This study examines the range of cognitive processes assessed in the English language reading literacy test as part of the Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education Examination (HKDSE), the secondary school exit test in Hong Kong. Prior studies have suggested that higher order cognitive processes are often undermined in high-stakes tests and classrooms, due to what is called the “washback effect.” This prompts the following hypothesis: despite its top-performing education system, Hong Kong has failed to provide a versatile collection of test items that involve complex reasoning. To investigate the cognitive demands of the test, as well as their relationship with student performance, this study maps the test items with reference to the cognitive levels assessed using in-depth document analysis. ANOVA is used to statistically determine differences in accuracy rates to supplement the analysis throughout. Results indicate that the test has placed an overwhelming emphasis on lower order cognitive processes over the past decade (2012–2019) and that items assessing higher order cognitive skills are, as expected, met with statistically significantly poorer performance in the test. Implications for future revision of the test and curriculum policy are discussed. Copyright © 2022 Springer.

The effect of ICT use on students’ academic achievement continues to be debated. While positive, negative, and non-significant linear relationships have been reported in the literature, few studies have examined the non-linear relationship between ICT use and academic achievement. Guided by the Opportunity-Propensity framework, this study addressed this gap by examining the non-linear relationships between four types of ICT use and students’ academic achievement. A two-level multiple indicators multiple causes model was conducted using Mplus version 8.0 on a representative sample of 15-year-old Hong Kong secondary students (N = 6,037, mean age = 15.73 years, 48.9% girls) from 152 schools. The results showed a linear, negative link between ICT use at school and ∩-shape links between ICT use for outside-of-school learning (with the peak at the 50 percentile), ICT use for leisure (with the peak at the 80 percentile), and using ICT as a topic in social interactions (with the peak at the 1 percentile) and their academic achievement. These findings suggest that stakeholders should always take caution when promoting ICT use at school and ensure that its use does not interfere with students’ learning activities outside of school. Copyright © 2022 Elsevier.

The procrastination assessment scale for students (PASS) has been used widely in evaluating the patterns of university students’ procrastination on academic tasks and their procrastination behavior. The present study validated the psychometric properties of a Chinese version of the PASS (PASS-C) by recruiting two representative independent sample of Hong Kong Chinese university students (S1 used in the EFA study: 506; S2 used in the CFA study: 506). The results confirmed that this modified Chinese version is a valid and appropriate tool to assess university students’ procrastination tendencies in Chinese educational settings. Copyright © 2022 Yip and Chung.

In the face of Hong Kong’s high grade-retention rates, this study aimed to investigate how Hong Kong secondary schools’ grade-retention composition is associated with student performance and socioeconomic inequality in student performance. As the research questions involved analysis at the school and student levels, this study employed hierarchical linear modelling to analyse the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2018 data. While grade retention was often suggested to have a negative impact on repeaters’ performance in studies using the same-age comparison strategy, this study found that a higher proportion of retained students at school was not associated with a reduction in students’ performance. However, greater socioeconomic inequality in student achievement was found in schools with higher retention rates. In addition to providing plausible explanations for these findings, this paper discusses the potential role of the government’s retention policies in these respects. Copyright © 2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Hong Kong has been regarded as one of the strong examination-driven systems worldwide. Under the current education system, local secondary school students have to sit for the Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education Examination (HKDSE) at the end of Grade 12. Although the continuing assessment reform since 2000 tried to reduce the number of high-stakes examinations for secondary school students (from two to one at the end of the six-year secondary education), it remained a high-stakes public examination because the examination results usually have a significant influence on learners’ future pathways, including further education and employment. In respect of the COVID-19 pandemic since 2020, many international public examinations have been tried to be called off, but the Hong Kong government did persist in moving ahead with HKDSE. This aroused criticisms about whether the government has taken students’ well-being as a top priority because the annual survey on DSE students’ stress recorded the highest levels in 2020, 2021 and 2022. In this paper, the positioning and myth of HKDSE and its tie to Confucian philosophy will be examined. Students’ well-being is also discussed regarding rescheduling the examination and the impacts on the mental health of all DSE students, notwithstanding the challenges that can bring to any successful outcomes. It is hoped to urge mental health education and promotion could be carried out systematically to improve its effectiveness. Copyright © 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Children’s social-emotional learning (SEL) lays the groundwork for their later adjustment (Durlak et al., 2011). Although numerous SEL programs have been developed for children, few measures have been constructed to assess social-emotional competencies, namely self-awareness, social awareness, self-management, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making (CASEL, 2013). This study validated the 40-item Washoe County School District-Social-Emotional Competency Assessment (WCSD-SECA; Crowder et al., 2019) for use in Hong Kong. The sample consisted of 369 Chinese children (8-13 years old) and their parents. Children completed WCSD-SECA and International Positive and Negative Affect Schedule-Short Form (Thompson, 2007). Parents completed the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (Goodman et al, 1997). Confirmatory factor analysis revealed that the original 8-factor model fit well to the data, χ2(698)=1116.16, p>.001, CFI=.91, TLI=.90, RMSEA=0.04. WCSD-SECA was associated with emotions and behavioral problems, ps<.05, thereby demonstrating concurrent and predictive validity. Hence, WCSD-SECA could be used to assess children’s social-emotional competence in Hong Kong. Copyright © 2021 HKERA-APERA International Conference.

The Hong Kong Early Child Development Scale (HKECDS) is a tool for assessing holistic early child development in preschoolers aged from three to six years. The original version of the scale, HKECDS, was updated in 2019 (HKECDS-2) to reflect the contemporary context and local curricular expectations. Children (n = 144) from three kindergartens in Hong Kong completed the HKECDS-2 in individual sessions. Rasch model analysis and expert discussions resulted in a short version of the scale (HKECDS-3) with 50 items in nine domains. The domains are Personal and self-care (4 items), Language development (7 items), Pre-academic learning (10 items), Cognitive development (6 items), Gross motor (4 items), Fine motor (2 items), Health and safety (5 items), Moral development (6 items), and Society and environment (6 items). There were significant correlations between findings from the updated version of the tool, HKECDS-3 and the HKECDS-2 (long form), and older children had significantly higher scores than younger children. Copyright © 2022 by THE PACIFIC EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION RESEARCH ASSOCIATION.

This demo/poster will report a web-based assessment database funded by a Teaching Development Grant given to the present researcher, who designed and maintained the database and made it freely-accessible to students, teachers, teacher educators and researchers. The purpose of the database is to improve preservice teachers’ language assessment literacy and enhance their skills to design assessment instruments with sufficient quality and variety. The database stores selected language assessment tasks innovated by cohorts of postgraduate and undergraduate TESL students enrolled in the language assessment courses taught by the present researcher in a university in Hong Kong. During the demo/poster, I will present the theoretical framework underlying the design and organization of the database, how the database is integrated into the assessment literacy courses given to pre-service teachers, and an analysis of students’ reflections on their experience of using the database to learn to adapt, design and evaluate assessment tasks, as well as to validate teacher-designed language tests. At the end, I will discuss the project’s implications for language assessment literacy education of pre-service teachers and potential areas of AL research. Copyright © 2020 LTRC.

Blended learning pedagogical practices supported by learning management systems have become an important part of higher education curricula. In most cases, these blended curricula are evaluated through multimodal formative assessments. Although assessments can strongly affect student outcomes, research on the topic is limited. In this paper, we adopted a learning analytics approach to explore student engagement with formative assessments and the power of these assessments to predict student outcomes in an English for Academic Purposes courses in a Hong Kong university. The study retrieved the data logs from 7,815 students and used the data to analyze student engagement with the formative assessments. The results suggested that the students put effort into completing the assessments. The degree to which assessments predict learning outcomes depend on students’ level of subject knowledge and their understanding of the relevance of the assessments. This study showed that learning analytics provided reliable evidence for understanding students’ engagement and identifying at-risk students. Therefore, learning analytics research has the potential to inform pedagogical practice. Copyright © 2022 The Author(s).

This sequential mixed-methods study investigates washback on learning in a high-stakes school exit examination by examining learner perceptions and reported behaviours in relation to learners' beliefs and language learning experience, the role of other stakeholders in the washback mechanism, and socio-educational forces. The focus is the graded approach of the Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education English Language Examination (HKDSE-English), incorporated in 2012, that allows test-takers to choose between easier and more difficult sections for reading and listening-integrated skills papers. Inductive coding of focus groups involving 12 secondary students fed into the development of the Washback on Students' Learning questionnaire, which was administered to another 150 learners. Exploratory factor analyses of identified washback effects revealed four major types straddling different settings (classrooms, tutorial schools, learners' personal environment), and seven categories of mediating variables pertaining to learners themselves, other stakeholders, and societal influences. Simultaneous multiple regressions identified influential clusters of mediating variables and showed the strongest predictors for each macro-level washback type varied. At least one intrinsic and one extrinsic factor category significantly contributed to all types, reaffirming learner washback as a socially situated, negotiated construct. Implications related to the consequences, use, and fairness of the graded approach are discussed. Copyright ©2021 SAGE Publications.