Exploring School Improvement in Hong Kong Secondary Schools

Scholars have increasingly sought to understand how the process of school improvement differs among schools operating in different school levels, conditions, and contexts. Using Rosenholtz's (1985 Rosenholtz, S. 1985. Effective schools: Interpreting the evidence. American Journal of Education, 93: 352–388. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) conception of “moving” and “stuck” schools as a framework for thinking about school improvement, this study examines the learning outcomes of 39 Hong Kong secondary schools over a 3-year period. We examine whether features of leadership and school capacity differed with respect to these learning outcomes within the sample of moving and stuck schools. This research in Hong Kong has identified several factors that appear to synergistically contribute to differences in patterns of improvement in learning across different subjects in both moving and stuck schools. These factors include resource management of principals and school capacity in terms of professional learning community; workload of teachers; alignment, coherence, and structure; and resource capacity. This study extends the research on leadership and capacity building as a means of school improvement, in the process elaborating on their impact within a non-Western society.     

End-of-Life Decision Making in Older Korean Adults: Concerns,Preferences, and Expectations

This study explored Korean older adults’ concerns and preferences regarding end-of-life care and the expected role of physicians in the decision making process. The purpose was to assist health care professionals, in particular, physicians, to better understand how to interact with Korean older adults. A qualitative method using in-person interviews was conducted with Korean older adults (N = 54). The seven main themes generated in this study included the following: (a) life-sustaining treatments and hope for quality of life; (b) physician expert status; (c) truth telling and ethics; (d) preferred way to disclose bad news; (e) physician's role to treat, (f) potential misuse of life-sustaining treatments; and (g) priority of patients’ preferences. Overall, study participants generally anticipated a larger role for physicians in their own end-of-life decision making, though some expressed concerns about the outcome of giving such power to physicians, especially in agreeing to life-sustaining treatments. Although culture provides one important clue about expectations, it is always crucial for health care providers to ask about individual preferences and to develop an open communication style to decrease distress. Our findings highlight the importance of understanding concerns and preferences regarding end-of-life care among Korean older adults and the importance of assisting them in planning end-of-life care within a cultural framework.     

A generic construct based workload model for web search

Benchmarks are vital tools in the performance measurement, evaluation, and comparison of computer hardware and software systems. Standard benchmarks such as the TREC, TPC, SPEC, SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, IBM, Wisconsin, AS³AP, OO1, OO7, XOO7 benchmarks have been used to assess the system performance. These benchmarks are domain-specific and domain-dependent in that they model typical applications and tie to a problem domain. Test results from these benchmarks are estimates of possible system performance for certain pre-determined problem types. When the user domain differs from the standard problem domain or when the application workload is divergent from the standard workload, they do not provide an accurate way to measure the system performance of the user problem domain. System performance of the actual problem domain in terms of data and transactions may vary significantly from the standard benchmarks.In this research, we address the issue of generalization and precision of benchmark workload model for web search technology. The current performance measurement and evaluation method suffers from the rough estimate of system performance which varies widely when the problem domain changes. The performance results provided by the vendors cannot be reproduced nor reused in the real users’ environment. Hence, in this research, we tackle the issue of domain boundness and workload boundness which represents the root of the problem of imprecise, ir-representative, and ir-reproducible performance results. We address the issue by presenting a domain-independent and workload-independent workload model benchmark method which is developed from the perspective of the user requirements and generic constructs. We present a user-driven workload model to develop a benchmark in a process of workload requirements representation, transformation, and generation via the common carrier of generic constructs. We aim to create a more generalized and precise evaluation method which derives test suites from the actual user domain and application setting.The workload model benchmark method comprises three main components. They are a high-level workload specification scheme, a translator of the scheme, and a set of generators to generate the test database and the test suite. They are based on the generic constructs. The specification scheme is used to formalize the workload requirements. The translator is used to transform the specification. The generator is used to produce the test database and the test workload. We determine the generic constructs via the analysis of search methods. The generic constructs form a page model, a query model, and a control model in the workload model development. The page model describes the web page structure. The query model defines the logics to query the web. The control model defines the control variables to set up the experiments.In this study, we have conducted ten baseline research experiments to validate the feasibility and validity of the benchmark method. An experimental prototype is built to execute these experiments. Experimental results demonstrate that the method based on generic constructs and driven by the perspective of user requirements is capable of modeling the standard benchmarks as well as more general benchmark requirements.     

Is being gifted always an advantage? Peer relations and self-concept of gifted students

The purpose of this study was to investigate the differences between identified gifted adolescents and adolescents not identified as gifted in terms of social acceptance and self-concept (peer relations, academic, and general). In addition, we aimed to investigate the differences between two groups of students identified according to different identification criteria (i.e. intelligence test and teacher assessment), and whether the relationship between students’ giftedness and the indicators of their social adjustment was moderated by gender. A total of 404 Slovenian elementary school students (191 males; 47%, 213 females; 53%) participated in the study; among them 85 (21%) were identified as gifted. No significant differences were found between gifted and non-gifted students in positive sociometric nominations and social preference; gifted students received less negative nominations and had lower social impact, but were assessed as more socially accepted by their teachers. Gifted students reported higher academic and general but not peer relations self-concept. No differences in social acceptance and self-concept were found between the groups of gifted students identified with regard to different identification criteria. In addition, we found significant interaction effects between gender and giftedness for peer relations self-concept. The results indicate the importance of investigating individual differences among gifted students in future studies.     

Do reading practices make a difference? Evidence from PIRLS data for Hong Kong and Taiwan primary school Grade 4 students

This study examined the influence of classroom pedagogic reading practices and out-of-school practices in explaining why the reading attainment of Hong Kong Grade 4 students was superior to that of their counterparts in Taiwan in the 2006 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study. Analyses of scores from 9301 students (4712 from Hong Kong and 4589 from Taiwan) revealed that independent reading in school made a distinctive contribution to the reading performance of Hong Kong and Taiwan students after controlling for the effects of students’ and parents’ reading attitudes, the availability of supportive home educational resources and student engagement in a range of reading practices. Out-of-school informational reading was found to be negatively associated with students’ reading attainment for both Hong Kong and Taiwan students. There was evidence that reading aloud in class in Taiwan classrooms significantly contributed to the Taiwan students’ poor reading performance.     

The effects of perceived CSR,pride, team identification,and regional attachment: the moderating effect of gender

The aim of this paper was to investigate specific mechanisms of how sport fans’ perceived corporate social responsibility (CSR) of teams could enhance their sense of pride, team identification, and regional attachment. The mediating effect of gender was also examined. A theoretical research model was investigated via multi-group structural equation modeling (SEM) using 317 survey responses. The results indicate that pride is an important mediator of the relationship between perceived CSR and team identification, and team identification was found an important predictor of regional attachment. Additionally, the results suggest that these relationships were much stronger amongst males. In both genders, perceived CSR was an important indicator for enhancing pride.     

An Empirical Analysis of Children's Thinking and Learning in a Computer Game Context

This study explored ways to analyse gains in children's cognitive skills through playing computer games. Eighty-seven children aged from 7 to 10 years participated in a computer game called 'Find the Flamingo', one of Safari Search series (O'Brien, 1985). The game consisted of a set of rules, given with affirmative and negative if-then statements. Development, individual differences and learning were found in children's inferential game play. It was also found that there were already different play patterns from the beginning of the games between the good problem solvers and the random guessers. Discussions were made on the methods for analysis of computer game activity.     

A Possible Mechanism of Stress-Relieving Effects of Spousal Presence and Implications for Future Infant Cry Research

SYNOPSIS

Infant crying is one of the parenting stressors, and our research suggests that the presence of spouse has a stress relieving effect in mothers with high attachment anxiety. Its mechanism is, however, still unclear. Here we will discuss the possible mechanism again corresponding to the commentaries. First, we briefly review the difficulties that individuals with high attachment insecurity face in parenting situation and discuss the possible cause why spousal presence smooth out the difficulties focusing on the role of oxytocin. Second, we point out potential issues in parenting research which presuppose the linear relationship between parental physiological or neural response, and parenting behavior. Finally, we discuss the future parenting research such as children with developmental disability or fathers that has gained less attention in previous research.     

Curriculum reform with a school-based approach: intellectual,structural and cultural challenges

Curriculum reform with a school-based approach is often assumed to offer schools and teachers autonomy at the site level, thus enabling them to develop a school-based curriculum and pedagogies to better fit the needs of students. Over the past decade, school-based curriculum development in Hong Kong has encountered issues that deserve worldwide attention and discussion. By reviewing the experiences of two schools in Hong Kong and drawing on international evidence, this study identifies key challenges and difficulties in school-based curriculum reform in three areas. Intellectually, there is a lack of a strong and broad shared knowledge base for curriculum development. As a result, most school-based curriculum initiatives have been piecemeal, fragmented and shallow. Structurally, many teachers have wasted time ‘re-inventing the wheel’ when developing school-based curricula. This effort has left them without sufficient time and energy to be effective in teaching. Culturally, reliance on school management to steer school-based reforms has prevented the development of a new culture in which teachers have the autonomy to make changes in their daily practices. Without cultural changes, curriculum reforms are not sustainable or effective. This study proposes a cooperative platform that integrates the strengths of central intelligence and school-based initiatives to maximise support for curriculum development at the teacher, school-site and system levels.