Purpose: Learning to do research has been understudied in the context of professional development in postgraduate programs. This exploratory study investigated the agency and experiences of five Chinese students who learned to design their research project in a Master of Education program at an English-medium university in Hong Kong SAR. Design/Approach/Methods: We obtained the data from semi-structured interviews and documents to establish data triangulation. Findings: The findings revealed that (1) the students' agency in research design and proposal writing was associated with their personal/professional backgrounds, (2) their English proficiency affected their agency in the proposal writing, (3) the supervisors' feedback would stimulate students' agency in changing/refining their research design, and (4) ineffective supervision and learning resources would impede students' achievement of agency on their way to creating a robust research design. Originality/Value: This study adds empirical evidence to the field of research training through the lens of learner agency. It demonstrates the applicability of using the ecological framework of agency in theoretically interpreting the contextual facilitators and constraints in making postgraduate students active agents. Copyright ©Sage Publications Ltd.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the differences between Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) and Mainland in terms of education and also the influence of it on doing comparative educational research. Hong Kong SAR is ruled by the Chinese Government under the framework of "One country, two systems." It makes Hong Kong SAR different from other Mainland cities based on different aspects including, education. The finding of this paper provides a systematic review about the differences between these two Chinese societies in terms of education and also implication for conducting comparative educational research in these two societies and also generating some implications for cross-national and cross-cultural study in education.Design/methodology/approach: This paper made references from the framework proposed by Bray and Thomas (1995) in relation to comparative educational research to make comparison between Hong Kong SAR and Mainland China. Multi-level comparison is conducted between two societies in terms of education, especially aspects relating to conducting educational research sat social, school and individual levels.Findings: This paper identified the influence of “One county, two systems” on education at different levels such as ideology, school management system and use of languages in teaching. Such differences affect the choice of topics, sampling strategy, research design, data analysis and interpretation and also ethical considerations when conducting comparative research between Hong Kong SAR and Mainland China.Originality/value: This paper is an integrated analysis of conducting educational research in two Chinese societies and provides insights for further discussions and possible research about this topic. Copyright © 2019 Emerald Publishing Limited.

This study investigates how genre can be used as an organisational principle to interweave teaching and assessment in the L2 school context. Relying on data from interviews and lesson observations gathered from two Secondary 1 (that is, Grade 7) Hong Kong classrooms, the study sought to discover how teachers implemented genre-based teaching and assessment in traditional product- and exam-oriented writing classrooms, students' and teachers' evaluation of the approach, as well as the factors that might facilitate or restrain the genre innovation. The findings show that teachers worked collaboratively and shared a common vision in implementing genre-based teaching and assessment, making sure that they integrated teaching and assessment through a focus on genre. Although the limitations of the genre approach were noted, the innovation was generally well received by students and teachers, who felt that the innovation had enabled students to improve their writing and helped teachers enhance their practice. A few facilitative and inhibitory factors are discussed. The findings suggest that the implementation of genre-based teaching and assessment has to be considered within the ecology of teachers' work.
[Copyright of English Teaching: Practice & Critique is the property of Universidad del Zulia.
Access via Directory of Open Access Journals: http://edlinked.soe.waikato.ac.nz/research/journal/index.php?id=1]

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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Access via Directory of Open Access Journals: http://edlinked.soe.waikato.ac.nz/research/journal/index.php?id=1]

This study examined the mediator and moderator roles of self-regulation and motivation constructs in the relationship between learning experience and academic success. Self-reported measures of learning experience, self-regulation and motivation were obtained from 384 undergraduate students from a university in Hong Kong. Structural equation modelling indicated that self-regulation and motivation fully mediated the learning experience-academic performance relation. In addition, hierarchical regression analysis also showed that both self-regulation and motivation had small moderating effects on the link between learning experience and academic performance. That is, the association between learning experience and cumulative GPA was stronger for students with lower levels of self-regulation and motivation. The implications of fostering motivation and enhancing university learning experience are discussed.
[Copyright of British Educational Research Journal is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01411926.2010.538468]