Background: Abundant research has been undertaken on the importance of teachers’ feedback to the school achievement of students. However, focus has rarely been placed on the differences between the perception on feedback of students and teachers. Being a part of the study which was sponsored by a General Research Grant awarded by Research Grants Council of UGC, Hong Kong (Project Number 844011), we attempted to find out the differences between students’ and teachers’ perception on feedback. Aims and Keywords: The study aimed to find out the differences between Hong Kong primary school students and teachers in their views to feedback. Sample: Four thousand five hundred and seven students between primary 3 and primary 5, 132 teachers from 26 Hong Kong primary schools were sampled in the study. Method: A 42-item instrument with 4-Likert point response scale was constructed by the research team to collect the responses from Hong Kong students and teachers of their perception on 6 dimensions in feedback. Multidimensional Rasch analysis was conducted on the collected data with CONQUEST 2.0. Results: The results showed that: (1) item-fit was between 0.5 and 1.5 for all items except one; (2) Rasch person reliabilities in the 6 dimensions ranged from 0.72 to 0.86 and item reliabilities was 1.00; (3) the effect size of the respondents’ status (teacher or student) in the 6 dimensions ranged from 0.32 to 0.64. Conclusions: In this study, there are moderate differences between the students and teachers in the perception on the source of feedback, the effectiveness of feedback and the function of feedback. On the other hand, there are little differences among the two types of respondents in the perception on the goodness of feedback, the focus/target of feedback and the expectation of feedback.

The feminisation of teaching is an important topic in education and gender studies. Discussions have been enriched by comparative and international studies as well as a gendering perspective in which a complicated view of the role of the state has emerged. In colonial Hong Kong, although the government was limited in its support of teacher training, its strategic control was not ineffective. Through regulating the teaching force, the colonial regime was instrumental in training women to help civilise the young and in creating a dead end job - that of a 'primary school teacher'. It also constantly (re) constructed the nature and role of 'Chinese teacher' and 'Chinese women'. By revealing some seldom-explored strategies and disrupting the fixed meanings of 'Chinese teacher', 'Chinese women', and 'primary school teacher', this paper unravels the intervention and (re) invention of the colonial regime in the teaching occupation and probes their implications for a patriarchal society.
[Copyright of History of Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0046760X.2011.635603]