This article reports on how teacher educators from a university, acting as facilitators, supported teachers in conducting a school-based action research project as a practice of professional development in the context of reform in language assessment in Hong Kong. In particular, the article problematises how the facilitators and teachers negotiated and managed identities whilst being engaged in a collaborative action research project. Data were collected from semi-structured interviews. Critical discourse analysis was used to examine the textual data. A key finding was that identities were neither fixed nor finite in the context of collaboration, but were negotiated within and against a range of contextually salient discourses. A major contribution of the article lies in its examination of the complexities of negotiating identities when educators from two different institutional cultures collaborate. The article suggests that collaboration has to be understood within broader sociocultural contexts to identify the interplay of forces that shape relations, identities, and practices constructed.
[Copyright of Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1359866X.2014.902425]

Research on school improvement tends to assume that school improvement is a school-wide process. Nonetheless, some researchers have also proposed that secondary schools are comprised of subcultures centered on subject area departments. It has further been suggested that variations in the sociocultural organization of subject departments could produce differential results in the learning outcomes of students. To date, however, few empirical studies have examined the leverage offered by this perspective. The current study addresses this gap in the literature by analyzing changes in the learning outcomes of subject departments over a 3-year period as compared with patterns of whole school improvement in 47 Hong Kong secondary schools. The results support the proposition that theory, research, and practice on secondary schools will benefit from viewing their improvement from a perspective that takes into account the diversity of department-level conditions and learning outcomes.
[Copyright of School Effectiveness and School Improvement is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09243453.2014.882848]

Associate (community college) degrees have expanded rapidly in the past decade in Hong Kong, but their value has been questioned due to the limited number of government-funded articulation opportunities available. This paper argues that associate degrees in Hong Kong are not valued solely for articulation purposes, but also for nurturing students' development for future pursuits. This study examined associate degree students' development longitudinally over the two-year curriculum, and piloted the use of diagnostic instruments for prospective quality assurance. Three hundred associate degree students from Engineering, Marketing and Sociology programmes (N = 113, 128 and 59, respectively) at a community college in Hong Kong completed the student engagement questionnaire at two time points (commencement and graduation). Two-way repeated measure multivariate analysis of variance results suggest a significant interaction effect between Time and Discipline and a main effect of Time on seven dimensions of generic capabilities. It was found that students from Engineering programmes yielded more and larger positive changes in generic capabilities than students of other programmes. Implications of the findings regarding the value and the learning environment of associate degrees are discussed.
[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/10.1080/02601370.2014.909539]

This study examines the practical and conceptual dimensions of children's play in German and Hong Kong Chinese kindergartens. German (n = 24) and Chinese (n = 24) children (3-6 years) were randomly selected and videotaped during their free play for 5 min continuously on five consecutive days. Play behavior was analyzed by adopting the Parten-Smilansky play scale. Ten teachers were interviewed to elicit their views on play, learning, and play arrangements. The findings indicate that a significant difference was found between all the play categories of Hong Kong and German children. The most frequent behavior in both contexts is non-playing behavior (Non-Play), which includes completing assignments and onlooker behavior. German children show a slightly higher level in the social and cognitive dimensions of play, compared with their Chinese counterparts. Moreover, there is an association between children?s play and teachers' views on play and, to some degree, the curriculum foci. This comparative study has implications for the curricula currently under reform, based on consideration of whether play should be applied to or removed from the curriculum.
[Copyright of Early Years: An International Journal of Research and Development is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09575146.2013.818936]

This study, conducted over a one-year period, examined the collaboration practices in a large-scale school-university capacity-building collaborative action research project that was designed to help English language teachers develop the skills needed to deal with the reforms to assessment practices in Hong Kong's school curriculum. The study theorized collaboration as a complex construction that must be understood in the context of the prevailing ideologies shaping professional development practices for teachers. Online data generated from the collaborative action research project were analysed to explore the discursive construction of interpersonal relationships. Critical discourse analysis was used to examine the discursive strategies that were used in the emails of two university researchers and two school teachers to negotiate and manage collaboration practices. It examined the complexities of negotiating collaboration as a social practice in institutional cultures in a non-Western sociocultural setting. The implications of the findings for policy, professional development and future research are discussed.
[Copyright of Asia Pacific Journal of Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02188791.2014.906386]

Some educators may see cooperative learning as a Western pedagogy that is difficult to use in Eastern countries with a Confucian Heritage, while others argue that the philosophy of Confucius parallels the elements of cooperative learning. This article reports the key findings of a 2-year longitudinal study that investigated the perceptions of cooperative learning and pupils' problems with cooperative learning in a Hong Kong primary school. A school-based staff development programme was conducted to help teachers prepare students for using cooperative learning in their classes. Pupils were interviewed at various stages of the study, and classroom observations were conducted to see how they worked in cooperative groups in the core subjects. The results showed that pupils' perceptions of cooperative learning were generally positive though they encountered some problems in working together. The results are discussed with reference to the influence of Confucian heritage culture on pupils' perceptions of CL, and recommendations are made for accommodating cooperative learning accordingly.
[Copyright of Intercultural Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14675986.2014.911805]

Classroom experience is shaped by a number of factors. In this paper, we report a classroom observation study in China, illustrating regional variation in students' classroom learning experiences. Through comparing and contrasting observed classroom practices in three different regions in China (Chongqing, Hong Kong and Shanghai), the paper provides an analysis of the variation in classroom learning experiences of primary school students in China. Our empirical classroom observation data illustrates some key differences in the pedagogy, the use of classroom activities, and the implementation of the curriculum between individual schools. More substantial differences in classroom practices are found when comparing schools from different regions than those within a given city, leading us to conclude that regional impacts on student experience appear to be more important than within-city factors such as the location of a school or its level of facilities.
[Copyright of Asia Pacific Journal of Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02188791.2013.860005]

Students have a wide experience of being tested, but their perceptions of assessment are comparatively under-explored. This paper illuminates the perspectives on assessment of a sample of lower primary school students in Hong Kong. It uses focus group interviews and draw-a-picture technique to elicit their views. The main findings are that assessment can bring a sense of satisfaction or happiness, but that more than half of the informants indicated that they had negative feelings in relation to testing. The paper reinforces how students are controlled and moulded by their assessment experience, and its significance lies principally in documenting this phenomenon amongst lower primary school learners.
[Copyright of Education 3-13 is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03004279.2012.689988]