The study examined knowledge building and scientific understanding in the context of high school students working collaboratively on Knowledge Forum in a chemistry classroom in Hong Kong. Three specific questions were explored: 1) How can knowledge building be assessed and characterized? 2) What are the roles of knowledge building in scientific understanding? and 3) How does the community develop and how do teacher and contextual factors influence its growth and evolution? Participants included 34 Secondary Four students (Grade 10) who worked on knowledge building pedagogy mediated by a computer supported platform called Knowledge Forum for eight months. Various data including Analytic Toolkit statistics (ATK), depth of inquiry, learning portfolios and examination results were examined. Students' Knowledge Forum discourse was also analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. The findings show that 1) a three-pronged approach using ATK, depth of inquiry, and discourse analysis was a suitable tool for tracing both individual and communal growths in knowledge work, 2) knowledge building learning portfolio and the ATK index "linked notes" predicted students' conceptual understanding, and significant differences in students' school examination, a measure of their scientific understanding, were obtained favoring Knowledge Forum students over comparison counterparts, and 3) three distinctive phases were identified suggesting students' growth in epistemic agency; as well as showing how the growth of the community was mediated by contextual and teacher factors. Discourse analysis suggests how knowledge building might be a useful means of promoting scientific understanding at both individual and communal levels interweaving progress in conceptual understanding with growth in views and ways of doing science, thus helping students to move towards both "science learning" and "learning about science". Theoretical and pedagogical significances of the findings and the limitations of this

For data collection, the researcher was attached to three Hong Kong secondary schools with average academic and extra-curricular activity performances for three months each during the past two years. Having got familiarized with the teachers and students through joining various formal and informal school activities, in the last month of his attachment, the researcher invited each teacher to be interviewed on the topic of extra-curricular activities and to be tape-recorded. In the end, 122 teachers agreed to be the participants in the interviews. The interview was conducted in a semi-structured way, in which the teacher first recounted and commented on his/her experience and impression of extra-curricular activities. The researcher then asked for clarifications and further exploration of his/her own conception, with the help of some "situation cards". In the whole interview process, the researcher adopted a "non judgmental" attitude towards the definition of "extra-curricular activities", only asking the interviewee questions on the clarity and consistency of his/her conception. Each interview lasted for about an hour. After the interviews, the recordings were converted into written scripts. Based on the interview process and scripts, the researcher sorted out various main themes and key words and proceeded with data analysis. After three stages of back-and-forth collation and with the number of cases reduced to forty, finally seven conceptions of extra-curricular activities have been constructed: Accountability, Attachment, Mould, Experience, Personal growth, Liberation, and Balance. The researcher has depicted the specific horizon, concepts and the relationship among concepts, and also compared and contrasted the distinctive features of each conception.
There are multifarious extra-curricular activities in Hong Kong secondary schools. Nearly every teacher participates in the activities. Different teachers infuse extra-curricular activities with diverse meanings

This is a research about the life stories of Hong Kong secondary school teachers. It explores on the process of how these teachers implement their humanistic education beliefs and manifest their humanistic personal qualities, so as to achieve positive education results.
This research adopts the life history research method and focuses on the interviews of five humanistic teachers in Hong Kong secondary schools. Data from the interviews is analyzed by using the categorical-content approach. Such data plus the researcher's personal log are crossed with theories on humanistic education. Results are: (1) positive growing up background of the humanistic teachers nurtured their humanistic beliefs; (2) the humanistic teachers establish a teacher-student relationship full of genuineness, empathy and respect---when adding up equals to love, and such relationship facilitates the growth of their students; (3) the humanistic teachers do experience struggle in their career paths and they have to adjust for the incongruence between ideals and reality, but their greatest contentment is still the growth of their students.
The major finding of this research is that during the manifestation of humanistic beliefs of these Hong Kong secondary school teachers, a theory of "A Touch of Love Lights up a Life" is established---both the students and even their teachers themselves experience the lighting up of their inner energy and grow as a result if they are touched by the elements of love such as genuineness, empathy and respect in their life circumstances. Such growth-facilitating processes that happen in the education setting are highlighted.
This research also discusses the implication of its findings on education reform movements on-going in Hong Kong. Furthermore, directions for future research on the manifestation of humanistic education beliefs in Hong Kong are suggested.

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]

Teaching is a female-dominated career in both Western and Eastern societies. While low salary and social status have been suggested by previous research as the main reasons, these cannot explain the phenomenon in Hong Kong where teachers enjoy high social status and salary. My Master of Psychology research will include samples of Hong Kong and Australian senior high school students, to contrast their gender stereotypes as measured by Bem's Sex-Role Inventory (Bem, 1981), and how these, along with their gender and gender role orientations, affect their views of what characterises a good primary and secondary teacher, likelihood to consider teaching as a career, self-efficacy, and interests in teaching.
The theoretical framework integrates Lent et al.'s Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT; 1994) and research on gender stereotyping. SCCT posits that self-efficacies predict individuals' interests and intentions to persist in a given domain, which has not yet been applied to the context of teaching career choice. Research on gender stereotyping predicts that gender and conformity to gender role norms significantly shape individuals' learning experiences, which, in turn, affects self-efficacy (Toker et al., 2007). Recent research in the Chinese context has found that males and females exhibit fewer and weaker traditional gendered stereotypes (Zhang, Norvilitis, & Jin, 2001).We may reasonably infer shifting conceptions of gender stereotypes, including those associated with teachers, across cultures or time.
In the present paper, I report on the pilot study results from 120 senior high school survey participants in Hong Kong. Factor analyses and measures of Cronbach's measure of internal consistency will first explore the structure of gender stereotyped characteristics. Multiple regression analysis will examine the contributions of student gender, gender stereotypes, self-efficacy, and interest in teaching, towards intentions to teach. These findings will have