In the field of higher education, there are two dominant strands of interpretation of criticality, either as a decontextualized skill of logical reasoning, or a sense of action within larger contexts more than mere cognition. This research offers a reclaiming and reimagining of criticality in universities as an affective process, highlighting the…

Research Findings: The present study focused on the affective quality of dyadic relationships between teachers and young children in China and the Netherlands. We examined whether there were cross-cultural differences in teachers' and children's relationship perceptions, as well as the degree to which teachers and children agreed on their…

Aiming to inform teaching practices and understand cultural differences, we examined praise practices of high- and low-quality preschool teachers in China. As part of a broader project, we purposefully selected three high-quality and three low-quality teachers based upon their Pre-K CLASS ratings and self-reports, and conducted qualitative…

To date, cross-cultural studies on Theory of Mind (ToM) have predominantly focused on preschoolers. This study focuses on middle childhood, comparing two samples of mainland Chinese (n = 126) and Australian (n = 83) children aged between 5.5 and 12 years. Strange Stories, the most commonly used measure of ToM, was employed. The study aimed to…

While test anxiety has been studied extensively, little consideration has been given to the cultural impacts of children's experiences and expressions of test anxiety. The aim of this work was to examine whether variance in test anxiety scores can be predicted based on gender and cultural setting. Three hundred and ninety-eight pupils in Grade 3…

This study examined judgments and reasoning about four parental discipline practices (induction or reasoning and three practices involving "psychological control"; Barber, 1996; two forms of shaming and love withdrawal) among children (7-14 years of age) from urban and rural China and Canada (N = 288) in response to a moral…

This study investigated whether the associations between (a) the quality of the parent-child relationship and peer acceptance and (b) early adolescents' life satisfaction differed depending on the importance of family values in the respective culture. As part of the Value of Children Study, data from a subsample of N = 1,034 adolescents (58%…

The attitudes and reactions toward computers of two samples of college students from Los Angeles, California, and Hunan, People's Republic of China, were examined and compared. Results indicate that computer anxiety was present to a similar degree in both groups of students. (25 references) (Author/DB)

Two studies were conducted to examine perceptions about achievement and achieving peers in 190 U.S. and Chinese kindergartners. Children provided free-narrative responses to story beginnings about an achieving protagonist in school settings. We found marked cultural differences. For achievement, U.S. children perceived more intellectual…

This paper analyses some changing aspects of learning and "cultures of learning" in China: these are related to meeting the needs of Chinese learners studying in higher education in the UK. We use the term "cultures of learning" to draw attention to the socio-cultural aspects of key practices, expectations and interpretations…