Researchers in teacher education have suggested that many of teachers classroom decision-making and actions are based on some sort of theoretical framework which are beliefs driven (Armour-Thomas, 1989; Clark & Peterson, 1986; Marland, 1995, 1998). Such beliefs driven theoretical framework constitute teacher's conceptions about teaching and learning and build up their principles of classroom practice. These beliefs or theoretical frameworks are given various labels in literature including implicit theories or personal theories about teaching and learning. Studies of teacher's personal theories are often conducted by means of qualitative methods such as interview, narratives and analysis of reflective journal about teaching. Quantitative measure by means of questionnaire or inventory to study personal theories are few but they are useful to provide a global picture or profiles of teachers beliefs/conceptions about teaching and learning. This paper attempts to develop and validate an instrument to measure teacher's personal theories. By means of which teacher educators and teacher education students can have an understanding of student teachers beliefs and conceptions about teaching and learning, which is considered a functional way of helping them learn how to teach in their course of professional development. Thus the validated measure assists teacher educators to evaluate the effectiveness of the teacher education program with reference to the identified profile of personal theories of their students. Also, the relations of demographic variables of teacher education students and their personal theories were analysed to investigate if there is any influence of age, gender and electives studied on the students beliefs or personal theories about teaching/learning, based on which implications and suggestions are drawn for teaching education development and research.
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In higher education, student evaluation of teaching is widely used as a measure of an academic's teaching performance despite considerable disagreement as to its value. This paper begins by examining the merit of teaching evaluations with reference to the factors influencing the accuracy of the teaching evaluation process. One of the central assumptions on which student evaluation of teaching is based is that there is a relationship between student achievement and student rating of teachers. However, the findings of the majority of studies do not support this assumption. The absence of a strong link between student achievement and teaching evaluations suggests that there is scope for examining other approaches to measuring effective classroom dynamics. This paper presents such an approach based on the notion of transformational classroom leadership.
[Copyright of Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02602930701292621]

The Research Assessment Exercises (RAEs) in hugely expanded universities in Britain and Hong Kong attempt mammoth scale ratings of "quality of research." If peer review on that scale is feasible for "quality of research," is it less so for "quality of teaching"? The lessons of the Hong Kong Teaching and Learning Quality Process Reviews (TLQPRs), of recent studies on the influence of grade expectation and workload on student ratings, of attempts to employ agency theory both to improve teaching quality and raise student ratings, and of institutional attempts to refine the peer review process, all suggest that we can "put teaching on the same footing as research" and include professional regard for teaching content and objectives, as well as student ratings of effectiveness and personality appeal, in the process.
[Copyright of Education Policy Analysis Archives is the property of College of Education, Arizona State University.
Access via Directory of Open Access Journals: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/]

The study aims to develop an instrument for research on teacher self-management in the school organization. In this paper, teacher self-management is conceptualized as a self iterative process which comprises five stages; namely, (i) the Environmental Analysis Stage, (ii) the Planning and Affiliating Stage, (iii) the Developing and Directing Stage, (iv) the Implementing Stage, and (v) the Evaluating and Monitoring Stage. Based on this conception, the instrument developed consists of five subscales. The developed instrument was field tested in 63 schools including 1,183 teachers. The analysis showed that the estimated reliability and the predictive and construct validity of the instrument were satisfactorily high. It is hoped that the instrument may provide a basic tool for related empirical studies and for understanding of teacher's self-management practices in school.
[Copyright of Educational Research & Evaluation is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1076/edre.4.3.235.6957]

We tested 462 primary students (244 boys and 218 girls) in Grades 1, 2, and 3 from 20 primary schools in Hong Kong. Their ideational fluency was assessed by using 2 items each on 3 types of verbal tasks (instances, uses, and similarities) and 2 types of figural tasks (pattern meanings and line meanings) from the Wallach-Kogan tests. On the average, students generated about 20 instances, gave 9 alternative uses of a common object, listed 11 possible similarities between a pair of named objects, and gave 13 and 15 possible meanings for visual patterns and lines, respectively. Although boys scored consistently higher in ideational fluency than girls on verbal tasks, significant gender differences did not emerge for figural tasks. Significantly higher scores on ideational fluency were evident for students in higher grades especially for verbal tasks. The use of the Wallach-Kogan tests in the assessment of divergent thinking ability and creativity for Chinese children is discussed.
[Copyright of Creativity Research Journal is the property of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/S15326934CRJ1334_13]

The relationship between thinking styles and personality types is investigated within the contexts of Sternberg's theory of mental self-government and Holland's theory of personality types. A total of 600 university students from Hong Kong responded to the Thinking Styles Inventory (TSI) and the Short-version Self-directed Search (SVSDS) that was specially designed for the present study. A major finding of this study is that thinking styles and personality types overlap to a degree. A secondary finding is that the SVSDS is sufficiently reliable and valid for assessing Holland's personality types. Implications of both findings are discussed.
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