The current paper examined the effects of A Balanced Reading Approach for Children Always Designed to Achieve Best Results for All (ABRA), a web-based literacy programme developed by the the Centre for the Study of Learning and Performance (CSLP) at Concordia University, on primary school children in Hong Kong. The participants were 249 Primary 1 students from two low social economic status schools in Hong Kong and the two schools were well-matched on many demographic characteristics. All participating students were pre-tested in the fall and post-tested in the following spring. After adjusting for pretest differences, the treatment school scored significantly higher than the controls on three of the six outcome measures at post-tests: phoneme-grapheme correspondence (ES = +0.22, p < 0.05), phoneme segmentation (ES = +0.46, p < 0.00), and nonsense word fluency (ES = +0.22, p < 0.06). Both treatment and control students scored similarly on word reading, listening comprehension, and initial sound fluency. The outcomes of the study provides some promising evidence of the effects of ABRA on Chinese primary students in Hong Kong, especially on the enhancement of phonological skills, thus leading to early success in the formative years of learning English as a Second Language (ESL). Practical implications are discussed.
[Copyright of Education and Information Technologies is the property of Springer New York LLC.]

This research aims to study how a resource-based learning environment (RBLE) helps primary students develop better understanding of the Earth's movement. One objective of the study is to establish an RBLE by creating authentic contexts, selecting appropriate resources, designing relevant tools and adopting necessary scaffolds. The other objective is to examine the effects of the RBLE on primary students' understanding of the Earth's movement in different classroom settings with varied teaching support levels. Research methodology includes pre-lesson and post-lesson tests to study students' understanding, observation and analysis of lessons to examine the teaching scaffolding employed, interviews and teacher's written reflection after all the lessons to investigate their views of the use of RBLE. The findings indicated that there is an interaction effect between students' academic background and settings of learning, and that the RBLE provides little support to students of low academic background, but is very effective to students of higher academic background helping them to construct an improved understanding of the Earth's movement. The article suggested an integrated use of teacher-regulated inquiry approach and interactive inquiry approach for the better use of the RBLE.
[Copyright of Interactive Learning Environments is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10494820802393788]

Whole-school anti-bullying programs are widely recognised as the best, evidence-based approaches to reducing school bullying. Despite this, few published studies have been conducted within high schools to systematically evaluate anti-bullying interventions using a control group design. To this end, a quasi-experimental study of anti-bullying interventions was conducted in four international secondary schools in Hong Kong. The four secondary schools were randomly assigned to: (a) a whole school curriculum intervention, (b) a combined Year 7 curriculum and shared concern intervention, (c) a shared concern only intervention and (d) a control school. The sample consisted of 549, year 7 students who anonymously completed a pre-test / post-test questionnaire. Results were analysed using several ANOVA procedures. When post-test composite bullying scores were adjusted for pre-test school differences, a highly significant main effect for schools was found (F = 7.70 p < .001). In further comparisons, a repeated-measures ANOVA showed the most significant reduction in bullying composite scores occurred when a whole school intervention was used (F = 10.73 p < .001). Bullying levels increased from pre-test to post-test over the school year for both the control school and the school that adopted a shared concern only approach. These results provide strong support for the need for high schools to adopt a whole-school preventative and management approach if they are to be effective in reducing student bullying.
[Copyright of Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) at http://www.aare.edu.au]

Drawing on the empirical data of the Learning Study projects conducted in primary and secondary schools in Hong Kong since 2000, this paper discusses the relationship between teacher act and the improvement of students' learning. This paper argues that students' perception of the object of learning depends on how they experience the pattern of variation created by the teacher during the teaching act. "What varies" and "what remains invariant" both matter. Thus teaching should be a conscious structuring act, where teachers actively construct the learning experiences for the students so that they can experience appropriate variations in the object of learning, in order to bring about the intended discernment and learning.
[Copyright of Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) at http://www.aare.edu.au]