Asystematic study of the linkages between gender issues and parenting is made among Chinese families. This study examines sex differences in parenting attributes across fathers and mothers and towards sons and daughters, and compares the contributions of fathers and mothers to the prediction of academic performance across boys and girls. Four parenting attributes are included: nurturance, psychological control, parental involvement in education, and parental academic efficacy. Data were collected from 461 Chinese father-mother-child triads of children studying Grade 3 to 5 in Hong Kong. Findings of this study, based on multivariate analysis of variance, showed that parental roles followed traditional Chinese cultural expectations. Compared to the fathers, Chinese mothers of school-age children in Hong Kong were more loving and caring, more involved in children's education, and more efficacious in promoting children's academic performance. Results of hierarchical regression analysis examining the role of child's sex as a moderator showed cross-sex influence in parental contribution to academic performance with respect to parental psychological control and academic efficacy. Specifically, boys benefited more from maternal efficacy than girls did and they were also more hampered by mothers with high psychological control, while girls' academic performance was more enhanced by paternal academic efficacy than boys. A gender-balance approach that highlights the significance of gender in moderating parental contributions to academic performance was thus supported. Future research should continue to focus on psychological control and domain-specific parental attributes as potential sources of gender-linked parent-child associations. Investigations should also explore other cognitive and noncognitive domains of child outcome, different child age groups, as well as Chinese populations in various geographical regions.
[Copyright of International Journal of Psychology is the

The purpose of this study was to examine the underlying structure of the second edition of the Test of Gross Motor Development-2 (Ulrich, 2000) as applied to Chinese children. The Test of Gross Motor Development-2 was administered to 626 Hong Kong Chinese children. The outlier test with standard scoring was utilized. After data screening, a total of 614 cases (N = 614) were used for further analysis. The two-factor structure of the Test of Gross Motor Development-2 was tested using confirmatory factor analysis with maximum likelihood estimation to compute parameter estimates and to select the appropriate item for each factor. The goodness-of-fit indices supported that the model was tenable (goodness-of-fit index = .95, root mean square error of approximation = .06, standardized root mean square residual = .04, comparative-fit index = .97). The findings of this study suggested that the two-factor structure proposed by Ulrich (2000) fit the data of Hong Kong Chinese children.
[Copyright of Measurement in Physical Education & Exercise Science is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10913671003726968]

Children's interest in exploration is the hallmark of their curiosity. As people who are significant in organising children's environment, how teachers and parents respond to children's exploratory behaviours may promote or hinder the child's desire for further investigation. With reference to Kurt Lewin's concept of 'total situation', various hypothetical scenarios on children's exploratory behaviours in different contexts were designed to solicit teachers' and parents' interpretation of the behaviour, how they might respond in the situation and the rationale behind their response. The findings indicated that the decision of adults in allowing children to explore is influenced by a combination of child, adult and situational factors.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03004430802181965]

Previous research on the development of children's concept of distributive justice has shed little light on the child's ability to consider the characteristics of the recipients when making judgement of fair sharing. Previous research has shown that preschool children generally apply principles of equality when making decisions for fair sharing of materials, regardless of the characteristics of the recipients. The idea of equality refers to equal sharing of each individual person. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether preschool children would share toys equally across situations or on the basis of the characteristics of the recipients. The study also observed whether each member in a group would be counted as one unit for allocation across situations. A crucial piece of evidence for understanding children's concept of distributive justice is demonstrated by children's ability to view situations differently based on the characteristics of the recipients. These findings serve as a starting point to support the hypothesis that preschool children do take contextual information into account when making distributive justice decisions.
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This paper provides information on a measure that was developed to assess children's level of development at preschool and entry to school level, as well as their readiness for formal schooling. This measure - Who Am I? - is based on early copying and writing skills and is designed to identify the broad stages of development that underlie children's readiness for more formal learning in a school situation. Although originally developed in Australia, it has now been used in studies in a number of different countries, including Canada, and data from these studies provide some insight into the variations in development that are associated with different patterns of preschool provision and different ages of entry into an educational program. The results of these studies indicate that Who Am I? provides a valid measure of development across different language and cultural groups and can therefore be used as a tool to evaluate the effectiveness of different forms of early childhood provision, as well as children's readiness for more formal learning in a school situation.
[Copyright of Australian Journal of Learning Difficulties is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19404150802380597]