កាលិកបត្រស្រាវជ្រាវមនុស្សសាស្ត្រនិងវិទ្យាសាស្ត្រសង្គម

People’s Perceptions on Community Welfare and Public Administrative Service Providers: A Case of Trapang Thom Cheurng Commune, Takeo Province, Cambodia

Community welfare plays significant role in people’s well-being including their mental state and physical being. In this regard, public institutions and local authorities play important roles in ensuring the progress and development. The current study centers on public perceptions toward the government’s performance in issues related to enhancement of community welfare and public service providers. The study employed a cross-sectional survey method to collect the data from the participants using a researcher-development questionnaire. A total of 350 community people participated in the study. It was found that the participants expressed favorable views toward most aspects of community welfare with exception of how the local authorities handle illegal drug situation and the development of irrigation infrastructure in the villages. The participants’ attitudes towards public administrative service providers were strongly positive. The study suggested looking at the issues from independent point of view, adjust methodology for comprehensive analysis, publicize the public institution’s performance information, safeguarding the illegal drug activities in the communities and developing proper irrigation infrastructure.

Determining Cambodian University Students’ Perceptions of Lecturers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge

While teacher professional development is all-important, research on students’ perceptions of their teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) has drawn many educational researchers to explore it since PCK has a role in effective teaching. This article reported on a study examining how university students in Cambodia viewed the pedagogical content understanding of their English lecturers. The research setting was a private university situated in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The samples were Cambodian EFL students majoring in English in 2023–2024. The researcher collected data using a slightly adapted five-level Likert-scale questionnaire from 150 students. This research used small data sets and revealed that the students perceived their lecturers’ PCK as high. Among the four subconstructs of PCK, Subject Matter Knowledge (SMK) received the highest rating, followed by Instructional Objective and Context (IOC), Instructional Representation and Strategies (IRS), and Knowledge of Students’ Understanding (KSU), respectively. Additionally, a difference in PCK scores between males and females was not found. Related to the student’s perception of PCK based on year levels, another result indicated no statistically significant difference among the three-year levels: first-year students, sophomores, and juniors.

Analysis of Cambodian EFL Undergraduate Students’ Vocabulary Errors in English Affixes

The main objectives of the current study are to assess Cambodian EFL undergraduate students’ vocabulary learning achievement in affixes and to explore Cambodian EFL undergraduate students’ errors in affixes in relation to verbs, adjectives, and nouns. In order to investigate the variables, 110 EFL undergraduates in the University of Cambodia, Angkor Khemara University, Khemarak University, and Human Resource University were chosen in using voluntary and convenient sampling techniques. The data were collected in two phases: survey and interview. The findings showed that the students’ overall achievement in using ‘Affixes’ was at a medium level (Mean=25.63, SD=7.477). Categorically, 20.7% of the participants were poor, 35.5% were medium, 32.7% were good, and only 10% were excellent in vocabulary learning achievement in ‘Affixes’. In addition, the students’ achievement in ‘Affixes’ was significantly different in relation to gender (t(108)=2.578,p=0.011), in which male students scored a bit higher than their counterparts. Furthermore, the findings revealed three main common errors: mismatch between base words with correct prefixes and suffixes, spelling errors, and difficulty of correct part of speech identification. The findings also gave some recommendations on affix learning which focused on the teachers’ roles to provide students proper instruction of word formation activities, engage them with texts, and review them through practices and quizzes as often as possible in English classes.