The present study was aimed at investigating the perception of teaching and learning of kindergarten teachers in Hong Kong. Despite the philosophical vision of early childhood education, a firm traditional kind of instruction, with emphasis on planning, preparation and external judgment, was perceived as an important indicator for good teaching. Moreover, teachers tended to focus on and describe their own actions as teachers rather than the actions of pupils. There was a shift from children's agenda to the teacher's agenda. A very different role of the teacher, in contrast to the philosophy of early childhood education, was recorded. The vision of developmentally appropriate early childhood education has not been well acknowledged by kindergarten teachers in Hong Kong. It is argued that challenge to their prior beliefs on teaching and learning will facilitate their future professional development.
[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/10.1080/0300443022000022396]

The field experience component in a teacher education programme serves both a gate-keeping function and a formative purpose that supports student teacher development. The authors were members of a research team which took care of the re-design of the assessment instrument for the field experience component of a teacher education programme, as well as conducting a pilot implementation test. The new assessment instrument, referred to as a Professional Development Progress Map, was developed with reference to the professional standards formulated by an official teacher education policy advisory body. This paper looks into the comments of the users, that is the supervisors and the student teachers (or participants, as in-service teachers were involved in the pilot implementation test) after the pilot implementation test. Findings suggest difficulties in using the Progress Map as a summative assessment instrument regarding the determination of grades and levels, making judgements based on observable performance and collection of evidence, and difficulty in assessing the domain 'Involvement in Education Community'. The discussion highlights the dilemma related to the use of professional standards as summative assessment instruments, and how users may be re-orientated to enhance the formative purpose. The paper concludes with suggestions on prudent use of the Progress Map.
[Copyright of Teacher Development is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13664530802259289]

The Research Assessment Exercises (RAEs) in hugely expanded universities in Britain and Hong Kong attempt mammoth scale ratings of "quality of research." If peer review on that scale is feasible for "quality of research," is it less so for "quality of teaching"? The lessons of the Hong Kong Teaching and Learning Quality Process Reviews (TLQPRs), of recent studies on the influence of grade expectation and workload on student ratings, of attempts to employ agency theory both to improve teaching quality and raise student ratings, and of institutional attempts to refine the peer review process, all suggest that we can "put teaching on the same footing as research" and include professional regard for teaching content and objectives, as well as student ratings of effectiveness and personality appeal, in the process.
[Copyright of Education Policy Analysis Archives is the property of College of Education, Arizona State University.
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The study aims to develop an instrument for research on teacher self-management in the school organization. In this paper, teacher self-management is conceptualized as a self iterative process which comprises five stages; namely, (i) the Environmental Analysis Stage, (ii) the Planning and Affiliating Stage, (iii) the Developing and Directing Stage, (iv) the Implementing Stage, and (v) the Evaluating and Monitoring Stage. Based on this conception, the instrument developed consists of five subscales. The developed instrument was field tested in 63 schools including 1,183 teachers. The analysis showed that the estimated reliability and the predictive and construct validity of the instrument were satisfactorily high. It is hoped that the instrument may provide a basic tool for related empirical studies and for understanding of teacher's self-management practices in school.
[Copyright of Educational Research & Evaluation is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1076/edre.4.3.235.6957]

In student-evaluation research, there has been considerable debate on the number of higher order factors in student ratings of university teaching. Using a distance learning program as the context for research, the study described in this article applied structural equation modeling to investigate the 2nd-order factor structure in student ratings of teaching effectiveness. An a priori model was hypothesized, which consisted of four 1st-order factors and one 2nd-order factor. Data were collected from 2,021 distance students using a multifactor questionnaire. In contrast to all past studies, the presence of a single 2nd-order factor in student ratings was empirically demonstrated through hierarchical confirmatory factor analysis. Implications for future research on the higher order factor structure in student ratings of conventional on-campus courses are also discussed.
[Copyright of Structural Equation Modeling is the property of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/S15328007SEM0703_5]

This article presents a conceptual framework for evaluating the teaching effectiveness of distance education courses and demonstrates how student evaluations can be analysed by rigorous statistical techniques. The conceptual framework consists of four dimensions which relate to student development, assessment, learning materials, and a face-to-face component. Each dimension subsumes a number of attributes. Justification for inclusion of the dimensions and attributes is presented. Based on the conceptual framework, a student questionnaire was developed. The interrater reliability and construct validity of student evaluations collected by the questionnaire were demonstrated through analysis of variance and hierarchical confirmatory factor analysis, respectively.
[Copyright of Distance Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0158791980190104]

Good tutoring requires appropriate interpersonal and pedagogical skills. Tutor personality is a major factor affecting how tutors communicate and deals with students, and yet it is a largely unexplored context of distance education. Using the Chinese Personality Assessment Inventory (CPAI)* this paper examines how the personality of tutors' affects their teaching effectiveness at a distance learning institution in Hong Kong. The results are compared to those reported by Chan (2001) in a similar study using the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). The results indicate that certain scales on the Chinese Tradition factor of the CPAI are significantly related to tutors' teaching performance, and that the MBTI could not subsume all the CPAI scales. Future research with the CPAI should explore whether this Chinese Tradition factor is unique to the Chinese culture or whether it comprises elements of a universal domain useful in understanding key interpersonal aspects of personality that have been absent from Western personality inventories.
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Teachers beliefs about their ability to affect students' performance is an important part of professionalism. This study compared 725 Hong Kong and 575 Shanghai primary in-service teachers on their teacher efficacy. Two Chinese versions of the 12-item Teachers' Sense of Efficacy Scale were used in this study since some wordings of the Hong Kong version of the Scale (HK-TSE) were different from the Shanghai version (STSE) as a result of cultural differences. Basically, the Shanghai teachers reported significantly higher efficacy than did the Hong Kong teachers. After reviewing these quantitative results, 86 follow-up questionnaires from Shanghai in-service teachers who also participated in the first part of this study were collected. Results of this qualitative part showed that the three most commonly cited factors for the contribution of teacher efficacy were: respect and confidence placed in them by students and parents, the training they received from universities and the experience they gained from daily teaching practice. Though Hong Kong in-service teachers had lower efficacy scores than the Shanghai counterparts.
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