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.
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How school-based management in the form of multilevel self-management is related to educational quality is a crucial issue in current educational reforms. An empirical study was conducted to explore this issue in a sample of 68 primary schools in Hong Kong. It was found that the school environment of sampled schools could be classified into 4 types: Bottom-level Self-Managing (B SM), Top-level Self-Managing (TSM), Mediocre Self-Managing (MSM), and Poor Self-Managing (PSM). The performances of the school, groups, and individual teachers among these 4 types were significantly different. Some implications were drawn for practice and policy formulation.
[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.10.1.71.26298 ]

Traditional studies of teacher commitment often ignore the effect of interactions between personal characteristics and school environment and the implications of their findings are inevitably limited. Responding to this research gap, the present study aims to investigate the contingency relationship of school organizational health to teacher commitment with multi-level statistical analysis. The study was a survey involving 20 aided primary schools and 423 teachers in Hong Kong. The findings suggest that three school organizational health factors such as morale, consideration and institutional integrity are related to teacher commitment through interactions with the teacher personal characteristics such as position, marital status, and length of service in the school. The result supports that the relationship between school organizational health and teacher commitment is contingent upon teacher characteristics. The interesting findings can provide implications for school improvement and future research.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1076/edre.5.3.249.3883]

The present study aims (1) to investigate the specific study strategies that may lead to a success in Matriculation as well as at University; and (2) to investigate whether these study strategies that are effective in Matriculation also work efficiently at University. A revised version of the Learning and Study Strategies Inventory (LASSI, Weinstein, Zimmermann, & Palmer, 1988) was used and we found that there were significant differences between study habits of students with high academic achievement and those with low academic achievement in Matriculation. However, this was not the case at University. More importantly, we also found that those effective study strategies used in Matriculation may not work at University. These results are discussed in terms of the focus and the academic demand of different learning phases of higher education in Hong Kong.
[Copyright of Educational Research & Evaluation is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13803610500110414]

The purpose of this study was twofold: to examine how attitudinal and instructional variables differentiated 4th-grade students in Cyprus, Hong Kong, and the USA; and to determine how those variables were related to math performance on the TIMSS test. A discriminant analysis was performed to examine how those variables differentiated the students in the 3 countries. The most striking result was that the students from all 3 countries, who were similar to the average students in Cyprus, had the highest achievement within their countries. Thus, 4th-grade students who liked math, who thought it was important to do well in math for their friends, who did not need private instruction, and who had not been taught using computers or small group procedures, tended to be the better students. However, students who were similar to the average USA student had the lowest achievement within each of the 3 countries.
[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.8.1.129.6919 ]

The Hong Kong Classroom Environment Scale (HKCES) is a new instrument designed to assess upper primary and junior secondary school students' perceptions of actual and preferred classroom environment. The development of the scale involved 2 stages of study. In the 1st stage of study, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses clearly identified 4 dimensions of classroom environment: teacher involvement, teacher support, order and student involvement and collaborativeness. In the 2nd stage of study, the instrument was administered to a new sample of about 6,000 students from 13 primary schools and 5 secondary schools for cross-validation.
[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.9.4.317.17813 ]

One widely accepted explanation of bullying, known as the aggressive-motive thesis, assumes that bullying is a form of aggressive behaviour triggered by external stress. However, recent evidences have suggested a different explanation, known as the frustration-aggression thesis, which asserts that bullying is a psychological defense triggered by external stress to reduce anxiety. The present investigation is an attempt to compare school bullying in Japan and Hong Kong and to find out whether the frustration-aggression thesis is applicable in the schooling context of both societies. Data analysis using structural equation modeling was based on 703 girls selected from 13 primary and 6 junior secondary schools in Japan and 2,477 girls selected from 21 primary and 19 secondary schools in Hong Kong. Results of the analysis suggest that girl bullying in Japan can be explained by the frustration-aggression thesis but that girl bullying in Hong Kong can be explained by the aggressive-motive thesis. The reasons behind the different bullying mechanisms are suggested, but further investigations are needed to uncover the underlying causes.
[Copyright of Educational Research & Evaluation is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13803610701702894]

Hong Kong, Japan, Korea and Singapore are the only East Asian countries in the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), but students in these 4 countries outperformed their counterparts in the TIMSS mathematics test. An examination of the student background information showed that there was little commonality among the 4 countries which can be used to explain the superior achievement of their students. The only common background data for the 4 places were their high population density and large class size, which are, in general, not considered favorable factors for achievement. An investigation of the TIMSS attitude data also failed to locate common attitudes that were unique to the 4 countries and which can be used to explain the high achievement of their students. The questionnaire data however indicated that the superior results of the East Asian students might have been achieved at the expense of other aspects of the development of the students. The results also showed that students in the 4 countries displayed relatively negative attitudes towards mathematics, including the lack of confidence in doing mathematics. The predominant Confucian culture in the 4 countries will be discussed in an attempt to explain the negative attitudes of the East Asian students, but it is not clear how these cultural values can be used to explain their superior achievement.
[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.8.1.87.6920 ]

The cultural capital in families, more specifically, the educational level of parents, has during the last decades been shown to be the most important dimension of socioeconomic influence on school performance in many countries. Less is known about the factors that actually mediate this influence. The aim, therefore, is to investigate the relative importance of various mediating factors, as well as the total effects of parents' educational levels, on the reading achievement levels of children in Grade 4. Data in this comparative analysis come from the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) 2001 and include representative samples from 7 countries: Sweden, Norway, Bulgaria, France, Hong Kong, Hungary, and Italy. Variables indicating possession of cultural capital in the families are collected from the home questionnaire. A total achievement score is used as outcome variable. The effects of parents' education on reading achievement are estimated with structural equation modelling. Substantial effects of parental education were found, but the pathways for indirect effects that were mediated through other variables varied between countries.
[Copyright of Educational Research & Evaluation is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13803610802576742]