Goal orientations and achievement among Chinese gifted students in Hong Kong

This study examined four goal orientations and their relationships to achievement among 1041 Chinese gifted students in Hong Kong. These students endorsed learning and social goals over performance‐approach and performance‐avoidance goals. The endorsement of learning goals emerged consistently as the significant predictor predicting achievement in academic, non‐academic, and social/leadership areas. Implications of the findings for coordinating different goal orientations for enhancing achievement in different areas are discussed.     

试论英汉商标的选名原则

对商家来说要打造成走向世界的商标品牌,为更多的国外消费者接受,单就英汉商标的选名而言,应该充分考虑商标的显著性并遵循以下原则：（1）遵守国际规范;（2）选择显著性强的文字作为商标;（3）既注重音美又注重内涵;（4）充分考虑目标市场消费群体的文化背景。     

The discrepancy between teachers’ beliefs and practices: a study of kindergarten teachers in Hong Kong

This study examines the discrepancy between teachers’ beliefs and practices in Hong Kong kindergartens and the factors that influence this discrepancy. Three kindergartens, considered by the Hong Kong Education Bureau to be of varying quality, were chosen from different areas of Hong Kong. Questionnaires about teaching beliefs were administered to 35 teachers from these kindergartens. These quantitative data were supplemented with qualitative data gathered during individual interviews with five of the teachers and the three principals. In addition, a focus group of five early childhood education specialists commented on the videotaped observations of the classroom practices of the five interviewed teachers. The findings showed that all of the teachers endorsed the advocated teaching beliefs, but there was a discrepancy between their beliefs and practices. The most significant factors contributing to the discrepancy were teachers’ professional education and their attitudes towards personal teaching introspection. Teachers were also under pressure from parents’ curriculum requests, demands on the children’s academic abilities and expectations for a strong link to Primary One. Enhanced early childhood education training that helps teachers to be introspective about their own teaching practices and beliefs is recommended. Government support is also required to teach parents what constitutes a high-quality learning environment for young children.     

Combined strategy and attributional training for seventh grade average and poor readers

This paper reports on a study examining the effects of combined strategy and attributional training through small-group intervention in a specific reading task context. The training aims to provide instruction in the use of reading strategies while at the same time to convince students that their reading performance is attributable to their use of effective strategies, which is under their personal control. Four grade 7 (13 year old) classes, consisting of 40 poor readers and 56 average readers, participated in the study. Students were randomly allocated to one of four instruction conditions involving different combinations of strategy instruction and attributional training. Instruction was provided in small groups of 6 to 8 students over nine one-hour sessions. Results indicated that teaching poor readers use of effective reading strategies, while convincing them that reading successes and failures were attributable to use of effective or ineffective strategies, not only improved their comprehension performance and increased use of reading strategies, but also reduced their perceptions of learned helplessness.     

Multiple intelligences and perceived self-efficacy among chinese secondary school teachers in Hong Kong

This study assessed multiple intelligences in a sample of 96 Chinese secondary school teachers in Hong Kong, and explored the consistency between these teachers' multiple intelligences and their areas of responsibilities. Teachers typically reported relative strengths in interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligences and weaknesses in visual-spatial and bodily-kinesthetic intelligences. While there were no gender or age group differences, arts/music/sports teachers indicated greater strengths in musical intelligence when compared with language and social studies teachers, and guidance teachers indicated greater strengths in both intrapersonal intelligence and interpersonal intelligence than did non-guidance teachers. Using the eight intelligences as predictors, teachers' interpersonal intelligence was the significant predictor of their self-efficacy in helping others. The implications of these findings are discussed in light of the current Hong Kong education reform movement and the inadequacy of teacher education programs in Hong Kong.     

Screening for Chinese Children with Dyslexia in Hong Kong: The use of the Teachers' Behaviour Checklist

Primary school teachers rated the frequency of occurrence of 65 reading‐related behavioural characteristics in a sample of 251 Grade 1 to Grade 6 Chinese school children in Hong Kong. These behavioural characteristics were in the areas of general performance, reading, dictation, writing, mathematics, language, memory, concentration, sequential ability, motor co‐ordination, spatial orientation, and social/emotional adjustment. Of these 12 areas, 10 yielded scale scores that could distinguish children with dyslexia from those without dyslexia, identified on the basis of their performance in five domains of literacy and cognitive skills. Using a summary score derived from the 10 relevant scales, an optimal cut‐off score was suggested to arrive at a balance between high sensitivity and an acceptable rate of false positives in screening for children with dyslexia. The need for cross‐replication in screening children with dyslexia using the behaviour checklist with different samples of school students is emphasised.     

Disciplinary differences and implications for the development of generic skills: a study of engineering and business students’ perceptions of generic skills

Although previous research has examined how generic skills and disciplinary contexts are related, such investigation has not been conducted from students’ perspectives. Implications of disciplinary differences for the design of a generic skills curriculum have also remained unexplored. In this study, a questionnaire was administered to 502 first-year engineering and business students from a Hong Kong university which explored their perceived importance and competence level of their generic skills, as well as their motivation towards developing these skills. The results of engineering and business students were compared which revealed some disciplinary differences. Substantial differences were found in the importance and competency ratings on IT skills and business students gave significantly higher importance ratings on most generic skills than engineering students. This study will help guide curriculum design that leverages the benefits of interdisciplinary programmes and incorporates generic skills as part of learning outcomes within disciplinary contexts.     

Dimensions of teacher self‐efficacy among Chinese secondary school teachers in Hong Kong

This article reports the development of a teacher self‐efficacy scale that aims to accommodate the complexity of teacher functioning in secondary schools in times of education reforms in Hong Kong. The scale was designed to assess six domains of teacher self‐efficacy: teaching highly able learners, classroom management, guidance and counselling, student engagement, teaching to accommodate diversity, and teaching for enriched learning. The total scale and the six subscales were evaluated based on the responses of 159 Hong Kong Chinese prospective and in‐service teachers for internal consistency and construct validity, and for convergent and discriminant validation with external measures.     

Emotional intelligence,self‐efficacy,and coping among Chinese prospective and in‐service teachers in Hong Kong

Emotional intelligence (intrapersonal and interpersonal) and general teacher self‐efficacy were assessed to represent personal resources facilitating active and passive coping in a sample of 273 Chinese prospective and in‐service teachers in Hong Kong. Intrapersonal emotional intelligence and interpersonal emotional intelligence were found to predict significantly active coping strategy, but teacher self‐efficacy did not contribute independently to the prediction of active coping even though there was some evidence that teacher self‐efficacy might interact with intrapersonal emotional intelligence in the prediction of active coping, especially for male teachers. The implications of the findings for preventive intervention efforts to combat teacher stress through teaching to enhance emotional intelligence are discussed.