This research aims to study how a resource-based learning environment (RBLE) helps primary students develop better understanding of the Earth's movement. One objective of the study is to establish an RBLE by creating authentic contexts, selecting appropriate resources, designing relevant tools and adopting necessary scaffolds. The other objective is to examine the effects of the RBLE on primary students' understanding of the Earth's movement in different classroom settings with varied teaching support levels. Research methodology includes pre-lesson and post-lesson tests to study students' understanding, observation and analysis of lessons to examine the teaching scaffolding employed, interviews and teacher's written reflection after all the lessons to investigate their views of the use of RBLE. The findings indicated that there is an interaction effect between students' academic background and settings of learning, and that the RBLE provides little support to students of low academic background, but is very effective to students of higher academic background helping them to construct an improved understanding of the Earth's movement. The article suggested an integrated use of teacher-regulated inquiry approach and interactive inquiry approach for the better use of the RBLE.
[Copyright of Interactive Learning Environments is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10494820802393788]

This article examines the relation between social class and language attitudes through a triangulated study that analyses the attitudes of 836 secondary school students from different socioeconomic backgrounds toward the 3 official spoken languages used in postcolonial Hong Kong (HK; i.e., Cantonese, English, and Putonghua). The respondents were divided into 3 social class groups (viz. middle, lower-middle, and working class), according to their parents' occupations and levels of educational attainment. This particular group of students started its secondary school education when the mandatory Mother Tongue Education Policy was just implemented after China resumed sovereignty over HK. Data were collected through a questionnaire survey and focus-group interviews. This study was designed to test 2 hypotheses: (a) that the middle-class group would be the most positively inclined toward English and (b) that the working-class group would display the most positive attitudes toward Putonghua due to closer social distance. Although the results from the questionnaire survey appeared to provide a degree of support for both hypotheses, little evidence was found in the interview data to indicate that the working-class group did, in fact, aspire to Putonghua either as an alternative form of linguistic capital or a symbol of preferred social identity.
[Copyright of International Multilingual Research Journal is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19313150903500945]

Following the return of Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty in 1997, the government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region developed wide-ranging curriculum reforms, including project learning. A recent survey has indicated that over 80% of Hong Kong primary and secondary schools have adopted project learning as a curriculum task. Such an outcome is hard to reconcile both with the culture of Hong Kong schools and the generally bleak picture that pervades the literature on educational change.In seeking an explanation for this apparent success we focus attention on the policy instruments that were used by government agencies to facilitate the process of implementation. Our analysis revealed that teachers were caught in a pincer movement that involved voluntary activities promoting project learning and coercive measures that monitored and evaluated successful implementation. Teachers' views of these policy instruments differed markedly from those of policymakers. This confluence of mixed approaches, while apparently successful, is also shown to be problematic. Finally, the paper is located in a theoretical framework with its origins in recent policy theory that to date has not been applied to educational contexts.
[Copyright of International Journal of Education Policy and Leadership is the property of Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Access via Directory of Open Access Journals: http://journals.sfu.ca/ijepl/index.php/ijepl]

Books are traditionally set aside at the request of teachers from the main, normal loan collection to be put on reserve temporarily for checking out for a much shorter loan period to ensure that, at the expense of convenient, long-term loans for other users, all the students enrolled in a course have an opportunity to use them. Many studies have found that reserve usages are not high enough to justify the time and effort involved in making the arrangement. This article reveals that the accessibility and availability of materials to students, the idle status of reserve items on the shelf, and the usage of the collection may be improved if the access to books on reserve and on normal loan matches and fits the instructional choices of teachers and the study modes of students. As long as books in print format continue to play a role in the library collection, librarians have to manage their access to the best benefit of the users. Further studies on how the access to library materials can be managed and arranged concertedly to make the usage surpass the 80/20 rule are desired.
[Copyright of Journal of Access Services is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15367960903385771 ]