Background: Abundant research has been undertaken on the importance of teachers’ feedback to the school achievement of students. However, focus has rarely been placed on the differences between the perception on feedback of students and teachers. Being a part of the study which was sponsored by a General Research Grant awarded by Research Grants Council of UGC, Hong Kong (Project Number 844011), we attempted to find out the differences between students’ and teachers’ perception on feedback. Aims and Keywords: The study aimed to find out the differences between Hong Kong primary school students and teachers in their views to feedback. Sample: Four thousand five hundred and seven students between primary 3 and primary 5, 132 teachers from 26 Hong Kong primary schools were sampled in the study. Method: A 42-item instrument with 4-Likert point response scale was constructed by the research team to collect the responses from Hong Kong students and teachers of their perception on 6 dimensions in feedback. Multidimensional Rasch analysis was conducted on the collected data with CONQUEST 2.0. Results: The results showed that: (1) item-fit was between 0.5 and 1.5 for all items except one; (2) Rasch person reliabilities in the 6 dimensions ranged from 0.72 to 0.86 and item reliabilities was 1.00; (3) the effect size of the respondents’ status (teacher or student) in the 6 dimensions ranged from 0.32 to 0.64. Conclusions: In this study, there are moderate differences between the students and teachers in the perception on the source of feedback, the effectiveness of feedback and the function of feedback. On the other hand, there are little differences among the two types of respondents in the perception on the goodness of feedback, the focus/target of feedback and the expectation of feedback.

Background: In PISA 2009, seven East Asian countries rank high among the 65 participating countries, but some of the differences among the seven countries are small to be of substantive meaning.
Aims: This paper is an attempt to fine tune the comparisons for better understanding of the situation in East Asian. Sample: Data of the seven East Asian countries were pulled from the PISA 2009 report and re-analyzed.
Method: Pair-wise comparisons were made by way of effect size on Reading, Mathematics, and Science.
Results: The overall patterns of differences show that Shanghai-China is definitely ahead of all the others. Korea, Hong Kong-China, and Singapore are similar in performance and form a cluster. Japan, Chinese Taipei, and Macao-China are similar and form another cluster at the lower end of achievement.
Conclusion: Instead of ranking the seven countries with seven different ranks, it is more meaningful to cluster them into three groups to avoid spurious precision. In other words, league tables should not differentiate where there are no meaningful differences.
[Copyright of New Horizons: The Journal of Education, Hong Kong Teachers' Association is the property of Hong Kong Teachers' Association at http://www.hkta1934.org.hk/]

This article aims to investigate reasons underpinning academic help-seeking behaviours of Chinese students in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. Data were collected from 23,563 secondary students. The study found significant differences both in attitudes and reported behaviour among secondary school students from the three locations, however, the effect sizes were all very small. Importantly, it was found that no matter which location, students considered grade enhancement to be the least important benefit of help-seeking. Rather, the most important benefit was that help-seeking enabled them to solve their learning difficulties or to solve their learning problems. The study also found that losing face was the last deterrent for the students not to seek help. Instead, Chinese secondary school students refrained from seeking help because they were afraid to disturb others in the act of help-seeking. In addition, a high proportion of students reported seeking help in the past two months in order to get advice on problem-solving approaches. Comparatively, a much smaller proportion of students reported seeking help in the last two months in order to improve on their grades. These results were discussed in light of the previous images of Chinese students.
[Copyright of Evaluation & Research in Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09500790802485229]

The reciprocal relationship between mathematics achievement and self-concept is examined in this study to expand the existing knowledge to a cross-cultural setting. Based on analyses of educational data two years before and after Hong Kong's sovereignty switch in 1997, this investigation shows a weak reciprocal relationship among the eighth-grade students across gender categories. With the introduction of a new policy to promote Chinese instruction, changes in the perceived importance of English have been assessed by education stakeholders, and the results are used to indicate a latent factor of "English push" behind the learning process. In the context of cross-cultural transition, gender differences have been found in path coefficients toward mathematics achievement and self-concept. Limited by the four-year research period, one may speculate whether it would take longer to demonstrate a large effect size in the reciprocal relationship.
[Copyright of Educational Psychology is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01443410500390863]