In Hong Kong, once a British colony, 'sex' has traditionally been viewed as taboo, and as such, seldom talked about or openly discussed in public. Schools have therefore not implemented sex education. Mass media further challenges the moral standards and values of teenagers by distributing sexual material which is distorted in nature. All these factors contribute to an increase in sexual promiscuity, sex related crime and incest, of which some victims are young children. Since the first few years of a person's life are the most important in the formation of their value and behaviours (Opper, 1996), the foundation of sex education should begin early.
The aim of this pilot study was to investigate the Hong Kong teachers' perceptions of teaching sex education in pre-schools. One kindergarten and one childcare center were selected for this study. Two pre-school heads and six teachers were interviewed. The findings indicated that almost all of the teachers did not have confidence in teaching sex education in their pre-schools, because they had inadequate knowledge and skills. Interestingly, the findings also showed that some unmarried teachers felt embarrassed to implement sex education. Nevertheless, they were willing to take up the responsibilities of teaching sex education if they had sufficient training.
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This paper introduces the core principles of Improving the Quality of Education for All (IQEA) before drawing on the experience of one school engaged in the programme in England. This school has implemented a cross-school reflection and enquiry process (lesson study) to explore a number of fundamental questions:
1.How can we generate developments in teaching and learning?
2.How can schools be encouraged to lead from within?
3.What types of evidence move thinking and practice forward?
4.How can a collaborative focus on teaching and learning establish conditions for resource sharing?
The paper discusses the extent to which lesson study has contributed to the exploration of the above questions and how the insights gained from this methodology have fed into the improvement process. In conclusion, the paper argues that this school's involvement in IQEA has contributed to significant cultural and structural change within the school.
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Using confirmatory factor analysis this study examines the cross-cultural generalizability of the factor structure for the Inventory of School Motivation (ISM), an instrument based on Personal Investment theory. The instrument consists of eight different scales with 43 survey items (ranging from 3 to 7 items each) and each reflecting one of eight specific dimensions: task, effort, competition, social power, affiliation, social concern, praise, and token. The factor structure was invariant over large samples of responses by Anglo-Australian (n=2,616), Migrant Australian (n=1,265), Aboriginal Australian (n=906), Hong Kong Chinese (n=697), Navajo (n=1,776), Anglo-American (n=884) and African (n=819) cultural groups of high school students. The results of factorial invariance analysis indicated that the ISM has a stable and reliable factor structure among the 7 cultural groups. Findings also provide evidence that the ISM scales are applicable to students of different cultural backgrounds; meaningful cross-cultural comparisons should use the 43 items in educational settings.
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This report is concerned with the development of measurement scales for self-learning of secondary students. Self-learning refers to a process whereby the learner participates actively in the act of learning, including planning, goal setting, progress monitoring, selecting learning strategies and controlling the learning environment. The capacity for self-learning has been accorded high priority in recent years by major education systems, particularly those in the Asia Pacific region. This study is motivated by the lack of measurement tool available for the study of self-learning in countries where Chinese is the main medium of instruction, including China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. The sample comprised 398 secondary students from Hong Kong secondary schools and a comparable sample of 200 secondary students from Macau. Questionnaires with Likert items were administered to the students during class-time. Scales included students' goal setting, academic motivation, self-efficacy, information processing strategies, monitoring and management of learning resources. Rasch modelling and confirmatory factor analysis were used to establish construct validity of these scales. Differences across males and females, grade levels, and regions were reported in the paper.
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The twin policy domains of accountability and autonomy have featured in recent education reforms in many countries, signalling new relationships between governments and educational institutions. Despite different national and localised contexts, a number of common 'global' trends have been identified. However, simultaneously context-specific differences are also evident. For us, the concept of 'globalisation', when it implies policy homogenisation, is too blunt an instrument to critically analyse these major reforms. We would argue that there are still too few studies on globalisation processes grounded in detailed examinations of particular historical times and geographical spaces. Our research is located within the tensions between global commonalities and localised differences.
This paper reports research on changing accountability and autonomy in higher education in three 'Asian' countries. Empirical data has been collected in the People's Republic of China, Hong Kong and Singapore in an attempt to begin to redress a 'Western' hegemony in such research. Within each national context two different types of universities became case study sites for the analysis of both commonalities and differences in accountability and autonomy policies and practices. The current paper focuses in particular on the conceptual and methodological framings of the research and presents some preliminary findings.
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Recent studies in the late 1990s have led researchers argued that performance goals can be split up into performance- approach and performance-avoidance goals and that performance goals are not totally maladaptive in learning. Research of the trichotonomous goals framework by Elliot, McGregor and Gable (1999) found that mastery goals are positive predictors of deep processing, performance - approach goals are positive predictors of surface processing and exam performance, and performance-avoidance goals are positive predictors of surface processing and negative predictors of deep performance and exam performance. The present study examined a structural model outlining the relationship of the three achievement goals, learning strategies and achievement of Hong Kong secondary students. The model was confirmed by LISREL with satisfactory goodness of fit index. The results showed that mastery goals were significantly and positively related to deep learning strategy but negatively related to surface strategy. Both performance- approach and avoidance goals were significantly related to surface strategy. Both mastery goals and performance - approach goals were significantly and positively related to academic achievement but performance-avoidance goals were significantly and negatively related to achievement.
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A survey study was conducted to examine the epistemological beliefs and study approaches of a group of Hong Kong teacher education students. Results showed that epistemological beliefs and study approaches of the students were independent of age, gender and electives. Correlation analysis, however, indicated that the students' epistemological beliefs were related to their study approaches. Beliefs in innate/fixed ability, authority/expert knowledge and certainty knowledge were positively related to surface approach, surface motive and surface strategy in learning while belief in learning effort/process was positively related to deep approach, deep motive and strategy in learning. A negative relation was also identified between belief in authority/expert knowledge and deep approach, motive and strategy. The results supported the suggestions in research literature that epistemological beliefs were related to meta-cognitive activities and implications were drawn for teaching and learning as well as future research in this area.
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Survey data from 15 lecturers in a tertiary education institution and 39 teachers in a secondary school in Hong Kong were analyzed to investigate their work motivation and its relationship with job-related stress and satisfaction. The relationship between job-related stress and job satisfaction was negative. However, both levels of stress and job satisfaction were high. In terms of work motivation, for both groups, achievement and affiliation orientations were high but power orientation was not. These results indicate that the job nature of teaching itself may have a driving force that makes teachers strive for professional development that is stressful yet satisfying and fulfilling. Analysis of variance found that the two groups (lecturers vs. teachers) did not differ in work-related psychological outcomes (job stress and satisfaction), nor did they differ in their power orientation. For both groups, the achievement and affiliation orientations were higher than power orientation whereas between-group comparisons found that achievement and affiliation orientations were significantly higher for lecturers in the tertiary institution. The relatively high stress level of both the lecturers and teachers warrants attention. Further work should focus on effort to reduce teacher stress and increase job satisfaction.
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The present paper tries to identify the societal factors and psychological factors that motivate students to have better performance in English as a second language and to postulate a theoretical model subsuming these socio-psychological variables to explain and predict the performance in English as a second language for Hong Kong students in Australia. Since the proposal of socio-educational model of second language learning by Gardner (1959), a number of studies have focused on identifying the potent factors in second language acquisition. Giles and Byrne (1982) emphasized the need to have variables intended to determine the perceived relationships operating between ethnic groups. Kraemer (1993) included ethnolinguistic vitality perception construct in her study on social psychological factors in the learning of Arabic in Israeli schools. 247 students of ethnic Chinese in the Sydney metropolitan area who were studying in weekend Chinese schools and 628 Hong Kong students who were studying in primary and secondary schools were sampled. Path analysis was used to determine the relationship between the performance of Chinese and English with societal and psychological variables.
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According to the big-fish-little-pond effect (BFLPE), equally able students have lower academic self-concepts when attending academically selective schools than non-selective schools. Here we evaluated the generalizability of the BFLPE with diverse self-constructs (e.g., self-concepts, values, goals, interest, etc.) for Grade 7 Hong Kong Chinese students (N= 1950). According to the internal/external frame of reference model, students formulate their self-concept by comparing their own performance (e.g., math achievement) with that of other students (i.e., the external frame) as well as their own performance in other academic areas (e.g., language; the internal frame). In support of the BFLPE, structural equation models showed that self-concept, self-efficacy and interest were most affected by school-average ability. Furthermore, students with high mastery goal, low performance goals, and low avoidance goals were less affected by the negative BFLPE. In agreement with the Eccles and Wigfield's (2002) expectancy-value model, expectancy and value had positive, additive effects on students' persistence/effort. However, there was no expectancy X value interaction as posited in earlier versions of the model. Implications for teaching are discussed.
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