Hong Kong secondary schools have difficulty in integrating guidance, or counselling, and discipline into schooling. In some schools, discipline is overdeveloped while guidance is underdeveloped. The positive aspect of the caring system is distorted as part of the provision of discipline. This article looks at the distinction between guidance and discipline, and deals with what relatively little is known about in current research, that is, how guidance and discipline function within a school organization. It uses the perspectives of interactionism and social constructionism to contrast the relationship between guidance and discipline in two Hong Kong secondary schools. It employs case study and qualitative methods for data collection. Data for the two schools show that the contextual and organizational factors have a profound impact on the connectedness between guidance and discipline at the three levels of whole school, department and classroom. Finally, the implications for their implementation and integration will be given.
[Copyright of Educational Review is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00131910701427355]

At the turn of the millennium, the term 'spiritual' began to gain more prominence in the educational discourse in Hong Kong, both in official policy documents and in religious schools' descriptions of their own mission. Addressing each of these two cases in turn, a description of the context in which the increased use of the term has occurred leads on to the question of the extent to which this increased rhetorical emphasis on the spiritual is matched by the actual substance of education policy and the reality of religious education. It is found that the match is much less than perfect, and the reasons for this are explored.
[Copyright of International Journal of Children's Spirituality is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13644360500347359]

This article draws on a longitudinal study of a group of mainland Chinese students' English learning experiences in an English medium university in Hong Kong, and explores the dynamic nature of their language learning motivation prior to and after their arrival in Hong Kong. The study identified context-mediated and self-determined elements in the participants' learning motivational discourses. The context-mediated motivational discourses echoed the societal discourses of learning, and were shaped by the contextual conditions on the Chinese mainland and in Hong Kong, including the roles of English, academic competition and medium of instruction. Through an extended socialization process, mediated by various social agents, some of these context-mediated motivational discourses became internalized and transformed into self-determined ones among many participants in later stages of their learning. The article argues for an integrated perspective, viewing learner motivation as a dynamic construct emerging from learners' interaction with contextual conditions.
[Copyright of Studies in Higher Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03075070802373107]

This article uses the case of the Target Oriented Curriculum (TOC), a major curriculum reform introduced into Hong Kong primary schools, to explore the interaction of cultures and curriculum reforms. It is argued that the reform emerged from, and was adapted and enacted in contexts or arenas that exhibited very different cultures. We focus on three distinct arenas that affected the reform, and examine within each of these the key interest groups and their shared understandings. The article thus provides an analysis that stresses the fragmented, pluralistic and changing nature of culture within Hong Kong society.
[Copyright of School Leadership & Management is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13632430050011416]

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) represent a crucial force for cultural change in both education and society and possible transitions between old and new learning as well as social values. This is especially so in East Asia, where the young have informally embraced ICTs but learn in formal contexts often still dominated by traditional transmission models of learning rather than the new learner-centred theories which inform policy imperatives for innovation and reform. Educational contexts like Singapore and Hong Kong are particularly exemplary because they have been so progressive in policy initiatives for ICT integration and reform in formal education, imperatives which conflict in practice with still dominant traditional learning expectations, teaching practices and models of assessment. As typified by such contexts, this paper investigates how the pedagogical dilemmas of a tension between old and new models of learning need to be understood and approached in terms of related and overlapping institutional and social dilemmas of change.
[Copyright of Globalisation, Societies & Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1476772042000252470]

Personal and social education has become an important area of development in education in Hong Kong. Given that much of the literature on personal and social education is Anglo-American or European, what is the influence on the largely Chinese settings in Hong Kong? This paper will examine some of the debates of what constitutes personal and social education. The significance of competing contexts in the development of personal and social education will be analysed in detail. Comparisons will be made between Western and Chinese (especially Confucian) views on personal and social education. Attempts will be made to come up with a notion of personal and social education which is suitable for the Hong Kong context
[Copyright of Comparative Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03050060020020435]