School choice gives parents greater power over their children's education. But ever since the Pre-primary Education Voucher Scheme (PEVS) was introduced in Hong Kong in 2007, school choice has become a hotly debated topic. The scheme was introduced to empower kindergarten parents in choosing a school for their children by offering them direct fee subsidies that, in return, could propel education quality forward. Parents in the private kindergarten sector, however, have long enjoyed the privilege of choice, and they have been preoccupied with an intense interest in their children's academic upbringing, even if it means compromising the holistic development of their children. This runs counter to the principles of a quality education. Therefore, the urge to further promote parental kindergarten choice will likely allow parental academic interests to continue to prevail and hence invalidate the PEVS' promise to improve education quality. The result is a unique dilemma between school choice for parents and the promise of education quality within Hong Kong's unique private kindergarten sector.
[Copyright © 2011 Arizona State University.]

Self-directed learning is an important element in the recent education reform in Asian-Pacific countries. This study explores differences and similarities in the self-directed learning of primary students in Hong Kong and Macau. Data from samples of 1,253 students from 10 Hong Kong schools and another 1,562 students from 10 Macau schools who were currently enrolled in primary-3 and primary-5 in the two locations were analyzed. Three-way comparisons (location, gender and year levels) on primary students’ perceptions of the usefulness of self-directed learning strategies were undertaken. The students’ deployment of self-directed learning strategies was also compared. Results were discussed in terms of implications to education reform in Hong Kong and Macau.
[Copyright © 2005 International Self-Directed Learning Symposium Group.]

Are teachers consciously aware of the strategies for enhancing the metacognitive processes of their students? To a large extent teachers' abilities to motivate and empower students to self-regulate their own learning processes is and has been the cause for concern among many educators even to date. Educators must focus on teaching students how to think, how to learn and to take active control over their own learning so that they are responsible for their own learning outcome. In this paper, a comparative study of teachers’ knowledge of metacognitive instruction in Hong Kong and Singapore were examined. MANOVA and a regression analysis were used to examine the patterns of teachers' knowledge of metacognitive instruction. The implications from the findings will be drawn with a view to enhance teacher education programmes.

In the past 15 years, educators in Hong Kong have given increasing attention to the research and development of home and community involvement in education. The roles of parents and teachers in educating the children were seen as separate in early eighties (Llewellyn, 1982). Parents mainly served as the “home supervisor” or “home tutor” of children, like those parents in other Confucian influenced regions in Asia (Pang, 2004). In the school premises, parents usually played the role of audience. After the setting up of the Committee on Home-school Cooperation by the Hong Kong Government in 1993, different forms of home-school partnership and diverse roles of parents have emerged. In research, there has been a significant increase in theses, reports and articles published in local and overseas journals. In this paper, via literature review and document analysis, the changing roles of parent and community in school education in Hong Kong will be examined. The consensus, controversies, and challenges of the various types of school-home-community partnerships will be discussed. The Ecological Systems Theory of Bronfenbrenner (1979) will be used to explain some of these developments.

Recent research in student learning has focussed on areas of individual differences such as the cognition of causal attributions and attributional styles. Studies in these areas have flourished in the last two decades and have received much attention especially within the context of academic setting. Academic causal attributions reflect the ways students perceive and explain the causes for their academic outcomes. It has been reported that causal attributions have influence on students' emotional responses, performance, and motivation depending on the locus of causality, stability and controllability. Research findings have also suggested that causal attributions are related with a number of variables including self-concept, learning approaches and achievement outcomes. This study investigates into a group of Hong Kong preservice student teachers' causal attributions and their implications for teacher educators. The participants' attributional dimensions were assessed by McAuley's Causal Dimension Scale (II) which comprised four subscales: locus of causality, personal control, stability and external control. The results showed that the internal consistency reliability estimates were of adequate value for research purposes. Construct validity was tested by confirmatory factor analysis using LISREL 8 and the goodness of fit indices supported the factor structure of the scale. Statistical results also showed that the participants scored lower in locus of causality and personal control but scored higher in stability and external control. On comparison with other local university students, these student teachers were shown to be less internal in locus of causality and have a weaker belief in personal control. They also showed higher scores in both stability and external control than their university counterparts. It is suggested that teacher educators could help facilitate the development of an adaptive attributional style which emphasizes internality and personal control

Teacher attitudes and practices have been considered as essential in bringing about parent involvement in school education. In Hong Kong, among various home-school links, teacher-parent communication about children's learning has been agreed as the primary concern of both schools and parents. This study looks at the intentions and practices of the communication of primary school teachers with parents. It attempts to identify variables which can predict the effectiveness of such communication. A model which has taken into account the theory of planned behaviour, self-efficacy theory, expectancy theory and role theory has been proposed. Scales for measuring the variables and constructs involved have been developed. Path analyses linking the variables in a conceptual model have been conducted. Results show that a number of variables, such as "the teacher's commitment towards teaching", "personal teaching efficacy", "teacher efficacy in working parents" and "teacher's sense of shared responsibility with parents" have predictive power for teacher's intention and practices. The significance of these findings for enhancing teacher-parent communication is discussed.