Pintrich et al. (1993) had developed the MSLQ (Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire), which was a self-report, Likert-scaled instrument designed to assess motivation and use of learning strategies by College students. The motivation part of this instrument was used to tap into 3 broad domains, viz. (1) value (intrinsic and extrinsic goal orientation, and task value); (2) expectancy (control beliefs about learning, self-efficacy); and (3) affect (test anxiety). The learning strategies part was composed of nine scales that can be recognized as cognitive, metacognitive, and resource management strategies. The instrument had demonstrated robust scale reliabilities, and confirmatory factor analyses revealed good factor structure. The questionnaire was adopted and translated into Chinese and a bilingual formatted questionnaire was administered to the pre-service teacher education students in Hong Kong. The objectives of this study was threefold. The first one was to identify the motivated learning strategies prevailing in the Hong Kong teacher education students. The second one was to examine if there was any significant differences in the learning strategies between gender and the third one was to investigate whether there were any significant electives difference in the learning behaviours of the student teachers. The findings certainly would give meaningful implications on the planning and development of teacher education program in views of the motivated learning strategies adopted by student teachers as related to different gender and electives.
[Copyright of Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) at http://www.aare.edu.au]

Higher education systems are in a constant state of change nearly everywhere. In particular, the changes in the socio-economic context caused by the impact of globalisation have inevitably led to changes to the university sector. Since capitalism has generated new global infrastructures that information technology has played an increasingly important role in the global economy, the popularity and prominence of information technology has unquestionably changed the nature of knowledge, and is currently restructuring higher education, research and learning. It is in such a wider policy context that an increasing number of institutions of higher learning are being established with new missions and innovative configurations of training, serving populations that previously had little access to higher education. Apart from accommodating a larger number of students, higher education institutions are required to improve their administrative efficiency and accountability in response to the demands of different stakeholders like government, business, industry, and labour organisations, students and parents as well. The present paper reflects upon the impacts of globalisation on national policy, with particular reference to examine how the higher education sector in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Mainland China has been transformed under the increasingly popular / global tide of marketisation and decentralisation. There are a lot of changes in common between the higher education sector in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Mainland China and that of elsewhere, which suggests that higher education developments in these societies have been affected by the similar trends of globalisation. But before we jump to this conclusion, maybe we should also bear in mind an alternative hypothesis that local factors are crucial and determining factors for changes. More specifically, this paper sets out in this wider policy context to compare and contrast the similarities and differences in terms of the copying strategies

This paper discusses an initiative that utilised a combination of "Project based Learning" and a"Learning with Technology" approach. Project based learning emphasises group work and knowledge construction whereas learning with technology emphasises using technology as a tool to promote thinking. A Digital Video (DV) Camp project was organised at the Hong Kong Institute of Education with twenty teacher education students to explore how technology could enhance meaningful learning in a project based learning environment. The objective of the project was to investigate how students could learn with Digital Video technology through collaborative project based learning activities. The paper discusses how students utilised DV technology in small groups to produce two DV outputs – a one minute introduction of their group members and a three minute DV on a specific topic. Student feedback and evaluation was positive in relation to the approach and feedback was used to reorganise another DV camp in the subsequent year. Implications for the approach are discussed.
[Copyright of Australian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education (ascilite) at http://www.ascilite.org.au]

The research reported in this paper used the Online Learning Environment Survey (OLES) as a tool to evaluate e-learning environments. Data gathered from university classes in Hong Kong using blended e-learning were used to illustrate the value of OLES in helping educators reflect on the online learning environment provided for students. Comments from interviews were used to verify the data gathered online. OLES was found to be a valuable instrument for gathering data to help educators reflect on what had worked or what might be improved in their classes. These educators were also able to see the extent to which the actual experiences of students in the module matched their preferred online learning environment.
[Copyright of Australian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education (ascilite) at http://www.ascilite.org.au]

In recent years, higher education in Hong Kong and Singapore has envisaged unprecedented changes and reforms, which affect significantly the daily lives of academia in addition to the management style of the university. Globalization is manipulated as a rationale for reforms with an aim to cope with the age of fast-changing technology and knowledge-based economy. Meanwhile, globalization embraces several values that prevail among universities, namely: economic rationalism, academic capitalism and corporate managerialism. The university becomes more business-like and enterprise-oriented. Business practices such as performance indicators, benchmarking, quality asurance and control, commercialization of applied research, user-pay principle, market incentives, and diversification of resources are transplanted to the higher education sector.
These phenomena demonstrate a paradigm shift from perceiving the university as a cultural institution to a public service one. Following the Anglo-American experiences of public sector reforms, higher education is similarly required to achieve the goals of "efficiency, effectiveness and economy" in the name of New Public Management (NPM). Smarter and wiser higher education, in terms of resource allocation, emerges at the expense of the traditional ethos of collegiality among academia for institutional decision-making and management. This article examines the impacts of higher education reforms on academe and academia in Hong Kong and Singapore. It is argued that higher education is cloaked by a pessimistic atmosphere, in which academics are pressurized by ever harsher external scrutiny over teaching, research and university administration.
[Copyright of Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) at http://www.aare.edu.au]

This study examined the interrelationship among achievement goals, study strategies and achievement of 473 students in a Hong Kong tertiary institution by means of questionnaire survey. Correlational analyses showed that performance goal was significantly and positively related to both surface and deep strategies while learning goal was significantly and positively related to deep strategy but negatively related to surface strategy. However there was no significant relation between achievement and goals or achievement and study strategies held by the sample. The results validated the applicability of an adapted instrument developed in western countries to measure achievement goal orientations in the Hong Kong context. It also gave support to the western findings that students who hold learning goals usually adopt a deep approach of study while students who are performance goal orientated tend to be shallow in study approach. Nevertheless, it was interesting to find that achievement was not significantly related to either the goals or study strategies held by students in the sample. The results were in contrast to the usual assumption that students who are performance goal oriented and adopt shallow approach in study would score low in academic achievement. Further investigation would be necessary to verify the effects of these variables on achievement of students.
[Copyright of Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) at http://www.aare.edu.au]