Teachers' Use of Approval and Disapproval in the Classroom

A review and analysis of the research literature on teachers' classroom use of approval/praise and disapproval/reprimand is provided in an attempt to determine the extent to which teachers typically employ praise in their classroom teaching. There is a considerable degree of agreement across the studies reviewed, carried out in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and St Helena, regarding the ways in which teachers typically deploy approval and disapproval, with some interesting variations. There is little evidence to suggest that teachers, universally, systematically deploy contingent praise as positive reinforcement in spite of the considerable literature testifying to its effectiveness. In particular, praise for appropriate classroom social behaviour is only rarely observed.     

香港教育评核的方法、特点及其对优化内地基础教育质量监测与督导制度的启示

香港是中西文化交融之地,不仅拥有高水平的教育体系,而且建立了科学系统的教育评估方法。本文重点介绍香港目前中小学主要的教育评核制度,包括全港性系统评估、学生评估和中小学校表现评估等,评论其对香港学校教育教学质量的影响。借鉴香港教育评核的经验,实施科学的教育评价对于深化内地基础教育改革,建立、优化符合内地实际的教育质量的评估与督导制度具有重要的参考意义。     

香港地区高等教育学生贷款的经验与启示

伴随全球性的高教财政危机，高等教育成本回收理论的推广以及政府资助高校模式的改变，高等教育学生贷款在许多国家逐渐出现并发展起来。适应高校扩张和收费提高之需要，香港地区的高等教育学生贷款方案经过30多年的发展，已形成一个较为规范的多元化的学生贷款体系。本文在介绍和分析香港学生贷款发展脉络及现状特点的基础上，将香港地区的学生贷款与中国大陆实施的学生贷款加以比较，并根据香港的成功经验对后者的发展提出相应的建议。     

两岸四地“将”字句及其使用情况考察

两岸四地“将”字句的使用频率相差不多,但是语义类型却有不小的差别,这主要表现在谓语动词的选择和使用上：大陆多为[＋强处置性、弱致使性],而台港澳地区则多用[＋强致使性、弱处置性]动词。除此之外．大陆与台港澳在“将”字句在书面语体色彩上还有一定的“程度”之别,而台港澳三地之间也存在“大同”之下的“小异”。     

Teacher stress in working with challenging students in Hong Kong

This article first illustrates how recent social, economic and educational development in Hong Kong contributes to teacher stress. It then presents data from an international study on teacher stress with respect to working with challenging students, i.e. students with behavioural problems. Teachers were asked to report on the perceived behavioural incidence, associated stress and the impacts of the most challenging student in their classes. The relationships among the various perceptions of teachers were examined using bivariate correlation, canonical correlation and one-way ANOVA. To account for the associated stress and impacts on teachers, negative affect, self-critical attitude and self-efficacy beliefs of teachers were found to be more important than the school characteristics. Compared to their counterparts, Hong Kong teachers were found to be subjected to highest negative impacts from the challenging students and have most negative beliefs in working with them. This study concludes with a discussion of the findings and remedies that might relieve the stress among teachers in Hong Kong.     

Group work and the learning of critical thinking in the Hong Kong secondary liberal studies curriculum

This article reports the findings of a one-year longitudinal study that investigated the impact of group work on the development of students’ critical thinking in Hong Kong secondary schools. It explores whether the participation of teachers in a group-based teaching intervention adapted from an earlier study conducted in the United Kingdom (UK) facilitated students’ use of critical arguments in Liberal Studies lessons. In addition to examining students’ critical thinking skills through test performance and the use of reasoned justifications in written class-work, the article also discusses the applicability to the Hong Kong context of the programme on which the intervention was based. In general, the results of the study indicate that group work is more effective than whole-class instruction in developing students’ critical-thinking skills and that students make better progress in ‘teacher-supported’ than ‘student self-directed’ group work.     

Development and evaluation of a Chinese version of the Questionnaire on Teacher Interaction (QTI)

Teacher–student interpersonal relationships play an important role in education. The Questionnaire on Teacher Interaction (QTI) was designed to measure students’ interpersonal perceptions of their teachers. There are two Chinese versions of the QTI for student use, and that inherited the weaknesses of the previous English versions, such as items that focus on class behaviour, instead of teacher behaviour, or that include conditionals and negations. The present study aimed to develop an improved Chinese version of the QTI which is conceptually parallel with the original QTI and with the use of optimal item wording. The process contained several steps, including expert panels and student and teacher interviews. New items were also created based on the Chinese secondary classroom context, rather than only using translations of English items. The final version of the Chinese version of the QTI presented in this paper was evaluated with a sample of 2000 students from 4 secondary schools in mainland China who rated a total of 80 teachers. The resulting version of the Chinese QTI had adequate validity and reliability, and it distinguished clearly between teachers. The predictive validity was supported by the relation between the students’ perceptions of their teachers and their academic emotions in class. Although further improvement of the instrument is recommended, it can be used to study interpersonal teacher behaviour in China and to help to improve Chinese teachers’ teaching practices.     

香港高校师资队伍建设的启示

师资队伍建设是香港实现卓越高等教育质量的关键因素。研究香港高校师资队伍建设的成功经验,从中寻求借鉴和启示,这对内地高校的师资队伍建设有着重要意义。     

How Fair are Student Ratings in Assessing the Teaching Performance of University Teachers?

This paper examines the effects of course characteristics on student ratings of university teaching. The multivariate effects of various course characteristics on student ratings of university teachers were examined by a 5×4×3×2×2 multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) with academic discipline, class size, level of course, type of course, and mode of study as independent variables and a set of six composite student ratings as the dependent variable. Data were obtained from a university in Hong Kong and consisted of 4996 course average ratings collected from 25 departments over two academic years. Significant differences were found in course average student ratings across academic disciplines, class size groups, course levels, types of course, and modes of study. The effect sizes of the largest differences between sub‐groups within each of the factors were also estimated. Academic discipline differences and class size were found to have the largest effect on student ratings, with effect sizes of 0.43–0.86 and 0.55–1.01 respectively. Implications of the findings are discussed.     

One country,two political cultures: What way forward for Hong Kong’s universities?

The review essay introduces and discusses Wing-Wah Law’s 2019 book Politics, Managerialism and University Governance: Lessons from Hong Kong under China’s rule since 1997, in the context of the position of Hong Kong as a formerly colonised Western enclave within a Sinic political culture, and expands on the associated issues. The book recounts on one hand the rise of managerialism and performativity in Hong Kong’s high quality universities, and on the other their enfolding in demands within the Special Autonomous Region for democratic reforms, tending towards independence from mainland China. Issues of corporatism and issues of political stability and control have coincided in disputes over the role and character of the governing councils, over senior appointments, and in relation to the freedoms of faculty and student activists. The One Country Two Systems formula, while broadly implemented, is not infinitely elastic and cannot manage a cleavage over national identity and loyalty. The differences between China and Hong Kong are more deep-seated than a tally of democratic activism and party-state repression would suggest. They go to the distinction between neo-coloniality and decoloniality and the fundamentals of political culture. The review argues that a wholly Western-style university is no longer fully viable in Hong Kong and ways need to be found to develop a more hybrid approach.     

Relationship between teachers’ preferred teacher–student interpersonal behaviour and intellectual styles

This study examines the association between teachers’ preferred interpersonal behaviour in teaching and their thinking styles. A sample of 131 secondary teachers from Hong Kong (n = 94) and Macau (n = 37) participated in a survey to measure their preferred interpersonal behaviour by the questionnaire for teacher interaction (QTI) and their thinking styles by the thinking style inventory‐revised (TSI‐R). Results indicated that teachers in both regions preferred to employ student‐centred interpersonal behaviour (leadership, helpful and friendly, understanding and freedom teaching styles) in the classroom teaching. Teachers’ thinking styles were related to their preferred interpersonal teaching styles. Specific relationships were found between the types of thinking styles and their preferred teacher interpersonal behaviour among Hong Kong and Macau teachers.     

Accreditation in Hong Kong and international peer review

Increasingly, student outcomes assessment is being viewed as a component of comprehensive academic program review. The Hong Kong peer review process is typical of program review in the United Kingdom and Europe. In the second article in this issue, Ruth Green describes a typical U.S. program review process. —Editor.     

Teacher efficacy: A comparative study of Hong Kong and Shanghai Primary in-service teachers

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 version of the Scale (HK-TSE) were different from the Shanghai version (STSE) as a result of cultural differences. Basically, the Shanghai teachers reported significantly higher efficacy than did the Hong Kong teachers. After reviewing these quantitative results, 86 follow-up questionnaires from Shanghai in-service teachers who also participated in the first part of this study were collected. Results of this qualitative part showed that the three most commonly cited factors for the contribution of teacher efficacy were: respect and confidence placed in them by students and parents, the training they received from universities and the experience they gained from daily teaching practice. Though Hong Kong in-service teachers had lower efficacy scores than the Shanghai counterparts.     

中国内地与香港地区译名之比较

香港是中西文化融和之地,中华5000年文化的熏陶,加上150年的殖民地岁月,造就了香港独特的面貌和个性,也创造了香港与内地大相径庭的译名,成为香港地区一个鲜明的文化现象。本文试图对中国内地与香港地区的译名作一番归纳、比较和探讨,旨在寻求更为合理的翻译文本,以适应内地与香港地区进行沟通与交流之需求。     

Teacher alienation in Hong Kong

Teachers’ negative emotions began to receive attention in the Hong Kong context in the mid-1990s. As negative emotions may affect both teachers’ well-being and the quality of their teaching, Hong Kong education policy-makers and educators have used psychological approaches to determine the reasons why teachers experience negative feelings. However, these approaches fail to accommodate the social causes of negative emotions. Therefore, this study investigates the possible social causes of teachers’ negative emotions from the perspective of alienation theory. In-depth interviews with 21 teachers in Hong Kong reveal that Hong Kong teachers may be suffering from alienation (characterised by a sense of powerlessness, meaninglessness, isolation, and self-estrangement) due to their experiences of teaching, their employment status, and their structural position in schools, which are related to the occupational and organisational structure of teaching. The findings also indicate that patterns of alienation may differ between more and less experienced teachers.     

祖国内地和香港新课改的政策学比较

以课程改革为中心的教育改革是世界教育改革的主要趋势,也是我国各地教育改革的现实重点。祖国内地和香港的新课程改革,经过几年的实施,取得了一定的成效,但也有不尽如人意的地方。从新课程政策的实施策略角度,比较内地和香港新课程改革进程的异同,我们应从注重规划、明确责任、整合资源等方面加以改进。     

Teachers' comfort and importance ratings for interventions for preschoolers with AD/HD

The main purpose of this study was to explore preschool teachers' ratings of both the perceived importance of and their comfort levels implementing interventions for children with AD/HD. Participants included 138 teachers from licensed child care facilities. Teachers completed a questionnaire that required them to rate, on a 7‐point Likert‐type scale, the importance of 43 interventions and how comfortable they would be executing the strategy if asked to do so in the classroom. Overall, teachers concluded that the majority of the interventions were mostly important and believed they would be comfortable using the strategies. In addition, findings indicated that preschool teachers' importance and comfort ratings were highly correlated. Teacher variables (i.e., years of teaching experience, educational level, and having a student with AD/HD) were not correlated with, or discriminative of, comfort and importance ratings. The implications of these findings are discussed. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Does Student Language Ability Affect the Assessment of Teacher Language Ability?

This article arises from an investigation into the classroom language assessment (CLA) component of the Hong Kong English language benchmark test for lower secondary (Grades 7–9) teachers of English as a second language (ESL). After some background to the benchmarking initiative in Hong Kong and to the CLA test, the article describes a small-scale study into the effect of student levels of ability on grades awarded to teachers working in schools with differing ability intakes. In the study, a group of ESL teachers were videotaped teaching ESL classes at two different student ability levels, with the two sets of videos assessed by trained CLA assessors. Results indicate that, although there is some variety in the grade awarded to the two different classes taught, variation in grades may well be attributable to individual teacher performance rather than to external factors such as the ability levels of the students being taught. The grades awarded were generally consistent, irrespective of whether classes of high-ability students or low-ability students were being taught.     

New Opportunities for Change in American Teacher Education: Insights From Hong Kong

This article is an exploration of the emerging narratives on learning and teacher education in the United States and Hong Kong, as found in official policy statements and curriculum documents. Particular attention is given to Hong Kong's initiative in implementing an interdisciplinary liberal studies curriculum, and the continued professional development of teachers for this proposed change. This recent trend is used to illustrate the possibilities for a broader vision of creating and substantiating knowledge and learning in teacher education programs in the United States.     

Are health professional competency assessments transferable across cultures? A preliminary validity study

This study investigated if professional competency assessments are transferable across cultures using COMPASS®: Competency assessment in speech pathology, a tool developed and validated in Australia. Students in Hong Kong were assessed by clinical educators using COMPASS® and the usual clinical evaluation forms. Analyses compared Hong Kong data with the original Australian field trial data. Rasch analysis was used to evaluate how well the ratings and score generated represented students’ development of competency. Hong Kong clinical educators’ ratings represented the same seven distinct categories of judgement as Australian clinical educators. The order of item difficulty was very similar for the two samples. However, Hong Kong clinical educators were not rating students in a pattern that reflected increasing competency with experience and very few year 4 students were rated at entry level. It is concluded that an assessment tool validated and developed in one culture may well support valid judgements and yield measures that can be used to judge student competency in another culture. Further evaluation is required to investigate the differences in the judgement of student progress in another culture and strengthen the validity of using its measures to judge students' competency performance.