This study is part of a cross-cultural investigation that was initiated in Sweden followed by studies in Australia and Singapore. This paper shows how a phenomenographic approach may be used to reveal the qualitatively different ways in which 40 students in Hong Kong primary and secondary schools experience and understand the phenomenon of graphic representations of quantitative data. An outcome space depicting four variations of the children's understanding are revealed.
[Copyright of Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0031383990430102]

Promoting social integration and meaning derived from activities can be effective approaches to facilitating basic and advanced development among young participants in the Summer Youth Program of Hong Kong. Its rationale rests on the humanist perspective, which emphasizes the individual's deriving meaning and maintaining affiliation with people. To examine the effects of these experiences in the program, the study employed a pre-post design to survey 799 adolescent participants' experiences with the program and their basic (more emphasis on potential. skill, and social well-being) and advanced (more emphasis on civic responsibility, volunteerism, and transcendence) development. Results reveal that experience of the social integration approach tended to increase young participants' basic development, whereas experience of meaning in program activities appeared to induce advanced development.
[Copyright of Journal of Social Service Research is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1300/J079v31n02_01]

The responses of 712 high achieving and low achieving students at the Open University of Hong Kong were analysed to investigate gender differences in factors that contribute to successful achievement in distance education. The analysis indicated a number of gender differences, including in the areas of organisation and use of study materials, confidence about studies, and independent versus collaborative study. Based on these, some questions have been raised about the need to develop some different treatment for male and female students in order to maximise the achievement of both groups.
[Copyright of Open Learning is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02680510120050307]

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) represent a crucial force for cultural change in both education and society and possible transitions between old and new learning as well as social values. This is especially so in East Asia, where the young have informally embraced ICTs but learn in formal contexts often still dominated by traditional transmission models of learning rather than the new learner-centred theories which inform policy imperatives for innovation and reform. Educational contexts like Singapore and Hong Kong are particularly exemplary because they have been so progressive in policy initiatives for ICT integration and reform in formal education, imperatives which conflict in practice with still dominant traditional learning expectations, teaching practices and models of assessment. As typified by such contexts, this paper investigates how the pedagogical dilemmas of a tension between old and new models of learning need to be understood and approached in terms of related and overlapping institutional and social dilemmas of change.
[Copyright of Globalisation, Societies & Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1476772042000252470]

This paper examines the extent of gender differences, and discusses the role of gender in musical instrument learning. It focuses on the collective instrumental experiences of 1493 Chinese students (774 boys and 719 girls attending grades 7–13) within Western and non-Western musical traditions in Hong Kong. The discussion draws attention to gender differences in the learning of Chinese and Western musical instruments, in musical interest and instrumental learning, and in the reasons why students learn or do not learn musical instruments. The paper argues that, while female and male students exhibit different attitudes towards the types of instruments learnt, significant correlations exist between their interest in music and parental support for their instrumental learning. Gender is brought to the fore by the pedagogical actions of the teacher, the mass media and by parental efforts to reduce gender bias and stereotypes through school, public and family education.
[Copyright of Gender & Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09540250802537596]