An understanding of student teachers' pedagogical images plays an important role in helping teacher educators plan learning experiences. The purposes of this study were to obtain a profile of pedagogical images of a group of student teachers, and to assess whether there is congruence between their pedagogical images and classroom practices. Applying the conception of teaching model proposed by Pratt, Chan developed a questionnaire to evaluate teachers' views about teaching, which was modified here and administered to 59 first-year student teachers before and after their teaching practicum in physical education for secondary schools. Results indicated that the student teachers possess a Nurturing image, whereas in actual classroom practices, their approach was a mix between the Apprenticeship and the Transmission approaches. In other words, whereas student teachers conceive themselves as having a more child-centred approach to teaching, in reality, their practices constituted more a teacher-centred approach. The investigators considered that this type of information would be helpful for teacher educators when planning learning experiences.
[Copyright of Educational Research is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0013188022000031605 ]

Over the past two decades children's fitness levels may have declined (Ross and Pate, 1987; Ignico, 1990; Leung, 1995). Currently, attention is being directed to young children's gross motor performance, assessment procedures and program planning issues. This paper will present findings of a study which investigates the gross motor proficiency of young children in Hong Kong. The Bruininks-Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency (Subtests 1-5) was used to assess the gross motor proficiency of 320 children aged 5 to 6 years. Gross motor proficiency was measured in terms of their performance on running speed and agility, balance, bilateral coordination, strength and upper-limb coordination.
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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).
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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.
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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]

Many institutions producing distance education courses employ teaching-learning specialists, who are most commonly known as instructional designers. The suitability of instructional design as a framework for educational development is questioned, since it is a prescriptive science and course design is an ill-defined problem. The designer-client relationship also implies a deficit assumption about academic staff. Action research is advanced as an alternative approach to educational development. It is argued that an important feature of course teams has been the critical discourse which is an integral part of action research. The Action Learning Project is used as an example of how the action research framework can be put into practice. The multi-faceted role of the 'critical friend' in supporting projects is described.
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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.
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The reciprocal relationship between mathematics achievement and self-concept is examined in this study to expand the existing knowledge to a cross-cultural setting. Based on analyses of educational data two years before and after Hong Kong's sovereignty switch in 1997, this investigation shows a weak reciprocal relationship among the eighth-grade students across gender categories. With the introduction of a new policy to promote Chinese instruction, changes in the perceived importance of English have been assessed by education stakeholders, and the results are used to indicate a latent factor of "English push" behind the learning process. In the context of cross-cultural transition, gender differences have been found in path coefficients toward mathematics achievement and self-concept. Limited by the four-year research period, one may speculate whether it would take longer to demonstrate a large effect size in the reciprocal relationship.
[Copyright of Educational Psychology is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01443410500390863]

An innovative scheme known as Project Yi Jin that provided an alternative route for students who failed in the Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination (HKCEE) to gain an academic status for, and access to, higher education was evaluated after one year's implementation. A survey of 2416 students via telephone found that students who successfully completed the project had better opportunities for further study and tended to do so at higher academic levels than those who did not complete the programme. They also had better subsequent employment opportunities and felt more satisfied with the course. The programme was found to be gender and age unbiased and was able to differentiate higher academic achievers from lower academic achievers for more advanced academic pursuit. Project Yi Jin has served as a bridge between secondary and tertiary education and provided a route for those who had completed secondary education in Hong Kong with unsatisfactory results and those mature students who are 21 or above to obtain a formal qualification for both employment and continuing education purposes.
[Copyright of International Journal of Lifelong Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/026037042000233494]