Teachers beliefs about their ability to affect students' performance is an important part of professionalism. This study compared 725 Hong Kong and 575 Shanghai primary in-service teachers on their teacher efficacy. Two Chinese versions of the 12-item Teachers' Sense of Efficacy Scale were used in this study since some wordings of the Hong Kong…

Focuses on the role of primary school teachers in Hong Kong, especially with respect to their treatment of individual learner differences among students. Looks specifically at how three teachers cope with the demands of attention to individual differences, an emphasis of the new target-oriented curriculum. (Author/VWL)

Tested on a sample of 1,365 Hong Kong primary school students from five grades, teacher preference or the extent to which the classroom teacher likes a child in the class was found to both mediate and, to a lesser extent, moderate the relations between children's social behaviors and peer acceptance across age groups. The mediating effect suggests…

A measure of academic parenting practices was developed through parent and teacher interviews and subsequently administered to 91 Hong Kong Chinese fifth graders, who also rated their mothers' restrictiveness and concern, school motivation, and self-perceived academic competence. Children's actual school grades were obtained from school records.…

This study investigated Hong Kong elementary school teachers' and students' attitudes toward cooperative learning. Teachers from one school completed a two-part questionnaire. Part 1 asked for personal information. Part 2 had eight sections that discussed: organizational strategies used in the classroom; frequency of using classroom organizational…

This article describes teachers' and Life Education Coordinators' perceptions of, and involvement in, the guidance and counselling activities in primary schools in Hong Kong. Respondents who completed a survey questionnaire comprised 367 class teachers and 66 Life Education Coordinators from 82 primary schools. The results indicated that guidance…

This paper describes a pilot study which is part of a larger research project into theories underpinning the teaching and learning of early mathematics in Hong Kong. In this pilot study we focus on the relationship between teachers' beliefs and their instructional practice in pre-school and lower primary school. Findings reveal that there were…

The aim of the present study was to test the hypotheses that parents' academic expectations, their perception of children's cognitive ability, and their degree of involvement at home and school would predict children's academic achievement, and that there would be important differences in this achievement as a consequence of differences in…

Job satisfaction is an important topic in teacher education research. Exploring the issue of teacher job satisfaction helps us gain a deeper understanding of teachers' mental state, such as their occupational attitudes, zeal for teaching, and work enthusiasm, which affects the quality of teaching and education. From an examination of teachers' job…

The scene is a televised debate, and the question is how to improve the quality of the nation's teaching force. On one side of the argument, a university scholar argues for raising the professional requirements for entry into the classroom. On the other, a top government education official, waving a thick report from a national teaching commission…

This study looks at the curricula for mathematics, science and literacy, comparing England's curricula with those of other countries based on performance in international comparative surveys. The main objective was to answer the question: How does the content of the Primary Curriculum in England at Key stage 2 compare in literacy, math and science…

This study compared physical education (PE) and recess in two markedly different special schools for children with mild intellectual disabilities; one school had a reputation for focusing on sports (High Sport Focus-HSF) and the other did not (Low Sport Focus-LSF). Data were collected in 24 PE classes and 48 recess periods using a validated…

Physical activity (PA) during physical education is important for health purposes and for developing physical fitness and movement skills. To examine PA levels and how PA was influenced by environmental and instructor-related characteristics, we assessed children's activity during 368 lessons taught by 105 physical education specialists in 42…

Used the four curriculum orientations defined by J. McNeil (1996) to demonstrate how hierarchical confirmatory factor analysis can be applied to measure the meta-orientation construct. The analysis of teacher data collected by a curriculum orientation inventory from 675 primary school teachers in Hong Kong provided clear support for the…

Background: Most studies have investigated college and high school students' epistemological beliefs in Western contexts, with few studies examining how beliefs about learning are related to children's strategies and comprehension in the Chinese cultural context. Aims: The present study investigated Chinese elementary school children's beliefs…