Asystematic study of the linkages between gender issues and parenting is made among Chinese families. This study examines sex differences in parenting attributes across fathers and mothers and towards sons and daughters, and compares the contributions of fathers and mothers to the prediction of academic performance across boys and girls. Four parenting attributes are included: nurturance, psychological control, parental involvement in education, and parental academic efficacy. Data were collected from 461 Chinese father-mother-child triads of children studying Grade 3 to 5 in Hong Kong. Findings of this study, based on multivariate analysis of variance, showed that parental roles followed traditional Chinese cultural expectations. Compared to the fathers, Chinese mothers of school-age children in Hong Kong were more loving and caring, more involved in children's education, and more efficacious in promoting children's academic performance. Results of hierarchical regression analysis examining the role of child's sex as a moderator showed cross-sex influence in parental contribution to academic performance with respect to parental psychological control and academic efficacy. Specifically, boys benefited more from maternal efficacy than girls did and they were also more hampered by mothers with high psychological control, while girls' academic performance was more enhanced by paternal academic efficacy than boys. A gender-balance approach that highlights the significance of gender in moderating parental contributions to academic performance was thus supported. Future research should continue to focus on psychological control and domain-specific parental attributes as potential sources of gender-linked parent-child associations. Investigations should also explore other cognitive and noncognitive domains of child outcome, different child age groups, as well as Chinese populations in various geographical regions.
[Copyright of International Journal of Psychology is the

This study investigated the effects of supplemental instruction, a peer-assisted learning approach, on students, learning competence and academic performance. The supplemental instruction intervention facilitated by senior students focused on developing students' use of study skills and enhancing their motivation and academic performance. Pre- and post-intervention learning competence measures (the 10 scales of the Learning and Study Strategies Inventory) were available for 430 first year undergraduate business students (Supplemental Instruction, n = 109; Non-Supplemental Instruction, n = 321) from a university in Hong Kong. Structural equation modeling demonstrated that supplemental instruction had a significant effect on academic performance, both directly and indirectly via enhancement of student learning competence, after controlling for pre-intervention learning strategy scores and previous academic achievement. This study provides evidence that supplemental instruction can be a very effective instructional strategy for promoting undergraduate student learning.
[Copyright of Studies in Higher Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03075070903390786]

The aims of this study were to examine the factor structure of the attitudinal questionnaire items from Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 2003 and to investigate low- and high-performing students' mathematics self-concept in East Asian societies and in the USA. The participants were 24,119 eighth-graders, 4856 from Japan, 4972 from Hong Kong, 5379 from Taiwan and 8912 from the USA. Exploratory factor analyses (EFAs) were conducted revealing a same factor structure across the four societies. The MANOVA results showed that (1) the US students reported a statistically significant higher mathematics self-concept than students in Hong Kong, Taiwan, or Japan; (2) across the four societies, high-performing students had statistically significant higher self-concept than low-performing students; and (3) the US low-performing students' self-concept was higher than Japanese high-performing students' self-concept. The implications of these findings are discussed.
[Copyright of Educational Psychology is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01443410.2010.501102]

This study describes the validation and interpretation of the Parents' Attributions and Perception Questionnaire (PAPQ) using confirmatory factor analysis and Rasch modelling to report both the construct validity and category structure of the scales in the questionnaire. The PAPQ was developed to reflect the proposal that parents mediate the relationship between their children's social and psychological development, and their academic achievement, within the context of Hong Kong. The questionnaire consists of four subscales that reflect different interactions between parents and their children in relation to their children's academic-related activities, including a Parental Attributions Scale, Parental Beliefs of Working Memory Scale, Parental Home and School Involvement Scale, and Parental Academic Expectations Scale. These subscales were supplemented by a fifth subscale that describes parents' socio-economic background. The PAPQ was administered to 215 parents from four schools in Hong Kong. Results showed that the four subscales of the PAPQ are valid and reliable unidimensional measures of constructs related to parental role in the academic achievement of their children, thereby enabling future research to directly test Vygotsky's hypothesis.
[Copyright of Educational Psychology is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01443410.2010.496900]