Daphnee Lee

Linking Immigrant Parents’ Educational Expectations and Aspirations to Their Children's School Performance

ABSTRACT The authors examined the relationships of parental expectations and aspirations for their childrens educational attainment to childrens academic performance in school among 783 immigrant-origin children aged 5–18 years in Canada. The results of hierarchical regression analyses, after accounting for student and family background characteristics, indicated that immigrant parents’ expectations and aspirations for their childrens educational attainment were positively linked to immigrant-origin childrens academic performance in school. Implications of these findings are briefly discussed.

A Professional Learning Community for the New Teacher Professionalism: The Case of a State-Led Initiative in Singapore Schools

ABSTRACT This paper seeks to explore the empirical fit of two PLC models, using Singapore as a case. Insights emerged from documentary analyses and interviews with state-affiliated agents from the Academy of Singapore Teachers. The proposed DuFour–Fullan model, despite policy aspirations, remains largely DuFour-predominant in practice. Aspirations for a Fullan-inspired approach are evident, but still rest in the stage of conceptualization.

Bourdieu’s symbolic power and postcolonial organization theory in local-expatriate relationships: An ethnographic study of a French multinational corporation in Singapore

This empirical study seeks to illustrate the complementary interplay between Bourdieu’s theory of symbolic power (field, habitus, cultural capital) and postcolonial organizational theory. Local and expatriate regional subsidiary managers of a French multinational corporation (MNC) hosted in Singapore share their divergent views on managerial assertiveness. Findings from ethnographic fieldwork point to the exercise of symbolic power and the differentiated responses to this imposition. The differentiated value of managerial assertiveness is found to be undergirded by not just power relationships within the organization, but also social inequalities, such as childhood socioeconomic background, within the broader social context of Singapore. Within this culturally diverse landscape, the author examines the empirical representations of theoretical perspectives emergent from the imagined dialogues that the managers have with each other, through the researcher as the medium. Notions of how expatriate managers are assertive by disposition and local managers are, conversely, risk and uncertainty avoidant, are first presented as symbolic impositions of cultural hegemony, before presenting perspectives that concede (‘conciliatory’) and reject (‘retaliatory’) these notions from a postcolonial vantage point. From the empirical findings, the author explores how theoretical dialogues on symbolic power and postcolonial organizational theory may unfold within the context of highly globalized societies.

The Relationship between Teacher Value Orientations and Engagement in Professional Learning Communities.

The development of teacher professional learning communities (PLC) has attracted growing attention among practitioners, policy-makers and researchers. The aims of this study were to identify typologies of professional learning teams based on measures of professional learning engagement, and assess their linkages with teachers’ value orientations. Based on data obtained from 408 professional learning teams in Singapore schools, cluster analysis identified three types of professional learning teams: highly engaged, moderately engaged and less engaged. These three profiles differ mainly in terms of level of endorsement for the four measures of professional learning engagement (collective focus on student learning, collaborative learning, reflective dialogue and shared values and vision). Results revealed that highly engaged professional learning teams reported the highest levels of endorsement for all four engagement measures. Teachers among the learning teams in the highly engaged profile reported a significantly higher level of uncertainty avoidance than those in the moderately engaged and less engaged profiles. Teachers in the less engaged profile also reported a significantly higher level of power distance than those in the highly engaged teams. Multinomial logistic regression analysis found that team power distance and team uncertainty avoidance were significant predictors of engagement profile membership. The implications for fostering effective teacher development through more systematic support of PLC are discussed.

Correlates of Science Achievement in Singapore: A Multilevel Exploration

Singapore has been participating in large-scale international student assessments for the last two decades, and the performance of students in Singapore on the various cycles of international student assessments was outstanding. However, there is sparse research on the factors contributing to Singapore students’ sterling performance. The authors, therefore, drawing on data from the fourth cycle of Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) and employing two-level hierarchical linear modeling (HLM), examined the student and school correlates of science achievement among 15-year-olds in Singapore. At the student level, student background characteristics and student perceptions of school climate were generally associated with science achievement. At the school level, school size and school socioeconomic status were solely linked to science achievement. The final HLM model indicated that the school-level factors accounted for 78 % of the variance in science achievement. However, the student-level factors accounted for only 12 % of the variance in science achievement. Implications of the findings are discussed for educational policy and practice.

Developing a Habitude: When Learning Isn’t Always Fun

In this chapter, we posit the thesis that learning is not just in the head or in social-cultural contexts, but very much also in the body. In this sense, the adaptivity in the body as it struggles to reconcile to the mind and the social others surrounding the individual. While bodily adaptations can be connoted to habits, we recognise that these individual dispositions are intricately woven with the social habitus. We describe and discuss how learning is a struggling process towards stability based on expectations in performance. Through this struggling process, habits of bodily sensing are developed, beliefs, and values are formed based on experience in doing and thinking, and these, in turn, are influenced by the social habitus. As this coupling relationship between individual habits and social habitus is co-evolving, disequilibrium or some form of struggling is necessary before reaching stability – both cognitively and bodily. Hence learning is not always fun. We use sports activities within schools contexts as cases because they are rich in cognitive and bodily actions at both the individuals and social levels.

“School banding”: Principals’ perspectives of teacher professional development in the school-based management context

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore how principals’ leadership approaches to teacher professional development arise from school banding and may impact upon teacher professional capital and student achievement. Design/methodology/approach The case study is situated within the context of school-based management, comprising reflective accounts of nine school principals selected by stratified sampling from a sample of 56 Hong Kong schools to represent Bands One, Two, and Three schools. The reflective accounts were triangulated with observations of teachers and analysis of school websites. Findings First, under school-based management, principals remain obliged to recognize the power of state-defined examinations in determining the schools’ future priorities. Second, the exercise of school autonomy in response to this obligation varies, depending upon the competitive advantage schools have in the school banding system. Ideally, effective school-based management is dependent upon the principal’s capacity to facilitate good instructional practices. However, principals need to adjust their leadership practices to school contextual demands. Third, adaptations to contexts result in the varied developments of teacher capacities in schools, corresponding with the types of principal leadership adopted. Originality/value While statistical studies have identified attributes of exemplary principal leadership, few studies have examined the qualitative reasons for the exemplification of these attributes, and the influence of the school context in shaping these attributes. Departing from assumptions that leadership attributes are intrinsic to individuals, this paper considers how principals contextualize leadership in teacher professional development to the schools’ student academic achievement.