Progress in International Reading Literacy Study 2006 (PIRLS): pedagogical correlates of fourth‐grade students in Hong Kong

Reading literacy of fourth‐grade students in Hong Kong showed a remarkable improvement from 2001 to 2006 as shown by international PIRLS studies. This study identified various aspects of the teacher factor contributing to the significant improvement among students. A total of 4,712 students and 144 teachers from 144 schools were randomly selected using probability proportional‐to‐size technique to receive the Reading Assessment Test and complete the Teacher's Questionnaire, respectively. A number of items pertaining to teachers' instructional strategies and activities, opportunities for students to read various types of materials, practices on assessment, and professional preparation and perception, were found to be significantly correlated with the outcome of students' reading literacy. Stepwise regression procedure revealed four significant predictors for students' overall reading achievement. The most powerful predictor was the use of materials from other subjects as reading resources. Suggestions to improve quality of teaching of reading and further studies are made.     

电子资源管理的挑战及管理策略的实践

面对快速增长的电子资源和电子学习等环境的转变,高校图书馆必须在整体管理和发展的策略上积极配合。在电子资源方面,需要发展新的管理模式,作长远规划管理。文章主要分享香港中文大学图书馆如何面对电子资源的挑战及实践管理策略的经验。     

Substitutive competition: Virtual pets as competitive buffers to alleviate possible negative influence on pupils

Although competition is regarded as a powerful motivator in game‐based learning, it might have a negative influence, such as damage to confidence, on students who lose the competition. In this paper, we propose an indirect approach, substitutive competition, to alleviate such negative influences. The approach is used to develop a My‐Pet v3 system, in which pupils master subject materials to make their pets stronger, and compete against each other. Specifically, pupils learn Chinese idioms in a pet‐training game scenario, and their mastery of the material is related to the pets' strength to win the competition. The result of the competition is influenced by whether pupils spend enough effort on the learning tasks. This intention is expected to alleviate the negative influence that results from direct competition. A within‐subject experiment was conducted to examine the influence of substitutive competition. The results indicated that substitutive competition seems a promising scheme to maximise the power of competition. However, there were no apparent evidences in this study to demonstrate its effect to alleviate pupils' sense of failure, as compared with other two direct competition conditions.     

Balancing breadth and depth of expertise for innovation: A 3M story

This study examines how inventors’ breadth and depth of expertise influence innovation in 3M, a company renowned for sustained innovation for over a century. While prior research tends to examine a single indicator – the technical success achieved by the inventor – our study differentiates between three indicators of a successful inventor: (1) the number of inventions generated; (2) the extent to which the inventor has a significant impact in his or her technical domain; and (3) the inventor's career success, in terms of the commercial value they have brought by converting their inventions into products that generate sales for commercial organizations. We found that breadth of inventor expertise relates to the generation of many inventions, but not necessarily to those that are technically influential. Depth of inventor expertise enables individuals to generate technically influential inventions, as measured by patents granted. However, both breadth and depth of expertise are required for innovators to be deemed highly valuable, based on their records of effectively converting inventions into commercially successful products. Our study extends prior research on innovation in two ways. We provide a comprehensive view of how inventors’ expertise influences innovation and also show how inventors with different expertise profiles can contribute in unique ways to their organization.     

Overshadowing of geometric cues by a beacon in a spatial navigation task

In three experiments, we examined whether overshadowing of geometric cues by a discrete landmark (beacon) is due to the relative saliences of the cues. Using a virtual water maze task, human participants were required to locate a platform marked by a beacon in a distinctively shaped pool. In Experiment 1, the beacon overshadowed geometric cues in a trapezium, but not in an isosceles triangle. The longer escape latencies during acquisition in the trapezium control group with no beacon suggest that the geometric cues in the trapezium were less salient than those in the triangle. In Experiment 2, we evaluated whether generalization decrement, caused by the removal of the beacon at test, could account for overshadowing. An additional beacon was placed in an alternative corner. For the control groups, the beacons were identical; for the overshadow groups, they were visually unique. Overshadowing was again found in the trapezium. In Experiment 3, we tested whether the absence of overshadowing in the triangle was due to the geometric cues being more salient than the beacon. Following training, the beacon was relocated to a different corner. Participants approached the beacon rather than the trained platform corner, suggesting that the beacon was more salient. These results suggest that associative processes do not fully explain cue competition in the spatial domain.     

Teachers’ and Students’ Conceptions of Good Science Teaching

Capitalizing on the comments made by teachers on videos of exemplary science teaching, a video-based survey instrument on the topic of ‘Density’ was developed and used to investigate the conceptions of good science teaching held by 110 teachers and 4,024 year 7 students in Hong Kong. Six dimensions of good science teaching are identified from the 55-item questionnaire, namely, ‘focussing on science learning’, ‘facilitating students’ understanding’, ‘encouraging students’ involvement’, ‘creating conducive environment’, ‘encouraging active experimentation’ and ‘preparing students for exam (PSE)’. Significant gaps between teachers’ and students’ conceptions on certain dimensions have been revealed. The inconsistency on the dimension ‘PSE’ is particularly evident and possible reasons for the phenomenon are suggested. This study raises the important questions of how the gap can be addressed, and who is to change in order to close the gaps. Answers to these questions have huge implications for teacher education and teacher professional development.     

Exploring foreign undergraduate students’ experiences of university

Although international students are an important source of income to universities in the UK, the emotional impact of their experiences may be ignored and unacknowledged. This study explored the personal experiences of international students studying for an undergraduate degree in the UK. Semi-structured interviews with five participants were analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis, which aimed to capture the personal perceptions of these participants. Two analytical themes are presented: “adaptation and identity”, which reflects the difficulties in acculturation, adaptation and development of identity in a foreign country; and “us and them”, which pays close attention to the perception of disconnectedness, unfairness and exclusion encountered in trying to integrate into a different way of life. Findings are discussed in relation to the impact that participants’ experiences have had on their self-worth, confidence and ability to engage with domestic individuals.     

Framework for educational robotics: a multiphase approach to enhance user learning in a competitive arena

Educational robotics involves using robots as an educational tool to provide a long term, and progressive learning activity, to cater to different age group. The current concern is that, using robots in education should not be an instance of a one-off project for the sole purpose of participating in a competitive event. Instead, it should be a sustainable long-term progression spanning the primary school to pre-university level. This article presents a framework for robotics using a multiphase approach to enhance user learning in a competitive arena.     

Public Diplomacy Strategies of the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the 2012 London Olympics: A Comparative Study

The various ‘global events’ China has hosted in recent years, most notably the Beijing Olympics, have sparked debate on the country's projection of soft power and invited easy conclusions that China's global public diplomacy has successfully seduced the world via its rich traditional culture and astounding modernisation. A comparison with the London Olympic Games, however, would suggest otherwise. Not only do the two Games differ in relation to the cultural ingredients combined to create overarching themes, they also reveal divergent public diplomacy strategies pursued by the host countries and cities. China's well-orchestrated and nearly infallible debut reveals its adherence to a top-down centre-driven approach that seeks to project the values and messages desirable to the governing authorities. The British approach, in contrast, transcends the elitist tendency by involving a wider set of actors within and without the government for clauses that extend past elites' interests. As a result, although London's Games were less ‘speculator’ than those in Beijing in presentation, the former's public diplomacy legacy may prove more lasting and likely to gain the admiration of the rest of the world.