{"title":"Exploring links between feedback, emotions, and behavioral engagement in secondary school Singaporean students","authors":"Anastasiya A. Lipnevich, Carolina Lopera-Oquendo, Basak Calik, Luofan Shu, Hui Yong Tay","doi":"10.1007/s12564-025-10086-7","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s12564-025-10086-7","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>In the current study, we examined the longitudinal relations among emotions, appraisals, and behavioral engagement with feedback in a sample of 314 Singaporean secondary school students. Students worked on writing assignments, and teachers gave feedback in the form of grades and comments. Students’ emotions, appraisals, and receptivity to instructional feedback were assessed using a number of self-report instruments administered at four points in time, including the baseline and three additional waves. Repeated Measures ANOVA has shown variations in enjoyment, pride, excitement, anxiety, and shame, whereas non-significant differences were found for behavioral engagement, and aggregates of positive and negative affect over time. The latent growth modeling results have shown a steady decrease in enjoyment, pride, hope, and excitement, while the decline in anxiety and shame differed over time depending on the level of those emotions. Additionally, gender differences and changes in receptivity to instructional feedback were revealed. Cross-lagged panel model analysis also showed non-significant cross-paths, indicating high stability for the reciprocal influence of emotions and behavioral engagement over time. The findings provide insights about links among emotions, appraisals, and behavioral engagement and how these are forged by how students deal with the feedback.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47344,"journal":{"name":"Asia Pacific Education Review","volume":"26 4","pages":"1125 - 1145"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-09-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145706050","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Tao Jiang, Gigen Chen, Hongjun Xing, Pingfei Zeng, Dongsheng Wan, Taijun Wang
{"title":"Low-efficiency schools in South Korea, Japan, and Finland receive ample human resources and quality teaching to improve quality and equality in education","authors":"Tao Jiang, Gigen Chen, Hongjun Xing, Pingfei Zeng, Dongsheng Wan, Taijun Wang","doi":"10.1007/s12564-025-10087-6","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s12564-025-10087-6","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>South Korea, Japan, and Finland have developed high-quality secondary education systems that effectively balance efficiency and equality. Each country employs iconic policies. South Korea and Japan aim to reduce inter-school differences in teaching quality through the rotation of teachers. Finland aspires to provide quality education (more than quality teaching) for all students through its public comprehensive schools. Nevertheless, few studies have provided evidence that these policies achieve their goals and reveal the distribution of efficiency-related inequalities in their schools. This study used 2018 PISA test data to analyze the state and patterns of secondary education in these three countries. Latent profile analysis identified two types of schools: low-efficiency and high-efficiency. Teaching quality in low-efficiency schools matched that of high-efficiency schools, consistent with the policy effect of teacher rotation. In Finland, 95.3% of schools were the high-efficiency type, which aligns with the comprehensive school policy. Moreover, low-efficiency schools gained more teachers and computers, yet their students still lacked academic drive and perseverance. The three-step latent profile analysis found that the likelihood of attending high-efficiency schools was the same regardless of whether students lived in small towns or large cities. Instead, fewer peers and a high proportion of students from low-income families increased the likelihood of attending a low-efficiency school. This study enhances understanding of the relationships among educational policy, school resources and climate, and school efficiency.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47344,"journal":{"name":"Asia Pacific Education Review","volume":"27 3","pages":"1239 - 1254"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2025-09-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148699747","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The effect of the small school revitalization act on academic achievement: evidence from a regression discontinuity design in South Korea","authors":"Hyunwoo Yang, Haram Jeon","doi":"10.1007/s12564-025-10084-9","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s12564-025-10084-9","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This study evaluates the impact of South Korea’s Small School Revitalization (SSR) policy on eighth-grade academic achievement in Jeonnam Province, a rural province experiencing significant population decline. The SSR policy, targeting schools with fewer than 60 students, aims to prevent student attrition by enhancing education quality. Examining data from the Jeonnam Student Longitudinal Study (JELS) and employing quasi-experimental research methods such as regression discontinuity design and propensity score matching, we find significant positive impacts of the SSR policy on academic achievement in eighth-grade math and science but limited effects for Korean language and social studies. These findings suggest that targeted support for small schools can be an effective alternative to closure and can help promote rural school revitalization. This study contributes to policy discussions on improving small rural schools, offering evidence for contexts facing similar challenges.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47344,"journal":{"name":"Asia Pacific Education Review","volume":"27 3","pages":"1195 - 1209"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2025-09-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148699687","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Teacher and student led curriculum development: ainu indigenous education in Japan","authors":"Taymour Bouran","doi":"10.1007/s12564-025-10085-8","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s12564-025-10085-8","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The purpose of this article is to examine the cooperation between a United World College (UWC) International Baccalaureate (IB) school and an indigenous Ainu community group to address the issues of empowerment within the field of education. This empowerment comes in the form of a collaborative curriculum design model, which depends on the integrative engagement of indigenous communities and the educator’s role in involving student input. The study used a transformative worldview, qualitative research design, with a single case study approach to investigate the cooperation between an Ainu indigenous group and an IB school in the process of building a collaborative curriculum model in Japan. The was study was guided by the Freire (1970) theoretical framework and its principles in cognitive inquiry teaching. The researchers, the author and five students, collected data through an on-site visit to Hokkaidō in March 2023. (1) We interviewed three members of the Ainu community in Nibutani and one scholar in Sapporo; (2) We observed 10 instances of curriculum building during the Ainu family’s visit to the school in November 2022 and 2023 with 40 students in each year respectively; and (3) we employed comparative analysis on education policy and curriculum from secondary literature sources of a UWC school in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Māori social studies. The thematic analysis of the data demonstrates that a collaborative curriculum model actively promotes empowerment among research participants and institutions by reshaping pedagogical roles, integrating diverse perspectives, and enhancing cooperative engagement between educators, students, and indigenous community members.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47344,"journal":{"name":"Asia Pacific Education Review","volume":"27 3","pages":"1211 - 1222"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2025-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148699640","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"An ethnographic case study on the influence of family environment on Chinese rural migrant children’s emotional literacy practice","authors":"Siyuan Wu, Xiaodi Zhou","doi":"10.1007/s12564-025-10083-w","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s12564-025-10083-w","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The cultivation of emotional competence is not only a key aspect of the educational process, but also a core component of personal socialization. This ethnographic case study conceived using sociocultural theory, studies two rural Chinese migrant families via 4-months of data collection. Subsequent thematic analysis of data surrounded self-emotional literacy, interpersonal emotional expression, and the family cultural environment. This study found that both cognitive and emotional factors were involved in the development of rural migrant children and jointly point to educational goals. Secondly, either overly high- or low-expectations and goals of family education can negatively affect children’s cognitive and emotional learning. Therefore, it is important to explore the mechanisms and causes of emotional disorders among rural migrant children; the “family” needs to be incorporated into the emotional literacy curriculum of schools in practice; and rural migrant families at the bottom of the socio-economic class urgently require the help and guidance of schools as well as public welfare organizations and other institutions.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47344,"journal":{"name":"Asia Pacific Education Review","volume":"27 3","pages":"1175 - 1193"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2025-08-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148699746","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Mustafa Öztürk, Neşe Soysal, Aylin Albayrak-Sarı, Burtay Hatice İnce, Seçil Dayıoğlu-Öcal, Abdullah Bağcı
{"title":"Curricular response to education for sustainable development in Turkish basic education: a comparative analysis of national versus global learning objectives","authors":"Mustafa Öztürk, Neşe Soysal, Aylin Albayrak-Sarı, Burtay Hatice İnce, Seçil Dayıoğlu-Öcal, Abdullah Bağcı","doi":"10.1007/s12564-025-10082-x","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s12564-025-10082-x","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>With the adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) defined and promoted a set of learning objectives through a global framework that all education systems across the world could respond to. The framework aims to develop competencies empowering learners looking from both local and global perspectives, reflecting on their own actions, and managing the current and future impacts of their environmental, social, economic, and cultural behaviors. Assessing the level of national responsiveness in Türkiye to this global framework, this paper, through a comparative curriculum analysis, portrays how well the Turkish curriculum of basic education prepares generations for a sustainable future as suggested by UNESCO. The analysis was executed on a dataset consisting of 12 subject-specific and 57 grade-specific curriculum documents (484 pages) including a total of 2039 national learning outcomes through a coding scheme with 323 keywords. The questions addressed in the study include the following: How aligned is the national curriculum with the global framework; What school subject(s) give more prominence to sustainable development goals; and What domains of learning are predominant in the outcomes? The study is comparative in three aspects: comparison of national versus global objectives; cross-subject comparison within the curriculum itself; and comparison of learning domains prioritized in the curriculum.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47344,"journal":{"name":"Asia Pacific Education Review","volume":"27 3","pages":"1159 - 1173"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2025-08-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148699785","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Diversity in Chinese societies: critical multiculturalism and the representation of indigenous people in textbooks in Taiwan","authors":"Jason Cong Lin, Liz Jackson, Fei Yan","doi":"10.1007/s12564-025-10081-y","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s12564-025-10081-y","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Taiwan is a diverse society that includes Indigenous people as well as settlers who migrated from Mainland China and other parts of the world throughout history. While centuries of assimilationist policies have led to systemic disadvantages to Taiwan’s Indigenous people, in the past few decades, diversity and multiculturalism have been increasingly recognized as positive features of Taiwan worth appreciating and cultivating. This study aims to examine how contemporary social studies textbooks in Taiwan represent Indigenous people, identifying the extent to which textbooks employ a multicultural lens. It starts by introducing assimilationism and Han centrism in the context of Taiwan and its education, contrasting these concepts with multiculturalism and “critical multiculturalism.” Then, it elaborates on our methodology and aims, and how we use content analysis as a research method. In our findings section, we argue that contemporary social studies textbooks in Taiwan showcase more critical multicultural themes than has been the case in the past, but systematic obstacles remain to be addressed. Finally, the paper discusses the implications and contributions of our findings and this research.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47344,"journal":{"name":"Asia Pacific Education Review","volume":"27 3","pages":"1149 - 1158"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2025-08-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148699745","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Bullying victimization and school engagement: the role of subjective well-being","authors":"Yanghua Huang, Harold Chui","doi":"10.1007/s12564-025-10078-7","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s12564-025-10078-7","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Efforts have been made to understand the underlying mechanism between bullying victimization and school engagement but primarily focused on the mediating effects of depression and anxiety, despite that low subjective well-being (SWB) is more commonly experienced among victims of school bullying. This study compared the mediating effects of SWB, depression, and anxiety in the association between bullying victimization and overall school engagement and examined how SWB was related to each dimension of school engagement with a sample of 232 Chinese adolescents (44.4% boys, age <i>M</i> = 14.4, <i>SD</i> = 1.1). The results showed that SWB was a stronger mediator than depression and anxiety in the association between bullying victimization and overall school engagement. Furthermore, SWB fully mediated the associations between bullying victimization and each of the five dimensions of school engagement. These findings suggest that being bullied may not directly lower one’s school engagement, but it significantly compromises one’s SWB, which then predicts decreases in school engagement across various dimensions.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47344,"journal":{"name":"Asia Pacific Education Review","volume":"27 3","pages":"1135 - 1147"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2025-08-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s12564-025-10078-7.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148699744","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"AI chatbot design principles to enhance the collective efficacy in collaborative learning","authors":"Minji Kim, Cheolil Lim","doi":"10.1007/s12564-025-10080-z","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s12564-025-10080-z","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>To support effective collaborative learning, it is essential to enhance collective efficacy and provide timely, tailored feedback throughout the learning process. However, it is often difficult for a single instructor to monitor multiple groups and deliver feedback that meets the specific needs of each team in real time. This study aims to develop and validate a systematic design for an AI chatbot that enhances collective efficacy in collaborative learning environments. The design will be devised by developing and validating design principles. The design-based research methodology was conducted to develop the design principles, which were then validated by experts and evaluated for usability. This process involved a review of relevant literature and case analysis, followed by expert validation and usability test to confirm the design principles’ validity. The final design principles are composed of four design elements— (1) support for group cohesion, (2) support for affective cohesion, (3) support for collaborative learning activities, and (4) facilitation of dialogue—and ten design principles. These include the principle of belongingness formation, interdependence, positive atmosphere, empathy formation, sharing, collaborative problem-solving, social regulation, immediate scaffolding, familiarity, and personification. The design principles are further supported by 46 actionable sub-guidelines. Validation was conducted through three rounds of expert review and usability testing with educators and developers, whose diverse perspectives informed both the pedagogical soundness and technical feasibility of the principles. This study contributes to the field by offering theoretically grounded and practically applicable guidelines for designing AI chatbots in education. Importantly, the principles are designed to be usable by educators without requiring technical expertise, thus supporting scalable and accessible implementation in real classrooms.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47344,"journal":{"name":"Asia Pacific Education Review","volume":"26 4","pages":"1111 - 1124"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-07-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s12564-025-10080-z.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145706080","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Tailoring a complexity-aware theory of change for out-of-school children education program: reflections on an evaluation of Korea–Qatar innovation initiative","authors":"Moon Suk Hong, Gahyung Kim, You Jin Chun","doi":"10.1007/s12564-025-10069-8","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s12564-025-10069-8","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The objective of this study is to explore and discuss the conceptual and methodological importance for a more holistic and complexity-aware framework by employing the Theory of Change into the design and evaluation of international education initiatives. Through a critical analysis of the KOICA–Qatar’s Education Above All Foundation partnership project, which aimed to support Out-of-School Children (OOSC) in Cambodia, Iran, Myanmar, and Nepal, we identified several key lessons learned. First, the joint program narrowed both the conceptual and practical dimensions of educational interventions by prioritizing simplistic numerical metrics—specifically the return of OOSC/Y to formal schooling—thereby aligning with the prevailing trends in accountability and transparency in evaluating global educational programs. Secondly, the education projects within the large scale of KOICA-Qatar Education Above All Program assumed that educational impact directly resulted from program outputs, revealing a lack of clear linkage between overarching program-level educational outcomes—namely, quality education for all—and the outputs of individual sub-projects, such as student enrollment figures. Thirdly, an overemphasis on linear project-level logic, while neglecting the interconnected influence of noneducational factors—such as legal and social protection, sanitation, and health—limited the ability to effectively navigate the complexities of OOSC programs. We propose that moving beyond the conventional linear approach to educational programs requires tailoring a complexity-aware Theory of Change. Integrating Theory of Change Analysis (TOCA) into the strategic framework for educational development and the OOSC program model can enhance our capacity to plan and evaluate diverse pathways for achieving positive social and educational impact while accounting for various program assumptions, risks, and other complex macro-level factors.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47344,"journal":{"name":"Asia Pacific Education Review","volume":"27 3","pages":"1063 - 1076"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2025-07-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148699786","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}