Although all teachers hold beliefs about alternative curriculum designs, researchers know little about how the beliefs are related to each other and to teacher demographic characteristics such as gender and subject areas. In addition, measuring instruments in this area of curriculum enquiry remain primitive. In this article, we review issues surrounding the measurement of teachers' curriculum orientations, report the development and validation of a 30-item curriculum orientation inventory,and use the data gathered from a sample of 648 Hong Kong teachers to examine the relationships between curriculum orientations and some teacher demographic characteristics. The inventory was designed to measure teachers' five curriculum orientations: academic, cognitive process, social reconstruction, humanistic and technological. We found that the reliability and validity of the data were adequate. In contrast to logical expectation, teachers valued all the five theoretically conflicting curriculum orientations and the correlations among the orientations were considerable and positive. There was no significant difference in teachers' curriculum orientations based on gender. Primary and secondary school teachers also did not show significant difference. Furthermore, experienced teachers were more likely to value the academic orientation and English language teachers were more humanistic than science teachers. Directions for future research are suggested.
[Copyright of Curriculum Journal is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09585170210136868]

The usefulness of the feedback received on assessments undertaken by accounting students during their degree programme is an area about which little has been written. Given the increasing significance of transparency in the academic process, as evidenced through the development of explicit programme and module learning outcomes, it seems anomalous that research into the student perception of the benefit they receive from assessment feedback to help them achieve those outcomes is virtually non-existent.
[Copyright of Research in Post-Compulsory Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13596740601155363]

This article uses the case of designing a new course questionnaire to discuss the issues of validity, reliability and diagnostic power in good questionnaire design. Validity is often not well addressed in course questionnaire design as there are no straightforward tests that can be applied to an individual instrument. The authors propose the technique of establishing validity by deriving constructs from naturalistic qualitative research--in this case by interviewing award-winning teachers about their principles and practices. Analysis of the interview transcripts led to nine principles of good teaching, which were developed into nine questionnaire scales. Reliability was tested with Cronbach's alpha and with confirmatory factor analysis, as the use of Cronbach's alpha alone can mask issues of multi-dimensionality in scales. The concept of diagnostic power as the ability of an instrument to distinguish between related constructs is introduced. This is important in course evaluation questionnaires, as it enables relative strengths and weaknesses to be identified, which makes it possible to advise on remedial action.
[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/10.1080/02602930701563070]

Seventeen lecturers in three departments in a university were interviewed about their conceptions of good teaching, their perceptions of the differences between adult and full-time students, and the actual strategies and methods they employed in their practice of teaching the two student groups. Results showed that there were common perceptions of the way adult students differed from their full-time adolescent counterparts. However, they reacted differently to those perceived differences. Three major types of accommodation were found: catering for weakness, treating both groups in the same way, and remediating weaknesses. The lecturers' conceptions of good teaching could be categorized into two main categories: transmissive and facilitative. Cross-tabulation of the teaching conception of the individual lecturers with their orientation to accommodation showed that those holding a transmissive conception tended to cater for the weakness of their students or make no distinction between teaching adult and full-time students. Those perceiving teaching as facilitating learning were more likely to try to remediate the weaknesses of their students.
[Copyright of International Journal of Lifelong Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02601370119164]

In 1995 Chan and Hui examined the responses of a sample of Chinese teachers on the Maslach Burnout Inventory and recommended a possible 2-factor rather than the original 3-factor model for the assessment of burnout among Chinese teachers. In the present study, the factor structure of responses to the Chinese version of the Maslach Burnout Inventory in a sample of 1,398 Chinese secondary school guidance teachers was examined using the EQS approach to confirmatory factor analysis. The results showed that a 3-factor model (Emotional Exhaustion, Depersonalization, and Personal Accomplishment) provided the best fit, with the first two factors highly correlated (r = .80). Internal consistencies for the subscales ranged from .80 to .88.
[Reproduced with permission of author(s) and publisher from: Yuen, Man Tak, Lau, Patrick Siu Ying, Shek, Daniel Tan Lei, & Lam, Man Ping. Confirmatory factor analysis and reliability of the Chinese version of the Maslach Burnout Inventory among guidance teachers in Hong Kong. Psychological Reports, 2002, 91, 1081-1086. © Psychological Reports 2002 Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://ammonsscientific.com/link.php?N=5842]

This article examines the problems associated with introducing integrated education into Hong Kong's mainstream schooling system. The research objectives were to examine the experience of teachers in teaching children with special needs in mainstream schools; to examine the attitude of mainstream teachers towards integrated education, and explore whether the differences in perception of difficulties and attitudes are attributable to types of disability and availability of resources. This was achieved through a research strategy utilising a questionnaire survey combined with individual and group interviews. The results demonstrate that there is a clear hierarchy of preference amongst teachers in relation to special needs children. Students with a learning disability and/or behavioural problems pose more challenges to teachers than those with a physical difficulty. Teachers that had both types of special needs children in a class experience more problems in maintaining classroom discipline, have a greater workload and struggle to manage the disparate academic standards amongst students. Teachers in schools with extra funding provisions, teachers trained to teach special needs children, additional counselling resources and specialist support expressed more accepting attitudes towards children with special needs and their admission into mainstream schools. Resource classes did not exert a positive effect on acceptance. More than 70% of questionnaire respondents were supportive of two positive value statements 'realisation of equal opportunities' and 'a good chance for students to interact'. At the same time teachers tended to agree with the statements 'integration was a burden to the schools and teachers' (over 60%) and 'a painful struggle for special students' (48%). Although there is a general normative acceptance of inclusion, the statistical pattern suggests that teachers' attitudes are not static or based solely on ideology.
[Copyright of Disability & Society is

This paper reports the findings of a study which investigates primary school teachers' receptivity to changes in the Target Oriented Curriculums (TOC) and General Studies (GS) in Hong Kong. In the study, survey was employed. Findings reveal that primary school teachers hold positive attitudes towards GS, but their behavioral intentions towards implementing TOC tend to be negative. Further, multivariate analyses show that teachers' perceptions of the two curriculum changes are significantly different.