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This research delves into the washback effects of the Hong Kong Diploma of Education Examination (HKDSE) on the learning strategies employed by secondary school students in Hong Kong. By surveying 50 students to assess their English learning strategy profiles, this study seeks to identify potential biases in strategy selection indicative of examination influence. A subset of participants was further interviewed, enabling a deeper exploration of the underlying reasons behind their strategy choices. Thematic analysis of these interviews revealed that while students recognize the intended washback of the examination on their learning strategies, its actual influence might be diminished by their reservations regarding high stakes testing's effect on authentic English learning. The overarching sentiment expressed frustrations and conflict between the study of English language, and exam-centric pressures.

This article assesses how an interactive simulation game, a modified version of Simulated Society (hereinafter 'SIMSOC-modified'), was used for teaching a theoretical criminology course in a Hong Kong university. Its use was intended to enable students to experience inequalities, in terms of wealth and power. The primary focus was to observe how participating in SIMSOC-modified impacted students' knowledge of and attitudes toward crime causation and their intentions to engage in activism and radicalism. The findings showed that SIMSOC-modified promoted students' active learning, resulting in cognitive and attitudinal changes toward the social causes of crime and increased intention to radically support the social groups they closely identified with. Rather than solely relying on didactic lectures and tutorials, we found strong support for the use of SIMSOC-modified in teaching crime causation and responses.

Twenty-one in-service early childhood students participated in a teaching practicum in Australia as part of the final year of a Bachelor of Arts in Hong Kong. Students spent two weeks visiting a university and early childhood settings in Australia. The university based component of the program included workshops and discussions with lecturing staff located in both the Australian and Hong Kong universities. Students were asked to complete written statements about "What is children's learning?" before and after their practicum experience. An inductive analysis of students' written statements and practicum evaluations revealed an increase in beliefs about children's learning as "active understanding" over the two-week period. Implications for teacher education programs are discussed. (Contains 2 tables and 1 footnote.)

This paper explores the construction of local and national identities among secondary school students in post-colonial Hong Kong. As a Chinese society that has undergone a prolonged period of British colonial rule, the reunification of capitalist Hong Kong with the motherland under socialism in 1997 has set the context for a negotiation of identities. It has been revealed that the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region has tried to foster a stronger sense of national identity and a sense of belonging among the younger generations through its education reform measures in the new millennium. Nation-building is part and parcel of the reform, although it is being interpreted and implemented diversely by local officials, school principals and teachers. The intersecting and overlapping nature of students' different identities has set the parameters of their identity formation but allows different latitudes of observance and/or choice of different identities. (Contains 14 notes.)

Children's interest in exploration is the hallmark of their curiosity. As people who are significant in organising children's environment, how teachers and parents respond to children's exploratory behaviours may promote or hinder the child's desire for further investigation. With reference to Kurt Lewin's concept of "total situation", various hypothetical scenarios on children's exploratory behaviours in different contexts were designed to solicit teachers' and parents' interpretation of the behaviour, how they might respond in the situation and the rationale behind their response. The findings indicated that the decision of adults in allowing children to explore is influenced by a combination of child, adult and situational factors. (Contains 4 notes and 3 tables.)

Although curiosity is a characteristic often observed in young children, it has not received much academic interest in recent years. Among its many dimensions, the epistemic nature of curiosity, or the quest for knowledge, deserves attention. To explore the potential application of "epistemic curiosity", it is important to understand how lay conceptions complement theoretical conceptualizations. As people who are significant in organizing children's environment, how teachers and parents view curiosity is essential to how they will respond to the manifestation of this characteristic in children. A questionnaire was developed to examine teachers' and parents' conception of children's curiosity and exploratory behavior and whether they value this characteristic. The participants of this study were preschool teachers and parents with a preschool-age child. The findings indicated that the participants have a positive view toward curiosity and exploration and that teachers are more willing than parents to encourage this characteristic in young children. A factor analysis indicated that teachers' and parents' conceptualization of curiosity is multi-dimensional, showing some similarities with theoretical conceptualization. (Contains 4 tables and 3 notes.)

This article reports on the findings of a study involving intensive interviews with 21 former drug addicts who had successfully maintained abstinence for periods ranging from one-and-a-half to four years. They were among the 74 successful former drug addicts out of a pool of more than 2,000 participating in a major rehabilitation program in Hong Kong in 1996. The intensive interviewing primarily employed a Q-sort task which required respondents to rate the importance of causes leading to their success in abstinence maintenance. The pool of causes was derived from ten theories that claim to explain drug abuse and recovery. Results show that the cognitive-developmental factor was the most important one followed by the social cognitive factor, which was significantly more important among former addicts who had maintained abstinence for longer time. These findings, therefore, uphold the particular relevance of cognitive factors to rehabilitation. (Contains 6 tables.)

Results of a study of children's performance on pseudohomophone naming, similarity judgment, and lexical decision suggest that training in pinyin, a system for spelling Chinese words in Latin letters, helps child readers pronounce unfamiliar words, and makes them more responsive to visual information but less precise in word recognition. (Author/LB)

We examined the prevalence of medical problems in children and teenagers with Down syndrome in Hong Kong. Methods: Children with Down syndrome receiving care from seven regional hospitals were included and their hospital records were reviewed. A total of 407 patients, aged between 0.06 and 17.16 years were included. Cardiovascular problems were observed in 216 (53%), endocrine problems in 111 (27%), gastrointestinal problems in 46 (11%), haematological problems in 18 (4%), neurological problems in 27 (7%), sleep problems in 36 (9%), skeletal problems in 56 (14%), visual problems in 195 (48%) and auditory problems in 137 (34%). Conclusions: The prevalence of medical problems was high in children and teenagers with Down syndrome in Hong Kong and similar to previous findings elsewhere. Future studies on the local prevalence of medical problems in the adult population with Down syndrome would help to define their medical needs. (Contains 1 table.)