The junior secondary history curricula in Hong Kong and Shanghai: a comparative study

Since 1997, Hong Kong's reintegration with China has been founded on the principle of ‘One Country, Two Systems’, which serves to guarantee the sustainability of the capitalist system in Hong Kong under the rule of the socialist motherland. This paper is an intra‐cultural and inter‐regional comparative study of the curricula of two systems (socialist and capitalist) under one country, using the junior secondary History curricula in Shanghai and Hong Kong as a case study. In addition to tracing the differences and similarities, divergences and convergences in the junior secondary History curricula of the two systems, the paper also generates proposals for the future improvement of History education in both cities.     

Educational Usage of Mobile Devices: Differences Between Postgraduate and Undergraduate Students

The rapid increase of smartphone usage in recent years has provided students the opportunity to participate in mobile learning (m-learning) anywhere, anytime. Academic institutions are also following this trend to launch many m-learning services. This article investigates the differences of the user needs between undergraduate (UG) and postgraduate (PG) students though an online survey with 140 Library Information Systems (LIS) subjects in a Japanese university in order to provide solid foundations for future m-learning studies. We find that UG and PG students do not show significant differences in adopting m-learning by smartphones despite the fact that they have different learning patterns. The m-learning frequencies of smartphones generally range from weekly to monthly, where using search engines is the most frequent, and reading academic resources is the least frequent. They tend to use these services for handling their daily routines (such as search engine, social networks) rather than their academic activities (such as using online databases to search for academic materials). Further, the results also show that content displaying issues (e.g., small display screen, text unable to enlarge) are barriers for most subjects in using these m-learning services.     

论民族地区人口与经济发展问题

我国民族地区的人口增长状况与这些地区的经济发展有着紧密联系，合理调节民族地区的人口分布、控制民族地区的人口增长，会极大地推动本地区经济的快速稳定增长。     

FPGA-based acceleration of Davidon-Fletcher-Powell quasi-Newton optimization method

Quasi-Newton methods are the most widely used methods to find local maxima and minima of functions in various engineering practices. However, they involve a large amount of matrix and vector operations, which are computationally intensive and require a long processing time. Recently, with the increasing density and arithmetic cores, field programmable gate array (FPGA) has become an attractive alternative to the acceleration of scientific computation. This paper aims to accelerate Davidon-Fletcher-Powell quasi-Newton (DFP-QN) method by proposing a customized and pipelined hardware implementation on FPGAs. Experimental results demonstrate that compared with a software implementation, a speed-up of up to 17 times can be achieved by the proposed hardware implementation.     

Directions for the future of schooling in Hong Kong: Vision and reality in a post-colonial society

The study reported here used the OECD scenarios on the future of schooling to probe the views of a sample of educators identified as having the potential to influence education policy formation in Hong Kong. The results indicated that among this sample, there were multiple perspectives on the future of schooling and these were related to the very public education reform agenda that was currently being implemented in Hong Kong schools. The future of schooling was seen to be dependent on the role of the political process in articulating a clear vision, school leadership and teacher capacity. Lack of any one of these was seen as an impediment to achieving change in Hong Kong schools.     

基于AT89S51库温系统的设计

为了精确地测量与调节仓库的温度,提高仓库的管理质量,本文设计了一个温度调控智能化系统。在主控单元中采用了AT89S51单片机;在温度测量单元中应用DS18B20传感器,多路通道巡检、采样,经主控单元处理,使测量误差控制在±0.2℃以内;在执行机构中,对系统的工作过程实行了数字显示、打印记录。     

传统孝道在我国农村老龄化问题中的现实意义

传统孝道是中国传统伦理规范的重要内容,物质赡养、精神敬养、健康关切等道德内涵是孝道思想的精华,它们在中国传统社会的家庭养老中发挥着重要的作用。我国作为一个农业大国,随着农村人口的老龄化、城镇化步伐不断加快,农村家庭规模和价值观念正在发生深刻地变化,农村养老问题凸显。弘扬传统孝道规范中的道德精华,对于有效应对我国农村人口老龄化带来的一系列挑战,促进农村经济社会可持续发展和社会主义新农村建设具有重大的现实意义。     

University rankings as a zoning technology: a Taiwanese perspective on an imaginary Greater China higher education region

This paper argues that global university rankings can be understood as a mechanism upholding Taiwan's interests in light of cross-national analysis of university ranking and recent discussion on regionalisation of higher education in Asia. To draw an analytical framework, it begins by delineating a conceptualisation of university ranking, in which ranking exercises are seen as a form of institutions in the globalised field of education politics and policy. In anticipation of the emergence of the Greater China higher education region, the paper suggests that global university ranking can be used as a zoning technology to form an imaginary line of cultural and academic sovereignty, and to affect university strategies and government policies. This analysis not only explains how global university rankings can be used to uphold interests of Taiwan's higher education, but also sheds light on the way to constitute subjectivity in the process of regionalisation of worldwide higher education.     

Academic work within a mode of mixed governance: perspectives of university professors in the research context of western China

Chinese higher education institutions have been subjected to the intensive bureaucratic governance led by the central authorities since 1949. Since the new public management has been a burgeoning social discourse, some reforms have been conducted recently, centering on the competitive contract-centered employment of staff, integration of industrial sectors, universities, and research institutes, and the evaluation of teaching quality at the undergraduate level. By embracing the ideas of new public management, a mode of mixed governance has evolved within the larger milieu of Chinese higher education. By in-depth interviews with 36 university teachers from a university in western China, this study finds that the distribution of income within the academic community has been polarized, so that the career development of new teachers and those in low priority disciplines is curtailed. Additionally, research is assigned more priority than teaching; institutional service has made distracted academics from knowledge. Lastly, Chinese academics’ work has been greatly affected by a mixed mode of governance spawned by the unique integration between paternalistic governance, bureaucratic management, and new public management.     

Television coverage of the 1995 legislative election in Taiwan: Rise of cable television as a force for balance in media coverage

This research examines how television reported the campaign, parties, and candidates during the 1995 Legislative Election in Taiwan. Results of this study showed that state‐owned broadcast television stations were far more likely than privately owned cable television channels to give greater coverage to the ruling party and its candidates, to use ruling party officials as news sources, and to offer more news coverage favorable to the ruling party than to other parties. We conclude that cable television has become a force for balance in coverage, diluting a pervasive pro‐government party bias. The rise of cable television from virtual “outlaw” status to government‐licensed status appears to have responded to a more liberal society and made a contribution to the development of democracy, as have the expanded elections themselves.