This pilot study is to examine whether it is valuable to implement jazz choral practice in Hong Kong primary school setting. The findings can serve as a reference to explore the possibilities of promoting jazz education in Asian countries or in China. The participants were 70 public primary school students from grade 2 to 5 in Hong Kong. All participants were asked to sing jazz warm up exercises written by Kirby Shaw in their choral rehearsals. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected. Findings were presented from two perspectives - student perspective and observer perspective - in this study. After rehearsals, students were asked to complete a questionnaire related to the response in singing jazz music. Video recording and field notes were captured to observe the behaviour and expression of the participants. Six dimensions of contents were observed during the rehearsal including physical actions, verbal behaviour, expressive behaviour, spatial relations, temporal patterns and verbal records. The results have indicated that it is beneficial to use Jazz warm up exercises in the traditional choral practice in Hong Kong primary school setting.
[Copyright of Music Education Research is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14613808.2013.788142]

The Hospital Authority employs over 60,000 staff and manages 41 public hospitals and institutions, 47 specialist outpatient clinics and 74 general outpatient clinics throughout Hong Kong. It received HK$41.14 billion (L3.475 billion) of funding from the government in the year 2012 to 2013, which represented 92% of its funding income (Census & Statistics Department, 2013). This public healthcare system uses 3% of the Hong Kong gross domestic product (GDP) to provide 88% of inpatient services and 28% outpatient services locally, while the private sector provides only 12% of inpatient services and 72% of outpatient services with 2.3% of GDP. There is a heavy reliance on the public sector to provide healthcare to most of the patients requiring more intensive hospitalization. Hong Kong currently only has about 280 specialists in psychiatry serving a population of over 7 million people, of whom 90 work in the private sector. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) Mental Health Atlas 2011 country profiles (WHO, 2011), the number of psychiatrists per 100,000 population is 4.39, compared to 12.76 in Australia, 10.1 in Japan, 5.12 in Korea, and 2.81 in Singapore. There is a shortage of psychiatrists, especially in the public mental health sector, which urgently needs to be tackled. This article looks at the current trend in psychiatry teaching and recruitment from medical school and the training scheme provided by the Hong Kong College of Psychiatrists.
[Copyright of International Review of Psychiatry is the property of Informa Healthcare. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.3109/09540261.2013.816656]

This article adds to computer-assisted language learning by extending a study on an essay critiquing system (ECS) feedback to secondary school language learners' writing. The study compared two groups of participants' performance, namely the treatment group which received both the system feedback and teacher feedback (i.e., blended learning mode), and the control group which received teacher feedback only. The study was conducted in a secondary school in Hong Kong in the form of an extra-curricular activity after school. Fifty-three students from the ages of 16 to 17 with different argumentative writing experience participated in a series of five writing workshops once a month voluntarily. The participants were assigned to a treatment and a control group based on the stratification approach. Their scores were compared and an interview with the treatment group was conducted. Analysing the total and content and organisation scores of the two groups, it was found that both groups demonstrated statistical significant gains. Nevertheless, the treatment group's gain appears to be more meaningful than the control group's in view of its group composition. The blended learning mode contributes to the encouraging results as revealed through the treatment group's scores, high rating and positive comments on both system and teacher feedback in the survey and interviews. The analysis also implies the need to improve the system feedback on paragraph coherence, workshop design and grading criteria.
[Copyright of Computer Assisted Language Learning is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09588221.2011.630672]

Capitalizing on the comments made by teachers on videos of exemplary science teaching, a video-based survey instrument on the topic of 'Density' was developed and used to investigate the conceptions of good science teaching held by 110 teachers and 4,024 year 7 students in Hong Kong. Six dimensions of good science teaching are identified from the 55-item questionnaire, namely, 'focussing on science learning', 'facilitating students' understanding', 'encouraging students' involvement', 'creating conducive environment', 'encouraging active experimentation' and 'preparing students for exam (PSE)'. Significant gaps between teachers' and students' conceptions on certain dimensions have been revealed. The inconsistency on the dimension 'PSE' is particularly evident and possible reasons for the phenomenon are suggested. This study raises the important questions of how the gap can be addressed, and who is to change in order to close the gaps. Answers to these questions have huge implications for teacher education and teacher professional development.
[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/10.1080/09500693.2011.629375]

Since 2008, outcome-based learning (OBL), a student-centred strategy aiming to enhance the quality of teaching and learning, has been launched as a major initiative among higher education institutions in Hong Kong. When adopting OBL at course level, other than designing the OBL framework, it is also very important to evaluate the effectiveness of the OBL implementation. However, studies focusing on the evaluation of OBL have been rare. In this paper, the authors will report on the evaluation of the implementation of OBL in 17 pilot courses in the English Department in the Hong Kong Institute of Education. Five evaluation instruments were developed, and questionnaire surveys and interviews based on these instruments were carried out to find out both students' and teachers' perceptions of OBL adopted in the pilot courses. The findings suggest that both the students and the teachers hold a generally positive attitude towards OBL, but a number of issues have been raised concerning the successful implementation of OBL at course level.
[Copyright of Research in Higher Education Journal is the property of Academic and Business Research Institute. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://www.aabri.com/rhej.html]

This article is about a qualitative research project concerning a group of expatriates' (TEFL/TESOL English language teachers) experiences in Hong Kong. Data related to their life, attitudes and cultural dispositions are discussed under four different states, namely, Adaptation, Drifting in Global Comfort, Drifting in Global Discomfort and Bitter/Sweet Home. Together, these contribute to their mobility pattern the Global Drift. The study discusses their global experiences and situations relating to the interplay of personal choice on the one hand and changing global and local processes and conditions on the other. It is argued that this is a self-perpetuating group sustained and reproduced by a Global Quality including distinct cultural dispositions, concepts of home and the reproduction of third-culture-kids, who are tailor-made for twenty-first-century mobile work. Finally, the research is situated in the study of cosmopolitanism, particularly in the identification of cosmopolitans and their dispositions. Alternative ways of theorising home (as interactive continuums) and issues related to mobility and dispositions will be discussed briefly.
[Copyright of Globalisation, Societies & Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2012.750456]