No abstract

This study was conducted to explore the relationships between pre-school educators' conceptions of and approaches to learning by web-searching through Internet Selfefficacy. Based on data from 242 pre-school educators who had prior experience of participating in web-searching in Taiwan for path analyses, it was found in this study that conceptions of learning by web-searching play a major role in approaches to learning without Internet Self-efficacy (ISE). The results indicated that preschool educators' Internet self-efficacy was the significant moderator of their conceptions of and approaches to learning by web searching. Thus, this result suggests that improving preschool educators' ability to use the Internet as well as their use of relevant web-based tools may increase their approaches to learning by web-searching, which may in turn strengthen their learning performances in Internet-based environments.

In Taiwan, the Science Volunteer Locomotive (SVL) Program has been in operation for the past ten years. During these years of its implementation, the SVL Program has continued to participate in and co-ordinate various national scientific activities. This study examined the relationships between volunteers’ prime motivations, self-directed learning and satisfaction among Taiwanese science volunteers. To explore volunteers’ perspectives on their involvement in science service, in this research, we developed three questionnaires to investigate the relationships among volunteers’ motivation, self-directed learning and satisfaction with their science service. The study sample included 289 volunteers, taken from a project for science volunteers run by the Ministry of Science and Technology in Taiwan. The results indicate that the prime motivations and self-directed learning of science volunteers are focused on doing something meaningful for others and for society in general. It was found that the science volunteers’ motivation, self-directed learning and satisfaction all had significant positive correlations. The findings suggest that science training programs may provide some motivational support to enhance satisfaction, so that science volunteers will be more inclined to participate in collaborative scientific projects. Keywords: prime motivation, service satisfaction, science volunteers, self-directed learning.