Kwok Shing Richard 黃國成 Wong

The Anatomy of the Role of Morphological Awareness in Chinese Character Learning: The Mediation of Vocabulary and Semantic Radical Knowledge and the Moderation of Morpheme Family Size

ABSTRACT In the present study, the mediating roles of syllable awareness, orthographic knowledge, and vocabulary skills and the moderating role of morpheme family size in the association between morphological awareness and Chinese character reading were investigated with 176 second-grade Hong Kong Chinese children. In the path analyses, the results indicated significant partial mediating effects of semantic radical function knowledge and vocabulary skills but not of syllable awareness and pseudocharacter identification. A significant moderating effect of morpheme family size was also observed. Children with relatively poor compounding structure awareness performed much more poorly in reading Chinese characters that had a small family size. The mediating and moderating effects documented in the present study can help us understand the mechanism involved in the relationship between morphological awareness and Chinese character reading and provide evidence as a basis for modifying current instruction strategies for improving Chinese children’s reading performance.

Kindergarten principals in Hong Kong

Aims primarily to examine how stressful kindergarten principals as leaders and managers of their schools found their work to be, and if such job stress was related to negative emotions and job satisfaction. The secondary aim was to explore if social support from a close friend could reduce and buffer job stress. Seventy‐seven kindergarten principals in Hong Kong responded to a questionnaire containing the variables of interest. The results showed that the principals found their work to be moderately stressful. However, emotional and informational support from a close friend had beneficial impacts on stress.

Transnational comparisons of teacher expectation of mathematical functional ability in early years and Key Stage 1 pupils – a study undertaken in Hong Kong and England

ABSTRACT The dominance of Asian communities in international league tables such as those produced by The Program for International Student Assessment, which monitors competence in literacy and numeracy, has resulted in a policy discourse from the English government of failing schools, deficit curricular and ineffective teachers. This in turn has led to a re-defining of the National Curriculum framework for pupils educated in England with greater focus given in the Early Years curriculum to Mathematical functions particularly those associated with skills in counting; understanding and using number; calculating simple addition and subtraction problems and the understanding of shape, space and measure. Drawing on research carried out in Hong Kong and England this article offers a cross-cultural comparison of the expectations of Early Years Teachers in terms of the capabilities of early learners in achieving elements of number competency. The study of teachers’ expectation is a neglected field in research when applied to compare intercultural achievement. In identifying divergent national expectations, the current panic over what constitutes an appropriate maths curriculum is critiqued and recommendations made for further exploration into teachers’ expectations as to the age and stage at which elements of the maths curriculum are introduced in English schools.