This study addresses a gap in the existing literature by centering student perspectives—voices that have often been underrepresented in discussions on university internationalization. Drawing on qualitative data from Chinese students at a university in Greater China, the research examines students’ interpretations of internationalization shaped by their lived experiences. The findings reveal a diversity of student voices. While some perspectives align with the dominant East Asian discourse on internationalization, others highlight a disconnect between students’ understandings and the university’s policy-driven approach. These dissenting views offer critical insights into long-standing issues surrounding the internationalization of higher education in non-Western contexts. The study contributes to ongoing debates by urging scholars and policymakers to reconsider the core purposes and ultimate goals of internationalized higher education.

The Asia Pacific Education Review (APER) is a journal dedicated to advancing educational research within and beyond the Asia-Pacific region. It publishes articles that engage with significant educational issues through rigorous theoretical and empirical analysis. The articles contribution from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives that enrich the understanding of education in diverse contexts. APER currently holds a 5-year Journal Impact Factor of 3.0.

Abstract

Students today need to become good digital citizens in order to operate successfully when reading, writing, learning, and interacting socially online. Digital citizenship depends on online access, mastery of technical skills for using digital devices, guidance from parents and teachers, and applying established social norms for online behavior. To investigate each of these aspects of digital citizenship, we examined the survey responses of 2,005 Grades 4 to 9 students (56% were female) who were randomly selected from 3,286 schools in Chongqing China. Virtually all students (96%) reported having internet access at home, and spent an average of 28 min online at home (SD = 25.42) and 17 min at school (SD = 28.94). Ninety-five percent of students were positive about their digital capabilities; 89% of them indicated online responsibilities and rights were taught at school; and 58% noted parents guided their internet use. On average, students slightly agreed that being online was important, but averaged moderate agreement they liked to read and write online for academic and social purposes, with reading online occurring weekly and writing online monthly. On average, students moderately agreed that they followed norms of digital netiquette, practiced safe online privacy behaviors, managed their digital footprint appropriately, balanced digital media use in healthy ways, and approached digital media in a literate manner. Nevertheless, 24% of students agreed they had been cyberbullied, 73% shared passwords with friends, 68% befriended strangers, 39% reshared posts, 78% used false personal information to register online, and 24% copied text directly from online sources when doing homework. Measures of digital citizenship were statistically related to student characteristics, internet use, and beliefs about online engagement. Implications for practice and future research are presented.

Contributions of this paper

There is considerable variability in online access and use across the globe. At least in the U.S., students mostly reported they were not taught digital citizenship at school, and only about one-half of students or less indicated parental oversight of online behavior. While many U.S. students indicated they adhered to the social norms of digital citizenship, concerning behaviors were reported in terms of cyberbullying, password sharing, and resharing posts.

This study conducted in June 2022 in Chongqing, China after the Action Outline for Promoting Digital Citizenship was issued in September 2021. Compared with previous studies, our participating students’ perceptions about their digital citizenship practices was positive (and it was reported that less time was spent on online games). These findings are important because the ability to access, use the internet capably, and act online in responsible, safe, ethical, and healthy ways is essential to success in the informational societies of today. Collectively, the students in this study recognized the importance of online access, agreeing that access was important for social and academic purposes, including learning, reading, and writing. They were also positive about reading and writing online, and they further noted they read online weekly and wrote online monthly. Even though the internet was used sparingly at school for academic purposes, these youngsters had developed positive attitudes about the use of the internet for learning and literacy.

Nevertheless, the study revealed multiple concerns that policy makers, parents, and teachers should carefully consider. This included limited use of internet resources at school as well as a sizeable proportion of parents (42%) who did not monitor and influence youngster’s online behavior. Student responses to survey questions also revealed unacceptable rates of cyberbullying, sharing of passwords with friends, friending strangers, resharing of posts, using false personal information to register online, and copying text directly from online sources when doing homework. These concerns need to be better addressed by parents, teachers, and students if the norms of digital citizenship are to become habitual in China (and other countries as well).

Journal

Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal

Journal Impact Factor: 2.2 (2024)

5-year Journal Impact Factor: 3.1 (2024)

Reading and Writing publishes high-quality scientific articles pertaining to the processes, acquisition, and loss of reading and writing skills. The journal fully represents the necessarily interdisciplinary nature of research in the field, focusing on the interaction among various disciplines, such as linguistics, information processing, neuropsychology, cognitive psychology, speech and hearing science and education.

Coverage in Reading and Writing includes models of reading, writing and spelling at all age levels; orthography and its relation to reading and writing; computer literacy; cross-cultural studies; and developmental and acquired disorders of reading and writing. It publishes research articles, critical reviews, theoretical papers, and case studies.

Reading and Writing is one of the most highly cited journals in Education and Educational Research and Educational Psychology.

Link

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-024-10594-9

AERA i-Presentation Gallery: https://aera24-aera.ipostersessions.com/?s=4C-DF-80-07-22-08-B1-32-8B-08-B2-7F-F8-92-E6-39

Informed by the conceptual framework of teacher feedback literacy and drawing upon multiple sources of data, including teacher feedback samples, semi-structured interviews, and stimulated recalls, this case study examined how L2 writing teachers praise students in written feedback and their feedback literacy in giving praise in a Chinese English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) university context. The findings revealed that although praise was commonly used, suggestion and criticism still accounted for a larger percentage of all feedback given. The teachers favored independent praise and performance-oriented praise (i.e. text quality) over concomitant praise, effort-oriented, and ability-oriented praise, and praise was found to facilitate teacher-student dialogic feedback and encourage student autonomy and reciprocity in engaging with teacher feedback. The study identified two profiles of praise-giving practice: “active praise givers,” who communicated with student writers by providing feedback, and “sparse praise givers,” who focused more on working on student texts. Based on the findings, an L2 writing teacher feedback literacy framework in written praise was proposed to delineate the required knowledge, goals, values, and skills for giving written praise to improve student writing.

This study enriches the understanding of teacher feedback literacy by exploring how L2 writing teachers use praise in written feedback. It identifies two distinct profiles of teachers’ positive feedback literacy—“active” and “sparse” praise givers with different feedback goals. Based on this, it proposes an empirically grounded framework for teacher feedback literacy in written praise, offering valuable insights for both L2 writing teachers’ praise practices and future research.

Dongbo Zhang delivered a report titled ‘Why should assessment not be a “Cinderella” in Chinese as a second language (CSL) vocabulary studies?’ at Pacific Second Language Research Forum 2025 (in conjunction with Conference on Innovation in L2 Chinese Research) at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

The second language (L2) vocabulary literature, and SLA literature in general, traditionally gave limited attention to assessment issues. This was largely the case in the field of L2 Chinese vocabulary studies. The trends, however, have begun to shift over the past two decades, although assessment may still be considered a “Cinderella” in L2 Chinese vocabulary research. In his talk, Prof. Zhang argue that the shift has happened as a result of several “internal and external pressures” and discuss these “pressures” with particular references to vocabulary assessments in L2 Chinese. Evidence is cited from his scoping review of relevant literature to make a case for due research attention to L2 Chinese vocabulary assessments.

This study tested how different facets of lexical ability (i.e., morphological awareness, character knowledge, and vocabulary knowledge) contribute to L2 Chinese reading comprehension and how the contributions of these facets may vary depending on learners’ L2 proficiency. Separate sets of path analysis showed that higher- and lower-proficiency learners had distinct patterns of relationships. Whereas higher-proficiency learners relied more on morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge in L2 Chinese reading comprehension, lower-proficiency learners drew largely upon their character knowledge.

This study distinguished between two vocabulary depth (VD) aspects, that is, semantic network knowledge and polysemous knowledge; and tested how they, together with vocabulary size (VS), predicted reading comprehension in advanced English L2 readers. Hierarchical regression analysis revealed that both VD aspects were a significant, unique predictor of reading comprehension; the two aspects collectively demonstrated a stronger effect on reading comprehension than did VS. Differential patterns, however, were revealed when VD and VS were regressed on different reading comprehension tasks. These findings underscored the importance of VD in L2 reading comprehension and also suggested that L2 readers may utilize their lexical repertoire differentially to cope with varied task demands and comprehension needs.

This Element discusses the complexity of metalinguistic awareness (i.e., phonological, orthographic, and morphological) and provides a thorough account of its impact on second language (L2) reading development. In particular, it underscores various factors regulating the influence of first language (L1) metalinguistic awareness on L2 reading. It presents the most comprehensive meta-analysis of inter-lingual correlation coefficients between L1 and L2 metalinguistic awareness on the one hand and those between L1 metalinguistic awareness and L2 reading on the other. This Element is the first to systematically investigate the roles of distinct facets of metalinguistic awareness in L2 reading.

This book is an academic work on the history of education in Macao, covering the period from the late Qing Dynasty to the post-handover era. It explores the development of the region’s educational system and highlights key historical shifts. The author begins with the education of the Chinese and Portuguese communities during the late Qing Dynasty. The text details initiatives by the Chinese community, including the establishment of schools, the oversight of private schools, and the organization of student-led patriotic activities. The narrative then shifts to the extracurricular dimensions of modern education, particularly the activities of the Boy Scouts and YMCA, emphasizing their educational values. Using extracurricular engagement as a lens, the author chronicles the histories of two patriotic schools—Pui Ching and Kwong Tai—both of which maintained strong educational missions despite challenging circumstances. Special attention is given to Pui Ching’s principal, Kuang Bingren, whose lifelong dedication to education and moral integrity are praised. Additionally, the Tung Sin Tong Charitable School is highlighted as a model for providing free education to the public. Other chapters examine the development of normal education, the cultivation of Chinese language teachers, and the research on educational history in Macao from the transition period to the post-handover era. These discussions reflect the reforms in Macao’s education sector and highlight the various contributions made by the Macao SAR Government to the region’s educational development.

This article reports the first meta-analytic Structural Equation Modeling study that examined the within- and cross-language relations of three metalinguistic awareness skills (orthographic, phonological, and morphological awareness, or OA, PA, and MA) with word reading among school-aged dual language learners (DLLs) of English. Based on 156 primary studies (N = 23,371), we found that (1) OA, PA, and MA each uniquely predicted word reading within first language (L1) and second language (L2); (2) L1 OA, PA, and MA predicted their corresponding skill in L2, showing a construct-level transfer facilitation effect; (3) for cross-over transfer, L1 PA, as opposed to L1 OA and MA, predicted L2 word reading, but their indirect effects on L2 word reading were all significant. Moderator analysis was conducted on L1 background (Chinese vs. non-Chinese); L2 learning context (ESL vs. EFL); and developmental stage (younger vs. older). We discuss the transfer facilitation effects of L1 metalinguistic awareness skills that can be leveraged for effective and differentiated instruction for DLLs.

This is the first article the Faculty of Education has ever published in the journal, which is a prestigious, flagship journal of the American Educational Research Association and also a Category A journal defined by FED.