This study examines the practical and conceptual dimensions of children's play in German and Hong Kong Chinese kindergartens. German (n = 24) and Chinese (n = 24) children (3-6 years) were randomly selected and videotaped during their free play for 5 min continuously on five consecutive days. Play behavior was analyzed by adopting the Parten-Smilansky play scale. Ten teachers were interviewed to elicit their views on play, learning, and play arrangements. The findings indicate that a significant difference was found between all the play categories of Hong Kong and German children. The most frequent behavior in both contexts is non-playing behavior (Non-Play), which includes completing assignments and onlooker behavior. German children show a slightly higher level in the social and cognitive dimensions of play, compared with their Chinese counterparts. Moreover, there is an association between children?s play and teachers' views on play and, to some degree, the curriculum foci. This comparative study has implications for the curricula currently under reform, based on consideration of whether play should be applied to or removed from the curriculum.
[Copyright of Early Years: An International Journal of Research and Development is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09575146.2013.818936]

This paper analyses how the impact of international student achievement studies and the recent economic crisis in Europe are influencing the development of educational policy transfer and borrowing, from East to West. This is contrasted with education reform movements in East Asia, which have long legacies of borrowing from so-called 'progressive' discourses in the West. England and Hong Kong are used as case studies. Since 2010, England's coalition government has prioritised its determination to look to jurisdictions like Hong Kong to inspire and justify reforms that emphasise traditional didactic approaches to teaching and learning. In contrast, Hong Kong's reforms have sought to implement practices related to less pressured, more student-centred lifelong learning, without losing sight of strengths derived from its Confucian heritage culture. Conclusions highlight factors that underpin English interest in Hong Kong education policy, values and practice and point to the need for further attention to be given to these multidirectional and often contradictory processes by researchers concerned with the study of policy transfer.
[Copyright of Compare: A Journal of Comparative Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03057925.2014.928508]

A recent review of research identified two Asian societies that represented 'positive outliers' in the production of published knowledge on educational leadership and management: Hong Kong and Israel. These were the only Asian societies that had produced a critical mass of publications in this field in international journals over the past two decades. The current study examined the nature of the publication corpus from Hong Kong and Israel in an effort to understand factors that may have contributed to this capacity for high research productivity. The results suggested that different strategies may have accounted for research capacity development in these two societies. Directions are identified for future research.
[Copyright of Asia Pacific Journal of Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02188791.2014.934780]

In recent years, large-scale international assessments have been increasingly used to evaluate and compare the quality of education across regions and countries. However, measurement variance between different versions of these assessments often posts threats to the validity of such cross-cultural comparisons. In this study, we investigated the cross-language, cross-cultural validity of the Programme for International Student Assessment 2006 Science assessment via three differential item functioning (DIF) analyses between the USA and Canada, Chinese Hong Kong and mainland China, and between the USA and mainland China. Furthermore, we explored three plausible causes of DIF via content analysis, namely language, curriculum and cultural differences. Our results revealed that differential curriculum coverage was the most serious cause of DIF among the three factors we investigated in this study, and differential content familiarity also contributed to DIF here. We discussed the implications of the findings for future international assessment development, and for how to best define 'scientific literacy' for students around the world.
[Copyright of Educational Psychology is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01443410.2014.946890]

In some settings, medium of instruction (MOI) policies in multilingual education break out into public debates in mass media involving politicians, business leaders, government officials, parents, and school children. These public discussions of MOI often index struggles over the distribution of political power and economic resources, and issues such as national cultural identity, national security, equity, and social justice. Although there is a vast scholarly literature on framing and media effects, very little research has examined the role of mass media in MOI policy-making. Specifically, how do mass media shape the policies that are adopted in multilingual contexts? This article reports on a comparative analysis of the coverage in major newspapers of two important MOI controversies in multilingual education: mother tongue versus English MOI in Hong Kong and the continuing discussion of the role of English and Spanish in Arizona. Using the conceptual frameworks of representation theory, legitimization theory, and framing, I identify the major components of the ideological framing of MOI policy in these contexts, the political agendas implicit in media texts about MOI, and the implications for language policy research and practice.
[Copyright of Current Issues in Language Planning is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14664208.2014.947018]

This article summarizes prominent themes found in descriptions of school psychology programs in Estonia (Kikas, 2014), Greece (Hatzichristou & Polychroni, 2014), Hong Kong (Lam, 2014), Romania (Negovan & Dincă, 2014), Sweden (Schad, 2014), United Kingdom (Wood, 2014), and United States (Joyce & Rossen, 2014). This paper summarizes prominent issues found in these and companion descriptions (e.g., Jimerson, Oakland, & Farrell, 2007), with the goal to promote an understanding of prevailing conditions that impact preparation, including those that are external to as well as under the control of school psychology programs. These latter conditions include the academic and professional development components of preparation, including their emphasis on multicultural and international issues. Program content generally is consistent with that promulgated by the International School Psychology Association (e.g., Cunningham & Oakland, 1998) and as discussed more fully in The Handbook of International School Psychology (Jimerson, Oakland, & Farrell, 2007). Regional and national agencies external to psychology and school psychology together with alterations in program funding are exerting a strong and seemingly increasing impact on professional preparation programs in psychology. Knowledge of these and other prevailing conditions together with their impact on school psychology preparation and subsequent services is warranted. Stronger leadership from national, regional, and international associations of psychology and school psychology is needed to counterbalance the effects of external control that pose threats to the specialty.
[Copyright of International Journal of School & Educational Psychology is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21683603.2014.934638]

The present study investigated multidimensional motivation and engagement among Chinese middle school students in Australia (N = 273), Hong Kong (N = 528), and Mainland China (N = 2106; randomly selected N = 528). Findings showed that a multidimensional model of motivation and engagement fit very well for all three groups. Multi-group invariance tests showed that the number of factors, factor loadings, factor correlations and item uniquenesses were invariant across the three groups - as were inter-correlations with a set of cognate correlates (class participation, school enjoyment, positive intentions, academic buoyancy) - hence no differences of 'kind'. However, differences of 'degree' were indicated through significant mean-level effects between groups, with self-reports favouring Australian Chinese students over Hong Kong and (to a lesser extent) Mainland Chinese students. We propose these findings shed important light on Chinese students' academic motivation and engagement and also on socio-cultural perspectives on motivation and engagement because they assist understanding about effects attributable to context and effects attributable to ethnicity. Given this, the study is a timely contribution to current understanding of the Chinese learner in this, the 'Asian Century'.
[Copyright of Educational Psychology is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01443410.2013.814199]

This study examined the influence of classroom pedagogic reading practices and out-of-school practices in explaining why the reading attainment of Hong Kong Grade 4 students was superior to that of their counterparts in Taiwan in the 2006 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study. Analyses of scores from 9301 students (4712 from Hong Kong and 4589 from Taiwan) revealed that independent reading in school made a distinctive contribution to the reading performance of Hong Kong and Taiwan students after controlling for the effects of students' and parents' reading attitudes, the availability of supportive home educational resources and student engagement in a range of reading practices. Out-of-school informational reading was found to be negatively associated with students' reading attainment for both Hong Kong and Taiwan students. There was evidence that reading aloud in class in Taiwan classrooms significantly contributed to the Taiwan students' poor reading performance.
[Copyright of Compare: A Journal of Comparative Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03057925.2014.927732]

Using an autoethnographic approach, this paper focuses upon interactions between 'Paul' (a pseudonym), whose symptoms associated with 'severe learning difficulties' are such that he is positioned on the low-functioning end of the autistic spectrum, his carers and others, in spaces taken for granted to be 'public' in both the United Kingdom and Hong Kong. This paper examines how social discourses relating to disability filter into social interactions, ultimately constructing the symptoms they purport to represent. This paper concludes by highlighting how interactions might be viewed as enabling rather than disabling, as producing spaces for thinking about the human condition.
[Copyright of Disability & Society is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2014.953245]

The authors rank the management schools in Greater China (including Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Macau) based on their academic publications in the Social Sciences Citation Index management and business journals from 2000 to 2010. Following K. Ritzberger's (2008) and X. Yu and Z. Gao's (2010) ranking method, the authors develop six indices to rank institutions from several aspects, including both the quantity and quality of publications. By doing so, they provide a clear viewpoint about which institutions achieve high levels of academic performance in management and business research. They also find that (a) there is still a large gap in research rankings between business schools in Mainland China and in Hong Kong; (b) some institutions perform well in quantity rankings but poorly in quality rankings; (c) the development of the general management and operation disciplines are much more mature than that of the finance and accounting disciplines in Greater China; and (d) most outstanding institutions cooperate with developed countries at a moderate level. The authors state their contributions and future directions as well.
[Copyright of Journal of Education for Business is the property of Routledge . Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08832323.2013.863750]