Emotional autonomy and perceived parenting styles: relational analysis in the Hong Kong cultural context

Three hundred and seven teacher education students of a Hong Kong university were administered two questionnaires, one measuring emotional autonomy (EAS) and the other measuring perceived parenting styles (PAQ) of their parents. It was found that the Hong Kong teacher education students tended to be autonomous and they characterized their parents as authoritative instead of authoritarian. In addition, the emotional autonomy scale was positively related to authoritarianism, but negatively related to authoritativeness and permissiveness of parenting. Emotional detachment instead of autonomy seemed to be a more appropriate meaning of EAS for the interpretation of results. Implications were drawn for future research including development of an improved instrument in measuring emotional autonomy to study its associations with perceived parenting styles of young people across cultures.     

游戏化网络课程的设计与应用研究

针对游戏进入中小学课堂教学出现的困难和障碍,提出了构建面向中小学生的基于游戏化学习的网络课程。分门别类地详细介绍了此类课程的设计理念和特点:一是基于游戏化学习的课程;二是面向中小学生的网络课程;三是大学和中小学共同开设课程,同时针对每种特点提出相应的设计策略。随后,开发了"农场狂想曲科学探究网络课程",并开展了准实验研究,探讨了游戏化网络课程的教学成效。     

From the Horse's Mouth: Why scientists’ views are crucial to nature of science understanding

Written in response to criticism of our work by Fouad Abd-El-Khalick, this position paper reaffirms and reinforces our position about the need to broaden and enrich the scope of nature of science (NOS) oriented curricula by exposing students to the voices of practising scientists. While Abd-El-Khalick's motivation for promoting the so-called consensus view of NOS is rooted in issues of assessment (or ‘benchmarking', as he calls it), we argue that the major reason for teaching about NOS is its contribution to what Shen calls civic and cultural scientific literacy. We are critical of the consensus view for its philosophical naivety, failure to reflect contemporary scientific practice and potential for confusing students, and we re-state our view that it is important to expose students to a diversity of practice among the sub-disciplines of science. We argue that richer NOS understanding and a more authentic view of scientific practice can be achieved through direct and indirect contact with scientists at the cutting edge of research and development, which we characterise as learning about scientists, learning from scientists and learning with scientists.     

Turning Crisis into Opportunity: Enhancing student‐teachers’ understanding of nature of science and scientific inquiry through a case study of the scientific research in severe acute respiratory syndrome

Interviews with key scientists involved in research on severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), together with analysis of media reports and documentaries produced during and after the SARS epidemic, revealed many interesting aspects of nature of science (NOS) and authentic scientific inquiry. This novel insight into practice in the rapidly growing field of molecular biology was used in the development of instructional materials for use in the pre‐service and in‐service teacher education programme at The University of Hong Kong. The elements of NOS and scientific inquiry identified in the scientific research on SARS were explicitly emphasized in our instructional materials. The contemporary real‐life context of SARS was found to be effective in promoting student‐teachers’ understanding of NOS and scientific inquiry, particularly in terms of: the realization of inseparable links between science and the social, cultural, and political environment; deeper understanding of how science and technology impact on each other; and a richer appreciation of the processes of authentic scientific inquiry and the humanistic character of scientists. The effectiveness is attributed to immediacy, relevance, and familiarity, making the abstract tangible, personal experience of science history, and the powerful affective impact of the interviews with scientists.     

Syntactic based approach for grammar question retrieval

With the popularity of online educational platforms, English learners can learn and practice no matter where they are and what they do. English grammar is one of the important components in learning English. To learn English grammar effectively, it requires students to practice questions containing focused grammar knowledge. In this paper, we study a novel problem of retrieving English grammar questions with similar grammatical focus. Since the grammatical focus similarity is different from textual similarity or sentence syntactic similarity, existing approaches cannot be applied directly to our problem. To address this problem, we propose a syntactic based approach for English grammar question retrieval which can retrieve related grammar questions with similar grammatical focus effectively. In the proposed syntactic based approach, we first propose a new syntactic tree, namely parse-key tree, to capture English grammar questions’ grammatical focus. Next, we propose two kernel functions, namely relaxed tree kernel and part-of-speech order kernel, to compute the similarity between two parse-key trees of the query and grammar questions in the collection. Then, the retrieved grammar questions are ranked according to the similarity between the parse-key trees. In addition, if a query is submitted together with answer choices, conceptual similarity and textual similarity are also incorporated to further improve the retrieval accuracy. The performance results have shown that our proposed approach outperforms the state-of-the-art methods based on statistical analysis and syntactic analysis.     

An investigation of instruction in research publishing offered in doctoral programs: the Hong Kong case

As a result of globalization, universities in some Asian countries now require their faculty members, by way of carrot or stick, to research and publish internationally. In tenure, promotion, contract renewal and faculty recruitment exercises, rate of publication in reputed journals based in the US and the UK has become a major criterion of assessment. The stakes involved in publication in many of these contexts, have created ripple effects on their doctoral students, many of whom are now under pressure to publish internationally during their doctoral tenure in order to secure professoriate employment upon graduation. Yet, publishing during the doctoral years is rarely an easy task not least because it is a taxing endeavor even for practicing academics. Challenges of publishing multiply when it is done in a period when the new researcher is already intensively engaged in the daunting tasks of researching and thesis-writing. However, what make publishing most challenging for students in these contexts are perhaps its linguistic demands and the need to make their work relevant to the international academic community. Given the stakes and difficulties involved in publishing internationally during and beyond the doctoral years, instruction in research publication (IRP) need be given some priority in doctoral programs in the Asian contexts. However, to what extent is IRP in place and to what extent can the instruction prepare students to face the various challenges of publishing in the early phase of their academic career? The questions remain largely under-explored in the literature. The study reported in this paper is a response to this lacuna by examining the IRP provided in the universities in Hong Kong. The study assumes that to succeed in publishing internationally, one needs to develop competence of three major domains, namely, scholarly communication, strategic research conception, strategic management of publishing. And in the context of doctoral undertaking, an added domain is that of strategic management of thesis-publishing. The study investigated the extent to which the IRP provided in the context under study attends to the four domains of competence. Methods of investigation involved an analysis of documents of research degree programs and courses (n = 155) offered in seven doctoral degree granting universities and interviews with doctoral students (n = 30). Findings suggest that instructional attention tends to be skewed towards developing students’ scholarly communication while competence in the other three domains remains relatively under-addressed. Pedagogical implications will be discussed.     

Comparing overexcitabilities of gifted and non-gifted school children in Hong Kong: does culture make a difference?

Overexcitabilities (OEs) are ways that an individual experiences the world and can be understood as channels of information flow. The current study examined the profile of OEs among a group of Hong Kong children. Participants included 229 non-gifted and 217 gifted children. OEs were measured using the Overexcitability Questionnaire II. Results indicated that there were differences between the gifted and the non-gifted groups in all OE subscales. Gender differences were also identified. Females, in both gifted and non-gifted groups, have a significantly higher score in Emotional OE when compared to males. In addition, gifted females also scored significantly higher than their male counterparts in Sensual OE. Results of this study were compared to a group of American children (based on C.L. Tieso's work on overexcitabilities in 2007). The implications and limitations of this study are presented.     

Visual Instruction to Enhance Teaching of Technical Subject to Design Students

Visual instruction complementing verbal lectures is known to promote learning among students. In this study, the role of visual instruction in engaging learners effectively via the simplification of technical concepts was examined. Different aspects of visualisation, such as order of presenting and dimensionality, were tested to observe their effect on students’ approach to learning and learning outcomes. In this mixed‐method quasi‐non‐experimental explanatory study, visual instruction was applied in one of the undergraduate architecture modules that teaches fundamentals of building systems, which students often find difficult to comprehend. Three key variables, including spatial cognitive ability, approach to learning and learning outcomes, were measured using statistically valid instruments along with students’ feedback and interviews. These factors were also measured for the control group that did not receive visual instruction (n = 32), to assess the effect of the intervention. When taught with visualisation, students (n = 69), showed a significant increase in deep approach to learning (e.g., deep motive: t = 2.584, p = 0.011). In interviews, students expressed a deeper interest in the subject and reported that the topic was engaging in class. Visualisation favours students with a higher spatial ability and, thus, is useful for design students who receive spatial ability training in the course. Two‐dimensional visuals must be followed and preceded by three‐dimensional visuals to provide advanced organisation and the connection of new knowledge with known organisational models to be made.     

Assessment of early handwriting skill in kindergarten children using a Chinese name writing test

Reading and Writing - This study developed and validated a Chinese name writing scale (CNWS) for evaluating early handwriting skills of kindergarten children. We then used the validated CNWS to...     

Is there creativity in design? From a perspective of school design and technology in Hong Kong

As creativity is likely to become a crucial aspect of living in the future, it is important for educators to teach students to think creatively when solving constantly evolving and increasingly complex problems. Supported by the idea that creativity can be taught and learnt, elements of creativity are now embedded in secondary school education. Among all school subjects, design and technology (D&T) is one of the best examples for fostering and cultivating students?? creativity, as the subject offers creative activities that enable students to realize their ideas in the context of the real world. This paper analyzes the creative elements in the D&T curriculum in Hong Kong as seen in the exemplar projects on the Education Bureau website. Some problems and difficulties encountered in fostering creativity in the context of Hong Kong are identified, based on the current teaching environment. The paper also draws attention to East Asian beliefs and implicit theories, which greatly influence teachers?? underlying assumptions about learning and teaching, and at the same time notes that these beliefs may be detrimental to the development of creativity among students. The paper then identifies the problems and inadequacies in fostering creativity in design at the secondary school level and expects to raise awareness of the importance of creativity in D&T.