Total influence and mainstream measures for scientific researchers

We propose two new indices that are able to measure a scientific researcher's overall influence and the level of his/her works’ association with the mainstream research subjects within a scientific field. These two new measures – the total influence index and the mainstream index – differ from traditional performance measures such as the simple citation count and the h-index in that they take into account the indirect influence of an author's work. Indirect influence describes a scientific publication's impact upon subsequent works that do not reference it directly. The two measures capture indirect influence information from the knowledge emanating paths embedded in the citation network of a target scientific field. We take the Hirsch index, data envelopment analysis, and lithium iron phosphate battery technology field to examine the characteristics of these two measures. The results show that the total influence index favors earlier researchers and successfully highlights those researchers who have made crucial contributions to the target scientific field. The mainstream index, in addition to underlining total influence, also spotlights active researchers who enter into a scientific field in a later development stage. In summary, these two new measures are valuable complements to traditional scientific performance measures.     

Exploring the Impacts of Cognitive and Metacognitive Prompting on Students’ Scientific Inquiry Practices Within an E-Learning Environment

This study explores the effects of metacognitive and cognitive prompting on the scientific inquiry practices of students with various levels of initial metacognition. Two junior high school classes participated in this study. One class, the experimental group (n?=?26), which received an inquiry-based curriculum with a combination of cognitive and metacognitive prompts, was compared to the other class, the comparison group (n?=?25), which received only cognitive prompts in the same curriculum. Data sources included a test of inquiry practices, a questionnaire of metacognition, and worksheets. The results showed that the mixed cognitive and metacognitive prompts had significant impacts on the students’ inquiry practices, especially their planning and analyzing abilities. Furthermore, the mixed prompts appeared to have a differential effect on those students with lower level metacognition, who showed significant improvement in their inquiry abilities. A combination of cognitive and metacognitive prompts during an inquiry cycle was found to promote students’ inquiry practices.     

Reconnecting Colonial Imagination?: Hong Kong People's Attitude Towards the London 2012 Olympics

A number of Olympic studies focus on the relations of the Olympics with nationalism, globalism, cosmopolitism and Olympism. However, the majority of these ‘-ism’ studies focus on the impact of the Games on national integration in the host countries or cities; its transnational connections contribute to the creation of a transnational society and its global consciousness cultivates cosmopolitism. Most studies do not investigate the ‘colonial (re-)connectivity’ of the Olympic Games, which has the potential to affect people's attitude towards the Olympic Games and the host countries or cities. This study attempts to analyse the concept of ‘imagined community’ by measuring how people in Hong Kong (the colonised) display their awareness, motivation and expectation towards the British community (the coloniser) in hosting the London 2012 Olympic Games at the pre-game level. The results, based on a sample of 312 people in Hong Kong, highlight the multidimensionality of identity among different age groups. The London 2012 Olympics was not capable of creating the ‘imagined community’ to foster a coloniser–colonised reunion, but it somehow provided an identity-neutral platform for Hong Kong people to display situational, conditional or even pseudo-nostalgia for the colonial era.     

Use of comics to enhance students’ learning for the development of the twenty-first century competencies in the mathematics classroom

Abstract

This paper discusses the use of comics in teaching mathematics in the secondary mathematics classroom. We explicate how the use of comics in teaching mathematics can prepare students for the twenty-first century competencies. We developed an alternative teaching package using comics for two lower secondary mathematics topics. This alternative teaching package consists of (1) several sets of comic strips expounding all related mathematical concepts in a lively way; (2) tiered practice questions for learning reinforcement; and (3) a set of proposed lesson outlines with suggestions on how to use the comics for mathematics teaching. We also report how one of the teachers in our study used this teaching package in her mathematics lessons. Her lessons were video-recorded and 11 students were interviewed to help us understand how the mathematics comics lessons were enacted and the students’ perception of comics as instruction. We identified instances in which the teacher tweaked the provided resource to further enhance student learning and incorporated elements of the twenty-first century competencies during her lessons. Through selected student interviews, we also identified instances in which students commented on their gain from the new approach from the perspective of the twenty-first century competencies.     

The quest for an entrepreneurial university in East Asia: impact on academics and administrators in higher education

In the last decade, universities in East Asia have taken knowledge transfer more seriously, especially when the state funding for higher education was reduced while other private funding sources were diversified. Universities in East Asia collaborate with the industrial and business sectors on projects related to research, development, and knowledge transfer to enhance their global competitiveness. This article examines how the quest for an entrepreneurial university in East Asia has affected academics and administrators in higher education, with particular reference to the perceived impact of an entrepreneurial university on academic life.     

The relationship between teacher stress and burnout in Hong Kong: positive humour and gender as moderators

In this study, we report on the relationship between positive humour and burnout among 379 secondary school teachers in Hong Kong, and explore whether the relationship varies according to gender. The moderating effects of both affiliative and self-enhancing humour on each burnout component were then examined. High affiliative and self-enhancing humour were found to be associated with lower emotional exhaustion and depersonalisation but higher personal accomplishment. Further, the results indicated that low levels of affiliative and self-enhancing humour were related to more depersonalisation among females than among males. The results also partially supported the stress-moderating hypothesis, as affiliative humour was found to buffer the stress–depersonalisation relationship in this sample. These findings suggest that schools can design continuing education programmes based on the use of positive humour in helping teachers to cope with burnout.     

Enhancing Quality of Higher Education for World-Class Status

Aspiring to become an international city in Asia, the government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) has been investing more in higher education. In order to enhance its global competitiveness, all public universities in Hong Kong have gone through different forms of quality assurance exercises, including teaching and learning processes reviews, research assessment exercises, management and governance reviews, as well as quality assurance council reviews. In the context of the significant emphasis placed by Hong Kong on the internationalization of higher education, this article examines the major approaches and strategies that the HKSAR has adopted in enhancing quality in teaching, learning, and research in higher education, and also discusses the major challenges for quality assurance confronted by the city-state.     

Emerging education hubs: the case of Singapore

In anticipation of a globalising post-Fordist political economy, countries and universities are increasingly pursuing strategic transnational education and research alliances. This article analyses the Global Schoolhouse, a key education policy platform that aims to transform Singapore into a knowledge and innovation hub by establishing networks and collaborations with foreign universities. Two Global Schoolhouse initiatives are examined—the alliance between Singapore and MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), and the institutional restructuring aimed at re-modelling the National University of Singapore into a ‘leading global university centred in Asia’. We outline some of the complexities and unanticipated outcomes which emerge when nations and their education institutions seek to globalise.