1,721,995 research outputs found
Shadow Education:Its nature role and function in British International schools in Hong Kong.
Get PDFShadow education is the term frequently used to describe the provision of supplementary education by tutoring agencies, ‘cram schools’ and other private, typically for-profit organisations that assist in the achievement of successful examination results. This thesis will attempt to research the role which ‘shadow education’ plays in modern day Hong Kong. A study undertaken in 1998 revealed that on average 41 per cent of grade 3 students and 39 per cent of grade 6 students were participating in shadow education. This seems to be part of a wider international trend in both developed and developing countries, including the UK. With a system comparable to the British education system, Hong Kong has experienced growth in its shadow education system as well. While a number of studies have examined the economic and policy implications of shadow education, few have undertaken thorough research of the sociological factors that might contribute to its popularity. This study aims to investigate the historical, socio-economic factors that influence the choice of shadow education in Hong Kong. In this way, it followed the precedent set by British researchers Ireson and Rushforth, who conducted a similar study of private tutoring in the UK. In order to understand the policy and social implications of shadow education, the system needs to be placed into a wider socio-political historical, economic and cultural context to reflexively frame both its existence and its acceptance amongst parents, students, education providers, and education policy-makers in Hong Kong. This study has hopefully provided both the context and the impact of shadow education in this particular example, but with wider application once the historical and sociological contexts are understood. This discussion and analysis placing the study’s primary data results from questionnaires, interviews, and focus groups hopefully demonstrates that the historical and social context of Hong Kong plays at least, if not more, of a role in the choice to participate in shadow education as pure economic practicality and functionalism. Shadow education fills a role in education that is social and confidence building, and also ameliorates some of the postcolonial anxieties of parents who grew up in a very different context than they find their children. While social mobility and economic gain clearly play a role in all of these considerations, the role of the shadow education system extends beyond the functionalism it is currently assigned in the literature
Local culture and political socialization of Hong Kong’s Chinese language curriculum in the period of 1960s to 1997
Get PDFHong Kong was ruled by the British from 1842-1997. During that period, educational policy of Hong Kong differed from that in other colonial territories. The colonial government encouraged identification with the indigenous Chinese culture, particularly the values of Confucianism. One aim of this research is to explore the culture and values that were chosen by the colonial government as "legitimate knowledge". A second aim is to investigate the relationships between the promotion of the Chinese local culture and British colonial rule in Hong Kong. The methodology used in this study consists of content analysis, interview and documentary analysis to collect both primary and secondary sources of data. Hong Kong under British rule, pursued a deliberate policy of the "depoliticization" of society, both to avoid offending the Chinese government and to preserve Hong Kong’s stability and prosperity "conditions favourable to the colonial government's continued rule and the economic development of Hong Kong society. Hence, some scholars have argued that the colonial government's strategy was to depoliticize the curriculum in its educational policies. However, the present study demonstrates that politics and the Chinese Language curriculum were closely related. The Chinese Language curriculum strongly advocated Confucian values and this was in fact a tactic to achieve political socialization as well as consolidate British colonial rule over Hong Kong. The promotion of the Chinese local culture in Hong Kong was most probably a remedial measure to tackle political crisis arising from the anti-imperialist demonstrations, boycott and general strike against the British in Hong Kong in the 1920ร. Under such a cultural incorporation policy, traditional Chinese values, particularly Confucian ethics, were strongly promoted, in the hope of nurturing conservative attitudes among Hong Kong students and eliminating their radical behaviour. Such a move could not only pacify the anti-British emotions and win popular support, it could also further strengthen colonial rule without provoking political unrest. The key to British success in consolidating its rule depended heavily on its tactics of achieving "de-nationalization" (i.e. deliberately excluding the cultivation of a sense of national identity among the Chinese) through "nationalization" (i.e. cultural incorporation of Chinese culture) and made use of "de-politicization" (greatly promoting moral cultivation in the Chinese Language curriculum and discouraging people’s active participation in politics) to achieve politicization (political stability).Generally speaking, the indigenous language of a country, in addition to training students with language skills, provides students with an awareness of their national identity. In Hong Kong, by contrast, the subject of Chinese Language existed to supply students with a depoliticized and alienated vision of their national identity. As revealed by the findings in this study, the Chinese Language curriculum mainly emphasizes those values that contribute to social harmony as well as political stability, thus facilitating British colonial rule
Achievement motivation of adult learners in Hong Kong- An exploratory study
Get PDFThis thesis is focused on the question of motivation among adult students and the ways in which it can be theorised and investigated. The idea was prompted by three areas of concern. First, the large body of literature on achievement goal theory is developed in the West involving school children and young adults. Second, research in cross-cultural motivation issues has also been focused on young learners. Third, research on adult learners has been fragmented and sparse. Little is understood about the motivation of adult learners in a Confucian Heritage Culture, such as Hong Kong. The purpose of this study is to explore the transferability of achievement goal theory to Chinese adult learners. Based upon the social-cognitive framework, this study enquires if personal, behavioural and environmental factors of Chinese adults' achievement motivation can be satisfactorily explained by Western theory that is developed with young learners in mind. A heuristic approach is adopted to explore personal perceptions and understandings of aspects relating to adult learners' motivation. In the first part of this study, the construct systems of 27 part-time Chinese adult students were explored using Repertory Grid interviews. In the second part of the study, the interview data were validated by data triangulation using two focus groups. The data showed that Chinese adults were primarily motivated by extrinsic goals in an avoidance orientation, while holding a firm belief in effort and hard work. Analysis of the data showed considerable differences between important elements suggested by the Western theory and important motivation factors revealed by the sample. In the final analysis, cultural as well as developmental factors were found to attribute to the gap between Western theory and Chinese adult learners. The thesis concludes by discussing the implications of the findings and the strengths and limitations of the research
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Perfectionism and exam performance: The mediating effect of task-approach goals
Get PDFPerfectionistic strivings are positively correlated with students’ achievement goals and exam performance. However, so far no study has employed a prospective design investigating whether achievement goals mediate the positive relationship between perfectionistic strivings and exam performance. In the present study, 100 university students completed a measure of self-oriented perfectionism and socially prescribed perfectionism (Hewitt & Flett, 1991) and received a chapter from a textbook to study for 2-4 days. Then they returned to the lab to complete a measure of achievement goals following the 3 x 2 model (Elliot, Murayama, & Pekrun, 2011) and sit a mock exam testing their knowledge of the chapter. Multiple regressions showed that socially prescribed perfectionism negatively predicted exam performance when the overlap with self-oriented perfectionism was controlled for. In contrast, self-oriented perfectionism—a defining indicator of perfectionistic strivings—positively predicted exam performance. Moreover, task-approach goals mediated the positive relationship between self-oriented perfectionism and exam performance. The findings suggest that perfectionistic strivings make students adopt task-approach goals that help them achieve better results on exams
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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