Are teachers consciously aware of the strategies for enhancing the metacognitive processes of their students? To a large extent teachers' abilities to motivate and empower students to self-regulate their own learning processes is and has been the cause for concern among many educators even to date. Educators must focus on teaching students how to think, how to learn and to take active control over their own learning so that they are responsible for their own learning outcome. In this paper, a comparative study of teachers’ knowledge of metacognitive instruction in Hong Kong and Singapore were examined. MANOVA and a regression analysis were used to examine the patterns of teachers' knowledge of metacognitive instruction. The implications from the findings will be drawn with a view to enhance teacher education programmes.

Since the late 1970s, some feminists in North America, the UK, and Australia have celebrated what have traditionally been considered woman's traits, particularly the educating and nurturing of children, the care of the elderly, and the low level of criminal violence among women. The "difference" feminism has appealed to many women because it promotes the view that women's qualities and ways of life are as important, serious and valuable as men's. Working from this theoretical perspective, Nel Noddings developed a feminine ethics of caring. She believes that men and women approach moral problems differently, men are guided primarily by principles, propositions, justification, and fairness and women are guided more by a commitment to maintain caring relationships. Noddings rejected the notion that principles and rules should be the major guide of ethical decisions and argues that caring, a primary attribute of women, is the foundation of ethical response. Noddings has applied an ethics of caring to curriculum development and educational reform. She proposed that if standards arising from women's culture were to guide educational planning, we would have more caring communities. She believes that when men's experiences are used as a standard for curriculum development, the contributions of women towards the improvement of social conditions are often devalued. Women's interests such as childcare, poverty, and peace often are not included in the curriculum. Social studies curriculum would focus on human relationships, with family at the center of the curriculum. Children's social consciousness would be raised because more attention would be paid to social issues. Women's ethics of care and maternal thinking would serve as standards for changing the culture of the schools. Few would disagree with Nodding's suggestion that social issues be given more serious attention in school curriculum. Many realize that the way we educate our children today will influence the types of communities

This paper offers a critical review of research in the area of gender and education in Hong Kong, and suggests the plausible circumstances contributory to its impoverished development. While it is found that "gender" has been touched upon in diverse educational literature, the way the concept is conceptualised has been limited and there has been little or no mentioning of gender in teachers’ education in the territory. Gender is popularly used as a demographic variable and, at best, equated with sex roles. In both cases, the use of the concept is devoid of what we consider a more sophisticated understanding of gender as a social construction, as relational in nature, as entangled with power relations, which, in short, fails to explain how education and gender regulate. The relatively limited conceptualisation in the field of education can be explained in two main ways. First, there has been a lack of a dialogue between the educational literature and sociological literature in the territory, where the latter is comparatively more developed. Secondly and more crucially, the limited development can be partly to do with the fact that gender equity in education is deemed a non-issue in the local community. As studies have demonstrated, Hong Kong people embrace the society as openly egalitarian with abundant opportunities for social betterment, in spite of the social injustice that many encounter. Furthermore, the locals, especially the middle class, tend to resort to individualistic and privatised strategies when confronting difficulties and uncertainties, and more so when investment in their children’s education is concerned. Against a background of increasing educational privatisation, we argue for the urgency to have a more refined theoretical understanding of gender, a re-conceptualisation of the importance of schooling in relation to gender, and the execution of gender-sensitive pedagogies and teachers training in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong secondary teachers, as elsewhere, are concerned with students’ misbehaviour. In Hong Kong secondary schools, two teams of teachers, a guidance team and a discipline team, are formed to deal with this behaviour. This article examines how teachers made sense of their caring work and the strategies they adopted for behaviour management. Taking the interactionist perspective (Blumer, 1962, 1966), the framework suggested by Stebbin (1969, 1975) was adopted for exploring how teachers defined the situation in which they participated. Qualitative data were collected using interviews and classroom observation. Sixty teachers were interviewed. Eighteen classrooms were observed. The influence of the classical Chinese philosophy of Confucianism, emerging as a main theme from the data, was prominent, as its key principles were incorporated into the teachers’ personal system of caring. The findings illuminate the influence of Chinese culture in Hong Kong schools. Implications for the promotion of culturally responsive programmes for the promotion of pastoral care are drawn.

In view of globalization, this paper takes a critical look at the learning and teaching of second language(s) in two Asian cities, i.e. Singapore and Hong Kong. It discusses the challenges faced by teachers and parents in helping children to learn second languages well as well as comparing the differences and similarities in parental and societal expectations, and the functional roles of second languages in the two societies.

Research in the area of student's learning approaches has been conducted by numerous educators since the late 1970's (e.g. Marton & Saljo, 1976; Ramsden & Entwistle, 1981; Biggs, 1985, 1987). Marton & Saljo (1976) have suggested two basic approaches to learning, viz. "surface" and "deep" approach. A surface approach describes the intention to reproduce information in compliance with externally imposed task demands while a deep approach involved an intention to understand. Biggs (1985, 1987, 1993) added a third one, the "achieving" approach. According to Biggs (1993), the achieving approach is based on the ego-enhancement aiming at the achievement of high grades. Similar to the surface approach, the focus is not task-centred but on the recognition gained from top performance. The strategy is to organize time, workplace, and syllabus coverage cost effectively, with much use of cue-seeking, systematic use of study skills, planning ahead, allocating time according to task importance. Biggs (1985, 1987) has developed two different versions of questionnaires in his survey study with Australian tertiary and high school students, viz. "Study Process Questionnaire" (SPQ) and "Learning Process Questionnaire" (LPQ) respectively. Many of these studies of learning approaches were conducted with university / college students in western countries to identify what kind of study approaches were adopted and to relate the chosen study approaches with other variables such as academic achievement. Judith's (1992) study of the learning processes in distance learning students concluded that deep motivation was a way to success, but to succeed in gaining credit and good grades, deep strategy, achieving motive and achieving strategy were also needed. This was in support of the meaning assigned by Biggs to achieving approach. Studies employing Biggs' instruments have also been replicated in various situations and contexts, (e.g. Biggs, 1992; Watkins & Hattie, 1981, 1985; Watkins & Ismail, 1994

Since the return of sovereignty to China in 1997, national identification with China has been a priority in Hong Kong SAR government’s educational policy agenda. Hong Kong has seen an increase of national education activities which aim at cultivating a Chinese identity with emphasis on ethnic and cultural dimensions. By using case studies with in-depth interviews on selected samples of Hong Kong’s secondary school teachers, this study analyzes how do they perceive their national identity and how do they teach national education. The findings reveal that under the proclamation of Chinese national identity, there are differences in connotation emphases on their own national identity given by the respondents and they have different teaching strategies on national education. These findings have implications for understanding the meanings of national identity and national education in Hong Kong in a globalization era.

This first part of the paper briefly reviews the historical development of civic education in Hong Kong arguing that there had been three stages of development, namely Stage one: Depoliticizing by the State and the School (before 1984), Stage two: Politicization of the Intended Curriculum (1985-1996) and Stage three: Re-depoliticisation of Civic Education and Official Affirmation of Nationalistic Education (1997-2008). In stage two, civic education was considered to encompass five foci, namely, human rights education, education for democracy, education for rule of law, nationalistic education and global education. But in stage three, political content such as human rights and democracy were replaced by personal, interpersonal and moral issues. In addition, stage three is characterized by a strong promotion of nationalistic/patriotic education. In the second part of the paper, the author argues that as starting from 2009, civic education will be stepping into stage four, which can be called ‘Civic education through Liberal Studies’. A new, compulsory subject, Liberal Studies, will be introduced in 2009 containing modules related to rule of law, socio-political participation where democracy and human rights can be explored. The aims and content of the Liberal Studies will be discussed in details to explore whether and how it can serve as a vehicle for civic education for rule of law, democracy and human rights.

This paper aims at discussing the effectiveness of the College_Asia project, which involved EFL students from Indonesia, Japan, Thailand and Hong Kong. Participants were asked to upload their photos on Flickr.com with the purpose of drawing attention and arousing curiosity. They then made acquaintance with students from the partner universities, commenting on each other's photos and postings. This practice generated topics for class discussions and provided a platform for students to use English in authentic situations. The paper concludes that the project has a lot of potential in improving learner motivation and possibilities of international collaboration in English language classrooms.