Motivation and engagement play a crucial role in literacy development and achievement. However, the construct of reading engagement has become blurred and ambiguous, both in research and in discussions of practice. In order to guide future research and to extend our existing understanding of reading engagement into classroom practice, this study…

Research Findings: With a sample of 390 non-Chinese speaking first-grade primary school students and their parents in Hong Kong, this study examines associations between parental support and students' ideal selves, motivation, engagement, and Chinese reading test performance. Latent profile analysis (LPA) identified four groups of students (low-,…

This study investigates mothers' expectations of and experiences with parental involvement during the transition to primary school. The participants were 20 mothers of children attending 10 kindergartens in Hong Kong. Individual interviews were conducted 3 months before and 3 months after their children entered their primary schools. As they had…

In this research, the relationships among social support, including parents', teachers', and peers' support, goal orientation, and reading amount in English were examined directly and indirectly in a sample of Hong Kong senior primary school students (N = 570) using a questionnaire survey. It was assumed that parents', teachers', and peers'…

Based on the data of Program for International Student Assessment 2009, this paper examines how various aspects of home literacy environment, school climate and students' reading engagement related to their reading performance. A profile of Hong Kong students' three indices of reading engagement -- namely, reading enjoyment, reading diversity and…

Using PISA 2009, an international education database, this study compares gifted and talented (GT) students in three groups with normal (non-GT) students by examining student characteristics, reading, schooling, learning methods, and use of strategies for understanding and memorizing. Results indicate that the GT and non-GT gender distributions…

This study investigated the differential influences of maternal and paternal factors on Chinese children's English as a foreign language development. It took into account both behavioral (i.e. parental home literacy practices, HLP; and children's vocabulary knowledge) and emotional (i.e. parental and children's foreign language reading anxiety,…

This study examined the influence of classroom pedagogic reading practices and out-of-school practices in explaining why the reading attainment of Hong Kong Grade 4 students was superior to that of their counterparts in Taiwan in the 2006 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study. Analyses of scores from 9,301 students (4,712 from Hong Kong…

Reading literacy is the main focus of the international comparative study of PISA 2009 (OECD, "PISA 2009 results: What students know and can do: Student performance in reading, mathematics and science," 2010a) based on the results of which 65 economies were arranged in a league table. PISA also gathers background information which…

Purpose: To prepare Hong Kong students to face a rapidly changing twenty-first century, the Hong Kong Government implemented a major curriculum reform entitled Learning to Learn--The Way Forward in Curriculum Development. This reform has shaped the direction of Hong Kong's school education since 2001. The purpose of this paper is to examine the…

This study investigated the relationships among Hong Kong Chinese students' reading attainment in Chinese and English, their attitudes toward reading, and their self-concept as readers. The sample consisted of 1,232 fourth-grade students from thirty-eight primary schools. Predictably, the students' reading attainment was better when tested in…

This study examined the relationship between students' reading attainment scores and key family environmental factors in Chinese and non-Chinese communities. Six family environmental factors were considered: parents' evaluation of their offspring's early literacy skills, early home literacy activities (EHLA), reading activities involving parents…