In the process of examining the recent and, especially, post-Handover, contributions that the Hong Kong Education Commission (EC) has made to policy concerning Continuing Education (CE) in the Special Administrative Region, the authors of this article were drawn into discussion of three underlying issues. These include the issue of conceptual clarity with regard to 'continuing education' and the operational implications of the local adoption of the fashionable worldwide mantra of 'lifelong learning'. They necessarily become involved in the need to distinguish between policy rhetoric, often employed in the form of Confucian-like exhortation, and practical applications of specific recommendations. They consider the extent to which the new polices have been implemented. While their analysis of policy process is, in an important sense, Hong Kong specific, it raises questions of international interest and concern, and this is probably most clearly manifested in the case study they offer of different arguments and proposals about the funding of CE.
[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/10.1080/0158037032000131529]

Learning materials developed by the Open University for first-line managers in the British Health Service have been adopted and adapted in a number of other countries. This paper reports a questionnaire-based evaluation of their use in Australia, the Cayman Islands, Hong Kong and the United Kingdom. Participants?views of the helpfulness of the 18 workbooks that constitute the core of the Managing Health Services programme were very positive across all four countries, as were their views of the assessment process and, in most cases, of the tutorial arrangements. However, there were some significant differences between the views of the cohorts from different countries. Participants were also asked to assess the extent to which they had developed 40 management competencies as a result of their studies. Managers from each country reported progress in their competence development, but with considerable variation between countries. Possible explanations for these differences are explored.
[Copyright of Journal of Vocational Education and Training is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13636820100200168]

Learning materials developed by the Open University for operational managers in the British Health Service are increasingly being used in other countries, often with adaptation and translation. This paper reports an evaluation of the use of these learning materials in Australia, the Cayman Islands, Hong Kong and the UK. Participants'views of the workbooks that constitute the core of the programme, the assessment process and the tutorial arrangements were mostly positive. However, the materials were not always seen to be successful in addressing individuals in their specific health care contexts. Some participants also reported difficulty in managing the workload within the anticipated study time. Participants were also asked to assess the extent to which they had developed management competences as a result of their studies. In almost all cases, learners reported progress, but there was considerable variation between cohorts in different countries. Possible explanations for these differences are explored.
[Copyright of Innovations in Education & Teaching International is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14703290110073291]

The internationalisation of higher education in countries such as Australia and the UK has resulted in increased numbers of South-East Asia students in higher education classrooms. While considerable attention has been given to exploring the implications of internationalisation on students in 'Western' university contexts, there is a paucity of research concerning the effect on teachers of higher education and, in particular, those employed in to teach in countries culturally foreign to their own. This paper aims to initiate such discussion through an exploration of the experiences of two teaching academics working in Hong Kong. Discussion will focus on issues of language and communication, and social and cultural distance, and the effect of hierarchy and related teaching strategies developed to meet the inter-cultural learning needs of themselves and their students. It is argued that, the development of inter-cultural understandings must permeate the curricula, and be a shared goal and responsibility of both teachers and students.
[Copyright of Teaching in Higher Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/135625100114975]

As staff developmental initiatives become increasingly common in educational institutions, the evaluation of such programmes may need careful consideration. This paper describes a staff developmental initiative in which a one-on-one mentoring service was offered as part of a funded staff development project entitled 'Effective English Communication for Teaching and Research' (EECTR). EECTR provides language support to all academic staff in a Hong Kong university. The mentoring sessions typically require a discussion of the nature of academic writing. For evaluation purposes, feedback was collected through various questionnaires which indicated that the EECTR mentoring had been a fairly successful programme. However, these traditional measures could not tell the stakeholders the impact of the mentoring process on individual clients. Thus two additional measures were taken. First, three in-depth case studies were undertaken to ascertain how individuals saw the impact of mentoring. Additionally, interviews with clients were also conducted over a two-year period. With support from the data, this paper demonstrates how multiple measures of evaluation provided an opportunity to see the dynamic interaction between general perceptions of impact and individual learning within a programme.
[Copyright of Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0260293022000001373]

Despite the advantages of problem based learning (PBL) and the fact that it has been utilised for some time in conventional higher education settings, it is not widely used in distance education in Hong Kong. Recently, a small group of course co-ordinators at the Open University of Hong Kong engaged in a series of action learning projects to explore ways in which it could be incorporated into their courses. The purpose of this paper is to report the opinions of these academics about the suitability of PBL for a distance education environment. Generally, they concluded that it is possible, and perhaps desirable, to consider implementing PBL as one learning approach. However, most of the projects focussed on a fairly narrow application of PBL, namely in face-to-face tutorials. The limitations of the participants' interpretations are discussed in the light of the constraints they face, and some recommendations are made for other ways of implementing PBL into distance education.
[Copyright of Distance Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0158791000210206]

The hypothesis in this study was that different types of multiple-goal learners would have different patterns of learning. A sample of 797 adult distance learners enrolled in different programs offered by a distance learning university in Hong Kong completed a questionnaire assessing their goals, use of strategies, motivational beliefs, and attitudes towards the course they were doing. Two-stage cluster analyses found a group of single-goal learners (mastery focused) and three groups of multiple-goal learners with different focuses in their goal profiles: performance focus, work focus, and multiple focuses. These four clusters of learners differed in terms of use of learning strategies, regulatory strategies, motivational beliefs, and attitudes towards the course. Learners focusing on work-related goals or performance goals achieved better examination results than did those focusing on multiple goals or solely on mastery goals.
[Copyright of Educational Psychology is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01443410701739470]