Preschool principal’s curriculum leadership indicators: a Taiwan perspective

Chia-Fen Lin 서울대학교 교육연구소 2013 Asia Pacific Education Review Vol.14 No.4

The role of a principal’s curriculum leadership has become an educational issue in Taiwan’s early childhood education. This study represents a pioneering attempt in adopting a target school interview, fuzzy Delphi, and analytic hierarchy process for constructing preschool principal’s curriculum leadership indicators. Fifteen experts and practitioners were involved in the Delphi panel and a two-stage questionnaire survey was administered. The findings revealed that preschool curriculum leadership indicators could be classified as 20 implementation items in six aspects: formation of preschool vision; organization and functioning of the preschool curriculum development team; control of the preschool curriculum implementation process; improvement of teachers’ curriculum professionalism; integration of different educational resources; and assessment of preschool curriculum implementation performance. Analysis of the relative weighting of curriculum leadership indicators reveals that the most important implementation items are “Ability to analyze the preschool’s background and features to provide a basis for development of a curriculum vision,” “Ability to construct a preschool curriculum vision together with other members,” “Ability to call together teachers to jointly establish a curriculum development team,” “Ability to secure resources from inside and outside the school to provide the environment and equipment needed to meet teachers’ curriculum and teaching needs.” These indicators emphasizing organizational cooperation, entrustment, and control under the context of the new leadership in Taiwan are in line with the Western concept of distributed leadership.

Curriculum Development Program in a privately-managed public preschool in Taiwan: overcoming difficulties and establishing a process pattern

Chia-Fen Lin 서울대학교 교육연구소 2016 Asia Pacific Education Review Vol.17 No.2

Preschool curriculum reform is currently underway in Taiwan. Privately-managed public preschools (PMPPs) currently play the role of bellwethers because they stand halfway between public and private preschools, and serve as testing grounds for curriculum reforms promoted by the government. This study originated from Curriculum Development Program (CDP) which is one of Taiwan government’s policies toward PMPPs. The researcher and the research subject consisted of the expert and case school participating in this program. The main objective of this article was to discuss the course about a privately-managed public preschool how to overcome difficulties and establish a process pattern of CDP. This paper employed the qualitative research methods; it included focus group, interviews, and action research. Then, the study made use of grounded theory and conducted data analysis in the three stages of open coding, axial coding, and selective coding. Based on the results of this study, the CDP exerted a mediating effect that harmonized the tensions between external impact and internal resistance. The difficulties for the external impact of CDP included: educational policy reforms, competition in the education market, and parents’ right to choose. The internal resistance of CDP included: changes in the curriculum power structure, limitations on in-school resources, and conflicts of interest among organization members. The process pattern included: use of curriculum guidance experts and action research; integration of interested parties’ resources and organization of a specialist curriculum development team; responding to internal and external needs by establishing a compromise between school-based curriculum vision and assessment approach; harmonizing external impacts and internal resistance to complete the school-based curriculum; and cyclic reflection on and revision of action plan. This study provided practical insights and offered an integrated solution of how an assistance approach with experts’ participation can be combined with curriculum policy and academic research.

Factors Influencing Breast Symptoms in Breastfeeding Women After Cesarean Section Delivery [Asian Nursing Research 5 (2011) 88e98] The authors regret for the incorrect author affiliation published in this article. The correct affiliation is as follows.

Chia-Fen Hsien,Jung-Chung Fu,Cheng-Yu Long,Huey-Shyan Lin 한국간호과학회 2011 Asian Nursing Research Vol.5 No.3

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to compare smoking prevalence and risk factors of smoking between Korean and Korean-Chinese middle school students. Methods: Data was collected from seventh and eighth grade students from 12 schools in Korea and 6schools in China. Descriptive statistics, Chi-square test, and t test were performed. Results: For data analysis 10,002 usable surveys were utilized. The smoking prevalence was higher in Korean-Chinese students than in Korean students. Risk factors, such as father smoking, friends smoking,gender, grade, academic achievement, alcohol use, and family income were associated with current smoking, and the differences in the two samples were significant. Korean-Chinese students were more likely than Korean students to have friends who smoked and a father who smoked. Smokers had a significantly higher rate of friends smoking, father smoking, and alcohol use. Korean-Chinese male students smoking prevalence was more than three times higher than Korean students. Korean students could sense a more anti-tobacco atmosphere in their environment. Korean-Chinese students were more likely than Korean students to perceive that it was easy to buy cigarettes and to smoke cigarettes in a public computer room. Conclusion: These results highlight the differences of smoking prevalence and risk factors between Korean-Chinese students and Korean students. The findings may help health educators and researchers to better understand adolescent smoking and risk factors cross culturally and aid in the development of more effective education programs, which could lead to preventing tobacco use among these populations.

Factors Influencing Breast Symptoms in Breastfeeding Women After Cesarean Section Delivery

Chia-Fen Hsien,Jung-Chung Fu,Cheng-Yu Long,Huey-Shyan Lin 한국간호과학회 2011 Asian Nursing Research Vol.5 No.2

Purpose The purposes of this study were to explore postpartum stress and breast symptoms in postpartum breastfeeding of parturient mothers as well as to identify the factors influencing the breast symptoms in breastfeeding women after cesarean section delivery. Methods A cross-sectional survey was conducted. A total of 162 breastfeeding women after cesarean section delivery were recruited from five hospitals in Taiwan. Structured questionnaires were used to collect data. Results The five highest postpartum stress comes from the flabby flesh of maternal belly, the baby getting sick suddenly, interrupted sleep, insufficient breast milk, and discomfort due to breast engorgement. The most two common breast symptoms in breastfeeding encountered by subjects in this study were breast engorgement and breast hardening, whereas the least common one was nipple bloody discharge. Cesarean section women with early suckling on the operating table had more breast symptoms in postpartum breastfeeding; and the higher the postpartum stress of them, the more the breast symptoms. Conclusions Breastfeeding in a comfortable condition is a key factor of precipitating breast milk secretion,so early suckling on the operating table may result in discomfort and stress of the woman and interfere with the secretion or production of breast milk. Additionally, it is a crucial factor of the success in breastfeeding that the nursing personnel can provide women help in maintaining breast milk production and secretion, taking care of a baby, and reminding women’s families (especially their husbands) of giving their assistance, encouragement and praises to relieve women’s postpartum stress.

Evaluation of Intervention to Prevent Needle-sticks Injuries in Nurses

Chia-Ching Chang,Ching-Fen Huang 한국간호과학회 2009 한국간호과학회 학술대회 Vol.2009 No.10

The Effect of Response Shift and Adaptation in Cancer Patients

Chao Li-Fen,Wu Hsu-Hui,Kuo Yi-Shuan,Lin Chia-Yu,Liu Hsueh-Erh 한국간호과학회 2009 한국간호과학회 학술대회 Vol.2009 No.10

Methane transport in a soil column: experimental and modeling investigation

Chiu-Shia Fen,Yu-Ro Lin,Chia-Yu Chen 대한환경공학회 2021 Environmental Engineering Research Vol.26 No.5

This study explored two diffusion approaches, Fick’s law and the dusty gas model (DGM), to assess their differences on modeling methane transport in porous systems. Laboratory experiments were also conducted for methane transport through a nitrogen gas-dry soil column from different source densities. Gas pressures and methane densities at transient state were measured along the column for two transport configurations (horizontal and vertically upward) and compared with the predictions obtained from the DGM- and Fickian-based models. The retardation factor is the only parameter used in the model calibration. The results showed that the methane density profiles predicted by these models fairly matched the measured data and are quite consistent for vertically upward transport of methane. However, the predictions were over the measured ones for horizontal transport of methane. We suspected it is due to incomplete mixing of gas mixture in the inlet chamber since high pressure variations were observed in the horizontal transport experiments. Further, we found that the methane density profile predicted by the Fickian-based model is lagged behind the DGM result for at most 15% of difference in methane density for horizontal transport of methane from a pure methane source.horizontal transport experiments. Further, we found that the methane density profile predicted by the Fickian-based model lagged behind the DGM result for at most 15% of difference in methane density for horizontal transport of methane from a pure methane source.

Postmortem Proteolysis of Breast and Leg Muscles from Taiwan Colored Chickens and Silkie Bantams

Tsai, Shih-Fen,Lin, Chia-Ying,Lu, Jin-Jenn,Chou, Rong-Ghi R. Asian Australasian Association of Animal Productio 2006 Animal Bioscience Vol.19 No.5

Postmortem proteolysis of breast (BM) and leg (LM) muscles from Taiwan colored chickens (TCC) and silkie bantams (SB) at $5^{\circ}C$ were compared. Myofibrils were prepared from BM and LM samples that were randomly taken from the carcasses of SB and TCC after 0, 1, 3, 7 and 14 days of storage at $5^{\circ}C$. pH of samples was determined, and degradation of myofibrillar proteins was analyzed by the SDS-PAGE and western blots. The results showed that pH was lower in BM than in LM samples from both avian strains. Appearance of 30 kDa components and disappearance of titin and nebulin were more rapidly as seen on SDS-PAGE in BM than in LM samples. Western blots labeled with a monoclonal antibody to desmin also demonstrated that desmin degraded more quickly in BM samples. Our data might suggest that postmortem proteolysis occurred more rapidly in BM than in LM from both TCC and SB.

Efficient solar steam generator using black SnOx cored PANI polymeric mesh under one Sun illumination

Nallin Sharma,Nandini Swaminathan,Chia-Hung Chi,Raju B. Gurung,Hui-Fen Wu 한국공업화학회 2022 Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry Vol.107 No.-

Clean and sustainable energy is of one prime interest to current water production demands. Producingunpolluted drinking water and sustainable energy is the next big challenge to overcome. Solar steam generationhas great future potentials for mankind. The need to overcome limitations of solar steam generationis in recent penchants. A highly efficient black photo-convertor nanomaterial is synthesized andfunctionalized to achieve 87% efficiency under one Sun (1 kW m2) illumination. The black tin oxide(bSnO) nanomaterial was synthesized using electrocatalytic reduction approach, resulting a robustphoto-convertor nanomaterial. To enhance the capabilities of water evaporation, polymerization wasperformed using PANI (polyaniline), and PPy (polypyrrole) referred to as bSnO@PANI and bSnO@PPy,respectively. Various physical factors as narrow bandgap, surface water ratios and localized heatingare found remarkable to enhance overall efficiency. The bSnO@PANI was assessed to be at highest elevatedtemperature by acquiring nearly 82 C in close to 100 s under one sun irradiance and nearly56 C when in contact with water body. Thus, final water evaporating rate recorded to be 2.04 kg m2-h1 and 1.74 kg m2 h1 for water and seawater, respectively. Producing drinking water from dye andsea-water are reported after solar evaporation. Achieving enormous evaporation rate can further beexplored for green energy generation.

Optimization of Triple Response Systems by Using the Dual Response Approach and the Hooke-Jeeves Search Method

Shu-Kai S. Fan,Chia-Fen Huang,Ko-Wei Chang,Yu-Chiang Chuang 대한산업공학회 2010 Industrial Engineeering & Management Systems Vol.9 No.1

This paper presents an extended computing procedure for the global optimization of the triple response system (TRS) where the response functions are nonconvex (nonconcave) quadratics and the input factors satisfy a radial region of interest. The TRS arising from response surface modeling can be approximated using a nonlinear mathematical program involving one primary (objective) function and two secondary (constraints) functions. An optimization algorithm named triple response surface algorithm (TRSALG) is proposed to determine the global optimum for the nondegenerate TRS. In TRSALG, the Lagrange multipliers of target (secondary) functions are computed by using the Hooke-Jeeves search method, and the Lagrange multiplier of the radial constraint is located by using the trust region (TR) method at the same time. To ensure global optimality that can be attained by TRSALG, included is the means for detecting the degenerate case. In the field of numerical optimization, as the family of TR approach always exhibits excellent mathematical properties during optimization steps, thus the proposed algorithm can guarantee the global optimal solution where the optimality conditions are satisfied for the nondegenerate TRS. The computing procedure is illustrated in terms of examples found in the quality literature where the comparison results with a gradient-based method are used to calibrate TRSALG.