The use of Rasch measurement in the high-stakes testing of educational achievement increases at an outstanding rate. It provides the psychometric background for system-wide examinations in Hong Kong, Australian national beachmarking testing and many educational systems in the US. Its use in Computer Adaptive Testing is fundamental to the in-school assessment systems provided by NWEA in the US and the CEM Centre in the UK. More important for APERA delegates is the growing use of Rasch measurement for small and large scale educational research projects conducted in schools and universities by academic researchers. The development of sample independent invariant measures for educational research allows researchers to address problems that remained intractable under previous analytical methods. Presenters in this symposium will provide an international perspective on the use of Rasch scales in projects including student feedback about teaching, gifted students, mathematics education, self-efficacy, dyslexia in Chinese language and readiness for early school learning.

A recent review of research identified two Asian societies that represented 'positive outliers' in the production of published knowledge on educational leadership and management: Hong Kong and Israel. These were the only Asian societies that had produced a critical mass of publications in this field in international journals over the past two decades. The current study examined the nature of the publication corpus from Hong Kong and Israel in an effort to understand factors that may have contributed to this capacity for high research productivity. The results suggested that different strategies may have accounted for research capacity development in these two societies. Directions are identified for future research.
[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/10.1080/02188791.2014.934780]

The authors rank the management schools in Greater China (including Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Macau) based on their academic publications in the Social Sciences Citation Index management and business journals from 2000 to 2010. Following K. Ritzberger's (2008) and X. Yu and Z. Gao's (2010) ranking method, the authors develop six indices to rank institutions from several aspects, including both the quantity and quality of publications. By doing so, they provide a clear viewpoint about which institutions achieve high levels of academic performance in management and business research. They also find that (a) there is still a large gap in research rankings between business schools in Mainland China and in Hong Kong; (b) some institutions perform well in quantity rankings but poorly in quality rankings; (c) the development of the general management and operation disciplines are much more mature than that of the finance and accounting disciplines in Greater China; and (d) most outstanding institutions cooperate with developed countries at a moderate level. The authors state their contributions and future directions as well.
[Copyright of Journal of Education for Business is the property of Routledge . Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08832323.2013.863750]

This paper addresses some fundamental methodological and ethical issues confronting non-Chinese researchers undertaking research in Hong Kong Chinese society. Among other things, it considers problems pertaining to data collection, the challenges of data interpretation, and the implication that this has for research. Whilst the issues are by no means unique to Hong Kong, there are a number of matters related to outsider research that require special attention in the Hong Kong Chinese context, even when the researchers may be acquainted with both the context and the participants. Understanding the context of research, including the socio-cultural context of which the research participants are a part leads to an enhanced understanding of the issues at hand. This paper intends to serve as an overview that may guide future research in Hong Kong. Issues raised in this paper will need re-theorizing in order to provide a more realistic and comprehensive view of the need to re-examine the paradigms that guide research methodology in Confucian societies.
[Copyright of International Journal of Research and Method in Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1743727X.2012.736484]