The English verb "be" has always been a perceived problem for Chinese ESL learners, however, few studies have been conducted with a specific focus on the interlanguage "be" of Chinese ESL learners. This paper examines the variable use of the English verb "be" of 270 Hong Kong primary school children for developmental…

A Chinese version of the Psychological Sense of School Membership (PSSM) scale was developed to find out the subjective PSSM of Mainland immigrant and local Hong Kong students. Five schools participated with 295 boys and 252 girls from Primary years 4, 5, and 6 taking part. Among those, 264 students were local Hong Kong students, while 283 were…

Gives an overview of the issue of English medium and Chinese medium schools in Hong Kong. The issues addressed are: (1) the two official languages in Hong Kong; (2) government policy; (3) selection of language of instruction; (4) problems in the use of English as medium of instruction; and (5) a suggested solution. (AMH)

In this age of new media, children are exposed to media messages at an early age. What can we do when the mass media exert such a great influence on children? One proposal has been for the introduction of a new school subject: media education. Though media education has not been part of the official curriculum in Hong Kong, some schools, both…

This article reports on a project which involved enabling teachers in Hong Kong primary schools to use an online integrated learning environment (ILE) to design lesson plans to cater for students with different learning abilities. Teachers explored ways of using technology to enhance student learning. A case-study approach was used to collect data…

Discusses curricular innovation, educational reform, and the advancement of information and communications technologies and describes a study in Hong Kong that explored knowledge construction using a computer mediated communication platform called Knowledge Forum. Explains how primary schools participated in building learning communities through…

Reports results of an exploratory cross-sectional study of pragmatic development among three groups of primary school students in Hong Kong who complete a cartoon oral production task designed to elicit requests, apologies, and compliment responses. (Author/VWL)

This study investigates the effect of a science teaching approach--the experimental inquiry approach--on preservice student teachers' understanding of the teaching and learning of science in primary schools. This understanding might be influenced by their prior science learning experiences in schools and in teacher education. In this study, the…

With the increase in prominence of the investigative approach in Hong Kong science curricula from the primary to the senior secondary level, there is urgency for local science educators including primary school teachers to gain a better understanding of pupils' existing cognitive understanding and reasoning ability for performing science…

Investigates the effect of grade level, gender, and musical style (Western art, jazz, rock, Cantonese popular, and Chinese Sizhu) on the preference responses of 3,715 Hong Kong students aged 6 to 15. Reveals grade level and music style had significant effects and preferences leaned toward Cantonese popular. (CMK)

A paper was published in JBE in 2001 which examined the background of the education reform launched in 2000 in Hong Kong, and reviewed existing practices as well as beliefs in science and biology assessment among secondary teachers in Hong Kong. The direction of the reform was to take the emphasis away from public examinations as the sole…

This study investigated cultural differences in self-perception of competence and mathematics achievement in Canadian and Chinese elementary school students. The Self-Perception Profile for Children (SPPC) was administered to 125 fourth-grade Canadian children randomly selected from schools in an urban school district. The SPPC was translated into…

Teachers attending a 5-week in-service retraining course completed a survey asking them to rate their current competencies and training needs in 24 variables (N = 210). Intuitively, teacher competencies and their perceived needs of retraining should be negatively correlated. However, the correlations between teacher competencies and perceived…

The relationships between student affective performance and classroom physical environment, social climate, and management style were studied for 21,622 students, mostly sixth graders, in Hong Kong. Perceived quality of physical environment and class master's expert, personal, and coercive power were the strongest predictors of affective…

This study investigated differences across four countries in the amount and nature of above-average ability and average-ability pre-adolescents' everyday life, scientific, moral, spiritual and religious questions. The participants (N = 975) of this study were fifth-and sixth-grade elementary school students from different schools in Finland (N =…