Fumitaka Furuoka | University of Malaya, Malaysia (original) (raw)

Papers by Fumitaka Furuoka

There is a growing awareness in methodological literature that parametric statistical tests may n... more There is a growing awareness in methodological literature that parametric statistical tests may not be appropriate in studies with a small sample size and non-normal data (Larson-Hall and Herrington 2010; Mizumoto and Plonsky 2016). In addition, the presence of outliers or cases widely different from the rest of the data set poses serious methodological challenges: even a single extreme case can invalidate the estimated statistics in parametric methods (Larson-Hall and Herrington 2010). As Larson-Hall (2010) noted, removing outliers from the data set is undesirable for several reasons. First, such decisions are based on the researcher’s subjective opinion. Secondly, when one outlier is removed another may emerge and the subsequent removal of all outlying cases could drastically reduce the number of observations. Thirdly, removing outliers may violate a data distribution assumption (Huber 2004). In the case of mixed-methods studies...

ASEAN Economic Bulletin, 2009

A specific question addressed in this study was: What is the threshold inflation rate for Malaysi... more A specific question addressed in this study was: What is the threshold inflation rate for Malaysia? The findings clearly suggest that one inflation threshold value (i.e., structural break point) exists for Malaysia; and this implies a non-linear relationship between inflation and growth. The estimated threshold regression model suggests 3.89 per cent as the threshold value of inflation rate above which inflation significantly retards growth rate of GDP. In addition, below the threshold level, there is a statistically significant positive relationship between inflation rate and growth. If Bank Negara (Central Bank of Malaysia) pays more attention to the inflation phenomena, then substantial gains can be achieved in low-inflation environment while conducting the new monetary policy.

Asian Survey, 2003

This article investigates the emerging pattern of Japan's peacemaking in Southeast Asia, which is... more This article investigates the emerging pattern of Japan's peacemaking in Southeast Asia, which is characterized by the heavy use of economic aid. Case studies of Cambodia and Burma suggest that Japan's strength lies in mediation between conflicting parties, not in promoting certain values such as human rights.

Since 1979 when China waged a short but devastating war with Vietnam, East Asia has been free of ... more Since 1979 when China waged a short but devastating war with Vietnam, East Asia has been free of large-scale armed conflicts due mostly to the development of the "East Asian Way of Conflict Management." China has contributed a great deal to this East Asian Way through its experience in handling conflicts on its periphery as a disputant or a mediator. As a result, what may be called a Pax Sinica seems to be emanating from China. On the other hand, after more than 30 years of relatively weak presence, the United States has been politically and militarily returning to East Asia since the inauguration of the Obama Administration. China and the U. S. seems to be contending with each other over influence in East Asia, but prospects are that the U.S. eventually withdraw to the Second Islands Chain, leaving East Asia and a large part of Eurasia under the Pax Sinica. The paper also looks at the challenges and dilemmas that other East Asian countries face in the process, mostly focusing on Japan.

Since 1979 when China waged a short but devastating war with Vietnam, East Asia has been free of ... more Since 1979 when China waged a short but devastating war with Vietnam, East Asia has been free of large-scale armed conflicts due mostly to the development of the “East Asian Way of Conflict Management.” China has contributed a great deal to this East Asian Way through its experience in handling conflicts on its periphery as a disputant or a mediator. As a result, what may be called a Pax Sinica seems to be emanating from China. On the other hand, after more than 30 years of relatively weak presence, the United States has been politically and militarily returning to East Asia since the inauguration of the Obama Administration. China and the U. S. seems to be contending with each other over influence in East Asia, but prospects are that the U.S. eventually withdraw to the Second Islands Chain, leaving East Asia and a large part of Eurasia under the Pax Sinica. The paper also looks at the challenges and dilemmas that other East Asian countries face in the process, mostly focusing on Japan.

In educational research literature there are two influential metaphors about learning. They descr... more In educational research literature there are two influential metaphors about learning. They describe this process as either "acquisition" or "participation" . These metaphors have been widely used by scholars, researchers and educators. However, the students' perspectives on learning have been underexplored. This article addresses this gap in research literature and examines metaphors about learning created by a group of foreign language learners in a big public university in East Malaysia. The findings indicate universality of people's perceptions about learning and reveal the presence of both the "acquisition" and "participation" metaphors in the students' images. The study considers the implications of the findings for language pedagogy.

In 2006, the Ministry of Higher Education, Malaysia, recommended that all public institutions of ... more In 2006, the Ministry of Higher Education, Malaysia, recommended that all
public institutions of higher learning in the country incorporate soft skills formation into their curricula. This qualitative study aimed to explore Malaysian students’ expectations of university education with a special focus on the acquisition of soft skills and to examine the students’ perceptions of the instructors’ and the courses’ effectiveness in fulfilling their educational agendas. Ninety-six students at Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS) participated in this study. The findings revealed that their educational expectations were varied and diverse and could be separated into three categories, such as “Life Skills”, “Subject Matter (Hard Skills)”, and “Soft Skills”. The students considered soft skills formation as an important part of university education. However, not all of the soft skills identified by the Ministry of Higher Education, Malaysia, were mentioned by the respondents. The article discusses the implications of the study’s findings for Malaysia’s higher education policy.

This study examines metaphors about learning produced by a group of eighteen students at a big pu... more This study examines metaphors about learning produced by a group of eighteen students at a big public university in Malaysia. The learner perspective is placed within a wider discourse on education in order to explore whether the images employed by the learners to describe
their learning reflect the dominant conception of education as ‘‘production’’. The metaphors supplied by the participants were analyzed and classified into several themes. None of the metaphors generated by the students alluded to
the images that link education with ‘‘production’’. The study contends that the student perspective on education can enrich educational discourse and highlight the previously obscured notions on education and learning.

Research studies in the fields of general education and language pedagogy recognize the importanc... more Research studies in the fields of general education and language pedagogy recognize the importance of metaphor as a research tool. Metaphors can help teachers articulate and construct their professional experiences (Kramsch, 2003) and ameliorate the classroom practice (Cortazzi & Jin, 1999). The majority of the previous studies that employed metaphors focused on the teacher-produced images and adopted a qualitative approach to metaphor analysis. The present study departs from this format. It focuses on the student generated metaphors about language teachers and employs a quantitative analysis to examine the dimensions around which these metaphors align. A questionnaire containing metaphors about language teachers was distributed to 98 students at Universiti Malaysia Sabah. Factor analysis was employed as a research technique to identify the dimensions along which the students’ perceptions aligned. The findings of the present paper lend support to the previous attempts at metaphor taxonomy by Oxford et al. (1998) and Chen (2003).

In der Erziehungswissenschaft und Fremdsprachendidaktik gilt die Metapher als ein wichtiges Forschungsinstrument. Metaphern können Lehrern helfen, ihre beruflichen Erfahrungen zu formulieren (Kramsch, 2003) und die unterrichtlich Tätigkeit zu verbessern (Cortazzi & Jin, 1999). Die meisten bisherigen metapherngestützten Studien konzentrierten sich auf die von Lehrer n produzierten Bilder und bestanden in einer qualitativen Metaphernanalyse. Von dieser Prämisse ausgehend befasst sich der vorliegende Beitrag mit Metaphern, die von Studenten zu Sprachenlehrern produziert wurden, und verwendet eine
quantitative Analyse, um die Dimensionen /Kategorien zu untersuchen, um welche diese Metaphern sich gruppieren. Ein Fragebogen mit Metaphern über Sprachenlehrer wurde an 98 Studenten der Universiti Malaysia Sabah verteilt. Um die Dimensionen/Kategorien, die sich aus den Wahrnehmungen der Studenten ergeben, zu identifizieren, wurde die Technik der Faktoranalyse herangezogen. Damit unterstreicht die vorliegende Studie die Untersuchungen zur Metaphernklassifizierung von Oxford et al. (1998) und Chen (2003).

This study explored stereotypes about China held by young Malaysians. It focused on the learners ... more This study explored stereotypes about China held by young Malaysians. It focused on the learners of the Mandarin language in a big public university. The study not only examined the content but also assessed the favourability and salience of the language learners' stereotypes, which had not been done in the previous studies. The stereotypes about China provided by the participants were diverse; they referred to culture, politics, language, history, climate, landscape, economics, religion and the Chinese people. Overall, the stereotypes were favourable. Especially the stereotypes referring to Chinese traditional and popular culture and cultural symbols were among the most frequent and most salient images of China. An interesting finding was that transnational popular culture played an important role in the formation of the stereotypical images about China. The study concludes by highlighting some pedagogical implications based on these findings.

This article examines metaphors about language teachers created by a group of 23 Malaysian univer... more This article examines metaphors about language teachers created by a group of 23 Malaysian university students. The aims of the study are (1) to determine whether metaphors produced by language learners in the Asian educational context can fit into the four philosophical perspectives
on education outlined by Oxford et al. (1998), and (2) to explore whether students’ gender
influences their metaphor production. This study employs both qualitative and quantitative
methods of analysis. The results of the content analysis of 27 metaphors produced by the
participants show that Oxford et al.’s (1998) typology of metaphors is applicable in the Malaysian educational context. In addition, the qualitative analysis reveals that the imagery used in the metaphors is, to some extent, gender-related. However, the results of statistical analysis indicate
that there are no statistically significant differences in the perceptions of the teacher’s role between the students of different genders. Pedagogical implications of the research findings are discussed.

Asean Economic Bulletin, 2009

Developed countries have been allocating vast amounts of funds as foreign aid to developing natio... more Developed countries have been allocating vast amounts of funds as foreign aid to developing nations. For example, in 2006, the 22 member countries of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) disbursed US$103.9 billion as foreign aid. However, foreign aid policy has been attracting a lot of criticism. One prominent example is that foreign aid allocations have not been determined by the needs of the recipient countries. This paper addresses this issue and examines determinants of Official Development Assistance (ODA) allocations including both bilateral and multilateral foreign aid over the period 2000-2005. The empirical findings reveal a complex nature of foreign aid allocations. The aid donors did tend to provide larger amounts of foreign aid to the poorer developing nations. At the same time, the empirical evidence indicates a distortion in the direction of the aid flows where the developing countries with smaller populations were given more foreign aid.

This paper chose Singapore as a case study to investigate whether population growth can contribut... more This paper chose Singapore as a case study to investigate whether population growth can contribute to economic development. It employed four different single-equation tests for cointegration, namely, 1) ordinary least squares, 2) fully modified ordinary least squares, 3) canonical cointegration regression, and 4) dynamic ordinary least squares. The empirical findings indicated a mutually reinforcing bilateral causality between population and economic development in the island-state. This highlights a dynamic nature of the population-development relationship in the country. In other words, Singapore's population growth did contribute to the nation's economic development, which in return stimulated population expansion in the country.

A rapid export growth in East Asia was once identified as a source of the sustainable economic de... more A rapid export growth in East Asia was once identified as a source of the sustainable economic development that the region enjoyed. However, the current global recession has turned exports from an economic virtue to a vice. There is a growing awareness that a heavy reliance on exports has caused a serious economic downturn in the region. The present paper chooses Singapore as a case study to examine the relationship between the origin of the East Asian Miracle (i.e. export dependency) and the economic growth. For this purpose, the study employs a causality test developed by Toda and Yamamoto. The empirical findings indicate that despite a negative long-run relationship between export dependency and economic growth, Singapore's heavy reliance on exports does not seem to have produced negative effects on the nation's economic growth. This is because the increase in export dependency was an effect, and not a cause, of the country's output expansion.

This study employs threshold regression analysis to examine the relationship between population g... more This study employs threshold regression analysis to examine the relationship between population growth and per capita GDP in 117 countries. Threshold regression analysis allows controlling the quality of population when examining the relationship between the quantity of population and per capita income in a country. The paper uses Human Development Index (HDI) value as the threshold regression variable. In the course of the analysis, a sample of 117 countries was split twice and separated into four sub-samples. The threshold regression analysis revealed that there was a significant negative relationship between population growth and per capita GDP only in the countries with a low level of human development. In other words, quantitative expansion of population would have negative impact on standard of living only in the countries with low quality of population. The empirical findings of this paper support a proposition that the quality of population aspect should be included in the debate on the relationship between population expansion and economic development.

This paper uses panel data analysis to identify how Japanese multinational corporations (MNCs) al... more This paper uses panel data analysis to identify how Japanese multinational corporations (MNCs) allocate their investments in the selected BIMP-EAGA countries (i.e. Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines). The paper hypothesizes that the following six elements would influence the inflow of Japanese Direct Investments (JDI) into the area: country's market size, growth rate of market size, per capita income, trade deficit, inflation rates and political condition. The main findings from the panel data analysis are that there is a significant relationship between Japanese direct investments and political condition in the recipient countries. The inflows of Japanese investment tend to decrease as the political risk increases. It means that Japanese MNCs tend to allocate more investments into the countries with better political condition.

This paper chooses three Asian countries (Japan, South Korea and Malaysia) as case studies to exa... more This paper chooses three Asian countries (Japan, South Korea and Malaysia) as case studies to examine the relationship between the Phillips curve and openness. The justification for the choice of these countries is that Japan is a moderately open economy while Malaysia is a highly open economy. South Korea is in-between these two extremes. The main finding of the present study is that as a country opens up to global market by increasing the amount of imports, the slope coefficient of the Phillips curve becomes smaller. In other words, the findings suggest that the Phillips curve tends to be flatter in more open economies.

Asean Economic Bulletin, 2010

... Central Bank of Malaysia. The Central Bank and the Financial System in Malaysia: A Decade of ... more ... Central Bank of Malaysia. The Central Bank and the Financial System in Malaysia: A Decade of Change. Kuala Lumpur: Central Bank of Malaysia, 1999. Dickey, DA and WA Fuller. "Distribution of the estimation for autoregressive time series with a unit root". ...

ASEAN Economic Bulletin, 2009

Asian Survey, 2003

Since 1979 when China waged a short but devastating war with Vietnam, East Asia has been free of ... more Since 1979 when China waged a short but devastating war with Vietnam, East Asia has been free of large-scale armed conflicts due mostly to the development of the “East Asian Way of Conflict Management.” China has contributed a great deal to this East Asian Way through its experience in handling conflicts on its periphery as a disputant or a mediator. As a result, what may be called a Pax Sinica seems to be emanating from China. On the other hand, after more than 30 years of relatively weak presence, the United States has been politically and militarily returning to East Asia since the inauguration of the Obama Administration. China and the U. S. seems to be contending with each other over influence in East Asia, but prospects are that the U.S. eventually withdraw to the Second Islands Chain, leaving East Asia and a large part of Eurasia under the Pax Sinica. The paper also looks at the challenges and dilemmas that other East Asian countries face in the process, mostly focusing on Japan.

Asean Economic Bulletin, 2009

Asean Economic Bulletin, 2010