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]

This paper describes the use of coaching as a means to enhance professional development of English-language teachers in a school involved in a partnership project in Hong Kong, which is characterised in terms of three phases. While the rationale for bringing in coaches into the school is on creating effective professional development environments for teachers--that is, providing ongoing supports and forming a community of practice focused on instructional methods, curriculum innovation, and new formats for instructional delivery--after 18 months of the partnership project it was found that the teacher/coach relationship is more complicated than expected. The paper will end with suggestions on how the three key stakeholders, namely the teachers, principal and teacher educators, can co-construct effective professional development environments.
[Copyright of Journal of In-Service Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13674580701486952]

After World War II, Chinese residents of Singapore demanded the establishment of local Chinese universities. The ruling regime, however, which was under the shadow of the neighboring Malay-dominated Malay Peninsula, was forced to suppress the development of such schools. In Hong Kong, the British needed to install a Chinese university to counter Beijing's and Taiwan's campaigns for recruiting students from the colony. As Hong Kong was a monoracial Chinese society, the government, not having to worry about the reaction of other indigenous groups, met this challenge by founding a fully recognized Chinese university. This research demonstrates that under diverse backgrounds of racial politics, state authorities have unequal latitudes to accommodate the educational institutions of subordinated racial groups. It also reveals that state education policies in small and dependent settings, unlike those in big and sovereign nations, are more susceptible to pressures from external powers and influences from the metropolis. These findings urge scholars to pay more attention to the factor of race and use comparative methods when employing the theories of state and hegemony to investigate education and power.
[Copyright of British Journal of Sociology of Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0142569042000294174]

This article describes teachers' and Life Education Coordinators' perceptions of, and involvement in, the guidance and counselling activities in primary schools in Hong Kong. Respondents who completed a survey questionnaire comprised 367 class teachers and 66 Life Education Coordinators from 82 primary schools. The results indicated that guidance and counselling activities (including guidance curriculum, individual planning, responsive services, and system support) were being implemented in their schools to some reasonable extent. Some differences between teachers and Life Education Coordinators in terms of their involvement and perceptions are discussed. The survey identified a major weakness in the present guidance system in that many teachers who are involved in, and responsible for, implementing a guidance curriculum do not have any training in guidance work. Implications are discussed.
[Copyright of Pastoral Care in Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0122.2007.00421.x]

The Chinese Value of Learning Scale (CVLS) is a 5-item instrument for assessing the value of learning in Chinese culture. The psychometric properties of CVLS were investigated in a convenient sample of 583 Chinese soon-to-be-aged adults in Hong Kong. CVLS possesses high internal consistency and exhibited satisfactory short-term test-retest reliability. CVLS also exhibited high face validity and mild convergent validity with other 48-item openness-to-experience scale (OTES) from Revised NEO Personality Inventory, and is significantly related to the past and actual learning experience. In view of its brevity and easy administration, CVLS offers a useful instrument to further investigate the value of learning in Chinese culture and its possible relationship with adults' learning behaviour.
[Copyright of Educational Gerontology is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03601270600846675]

Greater China is an umbrella term used to cover Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau. This article reviews the evolution of comparative education in these four societies, noting major forces which have shaped the field. The article observes and comments on similarities and differences within the four societies. It has been prepared as a response to the millennial special issue of the journal, and notes some lessons and contributions from the field in Greater China to the global field of comparative education.
[Copyright of Comparative Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03050060120091256]

This retrospective study presents a comparison of assessment results achieved by distance-learning students and classroom-based students undertaking the same module in a degree course. The purpose of the comparison is to provide some objective measurement of the quality of distance education in relation to conventional classroom-based education. The authors have selected three groups of students, who have all undertaken the same module in the B. Sc Health Studies degree programme offered by the University of Paisley. One group (in Paisley) undertook their studies by means of conventional classroom-based education, the second (in Hong Kong) by supported distance learning with face-to-face contact in the form of tutorials, and the third (in a geographically dispersed group in the United Kingdom and other countries) by supported distance learning with no face-to-face contact. The results obtained by these three groups of students were analysed. Because of the differences in the size of the groups, the Kruskal- Wallis 1- Way Anova test was applied to validate the face value findings. The authors include findings from the literature comparing distance education with conventional education and from cross-cultural studies to present their data in context. Analysis of the assessment results showed that students from all three groups were successful in their studies, but the students studying by distance learning obtained significantly higher end-of-module results than their classroom-based colleagues. This latter finding reflects the conclusion that other investigators have reached In their discussion the authors identify educational, cultural and personal factors that may help to explain their findings. A limitation in the study is that it concerns only one module in the degree programme. The research now moves on to comparing students who have undertaken the whole degree programme by the means described.
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