Sensemaking has been advocated as a core practice of science education to support students in constructing their own understanding through a prolonged trajectory. However, the field lacks a discussion of teaching strategies that can better support students as they develop in the trajectory of sensemaking, which includes four phases: initial…

What is the explanation for American students' comparatively mediocre academic performance? "A Mirror for Americans" finds part of it in how they are taught in primary schools. Comparisons with East Asian teaching are supplied by 50 years of research findings. Grove asks not that we copy East Asian teaching approaches, but that we use…

This research was designed to examine how teachers and students from various cultures (China vs. USA) might present distinct behavioural features in learner-centred classrooms. The findings of the research would serve the purpose to answer the question regarding whether and how learner-centred instruction could better support the learning of…

Ishimoto, Davenport, and Wittmann have previously reported analyses of data from student responses to the Force and Motion Conceptual Evaluation (FMCE), in which they used item response curves (IRCs) to make claims about American and Japanese students' relative likelihood to choose certain incorrect responses to some questions. We have used an…

This study evaluates the development of L2 collocational competence in texts written by learners of differing proficiency levels, compared to native speaker collocation patterns from a reference corpus. We address: (1) whether learners develop their collocation competence as their proficiency grows; and (2) How is this development mediated by…

This paper investigates foreigners' linguistic and visual representations observed in 17 recent Japanese animated shows (or "anime"), and explores ways to increase students' critical awareness of issues regarding Japanese language and culture. We find that foreign characters in "anime" tend to be linguistically represented with…

Maternal scaffolding and four-year-old children's linguistic skills were examined during toy play. Participants were 21 American-English monolingual and 21 Thai monolingual mother-child dyads. Results revealed cross-cultural differences in conversation styles between the two groups. American dyads adopted a high-elaborative style relative to Thai…

The present study attempts to identify difficulties that Japanese students encounter with metadiscursive nouns in writing second language (L2) argumentation essays. Metadiscursive nouns are abstract and unspecific nouns which can serve as cohesive markers by retrieving their meanings in the text where they occur. Using a selected number of nouns…

This study explored Korean university students' beliefs and perspectives on different English varieties, and their transformation in learner perceptions with respect to English learning, diversity in the English language, and learning of different English varieties over the course of a semester. On two occasions, Korean university students (N =…

Numerous studies from China report that student teachers in English language teaching practicums resist communicative language teaching, CLT (Hu, 2002), to follow mentor teacher cultural practices of teaching to the Gaokao through explanations of vocabulary and grammar. This study addressed a knowledge gap to investigate the CLT problems and…

The study compared the perceptions of adults from four countries about storytelling. Americans (N = 153), Germans (N = 163), Chinese (N = 324), and Vietnamese (N = 356) completed a survey. Americans' scores on measures of storytelling experiences were the highest overall. Americans and Germans reported having significantly more childhood…

The main purpose of this study was to compare differences in approaches to teaching children's song by kindergarten teachers in Taiwan and the USA. Five public school kindergarten teachers in Taipei, Taiwan, and five public kindergarten teachers in Seattle, USA, were invited to voluntarily participate in this study. They were asked to teach six…

Global student mobility has become a dynamic force in American higher education. Integrating international students into diverse campus environments provides domestic as well as foreign students with enriched learning opportunities. However, a diverse campus climate itself will not make college students interculturally competent. Intentional…

Guided by cultural border crossing and teacher identity development theories, this case study explores the bumpy process of a junior Chinese faculty member's border crossing into the U.S. teaching culture and analyzes the challenges, coping strategies, and consequences of his border crossing on teaching and teacher identity development. The…

The purpose of the present study was to examine factors that influence strategic flexibility in computational estimation for Chinese- and Canadian-educated adults. Strategic flexibility was operationalized as the percentage of trials on which participants chose the problem-based procedure that best balanced proximity to the correct answer with…