Discipline is a crucial aspect of teachers' and students' classroom lives. Hong Kong secondary teachers, as elsewhere, are concerned with students' misbehaviour. This article examines teachers' constructs of classroom discipline and strategies adopted for behaviour management. Qualitative data were collected by interviews and classroom observation. Sixty teachers were involved. Eighteen classrooms were observed. The influence of the three schools of classic Chinese philosophy, Confucianism, Taoism and Legalism, emerged as a main theme from the data. It was prominent as their key principles were incorporated into the teachers' personal system of classroom discipline. The findings illuminate the influence of Chinese culture in Hong Kong classrooms. Implications for the promotion of culturally responsive classrooms and the development of educational policies on pastoral care are drawn.
[Copyright of Pastoral Care in Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0122.2007.00406.x]

In September 1998, the Education Department of the fledgling Hong Kong Special Administrative Region implemented a controversial medium-of-instruction policy which compelled around three-quarters of the territory's hitherto English-medium secondary schools to switch to Chinese-medium teaching in Forms 1–3 (years 7–9). Only 112 schools were permitted to remain English-medium, but only on the condition that their content-area teachers make consistent use of English as the language of classroom instruction and interaction rather than, as had been the case in the last two decades of colonial rule, a mixture of Cantonese and English. This article presents the findings of a study which sought to determine the extent to which the post-colonial government's language policy has been translated into classroom practice in the reformed Chinese and English streams since 1998. The findings were derived from a questionnaire survey of a sample of undergraduates from the first two cohorts to complete their studies in the reformed Chinese and English streams, together with semi-structured interviews with students and teachers currently studying and teaching in the two streams. The findings indicate that teachers in both the Chinese and English streams have found it difficult to fully implement the new policy in their classrooms.
[Copyright of Research Papers in Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02671520802172461]

An examination of the literature suggests that universities play a part in developing generic capabilities needed nowadays for societies, through immersing students in a stimulating campus environment. Part time students, though, spend less time on campus than their full time counterparts, and far less time than on-campus residents, so could be expected to experience a less rich study environment. It might, therefore, be questioned whether there is a mechanism by which universities can influence to any great extent the development of these capabilities in part time students. The aim of this study was to determine the mechanism by which the study environment influences the development of eight qualities for part time students. An instrument was developed to seek the perceptions of the development of the eight capabilities and of eight variables identified as important elements in the part time study environment. The sample consisted of 1149 graduates from part time programmes of one university in Hong Kong. The inter-relationship of the 16 scales was then examined through a three-step procedure by utilizing structural equation modeling. The result showed that there were a number of significant paths between factors on the study environment side of the model and latent factors linking the eight capabilities. The resulting model showed that there were viable mechanisms by which the part time study environment can influence the development of these generic capabilities through the establishment of relationships between staff and students and between student peers, and through producing an atmosphere conducive to interaction in part time study.
[Copyright of Journal of Further and Higher Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03098870500103101]

After the resumption of sovereignty in 1997 mother tongue education in Hong Kong, though it began with the good intention of national reintegration, politi-cally, socially, culturally and educationally, has escalated the tensions and contradic-tions of the politics of bilingualism in its implementation. The government policy of bi-literacy and trilingualism addresses, rather than resolves, the problems of hegemonic struggle among different social groups in the society, and between the indigenous elite class and national ruling elites at both the local and national level. A reproduction analysis is conducted to examine the events pertinent to the language shift of English as a medium of instruction (EMI) to Chinese as a medium of instruction (CMI), with particular emphasis on controversial issues such as parental choice, antagonism of elite classes, and group politics in the face of the internationalisation of English under globalised developments of Information and Communications Technologies (ICT). English, a colonising language in the past and now a world language for changes in ICT, remains problematic for Hong Kong's language policy undergoing decolonisation and internationalisation in its early post-transitional years. Putonghua, the national lan-guage of China, challenging Cantonese, the regional dialect, as the formal and high Chinese language of the society, has added complexities to the discourse of polemical mother tongue education under the 'one country, two systems' framework practised in Hong Kong.
[Copyright of Compare: A Journal of Comparative Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0305792032000107786]

The expansion in the number of people entering higher education has resulted in a substantial increase in the proportion of students enrolling in nontraditional modes, such as part-time study. This study examined the question of whether part-time study curtails the development of the types of intellectual capabilities needed for a knowledge-based economy, because the students would have markedly less exposure to a stimulating campus environment than their full-time counterparts. Graduates from discrete full- and part-time programs from 1 university in Hong Kong completed a survey seeking perceptions of the nurturing of a range of capabilities, together with measures of teacher-student relationships and type of teaching experienced. Two hypotheses were tested by structural equation modeling: (a) the same mechanism for capability development operated for full- and part-time modes and (b) the principal element of the mechanism was the nature of teaching and the quality of teacher-student interaction. Hypothesis 1 was supported because configural invariance between hypothesized models for capability development between the 2 modes was found. Hypothesis 2 was also supported because the models showed that the principal influence on capability development came from teaching for understanding, through promoting active learning experiences and the degree and quality of teacher-student interaction.
[Copyright of Structural Equation Modeling is the property of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15328007sem1302_6]

This article examines colonial language policies and practices at the government Central School, Hong Kong - the so-called Eton of the East - in the second half of the nineteenth century. The article, which draws on a range of unpublished primary sources, seeks to enhance our knowledge of an important episode in Hong Kong's educational history and, in so doing, illuminate our understanding of British attitudes towards the learning and use of English in the empire. The article is divided into three main sections. The first section analyses the nature and purposes of the scheme to 'centralise' government-sponsored English teaching in a flagship school in the early 1860s. The second section investigates the roles of the English and Chinese languages in the colonial curriculum and the approaches to the teaching of English adopted by the school's founding Headmaster, Frederick Stewart. The final section examines the reform of the Central School in the late nineteenth century.
[Copyright of Language and Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.2167/le744.0]

This article examines the attitudes of the colonial and metropolitan governments towards the promotion of English-language education on Hong Kong Island between 1842 and 1860. The study, which draws on a range of unpublished primary sources, was conducted in response to Whitehead's recent call for detailed case studies of colonial education policies. This article explores, within the context of Hong Kong, a centrally important aspect of education in the Empire, and one that has been the subject of surprisingly little archival research: British policies towards the teaching and learning of English as a second language. The article begins by analysing the political, economic and demographic forces that influenced the study and use of English in Hong Kong during the 1840s and 1850s, and then moves on to examine language policies and practices in the colony's mission schools, with a particular focus on the Morrison Education Society School, the first Western school to be established on the Island after the British occupation. The final section analyses the introduction of English teaching in the government vernacular schools in the early 1850s.
[Copyright of History of Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00467600600745395]

In September 1998, Hong Kong's Education Department introduced the first stage of a controversial language policy which, when fully implemented, will bring about a fundamental change in the roles of the English and Chinese languages in the territory's education system at secondary level. The new policy, which was announced shortly after the transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong from Britain to China in 1997, stipulates that the majority (around 300) of the territory's English-medium schools should adopt Chinese as the medium of instruction (MOI). Only 114 schools have been allowed to 'continue' teaching in English. In the community-wide debate which followed the announcement of the policy, reference was frequently made in the media to the fact that the select group of English schools would 'retain' English as the MOI, while those English schools which failed to receive permission to 'continue' using English would be forced to 'switch' from English to Chinese. This paper, which examines the language of oral communication in the English-medium stream prior to the introduction of the new policy, assesses the changes which teachers and students in the English schools and former English (i.e. now Chinese) schools will need to make in order to implement the new policy.
[Copyright of Research Papers in Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02671520110084030]