published_or_final_version / Social Work and Social Administration / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Writing development has generally been assumed to be parasitic to reading development (e.g. Van Orden, Jansen op de Harr, & Bosman, 1997). However, recent studies suggest that writing may not be entirely dependent on reading. Among the limited number of writing studies, the majority of them focus on alphabetic scripts such as English. Chinese script, which is non-alphabetic, receives less attention in writing research. It has been suggested that three sub-character units – stroke, logographeme and radical – are involved in the character writing process. However, their roles in writing are still not clear and their influences on writing and writing development have not been systematically addressed. The present study aimed at studying the relevant processing units in writing development. Before investigating the roles of different sub-character units in writing, a corpus was established to identify a set of logographemes which can capture the use of logographemes among primary school students. The properties of logographemes were studied, including the lexicality and the frequency across different grades. After the identification of logographemes, the roles of radical, logographeme and stroke in writing from grades one to six were investigated using a delayed copying task of pseudo-characters. Pseudo-characters were composed varying orthogonally in radical frequency, number of logographemes, and number of strokes. The results show that logographeme number and radical frequency affected the writing performance of students across the six grades. This suggests that both logographeme and radical are prominent processing units across writing development. Significant effect of stroke was found when the logographeme number and the radical frequency were high. This suggests that stroke is a prominent processing unit when the logographemes and radicals are less accessible. It is interesting that the stroke effect was found to be reversed in some specific occasions. Distinctiveness of logographemes is suggested to explain the phenomenon. Finally, the overall results are discussed in terms of the grain size theory (Ziegler & Goswami, 2005). / published_or_final_version / Speech and Hearing Sciences / Master / Master of Philosophy

Critical thinking is widely acknowledged as crucial for 21st century learners to be able to tackle the complex tasks arising every day in a rapidly changing world. Earlier critical thinking research has mostly focused on the related micro-skills, which have been criticized as inadequate. Recent studies have placed more emphasis on nurturing the dispositions towards critical thinking. Another trend in critical thinking research is the realization that good performance on generic critical thinking skills tests does not guarantee critical thinking performance in the real world. In line with the recent trends in critical thinking development, educators have shown growing interest in fostering critical thinking skills and dispositions in students through collaborative inquiry in authentic problem-solving contexts. However, empirical research that examines students’ critical thinking behavior while they engage in extended collaborative inquiry is rare. Further, it is not clear whether differences in students’ critical thinking abilities contribute to differences in their engagement and learning outcomes in collaborative inquiry. This study aims to investigate the relationship between students’ critical thinking and the quality of their collaborative inquiry. The study involved a class of secondary two students studying a humanities module through collaborative inquiry involving the use of an online platform. Given the debates over the value of different methods of measuring critical thinking, this study first seeks to explore the relationship between three different critical thinking tests: two standardized surveys on generic skills and dispositions, and a constructed-response test on context-specific skills. Second, this study examines whether students with higher critical thinking scores are better able to apply critical thinking to real-life situations. This is done through analyzing students’ critical thinking behaviors exhibited in the context of authentic problem solving. Third, this study explores the relationship between students’ critical thinking behavior and their knowledge building engagement in the learning process. Finally, this study uses the standardized tests to determine whether there is any significant change in the students’ critical thinking ability after a sustained engagement in collaborative inquiry to tackle an authentic problem. The analysis revealed a number of interesting findings. First, the three critical thinking tests are related but measure different aspects of critical thinking. Second, compared with traditional standardized surveys, the context-specific critical thinking test is a better indicator of the likelihood of the students to autonomously apply critical thinking in authentic problem-solving contexts. Third, critical thinking behaviors exhibited by students contributed to their engagement in knowledge building. Fourth, there was a statistically significant increase in students’ critical thinking dispositions after the extended collaborative inquiry of an authentic problem. The study has both theoretical and methodological implications. The study has both theoretical and educational implications. It deepens our understanding of the relationship between critical thinking and computer-supported collaborative inquiry. This study has provided strong evidence that traditional measures of critical thinking cannot predict the quality of students’ critical thinking engagement in authentic problem-solving contexts. Further, it also provides empirical support the theoretical claim that engaging students in knowledge building activities will enhance their critical thinking skills and dispositions. / published_or_final_version / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

This study explores the nature of the policy gap – the discrepancy between intended and actual policy outcomes – resulting from the implementation of Practical School (PS) policy in four Hong Kong Practical Schools during the 1990s. The study closely examines the complexity of the policy formulation and implementation processes, and finds that a number of factors at different policy levels served to divert PS implementation from its intended outcome. These factors can be grouped into two main categories – those that were specific to individual policy levels (e.g., policy orientation at the Education Department (ED) level, institutional autonomy at the School Sponsoring Body (SSB) level, or principal leadership at the (school) level, and those relating to the interdependent relationships existing between and among the various levels. The factors in these categories interacted to shape and modify PS policy implementation, making the policy-practice relationship complex and unpredictable. Thus, this study suggests that policy gap can be seen as the outcome of the multilevel, intertwined interplay among policy implementation actors from various policy levels. This study also proposes that the observed policy gap was not necessarily undesirable; in fact, the modification of original implementation plans prevented, in some instances, overall policy failure. In the case of PS, modified policy implementation allowed all four Practical Schools to achieve certain policy goals, despite failing to achieve others. This study has found that whether a policy gap was perceived as desirable depended on how the modified implementation affected the interests of the various parties; thus, any given policy gap could be called undesirable, desirable, or both, depending on which party were asked. Finally, this study is particularly concerned with the views of policymakers, senior SSB administrators and principals, and their actions in response to policy demands. The study argues that policy gap varied depending on policymakers’ perceptions of the policy, the organizational characteristics of SSBs, and the contextual nature of the schools. In other words, whether implementation realized intended policy outcomes depended on how implementing actors interacted to steer policy either towards or away from its original course. / published_or_final_version / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

This study explores the role and meaning of general education in Chinese higher education in the face of ongoing social changes in China, using Fudan University (FU) as a case study. General education has been heatedly discussed and greatly promoted in Chinese higher education since the last decade of the 20th century. Since existing theories and conceptions of general education mainly focus on Western, especially American, higher education, there has been little exploration of the meaning and role of general education in China, which has very different sociopolitical and cultural traditions from those of many Western nations, especially in the context of economic globalization. Therefore, an exploration of the meaning and role of general education in Chinese higher education could help to provide either challenges or supplements to existing theories and conceptions of general education. This study adopted the qualitative case study with FU as the case to explore the research problem. It used three data collection methods – document collection and review, interviews and observation – to gain an in-depth understanding of the development and tasks of general education at FU during periods of social transformation of China from 1905 to 2004, and during the latest reforms to general education at FU, between 2005 and 2012. Data collected from historical documents identified that general education at FU had mainly assumed two persistent tasks during periods of social transformation of China between 1905 and 2004. The first task was to facilitate the transmission of core cultural values, as defined mainly by the leaders of the state in different periods, to help the state to preserve its national identity. The second task was to equip students with knowledge, capacities and values, mainly Western in origin, to facilitate the state’s economic modernization. Further analysis of documentary, interview and observation data also identified continuities in and changes to the sociopolitical/cultural and economic tasks of general education at FU between 2005 and 2012; specifically, that general education still transmitted state-promoted core cultural values and still equipped students with a wider range of knowledge and capacities, but the contents of those values and the nature of those knowledge and capacities had changed due to the further development of China’s market economy and the effects of economic globalization. Based on these findings, this study proposed a concept to understand the meaning and role of general education at FU in the context of ongoing social changes in China. This thesis argues that, at FU, general education can be interpreted as a curricular instrument for nation-building that helps China promote its sociopolitical/cultural and economic tasks by facilitating (a) the inheritance of selected Chinese and non-Chinese cultural values, and (b) the equipment of students with a broader range of knowledge and capacities to cope with China’s changing economy. This study identified that, to facilitate China’s nation building ambitions, general education transmitted to students (a) Chinese and non-Chinese (particularly Western) cultural values, and (b) both traditional cultural values and contemporary cultural values prescribed by different national leaders (and/or scholars) in different historical periods. Further, this study identified two tensions in general education for nation-building: (a) the tension between traditional and contemporary Chinese cultures, and (b) the tension between selected Chinese and non-Chinese cultures. This study shows the ebb and flow of traditional Chinese cultural values in the sociopolitical/cultural task of general education, and how it has been shaped by China’s nation building since the early 20th century under the economic and military challenges of foreign nations. The concept of general education proposed by this study helps to explain the persistence of the economic and the sociopolitical/cultural task of general education at FU during the periods of social changes of China from 1905 to 2012. The study also identified that the economic task of general education mandated the import of elements of Western culture and values and therefore created tension with the Chinese cultural values transmitted in general education’s sociopolitical/cultural task. The concept of general education proposed by this study has implications for existed theories and conceptions of general education (mainly Western in context) which do not show (a) the coexistence of and the tensions between traditional and contemporary national cultures in the tasks of general education, and (b) the coexistence of and tensions between the economic and sociopolitical/cultural tasks of general education. Further research is suggested into the complex relationships among and tensions between different cultures as general education facilitates nation-building. / published_or_final_version / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

With specific reference to junior secondary schools in Shanghai, China, this qualitative empirical study examines the dynamics and complexities of leadership in school and, in particular, citizenship education exercised by principals and school party secretaries (SPSs), who are de facto equally-ranked school leaders. Specifically, it examines, from a macro- and micro-political theoretical perspective, the interactions between these two types of school leaders, and how they respond to the demands of various school stakeholders, including macro-political actors (e.g., the state) and micro-political actors (e.g., other school leaders, teachers, students and parents), at the school level. Data were gathered from document analysis, non-participant observation and semi-structured interviews with 44 school leaders from 24 schools and two educational officials in Shanghai, conducted in 2011. This study has four major findings. First, in addition to the leadership responsibilities inherent to their particular portfolios, the interviewed principals and SPSs were also politically and administratively responsible for leading the school and citizenship education, and struggled to balance these (at times conflicting) responsibilities. Second, there were four major school leadership/citizenship education scenarios in which principals and SPSs were torn between faithfully executing state policy demands, adapting those demands to suit the specific needs and conditions of their school, pursuing their professional autonomy, and addressing the interests of different micro-political actors. Third, principals and SPSs enjoyed a complicated working relationship at the micro-political (school) level in which they collaborated to fulfill their responsibilities and respond to school macro- and micro-political actors, while simultaneously competing for power over school leadership and citizenship education. Fourth, principals’ and SPSs’ leadership in school and citizenship education was shaped by inter-related factors, including diverse influences in a multi-leveled world, the integration of politics and education, the demands of macro- and micro-political actors, and personal factors. To interpret these findings, this study proposes a theoretical framework for understanding leadership in school and citizenship education in China as a political exercise in which school leaders actively use their influence and resources to lead and administer school and citizenship education, resist other school leaders’ (at times contradictory) administrative and political responsibilities, and interact with and mediate between the interests of various actors at the macro- and micro-political levels in response to political, economic and social needs. This theoretical framework is useful for understanding the complexity of school and citizenship education leadership, the micro-political relationship between Chinese principals and SPSs, and their dynamic and complex interactions with macro- and micro-political actors as they fulfill their intertwined political and administrative responsibilities in school leadership and citizenship education. / published_or_final_version / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

This study investigated the neural bases underlying representation of nouns and verbs at the semantic, lexical form, and morpho-syntactic levels in Mandarin Chinese, a language with little inflectional morphology. Compared with other studies employing European languages with rich inflections, examination of Chinese would allow the separation of conceptual and morpho-syntactic operations based on different stimulus formats and experimental paradigms. To deal with both the theoretical and design issues in previous studies, several additional measures were taken. First, at each cognitive level, two experiments, one receptive and one expressive, were conducted. Moreover, convergence across experiments at the same cognitive level was computed in order to search for taskindependent grammatical class effects. Second, both concrete and abstract nouns and verbs were included, and conjunction analyses across the two concreteness levels were employed to ensure the generalizability of the findings to all nouns and verbs. Results revealed greater activation for verbs in the left posterior lateral temporal gyri in experiments at both semantic and morpho-syntactic levels, and stronger responses in the prefrontal cortex, including left BA47 and the supplementary motor area, only for morpho-syntactic processing associated with nominal grammatical morphemes, namely, classifiers. No differential levels of activation for nouns and verbs were observed in tasks emphasizing word form representation. While greater activation for processing of nominal classifiers in prefrontal areas may reflect differences in computational complexity associated with selection of grammatical morphemes, the involvement of left posterior lateral temporal cortex has been interpreted as reflecting semantic processing of verbs. The nature of processes represented in each of these regions was further discussed with findings from previous relevant studies. Finally, future studies are proposed for further exploration into the neural mechanisms underlying presentation of nouns and verbs using more recently developed methods of analyses. / published_or_final_version / Speech and Hearing Sciences / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

This research investigates what impact (if any) do personal epistemology (PE) have on individual’s engagement and ideas progression when engaged in a CSCL discourse designed to stimulate knowledge building (KB) (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2003). Through literature review, this thesis sets out with an assumption that a learner’s engagement in a collaborative learning discourse is influenced by three kinds of beliefs: nature of knowledge, how learning takes place, and quality criteria for good knowledge. Reflective judgment (RJ), i.e. network of beliefs on knowledge and knowing underpinning personal judgments on ill-structured issues (Kitchener & King, 2002), is the key PE construct underpinning this study. Further, it is believed that the extent to which an individual pursues explanatory coherence (EC) (Thagard, 1989) when engaged in a CSCL discourse reflects his/her beliefs about the quality criteria for good knowledge. The empirical part of this study was undertaken in a grade 8 class involving 32 students over a 12-weeks period. Students worked in groups on an integrated-humanities module to develop proposals for new tourist attractions in Hong Kong. Students were encouraged to use Knowledge Forum® (KF) for online collaborative discussions throughout different inquiry stages of the module. A questionnaire instrument was designed and administered to assess students’ RJ. Using this instrument, fifteen students were identified as pre-reflective and seventeen as quasi-reflective. Independent-samples t-tests on students’ participatory statistics in KF show that quasi-reflective students’ usage of two metacognitive-oriented KF features, scaffolds and note revision, were significantly more frequent than pre-reflective students (p<=.05). Four qualitative indicators for RJ were developed to assess epistemic properties of all written notes students contributed on KF: purpose of the note, type of query raised, structure of claims, and basis for justification. The first two reflect disposition and the other two reflect argumentative rigor of a note. No statistically significant difference in the mean of epistemic properties contributed by students at different RJ levels was found. In average, students are disposed towards contributing argumentative notes and raise explanatory questions in the online collaborative discourse. Furthermore, student’s contributions are mainly justified on idiosyncratic basis. The study further investigates whether individual’s EC seeking notes in threads reflects his/her beliefs about quality criteria for good knowledge, and how EC seeking affects ideas progression. Qualitative analysis of threads show students sought EC on ideas and the inquiry process through raising concerns about contextual issues, challenging causal views, task-space evaluation, and methodological evaluation. In many threads analyzed quasi-reflective students were the initiator of EC seeking. They are also active contributors of argumentative build-ons that contribute towards changes in view among peers. Independent-samples t-tests suggest that quasi-reflective students have contributed significantly more notes that sought EC about contextual issues than pre-reflective students (p=.016). To conclude, epistemic properties of notes contributed and individual’s EC seeking acts provide preliminary evidence to support the notion that RJ and individual’s beliefs about quality criteria for good knowledge influence engagement and ideas progression in CSCL. Further studies on using developmental PE theories to study learner’s beliefs and engagement in KB discourse are recommended. / published_or_final_version / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

The purpose of this thesis is to broadly determine the influence of the Constitution on the South African labour environment and to do so from the perspective of the labour rights of workers who fall outside the ambit of the traditional common law contract of employment. An examination of the Constitution&rsquo;s influence will involve a consideration of various aspects including: (i) The evolution of the concept of employee and the contract of employment; (ii) The impact of the Constitution on South African labour relations and labour laws; (iii) The purposive interpretation of legislation; (iv) An outline of the 'Kylie' CCMA ruling and Labour Court judgment; (v) The current legal position of prostitution in South Africa; (vi) The requirements for a meaningful transformation in the legal treatment of sex workers particularly as regards their entitlement to the protections afforded to vulnerable workers provided in the LRA. / Magister Philosophiae - MPhil