There are a number of theoretical perspectives established for studying adult participation in education, but they are seldom examined together in single studies; neither are participants and non-participants examined simultaneously. This study examines the relative power of the major perspectives in distinguishing between and predicting participants and non-participants. Secondary school teachers who were participating or not participating in continuing professional education programmes were taken as target respondents. Results show that the theoretical perspectives of situations, dispositions, attitudes and beliefs in continuing professional education, and social norms and pressure, do not discriminate teacher participants and non-participants and are therefore not good predictors of the participation status of teachers. Only a few factors in the perspectives of motivations and socio-economic background are significant and meaningful in distinguishing the two teacher groups and in predicting participation status.
[Copyright of International Journal of Lifelong Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/026013799293559]

The aim of the present study was to test the hypotheses that parents' academic expectations, their perception of children's cognitive ability, and their degree of involvement at home and school would predict children's academic achievement, and that there would be important differences in this achievement as a consequence of differences in culture. A sample of 158 parents of students from three primary schools (two Chinese and one of Anglo-Celtic origin) in Hong Kong participated in this study. The three groups of parents differed in terms of both culture and socio-economic status. Parents completed a questionnaire about their perceptions of their children's memory ability, their involvement in their children's activities, and expected and satisfactory scores for their children's achievement in mathematics and language. Unstandardised achievement scores in mathematics and language were obtained from school records. Parents' expected scores in these two subjects were found to be the consistent predictors of achievement for all children. Parental belief in children's episodic memory and involvement at school were predictors of language achievement in one school.
[Copyright of Educational Psychology is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01443410601104130]