Hong Kong has been implementing a policy of assessment for learning to counter-balance the strong, high-stakes, summative, and examination-oriented practices of the territory. While the purposes teachers have for various classroom assessment tasks are devoted to this learning premise, their views are bounded by the social expectations of assessment for accountability. This paper reports on a study of the types of assessment tasks used by four primary school curriculum leaders, the nature of assessment for learning in Hong Kong primary school context, and their views of how the tasks could support learning improvement in the accountability era. Results indicate that, consistent with official policy, “improvement” was the dominant reason for using the eight assessment tasks discussed in interviews. However, these tasks also met the functions of “accountability,” consistent with the dominant use of assessment in the Chinese context. It appears that assessment for learning in Hong Kong practice is still bounded by the need to demonstrating school quality through the preparation of students for examinations, which raises questions about the policy’s validity. This paper concludes with factors that hinder a formative learning practice and recommends some follow-up strategies under this improvement-accountability tension.
[Copyright © 2017 Education Research Institute, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea.]

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 the original Teachers’ Conceptions of Assessment (TCoA) inventory. An expanded Chinese-TCoA inventory was administered to in Chinese in both Hong Kong and southern China. The intended 6 construct structure was not supported. Exploratory factor analysis (MLE, oblimin rotation) identified 7 factors, which were further reduced to 3 major inter-correlated constructs (i.e., improvement, accountability, and irrelevance). Improvement and accountability were strongly inter-correlated (r=.80), while improvement had a weak negative correlation with irrelevance and accountability had a weak positive correlation with irrelevance. The model had 7 factors based on 33 items and acceptable fit (χ2=3856.97, df=426; χ2/df=9.05, p<.001; CFI=.85; RMSEA=.065; SRMR=.065; gamma=.90). Two group nested invariance testing (i.e., Hong Kong vs. southern China) showed that the model was statistically equivalent, except for item residuals (k=62; χ2=4612.89, df=891; χ2/df=5.18, p=.02; CFI=.83; RMSEA=.047; SRMR=.065; gamma=.94). Differences in mean scores between the two groups showed that Hong Kong teachers agreed more with the ideas of assessments helping student learning, being accurate, and being examinations; whereas southern China teachers agreed more that assessment was irrelevant. This study contributes to our understanding of how assessment is understood by teachers working within Chinese contexts.
[Copyright © 2010 The Authors.]

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.]

Hong Kong has introduced new school evaluation and assessment policies since 1997 which need to be implemented by school leaders. This context creates the possibility that policy intentions are not understood, accepted, or implemented. Using discrepancy evaluation analysis, this study reports interviews from 23 Hong Kong school principals about their perceptions and experiences of new policies to do with school evaluation and assessment for learning. The discrepancies fell into five major categories: one size does not fit all; a matter of school survival; workload for teachers; time pressures on those who manage and teach; and learning environment at the schools. The school principals were not convinced that the intended outcomes of helping schools to improve learning were achieved, rather they believed the policies were being implemented to control and close schools unfairly.
[Copyright © 2010 Philippine Society for Educational Research and Evaluation.]

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.

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.

Most of the educational reading material primary-aged students read at school tends to fall within the informational text genre. Informational text has schematic or organizational characteristics that readers need to be access. Ability to understand informational texts (Duke, 2009) has been shown to support students with fictional text comprehension (Soalt, 2005) leading to higher reading achievement (Kletzien & Dreher, 2004). Three quasi-experimental studies investigating reading comprehension test score gains of first and second language (L1 and L2 respectively) English international primary school students (Years 2 and 6) in Hong Kong were conducted. Students were randomly assigned to one of two teaching interventions; one focused on teaching informational text schema and the other on English vocabulary building. Reading comprehension gains were measured using the Assessment Tools for Teaching and Learning (asTTle) program and researcher-designed cloze fiction and nonfiction tests. Meta-analysis of the multiple measures and treatments found greater comprehension and cloze performance due to the teaching of informational texts compared to vocabulary training; though this was more pronounced for students with English as L1.