How students understand, feel about and respond to assessment might contribute significantly to learning behaviour and academic achievement. This paper reviews studies that have used a relatively new self-reported survey questionnaire (Students' Conceptions of Assessment - SCoA) about student perceptions and understandings of assessment. Confirmatory factor analyses and structural equation modelling results have shown, consistent with self-regulation theory, that the SCoA inventory has meaningful relations with academic performance among New Zealand high school students. Further, German, Hong Kong, American, and New Zealand studies have shown that the SCoA has relations to motivational constructs (e. g. effort, learning strategies, interest, self-efficacy and anxiety) that are also consistent with self-regulation. The SCoA inventory extends our understanding of how student conceptions of assessment are an integral part of self-regulation and provide a warrant for use in research studies investigating test-taker responses to assessment practices and innovations at both university and high school levels.
[Copyright of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01443410.2011.599836]

This study investigated the relation between teachers' instructional practices and students' self-regulated learning (SRL) in Hong Kong Chinese language classes using quantitative and qualitative methods. Participants were 1121 Grade 10 students from six secondary schools in Hong Kong. A Chinese reading comprehension (RC) test was used to assess the students' reading performance and a self-reported questionnaire measured their perception of reading instruction, strategy use and reading motivation. Classroom observations and in-depth interviews were conducted in one class at each school to explore what and how instructional practices supported or impeded SRL in real contexts. The findings of this study generally support the positive relation between SRL-based instruction and Chinese students' SRL. Among the four instructional variables, instrumental support from teachers showed the strongest relation with students' strategy use, motivation and RC. The degree of autonomy was low in Chinese language classes and was associated with students' negative reading behaviours.
[Copyright of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01443410.2012.674634]

This study investigated parent general value of science operationalized in the 2006 questionnaire of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), as a determinant of adolescents' scientific literacy performance. The transmission of academic values literature is small. To the best of our knowledge, no previous studies to date have examined the transmission of valuing of science. Study data were drawn from PISA 2006, which focused on science. The study sample comprised 4645 15-year-old adolescents in Hong Kong. Results from the conceptual structural model indicated that parental academic values (general value of science): (a) positively and directly affected adolescents' valuing of science and in turn further influenced adolescents' science performance, (b) positively and directly affected adolescents' science performance, and (c) stimulated adolescents' motivation to study science and in turn further influenced their science performance. Implications for school-level policy and practice include: (a) promoting parental valuing of science via parent involvement and (b) producing culturally and contextually grounded evidence on strategies for enhancing the transmission of academic values using research methodologies such as action research.
[Copyright of Educational Studies is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03055698.2013.866889]

There has been a substantial rise in the number of students enrolling in part-time taught postgraduate awards. This study investigates the reasons or motivation for students to spend significant amounts on tutorial fees and find time alongside work, family and social commitments to take a taught postgraduate award. Data were gathered through interviews with 21 part-time students in taught postgraduate programmes in Hong Kong. Students all held several motives for studying, so the outcome was a framework for explaining multiple interacting motives. Main categories of motivation were related to qualifications, current career, potential future career, interest, perpetual students and professional and social networks. Individual students displayed varying degrees of these motivations and the sub-categories of them. Students were able to specify their needs in terms of advanced specialised study, so enrolment satisfied a need for continuing professional development. The rise in taught postgraduate enrolments, in search of advanced specialised knowledge, seems set to continue as undergraduate degrees become broader and more attribute-oriented and the knowledge explosion makes it harder to reach the frontiers of knowledge.
[Copyright of Studies in Continuing Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0158037X.2011.646979]

This paper offers insights into an under-researched area of Chinese language learning among Hong Kong's less affluent South Asians, a group whose members have often been stereotyped as unable to function in the Chinese medium instruction (CMI) teaching system. Data were collected from a survey of approximately 300 South Asian secondary school students and from follow-up semi-structured interviews with 30 student participants. By cross-examining students' language competency and practice in Chinese, English and mother language(s), the research found that South Asian students, even though in a majority language environment, invest less in Chinese language learning and practice. Their language motivation is instrumentally driven and there is a lack of adequate family support for learning Chinese. It thus highlights the role of schooling and teachers' support in Chinese language learning as the main remedy for insufficient parental involvement. This research argues that in order to attain high competency in the Chinese language, which is considered important for upward mobility, there is an urgent need for teachers and researchers to understand the limited use that students make of the Chinese language and to develop a suitable teaching pedagogy for fostering language motivations.
[Copyright of Roeper Review is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2010.539693]