The article describes the "Top-Teen Program" This is a short, intensive, residential program which aims to change the self image and improve the self confidence of underachieving and poorly motivated students - popularly known as "band-5" students. The program is based on known therapeutic theories - particularly Neuro-Linguistic Programming. It focuses on the areas of ego-identity, self-mastery and self-esteem. All participants are given relevant psychological tests before participating and again afterwards. Statistical analysis of the results has consistently shown a significant improvement in all three areas after participating in the program. The authors argue that this indicates that it is possible to "re-motivate" students who had previously considered themselves as useless drop-outs.
本文主要介紹「Top-Teen計劃」。「Top-Teen計劃」是一項短期密集式的住宿計劃，目的在於協助低成就及動力差的學生──「第五組別」學生 ，改善其自我形象及自信心。計劃的基礎來自治療性理論，特別是關注自我身份、自我管理力和自尊的「神經語言學」。所有參與者在參與計劃的前後都進行了心理測驗，統計結果一致顯示，完成計劃的參與者在上述三個範疇中的表現都有顯著的改善。因此，從前認為自己「無用」的輟學者，是有可能能被「從新推動」的。
[Copyright of Journal of Youth Studies is the property of The Hong Kong Federation of Youth Groups at http://yrc.hkfyg.org.hk/]

本文探討貧窮與教育的關係，指出改善學校教育可以消減跨代貧窮。要打破「出身、教育及成就」的連鎖效應，就必須消減學校對貧窮學生所造成的負面影響。除政府的扶貧教育政策外，訪談資料顯示，老師也是一個非常重要的因素。本文建議老師注重提升學生的學業自尊感，對所有學生都應寄以合理的期望，才能積極地消減因貧窮而引致的教育成效不均問題。
This article discusses the relationship between poverty and education. Improved schooling can combat intergenerational poverty. In order to break through the chain effect of "social background-education achievement," schools must minimize any further disadvantages for students who are already socially disadvantaged. Alongside the role the government's education policy plays in tackling poverty, the findings show that teachers also play an important role. This article recommends that teachers pay more attention to raising students' academic self-esteem and to holding appropriate expectations of all students so as to effectively tackle the unequal educational results caused by poverty.
[Copyright of Journal of Youth Studies is the property of The Hong Kong Federation of Youth Groups at http://yrc.hkfyg.org.hk/]

本論文就家長的參與和支持，包括出席音樂會、聆聽音樂、在家中觀看音樂節目和整體財政支持等進行研究，亦調查學生在家長參與和支持其器樂學習上的觀感。於2007年10月至11月期間，本研究以自行填寫問卷方式，收集了香港10所中學共1,493位中一至中七學生意見的數據，發現家長對學生音樂活動的參與和支持總體屬低水平，家長的參與僅流於財政上支持。這裡值得關注的，是如何使學生和家長對音樂產生興趣並感到雀躍，從而一起參與音樂活動。
This paper examines various aspects of parental involvement in and support for musical participation, including concert attendance, music listening, watching music programmes at home, and overall financial support. It also examines students' perceptions of parental involvement in, and support for, their instrument learning. Data are drawn from self-completed questionnaires administered in school from October to November 2007 to 1,493 Secondary 1 to Secondary 7 students attending a total of 10 Hong Kong secondary schools. The survey finds low overall levels of parental involvement in and support of students' musical participation, with students reporting that financial assistance from their parents accounts for the majority of parental involvement. The results suggest it is important to determine how to make both students and parents interested in and excited about music, and how to get them to enjoy participating in music together.
[Copyright of Journal of Youth Studies is the property of The Hong Kong Federation of Youth Groups at http://yrc.hkfyg.org.hk/]

本論文旨在探討自尊感對成績稍遜學生的重要性。在提升學生的自尊感方面，主要集中在其自信心，個人形象及目標方向的三個層面。透過學期初的自尊感超越營活動和學期間的工作坊與及班主任課節活動，促使同學在自尊感方面提升。研究發現同學在其學習方面受正面影響，學生對活動的認受性亦十分高，尤以超越營對他們的感受至深。本研究建議面對成績一直欠佳、信心不足、形象欠積極及沒有清晰目標的同學，在提升他們的學業前宜先提升其自尊感。最後，本文亦對提升自尊感的活動模式作出一些建議。
The aim of this study is to investigate the importance of self-esteem upon academic low achievers. In raising the self-esteem of the students, three major aspects are considered. They are: self-confidence, self-image and personal goal. The "Self-esteem" Super Camp, Workshops and Form-master periods are organized to build up the self-esteem of the students. Results of the study indicate that there is a positive effect on the academic aspect of the students. Moreover, the activities have a great impact upon the students, particular the Super Camp. In order to help those academic low achievers, the study suggests the importance of increasing self-esteem before adding pressure regrading their academic performance. Finally, this paper also makes some suggestions upon the activities of raising self-esteem.
[Copyright of Journal of Youth Studies is the property of The Hong Kong Federation of Youth Groups at http://yrc.hkfyg.org.hk/]

本文闡釋了利用「通達學習」教授數學，照顧個別差異和提升學習動機的行動研究。研究者發現「通達學習」有效照顧班中尖子和能力稍遜學生的學習，使學生差異度收窄，增強了學習的興趣。研究亦顯示，通過有計劃的安排，制定明晰的教學目標與課業，以輔導和增潤課程設計，有效地改變了教學的效能和學習的程式。「通達學習」是值得推廣的，只是教師需要更多教學時間和支援。
The paper reports an action research on the use of Mastery Learning in the teaching of primary six Mathematics. It is reported that Mastery Learning is able to cater for the needs of a wide range of individual ability in the class. The pupils' motivation is enhanced. With good preparation and clearly defined objectives and learning activities, the effectiveness of teaching and learning is enhanced. However, teachers need more support and resources in order to prepare and conduct lessons for Mastery Learning.
[Copyright of Hong Kong Teachers' Centre Journal is the property of Hong Kong Teachers' Centre at http://www.edb.org.hk/hktc]

Whole-school anti-bullying programs are widely recognised as the best, evidence-based approaches to reducing school bullying. Despite this, few published studies have been conducted within high schools to systematically evaluate anti-bullying interventions using a control group design. To this end, a quasi-experimental study of anti-bullying interventions was conducted in four international secondary schools in Hong Kong. The four secondary schools were randomly assigned to: (a) a whole school curriculum intervention, (b) a combined Year 7 curriculum and shared concern intervention, (c) a shared concern only intervention and (d) a control school. The sample consisted of 549, year 7 students who anonymously completed a pre-test / post-test questionnaire. Results were analysed using several ANOVA procedures. When post-test composite bullying scores were adjusted for pre-test school differences, a highly significant main effect for schools was found (F = 7.70 p < .001). In further comparisons, a repeated-measures ANOVA showed the most significant reduction in bullying composite scores occurred when a whole school intervention was used (F = 10.73 p < .001). Bullying levels increased from pre-test to post-test over the school year for both the control school and the school that adopted a shared concern only approach. These results provide strong support for the need for high schools to adopt a whole-school preventative and management approach if they are to be effective in reducing student bullying.
[Copyright of Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) at http://www.aare.edu.au]

Teaching is a female-dominated career in both Western and Eastern societies. While low salary and social status have been suggested by previous research as the main reasons, these cannot explain the phenomenon in Hong Kong where teachers enjoy high social status and salary. My Master of Psychology research will include samples of Hong Kong and Australian senior high school students, to contrast their gender stereotypes as measured by Bem's Sex-Role Inventory (Bem, 1981), and how these, along with their gender and gender role orientations, affect their views of what characterises a good primary and secondary teacher, likelihood to consider teaching as a career, self-efficacy, and interests in teaching.
The theoretical framework integrates Lent et al.'s Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT; 1994) and research on gender stereotyping. SCCT posits that self-efficacies predict individuals' interests and intentions to persist in a given domain, which has not yet been applied to the context of teaching career choice. Research on gender stereotyping predicts that gender and conformity to gender role norms significantly shape individuals' learning experiences, which, in turn, affects self-efficacy (Toker et al., 2007). Recent research in the Chinese context has found that males and females exhibit fewer and weaker traditional gendered stereotypes (Zhang, Norvilitis, & Jin, 2001).We may reasonably infer shifting conceptions of gender stereotypes, including those associated with teachers, across cultures or time.
In the present paper, I report on the pilot study results from 120 senior high school survey participants in Hong Kong. Factor analyses and measures of Cronbach's measure of internal consistency will first explore the structure of gender stereotyped characteristics. Multiple regression analysis will examine the contributions of student gender, gender stereotypes, self-efficacy, and interest in teaching, towards intentions to teach. These findings will have

This study examined the roles of sub-character processing, phonological awareness, morphological awareness, and orthographic knowledge, measured using twelve different tasks hypothesized to indicate these four broad constructs, in Chinese character recognition and English word reading among 536 Hong Kong Chinese kindergartners, second- and fifth-graders. The twelve tasks generally showed an increase in performance with grade level. Confirmatory factor analyses comparing alternative models of these four constituents of Chinese word reading revealed a dynamic pattern of children's latent linguistic or reading processing skills development: The best-fitting model of kindergartners' processing was one that included two broad constructs, broadly termed metalinguistic processing and orthographic processing. In contrast, second-graders showed a fine-grained sensitivity to four distinct skills of sub-character processing, phonological awareness, morphological awareness, and orthographic knowledge. Finally, the latent processing skills of the fifth-graders converged into phonological and orthographic processing. The contributions of each of these initially specified constructs, i.e., sub-character processing, phonological awareness, morphological awareness, and orthographic knowledge, to Chinese word reading varied across each separate grade in regression analyses. The sub-character processing construct was uniquely associated with kindergarten Chinese word reading only. In contrast, the morphological awareness construct was uniquely associated with Chinese word reading in both second- and fifth-graders. The orthographic knowledge construct was uniquely associated with word reading across ail three grades. However, the phonological awareness construct was not uniquely associated with Chinese word reading in any of the groups of children, though it was uniquely associated with English word reading, even with Chinese character recognition skill statistically controlled. These findings