Through interviews and observing day-to-day classroom practice, this study explores the beliefs of 10 music teachers in elementary schools in Vancouver and Hong Kong. The results demonstrate that the music teachers of the two localities hold similar cognitive beliefs about the essential elements of music education. However, they hold different beliefs about the value or impact of music education on the psychological or character development of students. Music teachers of Vancouver are found to be more student-centred than their counterparts in Hong Kong, and this is reflected in both the curriculum and activities selected for classroom teaching. Though both groups of teachers place similar emphasis on western music, in Canada more classroom activities are based around the student's personal enjoyment and expression. In Hong Kong, meanwhile, music education is viewed as a means of nurturing the student's temperamental development. While students in Vancouver are allowed to express their personal musical preferences in classroom activities, in Hong Kong students are required to perform according to prescribed standard indicators of success. This is probably linked--albeit invisibly--to Chinese Confucian culture.
[Copyright of Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13450600500137182]

This paper attempts to discuss the Chinese cultural implications of the recently proposed document: 'Global Qualifying Standards for Social Work Education' by the IASSW and IFSW. It seems that this document still embraces an ideology of western social work imperialism in perceiving the development of social work in other countries. With reference to Chinese culture and social work education in Hong Kong and in mainland China, the writer advocates that responsibility and rights, stability and changes, social norms and equality, as well as empowerment and relation, should be fully articulated in the definition, ethical principles, and core purpose of social work practice as well as in the mission and curriculum in social work education within Chinese communities.
[Copyright of Social Work Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0261547042000252316]

In this article, the authors investigated personal beliefs and values and opportunism variables that might contribute to the academic dishonesty of American and Hong Kong master of business administration (MBA) students. They also compared American and Hong Kong MBA students with respect to their personal beliefs and values, opportunism, and academic dishonesty variables. Results showed that American MBA students who were idealistic, theistic, intolerant, and not opportunistic were likely to behave ethically. Hong Kong MBA students who were idealistic, intolerant, positive, and not opportunistic tended to act morally. Hong Kong students tended to be less theistic, more tolerant, more detached, more negatively oriented, more relativistic, less achievement-oriented, and more humanistic-oriented than were their American counterparts.
[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/10.3200/JOEB.82.3.146-158 ]

It is argued that language learning ought to be interactive. The traditional language classroom provides a favourable interactive situation for language learners. By contrast, the distance education mode is limited in some ways regarding language learning. Necessarily, distance education involves, primarily, self-learning. Face-to-face learning opportunities are scant compared with traditional classroom-based learning. It is, therefore, a challenge for language professionals to explore new ways of teaching language, the speaking skills in particular, within the constraints of the distance education mode. Being able to master English -- an increasingly important international language -- provides a key to information and learning societies in the 21[&SUP] stcentury. In this paper, I will suggest some ways of maximizing the amount of interactive activities in English language distance learning, based on my work-based experience as a course developer of a new English enhancement course offered by the Open University of Hong Kong. I will focus on the development of listening and speaking skills, which are in fact the most problematic areas -- the speaking skill, in particular, involves two-way communication. I will consider the issue from the perspectives of learners' motivation, peer support and technological support. Finally, I will present findings of a survey on the learners and tutors' feedback on the teaching materials of this new English language enhancement course.
[Copyright of Open Learning is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02680510307413 ]