Scientists in Hong Kong are celebrating a partial victory in what is likely to be an ongoing war against proponents of teaching creationism and intelligent design in secondary schools. Last month, Hong Kong's Education Bureau decided to discount language in new science curriculum guidelines that had opened the door to teaching creationism and intelligent design in secondary schools. But the scientists' triumph is bittersweet. The Education Bureau has not revised the guidelines, choosing instead to issue its pro-evolution statement as an annex. And no one expects the few dozen schools in Hong Kong that openly espouse creationism to suddenly abandon it.
[Copyright of Science is the property of American Association for the Advancement of Science. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/326/5952/510.2 ]

The rapidly growing older population necessitates the provision of more gerontological social workers. This study evaluates the social work programs that are offered by a university in Hong Kong, based on separate surveys of alumni and employers. It also examines the effects of alumni background characteristics on perceived training adequacy. The training is found to be moderately adequate in preparing the alumni for practice in aging-related jobs, but there is a need to improve the existing curricula. Implications for the improvement of the curricula and suggestions for further studies are also discussed.
[Copyright of Journal of Gerontological Social Work is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01634370802609189]

In recent years, the emphasis in second language (L2) oral proficiency assessment has shifted from linguistic accuracy to discourse strategies such as the ability to initiate, respond, and negotiate meaning. This has resulted in a growing interest in the discourse analysis of students' performance in different oral proficiency assessment formats. The study reported in this article represents an attempt to investigate students' discourse performance in L2 oral proficiency assessments conducted in the form of peer group interactions in Hong Kong. Forty-three female Hong Kong secondary students were involved. Findings from a qualitative discourse analysis of the students' interaction data supplemented with data from interviews and a questionnaire reveal the emergence of a test-task specific genre featuring recurrent frames of talk for task management, content delivery, and response giving. These frames were characterized by discourse features that seem to be ritualized, contrived, and colluded. Such interaction practices suggest a strong desire on the part of the students to maintain the impression of being effective interlocutors for scoring purposes rather than for authentic communication. Implications for test construct validity and the impact on the students' L2 oral proficiency development are discussed.
[Copyright of Language Assessment Quarterly is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15434300903473997]

This paper examines the nature and socio-political functions of Hong Kong's 'Chinese history curriculum' during colonialism and since decolonization and argues that these functions have resulted in a curriculum characterized by rote-learning and geared towards social control. Students are initiated into the traditional, orthodox view of Chinese history and prescribed moral judgements. Consequently, there is little chance for independent thinking on the part of students.
[Copyright of Journal of Curriculum Studies is the property of Routledge . Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00220271003599165]

A word, even when considered monosemic, generally has a cluster of meanings, depending on the mental representation of the referent by the speaker/writer or listener/reader. The variation is even more noticeable across cultures. This paper investigates the different ways in which cultural knowledge helps in the interpretation of English lexical items. After a brief review of the traditional World Englishes structural perspective, the paper analyses the various ways in which the schema helps in the construction of lexical meaning: it helps to decode the denotative meaning of some words with possible multiple interpretations; to perceive the referential boundaries; to understand the connotative meaning; to modulate meaning, demoting some features and promoting others; to understand the physical elements which contribute to the mental representation of some words; to perceive the bodily movements and other paralinguistic elements which contribute to the construction of the meaning of some words; to perceive the salience of a word within a cultural community; to perceive and predict collocates; to perceive cultural assumptions; to perceive political politeness and taboos; to distinguish transactional language from interactional language, and so on. The study is shown to have implications for lexicography and for English Language teaching.
[Copyright of Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01434630802147882]

This essay explores the nature of the curriculum content of liberal studies--a core school subject in the new senior secondary curriculum in Hong Kong--with reference to the curriculum- making processes entailed in the formation of that subject. The central thesis is that a school subject is introduced to schools and classrooms as a distinct representation of content embodied in curriculum materials, entailing a theory of content--a special way of selecting, organizing, and framing the content for social, cultural, educational, curricular, and pedagogical purposes. Knowing the content of a school subject thus entails knowing more than the content per se; it entails an understanding of the underlying theory of content, which is necessary for disclosing and realizing the educational potential embodied in the content.
[Copyright of Journal of Curriculum Studies is the property of Routledge . Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00220270902767311]

Background: The latest report by the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), issued in 2006, indicated that Hong Kong Primary 4 Chinese students outperformed children from 45 countries and provinces in reading comprehension tests that measured their higher-order reading proficiency. However, the study gave no indication of how factors such as attribution beliefs, motivation and strategy use might contribute to reading proficiency.
Purpose: The purpose of the study was to examine the relationships between students' implicit beliefs about intelligence and ability, i.e. their 'attribution beliefs', and their motivation, metacognitive awareness of reading strategies and reading comprehension.
Sample: The subjects consisted of 120 Grade 5 Chinese students (55 boys and 65 girls) from one Hong Kong primary school that uses Chinese as the medium of instruction. The school represents a typical primary school located in a Hong Kong urban area, with most students coming from low-income families. There was a wide range of academic ability and the average age of the students was 12.2 years.
Design and methods: A quantitative approach was adopted in the research. Students were required to complete three questionnaires and two reading comprehension tests. The three questionnaires measured students' implicit beliefs about intelligence and ability, and their self-reported motivation and metacognitive awareness of reading strategies. The reading comprehension tests measured students' higher-order reading proficiency. Multiple regression analysis techniques were used to examine the relationship between students' beliefs and motivation, metacognitive awareness of reading strategies, and how they predicated students' reading comprehension.
Results: The findings showed that students' implicit beliefs about intelligence and ability, and their intrinsic motivation and metacognitive awareness of the use of reading strategies were associated with their

Background: Many doctors experience psychological ill health. Interns are known to be particularly vulnerable.
Aim: To examine the level of depression, anxiety and stress in interns in Hong Kong, as well as the causes and how they cope.
Methods: A questionnaire was designed based on the themes identified in three focus groups of medical graduates of Year 2004 of the University of Hong Kong. The 21-item Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS 21) was also administered. All 155 graduates of the same year were invited to participate with a response rate of 63%.
Results: Percentages of respondents with abnormal levels of depression, anxiety and stress were 35.8%, 35.4% and 29.2%, respectively. Frequent calls during night shift, long working hours and heavy workload constituted the most significant stressors. Factor analysis of the stressors showed that seven factors could explain 68% of the total variance: multidisciplinary team working issues, clinical difficulties, job seeking and employment, workload issues, ethical and interpersonal issues, adjustment to job rotation and performance appraisal. Holidays, peers and sleep offered the most significant relief.
Conclusion: Interns experience considerable depression, anxiety and stress. The source of stress is multi-faceted, but workload is the most significant stressor. Peer support groups may relief stress.
[Copyright of Medical Teacher is the property of Informa Healthcare . Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.3109/01421590903449894]

This article reports on a qualitative study that explored the prospects for the promotion of collaborative relationships between English as a Second Language (ESL) and content teachers in Hong Kong. At the time of the study, the eight participants, four content teachers and four ESL teachers, were all teaching in English-medium secondary schools in Hong Kong. The study drew upon interview data to examine how the participants' construction of teacher identities can shape possibilities for collaboration between ESL and content teachers. The paper begins by discussing some of the key issues in promoting collaboration between content and ESL teachers, then draws upon the works of Wenger and Fairclough to describe a framework for understanding the construction of teacher identity in practice and in discourse. The framework is applied to reveal the major challenges facing the promotion of collaboration between content and ESL teachers. Implications for institutional change that might promote these collaborative relations are also discussed.
[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/10.1080/02188791003721622]