Purpose - Although researchers have identified correlations between specific attitudes and particular behaviors in the pro-environmental domain, the general relationship between young people’s development of environmental knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors is not well understood. Past research indicates that geographic context can play a role, while social factors such as age and gender can have a more significant impact on predicting attitudes and behaviors than formal education. Few studies have systematically examined the relationships between education and environmental attitudes and behaviors among youth in Hong Kong. The purpose of this paper is to report the findings of a study comparing secondary school students’ environmental attitudes and behaviors with age and related factors in two international schools and two government schools in Hong Kong. Students’ attitudes and behaviors were compared based on school type (curriculum), while the authors additionally compared the significance of social factors and attitudes on students’ behaviors.Design/methodology/approach - Attitudes were measured using the New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) and the NEP for Children (NEPC), the most commonly used, internationally standardized tools for investigating environmental attitudes and values of adults and young people for comparative purposes. The authors compared NEP/NEPC scores and student self-reported environmental behaviors using a short questionnaire.Findings - No significant differences were found in attitudes or behaviors based on school type. However the authors did observe a significant effect of gender and age on students’ attitudes, and a significant correlation of student attitudes in the NEP with students’ self-reports regarding air conditioning consumption.Originality/value - This study builds a foundation for cross-national studies and for evaluating the impact of curricula over time. Copyright © 2016 Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

Parents in dysfunctional family situations and those in intact well-functioning families have distinct requirements for parental learning and parent education. For intact well-functioning families, a developmental-educational paradigm for parent education is more appropriate. Although school-based parent education is ideal for well-functioning families, most policy makers and school leaders have overlooked the utility of this approach. Recent studies, however, have provided further support for in-school parent education. This paper presents some of the results from new research on parental learning and offers findings in support of in-school parent education.
[Copyright of Learning: Research and Practice is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/23735082.2015.1028714]

There is a growing consensus that schools and practising teachers can, in collaboration and/or in partnership with higher education institutions, make valuable contributions to initial and continuous teacher development, specifically when teachers can see how their efforts result in improved student learning and achievement. Learning Study, a Hong Kong version of the Japanese Lesson Study, was developed and used as a tool in a three-year project (2000 - 2003) for improving teaching and learning. Learning Study, which is built on a school-university partnership model, and is grounded in a theoretical framework of variation (Marton & Booth, 1997), was found to be powerful for teachers' professional development. In four years' time, Learning Study has spread from two primary schools to over a hundred primary and secondary schools, and over a hundred Learning Studies had been developed. Learning Study was also used in mentoring to facilitate the forming of a "learning community", to supplement the one to one mentor-mentee model, where the professional growth of all teachers involved was enhanced. In this symposium, we will illustrate how learning communities can be facilitated through engaging teachers in action research cycles of Learning Studies, in which teachers are empowered to learn from their students, from each other and from research as well.

This paper argues that the concepts, beliefs and understandings of local and non-local teacher educators in a Hong Kong university are grounded in their own cultural cognition and antecedents. It presents the viewpoint that contemporary notions of good practice were compromised when applied to a context that is strongly influenced by the tenets of Confucianism. Thus the conclusion is that the contingencies of teaching and learning contexts are sufficiently different to compromise the goal of having pre-constructed notions of good teaching. The alternative is that university tutors and future researchers re-conceptualise good teaching practices within a context that gives it meaning and purpose.
[Copyright of Journal of Education for Teaching is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02607476.2010.497395]

The study that we report in this paper, named as learning study, is a hybrid between a design experiment as characterized by Brown and Collins, and a Japanese lesson study as characterized by Yoshida, and Stigler and Hiebert. This paper aims at tracing the development of the learning study and examining its impact on teacher professional learning, through the example of an empirical study conducted in Hong Kong. First, the notion of learning study is explicated, together with the related ideas of the lesson study approach, the teaching research group and design experiments. Second, an empirical study is reported, which documents how a group of economics teachers in Hong Kong worked collaboratively within the learning study model to improve student learning, and in doing so enhanced their own professional learning. Finally, the implication of learning study for teacher professional learning is discussed.
[Copyright of Teaching Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10476210500527915]