One of the key aims of formative assessment in higher education is to enable students to become self-regulated learners (Nicol & Macfarlane-Dick, 2006). Based on Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick's (2006) framework, this exploratory study investigates which formative assessment practices proposed by them were used by one college EFL writing teacher to facilitate learner self-regulation in a Confucian Heritage Culture (CHC) setting (i.e. Hong Kong) and student perceptions of these practices in relation to self-regulation. Five formative assessment practices were found to be implemented by the teacher to support learner self-regulation. The students seemed to be more positive about teacher-and-student-directed practices than student-directed ones. Suggestions have been provided to maximize the potential of these practices in facilitating learner self-regulation.

The main purpose of this study was to develop a Rasch Measurement Physical Fitness Scale (RMPFS) based on physical fitness indicators routinely used in Hong Kong primary schools. A total of 9,439 records of students' performances on physical fitness indicators, retrieved from the database of a Hong Kong primary school, were used to develop the Rasch scale. Following a series of iterative Rasch analyses that adopted the 'data should fit the model' approach, four physical fitness indicators (such as 6-min run, 9-min run, 1-min sit-ups, and dominant handgrip) were successfully calibrated to form the RMPFS. The RMPFS and its scale indicators showed fit to the Rasch model sufficient for the intended purposes of measuring the overall fitness of children. The overall physical fitness measure reflects children's fitness on three key core components of physical fitness - cardio-respiratory fitness, muscular endurance, and muscular strength. Advantages of the RMPFS are discussed, and recommendations for future research follow. The findings of this study provide a better knowledge basis for interpreting children's physical fitness assessment results.
[Copyright of Measurement in Physical Education & Exercise Science is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher’s website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1091367X.2011.590772]

Humanities includes a diverse range of disciplines in which little literature has explored in any depth the desired learning outcomes. This study was designed to articulate and illustrate learning outcomes in the humanities from students' voices and work. Undergraduate students in their final year, postgraduate students and recent alumni from the Faculty of Arts at a Hong Kong university were interviewed individually or in groups of three to four. They discussed their desired and actual learning outcomes in three areas: the overall university experience, studying in the humanities and their studies in their specific majors. The students' comments were grouped into 16 categories of description. Seventy-three pieces of student work were collected and matched to the 16 categories to illustrate students' perceptions. A common set of qualities was found in all the humanities programs. From the data, knowledge is the most valued by humanities students, followed by rational thinking. Accomplishment and self-direction are relatively less mentioned. Further discussion is presented on how and why humanities students value different qualities, based on students voices interfaced with some relevant literature. The findings have been helpful in bringing the student voice into internal discussions about outcomes-based approaches to teaching and learning and how these approaches relate to internal quality-assurance and curriculum-change processes.
[Copyright of Higher Education Research & Development is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2010.542558 ]

While experential learning has been increasingly explored and adopted by higher education institutions, few have researched the appropriate assessment methods that can be aligned with the learning outcomes of experential learning. A literature review on the diverse forms of assessment currently used for community service types of experiential learning in higher education is presented in this paper to review their appropriateness in assessing experential learning. The paper also describes the assessment framework of the University of Hong Kong Sichuan Reconstruction Community Service Project, which is incorporated into a multidisciplinary community service learning project. Feedback from students and teachers are reviewed to gauge their preferences towards these assessments, as well as their opinions on assigning academic credits to experential learning projects.
[Copyright of European Journal of Engineering Education is the property of Taylor & Francis. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03043797.2011.644763]

Hong Kong is traditionally an examination-oriented culture, a legacy of its Confucian heritage. Since the 1990s, the Hong Kong government has shown its determination to make a change to this deep-rooted examination-oriented culture with assessment for learning highlighted as an important aspect in the reform agenda. Although many initiatives have been put in place, the government has not seen many changes in the assessment practices in schools. This paper discusses the difficulties faced when seeking to establish formative assessment in an examination culture.
[Copyright of Roeper Review is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0969594X.2010.527701]

This study investigated the identification and distribution of perfectionist types with a sample of 111 academically gifted Chinese students aged 17 to 20 in Hong Kong. Three approaches to classification were employed. Apart from the direct questioning approach, the rational approach and the clustering approach classified students using their scores on three constructs of the revised Almost Perfect Scale, which included high standards, order, and discrepancy between standards and performance. Despite the fact that the different approaches yielded different classification results, all three approaches generated profiles of three perfectionist types interpretable as nonperfectionists, healthy perfectionists, and unhealthy perfectionists, suggesting that healthy perfectionists tended to outnumber unhealthy perfectionists and nonperfectionists. Implications of the findings for working with perfectionist students and future research on perfectionism and perfectionist types are discussed.
[Copyright of Roeper Review is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02783191003587876]

This study examined the overlap of dyslexia and specific language impairment (SLI) in Cantonese-Chinese-speaking children. Thirty children with a prior diagnosis of SLI and 9 normal controls, aged between 6;0 and 11;3, participated. The children with SLI were tested for language impairment and dyslexia. Seven retained a diagnosis of SLI but were dyslexia-free (SLI-only), 13 received a comorbid diagnosis of dyslexia (SLI-D), and SLI had become history (SLI-H) in the other 10 children with no co-morbid diagnoses of dyslexia. The SLI-only group did worse on textual comprehension, but better on left-right reversal (an orthographic skill), than the SLI-D group. The SLI-only and the SLI-D group shared the same range of cognitive deficits relative to age norms and showed no difference in phonological processing. The SLI-D group did worse than the normal group on phonological representation, and both the SLI-only and the SLI-D group had difficulties with morphological awareness.
[Copyright of Scientific Studies of Reading is the property of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10888430903242043]