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This dissertation, "Enhancing Academic Self-concept and Academic Achievement of Vocational Students: a Longitudinal Intervention Study in Mainland China" by Lan, Yang,, was obtained from The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong) and is being sold pursuant to Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 Hong Kong License. The content of this dissertation has not been altered in any way. We have altered the formatting in order to facilitate the ease of printing and reading of the dissertation. All rights not granted by the above license are retained by the author. Abstract: While much is known about the achievement of high ability students, much less research has focused on their lower ability peers. In addition, although academic self-concept, locus of control and learning approaches have been demonstrated to be important personal variables that influence learning outcomes, less effort has been made to integrate these variables simultaneously to understand the complexity of low-achievement. The present research aimed to not only identify key causes of the low-achievement of academically disadvantaged students, but also provide appropriate and productive enhancement approaches to foster low-achieving students'' school success by conducting a pioneering longitudinal experimental study particularly in mainland China. The participants were low-achieving junior secondary students who had recently enrolled in Secondary Vocational Education (SVE) in mainland China (total N = 724). It was found that compared with normal- and high-achieving students in mainstream secondary education, students in SVE were characterized with less achieving motives, less internal-oriented control beliefs and particularly lower academic self-concepts. In addition, the academic self-concept of SVE students was found to be the most significant predictor of their academic achievement (p.001) compared with achieving approach (p.05) and locus of control (p.05). These findings, in ligh