The concept and connotation of critical thinking are formed based on human activities and social development in Europe and America, while relevant studies in East Asia are lacking. How to deconstruct the characteristics, formation and deep reasons of critical thinking in the East based on its continuous and dynamic human activities is still a…

To support international students better, Australian institutions have called for the internationalization of the curriculum. Internationalization is defined as the integration of international or inter-cultural dimensions into the teaching, research, and service functions of higher education institutions. However, the process of…

As China advances, attitudes about ethical reasoning will continue to evolve from norms rooted in Confucianism, guanxi, and collectivism toward attitudes consistent with developed countries. With the lack of understanding of reasoning in China, business executives, professors, and students from developed countries rely on their society's cultural…

This article explores the discourses concerning, and actors promoting, the recent 'rise' of East Asia in the global trend of education policy borrowing. It focuses on the ways in which English policymakers and media have represented the 'success' of East Asian education systems in international large-scale tests. Taking the Organization for…

This paper develops an interdisciplinary critical perspective on the concept of "Confucian Heritage Cultures" (CHC), used in intercultural and English language teaching theory to explain the supposed culturally distinct learning habits, expectations and schemas many Asian students bring to academic classrooms in English-speaking…

The implementation of social constructivist approaches to learning science in primary education in Vietnamese culture as an example of Confucian heritage culture remains challenging and problematic. This theoretical paper focuses on the initial phase of a design-based research approach; that is, the description of the design of a formal, written…

This book identifies three types of influential forces that pose challenges to innovations: socio-cultural dynamics, teacher individuality, and local circumstances. It uses languages, cultural traits, and intellectual heritages in the Asia-Pacific region as an example to show the resistance to Western-based pedagogies due to disparities between…

International research has found that while Assessment for Learning (AfL) can positively impact on learning, its implementation in different national contexts presents a number of challenges. The integration of AfL in Confucian influenced settings may be challenged both by traditional beliefs related to the hierarchy of the expert teacher and the…

To many Western observers, Confucian-heritage societies, such as Mainland China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore, are characterized as collectivist-orientated in nature. Individuals live within the relationship with others, and the value of an individual is expressed by how the person relates to others. People in these societies are…

This study examined the perceived parental styles of maternal warmth and control, as well as adolescent filial piety, in relation to parent-child relationship quality, in 308 Hong Kong Chinese adolescents. The three mother-child relationship qualities measured were perceived maternal support, conflicts, and relationship depth. Adolescents'…

This study investigates how Chinese and German adult daughters evaluate the norm of reciprocity and the unbalanced exchange of support in relation to their aging parents. Women from rural and urban China (n = 292) and from Germany (n = 264) have participated in this study. Results show that for the German daughters, differently from rural Chinese…

Although cultural stereotypes of Asian students as being prone to rote learning, passive and teacher-dependent have been under criticism, the issue of the extent to which Asian heritage culture impacts on Asian students' learning attitudes and behaviour warrants further investigation. This paper reports on an empirical study which compares…

Large numbers of students from the Chinese-speaking world are nowadays enrolled in Western universities, prompting the need for awareness of their educational beliefs and practices. Although an established literature seeks to characterize "the Chinese learner", much of this research results in stereotypical representations of a…

This article suggests that attempts to date to unravel the paradox of the Chinese learner are incomplete and inadequately modeled, and that the complexities of the paradox have not yet been fittingly operationalized or alternative explanations of research data investigated. It contends that attempts either to state or to unravel the paradox are…

Teachers in Hong Kong, as elsewhere, are concerned with students' misbehaviour. In secondary schools two teams of teachers, a guidance team and a discipline team, deal with it. This article examines how teachers make sense of their caring work and strategies for behaviour management. Taking an interactionist perspective, the framework suggested by…