Professionalism has been a focus of educational study in recent years, with researchers trying to find out if teachers demonstrate certain qualities, mainly external, of being a professional teacher. Instead of focusing on professionalism, this paper narrows its focus to the internal aspect of teacher professional development, examining the development of Hong Kong student-teachers’ professional beliefs, about which the student-teachers hold strong opinion, and which affect their decision-making and are subject to change. This present paper is based on a pilot study involving a total of eight student-teachers. Qualitative research methods, including autobiographies and in-depth interviews, were used to conduct the research. This paper attempts to identify and describe the patterns of development of Hong Kong student-teachers’ professional beliefs, to compare the differences between various patterns and to highlight some key factors influencing professional beliefs. Implications from the study would shed light on future research on the development of student-teachers’ professional conviction.

This paper addresses issues of cultural minority students in Hong Kong. The study involved multiple case studies of nine schools where interviews with principals and teachers were carried out. Findings demonstrate that Hong Kong, as an international city, is conservatively behind in dealing with cultural differences. Many mainstream schools are reluctant to accept children who do not belong to the Cantonese-speaking group. For example, new arrival children from Mainland China with additive cultural capital are generally welcomed by the schools, whereas those with negative cultural capital are often rejected, retained or demoted by schools. Further, children of South Asian decent can only attend one of the seven government-funded schools that cater for ethnic minority pupils. The study found schools in Hong Kong greatly behind in multicultural knowledge, skills, and experience in working with children from diverse cultural backgrounds. The paper attempts to draw implications for future policy.

This study examined the factors associated with the psychological and sociocultural adaptation of immigrant parents of preschool children, in terms of psychological distress, difficulties in managing everyday lives, marital relationship, parenting stress and preception of child behaviour problems. The participants were 261 immigrant parents. They were requested to complete a questionnaire on the above variables. The results indicated that psychological and sociocultural adaption outcome variables were related to one another and key were associated with self-efficacy, social support and acculturation strategies. Implications for service provisions were discussed.
[Permission for limited re-use is provided under the terms of the Australian Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives (by-nc-nd) licence.]

Numerous studies have been carried out to investigate motivation; however, no research has been done to evaluate how length of stay has an impact on the second language learning pattern. This study, therefore, investigated how length of stay places impact on a group of Chinese immigrant students’ motivation to learn English in Hong Kong. It is hoped that an understanding of Chinese immigrant students’ motivation to learn English in relations to length of stay would have implications on current teaching and learning practices, based on the adopted motivational theory and that these would enhance learners’ motivation to learn English while adjusting to and integrating with the new learning environment.
[Copyright © 2008 Samara AltLinguo.]

The purpose of this study was to determine whether physical activity, percent body fat, and eating habits differ in subjects from two different regions, with different social cultural and racial background, but similar in education level. 257 Hong Kong college students (87 males and 170 females; all Chinese), and 213 Malaysian college students (101 males and 112 females; 210 Malays), aged between 18 to 25 year-old participated in this study. Physical activity and eating habits were evaluated by a self-completed questionnaire. Subjects' percent body fat was determined by a body fat monitor (Omron). It was found that Hong Kong subjects had significant (p<0.01) higher overall mean percent body fat (22.02 ± 5.23% versus 19.78 ± 6.83%, Mean ± SD), and were less active physically when compared to Malaysian students. However, Hong Kong subjects were more particular with breakfast, lunch and dinner compared to Malaysian subjects. Interestingly, Hong Kong students snacked frequently and indulged in fast food compared to Malaysian students. The data obtained suggest that both physical activity and eating habits have some influence on the percent body fat in subjects from these two different regions.
[Copyright © 2003 Verlag Karl Hofmann.]

A survey study was conducted to examine the relationship among achievement goal orientations, study strategies and achievement of a sample of teacher education students in Hong Kong. Multivariate data analyses showed there was no significant difference in achievement goal orientations across discipline and programme groups but there was a significant difference in achievement goals between male and female students. The difference was found in performance goal. Analysis of the study strategies showed no significant difference across gender, discipline and programme groups. Correlational and path analysis shown learning goal was significantly and positively related to deep strategy but negatively and significantly related to surface strategy. Performance goal was significantly related to both surface and deep strategies. However, academic achievement was not significantly related to learning and performance goals or surface and deep strategies. The results were discussed in terms of socio-cultural factors and implications were drawn for teaching and learning as well as future directions of research.
[Copyright © 2005 De La Salle University, Philippines.]

Primary school pupils’ attributions of academic success are presented in this study. The sample for the study comprised 1154 Year-3 and Year-5 pupils from ten primary schools in Hong Kong. Pupils’ academic attributions were measured by a 16-item Academic Attribution Scale. Pupils indicated the extent to which they attributed their performance at examinations, tests, homework assignments, and class work to luck, ability, effort and use of strategy, on the scale. It was found that girls tended to have healthier attributions than boys did. Girls attributed significantly more to strategy use and effort than boys did. Boys attributed performance to luck significantly more than girls did. Multilevel analysis showed that there was significant school-level and class-level variance for attributional beliefs. Nevertheless, most of the higher level variances of attributional beliefs occurred at the class-level rather than at school level. Implications for teaching and learning are discussed in the article.
[Copyright © 2006 The Hong Kong Institute of Education.]