This paper examines some of the current metacritical perspectives to postcolonial cultural studies, and discusses an alternative cultural contextualist perspective through the case of Hong Kong cultural studies. I first demarcate between contextualist and non-contextualist metacritical perspectives as well as between political-economic and cultural-contextualist ones. Then I identify major metacritiques that are currently made against postcolonial studies, and by showing how they may be applicable to Hong Kong cultural studies, I suggest ways to re-interpret these metacritiques from a cultural sociological perspective. I shall highlight important structural characteristics of Hong Kong cultural studies, and analyse them in terms of a cultural sociology of the postcolonial intellectual field. Ultimately, I argue that the problems associated with this postcolonial intellectual field appear to originate from the hierarchical global cultural context.
[Copyright of Cultural Studies is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/095023800110046722]

This paper describes the development and initial validation of a Chinese reading motivation questionnaire (CRMQ) which was designed to assess Chinese students' reading motivation in Hong Kong. The development of the CRMQ consisted of two steps. In the first study, groups of items were constructed based on achievement motivation theories and existing instruments. The initial version of the CRMQ was administered to a small group of Grade 7 students in Hong Kong and exploratory factor analysis, item-total correlation, and reliability analyses were carried out to assess its psychometric quality. The CRMQ was then revised and administered to a larger sample of Grade 7 students in the second study. Findings of confirmatory factor analysis provided further validation for the proposed factor structure of the revised questionnaire. In addition, findings indicated that students' reading motivation was positively related to their strategy use, reading comprehension, and academic achievement. The findings of this study could enrich our understanding of Chinese reading motivation among Hong Kong students. Implications of these findings for implementing effective reading instruction in Chinese language teaching are also discussed.
[Copyright of Educational Psychology is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0144341042000271773]

Following initiations in educational reform that began in the 1990s, Hong Kong continues to experience considerable pressure for educational reform. On the surface many of these initiatives parallel reform policies/movements in Asia and indeed, globally. The success of any reform is dependent on how it is contextualised prior to and at implementation. In this article, an exploration is made into how reforms in four particular sareas, namely: professional development of principals, higher education, English language standards, and inclusion of students with learning difficulties have been conceived, contextualised and managed in Hong Kong, as it moves gradually toward increased adoption of education reforms. These areas are linked in that each describes and critiques contextualization with reference to areas such as accountability, co-operation and professional control.
[Copyright of Education Policy Analysis Archives is the property of College of Education, Arizona State University.
Access via Directory of Open Access Journals: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/]

The present study examined the effects of Classwide Peer Tutoring (CWPT) under two conditions--with reinforcement (CWPT+ R) and without reinforcement (CWPT-- R)--on 77 students' spelling performance and intrinsic interest in lower secondary school Integrated Science. The students displayed educational attainments in the average range. Both CWPT approaches led to significant improvements in spelling test performance. Both groups also evaluated the programme positively. However, the CWPT+ R group made significantly greater learning gains than did the CWPT-- R students. These appeared to be related to higher levels of academic responding. Despite their impressive spelling gains, students in the CWPT+ R group displayed significantly lower intrinsic interest in Integrated Science after involvement in CWPT. However, great caution should be exercised in interpreting this last result, as statistically significant effects werenot found when group differences at post-test were examined by way of t-test and analysis of covariance methods. In summary, the data from this study suggest: (a) that the CWPT method of instruction is useful for helping lower secondary school students, (b) that reinforcers may increase learning gains by encouraging higher rates of responding, but (c) that there is an indication, subject to caution, that these reinforcers may possibly depress intrinsic interest in an academic activity (science in the case of this study).
[Copyright of Educational Psychology is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0144341990190206]

This paper reports on a large-scale study on learner autonomy conducted with a group of tertiary students at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University in Hong Kong. The study investigates students' views of their responsibilities and decision-making abilities in learning English, their motivation level and the actual language learning activities they undertook inside and outside the classroom with a view to gauging their readiness for autonomous learning. The paper presents the student profile generated from the study and concludes with the pedagogical implications of the findings for the implementation of learner autonomy at tertiary level in Hong Kong.
[Copyright of Evaluation & Research in Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09500790208667003]

An in-depth investigation is currently being conducted into the metalinguistic awareness of a group of practising L2 teachers, all non-native speakers teaching English in Hong Kong secondary schools. The investigation focuses on teacher metalinguistic awareness (TMA) as it relates to grammar. As part of this in-depth study, a test was administered in order to explore the declarative dimension of TMA: the teacher's explicit knowledge of grammar and grammatical terminology. The test was based largely on Alderson et al. (1996), which in turn draws upon Bloor (1986). The present paper reports on the test performance of these serving teachers as an indication of the level and nature of their explicit knowledge of grammar and grammatical terminology. It also compares their performance with that of two groups of prospective teachers of EFL/ESL: one group of native-speakers and the other of non-native speakers. Comparison with the former helps to shed light on the native/non-native issue (see, for example, Medgyes, 1994) as it relates to explicit knowledge of grammar, while comparison with the latter offers some indication of the effects of post-secondary education and teaching experience upon such knowledge.
[Copyright of Language Awareness is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09658419908667125]

The survey involved 1978 Cantonese native-speaking subjects undertaking a programme of English in the Workplace (EIW) at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. This number represents almost the complete population of undergraduate students undertaking this mandatory course in their second year of tertiary-level study. The students answered a questionnaire, previously piloted in a sub-sample of 30, and were assigned on the basis of their responses to the four categories of motivational regulation proposed in Deci and Ryan (1985): External, Introjected, Identified and Integra the conventional classification of motivation into Extrinsic and Intrinsic, or Instrumental and Integrative, has serious limitations in the field of language learning and fails to provide a meaningful developmental model for students and teachers. The pilot study drew attention to the need to add a category of Avoidant, for students for whom all of the expressions of motivation to learn English, were found to be excessive. The main study showed that Identified Regulation was dominant (49%) and suggests that the transition from Identified to Integrated Regulation is the principal challenge facing teachers and students. Some 19% of the students fell into the Avoidant category. The implications of the study are discussed.
[Copyright of Language, Culture and Curriculum is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07908319908666583]