Jin Li
Associate Professor of Education:
Education
Phone: +1 401 863 9326
Jin_Li@Brown.EDU
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. 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.
Biography
Dr. Jin Li is associate professor of education and human development at Brown University. She originally came from China. She received her undergraduate degree in German from Guangzhou Institute of Foreign Languages in 1982 and taught German language and literature there. After immigrating to the United State in 1985, she studied first at the University of Vermont, then earned her Master's degree in foreign language education from the University of Pittsburgh, 1988. She received her second Master's degree in administrative planning and social policy in 1991 and her doctoral degree in human development and psychology from Harvard Graduate School of Education in 1997. Dr. Li participated in education reform in the United States at Harvard Project Zero under the leadership of Howard Gardner. She teaches courses in human development. Her research focuses on children's learning beliefs, motivation, self-concepts, and self-conscious emotions across cultures and ethnic groups in the United States.
Interests
Currently, I have five research projects.
1) Project Title: 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. Jin_Li@Brown.edu, 401-863-9326
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.
Children's capacity to learn develops early on, as do their BLs. BLs concern children's ideas about why they need to learn, how they should learn, whether they like learning, and who can help them learn. However, traditional research focuses much more on children's ability, school readiness, and teaching while paying little attention to children's own beliefs. BLs must also be studied in order to improve children's learning.
Children's BLs are not innate but develop as a result of their interactions with their social world. Because of caregivers' cultural/ethnic backgrounds, this socialization process also differs from group to group. Research shows that EA and Chinese children develop very different BLs. For example, when asked to talk about learning, EA children focus much more on the mind such as thinking, exploration, creativity, and verbal communication. Chinese children emphasize social and moral self-improvement along with developing personal virtues such as diligence, persistence, and concentration. Children from both cultures start to express such beliefs as young as four years of age. The older they are, the stronger their beliefs become.
Despite this research, we know little about how children come to hold different BLs during the crucial preschool years. Neither do we know how their caregivers socialize them at home. Moreover, virtually no research exists on CI family socialization in this area. Yet, CIs are the largest and fastest growing Asian American group. CI children are growing up in America, a culture that is vastly different from their parents' culture. In their socialization process, CI parents are likely to face acculturative challenges, and their children are also likely to experience cultural clashes. Finally, most research on CIs focuses on well-educated and middle-class population; little research exists on low-income families. Available research indicates that low-income CI preschoolers are far less prepared for school than their middle-class peers. This study seeks to address these research gaps. Our intention is to identify factors that promote positive development as well as factors that hinder such development in these two cultural and SES groups of children.
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.
2) Project Title: 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.
3) Project Title: 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.
4) Project Title: 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.
5) Project Title: 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.
Degrees
B.A., Ed.M., Ed.M., Ed.D.
Awards
One of the three nationally selected recipients for the Young Scholars Award from the Foundation for Child Development for a 2-year longitudinal study on Chinese immigrant children's learning beliefs and related home socialization. 2006-2008. $163,570.
Invited by the Chinese Ministry of Education to give a series of lectures at four major Chinese universities, summer, 2005.
One of 30 scholars in the field invited to participate in the Lunch with Leaders program at the biannual conference of the Society of Research in Child Development, April, 2005.
Award for Excellence in German Studies, Guangzhou Institute of Foreign Languages, from German Academic Exchange Service (Der Deutsche Akademische Austauschdienst). West Germany, 1981.
Affiliations
American Education Research Association
American Psychological Association
Association of Psychological Science
International Mind, Brain, and Education Society
International Society for the Study of Behavioral Development
Piaget Society; Society for Research in Child Development
Teaching
Human development in general, culture and child development, social contexts for learning and development, moral development and education, and educational psychology.
Funded Research
Major grant from the Spencer Foundation for a 4-year longitudinal study on European American and Chinese immigrant children's learning beliefs and socialization. 2007-20011. $670,186.
Young Scholars Award from the Foundation for Child Development for a 2-year longitudinal study on Chinese immigrant children's learning beliefs and related home socialization. 2006-2008. $163,570.
Grant from Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation for a 2-year collaborative research project on beliefs about learning among school children and parents in Taiwan, China, and the U.S. 2003-2005. $51,000.
Small Grant from the Spencer Foundation for a 1-year collaborative research research project on how Chinese rural mothers spontaneously teach their preschool children and how young children teach each other. 2003-2004. $35,000.
Major Grant from William T. Grant Foundation for a 2-year collaborative research project on adolescents' meaning making of learning and achievement in the U.S., UK, and Russia, 2002-2004. $470,000.
Salomon Faculty Research Award from Brown University for two research projects on children's beliefs about learning among U.S. and Chinese college students and young children, 2002. $6,000.
Small Grant from the Spencer Foundation for a 1-year project on U.S. and Chinese preschoolers' understanding of learning (PUL), 2001-2002. $35,000.
Salomon Faculty Research Award from Brown University for a 2-year research project on conceptions of learning among U.S. college students, 1999- 2001. $10,000.
Strategic Research Grant from Hong Kong City University for a 3-year co-investigation project on Chinese motivational model for learning among elementary and secondary school students in Mainland China, 1998-2001. $40,000.
Student Research Grant based on merit for dissertation from Harvard Institute for International Development and International Education Office of Harvard Graduate School of Education, 1996. $3,000.
Curriculum Vitae
