Li-Fang Zhang

The University of Hong Kong | HKU · Division of Learning, Development & Diversity

Drawing on the job demands–resources theory, this study pioneered the investigation of the influence of academic psychological capital (including self‐efficacy, hope, resilience, and optimism) on PhD students' creativity (including novelty and usefulness). It further explored the mediating role of academic engagement (including vigour, dedication,...

Family system generally consists of family structure and process, and plays substantial yet varied roles in university students’ career decision self-efficacy (CDSE). However, previous research has mainly employed the variable-centered approach, which overlooked the diversities of family systems in light of individuals’ CDSE. Adopting latent profil...

China’s economic slowdown and higher education expansion highlight the significance of career adaptability for its university students. To investigate the relationships among thinking styles, career adaptability, and perceived career support, the study surveyed 1072 students from nine universities. Creativity-generating styles were associated with...

Introduction The increased diversity of students (e.g., students with special educational needs) has presented teachers with unprecedented challenges. Teachers’ attitudes toward inclusive education play a crucial role in teachers’ organizational well-being. However, existing studies mostly explored attitudes toward inclusive education based on a va...

Purpose/Objective: This study aims to understand the reciprocal relationships among acceptance of disability, attitudes toward disability, and coping among Chinese adolescents with visual impairments. Research design: Adolescents with visual impairments (NT1 = 311, NT2 = 170) from four Chinese special education schools completed three questionnaire...

The mental well-being of PhD students is a major concern in higher education. However, very few studies have investigated the influencing factors of PhD students’ subjective well-being (SWB) – an important indicator of mental well-being. Even no study on the influencing factors of PhD students’ SWB has been undertaken in mainland China. Based on jo...

Based on career construction theory, this study examined the contribution of career adaptability to career choice satisfaction, with career decision‐making self‐efficacy as a mediator and socioeconomic status as a moderator. Nine hundred and fourteen Chinese final‐year undergraduates were recruited. The results revealed that career adaptability dir...

This research pioneered the investigation of the statistically predictive power of academics’ research agendas for their organizational commitment—beyond age, gender, academic rank, and academic discipline. Three hundred and thirty-two academics from nine research-oriented comprehensive universities in Zhejiang province and Shanghai, mainland China...

This study compared attitudes towards inclusive education and organizational commitment, as well as their relationship, amongst three types of teachers working in Chinese inclusive education schools. A total of 623 teachers, including general education teachers (n = 168), inclusive education teachers (n = 246), and resource room teachers (n = 209),...

Background: As three key indicators of psychosocial adaptation, coping, self-esteem, and social integration are vital for students with visual impairments. Aims: This study aimed to examine the reciprocal relationships among visually impaired students' coping, self-esteem, and social integration. Methods: Students with visual impairments (NTim...

This research pioneered the investigation of the statistically predictive power of university students’ thinking styles for their vocational identity – beyond age, sex, academic discipline, socioeconomic status, hometown locations, and institutional ranking. One thousand and seventy-two senior-year undergraduates randomly selected from nine elite u...

This study was a pioneering attempt to determine the statistical effect of inclusive education teachers’ self-efficacy on their work motivation. Five hundred and thirty-four inclusive education teachers in Beijing, China, participated in the study through responding to two inventories: the Teacher Efficacy for Inclusive Practices Scale and the Mult...

Four hundred and twelve secondary school students in Hong Kong responded to the Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory (ZTPI), the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS), and the Temporal Satisfaction with Life Scale (TSWLS) to examine the relationship between time perspective and subjective well-being. Past-Positive, Present-Hedonistic, and Fu...

This study's principal objective was to explore the statistically predictive power of academics' research agendas for their job dissatisfaction beyond demographics. Five hundred and forty-seven academics from the eight publicly funded universities in Hong Kong responded to the Multi-Dimensional Research Agenda Inventory-12 (MDRAI-12) and the Job Di...

This study investigates the changeability of learning approaches via a longitudinal design (Study 1) and explores the factors that potentially influence the use of and change in learning approaches through a qualitative research method (Study 2) in a Chinese cultural context. In Study 1, 439 Chinese university students participated in the pre-test,...

The principal objective of this research was to examine the relationships between thinking styles and time perspectives. Four hundred and fifty-one secondary school students from Hong Kong responded to the Thinking Styles Inventory-Revised II (TSI-R2) and the Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory (ZTPI). Results showed that when gender, school year l...

Traditionally, it had been commonly believed that individuals in the same culture have personalities distinct from those of individuals in other cultures. This article examines this belief by critically reviewing relevant literature generated from two of the most widely investigated personality-based style constructs in the field of intellectual st...

This study explored factors that influence academics to collaborate in research with their doctoral students. It focused on Hong Kong academics, using data from the Academic Profession in Knowledge Society survey conducted in 2017–2018. The study found that academics’ research collaboration with doctoral students is influenced by several factors, i...

Giftedness is a multifaceted construct and, as such, can be conceptualized in numerous ways. In this chapter, it is argued that giftedness can be conceptualized as a propensity to use creativity-generating intellectual styles. Intellectual styles refer to people’s preferred ways of processing information and dealing with tasks. This chapter is comp...

For more than a century, whether or not the research-teaching nexus exists has remained an intensely debated issue in the global academy at both the conceptual and empirical levels. Situating teaching styles within the context of teaching, conceptualizing research agendas as a dimension of research, and using academic self-efficacy as a mediator, t...

Much research has been conducted to investigate the impact of work environment on academics’ job satisfaction. However, little is known about what contributes to academics’ job dissatisfaction. Job satisfaction and job dissatisfaction are two distinct entities because a lack of job satisfaction cannot be simply equated with job dissatisfaction. Thi...

Research agendas are understudied, despite being key to academic knowledge creation. The literature suggests that the ways that academics determine their research agendas are conditioned by individual, organisational and environmental characteristics. This study explores the cognitive aspects of academics' research agendas in the social sciences by...

Whether or not styles are malleable is one of the major controversial issues in the field of intellectual styles. Taking thinking styles (one of the intellectual style constructs) as the theoretical basis, the present study aimed at clarifying the issue by examining the change of thinking styles over one year from multiple perspectives. Seven hundr...

Recent developments in higher education have placed greater emphasis on performance and accountability and raised concerns about increasing levels of stress among academics. Stress not only influences academic productivity but may also affect institutional commitment, which is key to guaranteeing academics’ organisational stability, identity and pe...

Educational Impact and Implications Statement As a consequence of fundamental changes, such as intensified competition and output orientation in higher educational institutions, academics’ organizational commitment has become exponentially more important over the last decade. Much research has been conducted to understand organizational commitment...

The key purpose of this research was to investigate the mediating role of academics’ self-efficacy in teaching and research (termed ‘academic self-efficacy’) in the relationship between emotions in teaching and teaching styles. Two hundred and thirty-two academics from 13 higher educational institutions in Shanghai, mainland China, responded to thr...

This research pioneered the investigation of the role of doctoral students' thinking styles in their program satisfaction and perceived intellectual competence. Participants were 285 STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) students in Hong Kong. Results showed that students' thinking styles as measured by the Thinking Styles Inventory-...

The article describes the development and validation of the Career Personality Styles Inventory (CPSI). The CPSI comprehensively assesses Holland's career personality styles with only 22 items. Based on a series of 3 studies, we found satisfactory internal consistency, factor structure, and criterion validities of the newly constructed CPSI.

This research examined whether thinking styles are distinct from or they are part of personality traits. Nine hundred and twenty-six students responded to measures of thinking styles, personality traits, and career decision-making self-efficacy. The results revealed that personality traits only explained a small part of variance in thinking styles,...

The main objective of the present study was to explore the role of the forces in the context external to the setting of a specific vocational setting (i.e., an academic major in a university) in the congruence–satisfaction relationship. Four hundred and fifty-three Chinese university students responded to the Career Personality Styles Inventory, th...

Intellectual styles are individuals' preferred ways of using their abilities. This book provides the first comprehensive and systematic review of existing research on the value and desirability of different intellectual styles. By critically analyzing findings from hundreds of international studies undertaken over eight decades, Li-fang Zhang demon...

This study investigated the predictive power of thinking styles for academic stress coping. Participants were 563 (280 males, 275 females, 8 gender unspecified) secondary school students in grades 7 through 12 from mainland China. Thinking styles were measured using the Thinking Styles Inventory-Revised II which was based on the theory of mental se...

Introduction The present research pioneered the effort in assessing adolescents’ coping with visual impairment through adapting the Brief COPE in an eastern context. The first study preliminarily explored the applicability of the Brief COPE to Chinese adolescent students with visual impairments. Based on the results, the Brief COPE was modified and...

THE AUTHORS explored how thinking styles relate to quality of university life among deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) and hearing university students in mainland China. The first of two studies affirmed the validity and reliability of a modified version of the Quality of University Life Measure (QULM; Sirgy, Grezskowiak, & Rahtz, 2007) among 833 univer...

This research investigated the statistical predictive power of organisational commitments for academics’ teaching approaches. Participants were 268 academics working in six elite universities in Beijing, mainland China. Results showed that academics’ organisational commitments as measured by the Organisational Commitment Inventory significantly pre...

This research aimed at identifying the statistically predictive relationship of personality traits to teaching approaches. The NEO Five-Factor Inventory and the Approaches to Teaching Inventory were administered to 268 academics from six elite universities in mainland China. Results showed that personality traits significantly contributed to teachi...

This article demonstrates that contrary to some people's belief that Erikson is passé, Erikson is very much in fashion. It does so by providing an up-to-date, panoramic picture of the scholarship founded on Erik Erikson's theory of psychosocial development. It begins with a succinct introduction of the principal tenets of Erikson's theory and those...

This study investigated the extent to which learning approaches can be accounted for by personal factors (i.e., demographics, ability, and personality). The participants were 443 students in a university in mainland China. The Revised Two-factor Study Process Questionnaire, the NEO Five-Factor Inventory-3, and the short form of Raven's Advanced Pro...

For long, the research–teaching nexus has maintained the interest of the scholarly community. The present study introduced a process variable—teaching styles—into the investigation of the association between research and teaching. The study adopted a predominantly quantitative-driven, mixed research method design, with a questionnaire survey supple...

This study explores how students' thinking styles are related to their university self-efficacy, by administering the Thinking Styles Inventory-Revised II and the University Self-Efficacy Scale to 366 deaf or hard-of-hearing (DHH) and 467 hearing university students in mainland China. Results showed that, among all participants, those with Type I s...

The principal objective of this research was to examine the value of thinking styles and that of defense mechanisms by identifying the predictive power of thinking styles for defense mechanisms, controlling for key demographics and social desirability. The preliminary objective was to construct and test an alternative form of the Defense Mechanisms...

Intellectual styles refer to people’s preferred ways of processing information and dealing with tasks. Individuals who have a propensity for using a wide range of styles—always including creativity-generating styles—are said to possess successful intellectual styles. The author argues that teachers should and can encourage creativity among students...

This study explores how university students' thinking styles changed over a single academic year by twice administering the Thinking Styles Inventory-Revised II to 256 deaf or hard-of-hearing (DHH) students and 286 hearing students from art and design academic disciplines in China. Results showed that after having studied at the university for one...

The primary objective of this study was to determine if academics' personality traits contribute to their organizational commitment. Three hundred and fifty-six academics from mainland China responded to the Organizational Commitment Inventory (OCI) and the NEO Five-Factor Inventory. Having ascertained the reliability and the validity of the relati...

The present study pioneered in adopting test accommodations to validate the Thinking Styles Inventory-Revised II (TSI-R2; Sternberg, Wagner, & Zhang, 2007) among Chinese university students with hearing impairment. A series of three studies were conducted that drew their samples from the same two universities, in which accommodating test directions...

While research has indicated that kindergarten teachers across cultures have consistently faced high work stress that may influence their wellbeing, little research has examined the relationships among kindergarten teachers' wellbeing, perceived school culture, and personality types. In the research, 371 in-service kindergarten teachers completed t...

This research pioneered the investigation of the predictive power of organisational commitments for academics’ teaching styles. Participants were 370 faculty members from 15 higher educational institutions in Beijing, the People’s Republic of China. Results showed that academics’ organisational commitments as measured by the Organisational Commitme...

To overcome the major weakness in the response format of the Defense Mechanisms Inventory and to use the information most relevant to the population concerned in the present study, an alternative form of the Defense Mechanisms Inventory (DMI-AF) was designed. The 80 Likert-scaled items in the inventory were tested among 385 university students in m...

This volume presents the most comprehensive, balanced, and up-to-date coverage of theory and research on cognitive, thinking, and learning styles, in a way that: * represents diverse theoretical perspectives; * includes solid empirical evidence testing the validity of these perspectives; and * shows the application of these perspectives to school s...

The present study examined the association between students’ perceived general learning environment and their thinking styles (a specific term for ‘intellectual styles’). Seven hundred and fifty-two undergraduates in Shanghai responded to the Thinking Style Inventory-Revised II and the Inventory of Students’ Perceived Learning Environment. Results...

In her chapter, Zhang Li-fang asks what intellectual styles are the most conducive for good educational outcomes in a multi-ethnic environment like China. She argues that intellectual styles complicate multicultural education, and stresses the importance of balancing group preferences for learning with individual cognitive styles. Furthermore, rapi...

This edited volume brings together essays by leading experts exploring different aspects of ethnic minority education in China: among these are the challenges associated with bilingual and trilingual education in Xinjiang and Tibet; Han Chinese reactions to preferential minority education; the role of inland boarding schools for minority students,...

This research had two objectives. The first was to determine the reliability and validity of the multifaceted assessment of creativity (MAC) for evaluating Hong Kong university students’ conceptions of creativity. The second was to establish if the theory–practice and gender gaps discovered among mainland Chinese university students would be replic...

Intellectual style, an encompassing term for such constructs as learning style, teaching style, teaching approach, and thinking style, refers to one's preferred way of processing information. For the past several decades, whether or not there is a need for a match between teachers' teaching styles and students' learning styles has been the focal po...

This study explores how psychosocial development and personality traits are related. In particular, the study investigates the predictive power of the successful resolution of the Eriksonian psychosocial crises for the Big Five personality traits beyond age and gender. Four hundred university students in mainland China responded to the Measures of...

While an individual's personality is related to his or her well-being, little research has examined kindergarten teachers' personality. This research was the first to investigate Hong Kong kindergarten teachers' personality types using the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). Three hundred and seventy-one kindergarten teachers voluntarily responded...

This book provides an up-to-date, panoramic picture of the field of intellectual styles through describing, analyzing, and integrating the major theoretical and research works on the topic. Readers will gain a broad understanding of the field--its nature, origins, historical development, theories, research, and applications, as well as the interrel...

The primary objective of this study was to examine the predictive power of personality traits for occupational stress among Chinese university academics. Two hundred and forty-six participants responded to the NEO Five-Factor Inventory and the Occupational Stress Inventory-Revised. Results indicated that the strongest predictor for occupational str...

Traditionally, many educators and psychologists believed that successes and failures within the school context are attributable mainly to individual differences in such classic variables as ability, personality, and learning motivation. This article presents research evidence demonstrating that intellectual styles, that is, people’s preferred ways...

This study was to ascertain the validity of Sternberg's theory of mental self-government for Tibetan ethnic minority university students and to compare the thinking styles of Tibetan students with those of the Han Chinese majority students. Participants were 408 Tibetan students and 920 Han Chinese students. Furthermore, focus group interviews were...

Authors: ZHU Chang, Zhang Li-fang Reference: from Educational Psychology: An International Journal of Experimental Educational Psychology (ISI/SSCI), issue 3, vol.31, pp.361 - 375, published by Taylor and Francis

The principal objective of this research is to ascertain if the “research–teaching dichotomy” as revealed in the relationship between conceptions of effective teachers and teaching styles among Han Chinese academics can be found among Tibetan academics. As a preliminary objective, this research examines the appropriateness of the Effective Teacher...

The principal objective of this study was to investigate the predictive power of thinking styles for hardiness—a healthy personality disposition. Four hundred (146 males and 254 females) students from a large, comprehensive university in Shanghai, the People's Republic of China, responded to the Thinking Styles Inventory-Revised II (Sternberg, Wagn...

This research further examines Sternberg and Lubart's (1995) investment theory of creativity by testing the newly constructed Multifaceted Assessment of Creativity (MAC). The MAC measures the extent to which people take into account the 6 resources for creativity (intelligence, knowledge, intellectual styles, personality, motivation, and environmen...

The field of intellectual styles is one that has been constantly searching for its identity within the larger context of literatures such as education, psychology, and business and the levels of interest in the notion of styles have waxed and waned in the past seven decades. There has been, however, a steady growth in the amount of styles research...

This research aims to understand university students’ thinking styles and the relationship with their views of creativity. The Thinking Styles Inventory‐Revised II was used to measure 13 thinking styles as defined in Sternberg’s theory of mental self‐government and the Conceptions of Creativity Scales was used to inquire students’ views about the c...

Temperament and personality have been presumed to affect achievement goals based on the hierarchical model of achievement motivation. This research investigated the relationships of temperament dimensions and the Big Five personality traits to achievement goals based on the 2 × 2 achievement goal framework among 775 Chinese adolescent students. Con...

The primary objective of this study was to investigate the predictive power of thinking styles for psychosocial development. Four hundred and twenty-six (212 men and 214 women) students from a large comprehensive university in Shanghai, the People’s Republic of China, responded to the Thinking Styles Inventory-Revised II (TSI-R2, Sternberg, Wagner,...

This study examines the construct of hardiness with the Big Five personality traits among 362 Chinese university students. Participants in the study responded to the Dispositional Hardiness Scale (Bartone, Ursano, Wright, & Ingraham, 1989) and the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (Costa & McCrae, 1992). Results indicate that personality traits sta...

Intellectual styles are individuals' preferred ways of using the abilities that they possess. The extent to which one can change his or her intellectual style is a question of interest to both researchers and the general public. This book presents the first comprehensive and systematic review of existing research on the malleability of intellectual...

This article describes two aspects of learning in a cross-cultural context: learning process as represented by intellectual styles, and learning outcome as typified by academic achievement. Research on cross-cultural learning converges on one conclusion: culture makes a difference in learning. However, findings from this research are challenging so...

Much theorization and research have been done independently on thinking styles and psychosocial development. The primary objective of this research was to further investigate the predictive power of thinking styles for psychosocial development through replicating Zhang and He's (in press) study of Chinese university students in Shanghai, mainland C...

The relationship between thinking styles, as defined in Sternberg's theory of mental self-government, and mental health was investigated. 583 university students (362 women, 221 men; M age = 21.4 yr., SD = 0.9) in Guangzhou, P. R. China, were invited to fill out the Thinking Styles Inventory-Revised and the Symptom Checklist-90 on a voluntary basis...

The principal objective of this study was to explore the predictive power of thinking styles for metacognition when self‐rated abilities were taken into account. As a preliminary step, the study examined the psychometric properties of the Metacognitive Awareness Inventory (MAI). Four hundred and twenty‐four university students from mainland China r...

This article reports two studies that aim at further distinguishing intellectual styles from abilities by taking into account the confounding effects of age and gender on the relationship between these two constructs. Two independent groups of secondary school students responded to the Thinking Styles Inventory-Revised and took the Sternberg Triarc...

The primary objective of this study was to examine the predictive power of thinking styles for anxiety. Three hundred and seventy-eight university students from mainland China responded to the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory and the Thinking Styles Inventory-Revised II. Results showed that, in general, creativity-generating styles (also known as Type...

The present study examined the relationships between thinking styles and achievement motivation among Chinese university students. The Thinking Styles Inventory — Revised (TSI-R; Sternberg, Wagner, & Zhang, 2003) and the Achievement Motives Scale (AMS; Gjesme & Nygard, 1970; Ye & Hagtvet, 1988) were administered to 238 Chinese university students f...

Purpose Drawing upon Sternberg's theory of mental self‐government, this paper aims to investigate the thinking styles and workplace experiences of 152 human resource (HR) practitioners pursuing Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) membership. It seeks to explore whether their thinking styles complemented their jobs and consider t...

The present study investigates the predictive power of conceptions of effective teachers for teaching styles. Ninety-three academic staff from two large comprehensive universities in the People's Republic of China responded to The Effective Teacher Inventory [Zhang, L.F. (2003). The effective teacher inventory. Unpublished test, The University of H...

The primary objective of this study was to examine the predictive power of occupational stress for teaching approaches. Participants were 246 faculty members from a large university in Guangzhou in the People’s Republic of China, who completed the Approaches to Teaching Inventory, four scales from the Occupational Stress Inventory‐Revised (assessin...