Two Mandarin readers in Taiwan: characteristics of children with higher and lower reading proficiency levels

This study investigated how two readers of Mandarin with differing reading‐proficiency skills interacted with a narrative passage, as well as what knowledge they brought to and made use of while reading the text. The perspectives of reading comprehension, transactional theory and social‐cognitive models of reading served as this study's theoretical framework. Two Sixth‐Grade participants were selected for inclusion through snowball sampling. The data in this study were obtained from interviews and think‐alouds. Qualitative analysis indicated that the skilled Mandarin reader's stance moved along the efferent/aesthetic continuum, while the less‐skilled Mandarin reader's was mainly efferent. The skilled reader employed strategies of inferencing, summarisation and synthesis during and after reading, while the less‐skilled reader applied bridging inferences, paraphrasing and repetition. The findings of this study corroborate previous findings that proficient readers employ more sophisticated approaches to reading than less‐proficient readers.     

Technology-Enhanced Physics Programme for Community-Based Science Learning: Innovative Design and Programme Evaluation in a Theme Park

Journal of Science Education and Technology - In this study, a new physics education programme is specifically developed for a famous theme park in Hong Kong to provide community-based science...     

Reading characteristics of Chinese-English adolescents: knowledge and application of strategic reading

Integrating both quantitative and qualitative approaches, this study examined the knowledge and application of strategic reading among Taiwanese adolescents learning to read English as a foreign language. A total of 144 Grade 11 students participated in this study. Correlational analysis and t-tests were applied to analyzing quantitative data, including an English reading comprehension test and two sets of reading strategy questionnaires; the constant comparative method (Glaser and Strauss 1967) was used for analyzing qualitative data, comprising semi-structured interviews and think-aloud protocols. Results from quantitative analysis show a relatively strong link between the perceived use of first language (L1, Chinese) and second language (L2, English) strategies. Nonetheless, metacognitive and cognitive strategies were reportedly used more frequently for L1 reading, whereas support strategies were more often used for L2 reading. One salient theme that emerged from the qualitative analysis is that the reading of the English texts more closely resembled the reading of the texts written in the classic literary style of Chinese than the reading of the texts written in contemporary Chinese. These findings to some extent support the reading universals hypothesis (Goodman in Journal of Typographic Reseach, 103–110, 1970); yet, skills transfer is not uniformly automatic (Bell in TESOL Quarterly, 687–704, 1995; Urquhart and Weir 1998).     

儒家文化对认知发展的影响

本论文研究儒家文化对中国儿童认知发展有何影响。文献归类为几方面的研究：早期控制冲动的能力与日后学业成就的关系，言语能力与非言语能力的比较，创造力的培养，学业成就动机，成就动机与集体取向的关系，对学习成败的信念与归因，及学习方式与思维。证据表明儒家文化①强调把早期冲动控制的掌握作为日后学业成功的先决务件，②培育植根于集体主义倾向的学业成就动机，③把成功或失败归因于努力。其教学和学习的方式着重于记忆和重复练习，而不是鼓励发现、创造和元认知。     

Are There Any Gender Differences in the Perception of University Support During the Transition Period to Higher Education?

The purpose of this study is to determine if there are gender differences in the perception of university support. The study is based on a survey of 368 students in a Hong Kong university. The findings of the study are threefold. First, female students perceive the university as being more supportive in their academic adjustment than do male students (t = ?4.256, p < 0.001). Second, male students perceive the university as being more supportive in their social adjustment than do female students (t = 2.156, p < 0.05). Last, male students perceive the university as being more supportive in their psychological adjustment than do female students (t= 2.401, p < 0.05).

     

Source-code plagiarism in universities: a comparative study of student perspectives in China and the UK

There has been much research and discussion relating to variations in plagiaristic activity observed in students from different demographic backgrounds. Differences in behaviour have been noted in many studies, although the underlying reasons are still a matter of debate. Existing work focuses mainly on textual plagiarism, and most often derives results by studying (small) groups of overseas students studying in a Western context. This study investigates understanding of source-code plagiarism (i.e. plagiarism of computer programmes) amongst university students in China. The survey instrument was a Chinese translation of a survey previously administered in English in the UK. This paper reports the results of the exploratory survey conducted in China, and compares these results to those from a parallel survey conducted in the UK. The results show that there is a significant difference in understanding between the respondents from the two surveys, and suggest topics which a future and more comprehensive study may focus on.     

Topology evolutions of silhouettes

We give the topology changing of the silhouette in 3D space while others study the projections in an image. Silhou- ettes play a crucial role in visualization, graphics and vision. This work focuses on the global behaviors of silhouettes, especially their topological evolutions, such as splitting, merging, appearing and disappearing. The dynamics of silhouettes are governed by the topology, the curvature of the surface, and the view point. In this paper, we work on a more theoretical level to give enu- merative properties of the silhouette including: the integration of signed geodesic curvature along a silhouette is equal to the view cone angle; in elliptic regions, no silhouette can be contained in another one; in hyperbolic regions, if a silhouette is homotopic to a point, then it has at least 4 cusps; finally, critical events can only happen when the view point is on the aspect surfaces (ruled surface of the asymptotic lines of parabolic points with surface itself). We also introduce a method to visualize the evolution of silhouettes, especially all the critical events where the topologies of the silhouettes change. The results have broad applications in computer vision for recognition, graphics for rendering and visualization.     

Conceptions of moral,social-conventional,and personal events among Chinese preschoolers in Hong Kong

Sixty-one Chinese preschoolers from Hong Kong at 2 ages (Ms = 4.36 and 6.00 years) were interviewed about familiar moral, social-conventional, and personal events. Children treated personal events as distinct from moral obligations and conventional regulations. Children judged the child as deciding personal issues, based on personal choice justifications, whereas children judged parents as deciding moral and conventional issues. With age, children granted increased decision-making power to the child. In contrast, children viewed moral transgressions as more serious, generalizably wrong, and wrong independent of authority than other events, based on welfare and fairness. Punishment-avoidance justifications for conventional events decreased with age, whereas conventional justifications increased. Young Chinese preschool children make increasingly differentiated judgments about their social world.     

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.