Choosing teaching in Hong Kong: a strategy to survive the financial crisis?

Background:?Hong Kong is currently a Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China. It has autonomy over many policy areas, including finance and education. It is a community of seven million people, which has changed its focus and identity significantly over the last 25 years, from predominantly manufacturing to a service and knowledge economy with particular strengths in financial services.

Purpose:?This paper will consider the market for teacher education places and the market for teachers, and explore the career intention and commitment implications of high numbers of well qualified applicants applying for teaching in the context of reduced work opportunities elsewhere, an increasing higher education focus on intake scores and the challenge, for the teaching profession and the education system, of teaching becoming less secure work.

Sources of evidence:?Governmental and institutional publications and data, along with research and survey findings, together with comparative literature underpin the reactions to past, present and possible future effects on teacher education in Hong Kong.

Main argument:?Given its financial focus, Hong Kong would be expected to suffer significantly during the recent financial crisis and that this would impact across all its sectors including Education and Teacher Education. In addition to the financial crisis, other changes have affected teacher education in Hong Kong, including major reforms in curriculum and school and higher education structure and a significantly diminished birth rate reducing posts in teaching, and raising concerns about job security.

Conclusions:?Hong Kong is a very prudently managed economy with substantial reserves and a commitment to ‘small government’ and the impact has been different from many other systems. Places on teacher education programmes remained unchanged. Applications for teacher education programmes however increased significantly during the crisis.     

Unit 9 Do you want to go to a movie?

Ⅰ.根据图片写出相应的单词。1.This is a p of mylittle sister.2.Jack’s brother is a goods.He studieshard(努力).3.ThisisTom’s g,he isveryo.4.Look!Who is thisb?He is verylovely(可爱).5.Mr Monkey likes aand he wants to be anartist(艺术家).6.John doesn’t like thismovie.He thinks it iss.7.The two p lookthe same(看起来一样).8.My father is a Cteacher.Ⅱ.按要求写出下列单词。1.interesting(反义词)2.comedy(复数)3.knife(复数)4.singular(反义词)5.they(反身代词)6.Chinese(复数)7.he(宾格)8.twelve(序数词)…     

Equitable research: a bridge too far?

This paper is written in response to Angela Chapman and Allan Feldman’s research study, “Cultivation of science identity through authentic science in an urban high school”. I utilize this forum piece to extend the call for “awakening a dialogue” that critically assesses the effectiveness of current K-12 science education research in addressing the needs of populations of color. I take the opportunity to first discuss elements of what an equitable research focus might look like. I finish by critiquing and ultimately commending the authors on the degree to which they succeed in demonstrating an equitable approach to the design and carrying out of their study.     

Is choosing to go on placement a gamble? Perspectives from bioscience undergraduates

In the biosciences, a professional placement experience in academia or industry is intended to contribute to a student’s personal and professional training. While there is a general acknowledgement that a placement experience is beneficial for students, recent years have seen a decline in the number of students choosing to go on placements. Using a mixed‐method research design, this paper explores the attitudes that influence the bioscience students’ decisions on whether or not to undertake a year in a professional placement. Other questions considered in this study were whether placements influence student attitudes towards learning and if students achieve a better degree classification and better employment because of placement. Perspectives from academic staff and employers were compared with student perspectives on the added value of undertaking an extended placement during a period of study at university. While our findings reaffirm some of the perceived advantages of a professional placement in terms of learning and employability, it identifies important factors that influence student decisions not to undertake placements, revealing interesting questions on the placement perspectives between the student, academic tutor and employer.     

Institutional Change towards a Sustainability Agenda: How far can theory assist?

Peter A. M. Maassen Governmental Steering and the Academic Culture. Utrecht, The Netherlands: Uitgeverij De Tijdstroom, 1996. Paperback ISBN 9 03521 772 1 Price 52.50Dfl. £17.50 194 pp

M. Cave, S. Hanney, M. Henkel and M. Kogan The Use of Performance Indicators in Higher Education: The Challenge of the Quality Movement (3rd Edition). London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 1997. Paperback. ISBN 1 85302 345 0 Price £17.95 160 pp Higher Education Policy Series 34 Leo Goedegebuure     

The flat world and education: how America’s commitment to equity will determine our future

This paper uses Margaret Archer’s morphogenetic approach to analyze the emergence of civil society within global educational governance. The purpose is to understand the intersection of historical structures with global actors and spaces that have accompanied the globalization of education. Based on findings from a study on the impact in Cambodia of the Civil Society Education Fund – sponsored by the Global Campaign for Education – we first identify the relevant sociocultural, political-economic, and governance structures within which the politics of education is embedded in Cambodia. Then, we detail the relational processes through which Cambodian civil society has been able to join and, in so doing, modify the structures of education governance. The value of the morphogenetic approach is its treatment of time – that is, the way that it temporarily separates structure and agency in order to make possible an analysis of the dynamics of global education governance. While this approach is not new, we suggest that a morphogenetic approach can help in understanding the ways actors come together to create the processes and co-constitute the spaces through which existing educational structures and policies are made and remade across time.     

Honours: a taken-for-granted pathway to research?

In this paper we examine variations in Honours programs in Australian universities and the consequences that this has for students who wish to undertake higher degrees by research after their undergraduate programs have been successfully completed. Our review of universities’ Honours programs across rural, regional, and urban Australia has indicated that there is a degree of variation that is localised as far as each university is concerned, and that there is a lack of consistency in various universities’ application of policies or procedures in the implementation of their Honours programs. We conclude by calling for greater consistency across universities in Australia in the awarding of Honours, certainly, but also suggesting that a review needs to be undertaken as part of national, systematic and orchestrated project.     

“You can go to college”: Employing a Developmental Perspective to Examine How Young Men of Color Construct a College-Going Identity

This article examines college-going identity construction for Black, Latino, and Asian American and Pacific Islander high school students. The authors use Marcia’s (J Personal Soc Psychol 3(5):551–558, 1966; in: Delson (ed) Handbook of adolescent research, Wiley, New York, 1980) ego identity statuses perspective to examine how students develop their college-going identities to consider their post-high school pathways. We draw on focus groups interviews with 153 Black, Latino, and Asian American Pacific Islanders students enrolled in 10 urban and suburban high schools in California. The findings show the importance of being somebody, not quitting before establishing a career or graduating from college, joining the military as a pathway to finance postsecondary education, and the internal pressure to pay for higher education. The significance of this paper challenges the dominant narrative of young men of color not invested or interested in higher education, but highlight how the young men of color negotiate their agency in constructing their ideas and making decisions based on how various tensions and aspirations shape their goals after high school.     

The Entrepreneurial University: a Fine Answer to a Difficult Problem?

The recent changes in the relationship between universities and society and the change of attitudes of governments towards higher education institutions are analysed. The different possible reactions of the institutions to the more demanding attitude of society as a whole are discussed. The authors present a critical view of the concept of entrepreneurial universities based on the work of Burton Clark and on the results of the quality audits of the Association of European Universities (CRE), and offer some comments about their applicability and usefulness to European higher education systems.     

Children's Responses to Contrasting `Realistic' Mathematics Problems: Just how realistic are children ready to be?

In recent years there has been an increasing emphasis within the world of mathematics education on realistic problem solving. At the same time research has shown that children typically remain apparently unwilling or unable to introduce realistic considerations when solving supposedly realistic word problems, though research has also shown that children's behaviour in this domain does vary as a function of the nature of the item, its context and the child's social background. This paper analyses 11–12 year-old English children's responses to two realistic problems. The first is taken from English national tests; the second is a revised version of this item which has been rewritten to encourage a more realistic pattern of responses. Through a comparison of responses to the two items it is suggested that, given suitable realistic problems, many children may be more willing and able to introduce realistic responses in a testing context than earlier research might lead us to expect.This revised version was published online in September 2005 with corrections to the Cover Date.