This study examines the research productivity of Hong Kong academics. Specifically, it explores the individual and institutional factors that contribute to their productivity while also comparing determinants across academic disciplines. We have conducted OLS regression analysis using the international survey data from "The Changing Academics Profession." We found that Hong Kong academics are highly internationalized in terms of research activities. Moreover, research productivity is influenced by a number of factors, including personal characteristics, workload, differences in research styles, and institutional characteristics. In addition, considerable variation exists regarding the determinants of research productivity across disciplinary categories.
[Copyright of Higher Education Studies is the property of Canadian Center of Science and Education.
Access via Directory of Open Access Journals: http://www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/hes]

Background: In PISA 2009, seven East Asian countries rank high among the 65 participating countries, but some of the differences among the seven countries are small to be of substantive meaning.
Aims: This paper is an attempt to fine tune the comparisons for better understanding of the situation in East Asian. Sample: Data of the seven East Asian countries were pulled from the PISA 2009 report and re-analyzed.
Method: Pair-wise comparisons were made by way of effect size on Reading, Mathematics, and Science.
Results: The overall patterns of differences show that Shanghai-China is definitely ahead of all the others. Korea, Hong Kong-China, and Singapore are similar in performance and form a cluster. Japan, Chinese Taipei, and Macao-China are similar and form another cluster at the lower end of achievement.
Conclusion: Instead of ranking the seven countries with seven different ranks, it is more meaningful to cluster them into three groups to avoid spurious precision. In other words, league tables should not differentiate where there are no meaningful differences.
[Copyright of New Horizons: The Journal of Education, Hong Kong Teachers' Association is the property of Hong Kong Teachers' Association at http://www.hkta1934.org.hk/]

Hong Kong's higher education system is undergoing an enormous change. At great cost, higher education and the school systems that feed into it are moving from a three-year university system that favored early specialization within a discipline and very few conversations across disciplines to a four-year university system to be fully implemented with the beginning class of 2012. This move will provide a framework in which disciplinary study is grounded in broader knowledge that encourages self-directed learning, critical thinking, and an understanding of the role of individual in society. So what are the cultural challenges to attaining these far-reaching goals? This essay attempts to delineate some of them, make some comparisons to the US, and also present some suggestions for meeting the challenges.
[Copyright of Teaching in Higher Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2012.658565]

This study utilized data from the 2006 Programme for International Student Assessment Hong Kong sample to investigate the factors that impact the science achievement of 15-year-old students. A multilevel model was used to examine the factors from both student and school perspectives. At the student level, the results indicated that male students, students from high socioeconomic status (SES) families, students with higher motivation and higher self-efficacy, and students whose parents highly value science are more likely to demonstrate achievement in science. At the school level, the results showed school science achievement differences can be explained by school enrolment size, school SES composition, and instruction time per week. Contrary to the negative influence of school size that was reported in previous studies, our findings suggested a positive relationship between school enrolment size and science achievement. This finding leads to an international discussion of school size.
[Copyright of International Journal of Science Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09500693.2012.708063]

This small-scale study aimed to explore how the reporting and feedback system in an inviting school in Hong Kong attempts to facilitate students' learning and development. In particular, the study examined how students in an inviting setting felt about the reporting system in relation to their own learning and development. Any associations between feedback given to students and their subsequent development of greater self-regulation were considered. Data were generated from individual and focus group interviews with a small sample of Grade 7 and Grade 10 students. The results revealed four key aspects of the school context that students regarded as helpful to facilitate the function of the reporting system. The potential relationship between feedback and reflection, and the roles these play in the acquisition of self-regulation in students, are discussed.
[Copyright of Pastoral Care in Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02643944.2012.671344]