This study investigated three orientations to happiness and their relationships with subjective well-being in a sample of 228 Chinese prospective and in-service teachers in Hong Kong. Confirmatory item factor analyses supported a three-dimensional model that included constructs represented by a life of meaning, a life of pleasure, and a life of engagement. These three orientations, especially the meaningful life and the engaged life were found to predict life satisfaction and positive emotions as two components of subjective well-being. Implications of the findings on the relationships between orientations and subjective well-being for helping teachers to promote a more satisfying life to combat against teacher burnout are discussed.
[Copyright of Educational Psychology is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01443410802570907]

The aims of this study were to examine the factor structure of the attitudinal questionnaire items from Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 2003 and to investigate low- and high-performing students' mathematics self-concept in East Asian societies and in the USA. The participants were 24,119 eighth-graders, 4856 from Japan, 4972 from Hong Kong, 5379 from Taiwan and 8912 from the USA. Exploratory factor analyses (EFAs) were conducted revealing a same factor structure across the four societies. The MANOVA results showed that (1) the US students reported a statistically significant higher mathematics self-concept than students in Hong Kong, Taiwan, or Japan; (2) across the four societies, high-performing students had statistically significant higher self-concept than low-performing students; and (3) the US low-performing students' self-concept was higher than Japanese high-performing students' self-concept. The implications of these findings are discussed.
[Copyright of Educational Psychology is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01443410.2010.501102]

This study is concerned with the attribution of secondary students. Causal interpretations for academic success and failure were analysed to investigate the effect of gender, year level and achievement level on students' academic attributions in Hong Kong, a Confucian Heritage Culture. The sample for the study comprised 14,846 students currently enrolled in Secondary 1 to Secondary 6 in Hong Kong. Multivariate analyses of variance found significant gender differences in ascriptions to ability, effort and strategy use reasons for school performance of students who shared a common cultural background. These effects remained after controlling for achievement and year levels. Chinese females in this sample were more inclined than Chinese males to explain their academic failure in terms of their lack of ability and strategy use. Females were also more likely to explain their academic success in terms of their effort or strategy use. Nevertheless, the study found secondary students of both genders and across all achievement and year levels, consistently ascribed to effort as the most important reason for academic outcomes. Secondary 4 students were significantly more inclined than students of lower levels to attribute their academic outcomes to effort and strategy use. Cultural influences are discussed in interpreting the findings.
[Copyright of Educational Psychology is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01443410.2010.518596]

This study describes the validation and interpretation of the Parents' Attributions and Perception Questionnaire (PAPQ) using confirmatory factor analysis and Rasch modelling to report both the construct validity and category structure of the scales in the questionnaire. The PAPQ was developed to reflect the proposal that parents mediate the relationship between their children's social and psychological development, and their academic achievement, within the context of Hong Kong. The questionnaire consists of four subscales that reflect different interactions between parents and their children in relation to their children's academic-related activities, including a Parental Attributions Scale, Parental Beliefs of Working Memory Scale, Parental Home and School Involvement Scale, and Parental Academic Expectations Scale. These subscales were supplemented by a fifth subscale that describes parents' socio-economic background. The PAPQ was administered to 215 parents from four schools in Hong Kong. Results showed that the four subscales of the PAPQ are valid and reliable unidimensional measures of constructs related to parental role in the academic achievement of their children, thereby enabling future research to directly test Vygotsky's hypothesis.
[Copyright of Educational Psychology is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01443410.2010.496900]

This study investigated the contribution of school contextual factors and intrapersonal factors to school satisfaction among a sample of Hong Kong Chinese primary school children. A total of 760 children completed the School Satisfaction Subscale of the Multidimensional Life Satisfaction Scale for Children along with self-report measures of intrapersonal factors (self-esteem and hope) and school-related factors (teacher support, peer support, peer conflict, peer victimisation and academic performance). Findings revealed teacher support as the most significant predictor of school satisfaction across grades, followed by academic performance. Hope was found to be a statistically significant mediator of school satisfaction across gender, whereas self-esteem did not act as a potential mediator except in sub-samples of girls and Grade 4 students. The findings lend support to using developmental ecological perspective and cognitive mediation models in studying school satisfaction. The implications of the findings for future research and educational practice were discussed.
[Copyright of Educational Psychology is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01443410903494452]

This study assessed the dispositional gratitude and its relationships with orientations to happiness and burnout in a sample of 96 Chinese school teachers in Hong Kong and investigated the effectiveness of an eight-week gratitude intervention programme using a pre-test/post-test design with outcome measures of subjective well-being in the same sample of teachers. The results indicated that the dispositional gratitude of teachers correlated substantially and positively with a meaningful life orientation to happiness and with personal accomplishment, and correlated substantially and negatively with the two negative components of burnout: emotional exhaustion and depersonalisation. The effects of the gratitude intervention were evident in the increase in scores on satisfaction with life and on positive affect, especially for teachers in the low-gratitude group. Implications of the findings on the relationships between gratitude and burnout and the effectiveness of gratitude intervention for teachers of different levels of dispositional gratitude are discussed.
[Copyright of Educational Psychology is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01443410903493934]

This study examines Hong Kong students' motivational beliefs, strategy use and their relations with two relational factors in classrooms--student learning community and teacher support and involvement. A total of 2206 Grade Four to Grade Nine students responded to a questionnaire that comprised three instruments, including two scales measuring student learning community and teacher support and involvement in classroom, respectively, and the Chinese version of the Motivated Strategy for Learning Questionnaire. Our findings suggest that the two relational factors could play an important role in facilitating students' intrinsic value, self-efficacy, and strategy use, reflecting some culture-specific features of students' self-regulated learning in Hong Kong classrooms. The implications of these findings for understanding Hong Kong students' motivational beliefs and strategy use are discussed. Finally, suggestions for future research are put forward.
[Copyright of Educational Psychology is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01443410903218844]

Vygotsky speculated that parents play an important role in the intellectual development of their children, and that this role includes the transfer of expectations related to their children's academic achievement. Consequently, different parents can produce different contexts of academic achievement for their children. The participants were 215 Primary 5 and 6 students from four primary schools in Hong Kong, and their parents. Students were administered a test of working memory and their academic achievement was indicated by their schoolassessed mathematics and language achievement scores. Parents reported their expectations of their children's academic achievement, the extent of their home and school involvement, and their educational and income levels. Correlational and sequential regression analyses showed that different schools yielded different contexts of academic achievement. The results support the hypothesis that parents, and especially parental expectations, play an important role in children's academic achievement, and that within Hong Kong different schools can be characterised by different contexts of achievement.
[Copyright of Educational Psychology is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01443410903059024]