Empirical Research Background: In constructing a reading ability scale for English, it was necessary to take the constituent testlets, items grouped within a single reading passage, seriously. That posed interesting and challenging problems for the calibration process. Empirical Research Aims: This paper attempts to show how to use the testlets as the main units for the construction of the reading ability scale. The exercise highlighted issues relating to item level and testlet level invariance, which would be interesting and informative for Rasch model applications. Empirical Research Sample: The sample in the study is around 5000 primary and secondary students in Hong Kong. Empirical Research Method: The scale calibration uses a series of linked reading comprehension tests acorss the full spectrum of the Hong Kong primary and secondary education. A three-facet Rasch model was used with testlets as an intermediate levels between items and students. The main issue to be considered is the selection of linking items across levels, giving due consideration to possible variance between levels and to the need to maintain invariance across the scale. The achievement of the latter will be the use of the anchoring of the testlets, while allowing some linking items to vary within the context of the testlet. Empirical Research RASCH: Multi-faceted Rasch models were used in the scale calibration. The exercise raises interesting issues on the definition of what constitutes a facet versus item grouping. Empirical Research Results: The exercise enabled the construction of a reading ability scale for English in Hong Kong. Empirical Research Conclusions: The reading ability scale provides the basis for tracking student reading ability in English across the full spectrum of education in Hong Kong. It has already been used in Macau and will be used in Taiwan.

This article mainly addresses the Hong Kong new Information Technology in Education policy to have further integration of information technology into the learning and teaching process, particularly on the design of IT-supported inquiry learning in the primary General Studies. The article focuses on the collaborative effort of the teacher educators from the Institute of Education and the curriculum developers of the Hong Kong Education City in the design of a web-based learning unit on "Earth Movement" to support pupils' inquiry learning of science. The article discusses the different modes of inquiry learning with the web-based learning unit in primary General Studies

This article describes the development and research process to support Hong Kong primary school pupils in constructing understanding of the motion of the Earth with integration of information technology in teaching and learning. The design of the research mainly addresses the call for further integration of information technology into the learning and teaching process as enshrined in the second Information Technology in Education strategy in Hong Kong, as well as to support teachers in the design of inquiry learning for the new General Studies lessons. A web-based learning unit is developed with consideration of inquiry learning and integrating IT in teaching and learning. Analysis of different ways of teaching with the web-based learning unit in primary classrooms is reported, and comparison of pre-lesson test and post-lesson test are conducted to study pupils' learning outcome.

School teachers, in the move of educational assessment reform in Hong Kong, are currently developing their professional competence on making a good use of assessment to enhance their own teaching. Both groups of school teachers and teacher educators are concerned with the issue about how to make sense of assessment data and to transform them into feedback useful to classroom instruction. This research seeks to understand the kinds of protocols of assessment data school teachers perceived as practical information to become useful feedback to their teaching. We conducted 2 types of protocols using different analysis methods of assessment data (that is, basic item analysis and Rasch model) to represent primary and secondary students' responses to objective test items assessing the competency of reading comprehension of Chinese literatures. We presented the protocols to primary and secondary school teachers who are teaching Chinese language subject in Hong Kong. After demonstrations, we interviewed the groups to understand their perceptions on the protocols. Results shows that teachers most value assessment data which can help in identifying students' strength and weakness, assuring test item quality, stimulating reflection on their teaching practice, and turns out to become the foundation for rebuilding their classroom instruction.