Pacific- Asian Education A Journal about Education in Pacific Circle Countries Volume 20 Number 2 2008 Pacific-Asian Education The Journal of the Pacific Circle Consortium for Education Volume 20, Number 2, 2008 General Editor Carol Mutch, Education Review Office, Wellington, New Zealand Editorial Assistant Jane Robertson, Christchurch, New Zealand Editorial Board Gerald Fry, University of Minnesota, USA Christine Halse, University of Western Sydney, Australia Kerry Kennedy, Hong Kong Institute of Education, Hong Kong Meesook Kim, Korean Educational Development Institute, Korea Gary McLean, Texas A&M University, USA ISSN 1019-8725 ©Pacific Circle Consortium for Education Publication design and layout: Jennifer Lees Desktop publishing: Jane Robertson Published by: Pacific Circle Consortium for Education Pacific Asian Education, Volume 20, Number 2, 2008 1 Pacific Asian Education, Volume 20, Number 2, 2008 2 Pacific-Asian Education Volume 20, Number 2, 2008 Contents Editorial ......................................................................................................................... 4 Carol Mutch, Education Review Office, Wellington, New Zealand Tribute to Art King ....................................................................................................... 6 Donald B. Young, University of Hawaii at Manoa, USA Articles Olympism, China and the call for an Olympic pedagogy ......................................... 7 Ian Culpan, College of Education, University of Canterbury, New Zealand Learning in the museum: A case study .................................................................... 17 Joe Tin-yau Lo, The Hong Kong Institute of Education, Hong Kong Exploring Fijian high school students’ conceptions of averages ............................. 29 Sashi Sharma, School of Education, University of Waikato, New Zealand To what degree do immigrant entrepreneurs need formal education? The influence of formal and informal learning on entrepreneurial behaviour among Chinese, Dutch, Indian and Pacific Peoples in New Zealand .................................. 46 Huibert (Herb) de Vries, Department of Management, University of Canterbury, New Zealand Ongoing challenges with language curriculum innovations in Asia: A South Korean case study ....................................................................................................... 59 Jocelyn Howard, College of Education, and Susan Millar, Bridging Programmes, University of Canterbury, New Zealand The application of games in teaching and learning volleyball in physical education lessons ............................................................................................................................ 76 Alberto Cruz, The Hong Kong Institute of Education, Hong Kong About the Authors .................................................................................................................... 92 The Pacific Circle Consortium for Education ....................................................................... 95 Members of the Consortium .................................................................................................... 95 Officers of the Consortium ...................................................................................................... 95 Subscription for Hard Copy .................................................................................................... 96 Notes for Contributors ............................................................................................................. 96 Guidelines for Submitting Manuscripts ................................................................................. 96 Pacific Asian Education, Volume 20, Number 2, 2008 3 Editorial Carol Mutch, PhD, Education Review Office, New Zealand Education is a context-bound enterprise. These contextual influences can be historical, geographical, political, social, cultural, economic and/or religious. Global and local contextual influences come together in the many schools and classrooms in the Pacific-Asian region. This issue of Pacific-Asian Education reflects the contextual influences and tensions faced by educators at all levels of the system across a range of Asian and Pacific countries. The first article by Ian Culpan draws together history, politics, sport and education as he discusses Olympic pedagogy in the light of the most recent Olympic Games in Beijing. Culpan declares his interest in Olympism as the possibilities it offers to educate youth – through sport – to contribute to a better, less divisive world. Such a philosophy, grounded in social justice, “critical in nature; emancipatory in action” can too frequently be sidelined by national and global politics. Culpan challenges the International Olympic Committee to take a leadership role in establishing an Olympic pedagogy that will “address, expose, and work towards transforming the issues associated with nationalism, industrialisation, sustainability, social justice, equity and internationalism”. This article gets to the heart of the purpose of education – what kind of young people do we want to prepare for the world of the future? Readers unfamiliar with Olympism as a pedagogy will find this article informative and those already aware of its aims will find it illuminating as it challenges some of Olympism‟s underpinning assumptions. The second article focuses more on the „how‟ of education but is no less challenging as it holds common teaching practices up to scrutiny. Many education curricula encourage teachers to find authentic contexts and to make use of opportunities for education outside the classroom. Joe Tin-yau Lo wanted to explore the congruence between Hong Kong teachers‟ aims for using the museum as an authentic context (the planned curriculum) and what students gained from the visit (the experienced curriculum). Through a five-phase multi- method study, he moved from lofty teacher aims to student learning and perceptions. The vivid descriptions of the museum visit will strike a chord with many of us. His conclusion was that, despite the best intentions of teachers, the strategies they used meant that student learning was “flimsy, inadequate and incidental”. Lo offers a range of solutions from the literature and his own findings to improve this situation. Sashi Sharma‟s article also explores curriculum and pedagogy at the level of what is experienced, through the teaching and learning of statistics within the mathematics curriculum. Because of its relevance to everyday life, statistics has become a more significant aspect of mathematics curricula. Sharma‟s study explored the statistical understanding and processing of form five Fijian high school students through the lens of their concepts of the „mean‟ or „average‟. This research showed that most students had only „procedural‟ understanding of the mean and related concepts such as the median. The concern is raised that although most teachers try to relate mathematics to the real world, students fail to connect the concepts and procedures they learn at school with real-life situations as they encounter them. Sharma raises the implications of these findings for mathematics teachers and provides some strategies for them in order to enhance student understanding of this fundamental concept. The fourth article, from Huibert (Herb) de Vries takes us into a wider world of education – the importance of formal and informal learning to different groups of immigrant entrepreneurs in the multi-cultural context of New Zealand. Many immigrants tend to take up entrepreneurial activities in their new countries, and this is also the case in New Zealand. In order to know Pacific Asian Education, Volume 20, Number 2, 2008 4 what the educational needs and interests of this group are, it is important to understand their varying backgrounds, experiences and aspirations. In his study, de Vries interviewed immigrants from Chinese, Dutch, Indian and Pacific Island backgrounds. His study broke down the stereotype of immigrants as „under-resourced and uneducated‟. The participants in this study, in general, came with higher qualifications and levels of experience than their respective populations within New Zealand. They highly valued both formal and informal learning and saw this learning process as on-going. Jocelyn Howard and Susan Millar were interested in whether the findings of a study conducted by in Canada by Li (1998), which looked at the difficulties in implementing communicative language teaching (CLT) in situations where English was taught as a foreign language, still held true after intensive education reforms in many Asian countries. CLT is a more learner-centred and experience-based pedagogy which can be seen at odds with teaching and learning practices in non-Western countries, for example, those with a strong Confucian base. Howard and Millar drew their sample from a recent group of Korean teachers studying in New Zealand and yet found many parallels with Li‟s earlier study. Teachers still face personal, ideological, institutional and classroom barriers in implementing CLT. Howard and Millar‟s study will resonate with many readers of this journal as they recognise the contextually-situated difficulties these teachers face and how they struggle with the lack of alignment between educational and societal goals and the reality of the situations in which they find themselves teaching. The final article examines in depth learning strategies to improve student motivation, interest and skill in physical