In the 2012 Programme for International Student Assessment, students from Shanghai, Hong Kong, Macao, and Taipei, where the classroom disciplinary climate of schools was relatively strict, were top performers in mathematics. In this study, two-level linear analyses showed that the classroom disciplinary climate of schools significantly affected student mathematics achievement in the four Chinese economies, indicating that school and economy-level inequality were related to the classroom disciplinary climate of schools. Additionally, residual analyses showed that students in different percentiles within economies, as well as students in the same percentiles of different economies, benefited or hindered differently from classroom disciplinary climate of schools, hinting at shrinking individual-level differences in student mathematics achievement. Most students in Shanghai and Hong Kong benefited from an orderly disciplinary climate in their schools, particularly medium and high performers in Shanghai, while most students in Taipei and Macao suffered from a disruptive disciplinary climate in their schools. Statistically, Taipei would replace Shanghai and top the four Chinese economies in student mathematics performance if all schools in the four had a disciplinary climate similar to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development average.
[Copyright of Asia Pacific Education Review is the property of Springer Netherlands.]

Positive attitudes of key stakeholders, such as school principals, towards a new policy are considered a necessary pre-requisite to implement any such policy. Hong Kong has recently formulated a policy that supports the integration of students with disabilities into regular schools. This study investigated the attitudes of Hong Kong primary school principals toward integration, with a view to determining if these school leaders are prepared to implement integrated education practices in their schools. A modified version of the School Principals’ Attitudes toward Inclusion scale (Bailey, 2004) was used to collect data from participants. Based on the responses of 130 primary school principals, it was found that their attitudes toward integration were slightly negative. Principals who had less teaching experience and who were administering schools with smaller student enrolment were found to hold more positive attitudes toward integration. The variable of "having a family member or close friend with a disability" had a significant and positive effect on the principals’ attitudes toward integration. Copyright © 2008 by Education Research Institute.

This study aims to understand teacher emotions through interviewing 28 primary teachers in Hong Kong. The study employed content analysis to analyze the data. The results were allocated to three dimensions of teacher emotions—student and learning, teacher and teaching, and the contextual factors. These teachers described 78 emotions of which approximately an equal number were positive and negative. Emotions relating to the student and learning dimension are the most intense, followed by those in the teacher and teaching and contextual factor dimensions. Data also indicated that teachers can hold positive and negative emotions simultaneously (e.g., happy yet pressurized by child's unconditional trust) and can suffer from paradoxical emotions (e.g., regarding education reform). Teachers demonstrated different ways to manage emotions contingent on their demographic background. Given the powerful role that emotions play, recommendations for including teacher emotion education in both initial teacher education and professional development have been proposed accordingly. Copyright © 2018 Education Research Institute, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea.

This study focuses on doctoral students' professionalisation as future academics across academic disciplines, using a Hong Kong research-oriented university as a case study. Doctoral students acquire the norms, knowledge/skills, and values required for the academic profession through their learning experiences. The study aims to explore how doctoral students perceive their professional competences and what are the major factors of learning experiences influencing perceived competencies among them. Data collection of the study is based on a questionnaire designed by international team members in a previous project entitled A Comparative Study of Doctoral Education in Asian Flagship Universities. Drawing on data from 490 respondents in Hong Kong, the current study uses descriptive and regression analyses to examine and compare the factors influencing doctoral students' perceived competencies in terms of tasks, ideas and attitudes. The results show that the competencies of doctoral students are influenced by various factors, such as curricula, supervision style and learning culture. Overall, the study suggests that the formal and informal learning experiences of doctoral students must be carefully designed and implemented to foster the development of their professional knowledge, skills and values.
[Copyright of Asia Pacific Education Review is the property of Springer. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12564-018-9530-0]

This article reports a comparative study on the reasons for pre-service student teachers becoming teachers in Hong Kong and Macau. The study adopted a mixed methods research design, with 459 and 137 student teachers completing a questionnaire on teaching motivation and 35 and 15 student teachers joining a follow-up interview in Hong Kong and Macau, respectively. The study found that student teachers in both societies share commonality in their altruistic and intrinsic motivations, i.e. a sense of vocation. The difference in student teachers’ motivation reflects the contrasting perceptions of teachers’ work and the teaching profession in connection with the different educational systemic factors in Macau and Hong Kong. Government-initiated quantitative expansion and quality enhancement in education set the backdrop of an aspiring teaching profession with promising prospects as perceived by the student teachers in Macau. In contrast, the move towards "centralized-decentralization" with a focus on excellence, competition and accountability in education at a time of teacher surplus results in a demanding profession with gloomy prospects as perceived by the Hong Kong student teachers. These differences add to our understanding of how the development trajectories of different education systems and teaching professions influence young people’s motivation to become teachers in different societies. The study also provides insights for initial teacher education and offers suggestions for the education communities of the two societies. Copyright © 2018 Education Research Institute, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea.

This study reveals the perceptions of over one hundred Hong Kong teachers who were asked to reflect upon the implementation of Liberal Studies in secondary schools in response to the latest government review of the subject's curriculum. Questionnaire-based surveys and semi-structured interviews were conducted to probe the participating teachers' perceptions and suggestions in such areas as the subject's objectives, content and assessment, with the ultimate goal of tracing the subject's developmental trajectory. The findings indicate that, whilst the teachers appear to have faith in Liberal Studies' objective to develop students into critical and independent thinkers, they feel that the pedagogical challenges with which they have been confronted have influenced their teaching motivation and support for the subject's mandatory status in secondary education. Further, the potential tension between the challenges they have encountered in reality and the ideal outcomes envisaged by policymakers raises the question of how Liberal Studies can move forward in giving teachers a greater role in educational reform. Recommendations for relieving that tension, as well as the findings' implications for future research on curriculum development in Hong Kong and elsewhere, are also discussed.
[Asia Pacific Education Review is a copyright of Springer, 2017]

This study explores the interrelationships between self-concept, motivation and academic and social experience among students from self-financing higher education institutions in Hong Kong. Although prior studies have investigated different aspects of self that drive various types of motivation in students' academic and social experience, most of them are related to publicly funded universities only. This study aims to extend our current understanding to the context of self-financing higher education, which is an alternative to students whose academic results are not good enough to secure tertiary placements at publicly funded universities. Using qualitative approach and the technique of friendship pair, 26 students from 12 self-financing higher education institutions in Hong Kong were recruited for semi-structured interviews. Data analysis revealed that participants constructed two dimensions of the self: the personal (i.e. the actual academic self, the possible academic self, the spiritual self and the extended self) and relational (i.e. the familial self and the social self) dimensions in the light of their university experience. The findings provide a better understanding of the contemporary university experience in relation to self and motivation among students studying at self-financing higher education institutions.
[Asia Pacific Education Review is a copyright of Springer, 2017]

Hong Kong has been implementing a policy of assessment for learning to counter-balance the strong, high-stakes, summative, and examination-oriented practices of the territory. While the purposes teachers have for various classroom assessment tasks are devoted to this learning premise, their views are bounded by the social expectations of assessment for accountability. This paper reports on a study of the types of assessment tasks used by four primary school curriculum leaders, the nature of assessment for learning in Hong Kong primary school context, and their views of how the tasks could support learning improvement in the accountability era. Results indicate that, consistent with official policy, “improvement” was the dominant reason for using the eight assessment tasks discussed in interviews. However, these tasks also met the functions of “accountability,” consistent with the dominant use of assessment in the Chinese context. It appears that assessment for learning in Hong Kong practice is still bounded by the need to demonstrating school quality through the preparation of students for examinations, which raises questions about the policy’s validity. This paper concludes with factors that hinder a formative learning practice and recommends some follow-up strategies under this improvement-accountability tension.
[Copyright © 2017 Education Research Institute, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea.]