In this article Hong Kong's policy on initial teacher training is used as a case study of the interplay between international trends and local policy. Traditionally initial teacher preparation in most countries has been based in higher education institutions. In recent years alternative routes for initial teacher education have proliferated in the United States and the United Kingdom. Meanwhile university-based pathways to teacher certification have been criticised as deterring talented candidates from entering the profession. The authors argue that these trends have had significant impact on Hong Kong's policies for initial teacher preparation. In Hong Kong untrained teachers have served as a convenient buffer to meet teacher demand for many decades. It was only in 1997 that the new Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government announced the policy objective of requiring all new teachers to be degree holders and professionally trained. However, this policy was short-lived. There is substantial evidence that government policy has been influenced by the development of alternative routes of teacher preparation elsewhere. This case study can provide useful insights for policy formation elsewhere.
[Copyright of Journal of Education for Teaching is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02607470802401370]

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]

Girls' education has been considered a site of struggle where ideals of femininity and domesticity are translated into curricula and practices that seek to shape and regulate. In colonial Hong Kong, British mission societies had a significant share in providing girls' education, which was predominantly in the hands of European missionaries in the nineteenth century. The dual mission of evangelising and civilising colonial subjects in the Victorian era of empire expansion constituted a pertinent focus of inquiry in the writing of history of girls' education. Drawing on selected texts on missionary literature and government reports, this article examines in what ways a domestic ideology framed within evangelical beliefs and the imperial gaze interplayed with the politics of race and class in shaping girls' education. It challenges the presumed impartiality in education policies and practices concerning both sexes, and discusses women's agency in re-defining identities and boundaries in a colonial society.
[Copyright of History of Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00467600802368715]

It has been suggested that although the most theorisation about globalisation has emerged from western contexts, the material implications of globalisation have been felt most strongly in non- Western regions. With this in mind, the authors undertake a situated analysis of how two states, Singapore and Hong Kong, are interacting with the broader processes of globalisation through their educational policies. Foucault's conceptual tool of governmentality is used to understand (i) the conduct of governing in the contemporary nation- state, and (ii) how the right rationalities are being inculcated by government to create desiring subjects who will play their part in ensuring national prosperity. The Asian economic crisis is used as a point of departure to show how global local tensions are being managed by Singapore and Hong Kong. The article concludes that both these global cities have adroitly managed the Asian economic crisis to steer their citizens away from pursuits of greater political freedom and towards concerns of material well being. They have done so through a selective interpretation of globalisation, by simultaneously resisting and embracing the contradictory strands of globalisation. Education has emerged as a critical space for this selective absorption of globalising trends.
[Copyright of Asia Pacific Journal of Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0218879030230104 ]

Australia is rapidly moving into the globally competitive higher education market. As a consequence the issue of consumer satisfaction and quality is emerging as an area of interest. This paper focuses on the issue of student understandings of quality by developing a consumer derived scale which identifies the quality variables related to student perceptions with the university experience. The scale was derived from focus groups, in-depth interviews and through an examination of the literature. The scale was tested and refined on a cohort of 351 Australian and Singaporean/Hong Kong students studying business subjects at an Australian University. The refined scale comprised 25 quality variables which factored into four orthogonal components. The mean values of the variables and factors were examined to make inferences about how educational marketing practitioners can be assisted.
[Copyright of Journal of Marketing for Higher Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1300/J050v10n01_03 ]

Through interviews and observing day-to-day classroom practice, this study explores the beliefs of 10 music teachers in elementary schools in Vancouver and Hong Kong. The results demonstrate that the music teachers of the two localities hold similar cognitive beliefs about the essential elements of music education. However, they hold different beliefs about the value or impact of music education on the psychological or character development of students. Music teachers of Vancouver are found to be more student-centred than their counterparts in Hong Kong, and this is reflected in both the curriculum and activities selected for classroom teaching. Though both groups of teachers place similar emphasis on western music, in Canada more classroom activities are based around the student's personal enjoyment and expression. In Hong Kong, meanwhile, music education is viewed as a means of nurturing the student's temperamental development. While students in Vancouver are allowed to express their personal musical preferences in classroom activities, in Hong Kong students are required to perform according to prescribed standard indicators of success. This is probably linked--albeit invisibly--to Chinese Confucian culture.
[Copyright of Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13450600500137182]