Journal of Educational Practice and Research

The Development of Oral Reading Fluency Passages

Yuwen Chang

This study aims to establish procedures for developing oral reading fluency (ORF) passages for second and third graders. The required characteristics of passages were specified and an open request for passages was announced. After experts’ reviewing, 40 passages were collected. Sixty students ranging from second to fourth grade were administered 40 passages individually. Three websites were used to analyze the textual features of the passages: Chinese Learning Remedy Teaching Resources Network, Readability-Analyzing System for Chinese Articles, and Chinese Readability Index Explorer. The results indicate that the total number of different words, the number of positive conjunctions, and negative conjunctions are the most powerful predictors of oral reading fluency. Thirty-two passages were chosen based on multiple indicators. These passages were divided into two sets. Each set comprises 19 passages with six common passages for both grades. The alternate-form reliabilities for both grades are .85. The generalizability coefficients in second and third grade conditions were .94 and .95 respectively when three passages were used to estimate performance. The correlations between ORF and grade scores in Chinese are .49 and .43 respectively. The results provide evidence for supporting the preliminary reliability and validity of the test.


Keyword：linguistic characteristics of passage, oral reading fluency, reliability, validity

Framing Professional Learning: An Action Research on Teachers’ Pedagogical Empowerment of Design-based Learning for Innovative Teaching

Wei-Ren Chen, Kai-Ju Huang, Ching-Ling Wu, & Chin-Hsieh Lu

In this innovation era, offering support for teachers’ innovative teaching has been an important but neglected issue. Based on teacher learning theory, the purpose of this study is to explore a teaching empowerment team’s design of professional learning for elementary school teachers who learned Design-Based Learning[DBL]. The team attempted to empower teachers based on the reflections of the collaborative action research through participatory observation, interviews and document analysis. The findings indicated that the teaching empowerment team regarded participatory learning as a fundamental rationale to elicit teachers’ professional autonomy. The team also guided teachers to make sense of the key elements of DBL by experiential activities and used a DBL exemplar curriculum as protocol. Consequently, the teacher community in an elementary school tried to deconstruct teaching habits and redefined their teaching roles. The teachers collaborated with students to develop contextual pedagogical competencies, and found that presenting learning outcomes in real context made professional growth possible. A teacher empowerment framework for innovative teaching and future studies was further proposed: through parallel learning for pedagogical transformation, the team and teachers might work together to develop a sustainable professional learning pathway based on the connoisseurship and evaluation of student learning performance.


Keyword：Design-Based Learning, innovative teaching, in-service teacher, professional learning

Exploring the Well-being of Elderly People Studying for a Master’s Degree

Hsiao-Feng Cheng

The aim of this study was to understand the experience of elderly people by the PERMA model. Thirteen participants were graduate students from a university in northern Taiwan and each were invited to an in-depth interview once. Their average age was 64 years old. This study adopted a ‟Multiple-case embedded design” of case study and analytic induction. For each component of the PERMA model, the results are as follows: ‟Positive emotion (P)”: The elderly people cherished and were confident. They gradually enjoyed learning and overcame difficulties. ‟Engagement (E)”: The elderly people re-experienced the sense of time, resonated with academic work, immersed in the flow of asking, thinking and responding, and had creative conversations with peers. ‟Positive relationships (R)”: The elderly people felt they belonged from peers, became a model and got positive feedbacks in their family. ‟Meaning (M)”: The elderly people improved their self-efficacy, tried to help others, and began to re-start their new career. ‟Achievement (A)”: They made progress in using computers and became an active learner. There were three stages in the well-being state of the learning process: the early stage was joyful and confidence, the middle of stage was engagement and breakthrough, and the last stage was flourish and construction. Finally, limitations and suggestions were discussed.



Keyword：elderly people, PERMA model, positive psychology, well-being

Educational Administration as a Technology of Control?- A Study on the Educational Implications of R. Bates Critical Theory

Yu-Nan Su

R. Bates is one of the most important educational administration scholars in modern time. However, there has been little research about Bates in Taiwan. The uniqueness of Bates’s theory lies in the analysis of educational administration based on sociology, combining critical theory with educational administration practice. For Bates, the purpose of educational administration is liberation rather than control, which corresponds to the aim of needing to anti-control the administration process, bringing to the forefront the contrary of every means of learning knowledge and administration regulations. Based on this theory, a new direction of educational administration perspective may begin in Taiwan, with focus on reflecting what the significance of the theory movement is. This study begins with the reflection on the origin of administration control, revealing the municipal reform movement, occupational professionalization, and the cult of efficiency as a source, which leads to four major problems: (1) reinforcing social reproduction on education, (2) knowledge as a product of school reproduction, (3) producing a didactic pedagogy, and (4) lacking a fundamental commitment to the ideas of community and to the mutuality of social concerns. The researcher also analyzes the three differences of control theory and critical theory, and deduces the three implications of educational administration democratization, multiculturalism, and justice, with expectation to reach different perspectives in educational administration by means of a new voice.


Keyword：Critical Theory, educational administration, paradigm of educational administration

On National Educational Legislation and Policies for Remote Area by Constitutional View-Reference on the System of Japan

Chun-Chieh Sung

This article first discusses the development and trends in the regulations and policies related to national education in remote areas of Taiwan. As regards to the development of statutory regulations, the legislative process of the ‟Act for Education Development of Schools in Remote Areas” promulgated in December of 2017 was analyzed and illustrated. Additionally, in light of the development of policy, an introduction of its history, recent moves and relevant opinions of the academic community are also elaborated. Second, on the basis of the foregoing, it is from the viewpoint of constitutional law that discusses several theoretical and legal issues before and after the implementation of the Act. Third, this article briefly scrutinizes the objective of implementing ‟Act on Improvement of Education in Remote Areas (1954)” in Japan and its related policies. It is hoped that this study may offer some insights into either education policy or education finance on how teachers from schools in the remote area of Japan are ensured to retain their position for a long time according to their willingness.


Keyword：bonus for long stay, Japan’s Education Promotion Law for Remote Areas, legislative inaction, national education, remote areas