International and Comparative Education Commons^™

Critical Reflections In International Contexts: Polyethnographic Accounts Of An International Doctoral Research Seminar, Lisa Fedoruk, Jon Woodend, Janet Groen, Avis Beek, Sylvie Roy, Xueqin Wu, Xiang Li

The Qualitative Report

As the world becomes more globally interconnected, international partnerships, including those within higher education, have increased. In an exemplar of these international partnerships from an academic standpoint, selected doctoral students and faculty from Australian, Chinese, and Canadian universities participated in an International Doctoral Research Seminar held in China in December 2015. The objective of this seminar was to have academic debate regarding educational reform. A critical by-product of this seminar was the meaning made by the participants from this experience. This paper reviews the critical polyethnographic reflections of the Canadian participants for three salient and influential topics including the role …

“If Our English Isn’T A Language, What Is It?” Indonesian Efl Student Teachers’ Challenges Speaking English, Mukhlash Abrar, Amirul Mukminin, Akhmad Habibi, Fadhil Asyrafi, Makmur Makmur, Lenny Marzulina

The Qualitative Report

Research on students’ skill speaking English in a non-English speaking country such as Indonesia is limited. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to document Indonesian EFL student teachers’ experiences in speaking English at one public university in Jambi, Indonesia. Data came from demographic questionnaires and semi-structured interviews obtained from eight participants. We organized our analysis and discussion around Indonesian EFL student teachers’ perspectives and the contexts in which experiences they encountered emerge. Our analysis of the text revealed overarching themes and sub-themes including (1) language barriers (vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar, and fluency); (2) psychological factors (anxiety, attitude, and lack of …

Teaching Moral Literacy Through Critical Pedagogical Bricolage: A Co-Constructed Auto-Ethnography Of An Educational Leadership Program, Chetanath Gautam, Charles L. Lowery

The Qualitative Report

In this collaborative auto-ethnographical inquiry, two developing scholar–practitioner educational leaders explore the notion of moral literacy through a lens of critical pedagogical bricolage. This study aims to reveal certain experiences of two doctoral candidates engaged in an educational doctorate, contemplating their identities as emergent leaders from diverse backgrounds. By approaching this inquiry from a qualitative and strictly post-positivist understanding of research, we aim to present critical components of our program and the literature presented in that program that led to our understanding of moral literacy’s role in theoretical and pragmatic provinces of educational leadership. Our analysis is presented in three …

Chinese International Students In A Northwest University: Investigating Cultural Academic Learning And Teaching Preferences, Michael L. Bevis

Theses and Dissertations

As Chinese international students on American university campuses continue to rise, the importance of these institutions to accommodate the students in adapting to a different academic culture has become more critical. On a public, coeducational research university located in the Pacific Northwest, a concurrent triangulated mixed method research design was implemented to investigate cultural factors with preferred learning and teaching styles of Chinese international students along with what corroborative descriptions these students provide as effective learning experiences in American college classrooms.

The study brought attention to Chinese international students’ differing cultural values from the previous literature understanding, it supported previous …

Effective Teaching In The Eye Of Teacher Educators: A Case Study In A Higher Education, Melek Çakmak, Ülker Akkutay

The Qualitative Report

Attempts to explore teacher educators’ thoughts seem to be meaningful at educational sciences since the number of studies discussing effective teaching and effective teacher at teacher education in the eye of teacher educators are quite limited. Therefore, this study mainly aims to identify the viewpoints of teacher educators in order to discover how they contextualize the concept of effective teaching. For this aim, a case study design, increasingly used in education (Tellis, 1997), is utilized in the study. This method is suitable when the research addresses an explanatory question such as how or why? (Yin, 2004). A questionnaire including open-ended …

Whose Reality? A Meta-Analysis Of Qualitative Research In International And Comparative Education, Romina B. Da Costa, Stephanie M. Hall, Anne Spear

The Qualitative Report

This meta-analysis seeks to critically examine the qualitative research being published in influential journals in the field of international and comparative education in order to determine whether qualitative research has remained true to the constructivist paradigm and its theoretical and philosophical underpinnings. Decades after the heated paradigmatic debates within the field of education in the 1980’s, we seek to examine whether predictions that the constructivist paradigm would be pushed out by the call for post-positivist, quantifiable, data-driven research have come to fruition. Based on a review of all qualitative research published in the past three volumes of five influential journals …