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Gifted and general high school

students perceptions of learning and

motivational constructs in Korea and

the United StatesYoojung Chae a& Marcia Gentry a

aDepartment of Educational Studies, College of Education,

Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA

Available online: 27 Jul 2011

To cite this article:Yoojung Chae & Marcia Gentry (2011): Gifted and general high school students

perceptions of learning and motivational constructs in Korea and the United States, High Ability

Studies, 22:1, 103-118

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Gifted and general high school students perceptions of learningand motivational constructs in Korea and the United States

Yoojung Chae** and Marcia Gentry*

Department of Educational Studies, College of Education, Purdue University,West Lafayette, IN, USA

This study examined differences between Korean and US gifted and general stu-dents perceptions constructs related to motivation and learning, using the Stu-dent Perceptions of Classroom Quality (SPOCQ) instrument. SPOCQ assesses

students

perceptions of appeal, challenge, choice, meaningfulness, and aca-demic self-efcacy. Measurement equality between the original SPOCQ and itsKorean translation was investigated using multi-group conrmatory factor analy-ses. The sample included 882 10th and 11th grade high school students (221Korean gifted and 220 Korean general students, 221 US gifted and 220 US gen-eral students). MCFA results showed that the original and translated SPOCQmeasure the same constructs and that partial invariance existed across the sam-

ples from each country. Multivariate analysis of variance was used to examinedifferences between gifted and general students, and between Korean and USstudents, revealing that differences existed between gifted and general studentsand between Korean and US students.

Keywords:student perceptions; classroom quality; Students Perceptions of

Classroom Quality (SPOCQ); cross-cultural study

Background

The important effects of appeal, challenge, choice, meaningfulness, and self-efcacy,

on student learning and intrinsic motivation have been extensively researched, and

positive relationships have been found among them (e.g., Ames, 1992; Lutz, Guthrie,

& Davis, 2006; Marcou & Philippou, 2005; Schiefele & Csikszentmihalyi, 1995;

Sobral, 1995; Turner et al., 1998; Young, 2005). Although these are different con-

cepts, they affect each other (Gentry & Owen, 2004). For example, when a task hasappropriate challenges, students may think it is appealing, or when students nd

meaning in the content they learn, their choices are inuenced. When teachers focus

on meaningful aspects of learning and design reasonably challenging tasks they can

help students learn with intrinsic interest and attribute success to effort (Ames, 1992).

Evaluating classes from the students view is important since the perspectives

and preferences of students and their teachers can differ (Gentry, Rizza, & Owen,

2002). By considering students perceptions, teachers and school administrators

*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]**Now at KAIST Global Institute for Talented Education, Daejeon, South Korea.

High Ability StudiesAquatic Insects

Vol. 22, No. 1, June 2011, 103118

ISSN 1359-8139 print/ISSN 1469-834X online

2011 European Council for High Ability

DOI: 10.1080/13598139.2011.577275

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may improve classroom qualities and satisfy students learning needs, which can

positively affect motivation and achievement. The instrument, Student Perception of

Classroom Quality (SPOCQ) (Gentry & Owen, 2004) was designed to evaluate sec-

ondary students perceptions of constructs in their classrooms that are related tolearning and motivation. The SPOCQ was selected for this study because it mea-

sures how students perceive their class experiences on the constructs of appeal,

challenge, choice, meaningfulness, and academic self-efcacy. Although many stud-

ies have demonstrated that these ve constructs are related to motivation and learn-

ing outcomes, there have been few studies in which these related constructs have

been assessed collectively.

Research has been conducted to examine how gifted and general students per-

ceive their classrooms, with mixed of perceptions between gifted and general stu-

dent groups. For example, Gentry, Gable, and Springer (2000) demonstrated that

gifted and general students had similar views concerning their class activities;

whereas, Gentry and Owen (2004) found statistically signicantly greater SPOCQ

means on challenge and meaningfulness, favoring the gifted group. Gentry, Gable,and Rizza (2002) found that as grade levels increased, indications of interest, enjoy-

ment, and choice decreased. Differences also existed between students in advanced

and general classes. Students in advanced, AP, or honors classes had signicantly

higher scores on the subscales of challenge and meaningfulness than did students ingeneral classes (Gentry & Owen, 2004).

People in Korean society are concerned about the public educational system,

which does not structure or provide classes based on student interests and talents,

nor does it encourage students to achieve to their potential. Rather, education in

Korea concentrates on improving student test scores, resulting in a severely compet-

itive atmosphere and bullying in schools (Kim, 2003; Lee, 2004). Korean generalhigh school analysis reports by the Korean Education Development Institute (KEDI)

(Kim, Namgung, & Kim, 2006) revealed student perceptions toward their schools

with regard to intrinsic/extrinsic motivation, interest, level of difculty, and instruc-

tional strategies. Students perceived they were not provided with sufcient opportu-

nities to learn independently in class, and they did not learn with interest or

experience appropriately challenging tasks considerate of their ability levels. In this

report, Kim et al. demonstrated that, in Korea, general high school teachers need to

improve the quality of instruction by attending to student interest, challenge, and

choice and by providing opportunities to encourage students to learn in ways that

develop intrinsic motivation.However, studies about Korean gifted students perceptions of their classes

showed somewhat different results from the ndings of Kim et al. (2006).

According to Park (2005), regarding class difculty, the Korea Science Academy

(KSA) students believed they received adequately challenging instruction but

wanted more challenging experiences and more choices in the classes. And, Park

and Seo (2005) conducted interviews with the KSA students and found that rst

year students, who follow a curriculum that provides all students with the same

classes and includes required coursework, perceived their classes somewhat nega-

tively. However, second year students (who have more options) perceived them-

selves as having more choices, challenges, and interests, which may affect their

motivation and learning.The increasing demand for global communication among researchers calls for

cross-cultural research studies that depict culturally different human behaviors and

104 Y. Chae and M. Gentry


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recognize individualism in cognitive and social development (Basic Behavioral

Science Task Force, 1996; Hambleton & de Jong, 2003). Specically, cross-

national comparative studies of student perceptions can provide valuable informa-

tion about culture-specic educational environments and the learning needs theyencompass. Common needs between cultures may be identied, but positive

aspects of classrooms from a particular country may be analyzed and adapted to

improve educational environments in a comparative country. According to Van de

Vijver and Hambleton (1996), examination of measurement equivalence is essen-

tial and required for investigating differences across cultures since instrument non-

equivalence may cause inaccurate interpretation (Geisinger, 1994; Hambleton &

Patsula, 1998). Therefore, when conducting cross-cultural research studies,

researchers need to conrm instrument invariance prior to investigating differences

across cultures.

In Korea, the emphasis on gifted education has increased in recent years (Cho

& Oh, 1998; Lee, 2005). The government passed the Gifted Education Law in

2002, and as a result, schools and public and private institutes for gifted studentshave been established to provide appropriately challenging lessons for high ability

students. Cross-cultural study could help both countries educators to re-think and

improve educational environments by comparing between cultures and adapting

positive aspects from the cultures to address educational needs. Therefore, in thisstudy, American and Korean gifted and general high school students perceptions

toward their class activities were investigated, using the SPOCQ (Gentry & Owen,

2004) and SPOCQ-K (Chae & Gentry, 2007) instruments.

Research questionsThe following research questions guided this study:

1. Do the original and translated Korean versions of the SPOCQ have equiva-

lent constructs?

2. Are there differences in perceptions of classroom quality between gifted high

school students and general high school students in Korea and in the US?

Methods and procedures

Participants

Korean student sample

Samples of gifted and general students in Korea were selected by purposively

choosing two gifted high schools and three general schools, considering the

regions and characteristics of the schools. Specically, 221 Korean students in

Grades 10 and 11 from two gifted high schools participated in this study: 128

students from a foreign language high school and 93 students from a science

academy (SA). These foreign language and science academy high schools enroll

students who score academically in top 2% of students nationally. This gifted

Korean sample consisted of 77% boys. Additionally, 220 general students were

randomly drawn from a previous research sample (Chae & Gentry, 2007) thatincluded 713 students from three general high schools in two cities. The general

Korean sample included 34% girls.

High Ability Studies 105


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US student sample

Permission was obtained to use the US data from the SPOCQ validation study

(Gentry & Owen, 2004). For this study, a random sample was drawn from the tenth

and eleventh grade students to match the Korean sample size with 220 gifted and

221 general students, 51% of the gifted sample and 46% of the general sample were

girls. This sample consisted of various ethnic groups: European American (69%),

African American (10%), Latino/a American (6%), Asian American (6%), Native

American (1%), and Other (7%).

Instrumentation

Student Perceptions of Classroom Quality (SPOCQ)

Gentry and Owen (2004) developed the SPOCQ instrument using a sample of

7,411 students in grades 7 to 12 in rural, urban, and suburban middle schools ( n =

12) and high schools (n = 14) in seven states and one foreign country. SPOCQ con-

sists of 34 items that measure ve factors (i.e., appeal, challenge, choice, meaning-

fulness, academic self-efcacy) using a ve-point Likert response scale. Gentry and

Owen reported RMSEA of 0.051 and CFI of 0.997, with factor loadings ranging

from .71 to .90, internal consistency estimates ranging from .81 to .85, and correla-

tions among the subscales ranging from .56 to .73.

Student Perceptions of Classroom Quality- Korean Version (SPOCQ-K)

Chae and Gentry (2007) conducted a cross-cultural validity study on the SPOCQ,

in which they eliminated two items from the challenge subscale in order to providebetter model t for the Korean data they collected (n = 713). Thus, the SPOCQ-K

has only 32 items, but measures the same subscales as the original SPOCQ. They

also found the SPOCQ-K has adequate model t of the data (CFI = 0.94, RMSEA

= 0.086, NFI = 0.93) with alpha reliability estimates of the data on the ve sub-

scales ranging from .75 to .85, and intercorrelations among the factors ranging from

.33 to .78. For the current study, responses from gifted Korean students were used

to complete a MCFA to further investigate the usefulness of the SPOCQ with gifted

students and for cross-cultural comparisons.

Data collection

School administrators from two magnet high schools for gifted students agreed to

allow students in their schools to participate in this study. One school enrolls stu-

dents gifted in foreign languages and the other students identied as gifted in sci-

ence. Contact persons at each site explained the objectives of the study and helped

recruit students to participate, then distributed the IRB-approved consent forms to

parents/guardians and assent forms to students.

The SPOCQ-K surveys were distributed to the two schools with the standard-

ized administration instructions, which explained that surveys would be anonymous;

how to answer the demographic items and survey questions; and which class to

consider when responding. The contact person also informed the students that

SPOCQ-K items do not have correct answers to encourage students to complete the



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form honestly and not to feel pressure to search for correct answers. Students used

about 15 minutes to answer the 32-item SPOCQ-K. Contact persons collected the

completed surveys and mailed them to the researchers, who then entered and ana-

lyzed the data.

Data analyses and results

Research Question 1: Do the original SPOCQ and the SPOCQ-K have equal

constructs?

Prior to addressing this research question, data were screened for missing values

using SPSS. Multiple imputation for randomly missing data was conducted using

LISREL following the suggestion of Schafer and Graham (2002). To examine the

factor equivalence between Korean and American groups, multi-sample conrma-

tory factor analysis (MCFA) method was employed to compare each groups covari-

ance matrices. To judge equality, invariance of factor loadings (pattern coefcients)

and error variances were checked using CFA. To examine invariance between

groups, rst it was conrmed whether each model had consistency, reviewing each

group model t indices, and the ve-factor baseline model was established for test-

ing Korean and US samples. In these analyses, the two items on challenge factor

deleted in the SPOCQ-K validation study were also excluded from the US data

(Chae & Gentry, 2007).

Cross-cultural equivalence check

Internal consistency reliability estimates

Internal consistency reliability coefcients were calculated using SPSS 16.0. The

alpha reliability coefcients for the SPOCQ-K ranged from .79 to .86. The alpha

reliability coefcients from the US data similarly ranged from .77 to .85 According

to Gable and Wolf (1993), both language versions of SPOCQ have good internal

consistency estimates.

Construct validity with CFA

Using Lisrel 8.8, conrmatory factor analyses (CFA) were conducted to investigate

how well the ve-factor, 32-item model t the Korean and US data (seven items in

appeal, ve items in challenge, seven items in choice, ve items in meaningfulness,eight items in academic self-efcacy). Results showed that the ve-factor model

with 32 items had an acceptable t to both data (see Table 1). Although the w2 sta-

tistic was statistically signicant, other t indices were also considered because sta-

tistical signicance may result from a large sample size (Bentler & Bonnett, 1980).

CFI (Bentler, 1990) and NNFI (Bentler & Bonnet, 1980) values were greater than

.90 as recommended by researchers (Hu & Bentler, 1999), representing an adequate

Table 1. Goodness oft statistics.

Chi-square RMSEA NNFI CFI

Korean group (n = 441) 2065.38 (p < .001), df= 454 .091 .94 .94US group (n = 440) 2566.03 (p < .001), df= 454 .011 .93 .93



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model t. All of the factor loadings were greater than .40 for both the Korean and

US groups (see Table 2). Intercorrelations among the factors ranged from .41 to .79

for Korean data and from .59 to .89 for US data and are depicted in Table 3.

Multi-group conrmatory factor analysis (MCFA)

Prior to multi-group invariance analyses, a baseline model for factor loading invari-

ance (Model 1) was established based on the ndings from the previous CFA on

each group. The baseline model (Model 1) was a ve-factor model comprising

appeal, challenge, choice, meaningfulness, and academic self-efcacy. Results

showed that the ve-factor model t was acceptable across groups (w2 =

4629.9151,df= 908, p < .001, RMSEA = .099, NNFI = .94, CFI = .93).

Model 2 was set to examine factor-loading invariance across the two groups,

which constrained all variables equally on factor structure and factor loadings across

both groups. The chi-square difference test between Model 1 and Model 2 indicated

that factor loadings (pattern coefcients) were not invariant across groups(w2difference (27) = 167.064, p < .001). Therefore, to identify the variables that

affected non-invariance across groups, each factor loading (lambda parameter) of

the 32 variables was examined independently (Byrne, 1998; Maller & French,

2004). All variables in the challenge subscale showed invariance. However, twoitems in the appeal subscale, two items in the choice subscale, one item in the

meaningfulness subscale, and two items in the academic self-efcacy subscale were

not invariant. These non-invariant items are shown in Table 4. Although perfect

invariance did not exist between Korean and US versions of the SPOCQ, the same

constructs and partial invariance on factor loadings allow for meaningful interpreta-

tion of the results (Byrne, Shavelson, & Muthen, 1989; Kim, 2008) so we examinedthe data for differences between cultures and abilities (see Chae, 2009, for results

of additional invariance testing).

Research Question 2: Differences between gifted and general and US and Korean

studentsperceptions?

To investigate Research Question 2, rst descriptive statistics such as means and

standard deviations of the ve subscales were calculated using SPSS 16.0. Then, a 2

2 Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) and Discriminant Function Anal-

ysis (DFA) were used. Because of the high intercorrelations among the factors in the

present and previous studies (Gentry & Chae, 2007; Gentry & Owen, 2004) MANO-

VA was selected to protect against inated Type 1 error (Tabachnick & Fidell, 1996).

Main effects and interaction effects of the independent variables (i.e., nationality and

giftedness) and ve dependent variables (appeal, challenge, choice, meaningfulness,

and academic self-efcacy) were analyzed at an .05 alpha level. Following the

MANOVA, DFA was used to determine which dependent variables best discrimi-

nated between the groups (Ruhl-Smith, Shen, & Cooley, 1999). Effect sizes were

examined to interpret statistically signicantndings for practical meaning.

Descriptive statisticsWhen examining means by gifted status and country (Table 5) Korean gifted and

general students had the highest means on challenge (3.47 and 3.27, respectively)



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Table2.

Factorloadings(patterncoefc

ients).

Factor

Item

Loading

K

U

Appeal

3

Indthecontentsofmyclassinteresting.

.7

0

.80

9

Theassignedreadingmaterialformyc

lassisinteresting.

.7

8

.70

19

Thema

terialcoveredinmytextbookisinteresting.

.6

4

.70

20

Thetex

tbookprovidesexamplesofhow

thematerialrelatestosocietyanddailyliving.

.4

8

.47

25

Ilookforwardtolearningnewthingsinthisclass.

.6

8

.83

26

Indthereadingmaterialformyclass

apleasuretoread.

.8

3

.69

30

Ilikeg

oingtomyclasseachday.

.6

8

.77

Challenge

4

Indm

yclasstimeinstructionappropriatelychallengesmyintellectualabilities.

.7

6

.72

8

Indm

yclassassignmentsagoodcha

llenge.

.7

9

.77

11

Ilearn

bestwhenIamchallenged.

.5

5

.44

15

Thisclasscontentisanappropriatecha

llengeforme.

.8

4

.80

18

Ilikethechallengeoftheprojectsinth

isclass.

.4

3

.67

Choice

1

IamgivenchoicesregardinghowtoshowtheteacherwhatIhavelearned.

.5

9

.64

5

Myteacherletsmechoosetheresource

sIuseforprojects.

.6

9

.47

6

Whentherearedifferentwaystoshow

whatIhavelearned,Icanusua

llypickagoodway.

.6

5

.77

12

Iamgivenlotsofchoicesinmyclass.

.7

4

.48

16

IfeelresponsibleformylearningbecauseIamallowedtomakechoicesinmyclass.

.7

4

.69

17

Thetea

cherusesavarietyofinstructionaltechniquesthatmakethiscla

ssenjoyable.

.6

5

.75

22

Iamen

couragedtopursuesubjectsthatinterestmeinmyclass.

.7

4

.68

Meaning

7

Thetea

cherappliesthelessonstopracticalexperiences.

.7

3

.71

10

Myteachermakesconnectionsbetween

thecoursematerialandsociety

.

.8

3

.76

13

Inmyclassmyteacherrelatescurrentissuestothematerialwearelearning.

.7

8

.77

24

InmyclassIexplorerealissuesthataffecttheworldaroundme.

.7

1

.77

28

Icanrelatethematerialdiscussedinm

yclasstomydailylife.

.5

6

.74

Selfeff.

2

Iamgoodathelpingotherkidsunderstandconcepts.

.6

2

.41

14

Iamgoodatconnectingmaterialfrom

thisclasswiththerealworld.

.5

3

.68

21

Iamgoodatansweringquestionsinthisclass.

.6

6

.64

23

Itisprettyeasyformetoearngoodgr

ades.

.6

6

.45

27

Imgoodattakingtestsinthisclass.

.6

8

.40

(Continu

edonnextpage)



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Table2(Continued)

Factor

Item

Loading

K

U

29

Icaneasilyunderstandreadingassignm

entsforthisclass.

.7

2

.56

31

Icanusuallydiscoverinterestingthingstolearnaboutinthisclass.

.6

4

.80

32

Icanexpressmyopinionsclearlyinthisclass.

.6

4

.64

Notes.AP

P=appeal,CHA=challenge,CHO

=choice,MEA=meaningfulness,

SE=self-efcacy,K=Koreanstudents,U=USstudents.



10/17


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GiftednessStatistically signicant main effects for giftedness (Wilks k = .952, F5,873 = 8.884,

p < .0001, partial g2 = .048) existed with a medium effect size. The effect sizesindicated that 4.8% of the total SPOCQ score variation was accounted by the main

effect for giftedness. There was an interaction effect with a medium effect size (Wil-

ks k= .936, F5,873 = 11.989, p


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Discussion

In this investigation of instrumentation and student perceptions of their education

we sought to understand cultural differences and similarities and differences

between gifted and general students concerning how they view the presence of

appeal, challenge, choice, meaningfulness, and academic self-ef

cacy in their class-rooms in he United States and in Korea. Results are not meant for generalization,

but rather as informative as educators consider how to meet the learning needs of

their students and as researcher consider how to assess those needs and related

interventions.

Instrumentation

Results from CFA and MCFA indicated that the SPOCQ and SPOCQ-K had ade-

quate t across both groups with ve factors and 32 items and partial invariance

with 25 out of 32 items factor loadings invariant across groups. The challenge fac-tor showed invariance on all ve items, but the other four factors contained one or

two non-invariant items (see Table 4).

The possibilities for interpreting the non-invariance across groups on the seven

SPOCQ items include different cultures, different language systems, and translation

errors (Geisinger, 1994; Hambleton & Kanjee, 1993). First, in terms of cultural dif-

ferences, the different classroom environment needs to be considered. Teachers in

Korea must teach based on the national curriculum, and most schools rely on text-

books that are designed under this national curriculum. Korean students might not

have considered other reading materials, focusing only on the required textbooks

when they responded to the two Appeal questions; whereas, American students mayhave considered a wider variety of reading materials. Therefore, the non-invariant

items on the appeal subscale might have resulted from entirely different conceptions

of reading materials between Korean and American students in different classroom

environments. Non-invariance on the item, My teacher lets me choose the

resources I use for projects (choice) can also be understood as a cultural difference.

Some Korean students asked What is a project? instead of answering the survey

question, and others wrote that they did not have opportunities to conduct projects

in class. Although the question asked about choice during a project, some Korean

students had not even experienced projects in class; which may have resulted in

non-invariance on this choice item.

Second, non-invariance may be related to the different language systems

between Korea and the US The English and Korean languages are very different in

sentence structure. For example, for Korean students, the item, I am good at con-

necting material from this class with the real world (academic self-efcacy) was

translated into the word order, I, this class, from, material, the real world, with,

connecting, at, am good. This item referred to academic self-efcacy; so, the part

am good at plays an important role in the sentence. However, in the SPOCQ-K,

the important part was moved to the last position in the sentence when it was trans-

lated. The possibility exists that Korean students may not emphasize the same

words in the sentence as American students because of different word orders. Simi-

larly, the sentence, My teacher lets me choose the resources I use for projects(choice) was translated as, My teacher, (me), project, for, use, the resources,

choose, let in different order. For this item, the word let was translated as allow;



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therefore, students may focus either on the concept of My teacher. . . allows, or on

the resources for projects.

Third, non-equivalence may result from inadequate translation. Since some sen-

tences became unnatural speech when translated into the passive voice, the transla-tors chose to change passive voice to active voice in some sentences. For example,

the sentence I am given lots of choices in my class (choice) was translated as My

teacher gives me lots of choices in the class. In this example, the focus may be on

my teacher instead of choices. Further, the item I nd the reading material for

my class a pleasure to read was translated into The material in my class is inter-

esting to read because the direct translation of the verb nd would lead to differ-

ent meaning in the Korean language. Although translators considered the important

meanings in each sentence and tried to stress the words based on Geisingers

(1994) suggestion to demonstrate the importance of cultural and linguistic consider-

ations, the translation may cause non-equivalence between Korean and US items. In

sum, the SPOCQ-K instrument had the same ve factor constructs as the original

SPOCQ; however, factor loadings and error variances across groups indicated thatonly partial invariance existed. Although the perfect invariance did not occur, the

same construct and partial invariance between Korean and US versions of SPOCQ

provided evidence that the comparison across groups can be understood in a mean-

ingful way.

Giftedness and nationality

About 5% of the variance was explained by giftedness and about 50% of the vari-

ance was explained by nationality. The difference in giftedness was accounted for

by challenge, meaningfulness, and choice with gifted students rating their classeshigher than general students across all three variables, and Korean students rating

these variables lower than their US counterparts (gifted and general). The differencein nationality was accounted for by appeal, choice, and meaningfulness with US

students rating their classes higher on choice and meaningfulness and lower on

appeal than their Korean counterparts. Though they found their classes more appeal-

ing than did US students, Korean students reported low levels of choice and mean-

ing when compared to their US peers. Self-efcacy made no contributions to

explaining giftedness or nationality, perhaps because it is less inuenced by class-

room activities and more of a within-person variable than the other constructs.

Providing challenges during instruction is essential for encouraging studentslearning. In the current study, general students reported that they perceived less

challenge than did their gifted peers, supporting ndings of Gallagher and Harradine

(1997) who demonstrated that students in academically gifted classes found these

classes challenging. However, the generally low SPOCQ mean scores may indicate

that all students including gifted students require more challenges. Since many stud-

ies have demonstrated that appropriate levels of challenge motivates and encourages

students learning (Bandura & Schunk, 1981; Lutz, Guthrie, & Davis, 2006; Simons

& Klein, 2007; Turner et al., 1998), educators should ensure that students are pro-vided with sufcient challenge in class.

The meaningfulness and choice subscales were moderate predictors for gifted

group membership and for nationality. Gifted students perceived more connectionsthan general students between their class and the real world with more freedom in

learning, supporting the ndings of Gentry and Owen (2004). However, gifted



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students in this study perceived more choice compared to general students, a nd-

ing differing from those of Gentry and Owen who reported no such differences.

Since the US sample is a subset of the Gentry and Owen total sample, the differ-

ences in this study may be attributable to the Korean students. US students alsorated their classes higher than did Korean students on both meaningfulness and

choice, which may reect the differences in how students in these cultures are

taught, with US teachers offering more choices and addressing content meaning

more often than Korean teachers.

The result of low mean scores on the choice and meaningfulness subscales sup-

ported ndings of Kim et al. (2006), who indicated that students did not experience

enough student-centered learning in language arts, mathematics, and science. In

other words, Korean students did not perceive that they were given opportunities to

decide what and how to learn during class. The low scores on the Choice factor

may be due to the large number of students per class and to the national curricu-

lum. In 2006 the average class size was 33.7 (Kim et al.), and teachers may have

difculty providing appropriate options and services for such a large number of stu-dents. Another possibility may be that the Korean culture is inuenced by Confu-

cianism (Sung, 2001). For example, students are taught to respect adults and follow

the directions. So, they may not have considered asking for choices in class. Many

studies have demonstrated that providing freedom to choose content and ways tolearn and connecting lessons to real world topics encouraged students motivation

and learning (Camahalan, 2006; Cordova & Lepper, 1996; Flink, Boggiano, &

Barrett, 1990; Young, 2005). Therefore, Korean educators need to consider design-

ing classes in which students are offered more choices and the opportunity to make

meaningful connections to the world around them.

Korean students perceived their classroom as more Appealing than did US stu-dents, but neither had high means on this construct. Korean and US groups had

mean scores of about 3.30 and 3.14 out of 5 points. The result of this study sup-

ported the ndings of Kim et al. (2006) that Korean general high school students

did not show satisfaction with their classes regarding interest in lessons, averaging

2.85 out of 5 points on the instrument developed by Korean Education Develop-

ment Institute. Both Korean and US students might benet if their teachers made

learning more appealing to them.

Providing students with choices and appropriate level of challenge in class may

increase students learning motivation and interest and may help build higher aca-

demic self-efcacy. Therefore, supporting students to be independent learners wouldencourage them to learn with joy, which would result in higher motivation to

achieve and ownership in learning.

Limitations

This study has several limitations. First, the US student sample was collected in

2001; then a subset was randomly selected for this study; whereas the Korean stu-

dent samples were collected in 2006 and 2008, which may raise issues of incompa-

rability. Second, the US subset selected for this study contained 69% European

American students, which is not representative of current US ethnic demographics.

Third, the characteristics of US gifted and Korean gifted students were not homoge-neous. The US gifted group included students in honors classes, AP classes, and

from a Magnet school; whereas, the Korean gifted students included identied



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gifted students who ranged in the top 2% of academic achievement. Because the

Korean students came from only ve schools, neither the gifted nor the general stu-

dents were representative of Korean students, nationally, so generalizability is lim-

ited. To conrm the results from this study, more gifted schools from variousregions should be included and perceptions of gifted students who are not in special

schools should be assessed. Finally, the SPOCQ was only partially invariant, so

results must be interpreted with caution. More work is needed to develop cross-cul-

tural instruments that will yield valid and reliable data.

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