The advantages and disadvantages of ability grouping for student achievement are strongly contested, with studies presenting different results. However, much of this research has focused on class-level or subject-level ability grouping. Relatively less research has focused on school-level ability grouping. More importantly, the role of teacher…

The big-fish-little-pond effect (BFLPE), the negative effect of school-/class-average achievement on academic self-concept, is one of educational psychology's most universal findings. However, critiques of this research have proposed moderators based on achievement motivation theories. Nevertheless, because these motivational theories are not…

The utilisation of the RIASEC Theory, based on the Holland Code, has gained substantial popularity in the realm of career planning. Nevertheless, only a limited number of studies have explored the potential influence of the six personality types identified in the Realistic-Investigative-Artistic-Social-Enterprising-Conventional Theory (RIASEC…

In educational psychology, the theories of interest and self-determination have been well studied to find the relationships between learning attitudes and learning outcomes. However, the instructional design and the learning behaviors are the two missing elements which have not been fully investigated in the learning process. Therefore, we…

It is well-documented that academic achievement is associated with students' self-perceptions of their academic abilities, that is, their academic self-concepts. However, low-achieving students may apply self-protective strategies to maintain a favorable academic self-concept when evaluating their academic abilities. Consequently, the relation…

Background: Goal theory research has mostly focused on the unidirectional effects of goals on learning strategies and academic achievement. Reciprocal relationships have mostly been neglected. Aims: The primary aim of this study was to examine the reciprocal relations and causal ordering of mastery goals, metacognitive strategy use, and academic…

The contribution of social context to school bullying was examined from the self-determination theory perspective in this longitudinal study of 536 adolescents from 3 secondary schools in Hong Kong. Latent class growth analysis of the student-reported data at 5 time points from grade 7 to grade 9 identified 4 groups of students: bullies (9.8%),…

This study examines the effectiveness of classroom experiments conducted before the relevant theories were taught. The experiments were used to provide students with first-hand experience of decision-making under various rivalry settings and to demonstrate several key predictions of oligopoly models. Statistical methods were used to analyze the…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore how principals' leadership approaches to teacher professional development arise from school banding and may impact upon teacher professional capital and student achievement. Design/methodology/approach: The case study is situated within the context of school-based management, comprising reflective…

This study identifies predictors of Hong Kong students' civic learning. It has adopted a cross-sectional quantitative design using secondary data from the 2009 International Civics and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS 2009; Schulz et al., 2010). Multi-level analysis reveals that most of the variance in student achievement can be accounted for by…

This study explores how pre-service teachers in Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the United States perceive educational diversity in relation to students' academic achievement by means of qualitative content analysis. It takes cultural psychological perspectives to revisit the attribute reasoning embedded in individualist and collectivist…

The aim of my critical literature review is to identify studies where students are engaged as partners in teaching in higher education and to analyze how tutors and tutees benefit from peer teaching. Thirty studies were included for review. Thirteen countries are represented and two thirds of the studies conducted in the United States of America…

The present study extended regulatory focus theory (Idson & Higgins, 2000) to an educational setting and attempted to identify individuals with high motivation after both success and failure feedback. College students in Hong Kong (N = 180) participated in an experiment with a 2 promotion focus (high vs. low) x 2 prevention focus (high vs.…

To facilitate second language learning, it has become increasingly popular to use a second language as the medium of instruction for content subjects for majority language students. Although numerous research studies have shown the advantages of such kind of programs in North America and Europe, those investigating English as the Medium of…

The internal/external frame of reference (I/E) model and dimensional comparison theory posit paradoxical relations between achievement (ACH) and self-concept (SC) in mathematics (M) and verbal (V) domains; ACH in each domain positively affects SC in the matching domain (e.g., MACH to MSC) but negatively in the nonmatching domain (e.g., MACH to…