Practicing teachers often engage in continuous professional learning with certain career considerations. Based on achievement goal theory, this study explored the effects of career goals on teacher's learning using a sample of practicing teachers in Hong Kong. Two forms of career goals were assessed using a questionnaire. Professional learning goals orient teachers to learn for improving professional competence by acquiring professional knowledge and understanding, and extrinsic career goals focus teachers on learning for tangible benefits such as career promotion and higher professional qualification. Results derived from regression analyses confirmed that professional learning goals were the most significant goals in predicting adaptive use of learning strategies, regulatory strategies, and positive attitudes towards learning. Extrinsic career goals predicted the use of surface strategies. This study also found that self-efficacy mediated the effects of different goals on learning. Cluster analyses provided additional findings confirming the importance of professional learning goals in teachers' goal profiles.
[Copyright of Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13540601003754806]

In 2007, a Judicial Commission of Inquiry was established by the Government of Hong Kong to investigate allegations that senior officials had interfered with the academic freedom and institutional autonomy of the Hong Kong Institute of Education (HKIEd). It concluded that a former minister had requested the President of that institution to curb the criticisms of Government policies by two of his colleagues. The report had significant ramifications including the resignation of the former minister. This article initially describes the background to the Inquiry and subsequently analyses why the situation escalated and resulted in the establishment of a Commission of Inquiry. The explanation focuses on the inherent weaknesses of the system of Governance, the political ecology of Hong Kong and recent changes to the political system.
[Copyright of Journal of Education Policy is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02680931003671962]

The Hong Kong Institute of Education (HKIEd) was established in April 1994 by amalgamating the former four Colleges of Education and the Institute of Language in Education under the Education Department. Since its establishment in 1994, the Institute has been undergoing rapid development in its academic structure and course provisions with a view to reaching hll-fledged university status in the early 21St century.
In the long run, the Institute aspires to become a major educational institution in teacher education in the Asia Pacific. In this context, the Institute has set up a Strategic Plan (1999-2004) for the first time, producing the vision and mission statements, and the corresponding guiding values as the central directives for its staff.
The purpose of this research project is to use HKIEd as an exploratory study of the building up of organizational culture in a higher educational institution in Hong Kong through staffs awareness and perception of the formation of its vision and mission statements, and the corresponding guiding values.
As the findings indicate, staff in general have been highly aware of these espoused values and share that HKlEd has been moving towards embodying these values, which certainly provides a ready and favourable environment for the Institute to develop its organizational culture.

The study aims to bring together theory, methodology and practice from the fields of programme evaluation, educational evaluation, English language learning and teaching, learner independence and self-access learning. These, together with research findings from the data collected in the study, have been used to develop a framework for the evaluation of self-access language learning centres. Such a framework is needed for the following reason. Evaluation is recognised as a central element in the development of any educational entity and there is at present no research-based construct designed for the evaluation of self-access language learning centres. This framework has been developed for the evaluation of Hong Kong self-access centres but it is intended that its construct should be sufficiently generative to be applied to other self-access language learning contexts, and sufficiently dynamic to develop in the light of on-going changes within the field. Research objectives & research questions The study has five main objectives. These are to: i) identify the defining pedagogical and systemic characteristics of a Hong Kong self-access language learning centre; ii) identify potential rationale, content and methodology for the evaluation of a Hong Kong self-access language learning centre; iii) examine existing evaluation constructs for elements that could contribute to the development of self-access language learning centre evaluation; iv) propose a framework for the evaluation of a Hong Kong self-access language learning centre; v) suggest areas for further research to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the evaluation of self-access language learning centres. Research approach & methodology The main emphasis is on qualitative research methodology based on naturalistic enquiry. Grounded Theory is the underpinning methodology. Grounded Theory is defined as "an initial, systematic discovery of the theory from the data" (Glaser & Strauss, 1967: 3) which "emerges