This paper reports on school-university collaboration during an action research project, which aimed to build a writing pedagogy for students with Learning Disabilities in the trilingual, biliterate educational context of Hong Kong. The project was established through interpersonal relationships built from the ground up between stakeholders from a university department and a secondary school. The informal social networks were the locus of innovation and creativity within the project. This paper examines four broad dimensions of collaboration: the relationships created, the resources shared, the action taken and the pedagogy created. We discuss these dimensions of collaboration from the perspectives of the stakeholders. We found that each stakeholder aligned their motivations and expectations with other stakeholders to achieve the common goals of the research and consequently we call such alignments of interests "research networks". Finally, we suggest that "research networks" constitute an important, yet overlooked component of action research.
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This paper reports an exploratory study of questions about English grammar sent in by a group of Hong Kong ESL (English as a Second Language) teachers to a teacher support computer network, TeleNex. The study examines the questions Hong Kong ESL teachers ask about the English language. Arising from the questions posed, the paper then delineates the kinds of language support that ESL teachers may need. Grammar questions sent in by teachers to the network constituted the data source. The questions were analysed in terms of the frequency of the contentwords used, linguistic categories, and teacher knowledge. The principal findings are that the teachers' grammar-related questions typically arose outof their everyday pedagogical needs and these needs seem to be shaped by their implicit models of grammar as a set of rules for 'correct' language use. Such information on 'correct' use does not seem to be easily available from major reference books. These findings confirm the value of a computer network where teachers can obtain continuous informational support and participate in collaborative discussions, which can develop an awareness of grammar as a meaning-making tool.
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Academics are increasingly expected to be research productive. An impressive research output requires the ability to communicate in sophisticated written English in order to ensure that a publication is of an acceptable standard. In response to the demands for advanced writing skills to maintain high standards in research publications, a pilot online writing network of information (OWN) has been developed to provide academics in the School of Nursing at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University with research writing support in English. In this paper the OWN database is introduced with an explanation of the theoretical foundations and the needs analysis that shaped each link. Then, with data from two questionnaires completed by the users and interview of four users, I present a user evaluation of OWN. The questionnaires suggest that users see certain links as more useful in providing individualised writing support, while the interviewees most appreciate the complete privacy in which support could be sought. Through this description and user evaluation, I argue that academics could benefit from English language support when writing for publication, and computer technology may offer both flexibility and privacy.
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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]