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 ]

Students' attitudes toward chemistry lessons in school are important dependent variables in curriculum evaluation. Although a variety of instruments have been developed by researchers to evaluate student attitudes, they are plagued with problems such as the lack of theoretical rationale and of empirical evidence to support the construct validity of data. This paper describes a study of students' attitudes toward chemistry lessons in Hong Kong secondary schools. One of the scales in the Test of Science-Related Attitudes developed by Fraser was modified to form an Attitude Toward Chemistry Lessons Scale (ATCLS). The construction of the ATCLS was based on a theoretical model with four dimensions: liking for chemistry theory lessons, liking for chemistry laboratory work, evaluative beliefs about school chemistry, and behavioural tendencies to learn chemistry. The arguments for inclusion of these four dimensions are presented. The final version of ATCLS was administered to 954 students. The results of confirmatory factor analysis indicated that there was a good fit between the hypothesised model and the observed data.
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The aim of this study was to investigate whether, in the Hong Kong context, selfand peer-assessment promote students' self-reflection and enable students to understand their own strengths and weaknesses better. A three-stage assessment strategy was employed in three Science courses at The Chinese University of Hong Kong: (1) students developing assessment criteria, (2) self-assessment, and (3) peer-assessment. These assessment strategies are not common at the University. Education in Hong Kong is often portrayed as having less experience of, and being somewhat resistant to, educational innovation. So, in addition to studying the learning potential of these strategies, the study also focused on the practicality of implementing the new strategies. The results confirm that there are challenges in the present context but also indicate that these innovations to assessment are well perceived by students if they are appropriately framed and implemented.
[Copyright of Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09695940903319729]