The role of stroke knowledge in reading and spelling in Chinese     

Lap‐yan Lo  Pui‐sze Yeung  Connie Suk‐Han Ho  David Wai‐ock Chan  Kevin Chung 《Journal of Research in Reading》2016,39(4):367-388

The present study examined the types of orthographic knowledge that are important in learning to read and spell Chinese words in a 2‐year longitudinal study following 289 Hong Kong Chinese children from Grade 1 to Grade 2. Multiple regression results showed that radical knowledge significantly predicted children's word reading and spelling performance across the years. Stroke knowledge contributed both concurrently (Grade 1) and longitudinally (Grade 2) to children's spelling performance after controlling for rapid naming, phonological awareness, morphological awareness and radical knowledge. These findings support the significance of radical knowledge in Chinese reading and spelling and the specific role of stroke order knowledge in Chinese spelling. The findings have implications for the design of an effective curriculum for teaching children to spell Chinese characters.  相似文献   

Achieving Optimal Best: Instructional Efficiency and the Use of Cognitive Load Theory in Mathematical Problem Solving     

Huy P. Phan  Bing H. Ngu  Alexander S. Yeung 《Educational Psychology Review》2017,29(4):667-692

We recently developed the Framework of Achievement Bests to explain the importance of effective functioning, personal growth, and enrichment of well-being experiences. This framework postulates a concept known as optimal achievement best, which stipulates the idea that individuals may, in general, strive to achieve personal outcomes, reflecting their maximum capabilities. Realistic achievement best, in contrast, indicates personal functioning that may show moderate capability without any aspiration, motivation, and/or effort expenditure. Furthermore, our conceptualization indicates the process of optimization, which involves the optimization of achievement of optimal best from realistic best.In this article, we explore the Framework of Achievement Bests by situating it within the context of student motivation. In our discussion of this theoretical orientation, we explore in detail the impact of instructional designs for effective mathematics learning as an optimizer of optimal achievement best. Our focus of examination of instructional designs is based, to a large extent, on cognitive load paradigm, theorized by Sweller and his colleagues. We contend that, in this case, cognitive load imposition plays a central role in the structure of instructional designs for effective learning, which could in turn influence individuals’ achievements of optimal best. This article, conceptual in nature, explores varying efficiencies of different instructional approaches, taking into consideration the potency of cognitive load imposition. Focusing on mathematical problem solving, we discuss the potentials for instructional approaches to influence individuals’ striving of optimal best from realistic best.  相似文献   

Does student self‐assessment empower or discipline students?     

Kelvin H. K. Tan 《Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education》2004,29(6):651-662

Student self‐assessment is a popular practice for enhancing student empowerment in the assessment process. However, in recent times various writers have questioned whether the practice of student self‐assessment automatically enhances student autonomy. Some writers have even warned that students' participation in the assessment process may discipline, rather than empower, students. How can student self‐assessment be practised in a way that empowers its students instead of disciplining or controlling them? It is argued that student empowerment can only be realized if the ways that power is exercised over students in self‐assessment practices are first understood. This paper examines the issues of power that underlie student self‐assessment practices and analyses how different notions of power enhance or undermine student empowerment. The notion of the teacher's unilateral power as the basis for student self‐assessment is critically examined against three contrasting notions of power in student self‐assessment: sovereign power, epistemological power and disciplinary power.  相似文献   

Structural Equation Modeling With Unknown Population Distributions: Ridge Generalized Least Squares     

Ke-Hai Yuan  Wai Chan 《Structural equation modeling》2016,23(2):163-179

This article proposes 2 classes of ridge generalized least squares (GLS) procedures for structural equation modeling (SEM) with unknown population distributions. The weight matrix for the first class of ridge GLS is obtained by combining the sample fourth-order moment matrix with the identity matrix. The weight matrix for the second class is obtained by combining the sample fourth-order moment matrix with its diagonal matrix. Empirical results indicate that, with data from an unknown population distribution, parameter estimates by ridge GLS can be much more accurate than those by either GLS or normal-distribution-based maximum likelihood; and standard errors of the parameter estimates also become more accurate in predicting the empirical ones. Rescaled and adjusted statistics are proposed for overall model evaluation, and they also perform much better than the default statistic following from the GLS method. The use of the ridge GLS procedures is illustrated with a real data set.  相似文献   

Is teacher education at risk? A tale of two cities – Hong Kong and Macau     

Sou Kuan Vong  Wai Ming Yu 《Compare》2018,48(5):785-800

Consequences of competition for global university rankings, such as changes in funding modes, have been extensively discussed in the field of higher education. However, few studies have reviewed its implications on knowledge production. This study provides a contextualised method for theorising the implications of this competition on the development of East Asian higher education, specifically teacher education. It identifies the new forms of knowledge being produced in two teacher education institutions in Hong Kong and Macau by reviewing the publications of new recruits in a five-year period. The study considers the following variables: author(s), date and form of publication, abstract, title, keywords, journal name, language, data source, research context and methods. The findings show that the dominant publication trends are towards quantitative research and multiple authors. Psychological research is the most popular area and studies of other long-term issues in teacher education are being marginalised.  相似文献   

Research output among the three faculties of business, education, humanities & social sciences in six Hong Kong universities     

Kwok Keung Ho 《Higher Education》1998,36(2):195-208

Academics in Hong Kong universities are urged to increase their research output. This article investigates the measurement of publication outputs among the three faculties of business, education, humanities & social sciences in the six universities of Hong Kong. Data were collected from the 1990–95 annual reports of research and publication outputs of each university. In order to have a fair comparison of publication outputs of each academic, rank, faculty and university, a framework was developed from practical experience and from literature to investigate the problem. Results indicate that the publication outputs of academics in Hong Kong were about the same as other countries in many aspects. Pressing academics for more research publications may raise the figure in the start, but would not necessarily increase the output in the long run.  相似文献   

Social axioms and achievement across cultures: The influence of reward for application and fate control     

Fan Zhou  Kwok Leung  Michael Harris Bond 《Learning and individual differences》2009,19(3):366-371

The present research examined the relationships between two social axiom dimensions, reward for application and fate control, with various achievement-related indexes across a wide range of cultures. Results showed that there was no relationship between reward for application and academic achievement or economic competitiveness, but reward for application was positively related to effort exertion and favorable attitudinal reactions to striving. In contrast, fate control was positively related to academic achievement and economic competitiveness, but not to effort exertion and attitudes toward striving. A number of speculations are provided to account for these intriguing findings.  相似文献   

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

Kwok Wai Chan  Siu Mui Chan 《Asia Pacific Education Review》2009,10(4):433-443

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.  相似文献   

Teacher alienation in Hong Kong     

Kwok Kuen Tsang 《Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education》2018,39(3):335-346

Teachers’ negative emotions began to receive attention in the Hong Kong context in the mid-1990s. As negative emotions may affect both teachers’ well-being and the quality of their teaching, Hong Kong education policy-makers and educators have used psychological approaches to determine the reasons why teachers experience negative feelings. However, these approaches fail to accommodate the social causes of negative emotions. Therefore, this study investigates the possible social causes of teachers’ negative emotions from the perspective of alienation theory. In-depth interviews with 21 teachers in Hong Kong reveal that Hong Kong teachers may be suffering from alienation (characterised by a sense of powerlessness, meaninglessness, isolation, and self-estrangement) due to their experiences of teaching, their employment status, and their structural position in schools, which are related to the occupational and organisational structure of teaching. The findings also indicate that patterns of alienation may differ between more and less experienced teachers.  相似文献   

Microfluidic fabrication of polymeric core-shell microspheres for controlled release applications     

Tiantian Kong  Jun Wu  Kelvin Wai Kwok Yeung  Michael Kai Tsun To  ᯺��  Liqiu Wang 《Biomicrofluidics》2013,7(4)

We report a facile and robust microfluidic method to fabricate polymeric core-shell microspheres as delivery vehicles for biomedical applications. The characteristics of core-shell microspheres can be precisely and easily tuned by manipulating the microfluidic double emulsion templates. The addition of a shell can significantly improve the versatility as well as functionality of these microspheres as delivery vehicles. We demonstrate that the nature of the shell material plays an important role in the properties of the core-shell delivery vehicles. The release kinetics is significantly influenced by the material of the shell and other characteristics such as the thickness. For example, by adding a poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) shell to an alginate core, the encapsulation efficiency is enhanced and undesired leakage of hydrophilic actives is prevented. By contrast, adding an alginate shell to PLGA core can lead to a reduction of the initial release rate, thus extending the release period of hydrophobic actives. Microfluidic fabrication enables the generation of precisely controlled core-shell microspheres with a narrow size distribution, which enables the investigation of the relationship between the release kinetics of these microspheres and their characteristics. The approach of using core-shell particles as delivery vehicles creates new opportunities to customize the release kinetics of active ingredients.  相似文献