This study is concerned with the attribution of secondary students. Causal interpretations for academic success and failure were analysed to investigate the effect of gender, year level and achievement level on students' academic attributions in Hong Kong, a Confucian Heritage Culture. The sample for the study comprised 14,846 students currently enrolled in Secondary 1 to Secondary 6 in Hong Kong. Multivariate analyses of variance found significant gender differences in ascriptions to ability, effort and strategy use reasons for school performance of students who shared a common cultural background. These effects remained after controlling for achievement and year levels. Chinese females in this sample were more inclined than Chinese males to explain their academic failure in terms of their lack of ability and strategy use. Females were also more likely to explain their academic success in terms of their effort or strategy use. Nevertheless, the study found secondary students of both genders and across all achievement and year levels, consistently ascribed to effort as the most important reason for academic outcomes. Secondary 4 students were significantly more inclined than students of lower levels to attribute their academic outcomes to effort and strategy use. Cultural influences are discussed in interpreting the findings.
[Copyright of Educational Psychology is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01443410.2010.518596]

Teacher culture is widely regarded as a factor affecting the success of school improvement efforts. Descriptions of teacher cultures in the literature are often rooted in particular historical, geographical and socio-political contexts, which may limit the wider applicability of these models. This paper goes beyond a simplistic comparison of schools against pre-defined models of culture. It provides a rare insight into one of Hong Kong's international primary schools and describes the centrality of collegial support in teachers' day-to-day lives. The evidence confirms that transformational forms of leadership are central to building a supportive school culture, but high expectations of teachers and strong collegial support do not create rigorous development of practice and may in fact work against it. This paper contributes to our knowledge of teacher cultures in a way which can help stimulate discussion of Hong Kong’s diversity of school types in more than simple structural terms.
老師文化被廣泛認為是影響學校成功改善的因素之一。文獻中描述的教師文化模式，多植根於歷史、地理及社會政治因素，因而限制了更廣泛地應用這些模式。這篇文章超越了簡單地把學校與既定文化模式作對比，對一所香港的國際小學提出精闢的見解，同時描繪老師日常生活互相支持的核心要素。研究數據證實，要建立學校支援文化，最重要的是轉化型的領導才能；此外，老師過高的期望和強有力的同儕支持，卻不能在實踐上產生精確的發展，甚至會造成反效果。這篇文章加深我們對教師文化模式的認識，從而激發我們對香港不同類型學校作深入探討，而不僅是依據簡化的系統作研究。
[Copyright of New Horizons: The Journal of Education, Hong Kong Teachers' Associationl is the property of Hong Kong Teachers' Association at http://www.hkta1934.org.hk/]

Subordinate femininity associated with feminine Japanese has been found to pose barriers for foreign language learners of Japanese, especially among Western female learners of Japanese. The present study investigates attitudes towards the use of both masculine and feminine Japanese among non-native professional speakers of Japanese. The latter's experiences can enlighten language educators in their efforts to help struggling learners cope with using language loaded with traditional gender roles and gender inequality. Data from interviews with male and female professionals who use Japanese in the courses of their work in Japanese companies in Hong Kong were used to study the problems posed by 'masculine' and 'feminine' Japanese for foreign learners of Japanese. It was found that Hong Kong professionals often use masculine and feminine Japanese in order to gain native-speaker status in the language. The study has implications not merely for the teaching of Japanese as a foreign language but also for the teaching of gendered aspects of foreign languages generally, especially when professional identity and status are involved.
[Copyright of Language, Culture and Curriculum is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07908310802287681]

This study examines Hong Kong students' motivational beliefs, strategy use and their relations with two relational factors in classrooms--student learning community and teacher support and involvement. A total of 2206 Grade Four to Grade Nine students responded to a questionnaire that comprised three instruments, including two scales measuring student learning community and teacher support and involvement in classroom, respectively, and the Chinese version of the Motivated Strategy for Learning Questionnaire. Our findings suggest that the two relational factors could play an important role in facilitating students' intrinsic value, self-efficacy, and strategy use, reflecting some culture-specific features of students' self-regulated learning in Hong Kong classrooms. The implications of these findings for understanding Hong Kong students' motivational beliefs and strategy use are discussed. Finally, suggestions for future research are put forward.
[Copyright of Educational Psychology is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01443410903218844]