The beliefs teachers have about assessment influence classroom practices and reflect cultural and societal differences. This paper reports the development of a new self-report inventory to examine beliefs teachers in Hong Kong and southern China contexts have about the nature and purpose of assessment. A statistically equivalent model for Hong Kong and southern China teachers had three factors (i.e., improvement, accountability, and irrelevance). The Chinese teachers very strongly associated accountability with improvement (r = .80). This is consistent with the Chinese tradition and policy of using examinations to drive teaching quality and student learning and as a force for merit based decisions. Small differences between the two groups of teachers are consistent with assessment policy differences in the two jurisdictions.
[Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.]

Background: In line with the increase of using value-added assessment information to evaluate learning gain made by learners in different parts of the world, the Education Bureau in Hong Kong has recently introduced a system that provides value-added information of secondary school students. However, not many teachers have a clear knowledge and understanding about value-added assessment. Aims: This paper provides a brief review of the meaning and the importance of value-added assessment in education. Then it provides an example of how to find out the academic attainment that one can reasonably expect from individual students and how to produce two types of school-based value-added estimations with reference to their own prior attainment or development ability measures. The paper also evaluates the use of descriptions in the value-added grid for making interpretations of the value-added assessment results. Sample: 60 schoolchildren in a primary school in England. Research method: Linear regression models. Results: The findings indicated that the descriptions in the grid were applicable for interpreting the assessment results, but attention had to be paid when making speculations about the positions of individual schoolchildren’s past attainment in reading. Conclusion: This paper functions as a simplified example and a timely resource for teacher learning and development concerning value-added assessment. It also reflects the importance for teachers and school administrators to equip themselves with a good understanding of the nature, potential value and meanings of value-added estimations.
[Copyright © 2009 New Horizons in Education.]

This study examines Chinese tertiary award-winning tutors' perceptions and reported practices of classroom-based assessment. Seventeen tutors in the final stage of a national university teaching contest were individually interviewed. An interview framework was developed using three process dimensions of assessment for learning (AfL). A sequential and iterative analysis of resulting data was conducted based on Miles and Huberman's protocols for qualitative analysis. Participants demonstrated a complex set of connections between perceptions and practices around issues of sharing standards, delivering feedback and response to external assessments. Results deviate from widely promoted principles of AfL and classroom-based assessment espoused in the international literature; in doing so, they challenge existing research and assumptions about the standardised and international nature of award-winning instructors' assessment practices. Findings are discussed in relationship to understanding best practices in tertiary assessment, given emerging tertiary education markets. Practical implications for the further development of learning and assessment practices and theoretical implications for the AfL theory are also discussed.
[Copyright of Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2015.1066306]

The present study adapted the abbreviated version of Swanson-Cognitive Processing Test (S-CPT) (Swanson, 1996) to be used in Hong Kong. The S-CPT, a North American standardised dynamic working memory assessment, was used to measure 215 students' cognitive ability from four primary schools Hong Kong. The abbreviated S-CPT had five subtests of verbal and visuospatial tasks, which were suggested by Swanson as suitable for individual administration on students above 8 years old. The five S-CPT subtests were adapted and translated into Cantonese in order to suit the Hong Kong context and to minimise the effect of participants' language ability on their performance in the assessment. Students were individually administered the adapted versions of the S-CPT. The adapted English version was administered to students from English-medium schools whereas the adapted Cantonese version administered to students from Chinese-medium schools. The obtained data was Rasch analysed using the Partial Credit Model (Masters, 1982). Two subtests were discovered to have disordered categories during the testing period and the categories in these subtests were collapsed to improve the categories structure, and hence, the measurement scale. Fit measures and reliability estimates for both the English adapted and Cantonese adapted S-CPT showed acceptable values to the Partial Credit Model, indicating that the adapted S-CPT was a valid and reliable measure of cognitive constructs of students within the four schools in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong has an assessment for learning policy and a cultural context that emphasizes examinations. In addition to associating student grading with improvement, important improvement-oriented conceptions have been identified among Hong Kong teachers and which were not fully instantiated in Brown’s Teachers’ Conceptions of Assessment (TCoA) inventory. An expanded Chinese-TCoA inventory was administered to 601 teachers (85% primary school) in Chinese. The intended 10 factor structure had poor fit to the data. Exploratory factor analysis (MLE, oblimin rotation) identified 7 factors. Confirmatory factor analysis of 7 inter-correlated factors, with 28 items, had acceptable fit (χ2=1061.87; df=329; χ2/df =3.23, p=.07; gamma hat = .92; RMSEA=.061; SRMR=.056). The strongest inter-correlation (r=.74) was between assessment is for school quality & control and assessment is for teacher quality & control. Correlations >.60 were seen between assessment is examinations and assessment is for student personal development and teacher quality & control and between assessment is for school quality & control and assessment is for student personal development. Factor inter-correlations among these 4 factors and the remaining three (assessment is irrelevant, assessment has error, assessment improves learning) were less than .60. Teachers gave mean scores over moderately agree to Improve Learning and Error, weak agreement was given to Personal Development, School Quality & Control, and Examinations. Disagreement was given to Irrelevance and Teacher Quality & Control. We conclude that, in keeping with the highly selective system, Hong Kong primary school teachers predominantly conceived of assessment as examinations for improved learning, rather than as a means of personal development and reject it as a means of teacher quality assurance.