A total of 199 students from a school in Hong Kong responded to 25 items in a survey. Principal components analysis found 4 school motivation factors consistent with the Task, Effort, Competitivenes and Praise scales of the McInerney et al. Inventory of School Motivation, 1 education aspiration factor and 1 career aspiration factor. The correlations indicated significant relations between the motivation factors and the aspiration factors. A path model applying a structural equation modeling approach found that Task, Effort and Competitiveness orientations had relatively stronger impacts on education aspirations whereas Task and Praise had stronger impacts on career aspirations. Analysis of variance found that grade 7 students had significantly higher Task, Effort and Praise scores and higher career aspirations than students from grades 9 and 11. The drastic drop from grade 7 of motivation scores--especially Task and Effort, both pertaining to a mastery orientation dimension that has been assumed to be a major driving force for excellence-calls for urgent attention to student motivation in junior secondary classes.
[Copyright of Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) at http://www.aare.edu.au]

This paper describes the development of Learning Study in Hong Kong and analyses the factors that lead to the success and ready acceptance of Learning Study by the school community in Hong Kong. The paper first describes how Lesson Study, as described by Stigler and Hiebert, was brought into the Hong Kong context through a three year project in 2000. It was then further developed and renamed Learning Study to differentiate it from the Japanese Lesson Study. The potential of Learning Study as a powerful tool for teachers' professional development was quickly recognized. Two subsequent projects led to the adoption of Learning Study by over 100 primary and secondary schools in a matter of four years. The success of Learning Study in Hong Kong will be analysed under the following factors: methodology, partnership with higher education institutions, positioning, reform context and culture, and dissemination strategy. Its contributions to pre-service education, teachers' continuing development, research and development in education, and also to improving the status of the profession as a whole are also discussed.
[Copyright of Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) at http://www.aare.edu.au]

As learning technologies increasingly facilitate the internationalisation of subject offerings, it becomes correspondingly important to try and ensure that the needs of diverse student groups are met, and to provide for ongoing improvement of their learning experiences. A variety of evaluation procedures is valuable in this respect, but particularly those that illuminate these experiences. This kind of information provides a rich source of data for teachers to use as a basis for reflective practice to inform the continuing refinement of teaching and learning approaches, and curriculum development. The nature of reflective practice also allows for its inclusion in the students' learning processes, thus simultaneously providing a means for improving the quality of their learning and contributing to their future professional lives, whilst offering a further set of perspectives to inform subject development.
This paper describes the use of reflective practice as a practical means of converging a range of non-positivist approaches to inform the teaching of a core undergraduate accounting subject; offered in Australia to on-campus students, distance education students and Victorian Year 13 school students, as well as to overseas students in Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong. It also shows that demands by the accounting profession for universities to improve learning to cope with the ambiguity and uncertainty inherent within professional life can be met, in part, by reflective practice.
[Copyright of Australian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education (ascilite) at http://www.ascilite.org.au]

This paper introduces the core principles of Improving the Quality of Education for All (IQEA) before drawing on the experience of one school engaged in the programme in England. This school has implemented a cross-school reflection and enquiry process (lesson study) to explore a number of fundamental questions:
1.How can we generate developments in teaching and learning?
2.How can schools be encouraged to lead from within?
3.What types of evidence move thinking and practice forward?
4.How can a collaborative focus on teaching and learning establish conditions for resource sharing?
The paper discusses the extent to which lesson study has contributed to the exploration of the above questions and how the insights gained from this methodology have fed into the improvement process. In conclusion, the paper argues that this school's involvement in IQEA has contributed to significant cultural and structural change within the school.
[Copyright of Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) at http://www.aare.edu.au]