Short description:

Using Vygotsky's theory as a conceptual framework to "construct" school achievement, this book puts forth a culturally relevant context for understanding developmental aspects of children?s school achievement and their implication to classroom practice.

Long description:

International interest focuses on why pupils from East-Asia tend to outperform pupils from the West and scholars have proposed a number of possible explanations to account for these international trends. Using Vygotsky's theory (1978) as a conceptual framework to "construct" school achievement, this book puts forward culturally relevant context for understanding developmental aspects of children?s school achievement and their implication to classroom practice and education progress. Converging the two important lines of inquiry ? the child factor and the sociocultural factor ? this book showcases evidence-based scholarly works from across the globe that shed light on causes of academic achievement in different contexts.

The book brings together eminent scholars from early childhood, primary education, secondary and vocational education who expertly capture the vitality of development and processes of specific child factors and their interaction with their environment that explain their school achievement. Foregrounded in the five planes of cultural historical, institutional, social, personal and mental, the research explain how children think, learn and form the will to perform amidst the changing social and family environment, and challenging school and educational environment.

Table of Contents:

Introduction  1. Constructing educational achievement within a sociocultural framework of planes  Sivanes Phillipson and Peter D. Renshaw  Part 1: Cultural-historical Plane  2. Framing achievement when learning is unified: The concept of unity in Vygotsky?s theory and methodology  Jennifer A. Vadeboncoeur  3. Family capital, child?s personal agency, and the academic achievement of Chinese migrant children  Qiaobing Wu  4. A psychometric understanding of sociocultural factors in test validity: The development of standardised test materials for M?ori medium schools in New Zealand/Aotearoa  Peter J. Keegan, Gavin T. L. Brown and John A. C. Hattie  Part 2: Institutional Plane  5. Classroom chronotopes privileged by contemporary educational policy: Teaching and learning in testing times  Peter D. Renshaw  6. Teacher self efficacy: Internalized understandings of competence  Janet Draper  Part 3: Social Plane  7. Parental expectations: The influence of the significant other on school achievement  Sivanes Phillipson  8. Examining the Relations Between a Play Motive and a Learning Motive for Enhancing School Achievement: Doing ?School? at Home  Marilyn Fleer  9. Peer co-regulation of learning, emotion, and coping in small-group learning  Mary McCaslin and Ruby Inez Vega  10. Teacher-student relationships and students? learning outcomes  Atara Sivan and Dennis W. K. Chan  11. Social learning, language and instruction for adult learners where English is their second language  Ian Hay, Rosemary Callingham and Frederick Wright  12. Two instead of one ZPD: Individual and joint construction in the ZPD  Aleksander Baucal  Part 4: Personal Plane  13. When Lev Vygotsky meets Francis Galton: On the nature and nurture of reading development  Simpson W. L.Wong  14. Education for Citizenship: An experiment in leadership development of pupils making the transition from primary to secondary school  Jim O'Brien, Evgeniya Plotnikova, and Iain Mills  15. How encouragement in everyday family practices facilitates Hong Kong-Australian children?s motive for learning  Pui Ling Wong  Part 5: Mental Plane  16. Cognitive style and achievement through a socio-cultural lens: A new way of thinking about style differences  Elizabeth R. Peterson and Kane Meissel  17. Role of verbal reasoning in critical thinking  Kelly, Y. L. Ku  18. Cognitive perturbation with dynamic modeling: A reconceptualization of conceptual change in science education  Sandy C. Li and Jacky W. C. Pow  Conclusion  19. The role of culture in constructing educational achievement  Sivanes Phillipson and Shane N. Phillipson