture. Before the pandemic, Ms. Luo shared Chinese foods and delicacies suchas moon cakes and Chinese dumplings with her Chinese Club. She continued thispractice during COVID-19. Although students could not taste the food, they learned
many Chinese foods, the ingredients of each delicacy, and the Chinese words for eachone, thus expanding students’ knowledge of Chinese culture and supporting language
development.
Although these recommendations were shaped by constructivist pedagogies that Ms.
Luo found to be effective, these approaches will not ensure that remote teaching willbe trouble-free. Students will struggle and many will become disengaged as learning
becomes more challenging. However, these principles may provide guidance toteachers who must design and teach engaging language and culture curriculum in virtual
classrooms.
Conclusion
Ms. Luo’s reflective, inquiring stance allowed her to learn from the challenges she
experienced and adjust her teaching to better meet the needs of her students. An
uncertain and rapidly shifting public health landscape has taught all of us to be flexible
and pivot quickly. Teachers are now prepared to do whatever they must to support
student learning across all modes of delivery. Moreover, remote teaching during the
pandemic has forced many of us to re-evaluate our perspectives on teaching andlearning. During the shift to remote teaching, Ms. Luo’s perspective shifted from an“all children can learn” stance to a more nuanced perspective that recognizes all
students can learn if they are fully engaged. As we learn to accept that the future of
education has been forever changed by the pandemic, teachers must grapple with howthey can engage students and support learning for all students in the remote classroom.

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underlying middle and high school teachers’ use of problem-basedlearning. Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-Based Learning, 13(1), 2.
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Stoller, F. (2002). Project work: A means to promote language andcontent. Methodology in language teaching: An anthology of current practice, 107119.
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Contact email: vshinas@lesley.edu

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A Prototype System with Speech Recognition Function for Practicing Speaking
EnglishHarumi Kashiwagi, Kobe University, JapanMin Kang, Kobe University, Japan
Kazuhiro Ohtsuki, Kobe University, Japan
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Abstract
The literature indicates that many Japanese students enrolled in English language
classes do not use English outside of class. Therefore, we assume that speech
recognition technology can help create opportunities to speak English. Although somespeech recognition software is widely available, few studies have used software witha speech recognition function to investigate how we should adapt this technology toforeign language learners with various proficiency levels, including Japanese students.
The authors, therefore, developed a prototype system with a speech recognition
function to create opportunities for Japanese students practicing English. We tested
the system in a pilot study with 17 Japanese university students. During the test,
students were asked to use the correct English word for an image displayed by thesystem. Students’ responses to the system were collected via a survey questionnaire.
The pilot test indicated that most words were recognized accurately, and the students’speech was correctly recognized by the testing system to a large extent. In addition,
88% of the students expressed a positive attitude toward the system. These results
suggest that speech recognition functions create opportunities for students to practicetheir English. They also suggest that we should consider the balance between asoftware’s recognition rate and students’ motivation for practicing English whenusing speech recognition software for language instruction, since students might beless confident if their pronunciation is repeatedly found to be incorrect.
Keywords: Language Learning System, Speech Recognition, Computer-Generated
Characters, Practice Speaking in a Foreign Language

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Introduction
In 2014, Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology
published its English Education Reform Plan. This plan placed a priority on
improving Japanese students’ oral English proficiency. However, many students inJapan lack the opportunity to use English outside of language classes and lackconfidence in speaking English (Kashiwagi, Kang, & Ohtsuki, 2017). Thus, it isimportant that these students have a welcoming environment in which they canpractice speaking English. In this paper, we suggest that speech recognition software
can help create this environment for students who lack English speaking opportunities
outside of class. Although some speech recognition software, such as Dragon
Naturally Speaking, is widely available, it is not yet sophisticated enough to recognize
the English speech of all levels of English language learners (Chapelle & Voss, 2016).
According to Blake (2016), effectively utilizing this technology’s limited range of
operations, such as word recognition or short sentence repetition, is a desirable goal.
By using the speech recognition function in this way, learners can identify which
words or phrases deviate from the standard pronunciation that the engine recognizes
and can adjust their speech accordingly. Unfortunately, few studies have usedsoftware with a speech recognition function to investigate how to adapt thistechnology to foreign language learners with various proficiency levels, including
Japanese students.
To meet this challenge, we developed a prototype system with a speech recognition
function to examine how to best adapt this technology for Japanese students
practicing English. We conducted a pilot study with 17 Japanese university students
and solicited their opinions of our prototype through a questionnaire. We aimed toinvestigate the following research questions:
1. How accurately does the prototype system recognize students’ speech?
2. How do the students respond to the prototype system?
3. Are student’s responses to the prototype system related to their nervousness when
speaking English, or their negative attitudes toward English pronunciation?
Below, we first describe the prototype system, then lay out the experiment, deliver its
results, and discuss its findings. We conclude by reflecting on the potential of our
prototype.
The Prototype System
In our prototype system, SpeechRecog, recognizes speech inputs by referring to aregistered dictionary. SpeechRecog uses Microsoft Windows’ speech recognition
function (see Windows Support Home Page, n.d.) to recognize students’pronunciation, following the process explained below. The system’s dictionary is
contained in a text file so that registered words and sentences can be edited with ease.
When a word is recognized by the prototype system, it provides feedback by repeating
the recognized word (or sentence) and a score from 0 to 1. This score indicates thedegree to which the speech input matches the registered dictionary. This feedback
comes with one of three letters: “H” indicates that the input has been recognized as an
accurately pronounced registered word or sentence, “M” indicates that the input
speech is hypothesized or assumed to be a registered word or sentence, and “L”
indicates that the input speech has been detected but it is not clear whether the input

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speech corresponds to a registered word or sentence. An example of such feedback
would be: “[H] sea bream (0.9426834).”
Structure of the Prototype System
The structure of the prototype system is outlined in Figure 1. It consists of threedifferent types of software: SpeechRecog, MINI BASIC, and AnimeViewer.
SpeechRecog (Figure 3) initiates and concludes the recognition of input speech andreceives and saves the results of the Windows’ speech recognition function.
SpeechRecog sends only “H” level results to MINI BASIC.

Figure 1: System overview.
MINI BASIC (Kashiwagi, Kang, & Ohtsuki, 2020) creates questions by automaticallyobtaining question text data and inputting this data into a TV Program Making
Language (hereinafter called TVML, TVML home page. n.d.) file template. TVML isa text-based scripting language that automatically generates television programs(Hayashi, 1999). This file is sent to AnimeViewer, which is a viewer tool that
displays computer-generated (CG) content from TVML scripts. AnimeViewer isprepared in TVML Player X, which produces CG content. MINI BASIC also checks
whether the recognized data from SpeechRecog match the correct answer and creates
feedback messages in a TVML file.
ExperimentParticipantsThis study had 17 participants, all students at a university in Japan, of whom 12 weresecond-year students, 2 were third-year students, and 3 were fourth-year students.
Participants were asked to provide an English word to accompany a picture displayedby the testing system (see below) and answered a questionnaire after completing theexperiment.

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ProceduresFirst, we provided study participants with 10 English words (shown in Table 1,
below) and instructed them to focus on remembering these words for 30 minutes. The
words were the names of fish and shellfish. Next, we asked participants to provide theappropriate English word for an image displayed by the testing system. The systemthen recognized their answers, checked whether their answers were correct, anddelivered feedback. The post-experiment questionnaire (Table 2) had three items,
each scored on a 5-point Likert-type scale: strongly agree, moderately agree, neutral,moderately disagree, or strongly disagree. They were also encouraged to give
unstructured, longer-running feedback about the experiment and the testing system.
The experiment had five steps detailed below to provide an idea of how our system
might be applied in a classroom setting.
1. The experimenter boots up the MINI BASIC software, and a CG character
appears on the AnimeViewer screen, gives instructions, and displays an image for aquestion (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Experiment scene using the prototype system.
2. SpeechRecog software is booted up and the dictionary file is read (Figure 3). The
experimenter clicks Start Log to initiate recording data and Start Recognition toinitiate speech recognition.

Figure 3: Example screen from SpeechRecog.

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3. The student orally answers the question.
4. The speech recognition results appear in SpeechRecog (Figure 3).
5. SpeechRecog sends only the “H” level results to MINI BASIC to check whether
the recognized data match the correct answer. If so, a TVML file is sent toAnimeViewer and a CG character appears to tell the user that their answer is correct.
If not, the same happens but the CG character says “Once again, please” to tell theuser that their answer was incorrect.
6. At the end of the experiment, the experimenter clicks Stop Recognition to stop
the software’s speech recognition activity and Stop Log to stop recording data. The
results are then saved.
Results and Discussion
RQ1: How accurately does the prototype system recognize students’ speech?
We determined the prototype system’s accuracy by calculating the percentage ofparticipants’ spoken words that were recognized as correct answers at the “H” level(Table 1). Every participant’s use of the words “prawn,” “sea bream,” “mackerel,”“yellowtail,” and “saury” was recognized accurately by our prototype, and 16
participants’ (94%) uses of the words “globefish” and “eel” were recognizedaccurately, while 13 of the 17 participants’ (76%) uses of the words “squid,” “crab,”and “turban shell” were recognized accurately. These results indicate that most of thewords were recognized accurately, and the prototype system usually reflectedstudents’ speech correctly.
Table 1: System recognition of participants’ use of key words.
English words
Percentage of spoken words recognized as correct
at the “H” level
prawn, sea bream, mackerel,
100%
yellowtail, saury
globefish, eel
94%
squid, crab, turban shell76%
RQ2: How do students respond to the prototype system?
Participants’ responses to the post-experiment questionnaire are listed in Table 3. The
responses to Q1 indicate that 15 of the 17 participants (88%) agreed strongly ormoderately that they had a positive attitude toward the prototype system. Participants
gave some positive feedback, including: “The speech recognition software is moreaccurate than I expected, and it might be useful for confirming our English
pronunciation,” and “This system might be useful when we are more familiar withspeaking English.”
Two outlying responses were neutral, though the participants who gave those
responses also commented that the prototype system’s “use of multimedia helps us
remember new words” and that “With this system, we will be able to practiceanswering the appropriate English word reflectively.”
There were some negative comments as well, most concerning the fact that the
prototype system only tells students when, not where or how, they made errors in

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pronunciation. This feedback suggests that speech recognition software does notnecessarily improve students’ English pronunciation, even though it gives them theopportunity to practice.
No
Q1
Q2
Q3

Q1
Q2
Q3

Table 2: Questionnaire items.
Questionnaire items
I have a positive view of this software and system.
I feel nervous when I use English during face-to-face communication.
I am not good at English pronunciation.
Strongly
Agree
7
6
5

Table 3: Questionnaire results (n = 17).
Moderately
NeutralModerately
Disagree
Agree
8
2
0
9
0
1
5
4
2

Strongly
Disagree0
1
1

In this study, we have not conclusively determined how we can effectively introduce
speech recognition into language learning activities. However, this type of practicewith pictures and a speech recognition function can serve for oral practice withmultimedia information that is not character-based and will provide students chances
to say what they want to say in English quickly. One participant commented that thisprototype system would be “useful for preschool and elementary school children” dueto its ease of use and the way in which feedback is delivered.
RQ3: Are students’ responses to the prototype system related to nervousness when
speaking English or negative attitudes toward English pronunciation?
We also used the post-experiment questionnaires to examine whether participants’
responses to our prototype were related to their nervousness in using English or their
negative attitudes toward English pronunciation. To analyze the relationships between
variables, we calculated Spearman’s rank-order correlation coefficients on the datafrom the questionnaire shown in Table 3.
The results for the correlation coefficients between Q1 and Q2 (rQ1Q2 = −0.26) show
no significant relationship between participants’ responses to our prototype and their
nervousness using English. Furthermore, the results for the correlation coefficients
between Q1 and Q3 (rQ1Q3 = 0.05) show that there was no significant relationshipbetween participants’ responses to our prototype and their negative attitudes toward
English pronunciation.
However, the results for the correlation coefficients between Q1 and Q2 (rQ1Q2 =−0.26) indicated that participants who feel nervous while using English in face-toface communication might hold negative attitudes toward practicing their vocabulary
with speech recognition software and that they might be less confident if theirpronunciation is repeatedly found to be incorrect. This suggests that the software’s
recognition rate and students’ motivation for practicing English must be consideredwhen using speech recognition software for language instruction.

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Limitations and Recommendations
Certain limitations of the current study should be mentioned. The primary aim of thisstudy was to verify the operation of the prototype system’s speech recognition
function in a pilot study. More words and more participants would need to be tested
before relying fully on this prototype system for English speaking practice. Moreover,it appears that students feel less confident if their speech is repeatedly recognized asincorrect. Thus, using this system’s speech recognition function could actually
decrease some students’ English speaking if they shy away from using it in order toavoid negative feelings associated with doing something incorrectly. For futurestudies, we hope to further examine how we can incorporate speech recognition
functions into language learning systems, considering both the recognition rate andthe students’ motivation to practice English.
Conclusion
We developed a prototype system that used speech recognition software to create
opportunities for students to speak English. The results of our pilot study indicatedthat most speech was recognized accurately, and that 88% of participants viewed theprototype system positively. Our results also indicate that participants’ responses tothe system’s use of speech recognition software was not related to their nervousness
using English or their negative attitudes toward English pronunciation. It did,
however, find that participants who felt nervous using English in face-to-facecommunication might have negative attitudes toward the use of speech recognition
software, especially if their speech is repeatedly found to be incorrect. Together, ourresults suggest that the software’s recognition rate and students’ motivation forpracticing English must be considered when speech recognition software is used for
language instruction.
This study has several limitations. For instance, we had only 17 participants andprovided them with 10 keywords. Future studies could examine more words and moreparticipants. Future studies could also examine the utility of speech recognition indifferent cultural linguistic contexts to improve the generalizability and adaptability ofsystems such as ours.
Acknowledgement
This work was supported by JSPS Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research Number
JP18K02822.

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References
Blake, R. (2016). Technology and the four skills. Language Learning & Technology,
20(2), 129–142.
Chapelle, C. A. & Voss, E. (2016). 20 years of technology and language assessmentin Language Learning & Technology. Language Learning & Technology, 20(2), 116–
128.
Hayashi, M. (1999). TVML (TV program Making Language)—Automatic TV
program generation from text-based script. Proceedings of Imagina ’99, 119–133.
doi:10.11485/itetr.23.4.0_1
Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. (2014).
English Education Reform Plan corresponding to globalization.
http://www.mext.go.jp/en/news/topics/detail/__icsFiles/afieldfile/2014/01/23/134359
1_1.pdf
Kashiwagi, H., Kang, M., & Ohtsuki, K. (2017). A study on the affective factors ofJapanese university students in language communication activities. Proceedings of the
4th Symposium on Language and Sustainability in Asia, 17–22.
Kashiwagi, H., Kang, M., & Ohtsuki, K. (2020). A study on a method for dynamic
control and use of TVML contents. Educational Technology Research, 43(Suppl.), 9–
12 (in Japanese).
TVML home page. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.nhk.or.jp/strl/tvml/index.html(in Japanese)
Contact email: kasiwagi@kobe-u.ac.jp

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Overcoming Academic Anxiety and Improving Hope of University Students:
A Group Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
Larissa Amira Giyani, Universitas Indonesia, Indonesia
Adhityawarman Menaldi, Universitas Indonesia, Indonesia
The Asian Conference on Education 2020
Official Conference Proceedings
Abstract
University students’ anxiety is mostly caused by academic anxiety. It is a disruptive
thought pattern followed by physiological responses and behavior as a result of concern
regarding the possibility of having poor academic performance. It may cause
detrimental effects such as procrastination, poor academic performance, andwithdrawal from social relations. Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) facilitates theidentification of thoughts, emotion, situations, and behavior that affect emotion andimprove emotion by altering dysfunctional thoughts and behavior. CBT is an effective
treatment for managing anxiety in adults, including university students (Situmorang,
2018; Situmorang, 2017; Cuijpers et al., 2016; Corey, 2012). Furthermore, hope as aprotective factor against anxiety can be fostered through CBT protocols that act as aresource for pathways and therapeutic relationship which facilitates agentic thought.
This research examined the effect of group CBT on reducing university students’
academic anxiety and improving hope. Group CBT was conducted in five sessions with
six participants of Universitas Indonesia’s undergraduate students. The data werecollected using validated pre-existing questionnaires: Student Worry Questionnaire andSnyder’s Hope Scale for pre-test, post-test, and follow-up measurements. The data
gathered was analyzed using Friedman’s ANOVA. There is no significant effect ofgroup CBT on reducing participants’ academic anxiety (𝑥2(2) = 3.20 p >.05) but there
is a significant effect on improving participants’ hope (𝑥2(2) = 6.52 p <.05). The
implications of hope as a protective factor for academic anxiety are discussed.
Keywords: Academic Anxiety, CBT, Group Therapy, Hope, University Students

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Introduction
University Students and Academic Anxiety
Anxiety is a complex cognitive, affective, physiological, and behavioral responses(Clark & Beck, 2010). Anxiety is experienced when one perceives some situation as
uncontrollable, especially threatening. A certain level of anxiety will drive someone tomove forward, but an anxiety level that is too high will cause the individual many
obstacles (Bamber & Schneider, 2016). Among many groups that experience anxiety,one of them is undergraduate students who possess a high level of anxiety (Falsafi
2016; Lun et al., 2018). Undergraduate students are expected to make adjustments todeal with new patterns in their life. This adjustment ranging from academic
assimilation, personal, emotional, and social aspect (Gray, Vitak, Easton & Ellison,2013).
The transition period from school to university life brings out several new demands andchallenges for university students. So it can be understood that this period may cause
increasing psychosocial distress and adjustment difficulty. From an academic aspect,
students face a strict curriculum and must manage their time effectively (Conley,Travers & Bryant, 2013). It is a much more challenging phase, where working on
assignments demand more of the students' time, compared to assignment in high school(Park, Edmondson & Lee, 2012). In the social aspect, numerous students need toseparate from their family and close friends. While at the same time they need to makenew friends, build a relationship with their academic advisors (Conley et al., 2013).
From several factors that cause anxiety in university students, most of them are causedby academic anxiety (Beiter, et. al, 2015; Hooda & Saidi, 2017). It is a disturbing
thought pattern that is followed by physiological responses and behavior as a result ofconcern regarding the possibility of having an unacceptable poor performance on facing
academic tasks (Ottens, 1991). Academic anxiety felt by university students will resultin maladaptive cognition, behavior, affect, and psychological aspect (Situmorang,
2018; Situmorang, 2017).
Tremendous academic anxiety may disturb students' learning activities such as
decreasing study motivation, poor performance during tests and tasks (DordiNejad etal. (2011). Psychological symptoms might appear in a form of tension and panic in theclassroom, feel incapable of completing tasks, and not interested in gaining a better
understanding of difficult materials. Physiological symptoms may include sweaty
hands, cold sensation, rapid breathing, palpitation, and stomachache (Vitasari, Wahab,
Othman, Herawan, & Sinnadurai, 2010). If ignored, academic anxiety may cause
detrimental effects such as procrastination, poor academic performance, andwithdrawal from social relations (Mattoo, & Nabi, 2012).
CBT as an Effective Treatment
Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is a well-researched psychological treatment uses
to manage emotional and behavioral problems (Butler, Chapman, Forman, & Beck,2006). CBT process follows a principle that negative thoughts and dysfunctional
assumptions can be challenged and change through behavioral experiments, that is
testing the dysfunctional thoughts against the reality face by the individual (Marwick

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Officilal Conference Proceedings& Birrell, 2018). CBT help develops skills that enable individuals to identify theirthoughts, emotions, situations, and behavior that affect their emotions and improve theiremotions by altering their dysfunctional thoughts and behavior (Cully & Teten, 2008).
Distorted thoughts targeted in cognitive therapy are done by using several techniquessuch as identifying inaccurate thinking, analyze evidence for and against the automatic
thoughts, challenging and changing maladaptive thoughts, changing non-adaptive
behaviors, and becoming more adaptive in relating to other people. In managing anxiety
disorders, cognitive therapy is conducted together using a behavioral technique that
may include exposure exercises (Kaczkurkin & Foa, 2015). The numerous CBTtechniques for managing different types of anxiety disorders have one importantcommonality which is that cognitive aspects causally influence fear and anxiety, where
the dysfunctional beliefs and cognitive distortions take part in the maintenance ofanxiety disorder (Hofmann & Asmundson, 2017).
Evidence show CBT is an effective treatment for reducing symptoms of anxiety
disorders (Cuijpers et al., 2016; Hofmann & Smiths, 2008). Specifically, a metaanalysis study revealed that social anxiety disorder (SAD), generalized anxiety disorder(GAD), and panic disorder can be treated effectively with CBT. The effect size washigh, regardless of whether these disorders were considered as disorder-specific or
generic anxiety outcomes (Cuijpers et.al, 2016). Also, anxiety disorders treated with
CBT in randomized placebo-controlled trials and natural real-life settings show aneffective and efficacious result for adults (Otte, 2011). Related to a group setting, groupcognitive therapy can help to change and restructure cognition, emotion, and behavior
that cause anxiety (Dewinta & Menaldi, 2009). Specifically, group therapy can decrease
academic anxiety levels in undergraduate students (Kifli, Sunawan, & Jafar, 2019).
Hope as Protective Factor
As one of the positive psychological constructs, hope is goal-oriented thought own by
an individual that consist of agency thinking and pathway thinking. Agency thinking is
the motivation to initiate and sustain movements toward goals, while pathway thinking
is the capacity to create ways for goals attainment (Snyder, 2002; Snyder et al., 1991).
Hope is generally regarded as a protective factor against anxiety (Michael, 2000;
Snyder, 1999; Snyder, Feldman, Taylor, Schroeder& Adams III, 2000). The cognitive
set owns by the individual affects how anxiety is experienced, will be a facilitative or adebilitating one, in regards to goal accomplishment. When individuals perceive that
others, the world, or the future as threatening, anxiety affects the human mind andinterferes with the individual's capability in creating a plan (pathway thought) and makeprogress (agency thought) to desired goals. On the other hand, when faced withpotential threats to the desired goal, an individual may have a protective cognitive set
consist of the perception that he/she is capable of achieving desired goals throughperceived pathways and agentic thinking. In the second cognitive set, hopefulindividuals are more inclined to follow through with their goals even when facing
anxiety, compared to less hopeful individuals (Michael, 2000).
To bring out hope, agency and pathway thinking must be present. CBT protocols act asa resource for pathways and therapeutic relationship facilitates agentic thought (Taylor,
Feldman, Saunders & Ilardi, 2000). In terms of anxiety among undergraduate students,
the intervention aims to enhance hope should focus on techniques that enhance agency
thinking. Those techniques include establishing personal goals, increasing positive self-

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talk, and less negative self-talk, also giving positive and encouraging stories of effective
coping examples (Buckelew, Crittendon, Butkovic, Price & Hurst, 2008).
The Current Study
This current research aims to examine the effect of group CBT on Universitas
Indonesia’s undergraduate students’ academic anxiety and hope. Especially whether
the group CBT intervention would decrease the participants’ academic anxiety andimprove their hope. This study uses a non-experimental pre-post measurement as its
method. The data were collected using validated pre-existing questionnaires. The First
instrument was The Student Worry Questionnaire – 30 (SWQ – 30) (Osman, Guttierez,
Downs, Kopper, Barrios & Haraburda, 2001). It is a self-report consist of 30 items
which represents various situation, feelings, and reaction related to anxiety experienced
by college undergraduate students. The 30 items are categorized into six domains,which are: Worrisome thinking, financial related concerns, significant others wellbeing, social adequacy concerns, academic concerns, and general anxiety. The items
were rated on a Likert scale of 0 - 4 (0 = "Almost never characteristic of me" to 4 ="Almost always characteristic of me"), with a score range of 0-120. SWQ-30 can yielda total score utilize to measure anxiety (worry) and each scale scores (Osman et. al,2001). A higher score indicates a higher level of anxiety.
The second instrument was The Hope Scale (Snyder, 1995), consist of 12 items divided
into agency (items 2, 9, 10, and 12) pathway subscale (items 1, 4, 6, and 8. While items
3, 5, 7, and 11 were distracters items to create a less obvious content of the scale. The
items were rated on a Likert scale of 1-4 (1= Definitely false, 2= Mostly false, 3=Mostly
True, and 4= Definitely True). The score ranging from 8 – 32.
Information regarding the group therapy was announced on social media andparticipants were recruited through social media as well. Participants interested injoining the group therapy were asked to fill out the SWQ questionnaire through a google
form. The inclusion criteria for the participant to join group therapy is an SWQ score ≥of 40. 44 participants signed up for the group therapy but after the screening andselection process, six undergraduate students of Universitas Indonesia joined the grouptherapy (M age = 19.3 years, SD = 0.52).
The Intervention: Group CBTThe intervention module of this group CBT was created based on principles ofcognitive-behavioral therapy, What? Me Worry!?! Mastering Your Worries module bySaulsman et al. (2015) and Manual for Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy of Major
Depression (Munoz, Ippen, Rao, Le & Dwyer, 2000). The group CBT was designed tobe conducted face to face in 5 sessions with one session per week. Each session has aduration of 2 – 2.5 hours. However, due to the Covid-19 situation, the group therapy
was conducted online via the zoom meeting platform for 5 sessions with a 2.5-hour
duration for each session. The group therapy program is as follows:

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AgendaDay/Date

PreMarch –Assessment June 2020

Session 1

Session 2

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Objectives

Activities•
Need assessment•
Problem mapping•
Participant’s
availability to join grouptherapy

Individual interview
with each participant,which covers:•
Explore theparticipant’s SWQ-30’s
result•Demographic
information (Name, sex,age, GPA, nonacademic activities)

1st week of •Sense of belonging
July 2020 to the group•
Gain anotherperspective regarding
academic anxiety

2nd weekof July
2020••

Group forming
Sharing session•
Participants canidentify how disturbing
their academic anxiety is•
Participants rate
how disturbing theiracademic anxiety on ascale of 0-10•
Understand what
academic anxiety is•
Brief materials
on:•Difference
between fear andanxiety•
Academic
anxiety and its daily life
examples•Understand theunderlying mechanism ofacademic anxiety through
CBT’s ABC model•
Discussion on
CBT’s ABC model ofacademic anxiety:•
A: Antecedents/
Activating Event•
B: Belief•C:
Consequences•
Understand what
negative automatic
thoughts (NATs) and typesof NATs are•
Participants canidentify their NATs•
Brief materials
on types of NATs•
Participants
identify which types of
NATs operates in themfrequently

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Session 3

Session 4

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Help participants
manage their anxiety andnegative thoughts•
Familiar withseveral relaxations andgrounding techniques•
Brief materials,
discussion, and guided
trial on several
relaxation techniquessuch as deep breathing
exercises and grounding
techniques•
Participants canapply the ABC model totheir daily routine, outside
the therapy session•
Homework 1:
Identify the ABC modelof their academic
anxiety in the next one
week•
Participants share
their homework•
Able to identify the
ABC model correctly•
Homework
discussion•
The therapist
and other participants
give inputs if necessary•
Participants canidentify which evidence
support or against their
NATs•
Participants can
examine their NATs moreobjective•
Introduction onevidence hunting: A
tool to look forevidence that supports
and against NATs•
Working anddiscussion on evidence
hunting worksheet
discussion•
Participants give
feedback and point ofview for one another4th week of •Participants
July 2020 understand the effect ofholding on or letting go of
their NATs•
Goldenquestions worksheet: A
tool to help participants
examine the positive
and negative effects ofholding on or letting goof their NATs•
Participants
understand the process thatneeds to be done to create
an alternative thought in ananxious situation•
Brief materials
on alternative thought•
Creating a newand more adaptive
thought•
Creating amantra, a short form of

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alternative thought
Session 5

Follow-Up
Session1st week of •Participants able toAugustidentify and see whether
2020
there is a difference
regarding their academic
anxiety•
Participants rate
again on how disturbing
their academic anxiety
on a scale of 0-10•
Comparison of
the rate between session
1 and session 5•
Participants
share what feels
different and the efforts
they have done toimprove their condition•
Participants
understand the possibilityof having a setback inmanaging academic
anxiety•
Create a selfmanagement plan•
Brief materials
on managing setbacks•
Setbacks are anormal process in thejourney of managing
anxiety•
Creating a selfmanagement plan:•
Identify signs
that might lead tosetbacks and adaptive
strategies to minimize
setbacks•
Participants
appreciate one another andidentify positive things
about the group•
Participant areencouraged to giveappreciation and share apositive thing about thegroup•
Gain an overview
of participants’ condition
after joining the grouptherapy•
Individualinterview by phone•
Discussion on
participant’s condition,
progress, benefit felt
from the group therapy,
techniques application
on daily activities

3rd weekof August2020

Table 1. Group Therapy Program

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Research Result
Quantitative
The data gathered was analyzed using Friedman’s ANOVA. There is no significant
effect of group CBT on reducing university students’ academic anxiety (𝑥2(2) = 3.20 p>.05). Wilcoxon tests were used to follow up on this finding. A Bonferroni was appliedand so all effects are reported at a 0.0167 (0.05/3) level of significance. Even though
the statistical analysis showed non-significant results, there was a large effect size forthe pre-test and follow-up measurement (r = -.55) (Table 1). Regarding the participants’hope result showed that there is a significant effect on improving university students’hope (𝑥2(2) = 6.52 p <.05).

Figure 1: Score Changes of Participants’ Academic Anxiety
Time ofmeasurementZp-value

Effect Size (r)Pre – Post

-0.943

.438

-0.27

Pre – Follow Up-1.892

.094

-0.55

Post – Follow Up -1.214

.313

-0.35

Table 2. Effect Size of Group CBT on Participants’ Academic Anxiety

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Figure 2: Score Changes of Participants’ Hope
Qualitative and SUDS
According to qualitative evaluation, all of the participants stated that the sessionsdelivered and group dynamics were helpful for them in managing their academic
anxiety. They are also sure that they can apply the techniques learned in the sessions,especially evidence hunting and deep breathing, to manage their anxiety. In terms of
the subjective unit of distress scale (SUDS) score, participants reported a decreasing
SUDS score from session 1 to session 5 on how disturbing their academic anxiety forthem. The SUDS score ranging from 1-10, where 1 is least disturbing while 10 is very
disturbing. In the 1st session, participants' SUDS scores were 8-10 while in the 5th
session their SUDS scores were 4 – 6.5.
Conclusions
At first, problems faced by participants regarding academic anxiety include facing
difficult subjects, competitive university environment, comparing themselves withother students with better scores, disturbing negative thoughts, feeling hopeless, worry,
and anxious about their scores, achievement, and future. To overcome those problems,participants did several efforts such as: discuss their problems with a friend, avoiding
tasks and not studying, emotion-focus coping such as crying, or consuming calming
food such as ice cream. Those efforts done to overcome academic anxiety were notfully effective, so the participants would like to learn more about how to manage theiranxiety effectively.
After joining the group therapy, five participants stated that the group therapy was very
helpful (Score 9 and 10 on a 0-10 scale) and one participant stated that the group therapy
was helpful (Score 8 on a 0-10 scale) for managing their academic anxiety. Participant
no. 1 stated that now she realizes the pattern that operates frequently in her, which was
focusing on the negative side and predicting negative events, even though the facts
show the opposite. She felt that the materials are given, really helped her to see things

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objectively, and determined to apply evidence hunting in her daily life. Participant no.
2 said that by joining the group therapy she learns to appreciate the process of doing
things and there are kind people that need to be appreciated who helps her in the processof managing her anxiety. Participant no. 3 learns to see things from both sides andefforts to calm herself when facing anxiety through grounding techniques, alternative
thoughts, and evidence hunting. Participant no. 4 can manage her anxiety better,
especially it is easier for her to think more positively. Participant no. 5 learns how tounderstand herself and managing her negative automatic thoughts better. Participant
no. 6 feels grateful to learn how to manage and face the anxiety that is not only
applicable to the academic aspect but also other aspects of her life.
On the other hand, the quantitative result shows a non-significant effect of group CBTon reducing university students' academic anxiety. This result might be caused byseveral factors such as: Due to the pandemic, the group therapy was switched fromoffline to an online platform. This condition might decrease the opportunity for eachparticipant and therapist to create a deeper therapeutical alliance, unlike a face-to-facegroup therapy. This was supported by feedback from participants that prefer the grouptherapy to be conducted offline so the interaction between participants and therapist ismore natural and comfortable. The therapeutic alliance is known to be an important
predictor of therapy outcome where strong therapeutic alliance such as Agreement ontask, goals, and bond) is more likely to result in a better outcome of treatment in anxiety
disorders (Newman, Stiles, Janeck, & Woody, 2006; Newman, Erickson, Przeworski& Dzus, 2003). Specifically, group therapy with anxious participants, which has highcohesiveness resulted in better immediate outcomes compared to less cohesive groups(Hand, Lamontagne, & Marks, 1974). Second, online and distance learning put moreacademic burden on the participants, where they need to adjust the learning method.
They need to focus on watching the lecture from their laptop which increases theirfatigue. Due to the increasing academic challenges, they might need constant supportand supervision to manage their study load. Where the support in a form of online
interaction only, might not be enough to fully facilitate their needs in managing
academic anxiety.
However, a follow-up test confirmed that there is a large effect size for the pre-test andfollow-up measurement. A small sample size may affect the statistical power and thus
resulting in a non-significant result (Fritz, Moritz & Richler, 2012). On the other hand,a large effect size with no statistical significance shows that there is some evidence fora meaningful effect, though greater power is needed for further research (Fan & Konold,2010). This finding indicated some evidence of a meaningful effect of the group therapy
for overcoming undergraduate students’ academic anxiety.
The second finding, showed a significant effect of group CBT to improve the hope ofuniversity students. This finding is in line with the literature that states CBT treatment
protocols act as a source for pathways thought and therapeutic relationship facilitates
agentic thought (Taylor et al., 2000). When faced with the inability of task completionand other negative beliefs of self, they refocus their attention on the task completionitself. Though in that situation they are also likely to experience anxiety, it is facilitating
anxiety that channeled to agentic thought. That sense of agency protects an individualfrom impairing effects of anxiety and they make use of the anxiety-related arousal tofacilitate greater agentic thinking (motivation). Through repetition of this process, thehopeful individual is better protected from anxiety problems (Michael, 2000).

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In the context of academic success in college, when faced with educational obstacles,
high hope individuals are fluent in channeling their energies to their new avenues.
Internal, agentic self-talk statements such as “Keep going!” reinforced the energy
production and maintenance of high hope individual characteristics (Snyder, LaPointe,
Jeffrey Crowson, & Early, 1998). That finding is actually in line with current findings,
where the participants utilize and felt that several techniques learned in the grouptherapy help them to manage their anxiety. Specifically for the agentic self-talks
statements (Snyder et al., 1998) that can be manifested or exercised through thealternative thoughts and mantra that they created. One example of the mantra was“Good job, you’ve made it this far”. Participants were able to create alternative thoughts
and mantra that is relatable and applicable to their situation.
To conclude, qualitatively the participants in this study can apply a more adaptive
approach to overcoming their academic anxiety. They felt the tremendous benefit frommaterials and positive interaction gained from the group therapy. However, this study
found no statistically significant effect of Group CBT on reducing university students'
academic anxiety. But a large effect size was found for pre-test and follow-up
measurement. There is a significant effect of Group CBT on improving university
students’ hope. From the literature review and the current study, we conclude that hope
may act as a protective factor for anxiety. It is probably possible that the mechanism bywhich CBT works to tackle academic anxiety is done through the improvement of hope.
Future study may investigate the mechanism that underlies the effectiveness of CBT on
reducing academic anxiety, that might be done through the improvement of hope. For
further research, a greater sample size is needed. This can be done by having moreparticipants and a greater number of intervention groups.

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Snyder, C. R. (2002). Hope theory: Rainbows in the mind. Psychologicalinquiry, 13(4), 249-275.
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Contact email: larissa.amira81@ui.ac.id, a.menaldi@ui.ac.id

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Developing University EFL Learners Debate Speaking Skills through Closed
Facebook Groups and Zoom Lessons
Leveth Jackson, Keiai University, Japan
The Asian Conference on Education 2020
Official Conference Proceedings
Abstract
Students acquire communicative competence in a variety of ways hence a need forhigher education to provide diverse instructional strategies such a debate. Kennedy(2007) advocates that this type of active involvement in the classroom enables content
to be learned in meaningful ways rather than passively consuming information.
Students therefore, learn more effectively by actively analyzing, discussing andapplying content when participating in debate classes. This study reports findings on
the pedagogical feasibility of developing students debate speaking skills through theuse of closed Facebook Groups and Zoom lessons. The research participants included
25 English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners taking Debate classes at a private
university in Chiba Prefecture, Japan during the first semester of the academic year
2019-2020. Data was collected from students’ critical reflections an in class structured
surveys. The findings indicate that notwithstanding the structure and technologicallimitations, delivering debate presentations through closed Facebook Groups andZoom lessons may help students develop their English speaking and presentation
skills, build their confidence in speaking before an audience, and reinforce theirEnglish macro skills such as listening and reading. This paper concludes with thepedagogical implications for EFL teachers, curriculum developers and researchers.
Keywords: Debate Speaking Skills, Closed Facebook Groups, Zoom Lessons,Teaching Debate, University EFL Learners

iafor
The International Academic Forumwww.iafor.org

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Introduction
The present global pandemic (COVID-19) has forced the closure of schools globallyand has introduced emergency remote teaching and learning as the current norm. Thishas generated a need for uncovering new channels of communication andcollaboration such as digital spaces like Facebook groups and Zoom videoconferencing. Online debates stimulate critical thinking and can be a highly effective
way to actively engage students in research in an online classroom (Shaw, 2012).
Findings from research conducted by Sheeran & Cummings (2018) on
communication through social networking sites (SNS) suggests that student
engagement increased more in courses with official Facebook groups.
Other pedagogical researchers have elaborated on debates as an active learning toolthat promotes critical thinking and triggers higher order learning such as synthesis,
analysis and evaluation (Kennedy,2007; Paladino 2009). Moreover, debates can be an
educational and valuable life experience (Galloway, 2007). Additionally, there is also
evidence that communication through SNS imposes no restrictions through physicalspace, time or time zones since collaboration can take place asynchronously(Stevenson & Bauer, 2019). Besides, the audience/students are rarely passively
reading; they are responding in numerous rhetorical forms. This study reports thefindings on the pedagogical feasibility of developing students debate speaking skills
through the use of closed Facebook Groups and Zoom lessons.
The Description of Debate Course Activities
Preparation for the debate began with teaching the structure of debate: The topics
covered included: Agreeing and Disagreeing, Giving Reasons, Supporting an opinion,
Debating an opinion and Deliver Skills, Building confidence Students were placed inteams to discuss and share their opinions. Each week students were given a moot that
supported their interaction, critical thinking and reflection skills. Students had todevelop their own points of view regarding the topic. With the purpose of informing
further practices in an online debate class the researcher sought to describe a range ofactivities that can be performed inside a closed Facebook group and zoom videoconferencing to enhance students’ debate skills (formulating an opinion, supporting an
opinion, debating an opinion and building confidence).
The course covered the essentials of mastering basic debate skills. The course wastaught in a fun, yet challenging online classroom setting. The main goal of the course
was to develop student’s confidence, critical thinking and speaking skills as they
practice understanding argument and basic debate skills. Additionally, it was the aimof the instructor/researcher that students received encouragement and gained
confidence as they explored debate topics such as Agreeing and Disagreeing, Giving
Opinions and Support, Comparing and Contrasting.
Using Closed Facebook Group
Each week students were given a moot that supported their interaction, criticalthinking and reflection skills. Students had to develop their own points of view
regarding the topic. After ten weeks of Facebook.The moot was shared as an
assignment.

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Using zoom meeting
Online instruction differs greatly from traditional in class instruction and does not
function at the same speed (Dykman and Davis, 2008). The debate class for thisparticular course occurred in a synchronous course session where the speakers can beseen and heard by other classmates. For each activity students were placed in groups
then assigned to breakout rooms. Active participation among university learners has
been regarded as a valuable aspect of conducting online lessons (Santilli & Beck,2005).
The activities assigned required students to play a specific role, they were either
debate leaders (as in Devil’s Advocate the advocates are tasked with provoking thediscussion, encourage various points of views and ensure the debate continues) or
students pose questions (as in the panel discussion where students ask questions andchallenge them on their views while presenting alternative views to the topic). This
format of assigning specific roles encourages active participation from all students
during the debates which is positively linked to their overall performance in thecourse (Pratt-Phillips, 2011). Furthermore, the format of the lessons allowed
collaboration among students. In teams/ groups they had to research a position. This
fostered critical thinking and allowed the learning objectives to be met.
Methodology
Participants
The research participants included 25 English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners
taking Debate classes at a private university in Chiba Prefecture, Japan during the firstsemester of the academic year 2019-2020. Number= 11 Males 14 Females who are 1st-4th year students.
Instruments
The data gathering tool in the quantitative research was collected from students'
critical reflections and in class structured surveys. It consisted of 12 items, 10 open
ended questions and 2 closed ended questions.
Procedure
The researcher employed practical action research using a mixed method approach.
The purpose of practical action research is a reflective change approach to improving
one’s practice or social situation through methods of collaborative problem solving inorder to improve the situation or produce guidelines for best practices. AR seeks toengage participants equally and fully in the research process while fulfilling its
purpose of being a systematic process of inquiry (Stringer, 2014).
Data Analysis
Thematic analysis was conducted to analyze themes from the critical reflections.
Thematic analysis is characterized as a method to identify, analyze and report patternsof meaning in a qualitative research. It transforms data into rich and data (Braun and

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Clarke, 2006). Consequently, the reflections were comprehensively reviewed and thenthe basic themes were extracted.
Findings
The findings indicate that notwithstanding the structure and technological limitations,delivering debate presentations through closed Facebook Groups and Zoom lessons
may help students develop their English speaking and presentation skills, build theirconfidence in speaking before an audience and reinforce their English macro skills
such as listening and reading.
The results of the study showed that the general student feedback on the use of zoom
meetings and a closed Facebook group were positive. The students briefly reported
their debate experiences after the debate in a reflection format. They mentioned anincrease in understanding debate terms. A few mentioned they felt really “engaged”
and that had “many speaking chances”. One student said, “I enjoyed the online zoom.
Although it was only on the screen, it was like a normal school because I could talkbefore and after class. I think the class was bright and fun. I think that it was good
because it was easy to talk because of the online zoom. What I enjoyed was the groupsessions. I was able to gain a lot of knowledge by exchanging opinions. I’m glad I
could make a strong opinion. The challenges for Facebook were easy tounderstand. After class, I could study as a review”.
While some students reported that they had an increased understanding of the course
content others reflection showed an increase in their confidence to express theiropinions. Based on student’s critical reflections this format of using Facebook groups
and zoom meetings has shown to support: interpersonal and teamwork skill
development. The interactivity of this format increased student motivation to learn,
increasing communicative competence.
Another student reported, “I enjoyed the group work, and I’m glad I did. The reason
for this is because I was able to engage with many different people in each class. In
actuality, it is difficult to make a group with the same group members or to form agroup with people you have never talked to before in a classroom, but ZOOM forces
you to form a group, so I had a lot of fun making friends. Also, I was able to put what
I learned into practice immediately”.
Table 1: Student Responses
Questions

YesNO

Which do you prefer: zoom classes or face to face?

68%

32%

Did you enjoy learning debate online via zoom?

76%

24%

Did you enjoy doing assignments on Facebook?

80%

20%

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Table 2: Basic themes derived from participant’s reflections
Questions
Evidence
Basic Themes
Which do you prefer: •Communication: Creates
Many chances to speakzoom classes or faceopportunities for increase in•
Online classes were exciting”
to face?
•Zoom classes allowed me to introduce my communicative competence,
listening, presenting andopinions and my speaking abilities improved”•
I had a chance to communicate with many public speaking
Sharing thoughts ,questions,students”
ideas and solutions•
Speaking activities in the breakout rooms
helped me a lot”
What did you enjoy
Collaboration: Promotes•
Group work
the most about the
teamwork and collaboration•
Practicing immediately
zoom classes?
•
Engage with classmates and make friends•
Speaking in the breakout rooms
Did you enjoy doing•
Seeing everyone submit I was prompted to Critical Thinking:assignments on
Ability to gather, analyze,
hurry and submit my assignment before theFacebook? Was it
and interpret information to
deadline.
helpful? Explain
information•
Facebook activities were fun
Building confidence•
I was surprised I could give my opinion
Looking at problems in a•
See the opinion of others helped me in
new way
thinking of my own opinion•
I had many speaking and listening chances
What class activities •Useful teaching aid
Sharing ideas in pair workin the course helped•
Working in groups
you to improve your •Warm up activities
speaking ability?
Discussion and Conclusion
Based on the experiences with teaching this debate course online, it is recommended
that educators in higher education use debate in an online format to assist students todevelop their speaking proficiency. Online debates are enjoyable for both instructors
and students despite the delivery mode. Studies conducted by Sheeran & Cummings(2018) on communication through social media proposes that student engagement
improved greatly in courses with official Facebook groups. According to Santilli andBeck (2005) active participation among university learners has been regarded as avaluable aspect of conducting online lessons. However, further research is needed on
students’ perceptions and experiences.
The pedagogical implications for EFL teachers, curriculum developers and researcher
are as follows:•This is a significant contribution to the field of research on instruction
techniques and online learning, especially in a pandemic.
•
Gain insights into the merits of online debate classes as a teaching strategy to
improve speaking skills.
•
Encourage EFL teachers, curriculum developers and researchers to take thestep to teach debate online.
•
Online debates are innovative and enjoyable for students

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Acknowledgement
The very valuable feedback from the editor-in-chief and the anonymous reviewers isappreciatively acknowledged. Special thanks to my mother Catherine JohnsonJackson for the motivation to complete this study and listening to all my complaints
and providing positive feedback. To my father Lawrence Jackson (Snr.) for nurturing
the change agent in me and to my husband Mr. Dwayne Coulthurst for being a
constant support throughout the study. Also, extra special thanks to my daughter
Nailah for being the most patient child while I work.

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References
Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative
Research Psychology. 3, 77-101.
Creswell, J. W. & Plano Clark, V.L. (2011). Designing and Conducting mixed
methods research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Dykman, C. & Davis, C. (2008). Online education forum: Part two—teaching online
versus teaching conventionally. Journal of Information Systems Education 19(2), 157164.
Galloway, R. (2007). Dinner and conversation at the argumentative table:
Reconceptualizing
debate as an argumentative dialogue. Contemporary Argumentation and Debate, 28,
1-19.
Kennedy, R. (2007). In-class debates: Fertile ground for active learning and thecultivation of critical thinking and oral communication skills. International Journal of
Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 19(2), 183-190.
Paladino, A. (2009). Squeeze that intellectual juice! Encouraging interactions in thelecture theatre to enhance skill development and student performance. Marketing
Education Review, 19(1), 81-88.
Pratt-Phillips, S. (2011). Comparison between online activity and performance in a
distance education equine science course. NACTA Journal 55(1), 21-15
Santilli, S. & Beck, V. (2005). Graduate faculty perceptions of online teaching. The
Quarterly Review of Distance Education 6 (2), 155-160.
Shaw, J. A. (2012). Using small group debates to actively engage students in an
introductory microbiology course. Journal of Microbiology & Biology Education,
13(2), 155-160.
Sheeran, N. & Cummings, D. J. (2018). We're all in this together: The impact ofFacebook groups on social connectedness and other outcomes in higher education.
The Internet and Higher Education, 40, 44-49,
Stevenson, C.N. & Bauer, J. C. (2019). Enriching Collaboration and Communicationin Online Learning Communities. Information Science Reference
Stringer, E.T. (2014). Action research. (4th edition). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE
Publications.
Contact email: l-jackson@u-keiai.ac.jp

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Unpacking Mission Statements of International Universities Recognized forInnovation
Kate A. Montgomery, Southern Methodist University, United States
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Abstract
This research supports some of the mounting pressures higher education practitioners
face in approaching innovation strategically while recognizing the mission-driven
needs of the institution. Two research questions were examined. First, how do highly
innovative universities balance traditional missions and innovation? Second, how do
mission statements project isomorphic or distinctive rhetoric? This research was
grounded in institutional theory given its relevancy to assessing the debate overlegitimizing tendencies, such as symbolism and signaling. For the research design, theunit of analysis was at the institutional level, specifically, 85 of the top 100
international universities recognized for innovation by Reuters that had publicly
accessible mission statements. For Phase I, a content analysis of mission statementsallowed for Concept and In Vivo Coding using ATLAS.ti CAQDAS software. In
Phase II, quota sampling was used to more deeply explore six universities: Universityof Tokyo, National University of Singapore, Stanford University, Harvard University,
University of Oxford, and KU Leuven. Most universities featured fell closer to central
tendencies which would suggest isomorphism in projecting the scope of their mission
statements. Phase II allowed for the incorporation of a qualitative investigation – forinstance, Oxford’s intentional reference to innovation as opposed to Harvard focusedsolely on traditional mission. The National University of Singapore varied moststrongly with the least descriptive rhetoric. This exploratory study piques researchinterest to pursue additional studies such as investigating the strategic plan alignment
with missions and investigating explanatory, causal studies.
Keywords: Higher Education Institutions, Mission, Vision, Innovation, Mission
Statements, International, Content Analysis, Comparative Analysis

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Introduction
As institutions face challenges with balancing their traditional institutional missions
and modern-day quests for relevance, they find themselves embracing innovation
initiatives to thrive in the years to come. The age of the fourth Industrial Revolution,
racial inequities and unrest, and most recently, a global pandemic have catapulted themost traditional, residential of campuses to innovate at lightning speed as they faceexistential threats.
This research supports some of the mounting pressures higher education practitioners
face in approaching innovation strategically while recognizing the mission-driven
needs of the institution. Two research questions were examined. First, how do highly
innovative universities balance traditional missions and innovation? Second, how do
mission statements project isomorphic or distinctive rhetoric?
A poorly constructed mission-vision statement can present negative outcomes,
inconsistencies with strategic plans and resource allocations, accreditation
vulnerabilities, and student recruitment, admissions, and enrollment declines(Morphew & Hartley, 2006). Of note, governing issues may expand beyond
accrediting bodies to state and national departments of education, ministries of
education, and international organizations such as the European Union, the United
Nations, and the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (Özdem,
G., 2011).
High research universities typically refer to three components of mission dependent
on institutional type: teaching, research, and service in their respective communities(Harris, 2013; Morphew & Hartley, 2006; Thelin, 2019). Mission statements provide
lenses to assess the rhetoric of traditional institutional missions and potential
innovations in order to foster legitimacy and/or utilitarian purposes to guide strategic
direction. A mission statement outlines the organization’s purpose and serves as aroadmap for programs and initiatives; whereas a vision statement outlines anaspirational direction the organization would like to achieve in a future state (Jonker& Meehan, 2014). For purposes of this study, “mission statements” referred to bothmission and vision statements given the use of one and/or the other by institutions
measured in this research; both terms demonstrated the organizational goals, presently
and in the future.
In their seminal work on innovation in higher education, Henderson (1970) and Thelin(2019) discussed the heritage of innovation in higher education such as theestablishment of the land-grant system, professional schools, and community colleges.
They posited that innovation has been built on the blending of society and individual
needs of which are not static. Their positions aligned with a definition of innovation
by Poole and Van de Ven (2004) in which they described innovation as “thewellspring of social and economic progress, and both a product and facilitator of thefree exchange of ideas” (p. xi).
When considering theories most relevant to mission-related research, institutional
theory was selected for grounding at a high level. Strong breadth of literature linked
this theory to institutional rhetoric and its relevancy to assessing the debate over

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legitimizing tendencies, such as symbolism and signaling, versus more meaningful
utilitarian prose (Ayers, 2015; Meyer & Rowan, 1977; Morphew & Hartley, 2006).
So, why examine from an international vantage? First, mobility and technology havemade international education increasingly more prevalent in the higher education
sphere (Landorf, Doscher & Hardrick, 2018). Additionally, university missions often
include solving broad societal challenges. Also, global citizenship and problemsolving are prevalent at the institutional and individual levels, even within their own
backyards, such as with the presence of international students, migration, and global
collaborations.
It is important to acknowledge the researcher positionality given experience in higher
education, innovation, and corporate management from the United States. To mitigate
potential bias, data was triangulated through secondary sources including literature
outside of the United States and by obtaining advisor and peer reviews.
Research Design
This research built on previous studies based on exploring the Reuters (2018a) Top
100 universities recognized for innovation internationally (Montgomery, 2020a;
Montgomery, 2020b). These universities were determined through an algorithm thatmeasured patents, research, and publications (Reuters, 2018b). In Phase I, a content
analysis (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016) was conducted by sourcing publicly available
institutional mission statements for high research universities displayed in the English
language of which 85 of the Top 100 universities were available. The 85 mission
statement documents were uploaded into ATLAS.ti CAQDAS software to then be
coded and serve as a benchmark against continents and institutional levels (ATLAS.ti,
2020; Contreros, 2017; Miles, Huberman, & Saldaña, 2014). Of note, the UnitedStates was referred to as a continent in comparison to Asia and Europe given the little
incidence of Canadian institutions in the Top 100. In Phase II, quota sampling wasused to select six institutions (two each from Asia, the U.S., and Europe) for closer
examination against the benchmarks.
Data Analysis
Geographic Contextual Overview
Before exploring the mission statements, broader context was examined via
descriptive statistics utilizing ATLAS.ti geospatial maps to provide a visual view
(Yoon, Gulson, & Lubienski, 2018). This section was first published in aninterdisciplinary overview to provide context leading into unpacking the mission
statements (Montgomery, 2020b). Given the unit of analysis based on an international
sample, geospatial mapping plotted the Top 100 institutions with publicly available
mission statements (44 in the U.S., 22 in Europe, and 15 in Asia) (see Figure 1).

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Figure 1: International Institutions Recognized for Innovation (Reuters, 2018a):
Geographic Dispersion Utilizing ATLAS.ti Software
In looking beyond the geospatial mapping, some variance by continent occurred inviewing the rankings by quadrant. The U.S. led the first three quadrants; Europe andAsia jockeyed for second and third positions in the first three quadrants; and Europe
led the fourth quadrant followed by the U.S. and Asia respectively (see Table 1).
Top 2526-50
51-75
75-100Region # %Region # %Region # %Region # %U.S.
17 68%
U.S.
12 48%
U.S.
10 40%
Europe 10 40%
Europe 4 16%
Asia
7 28%
Europe 8 32%
U.S.
7 28%
Asia
4 16%
Europe 5 20%
Asia
6 24%
Asia
6 24%
Other
0 0%
Other
1 4%
Other
1 4%
Other
2 8%
Total
25 100%Total 25 100%
Total
25 100%Total 25 100%
Table 1: International Institutions Recognized for Innovation (Reuters, 2018a) –Geographic Composition by Rankings Quadrant

University Selections for Phase II
The unit of analysis for Phase II included six international institutions selected basedon a quota sampling technique to equally represent Asia, the United States, andEurope based on the Top 100 (Reuters, 2018a) – University of Tokyo (Tokyo),
National University of Singapore (NUS), Stanford University (Stanford), Harvard
University (Harvard), University of Oxford (Oxford), and KU Leuven. These
universities represented a good dispersion of mission statement approaches asevidenced with mission and innovation In Vivo Codes.
Category and Coding Process
The working definition for categories represented many elements within the defined
scope (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016), were more explicit relative to themes (Rossman &Rallis, 2003; Saldaña, 2016), and were prescribed based on the research purpose andcorresponding literature. When beginning the formal coding process (Saldaña, 2016),
data was synthesized by building on the Concept Codes in light of the data collected.
For instance, some of the preliminary codes based on the research were maintainedsuch as innovation, teaching, and research. The need to create two catch-all codes,
general mission phraseology and descriptive innovation phraseology, for quotations
that did not fall into the more detailed Concept Codes was recognized (see Figure 2
for a category and concept codes listing).

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Category
MissionConcept Codes
General Mission Phraseology
Teaching
Research
Service
Traditional Mission

Innovation

Descriptive Innovation Phraseology
Innovation Within Mission
Innovation Beyond Mission

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Figure 2: Mission and Innovation Concept Codes List
Descriptive Statistics for Top 100
The first data point assessed the total number of words in mission statements as a way
to assess the depth of text to describe the institutional purpose. The mean number ofwords for the total universities amounted to 205, with Europe higher at 284 words andthe U.S. and Asia lower at 194 and 124 words respectively. The ranges of words foreach continent provided interesting accounts in that the U.S. and Europe wererelatively close in ranges, 23-950 and 28-954 respectively. Asia exhibited mission
statements of increased brevity at a range of 14-269. Of note, all universities withstatements were left in the analysis as those on the higher and lower ends of thespectrum could be exhibiting less isomorphic behaviors (see Table 2).
Total
Asia
U.S.
Europe
Mean
205
124
194
284
Median
130
94
156
181
Range
14-95414-26923-95028-954
N
85
17
44
21
Table 2: International Institutions Recognized for Innovation (Reuters, 2018a):
Benchmarks – Total Word Count (University Average)

Unpacking Mission Statements for Six Universities
The Tokyo (2020) mission statement emphasized Mission Concept Codes at 89% on
par with the institutional mean also at 89%. However, their total number of words at
92 compared to the institutional mean of 205. The Tokyo mission statement generated
ten codes. Their mission statement emphasized all traditional areas of mission – a“world-class platform for research and education” and fostering a “strong sense of
public responsibility.” Innovation was evidenced with general phraseology such as “apioneering spirt” and to “expand the boundaries of human knowledge” (see Figure 3).

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University of Tokyo
Mission Statement Summary
Total Words: 92
Mission vs. Innovation Concept Codes: 89% vs. 11%
Sample in Vivo Codes:
World-class platform for research and education
Strong sense of public responsibility and a pioneering spirit
Expand the boundaries of human knowledge in partnering with society
Figure 3: University of Tokyo – Mission Statement Summary
The NUS (2018) mission statement emphasized the highest percentage of Innovation
Concept Codes at 66%, well above the institutional mean at 11%. Their total numberof words at 14 was the lowest frequency of all universities measured and well below
the institutional mean at 205. The NUS (2018) mission statement generated fourcodes, the lowest number of all universities on the Top 100 list (Reuters, 2018a). The
NUS mission statement was not only short but also used more general language thatwas not unique to high research universities around the world. Two In Vivo Codes
signaled general innovation phraseology, “inspire and transform” and “shaping thefuture,” one word related to mission, “educate,” and one proclaiming prestige on aninternational scale (see Figure 4).

Figure 4: National University of Singapore – Mission Statement Summary
The Stanford (2020) mission statement was focused on a more visionary perspectivewith the traditional mission of research, education, and service embedded within
which was expected given their premiere status as the international university mostrecognized for innovation. In fact, they emphasized Innovation Concept Codes at 53%
versus the institutional mean at 19%. Their total number of words at 251 were closer
to the institutional mean at 205. The mission statement generated 17 codes. Stanfordemphasized strong evidence of traditional mission and innovation within their mission
statement rhetoric such as finding “new ways of fulfilling mission.” They included agood deal of innovation phraseology such as “discovery and creativity” and“transforming education” (see Figure 5).

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Stanford University
Mission Statement Summary
Total Words: 251
Mission vs. Innovation Concept Codes: 47% vs. 53%
Sample In Vivo Codes:
Discovery and creativity
Accelerating impact
Transforming education
Figure 5: Stanford University – Mission Statement Summary
The Harvard (2020) mission statement emphasized Mission Concept Codes at 89% on
par with the institutional mean also at 89%. They communicated specific language
related to a liberal arts curriculum with some reference to innovation (e.g.,“transformative”) without explicitly stating. Their total number of words of 179 wereless than the institutional mean at 205 but still relatively close. (see Figure 6).
Harvard University
Mission Statement Summary
Total Words: 179
Mission vs. Innovation Concept Codes: 89% vs. 11%
Sample In Vivo Codes:
Standard for residential liberal arts and sciences education
Experience an unparalleled educational journeyIntellectually and socially transformative
Figure 6: Harvard University – Mission Statement Summary
The University of Oxford (2020) mission statement emphasized Mission Concept
Codes at 87% which is virtually on par with the institutional mean also at 89%.
However, their total number of words at 191 were significantly less than Harvard at
179 and the institutional mean at 205. The Oxford (2020) mission statement generated
18 codes. Codes encompassed all areas of traditional mission – teaching, learning,
research, and service. In some cases, they were intertwined such as with “world-classresearch and education,” “independent scholarship and academic freedom,” and“diverse staff and student body strengthens our research learning.” Service provided
the breadth of communities served by stating the intent to “benefit society” on a“local, regional, national and global scale.” In regard to innovation, generalphraseology with specific mention of innovation was evidenced such as “culture ofinnovation and collaboration.” Innovation Within Mission rhetoric included“advancement of learning by teaching and research” (see Figure 7).

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University of Oxford
Mission Statement Summary
Total Words: 191
Mission vs. Innovation Concept Codes: 87% vs. 13%
Sample In Vivo Codes:
World-class research and education
Long-standing traditions
Independent scholarship and academic freedom
Culture of innovation and collaboration
Figure 7: University of Oxford – Mission Statement Summary
KU Leuven (2020) did not publish a mission statement but did reference missionrelated content in their policy plans. KU Leuven solely emphasized Mission Concept
Codes at 100% with no innovation referenced in their mission statement. Their total
number of words at 93 were significantly less than the institutional mean at 205. The
KU Leuven mission statement generated seven codes. The mission statement focusedon education and research with no immediate reference to service. In regards toeducation, they discussed “focus on the individual student” and “study programmes.”
Even more reference to research was exhibited with rhetoric such as “researchintensive” (see Figure 8).
KU Leuven
Mission Statement Summary
Total Words: 93
Mission vs. Innovation Concept Codes: 100% vs. 0%
Sample In Vivo Codes:
Research-intensive, internationally-oriented university
Learning in itself
Focus on the individual student, the study programmes, management and quality
assurance of these programmes
Figure 8: KU Leuven – Mission Statement Summary
Summary of Findings
In reviewing descriptive statistics from a word count perspective, the U.S. and Europe
both demonstrated a wide range of mission statement lengths which suggested moredifferentiation of how institutions were communicated. Conversely, Asia showedmuch less of a range and a lower median score which suggested more normative
behavior within that continent.
When reviewing codes for Mission versus Innovation, Asia constituted the highest
number of Innovation codes with the U.S. highest for codes related to mission(education, research, and service). In comparing universities specifically, Tokyo had ahigher number of mission codes relative to peer institutions within the Asian
continent. Conversely, NUS exhibited the highest innovation composition and theshortest mission statement out of all 85 universities researched. Stanford exhibitedhigh innovation rhetoric and the longest mission statement of the six universities
measured. Harvard focused on a high degree of mission language.

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Both European universities, KU Leuven and Oxford focused on mission rhetoric. Of
note, Oxford actually mentioned innovation outright in its mission statement while
KU Leuven was the only university to make no reference to innovation.
Conclusion
Future Research Agenda Recommendations
Most universities featured fell closer to central tendencies than variances which could
suggest isomorphism in projecting the depth of their mission statements. Descriptive
statistics and associated benchmarks provided a good starting point but shouldincorporate qualitative investigation. For instance, Oxford’s intentional reference toheritage and innovation contrasted Harvard who focused solely on traditional mission
rhetoric.
Gaps in LiteratureThis research filled several gaps in the literature related to international higher
education studies, the intersections of traditional university missions with innovation,and the critical use of ranking systems. It provided a vantage on interdisciplinary uses
for ATLAS.ti software beyond the robust coding features, such as geospatial
mapping.
Limitations
While efforts were made to understand the context of Asian and European
universities, researcher positionality could be argued to posture a U.S-centricinterpretation. To address this issue, international literature was included in addition
to peer reviewers with experience in international higher education policy. Initiatives
going forward would benefit from collaborations with Asian and European coinvestigators. This descriptive study piques research interest to pursue additional
studies such as investigating the strategic plans associated with operationalizing
mission and innovation as well as investigating explanatory, causal studies.
Concluding Remarks
In closing, innovation continues to be hotly contested in the higher education sphere.
A recent special edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education (2019) described thedebate of innovation as a mechanism for “high hopes or broken promises” (p. 59). In
the current worldwide climate of the COVID-19 pandemic, the world is witnessing
higher education institutions rapidly innovate programming and policies in real time
as a means to adapt to pressing challenges, and in many cases, to maintainexistentiality. Also at this time, great emphasis is placed on focusing precious
resources on initiatives most directly supporting institutional mission – theintersection of mission and innovation challenges faced in higher education today andfor years to come.

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Acknowledgements
I continue to be very thankful for the support and significant time Dr. Ashley Tull and
Dr. Denisa Gándara from the Education Policy and Leadership Department at
Southern Methodist University (SMU) in the United States have invested in my work.
I would also like to thank my fellow doctoral candidates, Brooke Guelker andKathleen Furr, for their unwavering enthusiasm to offer critiques and collaboration. I
am also fortunate to work with impressive colleagues in the Graduate Liberal Studies
Program at SMU and fellow program directors at the Association of Graduate LiberalStudies Programs serving institutions in the United States and Canada over the years.
They constantly remind me of the great traditions and ideals of higher education thatoffer timeless, contemporary, and innovative impacts.

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References
ATLAS.ti. (2020, July 1). All-in-one research software. Retrieved fromhttps://atlasti.com/
Ayers, D. F (2015). Credentialing structures, pedagogies, practices, and curriculum
goals: Trajectories of change in community college mission statements. Community
College Review, 43(2), 191-214.
Contreros, R. B. (2017, July 15). Working with geo documents in ATLAS.ti.
Retrieved from https://atlasti.com/2017/04/30/geodocs/
Harris, M. S. (2013). Understanding institutional diversity in American higher
education. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Harvard College. (2020, February 12). Mission, vision, & history. Retrieved fromhttps://college.harvard.edu/about/mission-vision-history
Henderson, A. (1970). The innovative spirit. (1st ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Jonker, K. & Meehan, W. (2014, Feb. 19). Mission matters most. Stanford Social
Innovation Review. Retrieved fromhttps://ssir.org/articles/entry/mission_matters_most
KU Leuven. (2020, February 12). Policy plans. Retrieved fromhttps://www.kuleuven.be/english/about-kuleuven/policy-plan/index.html
Landorf, H., Doscher, & S. Hardrick, J. (2018). Making global learning universal:
Promoting inclusion and success for all students. Sterling, VA: Stylus.
Merriam, S.B. and Tisdell, E.J. (2016). Qualitative research design: A guide to design
and implementation. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Meyer, J., & Rowan, B. (1977). Institutionalized organizations: Formal structure as
myth and ceremony. American Journal of Sociology, 83(1), 340-363. Retrieved fromhttp://search.proquest.com/docview/1289729146/
Miles, M., Huberman, A., & Saldaña, J. (2014). Qualitative data analysis: A methods
sourcebook. (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.
Montgomery, K.A. (2020a, July). A longitudinal financial analysis of the Universityof Oxford: Traditional missions, innovations, and comparisons with selectinternational high research universities - Harvard, Stanford, and the National
University of Singapore. Journal of Management Science and Business Intelligence.
5(1): 1-7. doi: 10.5281/zenodo.3915112

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Montgomery, K.A. (2020b, September 16). An interdisciplinary look behind the top
100 international universities recognized for innovation: Geographically, historically,and financially. The European Conference on Education 2020: Official Conference
Proceedings. 473-483. ISSN: 2188-1162. Retrieved from http://papers.iafor.org/wpcontent/uploads/conference-proceedings/ECE/ECE2020_proceedings.pdf
Morphew, C., & Hartley, M. (2006). Mission statements: A thematic analysis ofrhetoric across institutional type. The Journal of Higher Education, 77(3), 456-471.
Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3838697
National University of Singapore. (2018, August 15). New vision, mission, and values
launched. Retrieved from http://news.nus.edu.sg/highlights/nus-marks-new-beginningÖzdem, G. (2011). An analysis of the mission and vision statements on the strategicplans of higher education institutions. Educational Sciences: Theory & Practice,11(4), 1887–1894.
Poole, M., & Van de Ven, A. (2004). Handbook of organizational change andinnovation. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Reuters. (2018a). Reuters top 100: The world's most innovative universities – 2018.
Retrieved from https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amers-reuters-ranking-innovativeuniv/reuters-top-100-the-worlds-most-innovative-universities-2018idUSKCN1ML0AZ
Reuters. (2018b). Methodology: Top 100 innovative universities – 2018. Retrieved
from https://www.reuters.com/innovative-universities-2018/methodology
Rossman, G., & Rallis, S. (2003). Learning in the field: An introduction to qualitative
research (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.
Saldaña, J. (2016). The coding manual for qualitative researchers. (3rd ed.) Thousand
Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.
Soh, K. (2017). The seven deadly sins of world university ranking: a summary fromseveral papers. Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, 39(1), 104–115.
https://doi.org/10.1080/1360080X.2016.1254431
Stanford University. (2020, February 12). A vision for Stanford: A purposeful
university. Retrieved from https://ourvision.stanford.edu
The Chronicle for Higher Education. (2019). The Innovation Imperative. The
Chronicle of Higher Education Inc.
Thelin, J. (2019). A history of American higher education. (3rd Ed.). Baltimore, MD:
Johns Hopkins University Press.
University of Oxford. (2020, February 9). Strategic plan 2018-2023. Retrieved fromhttp://www.ox.ac.uk/about/organisation/strategic-plan-2018-23

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University of Tokyo. (2020, February 12). The University of Tokyo’s mission.
Retrieved from https://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/en/about/mission.html
Yoon, E., Gulson, K., & Lubienski, C. (2018). A brief history of the geography ofeducation policy: Ongoing conversations and generative tensions. AERA Open, 4(4),9. https://doi.org/10.1177/2332858418820940
Contact email: kmontgom@smu.edu

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Developing a Textbook of Writing Pantun, Syair, and Acrostic Poetry by Using theWebsite www.rimakata.com and kbbi.kemdikbud.go.id
Armilia Sari, Sriwijaya University, Indonesia
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Abstract
This study aimed to develop a textbook of writing pantun, syair, and acrostic poetry
by using the website www.rimakata.com and kbbi.kemdikbud.go.id. The researcher
used the Research and Development (R&D) method with the ADDIE model from
Branch (2009) where the steps were Analyzing, Developing, Implementing, andEvaluating. The results of the need analysis with a closed questionnaire showed that
94% of students needed a textbook of writing pantun, syair, and acrostic poetry. The
book consisted of four chapters; Tutorial in Writing Pantun, Tutorial in Writing Syair,
Tutorial in Writing Acrostic Poetry, and Anthology. In the three beginning chapters,
there were three types of evaluations; completing the first two lines called ‘sampiran’and the second two lines called ‘isi’, matching the rhymes, and writing poetry
exercise. The textbook draft was validated by three reviewers. After being revised, theresearcher conducted three tests of formative evaluation with students. The textbook
draft was revised again based on students’ suggestions.
Keywords: Research and Development, ADDIE Model, Teaching Materials, Pantun,
Syair, Acrostic Poetry

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Introduction
Writing poetry can be fun or even burdensome for students of the Indonesian and
Literature Education Study Program. If poetry comes from the innermost expressionof their hearts, it is not difficult for students to write poetry. But if it is a mandatory
task imposed by the lecturer, not all students can write good poetry. Though, poetry
can also be a means of entertainment and fatigue relief for students after days of
facing the intense lecture activities on campus.
As it is known, poetry has several types with different characteristics, such as pantun,
syair, gurindam, epigram, romance, elegance, ballad, satire, acrostic, and so forth.
From many types of poetry, only some poetries can be written by students. In theIndonesian and Literature Education Study Program, Faculty of Teacher Training and
Education, Sriwijaya University, lecturer of Apresiasi Puisi Subject taught writing
pantun, syair, and acrostic poetry only through the examples provided. There was no
specific media or learning material that could be applied to help students in writingthese three types of poetry.
Based on that problem, the researcher tried to develop a textbook about easy and fun
tutorials to write pantun, syair, and acrostic poetry by using the website
www.rimakata.com and also kbbi.kemdikbud.go.id. This textbook guided students on
how to find the perfect AB-AB rhymes for pantun, the perfect AA-AA rhymes forsyair, and good vocabularies for acrostic poetry through the two websites mentioned
above.
The difference between this textbook and other previous textbook was in how thematerial was presented. In the previous lesson, students read textbooks contained only
theories before they practiced, meanwhile this textbook directly presented exercises towrite pantun, syair, and acrostic poetry so that students did not need to memorize theprocedures. Students could directly practice writing the three types of poetry by using
the website www.rimakata.com (Rimakata, 2019) and kbbi.kemdikbud.go.id(Ministry of Education RI, 2019).
The specifications of this textbook consist of a cover, preface, table of contents,
exercises to complete sampiran and isi in pantun, exercises to complete syair,
exercises to complete acrostic poetry with a picture, exercises to write pantun, syair,
and acrostic poetry based on their respective genres, summaries of each chapter,
minimum completeness criteria (KKM), glossary, and bibliography, and author's
curriculum vitae on the back cover of the book.
The problem of this research was "How were the results of need assessment analyze,
design, validity, and evaluation of developing a textbook of writing pantun, syair, andacrostic poetry by using website www.rimakata.com and kbbi.kemdikbud.go.id?"
The objective of this research was to describe the result of need analysis, design,validity, and evaluation of developing a textbook of writing pantun, syair, and acrostic
poetry by using website www.rimakata.com and kbbi.kemdikbud.go.id.

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Definition of Textbooks
According to the LKPP Hasanuddin University (2015), textbooks were part of the
facilities or completeness of learning that had a mission to transfer material based on
curriculum and syllabus. Meanwhile, Tarigan and Djoyo (2009) stated that textbooks
were teaching materials in certain fields of study compiled by reviewers, and were
easily understood by readers, so they became a standard of learning to achieve
instructional goals both in schools and colleges.
From those opinions above, it could be concluded that the textbook was a paper in aparticular field that was used by educators (teachers, instructors, tutors, lecturers) andlearners (students, pupils, collegians) in the teaching and learning process to achievelearning objectives.
Developing Textbooks
A researcher should develop the textbook following the needs of students to achieve
the specified learning goals. Tomlinson (2011) stated that the development of
textbooks referred to all activities carried out by writers, lecturers or educators, andstudents in providing learning resources designed to maximize learning experiences
and achieve learning objectives. Ministry of National Education (2008, p.10-11)
stated that in developing textbooks, it was necessary to pay attention to the principles
of learning, including starting from easy to understand difficult, repetition would
strengthen understanding, positive feedback would provide reinforcement student
understanding, learning motivation, gradual and ongoing, and contained clear
guidelines.
To develop something, a researcher should do need analysis. According to (Yaumi,2013), needs were the gap between reality and expectation. Thus, a situation that did
not meet the desired expectations indicated a need. Learning needs were the gap
between the current conditions of reality and the conditions of learning undertaken.
Prastowo (2013) argued that analysis of textbook requirements was an initial processcarried out to compile textbooks according to needs. In line with this, Nurhayati(2012) stated that needs analysis was the initial stage in determining certain
behavioral goals to be achieved.
Data analysis was done to find out the most needed, less needed, and not needed partsby students. Besides, this data analysis was carried out to measure the level ofdevelopment of students by looking at the level of difficulty of the material presented
to produce textbooks that were following the competency demands that must be
mastered by students
Writing Pantun, Syair, and Acrostic Poetry
According to Tafifin (2015) writing pantun had an objective to develop students’potential following their abilities and wants. Introducing the abilities and limits ofstudents' abilities is intended to be able to introduce and maintain themselves in social
life. Besides, writing pantun was also intended so that students had a high sensitivity
to intrinsic values, effective values, sensory values, and social values in society.

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Meanwhile, according to Miftakhurniyati (2017) writing syair was a creative andproductive learning activity. The purpose of learning to write syair was for students tobe able to produce literary works in poetic form and use them in their daily lives.
Furthermore, Miftakhurniyati (2017) explained that writing syair could sharpen thereasoning and sensitivity of students to things that happen around them.
Lastly, Kustiyah (2017) believed that writing acrostic poetry was a very easy and fun
activity because it used the first letters of each line to spell words that could be readvertically and then used as sentences in poetry. Learners easier arranged words
because there had been previous stimuli.
From the statements above, it could be concluded that writing pantun, syair, andacrostic poetry were good activities that could be both fun and beneficial because it
could increase students' sensitivity to values in social life.
The Website www.rimakata.com
www.rimakata.com website is an online Indonesian rhymes dictionary. Through this
dictionary, everyone could find rhymes that could be used as poetry or other writings.
This website provides several types of rhymes.
1. Rima Sempurna (Perfect Rhymes), where two or more words have the same
sound in the last syllable. Example:
Jalak ~ Salak
Panggung ~ Tanggung
2. Rima Tak Sempurna (Imperfect Rhymes), where two or more words haveidentical sound in the last syllable. Example:
Macan ~ Sopan
Ragi ~ Caci
3. Rima Ganda (Double Rhymes), where two or more words have the same sound in
the last two syllables. Example:
Sahabat ~ Terlambat
Korupsi ~ Erupsi
4. Rima Ganda Tak Sempurna (Imperfect Double Rhymes), where two or more
words have the same sound in some of the last two syllables. Example:
Jelas ~ Keras
Curang ~ Pulang
5. Rima Awal (Beginning Rhymes), where two or more words have the same soundin the initial syllable. Example:
Harga ~ Harta
Mangkat ~ Mangsa
6. Rima Konsonan (Consonants Rhymes), where two or more words have the same
consonant. Example:
buku ~ buka ~ baku ~ baka

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7. Rima Algoritma Metaphone (Metaphone Algorithm Rhymes), words based on
sound equations with the Metaphone algorithm. Example:
bibit ~ bebet ~ bobot
8. Rima Algoritma Soundex (Soundex Algorithm Rhymes), words based on thesound equation with the Soundex algorithm. Example:
kumbang ~ kambing ~ kembung
The Website kbbi.kemdikbud.go.id
The online version of Kamus Besar Bahasa Indonesia/KBBI (The Big Indonesian
Dictionary) is an official word search homepage developed by Badan Pembinaan dan
Pengembangan Bahasa (National Agency for Language Development andCultivation). The aim is to give information as much as possible about thedevelopment of Indonesian vocabulary. This page is updated two times in a year, in
April and October. The last update was in April 2020.
Research Methodology
The researcher used the Research and Development (R&D) method with the ADDIE
development model (Branch, 2009) which the steps were Analyzing, Developing,
Implementing, and Evaluating. The product was a textbook of writing pantun, syair,
and acrostic poetry for students
1. Analyzing
In this stage, the researcher analyzes the students' needs toward a textbook about how
to write pantun, syair, and acrostic poetry. Researchers gave a closed questionnaire
about the need for textbooks to write pantun, syair, and acrostic poetry to 35 students.
2. Designing
The researcher designed a textbook draft that suited the needs of students, which
included the design of a cover page, table of contents, preface, learning objectives,and material in each chapter, exercises, KKM (minimum completeness criteria),
bibliography, glossary, and author's curriculum vitae.
3. Developing
In this stage, the researcher made a textbook draft of writing poetry, poetry, andacrostic poetry. Before the textbook draft of writing pantun, syair, and acrostic poetry
was given to students, the researcher applied a summative evaluation with threereviewers to review the textbook draft of writing pantun, syair, and acrostic poetry.
The three reviewers consisted of one reviewer of language, one reviewer of content,
and one reviewer of presentation. Then the researcher revised it following some notesfrom students.

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4. Implementing
In this stage, the researcher applied the use of the textbook through formativeevaluation. In this stage, researchers conducted one to one with three students, a small
group test with twenty students, and a field trial test with thirty-five students. Throughthese three tests, the researcher could find out the weaknesses of the textbook.
Students suggested the design, colors, and images contained in the textbook draft.
5. Evaluating
In this last stage, the researcher revised the textbook draft again. The deficiencies
given by students were used as references in revising the textbook draft.
Data Collection Technique
Closed questionnaire and validation were used as data collection techniques. A closed
questionnaire was given to obtain information about the obstacles encountered inwriting rhymes, poetry, and acrostic poetry. The validation assessment instrument was
aimed to find out the quality of the textbook draft. The reviewer assessment covered
three aspects, eligibility of language, eligibility of contents, and eligibility ofpresentation. Besides, a column was provided in the questionnaire to give comments
and suggestions.
Data Analysis Technique
The researcher used description technique data analysis. Data obtained from students
and lecturer's questionnaires were calculated in percentage and described, dataobtained from interviews with students and lecturers were described, data obtained
from validation assessments by reviewers were described, data obtained from tests
were analyzed and described.
Results and Discussion
Results of Needs Analysis
The researcher did need analysis by giving students a closed questionnaire. This stage
was aimed to determine the level of students’ needs toward the textbooks. The
researcher gave a closed questionnaire to 50 students of the Indonesian and Literature
Education Study Program on Tuesday 30 July 2019 at FKIP Unsri Indralaya.
For the first question, do you think lecturers and students need easy and fun teachingmaterial to write poetry? 2 students (5%) answered a) need it enough, 0 students (0%)
answered b) do not need, 43 students (94%) answered c) need it badly, and 0 students(0%) answered d) do not need at all.
For the second question, which of the three types of poetry is needed in textbooks forwriting poetry? 4 students (8%) answered a) pantun, 7 students (15%) answered b)syair, 1 student (3%) answered c) acrostic poetry, and 33 students (74%) answered d)
all of them.

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For the third question, what kind of pantun do you wish to be there in the teachingmaterial? 1 student (3%) answered a) pantun about advice and religion, 0 students(0%) answered b) pantun about tradition and riddle pantun, 1 student (3%) answeredc) pantun about love and joke, and 43 students (94%) answered d) all types of pantun.
For the fourth question, what kind of acrostic poetry do you need in the teachingmaterial? A total of 19 students (42%) answered a) acrostic from every first letter orlast letter of a word, 1 student (3%) answered b) acrostic from every first letter or lastletter of a person's name, 1 student (3%) answered c) acrostic from the first or lastletters of the names of animals and plants, and 24 students (52%) answered d) all
types of acrostic poetry.
For the fifth question, what kind of practice do you need in the teaching material? 1
student (3%) answered a) completing sampiran and isi, 6 students (13%) answered b)matching rhymes, 9 students (20%) answered c) the practice of directly writing
poetry, and 29 students (64%) answered d) all types of practices.
Results of Textbook Design
The textbook draft had three sections, beginning, content, and the final section. The
beginning section consisted of a cover with the title and author’s name, preface, andtable of contents. Next, the contents section consisted of the title of material in eachchapter, instructional design and indicators, description of the material, summary,formative test, assessment rubric, mastery learning criteria, bibliography, andglossary. The final section contained the author’s curriculum vitae.
Results of Developing Textbook
The textbook draft entitled Asyiknya Bikin Pantun, Syair, dan Puisi Akrostik Keren(It’s Fun to Write Nice Pantun, syair, and Acrostic Poetry). Chapter 1 entitled‘Asyiknya Menulis Pantun’. This chapter contained tutorial for writing pantun withperfect A-B-A-B rhymes. The evaluation provided was completing sampiran and isi(content).
Chapter 2 entitled ‘Asyiknya Menulis Syair’. This chapter was about easy and fun
tutorial for writing syair with perfect A-A-A-A rhymes. There were some practices ofmatching rhymes at the end of the chapter.
Chapter 3 entitled ‘Asyiknya Menulis Puisi Akrostik’. This chapter talked about the
tutorial for making various acrostic poetry using the website kbbi.kemdikbud.go.id.
The evaluation given was a direct practice of writing poetry from a word, name of aperson, object, animal, or plant.
Chapter 4 entitled 'Sajak-Sajak Kehidupan'. It was a bonus chapter where all pantun,
syair, acrostic, and other kinds of poetry written by the author were presented in thischapter. The design of the material in each chapter in the textbook entitled Asyiknya
Bikin Pantun, Syair, dan Puisi Akrostik Keren can be described in the chart below.

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Figure 1: The Titles of Each Chapter
Results of Textbook Implementation
Before the textbook draft was given to students, the researcher applied a summativeevaluation that was adapted from the developed model of Tessmer (2013). The
summative evaluation was conducted by asking 3 reviewers to review the textbook
draft of writing pantun, syair, and acrostic poetry. They were a reviewer of language,a reviewer of content or material, and a reviewer of graphics.
The eligibility of language was validated on Friday, October 4th, 2019 by Dra. Sri
Utami, H.Hum, lecturer of Indonesian and Literature Education Study Program,
Faculty of Teacher Training and Education, Sriwijaya University. In the aspect oflanguage appropriateness, the minimum score was 1 and the maximum score was 4.
The accuracy of sentence structure got a score of 4, the effectiveness of sentence got ascore of 4, rigidity of term got a score of 3, understanding of information got a scoreof 4, the ability to motivate students got a score of 4, conformity with students’development level got a score of 4, grammar got a score of 3, and accuracy of spelling
got a score of 3. The reviewer of language decided that this textbook was worthy of
publication with revisions.
The eligibility of content was reviewed on Wednesday, October 16th, 2019 by Dr.
Latifah Ratnawati, M.Hum., lecturer of Indonesian and Literature Education Study
Program, Faculty of Teacher Training and Education, Sriwijaya University. In the
aspect of content or material eligibility, the minimum score was 1 and the maximum
score was 4. Completeness of the material got a score of 3, the depth of material got ascore of 3, accuracy of definition and concept got a score of 4, the accuracy of factand data got a score of 4, the accuracy of case examples got a score of 4, the accuracyof pictures, table, and diagrams got a score of 3, the ability to encourage students’curiosity got a score of 3, and ability to make students interested in giving questions
got a score of 3. The reviewer of content concluded that this textbook was appropriate
to publish with revisions.
Meanwhile, the eligibility of presentation was reviewed on Monday, October 21st, by
Dr. Zahra Alwi, M.Pd., lecturer of Indonesian and Literature Education Study
Program, Faculty of Teacher Training and Education, Sriwijaya University. In the
aspect of presentation eligibility, the minimum score was 1 and the maximum score
was 4. The regularity of concept got a score of 3, the clarity of learning goals got ascore of 3, the learning indicator got a score of 3, the learning instructions got a scoreof 3, the glossary got a score of 3, bibliography got a score of 3. The same as two
previous reviewers, the reviewer of the presentation stated that the textbook draft

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entitled Asyiknya Bikin Pantun, Syair, dan Puisi Akrostik Keren was worthy of
publication with minor revision. After being validated, the researcher revised the
textbook according to notes that were given by the three reviewers.
After the textbook draft had been written, reviewed, and corrected, the next stage was
implementation. The researcher carried out one-to-one, small group, and field test.
One to one test was conducted on Thursday, October 23, 2019, with 3 students at
FKIP Unsri Inderalaya. The researcher asked 3 students that were consisted of thehigh, medium, and low ability students to read the textbook drafts. After that, theywrote some notes to add supporting pictures on certain pages.
A small group test was conducted on Tuesday, October 29, 2019, with 20 students at
FKIP Unsri Inderalaya. Students corrected some typing errors and numbering on
certain pages.
Lastly, a field test was carried out on Saturday, October 26 with 35 students at FKIP
Unsri, Ogan Campus. The results of the test field indicated that several pages needed
to be revised, such as adding pantun, syair, and acrostic poetry as examples, removing
images and colors that were too conspicuous in the cover design, and deleting
footnotes that were considered ineffective in this textbook.
Results of Textbook Evaluation
The textbook draft was edited following students' notes in one to one, small group,and field trial test. According to the student's notes, supporting images were added on
certain pages. Besides, the author also revised several pages where there were errors
in writing letters and numbering that was not consistent. The researcher also did notforget to make more examples of pantun, syair, and acrostic poetry. Cover designedwith too flashy images and colors was changed to cover designs with softer colors andsimpler images. Footnotes were no longer included in the revised book draft.
Conclusions
The textbook entitled Asyiknya Menulis Pantun, Syair, dan Puisi Akrostik Keren (It’sfun to Write Nice Pantun, Syair, and Acrostic Poetry). It consisted of four chapters;
Tutorial in Writing Pantun, Tutorial in Writing Syair, Tutorial in Writing Acrostic
Poetry, and Anthology. In the three beginning chapters, there were three types of
evaluations; completing the first two lines called ‘sampiran’ and the second two lines
called ‘isi’, matching the rhymes, and writing poetry exercise. The textbook draft was
validated by three reviewers. After being revised, the researcher conducted three testsof formative evaluation with students. The textbook draft was revised again based on
students’ suggestions. This textbook draft will be published by Unsri Press. By using
this textbook, the students can write pantun, syair, and acrostic poetry easier than
before.

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References
Branch, R. M. (2009). Instructional design: The ADDIE approach. Springer.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-09506-6
Kustiyah, K. (2017). Peningkatan kemampuan menulis puisi dengan menggunakan
teknik akrostik pada siswa kelas x ma al-asy’ari keras diwek jombang tahun pelajaran
2016/2017. NOSI Journal, 5(2), 256–265.
LKPP Hasanuddin University. (2015). Format bahan ajar, buku ajar, Mmodul, danpanduan praktik. Hasanuddin University.
Miftakhurniyati, M. (2017). Pelaksanaan pembelajaran menulis syair tema alam
lingkungan sekolah pada kelas vii AMP Negeri 3 Malang. University of
Muhammadiyah Malang.
Ministry of National Education. (2008). Panduan Pengembangan Bahan Ajar.
Retrieved fromhttps://headthineka.gq/4f3c797aa603bc6e3713bfec97839d8bwgXmseDj8liLaukcwdF
ELshF9K7eZNpVeeqlqSKvdRHOoiB3g?zw6KHSY1KJgV1m=SgPNMnmstWL1mOY87VMwH1 on December
23rd, 2019.
Ministry of Education RI. (2019). KBBI Online. www.kbbi.kemdikbud.go.id
Nurhayati, N. (2012). Silabus: Teori dan Aplikasi Pengembangannya. Leutika Prio.
Prastowo, A. (2013). Panduan kreatif membuat bahan ajar inovatif. Diva Press.
Rimakata. (2019). Kamus Rima Kata. www.rimakata.com
Tafifin, M. (2015). Kemampuan menulis pantun siswa kelas VII SMP Negeri 52
Konawe Selatan. Jurnal Humanika, 15(3), 1–12.
Tarigan, H., & Djoyo, T. (2009). Telaah buku teks bahasa indonesia. Angkasa Press.
Tessmer, M. (2013). Planning and conducting formative evaluations. Kogan Page
Publisher.
Tomlinson, B. (2011). Material development in language teaching. Cambridge
University Press.
Yaumi, M. (2013). Prinsip-prinsip desain pembelajaran. Kencana Pres.
Contact email: armilia_sari@unsri.ac.id

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Instructional Coaching for School Principals: Lessons and findings from the
Peruvian Principal Mentoring Programme
Pamela Valdivieso, Ministry of Education, Peru
The Asian Conference on Education 2020
Official Conference Proceedings
Abstract
In Peru, the role of principals has been traditionally associated with administrative
duties at school. However, in recent years the Ministry of Education of Peru
(MINEDU) has been promoting an education reform oriented towards the
improvement of school management, which implies empowering principals in theirrole as pedagogical leaders. This reform has become even more critical considering
the poor principal performance both in the results of the National Principal evaluationand in the national school management indicators (MINEDU,2018), showing that forthe most part, principals in the country are still unclear about the best practices toimprove their pedagogical leadership strategies. Given this scenario, the MINEDU
launched in 2019 a principal instructional mentoring pilot programme for government
schools, aimed at strengthening principals´ leadership skills. The programme
promotes the use of school evidence to enhance pedagogical practice, school planningand collaborative work. The programme has now been implemented nationwide andits design has been adapted to address the new challenges posed to principals in the
scenario of home school learning faced by COVID-19. By using the programme
baseline and monitoring data, the study will explore the impact of the programme on
principal’s performance. Our findings show that the MINEDU mentoring programme
has been significantly successful in enhancing principal skills to effectively support
pedagogical practice, the creation of professional learning communities and school
planning. These preliminary results show the relevance of developing further studies
to better understand the importance of developing programs that use school evidence
and data to improve school management.
Keywords: Leadership, Mentoring, School Principals, Principal´S Training

iafor
The International Academic Forumwww.iafor.org

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Introduction
A principal plays a crucial role in the success of school, especially over teachingpractice and student’s performance (Sebring & Montgomery, 2014). Nearly 60% of aschool’s impact on student achievement is attributable to principal and teacher
effectiveness (Sammons et.al., 2014). Yet, for several years the school principal’s role
was mainly associated with administrative and managerial duties, leaving aside theirrole as school leaders (Day & Sammons,2014). With the latest reforms carried out by
governments and policymakers to make schools more accountable for students´
outcomes, the pressure for principals to demonstrate that they are able to translate thisreform into improvement for their schools, has increased considerably (Vega
Rodriguez, 2018). This policy shift has led to the question, how well principals areprepared and supported to succeed in improving education quality on their schools.
In this sense, mentoring and induction programs have been recognized as essential forprincipal preparation (Villani, 2005; Leithwood, 2013). Mentoring approaches havegrown popular over the past decade, especially in developed countries like the UnitedStates, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand (Carrasco & González,2016). In Latin America, the use of mentoring strategies for principal professional
learning is still incipient, with Chile, Argentina, Brazil, and most recently Peru being
the pioneering programs in the region (GSL, 2020). International experiences portray
principal mentoring and coaching as a highly promising strategy to principal
professional development and to improving student achievement (GSL,2020), butthere has been a lack of evidence on the effects of principals´ preparation programs(Arshan et.al, 2019; Clifford et.al, 2016) and how to scale these programs indeveloping contexts, especially in Latin America.
In Peru, the focus of the reforms conducted by the Peruvian Government, has been
mainly directed towards teacher training. It was not until 2016 that the Ministry of
Education (MINEDU) started prioritizing policies targeting school principals, with theimplementation of an induction programme and the formalization of a professional
mobility scheme for principals (MINEDU,2019). In spite of this reform, the situationof principal training is still a matter of concern, where more than 60% of principals
still show low performance on school management indicators (MPE, 2019). Thissituation clearly exposes that most part of principals in the country are still unclear
about the best practices to improve their pedagogical leadership strategies.
Given this context, in 2019 the MINEDU implemented a mentoring training pilot
programme addressed to school leaders in low-performance schools, which has
escalated into a national policy for 2020. The mentoring strategy promotes anintensive use of data for school improvement. It comprises three main pillars
addressed to build instructional leadership capacity: (a) school planning; (b)instructional coaching; and (c) the promotion of professional learning communities inthe school. The programme content has been adapted to a remote learning strategy
given the COVID-19 context, using a blended methodology that involves
asynchronous and synchronous learning methods.
The purpose of the present study is to discuss the findings and lessons from theprincipal mentoring programme. The first part of this paper provides a background of
school leadership in Peru. The second part presents the programme design and

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methodology features. Finally, in the third part, using the analysis of the programme
baseline and monitoring data collected during 2019-20, and drawing on survey datafrom a sample of principals who received the mentoring sessions, we examine themain programme outcomes to gain important insights on its effectiveness on
improving principal practice.
1.

School leadership and management background in Peru

In Peru, the role of principals has been traditionally associated with administrative
duties at school. However, in recent years the MINEDU has been promoting an
specific education reform, oriented towards the improvement of school management,
resulting in empowering principals in their role as pedagogical leaders.
This reform has become even more critical considering the poor principal
performance in the national school management indicators. An analysis of the resultsfrom the MINEDU school management monitoring system and from the National
Principal Evaluation, reveals that school principals’ performance on leadership andschool management, specially concerning instructional coaching and school planning
indicators, is poor and has not presented significant improvements throughout
different historical measurements (MINEDU,2018). Figure 1 shows that while in most
schools (42.4%) there is a participative school planning process, there is no following
up of the programmed activities. In addition, more than 50% of schools are between
level 1 and level 2 in the school planning indicator, meaning that in these schools
there is not an institutional planning process: no institutional diagnostic, goals or
activities planning.

Figure 1: School Planning indicator, 2018
Similarly, the outcomes of the indicator for teacher monitoring (Figure 2) demonstrate
how most schools are stagnated between level 1 and 2. This means principals do nothave a teacher monitoring plan or, if there is, class observations are mostly not
implemented.

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Figure 2: Teacher monitoring indicator, 2018
Further corroborating these initial evaluations, the results of the National Principal
Evaluation (EDD) (Figure3) reveal that 67% of principals do not reach an effective
level in the area of “monitoring pedagogical practices”. This shows that the principals
are unable to either conduct class observations, or teacher feedback. Similarly, in the“Promote teacher collaborative learning” area, it was found that 43% of principals do
not carry out activities for strengthening pedagogical practices in their schools. If they
do undertake such activities, the same are not based on a teacher needs assessment orin school data. This situation clearly exposes that most part of principals in the
country are still unclear about the best practices to improve their pedagogicalleadership strategies.

Figure 3: Principal performance evaluation, 2018
The evidence from a correlation analysis between students´ performance in the
National Student Assessment (ECE) and the results of the Principal performance
Evaluation for 2018, also reveals a statistically significant relationship between
principal performance and student achievement. Thus, the percentage of primary andsecondary-level students with a satisfactory level in the ECE 2018 in both reading andmathematics rises by almost 5% in the schools where principals have a better
performance on monitoring pedagogical practices in the EDD.

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Area assessed: Monitoring pedagogical practices
EDD
Score

% PrimaryStudents withsatisfactory level
on Mathematics*

1o2% PrimaryStudents withsatisfactory
level onReading
26.9

24.6% Secondary
Students withsatisfactory
level onReading*
19.4% Secondary
Students withsatisfactory
level onMathematics*
16.4

3o4

29.1

27.0

23.2

21.0

Table 1: Correlation between student achievement and principal performance2.

Principal Mentoring Programme

2.1

Programme design

Based on the analysis of the school leadership and management situation in Peru, the
MINEDU decided, in 2019, to implement a mentoring pilot programme focusing onschool leaders. The programme was created with the aim of strengthening principals´
instructional and distributional leadership capacities through specialized in-housementoring sessions.
The programme design draws on international evidence from other principal
mentoring and coaching experiences, that are linked to improved principal practice,reflected in an improvement of school leadership (Nannyonjo,2017; Alonso, 2018;
OEI,2020). The findings also show that offering mentoring and coaching training toprincipal significantly increases student achievements and improve teaching quality(Fryer,2017, Arshan et.al, 2019; Barros et.al, 2019; Jacobs et.al,2015). Taking thisevidence into consideration, the Peruvian mentoring programme was expected to
impact principal practice in the short term, teaching practice in the intermediate term,
and finally students’ achievement in the long term.
The programme was created as a remedial mentoring programme targeting
experienced principals (with +4 years tenure) in low-performance schools and,
therefore, who are in need of in-house training. The intervention assists primary andsecondary level schools from urban and rural areas and each cohort receives thementoring for two years.
The programme pilot was implemented in 2019 for 5 months, covering 215 primaryschools and 259 principals in 21 (out of 25) regions of Peru. For 2020, theintervention increased its coverage to 536 schools, working with 593 principals in 23
regions for 10 months. Given the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the intervention has
shifted from face-to-face visits into a remote learning strategy, which also led to an
adaptation of the mentoring protocols and instruments to a virtual mode. For 2021, the2020 cohort will continue to receive the second year of mentoring.
2.2

Mentoring pillars

The delivery of the mentoring sessions contemplates a training design based on threemain pillars in order to enhance principal instructional and distributional leadership:

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Officilal Conference Proceedingsa)Institutional planning oriented to improve teaching practice and learning
outcomesb)Strategies for improving instructional coaching to promote the strengtheningof teacher practice.
c)
Promotion of Professional Learning Communities (PLC) based on school data
to promote collaborative work in schools.
The three pillars are interconnected and oriented towards the improvement ofleadership practice. On the one hand, the mentoring imparts principals with strategies
for developing school planning oriented to improve teacher performance.
Simultaneously, the programme also provides principals with strategies for enhancing
instructional coaching and teacher feedback, from where it is expected the principal
will obtain data from teachers’ performance, they can use for improving collaborative
work on their schools through the implementation of professional learning
communities (PLC). It is believed these three pillars will led into an effective
instructional and distributional leadership performance.

Figure 4: Mentoring Pillars
The ‘school planning’ pillar comprises two areas of work with principals: planning
process and remote learning strategies. In the planning process we support principals
in the school-self-evaluation process, considering school strengths and limitations
from the perspective of the whole-school community. Principals are also guided on
the use of school data for goals establishment and activities addressed to improve thequality of teaching and learning. The second dimension was designed in the context ofremote learning given COVID-19. On this dimension, principals are delivered withsupport in the use of the technology needed for distance learning (skype, zoom,
google classroom, etc.) and in identifying the connectivity conditions of school
members in the context of remote learning.
The ‘instructional coaching’ pillar, comprises three main areas of work withprincipals: monitoring planning process, teacher feedback, and the use of monitoringoutcomes data. Under monitoring planning, principals are mentored on how they can

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design a class observation plan for the school year and guided in the development ofan observation rubric (adapted to the characteristics of virtual learning). In the second
dimension, principals are mentored on the teacher feedback process. This provides
them with strategies for collecting and analyzing pedagogical evidence forunderstanding strengths and improvement areas of pedagogical practice, and equips
principals with strategies for providing effective feedback to teachers based onevidence. Finally, within the third-dimension principals are guided on how to use
monitoring outcomes for goals establishment and improve teaching practice.
The third and last pillar of ‘promotion of PLC’ comprises two main areas of work:
PLC planning and organization process and the use of school data for PLC
implementation. Firstly, the principal is mentored in the methodology for thedevelopment of PLC, helping them to identify and analyse school data frompedagogical practice and students learning outcomes for the organization of PLC.
Secondly, principals are guided in the distribution of roles for the PLC
implementation, in the setting goals process from the results of PLC to improveteaching practice, and in implementing and adjusting teachers´ practices to meet theneeds of all learners.
2.3

Mentoring sessions

The mentoring sessions are organized in six meetings with the principal during theschool year. During 2020, the sessions’ content and instruments have been adapted toa virtual mode, to facilitate remote learning. Each session duration is 2 days long,
during which the mentor works with principals in synchronous and asynchronous
learning. Each mentor assists between eight (8) and eleven (11) principals.
The mentoring sessions consists in three main parts, as it is show in Figure 5: thementor starts the session by making a personalized diagnostic of the principal needson the three programme pillars, using a mix research methodology that involves
interviews, documentary revision, etc. Based on the analysis of this evidence, thementors fill up the principal needs’ assessment instrument. Once identified theprincipals’ strengths and needs, the mentor provides them with a reflective feedback
and they engage into a practical workshop where the mentor promotes the use of thematerial from the in-house mentoring toolbox that can fit the principal needs. Finally,
the session ends with the mentor and principal establishing a personalized
improvement plan, on which they set the mentoring goals and agreements.

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Figure 5: Structure of mentoring sessions
The mentoring methodology is grounded on the use of different education researchtools to prepare a personalized diagnostic of the principal´s needs, which aretransversal to all three pillars. This methodology involves an interview with theprincipal and teachers to collect evidence on their practice regarding the three pillars,
followed by the documentation revision of the school plan, a virtual observation ofprincipal feedback to teachers; the analysis of teacher feedback to students(synchronous and asynchronous) for the instructional coaching pillar and, for the PLC
pillar, involves a modelling PLC meeting organized by the mentor and a virtual
observation of a PLC leader by the principal.

Figure 6: Mentoring methodology
2.4

Impact of school leadership training on school leaders’ practiceThroughout the time of the programme implementation, our findings show that the
mentoring programme has been significantly successful in enhancing principal skills
to effectively support pedagogical practice, the creation of professional learning
communities and school planning.
Using the baseline and monitoring data from the mentoring sessions reported during
2019-2020 by mentors, an analysis on school leaders’ performance was conducted by
the programme based on their progress on the programme indicators for the three

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pillars (school planning, instructional coaching and PLC). For the 2019 pilot, theintervention prepared a final balance report in December 2019, presenting the resultsfrom the three mentoring sessions. For 2020, we collected baseline information from a
new cohort of school leaders during the first three mentoring sessions and following
up information for the other three. To date, three reports have been prepared up to thefifth mentoring session.
The 2019 pilot results showed a significant change on school leaders’ practice for all
three pillars and in particular for instructional coaching and promotion of PLC. As
depicted in Figures 7 and 8, the percentage of principals who use monitoringoutcomes for goals establishment and improve teaching practice increased in almost
seven times in a span of three mentoring visits and the percentage of principals
promoting PLC in their schools raised up from 22% to 94.5% by the end of the third
visit.

Figure 7: Instructional coaching indicator,2019 Figure 8: PLC indicator,2019
The implementation of the 2020 virtual mentoring strategy also displayed a positive
progress on principals’ practice. The latest programme monitoring report from
October 2020, compared baseline information collected during the three first
mentoring sessions with the results from the fourth and fifth sessions, conducted in
September and October, respectively. Following a similar trend of the pilot, theresults for 2020 confirm there is a significant progress in the instructional coaching
and PLC pillar.
Thus, the percentage of schools with a monitoring plan raised progressively between
sessions 3 and 5, with 90% of principals having an observation rubric, and 93%
having a monitoring calendar by the fifth session. There is also significant progress inthe percentage of principals who provide feedback to teachers, raising from 14.4% to
74% by the fifth session. The percentage of leaders using monitoring outcomes for
improving teaching practice also increased from 3% in the baseline session to 72% by
the fifth session.

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Figure 9: Instructional coaching indicators, 2020
In addition, the evidence shows that the number of schools implementing PLC basedon data have progressively increased. As such, the percentage of school leadersorganizing PLC in their schools rose from 50% in the baseline, to 86% on the fifth
mentoring session. Similarly, and the percentage of principals that use school data for
PLC implementation increased from 16% to 71% by the fifth session.

Figure 10: PLC indicators, 2020
As part of programme quality measuring, a satisfaction survey addressed toparticipant school leaders was implemented by the end of the third session in August.
From the 345 respondents, 96.8% would recommend the mentoring programme toother colleagues. In addition, more than 90% of the respondents considered theprogramme to be ‘useful’ and ‘very useful’ to improve school planning, instructionalcoaching and collaborative work and that the level of satisfaction with the feedback
provided by the mentor is more than 90%.

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Figure 11: Programme quality survey outcomes3.

Lessons for implementing high- quality leadership mentoring programs

From the experience implementing the mentoring programme over these two years,
we have identified certain lessons that can be useful for the design andimplementation of high-quality leadership mentoring programmes:
Quality of mentors training
The mentor role is a crucial factor for achieving a change on school leaders´ practice.
This is why the programme conducts a meticulous selection process to guarantee they
will be a good match for the principals. Part of the recruitment process involves animmersive workshop on mentoring and education research tools. This workshop is
key for the mentor’s preparation since, even when the prospective mentors areexperienced principals, they are not necessarily trained on mentoring and coaching orin education research approaches. Therefore, it is crucial for the programme to
conduct a sensitization process to ensure they understand the horizontal leadership
focus we want them to promote in the school.
In this sense, mentors’ training and sensitization are crucial for breaking withtraditional hierarchical leadership models. It is vital to immerse mentors in the cultureof distributional and instructional leadership so they can transmit this to principals andbreak with the common fear of feeling evaluated.
In addition to this, the programme provides support for the mentors, who are in chargeof providing guidance to mentors in the use of the programme protocols andinstruments. Therefore, we look up for professionals with former experience on
education research and social background for the mentor support profile, who also
receive an immersive workshop on the mentoring tools.
Developing a bottom-up approach
We found a need to consider a bottom-up approach, to develop in-house training
tools, in order to have a real impact on principal practice. Most leader training
programs are designed from the policymakers’ view without considering and

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understanding the needs and motivations from local educational stakeholders, or inthis case, to school leaders.
In this sense, it is pivotal for this type of programmes to receive constant feedback
from mentors and school leaders in order to improve protocols and develop mentoring
instruments that fits the beneficiaries needs. Taking this in consideration, the Peruvian
mentoring experience, through consultation, focus groups, and surveys addressed toprincipals, is constantly collecting evidence from beneficiaries´ satisfaction level withthe programme as well as alerts, recommendations and good practices identified bymentors, which are taken into consideration in order to adapt and improve thementoring tools and protocols to principals’ needs.
Finally, flexibility and adaptation are crucial to succeed. Although there are official
protocols and guidelines developed by the programme, it is important to consider thateach school context is different, so the mentoring process should be flexible andadapted to each school and principals´ needs and context.
Conclusions
The study presented the lessons and findings from the Peruvian experience of the first
mentoring programme addressed to school leaders in the country. The results from theprogramme pilot and monitoring data reveals that the MINEDU mentoring
programme has been significantly successful in enhancing principal skills toeffectively support pedagogical practice and the creation of professional learning
communities.
One of the most significant effects from the mentoring programme in the peruvian
context has been the shifting from the traditional management model to a
distributional and instructional leadership, reflected in the promotion of regular PLC,
participative and collaborative institutional planning process. In this sense, there isreasonable evidence to believe that the mentoring process is leading into a progressivechange on school leaders’ practice towards a data based-decision making. Further
research needs to be conducted on the effects of the mentoring on teaching andstudent achievement.
The mentoring programme methodology approach involving education research toolssuch as triangulation, ethnography, interviews, observations-, represents an innovative
strategy to make a solid diagnostic centred on principals´ needs. Also, important tomention is the adaptation of the mentoring methodology given the remote learning
context, which required thinking outside the box to adapt the mentoring protocols andinstruments. This involved the development of an innovative methodology forcollecting pedagogical and student evidence through synchronous and asynchronous
methods for different connectivity scenarios.
Finally, in order to deliver high quality leadership mentoring programs, it is crucial toprovide high quality mentor training and to consider a bottom-up approach that takes
in consideration feedback and good practices from the protagonists: school leadersand mentors.

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