The authors investigated what and how instructional practices are related to students' motivation and performance in writing. The participants were 6 teacher interns and their (N = 209) secondary-school students in Hong Kong. In a 3-session instruction unit, the teacher interns taught their students how to write an expository essay. The students completed the essay and then a questionnaire to report their motivation in the task and their perception of the instruction. Results of structural equation modeling showed that students' motivation mediated the effects of instructional practices on writing performance. The authors found that when the teachers adopted more motivating teaching strategies, the students were more motivated. When the students were more motivated, they, in turn, had better performance in writing.
[Copyright of Journal of Experimental Education is the property of Routledge . Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.3200/JEXE.75.2.145-164 ]

Students from a school in Hong Kong (n=199) responded to 22 items asking about their school motivation and aspirations in a survey. Structural equation models found four school motivation factors consistent with the task, effort, competition, and praise scales of the Inventory of School Motivation, one education aspiration factor, one career aspiration factor, and significant relations of the motivation factors with the aspiration factors. Task and effort orientations were found to be stronger than the other orientations and to have relatively stronger associations with education aspirations, whereas task and praise had stronger associations with career aspirations. In examining potential change in students' goal orientations and aspirations through high school years, analysis of variance found that 7th-graders had significantly higher scores in task and effort orientations and career aspirations than 9th-graders, and higher scores in praise orientation than 11th-graders. The apparent drop in motivation scores from Grade 7, especially in task and effort orientations, 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 high school classes.
[Copyright of Educational Psychology is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01443410500046804 ]

The hypothesis in this study was that different types of multiple-goal learners would have different patterns of learning. A sample of 797 adult distance learners enrolled in different programs offered by a distance learning university in Hong Kong completed a questionnaire assessing their goals, use of strategies, motivational beliefs, and attitudes towards the course they were doing. Two-stage cluster analyses found a group of single-goal learners (mastery focused) and three groups of multiple-goal learners with different focuses in their goal profiles: performance focus, work focus, and multiple focuses. These four clusters of learners differed in terms of use of learning strategies, regulatory strategies, motivational beliefs, and attitudes towards the course. Learners focusing on work-related goals or performance goals achieved better examination results than did those focusing on multiple goals or solely on mastery goals.
[Copyright of Educational Psychology is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01443410701739470]

This study explored the problem of under-achievement in Hong Kong. Underachievers were compared with high achievers and low achievers on their motivational characteristics. The findings generally supported that motivational variables were important factors in discriminating under-achievers and high achievers. While under-achievers had poor academic self-concept, low attainment value in learning, and deficiencies in using effective learning strategies, they did not demonstrate maladaptive attributional pattern as described in Western studies. Implications of these findings for the study of under-achievement and implementation of interventions are discussed.
[Copyright of Educational Psychology is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01443410120090803]