Tag: Hong Kong

Thirty-eight scholars of The Education University of Hong Kong (EdUHK) were named among the top 2% most-cited scientists in the world, in the latest annual rankings published by Stanford University, as of October 2023.

Among them were new President Professor John Lee Chi-Kin, who assumed the position last month; Vice President (Research and Development) Professor Chetwyn Chan Che-hin; Advisor and Adjunct Chair Professor (Geography & Environmental Science) Professor Jim Chi-yung, Advisor (Environmental Science) Professor Wong Ming-hung; and Professor Rudolf Wu Shiu-sun, who has invented ‘artificial mussels’, an effective tool that can monitor radioactive contamination in waters around the world.

Compiled by a research team at Stanford University, the rankings list top scientists from a wide range of fields, based on their career-long citation impact or single-year citation impact in 2022.

EdUHK scholars fared well in their respective fields. Notably, Professor Jim Chi-yung, also known as ‘Dr Tree’, ranked first out of over 30,000 scholars in the field of forestry, representing the high citation rate and significant impact of his research output. Professor Wong Ming-hung from the Department of Science and Environmental Studies also ranked 8th out of nearly 100,000 scholars in environmental sciences.

In addition to research capacity and impact, the University has also secured record-high funding of over HK$27 million under the annual Research Grants Council’s General Research Fund and Early Career Scheme. Once again, EdUHK came first, in the discipline of education, both in terms of the number of funded projects and amount awarded. The University has also made significant strides in various disciplines, such as psychology and linguistics, further underscoring its solid foundation in broadening academic scope beyond education.

Congratulating the EdUHK team, President Professor Lee said, “The University has made great strides in research in education and various emerging disciplines, as illustrated by its remarkable achievements over the years. To further extend our research impact in Hong Kong and beyond, we have established two new Academies, namely the Academy for Educational Development and Innovation and the Academy for Applied Policy Studies and Education to better promote interdisciplinary research with greater synergy.”

Learn more: https://www.eduhk.hk/en/features/38-eduhk-scholars-named-world-s-top-2-scientists-by-stanford-university

Past research on Chinese mathematics teaching has focused mainly on the role of teacher’s beliefs and professional knowledge separately in teaching approaches, or examined three variables – teacher’s beliefs, professional knowledge and teaching approaches – in correlational studies. How teaching beliefs and professional knowledge specifically influence teaching approaches remained largely unclear. Also, most studies have focused on pre-service or elementary school teachers in the West. There is a need to know whether these conceptual frameworks can be applied and adapted to the Chinese teaching context at the secondary level.

Dr Zhang Qiaoping, Assistant Professor at the Department of Mathematics and Information Technology, The Education University of Hong Kong, conducted a study to help fill this research gap by investigating (1) what kind of mathematical knowledge of functions and beliefs mathematics teachers in secondary schools in mainland China have, and (2) how their professional knowledge and beliefs about mathematics affect their teaching approaches.

Phase 1 of the study was a questionnaire given to 92 mathematics teachers to get a picture of their beliefs about mathematics, along with their subject matter knowledge (SMK) and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) regarding the concept of functions.

In Phase 2, based on the responses in Phase 1, six teachers were selected from three districts to participate in a case study, which examined the teachers’ beliefs about mathematics in terms of their beliefs about the nature of mathematics, mathematics teaching and mathematics learning. The study found that three main beliefs held by the teachers were instrumentalist, Platonist, and problem-solving-oriented.

Regarding the nature of mathematics, over 70% of teachers believed that mathematics is a collection of rules and steps for solving problems. Most teachers believed that learning mathematics was about both getting answers quickly and understanding why solutions were correct. Over 60% of teachers believed that they should cover all topics in the logical order presented in textbooks, and 70% agreed that teaching activities should be challenging for students.

Teachers with weak PCK lacked variation in their teaching methods, while teachers with stronger PCK used textbooks flexibly according to their students’ needs. Their teaching designs were based on practical considerations, and they used many metaphors and analogies to explain concepts.

As for problem-solving, teachers with rich PCK gave counter-examples based on students’ mistakes to deepen their overall understanding; and they encouraged students to engage in classroom activities, allowing them to present their ideas and explore new knowledge.

The teachers’ professional knowledge scores were relatively high for familiar, everyday teaching questions, but very low on questions about unfamiliar functions.

The study concluded that there is a need to emphasise the integration of teachers’ professional knowledge with their mathematical beliefs, and that it is important to know what beliefs teachers hold about both the nature of mathematics and mathematics teaching, and how these beliefs influence their teaching.

Most research on the association between visual skills and reading has focused on how visual skills facilitate reading. But learning to read Chinese involves both visual skills and mapping between print and sound. It is not clear how their association develops in later stages. This study investigated the association of timed visual processing tasks varying in levels of phonological processing with word reading.

Dr Melody Pan Jinger, Assistant Professor at the Department of Psychology, The Education University of Hong Kong, and her research team included in their study (1) Cross Out, a speeded task that involves visual processing of nonalphanumeric stimuli; (2) Visual Matching, a speeded task which involves visual processing of numeric stimuli; and (3) numeric Rapid Automatised Naming, a speeded task which requires visual processing and oral output. Stimuli used in the Cross Out task are not verbally codable, whereas those used in the Visual Matching and Rapid Automatised Naming tasks are. Visual Matching does not require verbal output, while Rapid Automatised Naming does. These differences allowed us to investigate how phonological processing modulates the relationship between speeded visual processing and word reading.

The study tested 293 Chinese children on nonverbal IQ at age 4, phonological and morphological awareness at age 5, Cross Out and Visual Matching at ages 6 to 8, and Rapid Automatised Naming and Character Recognition at ages 5 to 9 to measure their reading accuracy.

The results found that children’s Character Recognition at ages 6 and 7 predicted Cross Out at ages 7 and 8. There was a cross-lagged relationship between Character Recognition and Visual Matching from ages 6 to 7, but Character Recognition at age 7 significantly predicted Visual Matching from age 7 to 8. Rapid Automatised Naming and Character Recognition predicted each other from ages 5 to 6, but only Rapid Automatised Naming predicted subsequent Character Recognition from ages 6 to 9.

Learning to read Chinese requires substantial visual processing. However, the findings of the study also highlighted the importance of reading skill for the development of children’s visual skills, irrespective of the type of visual stimuli.

The results extended previous findings by showing that visual processing can be improved by learning to read. It also suggested that the reciprocal relationship between visual processing and reading depends on the age and the type of stimuli of the visual processing task.

The findings reflected the development of reading Chinese. In the logographic stage, children tend to recognise characters based mostly on their visual features. Recognising Chinese characters, which are far more complex than the alphabet, helps children develop their visual skills. But in the cipher phase, children need to rely on decoding. Though Chinese is an opaque script, children still rely on phonological information in the early years of primary school. The association between visual codes and phonological codes, as reflected in Rapid Automatised Naming and in later ages in the Visual Matching task, are important for Chinese children in learning to read.

The study concluded that the relationship between Chinese character recognition and tasks involving speeded visual processing differ largely depending on age and whether alphanumeric stimuli and phonological processing are involved. Learning to read Chinese appears to facilitate early two-dimensional, geometric, pure (non-print-related) visual processing, but visual processing appears to promote subsequent reading of Chinese only when it involves alphanumeric print. This pattern is likely attributable in part to the development and specialisation of print recognition over time and partly to the involvement of explicit phonological coding in the process.

The study was conducted together with Dr Cui Xin and Professor Shu Hua from Beijing Normal University, and Professor Catherine McBride from The Chinese University of Hong Kong.

To learn more about the study, please click here.

Although the importance of investigating the enabling role of student feedback literacy has been widely covered in the literature, a measurement instrument is still lacking. A study by Dr Jane Zhan Ying, Assistant Professor at the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, The Education University of Hong Kong, used a construct validation approach to validate the self-developed student feedback literacy scale, with two types of examinations: within- and between-network examinations. Within-network examinations use reliability and confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) to explore the dimensional structure of the scale. Between-network examination performs correlation analyses to investigate the correlation between the scale and other constructs theoretically related to the scale.

Previous research has found that at the very beginning of the feedback process, students must actively elicit feedback from others; comprehend the feedback received, judge its quality and extract information to enable subsequent action; and take actions to revise their work. Feedback can help them better understand their learning by identifying their learning strengths and weaknesses from the perspectives of others, learning from others, and enhancing their self-reflection. They must be emotionally ready to engage with feedback (readiness to engage). And they must devote their time and effort to making changes in their learning and strive to continuously improve by conquering difficulties and finding extra support or resources. Based on the literature review, the author constructed six dimensions of student feedback literacy: three related to the students’ capacity to elicit, process and enact feedback; and three related to the students’ disposition in terms of appreciation of feedback, readiness to engage and commitment to change.

In this study, the author issued the developed 24-item student feedback literacy questionnaire to 555 university student participants in mainland China to validate the scale. Both confirmatory factor analysis and multi-group confirmatory factor analysis showed that the scale was valid and that its structure was stable among students of different genders and in different majors. The between-network analysis presented a significant correlation between the six dimensions of student feedback literacy and students’ intrinsic and extrinsic learning motivation.

Future studies could use the validated scale in this study to capture its temporal changes or explore the complex relationships between student feedback literacy and its influencing factors. It will enable higher-education teachers to systematically analyse student feedback literacy, such as the critical development period and possibly unbalanced development. This will help teachers reflect on their current feedback practices to see whether they create conditions conducive to the development of targeted aspects of student feedback literacy and what measures they can apply to facilitate its development.

Numerous studies highlight vocabulary as a critical predictor determining word and text reading comprehension in monolingual and bilingual children, but when measuring vocabulary, most studies focus on either breadth or depth, or conflate the two, which devalues the unique role each dimension plays in reading comprehension.

A study by Dr Tong Xiuhong, Assistant Professor at the Department of Psychology, The Education University of Hong Kong, examined the links between breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension, and the mediating impact of word reading on these links within and across first language (L1) Chinese and second language (L2) English among 391 Chinese-English bilingual second graders in Hong Kong mainstream primary schools where Chinese is the medium of instruction and English is taught as L2.

Parents and caregivers filled out a questionnaire on family demographics, children’s language background, and home language use, with four questions: the language the child prefers (1) when speaking with parents, (2) when watching TV/videos, and (3) when reading books and magazines; and (4) the main language parents use to speak with their children.

To measure vocabulary breadth and depth, parallel measures of L1 Chinese and L2 English vocabulary were administered. For L1, Chinese receptive vocabulary breadth, and expressive vocabulary breadth and depth were measured. For L2, English receptive vocabulary breadth and expressive vocabulary depth were measured.

To measure reading, parallel measures of L1 Chinese and L2 English word reading and reading comprehension were administered to all participants.

Control measures included assessing children’s nonverbal reasoning ability, L1 Chinese phonological awareness and L2 English phonological awareness.

The study demonstrated the occurrence of a cross-language association between L1 Chinese vocabulary and L2 English reading comprehension, and revealed different ways in which L1 receptive vocabulary breadth and depth contributed to L2 reading comprehension.

The findings extend contemporary models of reading comprehension to include bilingual readers and suggest that one theoretical framework assuming either a direct or indirect effect on vocabulary cannot adequately explain the complexity and specificity of the relation between oral vocabulary and reading comprehension.

Moreover, by highlighting the mediating role of word reading in the link between vocabulary and reading comprehension within and across languages, the findings reinforce the non-selective view of the lexical access of bilinguals and underscore the interaction between L1 and L2 lexicons in reading comprehension.

The findings have educational implications for biliteracy practices. First, since quantity and quality of vocabulary affect L1 Chinese and L2 English reading comprehension, biliteracy programs may consider targeting both to increase L1 and L2 lexical richness. Second, the facilitative effect of L1 Chinese vocabulary on L2 English reading comprehension suggests that biliteracy teaching and intervention programs should utilise L1 language skills to scaffold the acquisition of L2 vocabulary and reading comprehension.

Past studies have shown that providing bilingual versions or side-by-side translations of texts can improve bilingual children’s literacy development. Thus, when reading and writing, bilingual students should be encouraged to use their L1 and L2 language repertoires to think, reason, imagine, and organise ideas.

The study was conducted together with Dr Shelly Tong Xiuli, Associate Professor in the Department of Human Communication, Development, and Information Sciences at The University of Hong Kong.