Although research on Asian students’ composing is not new to the discipline of English Studies (Abelmann 2009; Mao and Young 2008; Young 2004), research and examination of the rhetoric-composition-literacies practices for Korean students are not present in our discipline. This is a gap in our research that needs to be narrowed because the number of Korean students entering U.S. colleges and universities is steadily growing.
The research I wish to present is an attempt to answer what can Asian Studies and English Studies, together, provide our Korean students so that they may acquire the best learning/communication practices to achieve success in their personal, professional, and civic lives? Answering this question at AAS/ICAS will take the shape of multimodal student productions that will challenge conference participants to question how we engage Korean students in the composition classroom.
In English Studies, in order to create sustainable futures for our students, we teach rhetoric-composition-literacies through/as a variety of multimodal texts: visual, verbal, aural, digital, print and combinations of these too. We argue that having access to understanding multimodal texts will help students grow personally, professionally, and civically so that they may participate in the making of new and sometimes radical democracies (Moon 2010; Cope and Kalantzis 2009; Wysocki 2004; New London Group 2000). This growth in understanding how to compose and interpret texts multimodally prepares Korean students to sustain a future here and internationally and hopefully can become a central focus in our interdisciplinary, scholarly, and pedagogical practices.
BIPA Program of LBI FIB UI is the oldest institution in Indonesia which holds the teaching of Indonesian language (Bahasa Indonesia) as a foreign language. This program has been started since 1986 and keeps on developing until the present day. The participants joining this program come from various countries all over the world.
The curriculum used in the teaching of Bahasa Indonesia is in accordance with the general curriculum of teaching a foreign language, which is the teaching of four language skills: listening, reading, speaking and writing. Furthermore, supporting skills like grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation are also taught. Pronunciation is one of the supporting skills important to be taught because there are words that can only be differentiated by a single phoneme in Bahasa Indonesia.
The curriculum used is combined with a contextual approach. Cultural elements are integrated in the teaching materials with the intention that students could be familiar with not only the language but also with Indonesian culture.
The materials taught in this program are tied in topics distinctively Indonesia which are set apart based on the levels of students proficiency (basic, intermediate and advance). Cultural materials are also actualized in the form of extracurricular lessons such as: traditional dancing, drawing batik, playing traditional music (arumba and gamelan) and also learning pencak silat.
Europe is converging its higher education and research systems for the past sixty years through a plethora of mechanisms that include programs to promote the mobility of students, faculty, researchers and content, as well as by linking institutions and even creating intergovernmental ones. But many countries around the world have also started to advance regional cooperation mechanisms. This paper will focus on the efforts to link within and across the most productive economies of Southeast, Northeast and South Asia. At the intergovernmental level we may highlight the ASEAN university network, the Campus Asia project led by China, Korea and Japan, and the Nalanda and SAARC universities planned in India. How are they developing within a context of national higher education and research liberalisation? What are their underlying explanatory factors? What kind of global model is being advanced by dynamic Asian economies? Is Europe a model for regional cooperation in various parts of Asia? Or is the liberal, globalising, North American (Anglo-Saxon) model the main one being followed? Or, even, are Asian countries advancing a distinct model in higher education and research cooperation?
The purpose of this research is to answer the following questions: 1) to what extent has Thailand been a destination for US study abroad students? 2) what has been the trend over time? 3) what are major obstacles facing Thailand in attracting more US students? 4) what are examples of successful study abroad programs in Thailand and what factors have contributed to their success? 5) what strategies could Thailand pursue to enhance its attractiveness to US students?
Theoretical frameworks underlying this study are inter-group contact theory (Allport, 1954; Pettigrew, 1998), human capital theory (Becker,1964; Schultz, 1975), and global and intercultural competency (Wilson, 1996, Deardorff, 2004).
A mixed-methods (Creswell, 2009) approach is used to conduct this research consisting of 1) extensive analysis of related documents; 2) in-depth interviews of experts in the field and of relevant stakeholders (IIE, CIES, and CIEE, for example; 3) multiple case studies of three study abroad programs in Thailand, i.e. Worcester Polytechnic Institutes (WPI), Council of International Education Exchange-CIEE Khon Khaen Program, and St. Olaf’s Thailand Program, including an electronic survey of the reflections of students who participated in these three programs in Thailand; and 4) individual embedded in-depth case studies from the three programs (Yin, 2009).
Results will be verified via triangulation and member checking and will then be presented at the conference. Policy recommendations derived from the research will then be shared with Thai policy makers and relevant stakeholders. In this sense, this research is an example of action research (Lewin, Argyris).
This paper reports on the findings of a research study seeking to understand the influence of social and cultural factors in the adoption of e-learning in Malaysia, Indonesia, Turkey, Singapore and Australia. This research focused on the social nature and diversity of cultures in the five countries and how cultural norms, values, attitudes and behaviour influence the adoption of e-learning.
What each of the five case studies revealed, was that the overriding factor in how university teachers adopted and implemented information technology and specifically online learning and teaching technology depended very much on issues of motivation that were intimately bound up with social networks and social capital rather than technology. Within each of the five country case studies certain dominant characteristics emerged. The paradox is that whilst there are significant differences between each of the case studies, each is subject to the same basic elements of cultural influence. These elements include: social capital, social networks, mentoring, pioneering and entrepreneurial leaders, social conservativism and instrumentalism, degrees of cross-cultural sensitivity in teaching and an attitude of reciprocity and social responsibility.
What is clear is that cultural and social factors need to be accorded the same sort of importance previously attributed to pedagogy, instructional design and technological specification. For the cultural and social contexts in which educational pioneers adopt learning technologies are at least as important as the technologies themselves in determining uptake and implementation.
China’s impressive economic growth in the past three decades has put China in the heart of global economy and labeled the ancient middle kingdom as the ‘World’s Factory’. However, in order to sustain its development and leading position, China must transform the country from a ‘working power’ to a ‘brain power’ by shifting the current focus on low cost production to higher value added industries. Investment in international education and attracting talents abroad has been a key strategy for China to compete in the knowledge economy. Since the first group of Chinese students went to study in the USA in mid-19th Century, millions of Chinese have left homeland to pursue overseas education either sponsored by government or private means. After the economic reform introduced in 1978, China has sent more than 1.2 million students abroad, more than any other country in the world. This social phenomenon has raised serious questions about the danger of ‘brain drain’ for China. However, in recent years China also sees new waves of return migration, driven by the business opportunities at home and supported by various government initiatives. In addition, China has furthermore set ambitious plans to place itself as a leading destination country for foreign students and talents. Therefore this public talk will explore the how China has moved from self-isolation to an active player in international education exchange, its growing importance in the ‘global war for talents’ and what all these will mean for the future of China.
|
