Abstract
The area of student learning is one in which researchers in the Asia-Pacific region have been at the forefront of research and theoretical developments for the last 30 years. At first much of this work focused on Australian school and university students but in the last ten years this focus has spread particularly to so-called Confucian heritage countries in South-East Asia such as Japan and Hong Kong. The impetus for this latter focus has been the excellent performance of students from such countries in international comparisons of educational progress. The question has been raised of cultural differences in student learning and a controversy has arisen about the very existence and the likely explanation of such differences. Other countries in the region, like elsewhere in the world, have recognised the importance of the quality of learning outcomes for economic development (Altbach & Selvaratnam, 1989). Consequently such research has been widely replicated in this region and so much is now known about how and why its students learn and the likely impact on the outcomes achieved. The great majority of this work has been based on Western concepts and theorising. This review focuses on the issue of the relevance of these imported ideas for non-Western countries through both a conceptual analysis and a cross-cultural meta-analysis involving 12 countries in the region. Issues such as cross-cultural differences and factors that particularly impact on student learning in the region are also briefly addressed.
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Watkins, D.N. (2003). Student Learning: A Cross-Cultural Perspective. In: Keeves, J.P., et al. International Handbook of Educational Research in the Asia-Pacific Region. Springer International Handbooks of Education, vol 11. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3368-7_31
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3368-7_31
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