Evaluation of teaching in higher education has drawn much attention due to the need for greater accountability and improvement in student learning. Our review of literature on Student Evaluation of Teaching (SET) surveys suggests that considerable controversy and criticism have surrounded its use, fairness, and validity. Yet, many universities in Hong Kong are depending primarily on student feedback in SET surveys to provide evidence for their improvement of teaching and learning, and for their decisions made on teachers' pay-rise and tenure. If universities are to continue to use SET surveys as the main source of mechanism for measuring teaching effectiveness, teachers will have to understand and be aware of its purposes. But how much do we know about teachers' perceptions of teaching and learning and, consequently, their opinions of using SET surveys as the primary standardized evaluation mechanism of teaching for promotion and tenure and for teaching effectiveness?
Copyright of Educational Research and Evaluation is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd.

The purpose of the present study was to examine the relationship between theories of intelligence and goal orientations, and their joint connections to students' academic achievement in the Chinese cultural context. A total of 418 university students in Hong Kong participated in the present study. The survey was administered to collect information on students' beliefs about their goal orientations, theories of intelligence and their college grade point averages. The data were analysed using structural equation modelling. The results suggest that beliefs in the incremental theory of intelligence contribute to students' academic achievements by facilitating their endorsement of mastery goals and performance-approach goals. Students' performance-avoidance goals have a negative association with academic success. Cultural factors and considerations are addressed to clarify further the culture-specific findings.
[Copyright of Educational Psychology is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01443410.2014.893559]

In recent years, large-scale international assessments have been increasingly used to evaluate and compare the quality of education across regions and countries. However, measurement variance between different versions of these assessments often posts threats to the validity of such cross-cultural comparisons. In this study, we investigated the cross-language, cross-cultural validity of the Programme for International Student Assessment 2006 Science assessment via three differential item functioning (DIF) analyses between the USA and Canada, Chinese Hong Kong and mainland China, and between the USA and mainland China. Furthermore, we explored three plausible causes of DIF via content analysis, namely language, curriculum and cultural differences. Our results revealed that differential curriculum coverage was the most serious cause of DIF among the three factors we investigated in this study, and differential content familiarity also contributed to DIF here. We discussed the implications of the findings for future international assessment development, and for how to best define 'scientific literacy' for students around the world.
[Copyright of Educational Psychology is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01443410.2014.946890]

In recent years, school-based assessment (SBA) has been incorporated into the English Language subject of a traditional high-stakes public examination, the Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination. As reactions from various stakeholder groups have been mixed, it was necessary to review this new practice. This paper reports on a study of 33 English language teachers who have been frontline SBA assessors. The study aimed to better understand (1) teacher-assessors' perceptions of the English SBA, (2) their professional development needs in relation to implementing SBA, (3) their perceptions of how students could benefit from SBA and (4) the pressing issues arising from the SBA implementation. The study found that, while many participants agreed that SBA could be beneficial to students' English learning, there was much room for improvement in all four aspects investigated. In particular, some problems identified at the very beginning of the implementation of the English SBA have still persisted.
[Copyright of Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0969594X.2014.915207]

Play is a primary context for fostering young children's positive peer interactions. Through play, children develop the social, emotional, cognitive and language skills that contribute to the ability to establish effective relationships with peers. The Penn Interactive Peer Play Scale (PIPPS) was first developed by Fantuzzo to assess the quality of peer interactions among low-income preschoolers in the USA. The present study invited 1622 children aged three to six and 152 teachers in 10 kindergartens in districts with high child poverty rates in Hong Kong to participate in the study (a) to validate the psychometric properties of a culturally, developmentally and linguistically appropriate version of the PIPPS using confirmatory factor analysis, (b) to investigate gender and (c) age differences in peer play, and (d) to inform early childhood intervention for children in low-income families. Translation and back-translation - a commonly used procedure in the translation of cross-cultural research instruments - was adopted. Results indicated that the three-factor model of the PIPPS (play interaction, play disruption and play disconnection) statistically fit the results in the Hong Kong sample. Girls exhibited greater play interaction and less play disruption and play disconnection. Peer interactive play behaviour increased with age. The cultural and linguistic contexts of scale development should receive attention in future research. Recommendations are made regarding lexical access in non-alphabetical language systems like Chinese; cultural understandings of shyness, withdrawal and social disinterest as they relate to the interpretation of play behaviour; and establishing the concurrent validity of the Hong Kong version of the PIPPS.
[Copyright of Early Child Development and Care is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03004430.2013.773990]