Hong Kong is traditionally an examination-oriented culture, a legacy of its Confucian heritage. Since the 1990s, the Hong Kong government has shown its determination to make a change to this deep-rooted examination-oriented culture with assessment for learning highlighted as an important aspect in the reform agenda. Although many initiatives have…

Research evidence indicates that formative assessment is one of the most effective ways of enhancing student learning. It is, however, difficult to implement successfully, principally because what is tested through summative assessment has such a powerful influence on teacher and student actions. This book scrutinizes the relationship between…

Western and East Asian people hold fundamentally different beliefs about learning that influence how they approach child rearing and education. Reviewing decades of research, Dr. Jin Li presents an important conceptual distinction between the Western mind model and the East Asian virtue model of learning. The former aims to cultivate the mind to…

As a former colony, Hong Kong's education system has been powerfully influenced by ideas from the West. However, these influences have been mediated by a number of factors of contingency--the most important of which is culture--which shapes implementation, particularly of what counts as successful practice. The aim of this paper is to trace the…

The purpose of this study was to develop greater depth of understanding regarding educational leadership development in the five north-western provinces (Shaanxi, Xinjiang, Gansu, Qinghai and Ningxia) of the People's Republic of China. The researchers used a mixed method approach of surveys and focus group interviews to gather data regarding the…

This article suggests that attempts to date to unravel the paradox of the Chinese learner are incomplete and inadequately modeled, and that the complexities of the paradox have not yet been fittingly operationalized or alternative explanations of research data investigated. It contends that attempts either to state or to unravel the paradox are…

Discipline is a crucial aspect of teachers' and students' classroom lives. Hong Kong secondary teachers, as elsewhere, are concerned with students' misbehaviour. This article examines teachers' constructs of classroom discipline and strategies adopted for behaviour management. Qualitative data were collected by interviews and classroom…

This study used the Rasch model to assess the unidimensionality and item-person fit of an Academic Self-Concept Questionnaire (ASCQ) that is based on the Confucian Heritage Culture (CHC) perspective. Knowledge of the relationship between academic achievement and academic self-concept is particularly useful because academic achievement is…

The education profession in Hong Kong has been experiencing waves of educational reforms since the early 1990s. A system of school-based management has been imported from Western countries without undergoing thorough discussion about the roles that teachers might play in facilitating it. The purpose of this article is to suggest a strategic mix…

This paper argues that the re-traditionalisation of 'wishing for dragon children' creates difficulties for China's current education reforms and informs the disquiet expressed by Chinese-Australians about Australian education. We develop this argument around three key propositions. First, we explore Confucianism and the civil service examination…

The purpose of this case study was to investigate the values demonstrated by an elementary school teacher in her mathematics teaching and what values her students perceived. This research adopted the valuing theory (Raths, Harmin & Simon, 1987) and used classroom observations and interviews to document the teacher's mathematics pedagogical values…

In the past, the teacher's sole job is to dispense his pool of knowledge to his students. The emergence of the knowledge economy and globalisation have redefined the place and role of knowledge in society. It is no longer effective to accumulate knowledge but rather to acquire skills for processing the large amount of data made available through…