Private schools have a long and important tradition in U.S. education and have been the focus of a great deal of political controversy in recent years. There is deep division among Americans over the desirability of using public funds to finance vouchers for private education--an issue that has become the leading educational goal of the Trump…

Mounting evidence demonstrates that social-emotional skills are important for students' academic and life success, yet we have limited evidence on how these skills develop over time and how this development varies across student subgroups. In this study, we use the first large-scale panel survey of social-emotional learning (SEL) to describe how…

Although research has shown that more Asian American and Latino students are choosing to attend historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), no research has offered insight into what motivates students from these demographics to enroll in these institutions. Given this, the authors explored the college choice process for Asian American…

Current educational resources for sex education in Hong Kong are mainly designed to be used in classroom. They are mostly text-based and are unattractive to the most vulnerable adolescent group. As discussion on sex is still taboo in Chinese society, self-learning resources can supplement classroom teaching. This paper describes an interactive…

This article explores outcomes of research into the role and place of cultural diversity in primary music classes at five government schools in Singapore. The study highlights the ways in which a variety of factors such as specialist music training, government policy, curriculum documents, and professional development influence teacher practice.…

Maternal warmth, the quality of the affectional bond between mothers and their children, has been found to be consistently associated with children's positive developmental outcomes in Western cultures. However, researchers debate the potential differences in the cultural meanings of maternal warmth, particularly between Chinese and European…

This paper compares public-private partnerships (PPPs) in education in post-war Singapore and Hong Kong. After the Second World War the Singapore government shied away from PPPs, while the state in Hong Kong collaborated extensively with the non-state sector in education. Singapore was a small city-state flanked by two Muslim nations, and its…

Recently, research studies and media have reported on the detrimental effects violent video games have on the social behaviors of adolescents. For example, previous studies have found that playing video games is positively associated with aggressive behaviors and negatively associated with prosocial behaviors. However, very few studies have…

Critical thinking is believed to be an essential skill for 21st century survival and therefore has been widely promoted in education. In Hong Kong, critical thinking is one of nine generic skills to be developed across all subjects, including English. How students do critical thinking in ESL, which is seldom used outside school and yet holds high…

The educational reproduction of elite masculinity in postcolonial societies has not been properly studied. This is partly because the postcolonial masculinities of non-western elites are accomplished through the cultivation of naturalized practices signifying the body politic of the nation-state. In Singapore, same-sex elite schools of colonial…

There is no shortage of studies that have reported the beneficial effects of extensive reading (ER) on various aspects of second/foreign language acquisition, including reading comprehension, reading speed, and vocabulary development. Anecdote after anecdote shows the effectiveness of ER, and no one seems to repudiate the power of reading in large…

The purpose of this study was to explore undergraduate Chinese international students' perceptions about their classroom experiences in the United States institutions of higher education. Double consciousness, introduced by W.E.B. Du Bois, was used as the theoretical framework for this study. After analyzing the 15 interviews to Chinese…

Decoding disciplinary expertise for novices is increasingly part of the undergraduate curriculum. But how might area studies and other interdisciplinary programs, which require integration of courses from multiple disciplines, decode expertise in a similar fashion? Additionally, as a part of decoding area studies and interdisciplines, how might a…

Risk-taking refers to the tendency to engage in behaviors that have the potential to be harmful or dangerous, yet at the same time provides the opportunity for some kinds of outcome that can be perceived as positive. Ely (1986) and Bang (1999) have mentioned the relationship between risk-taking and oral production in the process of English…

Central to argumentative writing is the proper use of epistemic devices (EDs), which distinguish writers' opinions from facts and evaluate the degree of certainty expressed in their statements. Important as these devices are, they turn out to constitute a thorny area for non-native speakers (NNS). Previous research indicates that Chinese EFL…