This study aimed to examine the role and process of reflective assessment supported by the Knowledge Connections Analyzer in helping low academic achievers to develop epistemic agency in knowledge building. The participants were 33 ninth-grade low achievers from a visual arts course in Hong Kong. A comparison class of 33 students, taught by the same teacher and studying the same topics in a regular knowledge-building environment, also participated. Qualitative tracing of students' online discourse showed that reflective assessment can help low achievers develop high-level epistemic agency. Qualitative analysis of the students' prompt sheets revealed that reflective assessment encouraged low achievers to set knowledge-building goals, collectively and continuously analyse and reflect on their inquiry and ideas, and generate actions to address identified gaps, thus helping them engage in high-level epistemic agency. The study results have important implications for designing technology-rich environments that support learners and offer insights into how teachers can help learners develop epistemic agency.
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Learning management systems (LMSs) have been launched in universities and other schools. However, because the use of such technology in schools is relatively new in the blended context, it is essential to understand whether students will accept and continue to use it. In this study, longitudinal latent growth modelling was used to examine the relationship between changes to LMS use and belief, and satisfaction with LMS among 1179 students, mostly between 12 and 13 years old, from 25 Hong Kong schools. Both LMS use and belief had positive linear growth over time. We observed individual differences in the students' initial level of belief and the rate at which their belief changed. In addition, individual differences in the students' initial level of LMS use were observed. However, there were no individual differences in their rate of change for LMS use. The initial level of belief and increased LMS use were directly associated with system and learning satisfaction with LMS. Changes to LMS use mediated the relationship between changes to beliefs and system and learning satisfaction with LMS.
[Copyright of British Journal of Educational Technology is the property of John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.]

Gamified Authentic Mobile Enquiry in Society (GAMES) is a GPS-supported mobile application for gamifying social enquiry learning in outdoor environments. Teachers are always the "educational innovation gatekeepers" in schools. This paper reports on a 3-year study in which the Stages of Concern model was employed as a quantitative diagnostic instrument to continuously understand and address the emerging concerns of 91 social humanities teachers (from 91 high schools in Hong Kong) about adopting GAMES in their teaching practice. With adequate interventions for addressing the participants' ongoing needs, their peak categorical concern shifted initially from "Management" (in Year 1) to "Consequence" (in Year 2), and finally to "Refocusing" (in Year 3). The results reveal that the participants largely intended to go on harnessing GAMES to facilitate outdoor social enquiry learning in their schools. This work provides the field with profound strategic insights into sustaining technological innovations in schooling from the perspective of teachers--an important stakeholder of education.
[Copyright of British Journal of Educational Technology is the property of John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.]

This paper investigates the experiences of two international students with different linguistic backgrounds in a university in Hong Kong, with particular attention to the role of language in their identity negotiation during their transnational studies. Based on their contrasting narratives, the study revealed that the two students’ identity negotiation experiences appeared to be shaped by their different language competences, which were valued differently in the academic and social contexts within the university. It was found that the degree of (in)compatibility between their language competences and the norms and expectations associated with the academic and social contexts within the university context impacted on their negotiation of fuller forms of participation and their construction of desirable identities. Furthermore, the two students’ different language ideologies and their different abilities to exercise agency in mobilising their linguistic capital in exchange for other forms of capital were found to mediate their identity negotiation and transformation. Copyright © 2019 British Association for International and Comparative Education.

Drawing upon the multifaceted construct of motivation and engagement, this study used the adapted Motivation and Engagement Scale for University/College Students (MES-UC) (Martin, 2007, 2008b, 2012) to examine English-majored undergraduate students' motivation and engagement in Chinese English as a foreign language (EFL) writing classes. A sample of 1190 students from 35 Chinese universities participated in this study. Results showed that students were generally motivated to write in English and engaged in the second language (L2) writing courses. Individual differences (Le., gender, grade, region, colleges' prestige, and colleges' profession) in L2 writing motivation and engagement also were identified. Three distinct profiles of L2 learners' motivation and engagement were identified: the "Motivated and engaged", the "Ambiguously motivated and engaged", and the "Ambivalently motivated and engaged" L2 writers. The findings shed new light on the nature of Chinese English-majored undergraduates' motivation and engagement in EFL writing contexts.
[Copyright of Studies in Educational Evaluation is the property of Elsevier Ltd.]

This study examined (1) differences in background, integrative/instrumental motivation, learning approach, leaning strategy and proficiency in second language (L2) and (2) the determinants of learning outcomes between Hong Kong and Mainland (Chinese) students. To achieve this, a questionnaire survey was distributed to 773 s language learners across four universities in Hong Kong and Mainland China to students in Bachelor of Education (English Language) programmes. The results showed that L2 proficiency was the strongest predictor of learning outcomes for Hong Kong and Mainland students, while integrative motivation was also a significant predictor of learning outcomes in both sample groups. In addition, instrumental motivation, deep approaches, and learning strategies were found to be significant predictors of learning outcomes for Mainland students. Mainland students demonstrated lower levels of motivation, learning approaches, learning strategies, L2 proficiency, as well as learning outcomes relative to Hong Kong students. Implications for curriculum design, classroom teaching and assessment, and future research are discussed in the paper.
[Copyright of Educational Studies is the property of Routledge.]

The applications of technology-enhanced learning spaces have become a topical subject of research, with many studies conducted on the impact of technology-enhanced learning spaces on students' learning; however, only a small number of these focus on how the spaces affect students' learning. This article will elaborate on how technology-enhanced learning spaces facilitate the learning of students and explain in detail the impact of such spaces on them. Interviews were conducted with 48 postgraduate students who had experienced learning in technology-enhanced learning spaces. The interview data were analysed using the grounded theory approach and a theoretical model was proposed for the process of student learning in technology-enhanced learning spaces. The results demonstrate that three factors: academic motivation, extension of time and space, and externalization and expression, can facilitate student engagement in learning in technology-enhanced learning spaces. In addition, student characteristics is an influential factor in student engagement, while pedagogies also determine the effectiveness of these spaces.
[Copyright of Asia Pacific Journal of Education is the property of Routledge.]

This paper presents findings of a qualitative inquiry into international students' experiences and perceptions of their language use in an English-medium international university in multilingual Hong Kong, with particular attention to the use of English as a lingua franca (ELF) in relation to other languages. Based on data collected from in-depth interviews with a group of international students, the study found that the participants embraced a pluralistic conceptualisation of ELF. While they emphasised the importance of ELF for their academic and social integration in the university, the perceived resistance against the use of ELF by local students means that the language norms operating in the university cannot be pre-determined. It was also found that the participants expressed monolingual ideologies with respect to the use of ELF as a result of their concerns about social exclusion and linguistic disadvantage. Meanwhile, multilingual language practices and multilingual ideologies in relation to the use of ELF were also found in the participants' accounts of language experiences and perceptions. The findings also point to the tensions arising from the language choice between ELF and the local language, as well as the co-existence of contradictory language ideologies concerning monolingualism/multilingualism in the international university context.
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This paper investigates mainland Chinese students? experiences of learning English as a second language (L2) in a multilingual university in Hong Kong, with particular attention to their negotiation of participation and identity. Drawing on a series of in-depth interviews with a group of mainland Chinese students, the study revealed that their participation in L2 practices appeared to be shaped by the contextual conditions in different communities within the university and mediated by their agentic responses to the contextual realities of these communities. While they gained fuller participation in L2-mediated activities in the local student community and the classroom community as a result of their appropriation of the associated language practices and their display of knowledge and competence in the related social practices, they struggled to gain access to L2 interactional opportunities in the community of exchange students, where their negotiation of positionalities was subject to the perceived unequal power relations between native and non-native speakers of the English. It is argued that their participation in L2-mediated activities in the university could be understood as a complex, dynamic, situated and co-constructed process of negotiating access, competence, membership, positionality, identities and discursive practices associated with different communities.
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This article is a response to Allan Luke's [(2018). Critical literacy, schooling, and social justice: The selected works of Allan Luke. New York, NY: Routledge] provocation to "join an international, intercultural and peer-conversation" about the imaginings and possibilities of "an education for critical literacies" (p. xii). Using Edward Said's [(1983). The world, the text, and the critic. Cambridge: Harvard University Press] "traveling theory" to reflect on my own engagement with critical literacy over time, place and space, I stitch together an account of how I mobilized critical literacy within the challenging national contexts of Hong Kong and Singapore after first encountering critical literacy in Australia with Allan Luke. Finally, drawing on emerging theories of postcritique (e.g. Anker, E. S., and Felski, R. (Eds.) (2017). Anker, E. S., and Felski, R. (Eds.) Critique & postcritique. Durham: Duke University Press; Felski, R. (2015). The limits of critique. Chicago: University of Chicago Press; Moi, T. (2017). Revolution of the ordinary: Literacy studies after Wittgenstein, Austin, and Cavell. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press), I explore how top-down, "methods" frameworks in critical literacy might be re-oriented towards more radical and inquiry-based approaches, resisting the imposition of artificial limits to critical literacy pedagogy.
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