Vol. 24-2（2011/12）
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Min-Hsiung Hsu
This research adopted a case study approach, where data was collected through unstructured interviews and checklists, to investigate the implementation process of infusing issues of new immigrants into a civic journalists workshop and to explore its impacts on participants’ media skills and intercultural understanding abilities in a community college. Basically, the educational goals of community college were "knowledge liberation and civil society development". By using instructional strategies based on three kinds of infusion principles, this three-month curriculum was designed to provide training in media skills and cultivate in-depth understanding about the living conditions of new immigrants.Twelve participants (11 of whom were women) attended the class where they meet 3 hours every two weeks. The educational backgrounds of these participants range from having a college degree to ones who are elementary school graduates. Theresults of this study shows that infusion curriculum indeed helped the learners raise intercultural understanding and media skills, and the instructor was allowed to improve her professional knowledge and competence about infusion curriculum design. Based on these findings, some suggestions were proposed for further infusion curriculum implementation and research.
Keyword：community college, intercultural understanding, media skills,infusion curriculum
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Mei-Ying Chien
The implementation of media literacy education in schools should be directed towards developing students’ understanding of the different types of media while providing them with opportunities for personal reflection on the content and effects of media. An action research was carried out with a group of grade-6 students and their teacher at one elementary school to evaluate the teacher’s teaching and students’ learning about media. Multiple methods of data collection were used for the purpose of triangulation, including research diary, classroom observations and field-notes taking, teacher’s reflective feedback, semi-structured tape-recorded interviews with the teacher, group video-recorded interviews with the students, questionnaires, and documents. Based on the research findings, conclusions in two respects were given on evaluating the impact of adopting a mutual collaborative mode in the conduction of this action research. 1. Mutual feedback and curriculum planning: the on-going mutual feedback between the teacher and the researcher had helped the teacher develop specific skills of integrating media into topic teaching and reflection on media use. The students had also benefited from learning the media including the development of a better understanding of media and their use. 2. Equal status and teaching limitations: the researcher’s concerns over sustaining equal status to lessen the teacher’s tension had, to some extent, limited our mutual feedback on the teaching process. Therefore, there should have been more substantive dialogues between the teacher and the students, and the critical thinking skills of students should also have been elicited and developed.
Keyword：media literacy education, topic teaching, critical thinking, action research
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Li-Jung Huang, Si-Yi Lai, & Shu-Ching Yang
Exploring ways to cultivate learners’ historical critical thinking has been one of the main themes in recent US and European educational reform. However, the processes by which learners’ understand the concepts in history (i.e. historical documents, evidence, empathy, interpretation and accounts) have not been investigated from a learner-centered perspective. Furthermore, how learners view history and their disposition to historical critical thinking have not been fully explored. The purpose of the study is to design instruments that measure students’ history learning and to explore learners’ development of history concepts, attitude toward history learning, and their historical critical thinking disposition. The participants were 1017 8th, 9th and 11th grade students within the Kaohsiung County. Results showed that learners in history courses, in general, tend to focus on memorizing historical facts and display only limited understanding toward the concepts of history. In addition, analysis showed that learners with more positive evaluation toward teachers, read a greater number of historical novels and stories, as well as reported more liking of history. These learners also display much better performance on historical critical thinking disposition. Based on the findings, some suggestions were proposed for history teachers and future studies.
Keyword：historical critical thinking abilities; historical critical thinking disposition, history education
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Preliminary Investigation of Practice Training and Supervision Needs of Elementary School Counselors
Yu-Kuang Hsu
Aimed to explore practice training and supervision needs of school counselors in elementary schools, thirty teachers who adjunct as school counselors were invited to join two supervision groups, each consists of four 160-minute sessions. The practice difficulties and their supervision needs were proposed before each session. The transcripts were analyzed and divided into several categories which related to the phenomenon of their concerned issues. Five types of supervision needs were found, they were: treating the specific issues of students, conducting practice of counseling and guidance, parents and teachers consulting, administration system building and resource supporting, and the professional development issues of school counselors. Three dimensions including direct services and interventions, system cooperating, and professional development of the elementary school counselors were discussed and integrated from above results. Applications and suggestions of practice training, supervision needs, and further research were discussed and proposed.
Keyword：Counseling supervision, elementary school counselors, group supervision, school counseling, school counselors
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Applying Kano Model to a Case University for Teaching Quality Improvement
Yuan-Ning Chang
While evaluation practice of higher education gradually emphasizes students’ learning outcomes, universities must focus on excellent teaching quality to provide students the necessary and innovative teaching and learning activities, since teaching quality is the key strategy in higher education institutions and the emphasis of educational reform in the world. This study first explored teaching quality and Kano’s two-dimensional quality model by documentary analysis. Second, the study applied the Kano model to classify teaching quality elements into five quality attributes, and analyzed students’ different classifications for teaching quality elements in S University of Technology. Third, combining a refined Kano model and IS model, the study investigated strategies of teaching quality improvement. Last, according to research conclusions, the study provided suggestions for management practices in S University of Technology and future researches for assessing teaching quality.
Keyword：Kano’s two-dimensional quality model, teaching quality, University of Technology
