Hongbiao Yin

Educational change is intrinsically bound to the cultural characteristics of the society. However, the relationship between educational change and societal culture is rarely explored, especially in the context of mainland China. Following a 3-year qualitative research project, the present study explored the influence of societal culture on teachers’ responses to the national curriculum reform of upper secondary education in mainland China. The results generated three themes highly relevant to teachers’ responses to curriculum reform in Chinese culture, namely teachers’ obedience, teachers’ facework and teachers’ collaboration. These teachers’ responses reflected some Confucian ethics rooted in Chinese culture and explained the absence of radical teacher resistance to the national curriculum reform. It was suggested that a culturally sensitive approach to change leadership may have been more fruitful for facilitating the aims of curriculum reform in mainland China.

The present study reports the adaptation and validation of the Teacher Emotional Labour Strategy Scale (TELSS) as tested on samples of 633 Beijing teachers and 648 Chongqing teachers in Chinese mainland. Results show that the 13-item TELSS adapted for this study had good internal consistency on three subscales which measure three types of teacher emotional labour strategy, namely, surface acting, deep acting and expression of naturally felt emotions. Confirmatory factor analysis using different data-sets provided support for the construct validity of this TELSS. In addition, the convergent, discriminant and concurrent validity of this newly-adapted TELSS were examined in the present study.

Assessing and improving the quality of undergraduate teaching is an important issue in China. Using the Course Experience Questionnaire, this study examined the quality of undergraduate teaching by investigating the relationships between students’ course experience, the learning outcomes demonstrated by the students and the learning environment. Two thousand and forty-three second-year students participated in a questionnaire survey. The results indicated that different aspects of the students’ course experience variously affected learning outcomes, such as overall satisfaction with the course, academic efficacy and the development of generic skills. These results reflected the characteristics of undergraduate teaching in China, and highlighted the need to enhance student autonomy and self-study. In addition, the appropriateness of learning resources and the level of academic freedom in the institutions were found to more powerfully influence students’ course experience than the provision of supportive facilities and services. These findings have implications for improving undergraduate teaching and its quality assurance in China.

The quality of teaching in higher education is a topic which has generated heated debate in China, though there has been a remarkable paucity of empirical research into the characteristics of teaching and learning in Chinese universities. This study examined Chinese university students’ course experience and its influence on their approaches to learning. A sample of 2529 students from 15 full-time regular universities responded to the questionnaire. Results indicated that the Course Experience Questionnaire could be a promising instrument for assessing the teaching quality in Chinese universities. Chinese undergraduate teaching was characterised by the dominance of developing students’ generic skills, but a lack of emphasis on students’ independence. The study revealed some desirable influences of university teaching on students’ approaches to learning, but an increase in instructors’ effort and commitment to teaching was found to facilitate a surface rather than a deep approach to learning. These findings highlighted the need to reflect on the teacher-centred nature of undergraduate teaching in China.

This report describes the development and validation of an instrument, the University Mathematics Classroom Environment Questionnaire (UMCEQ), for assessing the mathematics classroom environment in tertiary institutions in China. Through the use of multiple methods, including exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, on two independent samples of 1,476 and 1,024 tertiary students, results show that the 48-item UMCEQ finalised in this study has a stable factor structure and good psychometric qualities, including reliability, discriminant validity and construct validity. The concurrent validity of the UMCEQ is also examined through its correlations with students’ approaches to learning. These eight factors cover all three categories for conceptualising human environments, i.e. relationship, personal development and system maintenance and change. Four dimensions are suggested to understand the characteristics of classroom environment in Chinese tertiary institutions. The implications and suggestions for future research are finally put forward.

This study explores the impact of teachers’ perception of trust in colleagues on their sense of empowerment in Mainland China, with a particular focus on the mediating role of teacher efficacy. The results of a survey of 1646 teachers indicate that although teachers scored positively on trust in colleagues, efficacy and empowerment, they had relatively lower scores on general teaching efficacy (GTE) and participation in decision-making. Trust in colleagues was a significant predictor of teacher empowerment. In addition, personal teaching efficacy had a significant mediation effect on the relationship between trust in colleagues and teacher empowerment, while GTE had not. These findings lead to some implications for understanding the nature of GTE and the relationship between trust and teacher empowerment.

This study examines Hong Kong students’ motivational beliefs, strategy use and their relations with two relational factors in classrooms – student learning community and teacher support and involvement. A total of 2206 Grade Four to Grade Nine students responded to a questionnaire that comprised three instruments, including two scales measuring student learning community and teacher support and involvement in classroom, respectively, and the Chinese version of the Motivated Strategy for Learning Questionnaire. Our findings suggest that the two relational factors could play an important role in facilitating students’ intrinsic value, self‐efficacy, and strategy use, reflecting some culture‐specific features of students’ self‐regulated learning in Hong Kong classrooms. The implications of these findings for understanding Hong Kong students’ motivational beliefs and strategy use are discussed. Finally, suggestions for future research are put forward.

Classroom experience is shaped by a number of factors. In this paper, we report a classroom observation study in China, illustrating regional variation in students' classroom learning experiences. Through comparing and contrasting observed classroom practices in three different regions in China (Chongqing, Hong Kong and Shanghai), the paper provides an analysis of the variation in classroom learning experiences of primary school students in China. Our empirical classroom observation data illustrates some key differences in the pedagogy, the use of classroom activities, and the implementation of the curriculum between individual schools. More substantial differences in classroom practices are found when comparing schools from different regions than those within a given city, leading us to conclude that regional impacts on student experience appear to be more important than within-city factors such as the location of a school or its level of facilities.

In educational research, emotion has attracted substantial attention since the mid-1990s. While there are many studies of teacher emotion in educational change in the West, there is a remarkable dearth of such studies in China. This qualitative study attempts to address this issue by examining teachers’ emotional experiences in the national curriculum reform of senior secondary education in China. Results indicate that teachers revealed complex emotional responses to the reform. These emotions were related to teachers’ perceptions about the use of new textbooks, teaching approaches, and, more importantly, the uncertain changes in college entrance examinations. Three types of teachers with different emotions and professional identities are identified in the reform (i.e., the losing heart accommodators, the drifting followers, and the cynical performers). These findings highlight the Chinese perspective on teacher emotion and provide some implications for the management of curriculum reform and teacher emotion in the Chinese context.

This article reports the adaptation and analysis of Pintrich's Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) in Hong Kong. First, this study examined the psychometric qualities of the existing Chinese version of MSLQ (MSLQ-CV). Based on this examination, this study developed a revised Chinese version of MSLQ (MSLQ-RCV) for junior secondary students in Hong Kong. Confirmatory factor analysis and Graded Response Model (GRM) were used to examine the internal consistency, construct validity, differential item functioning (DIF), and differential test functioning (DTF) of the revised instrument, which contains six factors and 50 items. Compared with the existing MSLQ-CV, the factor structure of MSLQ-RCV was expanded to incorporate two new factors: extrinsic value and peer learning. The reasons for these amendments and implications of the findings are discussed.

This article used the multidimensional random coefficients multinomial logit model to examine the construct validity and detect the substantial differential item functioning (DIF) of the Chinese version of motivated strategies for learning questionnaire (MSLQ-CV). A total of 1,354 Hong Kong junior high school students were administered the MSLQ-CV. Partial credit model was suggested to have a better goodness of fit than that of the rating scale model. Five items with substantial gender or grade DIF were removed from the questionnaire, and the correlations between the subscales indicated that factors of cognitive strategy use and self-regulation had a very high correlation which resulted in a possible combination of the two factors. The test reliability analysis showed that the subscale of test anxiety had a lower reliability compared with the other factors. Finally, the item difficulty and step parameters for the modified 39-item questionnaire were displayed. The order of the step difficulty estimates for some items implied that some grouping of categories might be required in the case of overlapping. Based on these findings, the directions for future research were discussed. Cet article a utilisé le modèle Coefficients aléatoire Multidimensionnel Multinomial Logit (MRCMLM) pour examiner la validité de construction et détecter les articles DIF substantielles de la version chinoise de la stratégies motivés pour la lecture de la questionnaire (MSLQ-CV). Un total de 1,354 élèves du lycées de Hong Kong, ont été administrés dans MSLQ-CV. Un modèle de crédit partiel a été suggéré pour avoir une meilleure qualité d'ajustement que le modèle d'échelle de classement. Cinq éléments avec une des sexes ou grade DIF substantiels ont été retirés du questionnaire, et les corrélations entre les sous-échelles qui indiquent que les facteurs de l'utilisation de la stratégie cognitifs et l'autorégulation avaient une corrélation très élevée, qui a entraîné une combinaison possible de deux facteurs. L'analyse de fiabilité de test a montré que la sous-échelle de test anxiété avait une fiabilité plus faible par rapport aux autres facteurs. Enfin, les paramètres de difficulté et l'étape d'article pour le questionnaire de 39-article modifié étaient affichées. L'ordre des estimations de difficulté étape pour certains articles implicite que certains regroupement des catégories peuvent être nécessaires dans le cas de chevauchement. Se fondant sur ces constatations, les directions pour de futures recherches ont été discutées.

Few studies deal with teachers’ receptivity in the initiation stage of educational change, especially in a non-western cultural context like Mainland China. This study aims at investigating teachers’ receptivity to the system-wide curriculum reform of the senior secondary education in the initiation stage and understanding the factors influencing teachers’ receptivity in Mainland China. Questionnaire survey with open-ended question (n = 763) is employed to explore teachers’ receptivity in four selected experimental provinces, i.e., the first group of provinces which are selected by Ministry of Education to implement the curriculum reform. Results indicate teachers have positive attitudes and behavioral intentions toward promoting the curriculum reform of senior secondary education, and they consider the reform is valuable but difficult to carry out. The existing theoretical model can explain teachers’ behavioral intentions quite well, but its predicting ability to teachers’ general attitudes is limited, which indicates some new variables that need to be considered, too. Implications of this study and suggestions for future research are also discussed in the article.