New Release Books by Hyunjoon Park

Korean families have changed significantly during the last few decades in their composition, structure, attitudes, and function. Delayed and forgone marriage, fertility decline, and rising divorce rates are just a few examples of changes that Korean families have experienced at a rapid pace, more dramatic than in many other contemporary societies. Moreover, the increase of marriages between Korean men and foreign women has further diversified Korean families. Yet traditional norms and attitudes toward gender and family continue to shape Korean men and women’s family behaviors. Korean Families Yesterday and Today portrays diverse aspects of the contemporary Korean families and, by explicitly or implicitly situating contemporary families within a comparative historical perspective, reveal how the past of Korean families evolved into their current shapes. While the study of families can be approached in many different angles, our lens focuses on families with children or young adults who are about to forge family through marriage and other means. This focus reflects that delayed marriage and declined fertility are two sweeping demographic trends in Korea, affecting family formation. Moreover, “intensive” parenting has characterized Korean young parents and therefore, examining change and persistence in parenting provides important clues for family change in Korea. This volume should be of interest not only to readers who are interested in Korea but also to those who want to understand broad family changes in East Asia in comparative perspective.

International comparisons of student achievement in mathematics, science, and reading have consistently shown that Japanese and Korean students outperform their peers in other parts of world. Understandably, this has attracted many policymakers and researchers seeking to emulate this success, but it has also attracted strong criticism and a range of misconceptions of the Japanese and Korean education system. Directly challenging these misconceptions, which are prevalent in both academic and public discourses, this book seeks to provide a more nuanced view of the Japanese and Korean education systems. This includes the idea that the highly standardized means of education makes outstanding students mediocre; that the emphasis on memorization leads to a lack of creativity and independent thinking; that students'' successes are a result of private supplementary education; and that the Japanese and Korean education systems are homogenous to the point of being one single system. Using empirical data Hyunjoon Park re-evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of the existing education systems in Japan and Korea and reveals whether the issues detailed above are real or unfounded and misinformed. Offering a balanced view of the evolving and complex nature of academic achievement among Japanese and Korean students, this book will appeal to students and scholars of Asian, international and comparative education, as well as those interested in Asian society more broadly.

OBJECTIVE: Despite numerous studies suggesting the association between cortisol and cognitive performance, there has been a lack of literature investigating the association between cortisol and academic performance. Further, studies that have examined this association have mainly focused on cortisol response in a very limited setting (e.g., on the day of an examination) and have not considered potential moderators. To address this gap in the literature, using a longitudinal field research design, I investigated students cortisol responses and their association with academic outcomes in a challenging science gateway college class. Additionally, I investigated whether students cortisol response and its association with performance are moderated by race/ethnicity. METHOD: A total of 271 students who were enrolled in an Introduction to Molecular and Cellular Biology class participated in this study. Participants submitted two saliva samples per class across four classes (a total of eight possible samples). Participants exam scores and whether they dropped out of the course were collected from the instructor and official transcripts. RESULTS: Students cortisol levels were not elevated in classes around the exam period. Further, students cortisol patterns within class and across classes did not differ as a function of race/ethnicity. Averaged cortisol levels across classes did not have an association with academic outcomes. However, race/ethnicity moderated the association of cortisol with academic outcomes. Cortisol levels were positively associated with performance for negatively stereotyped students (i.e., Black, Hispanic, and Native American). There was no association between cortisol levels and performance for non-stereotyped students (i.e., White and Asian). CONCLUSIONS: Results suggest that cortisol may represent different psychological states and have different associations with academic performance for different racial/ethnic groups.