This study examined Hong Kong students' achievement goals and their relations with students' perceived classroom environment and strategy use based on the multiple goal perspective of goal orientation theory. A total of 925 Grade 8 students from six secondary schools in Hong Kong voluntarily responded to a questionnaire that measured these three sets of variables. Consistent with previous studies using goal orientation theory, the findings of this study indicated that students' perceived classroom environment was significantly related to their personal achievement goals and strategy use. While mastery goals were found to be the strongest predictor of strategy use, performance-approach goals and perceived instrumentality also had positive relations with mastery goals and strategy use. Our findings suggest that mastery goals and performance goals were not contrasting goals as conceptualised in normative goal orientation theory. Students with high motivation for both types of goal were more adaptive in learning than were students who pursued a single type of goal. Moreover, the value of adding perceived instrumentality when studying students' motivation should be emphasised. The implications of these findings for understanding Hong Kong students' motivation, and for planning effective teaching instruction to enhance their motivation, are discussed.
[Copyright of Educational Psychology is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01443410701612008]

A number of studies have indicated that the successful pedagogical use of technology depends on teachers' attitudes and acceptance towards technology. In order to predict and understand teachers' technology use and acceptance, a well- defined framework is essential. The purpose of the present paper attempts to explore a model to understand teacher acceptance of e-learning technology. A self-reported questionnaire was designed to examine teacher acceptance and attitude towards an online learning platform. Data were collected from 152 in-service teachers who were studying in a part-time teacher education program in Hong Kong. The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) was used as the core framework for analysis while additional constructs were added in order to find a better model to understand teacher acceptance of e-learning technology. A composite model including five constructs, namely, intention to use, perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, subjective norm and computer self-efficacy, were formed and tested in the study. LISREL was used in the data analysis. It was found that subjective norm and computer self-efficacy serve as the two significant perception anchors of the fundamental constructs in TAM. However, contrary to previous literature, perceived ease of use became the sole determinant to the prediction of intention to use, while perceived usefulness was non-significant to the prediction of intention to use. Altogether, subjective norm, computer self- efficacy and perceived ease of use were able to explain 68 percent of the variance observed in users' intention to use the e-learning system. Implications to teacher education and teacher professional development are discussed.
[Copyright of Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13598660802232779]

Over the past few years, curriculum innovation has been regarded as an essential strategy for educational reform throughout the era of educational change. Because of the changing nature of the knowledge age, students need to develop ways of dealing with complex issues and problems that require different kinds of skills and knowledge they have ever learned. Given the advancement of information and communications technologies (ICT), a number of cases of building learning communities in classrooms have been developed in recent years. Realizing the impact of this new learning culture, six primary schools in Hong Kong participated in the implementation of building learning communities through science project works. During the project, students from different schools engaged in the discussion and knowledge construction using a computer mediated communication (CMC) platform called Knowledge Forum. The aim of this case study is to explore the role of ICT in building learning communities and the conditions are essential to building learning communities from the different ways that students and teachers experienced the processes of community and knowledge construction using Knowledge Forum. Through the analysis of the interviews of students and teachers, conditions that support learning community building were emerged in three major themes, namely; conceptions of learning, knowledge construction processes, and development of social processes.
[Copyright of Educational Media International is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0952398032000092198]