Students' achievement motivation has been the concern of educational psychologists for the past several decades. Empirical studies on the effects of teachers' feedback provide useful information to educators on instructional practices. From these studies, educators know how to cultivate adaptive learning attitudes in students. However, a meta-analysis by Kluger & DeNisi (1996, 1998) did not find consistent effects of success and failure feedbacks in past studies. Idson and Higgins (2000) suggested that regulatory focus, a personality variable, could address these inconsistent effects. In their study, Idson & Higgins (2000) found that individuals with different orientation in regulatory focus would respond differently to success and failure feedback. The motivation of individuals with promotion focus would increase after success feedback but decrease after failure feedback. In contrast, the motivation of individuals with prevention focus would increase after failure but decrease after success feedback.
The present study attempted to identify the group of individuals who would be motivated both after success and failure feedbacks. It adopted an alternative fourfold classification of regulatory focus and extended Idson & Higgins (2000) study. Four independent groups could be derived from this classification: 1) individuals high in promotion focus but low in prevention focus; 2) individuals high in prevention focus but low in promotion focus, 3) individuals high in both prevention and promotion focuses (HH); 4) individuals low in both prevention and promotion focuses (LL). The third group of individuals was expected to be motivated after success and also failure feedbacks. They might be the people with the most adaptive motivational pattern of behaviors.
The present study adopted a 2 (promotion focus: high vs. low) x 2 (prevention focus: high vs. low) x 2 (feedback: success vs. failure) experimental design. The participants were 180 Hong Kong university students

A survey study was conducted with 251 preservice teacher education students in Hong Kong by administering a questionnaire comprising three inventories to measure their conceptions of learning, culturally oriented achievement motivation and learning strategies. Preliminary correlational analyses of the above three variables showed significant relationships between some subscales, consistent with previous research findings in literature which suggested that conceptions of learning are related to a number of variables such as students' learning approaches and the quality of learning. Further analysis was conducted by testing a structural model on selected categories of conceptions of learning (learning as an increase in knowledge and learning as personal fulfilment), culturally oriented achievement motivation and learning strategies. Satisfactory goodness of fit index was obtained with the proposed model. Path analysis showed that the conception "learning as an increase in knowledge" was positively and significantly related to social oriented achievement motivation, deep strategy and surface strategy; individual oriented achievement motivation was positively and significantly related to deep strategy but negatively and significantly related to surface strategy. The conception "learning as personal fulfilment" was positively and significantly related to individual oriented achievement motivation but negatively and significantly related to social oriented achievement motivation. Implications for learning and teaching were drawn based on the model result.
[Copyright of Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) at http://www.aare.edu.au]

This article reports a study to elicit junior secondary students' understandings of the nature of science (NOS) through a peer collaboration instruction based on science stories specially developed to present several aspects of NOS. The study also investigated how students reacted to the stories and whether they were able to extract the aspects of NOS presented in the stories. The results show that many students held a serendipitous empiricist view of experimentation and took scientific theories as absolute truth representing reality. Although the science stories impacted on students in substantial ways and the peer collaboration setting helped them develop shared understandings, many students changed from one set of inadequate views of NOS to another rather than to adequate views. This was attributed to students interpreting the stories in idiosyncratic ways other than those intended by the instruction and focusing their attention selectively on certain aspects of the stories that appeared to confirm and reinforce their inadequate views. The implications of the findings are discussed.
[Copyright of International Journal of Science Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09500690210126748]

A case study of an undergraduate Educational Psychology course that incorporated both constructivist and teacher-centred teaching was conducted. The learning processes and higher-level learning outcomes were examined through participant observation, interviews with students and analyses of student assignments. The lessons were audio recorded and transcribed, and a total of 68 interviews, each about 1.5 hours long, were conducted. In general, the constructivist teaching facilitated students' creation of their own knowledge, as they were allowed to think more over the problems together and generate original ideas. Students' performances in recalling, critiquing and generating with the knowledge gained in the constructivist teaching context were also better than those in the teacher-centred context. This could be explained by the deeper processing of the material, the activation of students' prior knowledge and the similarity between the situations of knowledge construction and knowledge application. The strengths and limitations of constructivist teaching are also discussed.
[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/10.1080/14703290600750861 ]

This study explored the problem of under-achievement in Hong Kong. Underachievers were compared with high achievers and low achievers on their motivational characteristics. The findings generally supported that motivational variables were important factors in discriminating under-achievers and high achievers. While under-achievers had poor academic self-concept, low attainment value in learning, and deficiencies in using effective learning strategies, they did not demonstrate maladaptive attributional pattern as described in Western studies. Implications of these findings for the study of under-achievement and implementation of interventions 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/10.1080/01443410120090803]