Jin Li
Associate Professor of Education and Human Development
Barus 204
(401) 863-9326 (phone)
(401) 863-1276 (fax)
Jin_Li@brown.edu
www.brown.edu/Research/Learning_Beliefs/Curriculum Vitae
Areas of Specialization: Primary areas include children's learning beliefs, related home socialization, achievement, self-concepts in learning across cultures and ethnic groups; secondary areas include self-conscious emotions such as pride, honor, respect, shame, guilt, and embarrassment, particularly as they relate to learning.
Teaching Interests: Human development in general, culture and child development, social contexts of development and learning, and moral development and education.
Office Hours
Yearlong
On sabbatical
Degrees
Harvard University Ed.D., 1997
Human Development and Psychology “Heart and Mind for Wanting to Learn:” A Culturally Based Learning Model
Harvard University Ed.M., 1991
Administrative Planning and Social Policy
University of Pittsburgh Ed.M., 1988
Foreign Language Education
Guangzhou Institute of Foreign Languages B.A., 1982
German Language and Literature
Publications
-Li, J. (2001). Chinese conceptualization of learning. Ethos, 29, 111-137.
-Li, J. (2003). The core of Confucian learning. American Psychologist, 58,146-147.
-Li, J. (2002). A cultural model of learning: Chinese “heart and mind for wanting to Learn.” Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 33(3), 248-269.
-Li, J. (2003). U.S. and Chinese cultural beliefs about learning. Journal of Educational Psychology, 95(2),258-267.
-Li, J., Wang, L. -Q, & Fischer, K. W. (2004). The organization of the Chinese shame concept. Cognition and Emotion, 18(6), 767-797.
-Li, J., & Fischer, K. W. (2004). Thoughts and emotions in American and Chinese cultural beliefs about learning. In D. Y. Dai & R. Sternberg (Eds.), Motivation, emotion, and cognition: Integrative perspectives on intellectual functioning and development (pp.385-418). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
-Li, J. (2004). “I learn and I grow big:” Chinese preschoolers’ purposes for learning. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 28(2), 116-128.
-Li, J., & Wang, Q. (2004). Perceptions of achievement and achieving peers in U.S. and Chinese kindergartners. Social Development, 13(3), 413-436.
-Li, J. (2004). Learning as a task and a virtue: U.S. and Chinese preschoolers explain learning. Developmental Psychology, 40(4), 595-605.
-Li, J. (2005). Mind or virtue: Western and Chinese beliefs about learning. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 14(4), 190-194.
-Li, J. (2006). Self in learning: Chinese adolescents’ goals and sense of agency. Child Development, 77(2), 482-501.
-Sobel, D., Li, J., & Corriveau, K. (2007). “It danced around in my head and I learned it:” What children know about learning. Journal of Cognition and Development, 8(3), 1-25.
-Li, J., & K. W. Fischer. (2007). Respect as a positive self-conscious emotion in European Americans and Chinese. In J. L. Tracy, R. W. Robins, & J. P. Tangney (Eds.), The self-conscious emotions: Theory and research (pp. 224-242). NY: Guilford.
-Li, J., Holloway, S. D., Bempechat, J., & Loh, E. (2008). Building and using a social network: Nurture for low-income Chinese American adolescents’ learning. In H. Yoshikawa & N. Way (Eds.), Beyond families and schools: How broader social contexts shape the adjustment of children and youth in immigrant families (pp. 7-25). New Directions in Child and Adolescent Development Series. R. W. Larson & L. A. Jensen (Series Eds.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
-- back to top --Interests
I mainly study how children across cultures and ethnic groups develop learning beliefs, how they are socialized in this development, and how their beliefs influence their actual learning and achievement. My research involves preschoolers, schoolchildren, and college students in the Unites States, China, and Taiwan. I am also interested in children’s self-concepts in learning. My second research interest is in how children across cultures develop self-conscious emotions such as pride, honor, respect, shame, guilt, and embarrassment, particularly as they relate to learning and achievement.
-- back to top --Research/Projects
European American and Chinese Immigrant Children's Learning Beliefs and Related Socialization at Home
Project Period: March, 06-October, 2011
Principal Investigator: Jin Li, Ed.D.
Funding Agencies: The Foundation for Child Development ($163,570) and the Spencer Foundation ($670,186) with a total of $833,756
The purpose of this 3-year longitudinal study (4th year for data analysis and report writing) is to document (1) what learning beliefs (BLs) European American (EA) and Chinese immigrant (CI) children develop and how children are socialized at home in this development, (2) how they come to hold their learning beliefs, (3) how CI children adapt to both home and mainstream socialization, and (4) how children's beliefs influence their actual learning and achievement.
This study uses a longitudinal design. We follow three groups, middle-class EA, middle-class and low-income CI children (100/group with a total of 300) as well as their mothers for three consecutive years starting with children at age 4. We collect data with ten sets of instruments from the children themselves, their mothers, mother-child interactions, teachers, and children's school records. Empirical methods include children's achievement tests, story completion, parent interviews, mother-child conversations, mother-teaching-child, mother diary, mother survey, and teacher ratings of children's learning and social adjustment. We analyze our data with mixed methods.
http://research.brown.edu/research/profile.php?id=1127251261&r=1
The Meanings of Learning, Achievement, and Motivation: A Study of Achievement Beliefs and Behaviors in Three Cultural Contexts
Project Period: May, 03-April, 06
Principal Investigator: Janine Bempechat, Ed.D., Wheelock College, Co-PIs: Jin Li, Ed.D. and Susan Holloway, University of California, Berkeley
Funding Agencies: William T. Grant Foundation ($470,000)
The purpose of this collaborative project was to understand how low-income high school students from European-, African-, Latino-, and Chinese-American backgrounds as well as their peers in England and Russia make meaning in their daily home and school life, how they interact and learn from their parents, teachers, and peers. We interviewed each of the 352 students three times. The first time they were interviewed about their daily home life including educational aspirations their parents convey to them, family-child communication, peer interactions outside school, and home monitoring for schoolwork. The second interview was on students' perceptions of key concepts such as "good student," "poor student," "good teacher," "not so good teacher," "smartness/intelligence," and "hard work." The third interview consisted of focus group discussions with 3-5 students per group about students' experiences at school. In addition, we used the experience sampling method (randomly signaling each student 7 times a day with a preprogrammed watch) to collect data on their daily activities in and outside school, their preference for activities, and their emotions. We also collected students' achievement data from school.
Currently, we focus our data analyses on variations within each ethnic group between high and low achieving students with mixed methods. We have analyzed a portion of the data and have three journal articles in press, one on Mexican American low versus high achieving students' perceptions of high achievement (the Urban Review), one on Russian high school students' family relationships and school learning (Journal of Adolescent Research), and one on Chinese American students' family social networks that support their learning (New Directions in Child and Adolescent Development). As we analyze more data, we will publish more research results.
http://research.brown.edu/research/profile.php?id=1127251261&r=1
Beliefs About Learning Among Children and Parents in Taiwan and the United States
Project Period: May, 03-April, 06
Principal Investigator: Jin Li, Co-PI: Heidi Fung, Ph.D., Academia Sinica, Taiwan
Funding Agencies: Chang Ching-Kuo Foundation ($51,000)
This study focused on early elementary schoolchildren with three components: (1) children's learning-related self-concepts, (2) parental socialization of learning beliefs, and (3) parents' emotional reactions to children's learning attitudes, behavior, and achievement. For (1), we collected children's stories about themselves at home vs. at school. For (2) we recorded mother-child conversations about good learning attitudes/behavior vs. less desirable attitudes/behavior. For (3) we assessed emotional reactions to children's learning attitudes and achievement by mothers and fathers and their respective socialization strategies. Currently we have completed some data analyses of all three components. We have found that children's self-concepts are constructed in the nexus of three key dimensions: domain (home life vs. school learning), self-construal orientation (autonomy vs. relatedness), and cultural values (e.g., emphasis on social competence vs. moral self-improvement in school). We have also found the two cultures' mothers socialize their children differently. European American (EA) mothers focus on fostering their children's self-confidence and pride; Taiwanese mothers emphasize continuous self-improvement. Finally, EA parents' affects are pride for their children's good learning attitudes/achievement, but sadness and anger at teachers for poor attitudes/achievement. Taiwanese parents' affects are relief for good attitudes/achievement but shame/guilt at themselves and anger at their own children for poor attitudes/achievement. We are in the process of publishing these results.
http://research.brown.edu/research/profile.php?id=1127251261&r=1
Teaching as a Natural Cognition: Chinese Mothers and their Young Children
Project Period: December, 03-November, 05
Principal Investigator: Sidney Strauss from Tel Aviv University, Co-PI: Jin Li.
Funding Agencies: The Spencer Foundation ($35,000)
Our goal was to investigate how indigenous (less influenced by the West) children (ages 3-8) from rural China develop their natural cognitive ability of teaching and how their mothers engage in teaching their young children household skills. We were interested in children's emergent understanding of other children's minds and their mothers' assumptions about their children's cognitive capacities. We taught each child a novel board game and asked the child to teach a peer. We then asked each child's mother to teach her child a household skill. Both sessions were videotaped. We have transcribed and translated all data. We have also developed our coding schemes and analyzed some data. Our findings show that Chinese rural children are similar to Israeli children with regard to the developing sequence of their teaching cognition. However, differences in the styles of teaching were observed in both the children and their mothers.
http://research.brown.edu/research/profile.php?id=1127251261&r=1
Positive Self-Conscious Emotion and Development Across Cultures
Project Period: July, 05-Present
Principal Investigator: Jin Li, Co-PI: Kurt Fischer, Ph.D., Harvard University
This project focuses on European American and Chinese concepts of six positive self-conscious emotions: Pride, honor, respect, face, gratitude, and humility. Currently, we are in the process of studying the basic conceptual maps of each of these emotions among Chinese adults. For respect, I am collaborating with Drs. Yeh Hsueh and Katherine Kitzmann at University of Memphis.
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Areas of Expertise
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Courses
EDUC0800 - Introduction to Human Development and Education
EDUC1580 - Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Child Development
EDUC1850 - Moral Development and Education
EDUC1860 - Social Context of Learning and Development
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