The Teachers’ Conceptions of Assessment inventory has been used in studies with primary and secondary school teachers in New Zealand and Queensland. It has been translated and used in two studies in Chinese contexts (i.e., Hong Kong and China). The Western studies consistently support the existence of four inter-correlated conceptions (i.e., assessment makes schools accountable, assessment makes students accountable, assessment improves teaching and learning, assessment is irrelevant). While similar factors have been found in the two Chinese studies, it was apparent that the factor inter-correlations were quite different. This was especially noted around the relationship of improvement and student accountability factors which were highly correlated in Chinese studies but weakly correlated in Western studies. This suggests that while the British assessment for learning policy is being advocated around the world, there may significant factors in how assessment is understood and used in Chinese contexts that require an alternative policy development. To that end, two studies have been conducted to extend our understanding of what assessment means to teachers in Chinese contexts.

Many school subjects in Hong Kong now have a component of school-based assessment (SBA) to enable a better judgment of students' performance. However, how SBA could be used at classroom level is often a concern to many teachers. Using three core school subjects, namely, Chinese Language, English Language, and Maths as the context, this paper discusses how school-based assessment could be implemented successfully in the classroom.

In the past ten years, Hong Kong Government has promoted the concept of biliteracy (Chinese and English) and trilingualism (Cantonese, Putonghua and English) in education. Putonghua has become an important issue in the school curriculum. Educators debate how and when Putonghua should be taught. In the preschool context, whether Putonghua should be taught as a formal subject or informally through fun and games has been debated. Another critical issue is how parents could help children to learn better outside schools. This paper presents findings on the learning and teaching of Putonghua from interviews with parents and school teachers and principals.

This study aims at exploring student writing of Chinese characters at their teachers’ dictation in a primary school in Hong Kong. Sample writings of 106 Primary 3 students produced in 12 dictation lessons were collected over a school term. The students wrote a total of 1441 characters. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the student writings. The main results are: First, the students correctly produced a large majority of about 90% of the characters at the dictation. Second, the categories of errors that the students made in writing the characters were diverse. Third, the students made a different combination of errors in writing the semantic and phonetic radicals of the characters. Fourth, a considerable portion of their errors was related to whether they were able to reproduce the specifics of the characters. This study examines the performance of the students after they have been taught to write, hoping to have direct implications to how teachers should teach students to write.
[Copyright © 2015 Journal of Educational Research and Development.]

本港教育署在幼稚園寫字教育方面曾有明確指示和建議：4歲以下幼兒不可以寫字 (香港教育署，1996)。但很多本港幼稚園、幼兒園以及幼兒中心，在家長和社會的壓力下，主動或被動地過早開展寫字教育，2、3歲的幼兒用他們尚未發育成熟的小手握起沉重的筆。這種做法雖然暫時應付了家長，但其是否對幼兒長遠發展有好處？會否出現拔苗助長的副效應？這令很多幼教同仁憂慮，也令人擔心這樣下去孩子們唯一一點幸福的童年時光也會被剝奪殆盡。針對這一擔憂，本文試圖從理論與實踐兩個層面分析幼兒寫字教育的幾個關鍵性問題，以解幼教同仁心中之疑惑。
[Copyright © 2002 香港教育工作者聯會.]

批判思維能力和創作能力教學，是香港小學中國語文科新課程提出的兩個新增教學項目。基於教學時間有限，語文科教學須多採用綜合不同能力訓練的設計。本文介紹一個以短篇校園小說為教材的文學單元，嘗試通過不同的評估課業來提升學生的批判思維能力和創作能力，該單元的經驗有助語文教學的不同持分者探索在小學文學教學中落實促進學習評估的理念。
[Copyright © 2010 優質教育基金.]

根據香港課程發展議會發布的課程文件，形成性與總結性兩種評估模式已涵蓋「持續」和「總結」評估的需要，而以評估的適時與回饋的即時效能來看，形成性評估顯示出以學習過程為主導的評估傾向，這正好體現「促進學習的評估」的精神。在語文學習中，文學學習是重要的組成部分，而閱讀則是課程發展的重點項目，因此，本文以文學教學的視點，初步探討怎樣結合學習過程與評估的設計原則與策略，以加強學與教的成效。
[Copyright © 2010 優質教育基金.]

本研究旨在了解漢字能否協會小學生理解科學，或相反地可能令他們形成另類的科學概念。文化、語言、科學學習三者互有關連。要把拜學學習變得實用，則必須在所處社會的社交、文化及政治環境下理解。本研究以問卷形式進行，調查香港小學四年級學生對部分漢字的理解。是次調查共有來自三間小學約500名學生參與。結果顯示，於有關生物分類的問題，學生能正確地把生物分類，但卻未能找出原因，部分生物的外形或其名稱的部首均可能影響學生分類的準確性。問卷的第二部分為問答題，每題先用兩個部首相同的單字，探討學生如何理解這些與科學概念相關的部首，並測驗他們能否再額外列出四個單字，其部首及類型須與問題所列字例相同。結果顯示，學生對這些部首的單字與其科學概念關係的認知都較為薄弱。一般來說，學生舉例的單字均與日常生活息息相關的字例，甚至已在書本上學習，但並不是很多學生能列舉出來，例如：「鋁」和「膽」。生物名稱的部首對學生了解生物分類有一定影響，因此，教師應利用文字或語言特色設計教學活動，把科學學習與科學語言融合起來。綜觀研究結果，學習科學應同時充分掌握作為學術語言的科學語言，認識文化與科學學習的關係。