Although academic underachievement is a familiar topic in educational research, there is no consensus on how underachievers should be selected. This study aimed to compare different selection methods, absolute split method, simple difference score method, regression method and nomination, in the identification of underachievers from a sample of 126 Chinese Grade 7 students. The results indicated that the three different statistical methods showed high congruence in selecting underachievers, but nomination selected a different group of underachievers. It was suggested that, depending on research or intervention purposes, information from statistical methods and nomination might combine to provide a more comprehensive identification procedure.
[Copyright of Educational Studies is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03055690120050419]

Gifted education in Hong Kong reflects the Chinese tradition of valuing and nurturing special abilities in children. Thus, identifying and selecting gifted and talented students into programs are central. Currently, procedures in Hong Kong generally emphasize the use of standardized instruments for identifying the intellectually gifted (using the Hong Kong Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children or Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices), the academically gifted (using the Hong Kong Attainment Tests), and the creatively gifted (using the Chinese versions of the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking or the Wallach-Kogan Tests). Advocating the use of multiple criteria, educators in Hong Kong also employ informal measures such as nominations and rating scales. The complexity of the identification process was illustrated with the Chinese University Summer Gifted Program procedures of nomination, screening, and selection based on multiple measures and the ultimate criteria of matching individual specific needs with program services available. The issues regarding students being labeled as gifted or nongifted as a result of identification, the all-or-none misconception of giftedness, and the need to design and evaluate multiple measures and identification procedures 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/ 10.1080/02783190009554008 ]

Inclusion of students with disabilities into regular schools is now one of the most significant issues facing the education community both nationally and internationally. In order to address this issue there is widespread acceptance that teacher training institutions must ensure that new teachers are trained to teach effectively in classrooms where there are students with a variety of learning needs. Utilizing a data set of 603 pre-service teachers from Australia, Canada, Hong Kong and Singapore this study reports the effects of training in inclusive education on pre-service teacher attitudes towards inclusion, their sentiments about people with a disability and their concerns about inclusion. The results are discussed in relation to a range of factors that could have produced different gains in their attitudes, sentiments and concerns among cohorts from different countries.
[Copyright of Disability & Society is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09687590802469271]

In this paper I first place the development of Hong Kong's higher education in the larger context of education and governance histories. Next I describe one of the deepest policy quandaries for Hong Kong's government in charting the futures of its higher education system: whether to view the ultimate benefits of higher education for individuals in terms of 'sponsored' versus 'contest' mobility. I then turn to evidence from HK census data about the changing distribution of opportunity for higher education. I discuss trends in educational stratification since 1981, focusing most attention on changes in the opportunity for post-secondary and, especially, for university education to the Bachelors' degree level. I discuss methods for the use of Hong Kong's 1981, 1991 and 2001 census, and I present bivariate and multivariate analysis of the changing impact of family cultural and material resources on the odds of continuing and attending education at the university level. From 1991 to 2001, census data suggest there was a reversal of a trend towards greater equality of opportunity that was observed between the 1981 and 1991 census. I conclude by relating the findings from these analyses to future higher education planning in Hong Kong.
[Copyright of Oxford Review of Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0305498032000153070]

This paper presents a qualitative study of student teachers' school-based learning in a teacher education program for secondary school teachers in Hong Kong. Learning to teach is examined through the lens of a personal-professional conceptualisation of learning. An in-depth study of two cases of student teachers' professional learning is reported. Research methods used include interviewing, tape-recording supervisory meetings, field observation and document analysis. Through an inquiry into the individual's interaction with pre-training influences, the teacher education program and the teaching practice context in the two cases, this study extends our understanding of student teachers' professional learning in terms of the formation of the teaching self and the process of framing in the action and socio-professional contexts of teaching practice.
[Copyright of Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13598660120114977]