In recent years, higher education in Hong Kong and Singapore has envisaged unprecedented changes and reforms, which affect significantly the daily lives of academia in addition to the management style of the university. Globalization is manipulated as a rationale for reforms with an aim to cope with the age of fast-changing technology and knowledge-based economy. Meanwhile, globalization embraces several values that prevail among universities, namely: economic rationalism, academic capitalism and corporate managerialism. The university becomes more business-like and enterprise-oriented. Business practices such as performance indicators, benchmarking, quality asurance and control, commercialization of applied research, user-pay principle, market incentives, and diversification of resources are transplanted to the higher education sector.
These phenomena demonstrate a paradigm shift from perceiving the university as a cultural institution to a public service one. Following the Anglo-American experiences of public sector reforms, higher education is similarly required to achieve the goals of "efficiency, effectiveness and economy" in the name of New Public Management (NPM). Smarter and wiser higher education, in terms of resource allocation, emerges at the expense of the traditional ethos of collegiality among academia for institutional decision-making and management. This article examines the impacts of higher education reforms on academe and academia in Hong Kong and Singapore. It is argued that higher education is cloaked by a pessimistic atmosphere, in which academics are pressurized by ever harsher external scrutiny over teaching, research and university administration.
[Copyright of Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) at http://www.aare.edu.au]

The relationship between explanatory style and self-perceived posttraumatic growth was examined among 105 undergraduates in Hong Kong who had experienced bereavement in the past 6 years. Individuals who tended to attribute positive events to internal, global, and stable factors reported more posttraumatic growth than individuals who tended to attribute positive events to external, specific, and unstable factors. The explanatory style for positive events might affect later cognitive processing, such as meaning making after bereavement, which will affect self-perceived posttraumatic growth. One's explanatory style for negative events is not related to posttraumatic growth after bereavement. Directions for future study are described.
[Copyright of Death studies is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07481180801974760]

This study critically examines Hong Kong's environmental education initiatives beyond schooling in the last 5 years with reference to the engagement of environmental non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in this process under an emerging sponsorship regime. It highlights that the manifested form and mode of environmen-talism in general and environmental education in particular are embedded within the socio-political context of colonial governance, the proliferation of green ideas and the local adaptation of ideas of environmental education. It is observed and argued that environmental education programmes in the last 5 years, promoted mainly in the mass media domain, have been partially successful in changing people's perception on environmental affairs, but environmental groups' autonomy is questioned under a sponsorship regime. The paper ends with remarks on the future of environmental education under a new political regime in 1997 and beyond.
[Copyright of Environmental Education Research is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1350462980040303]

Computer Literacy is one of the complementary subjects required for all first-year students in Hong Kong Baptist University. This subject covers both general computer knowledge and selected software packages. In addition to lectures, laboratories are arranged for students to gain hands-on experience with software operations. However, no assignment or tutorial is assigned for the part of general computer knowledge. Due to large class size, traditional paper-and-pencil assignment may not be appropriate. Hence, a multimedia web-based assessment system was developed. This system provides assignments on general computer knowledge. Students can access this system via the World Wide Web. In this paper, we present our findings on students' behaviour, performance and perception in the use of this assessment system.
[Copyright of Innovations in Education & Teaching International is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14703290110074542]

The debate in Hong Kong over which language (Cantonese, Mandarin or English) should be used as the teaching medium in publicly funded educational institutions predates the city's transition from colony to Special Administrative Region in 1997. In the past nine years it has been presented as the cornerstone of the ongoing educational reform process. This paper argues that the issue has become increasingly ideologically motivated since the end of the colonial period, and identifies two factors contributing to the decisionmaking process in Hong Kong: the role of outside vested interests in educational policymaking and the shortfall in specific language teaching expertise. Against the complex background of Hong Kong's official language policy of 'trilingualism and biliteracy', the paper shows how educational policymakers are constrained by these factors and prevented from engaging in substantive educational language planning as a starting point for root-and-branch reforms, and how this may have led them to commission research to support pre-existing executive decisions. The study analyses official statements and policy documents on the medium of instruction issue, in combination with observations of the current situation in publicly funded secondary schools, in an attempt to indicate future directions for Hong Kong.
[Copyright of Language and Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.2167/le633.0]

Presents information on a study conducted to analyze the level of environmental consciousness of students in the educational system in Hong Kong, with emphasis on environmental education. What is environmental consciousness; Details on the growth of materialistic values in society; Lack of attention to attitudinal and behavioral objectives in class room teaching; Method used in the study; Findings of the study.
[Copyright of Environmental Education Research is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1350462980040302]