Twenty-one in-service early childhood students participated in a teaching practicum in Australia as part of the final year of a Bachelor of Arts in Hong Kong. Students spent two weeks visiting a university and early childhood settings in Australia. The university based component of the program included workshops and discussions with lecturing staff located in both the Australian and Hong Kong universities. Students were asked to complete written statements about 'What is children's learning?' before and after their practicum experience. An inductive analysis of students' written statements and practicum evaluations revealed an increase in beliefs about children's learning as 'active understanding' over the two-week period. Implications for teacher education programs are discussed.
[Copyright of Australian Journal of Educational and Developmental Psychology is the property of University of Newcastle, Faculty of Education.
Access via Directory of Open Access Journals: http://www.newcastle.edu.au/journal/ajedp/]

Teachers beliefs about their ability to affect students' performance is an important part of professionalism. This study compared 725 Hong Kong and 575 Shanghai primary in-service teachers on their teacher efficacy. Two Chinese versions of the 12-item Teachers' Sense of Efficacy Scale were used in this study since some wordings of the Hong Kong version of the Scale (HK-TSE) were different from the Shanghai version (STSE) as a result of cultural differences. Basically, the Shanghai teachers reported significantly higher efficacy than did the Hong Kong teachers. After reviewing these quantitative results, 86 follow-up questionnaires from Shanghai in-service teachers who also participated in the first part of this study were collected. Results of this qualitative part showed that the three most commonly cited factors for the contribution of teacher efficacy were: respect and confidence placed in them by students and parents, the training they received from universities and the experience they gained from daily teaching practice. Though Hong Kong in-service teachers had lower efficacy scores than the Shanghai counterparts.
[Copyright of Australian Educational Researcher is the property of Australian Association for Research in Education.
Access via Directory of Open Access Journals: http://www.aare.edu.au/aer/about.htm]

This paper is a report on an innovative program for teaching business ethics, developed for undergraduate students, at the School of Business, Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU). The paper is an anecdotal account to make the point that in non-Western cultural contexts, figurative rather than scientific language often captures the essence of qualitative phenomena. Besides outlining the challenges that a credible and appropriate curriculum in business ethics must address in post colonial Hong Kong, and the steps that have been taken by the School of Business at HKBU to meet these challenges, the paper will underscore the importance of understanding and making explicit the cultural context(s) that have shaped local business environments and customary business practices, as a basis for effective teaching in business ethics. Hong Kong's unique strategic position in the development of a global economy rests upon the historic interplay of Western and Chinese cultures. The moral and religious values that have shaped Hong Kong's cross-cultural social environment must be regarded as a primary resource for business ethics development. As is documented in this report, HKBU's program, with its distinctive focus on the cultural context, may be of benchmark significance for the development of pedagogically effective curricula in international business ethics.
[Copyright of Journal of Teaching in International Business is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1300/J066v12n02_03 ]

This paper discusses the findings of a survey conducted over three years in Hong Kong and Taiwan concerning the nature of business and human resource strategies in the two regions. The differences between the two regions in relation to business and human resource strategy are noted, with particular emphasis on the implications for the development of management education in the Asian region. The importance of incorporating and interpreting business and human resource strategy according to culturally relevant differences between the two regions is also noted.
[Copyright of Journal of Teaching in International Business is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1300/J066v12n02_04]

Lack of shared meaning can make communication difficult for people of different cultures. Perceptions and practical experience are important influences when devising and developing online learning experiences in cross-cultural contexts. In this study, 15 educational designers studying for their Masters Degree were asked to contribute their interpretations to an ongoing study of what meaning and interpretations were generated from a series of different learning environments offered via the Web. Course materials were designed in Australia and delivered into Hong Kong, SAR, and China. Students did not always interpret the visual information in the manner expected by the original designers. This paper discusses the outcomes of the investigation relating students' perceptions of the appropriateness of the western interface design guidelines as they applied them to a number of exemplary Chinese WWW sites, highlighting the cultural differences in meaning and representation.
[Copyright of Educational Media International is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09523980210131123]

Since the criteria for diagnosis of childhood attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD) include that the symptoms present in at least two situations, usually home and school, the role of teachers in the identification and diagnosis of this condition is crucial. There is, however, evidence of inter-cultural differences in ratings of AD/HD in children and young people, by teachers and others, though it is not possible to make comparisons between the various studies, because the conditions were not comparable. The focus of this article is the cultural influences on ratings of AD/HD-type behaviour. Evidence is presented of culturally related differences in such ratings, under conditions designed to ensure directly comparable conditions, involving teachers and student teachers from mainland China, Hong Kong, and the United Kingdom. There was some evidence that the teachers from mainland China rated the behaviour of a "target" child, presented on video, higher on a number of items than either the teachers from Hong Kong or the United Kingdom. There was only limited evidence of differences between the ratings of teachers and student teachers within the same culture.
[Copyright of International Journal of Disability, Development and Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1034912022000007298]