Beginning in 1995, the Hong Kong University Grants Committee (UGC) embarked on a programme of Teaching and Learning Quality Process Reviews (TLQPRs) to gauge institutional commitment to assuring and improving educational quality. While rooted in academic audit principles, the reviews covered more aspects of education quality work than was typical in earlier audit implementations elsewhere. The paper describes the dynamics of the TLQPR process, presents examples of good and bad practices unearthed during the site visits, and reports on an external consultant's ex-post review of the exercise. It concludes by discussing lessons learned from the TLQPR experience and the way forward toward a second round of reviews.
[Copyright of Quality in Higher Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13538320120045067]

This article reports findings from a qualitative interview study that examined the provision of integrated kindergarten education for children with disabilities from the perspectives of general education teachers implementing integrated kindergarten programs. Analysis of interviews with eight informants led to the identification of two broad generalizations: the interviewed teachers emphasized teaching academics to children without disabilities, but they focused on social development at the exclusion of academic instruction for children with disabilities; and, according to the teachers, instruction was academic and skill-oriented in the integrated kindergarten programs. Research procedures are described and data supporting the findings are presented. Ways to improve program quality are discussed in terms of three major components: the Hong Kong government should include early childhood education within the compulsory education system, and enforce the formally recommended approach of developmental appropriateness; teacher education institutions should prepare prospective teachers to work in school settings where program goals may be contradictory with the ideology of inclusion; and educational researchers should monitor program quality in integrated childcare centers by conducting further research.
[Copyright of Early Child Development and Care is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03004430600563430]

This article draws on a longitudinal study of a group of mainland Chinese students' English learning experiences in an English medium university in Hong Kong, and explores the dynamic nature of their language learning motivation prior to and after their arrival in Hong Kong. The study identified context-mediated and self-determined elements in the participants' learning motivational discourses. The context-mediated motivational discourses echoed the societal discourses of learning, and were shaped by the contextual conditions on the Chinese mainland and in Hong Kong, including the roles of English, academic competition and medium of instruction. Through an extended socialization process, mediated by various social agents, some of these context-mediated motivational discourses became internalized and transformed into self-determined ones among many participants in later stages of their learning. The article argues for an integrated perspective, viewing learner motivation as a dynamic construct emerging from learners' interaction with contextual conditions.
[Copyright of Studies in Higher Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03075070802373107]

Prior studies on the effects of high school accounting qualification on student performance in university-level introductory accounting courses have focused primarily on the United States and other Western countries. For this article I examined (a) the generalizability of U.S. results to Hong Kong and (b) the effect of strength of high school accounting qualification, by incorporating different accounting strength variables in the U.S. model. Results show that students who had passed accounting in a public examination at the end of either the fifth or seventh forms all significantly outperformed students without high school accounting qualification in the first, but not the second, introductory accounting course. Despite differences in culture and educational system, determinants of student performance in university introductory accounting courses were found to be similar to those in the United States.
[Copyright of Journal of Education for Business is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08832329909601702 ]