Research Findings: This cross-sectional study examined the class- and child-level associations of social-emotional competence with behavioral and academic adjustment among Chinese kindergarten children and tested teacher collectivistic socialization goals as a moderator. Participants were 523 kindergarten children and their mothers and class teachers from Hong Kong, China. The mean age of children was 4.37 years (SD = 0.60), and 53% of them were boys. Using paper-and-pencil questionnaires, class teachers rated children’s social-emotional competence and their own socialization goals, and mothers rated children’s externalizing behaviors and school readiness and provided demographic information. Also, in structured interviews, children completed a Chinese word reading test. Multilevel models indicated that, controlling for child gender and age, mother age and education, and teacher experience of teaching, the class average of child social-emotional competence – which indicated the overall social-emotional climate of the classroom – was linked negatively to child externalizing behaviors and positively to child school readiness and Chinese word reading ability. Moreover, children who scored higher on social-emotional competence – compared to their own class average (i.e., their everyday companions) – scored lower on externalizing behaviors and higher on school readiness. There was no evidence of the moderating role of teacher socialization goals, however. Practice or Policy: Findings pointed to the utility of using class-wide initiatives to promote the overall classroom climate and using child-specific activities to promote individual social-emotional development. Copyright © 2021 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

The way culturally responsive teaching is employed in school settings in non-Western contexts is unclear. The question of how to teach Chinese effectively to ethnic minority (EM) children in Hong Kong has recently attracted much attention because their generally low level of Chinese language proficiency hinders their education and social integration. This study investigated teachers’ competence in utilizing culturally responsive teaching to teach Chinese to EM children in kindergartens. Focus group interviews were conducted with 43 teachers from 20 kindergartens. The results showed that teachers from kindergartens with a high concentration of EM children were more competent in adapting their teaching methods to cater for EM children’s learning styles and educational needs. However, teachers from low concentration kindergartens were less competent in incorporating multicultural elements in curriculum design and teaching materials. They demonstrated a more monocultural mindset in teaching Chinese to EM children. Teachers from high concentration kindergartens developed a better understanding of EM cultures, were more caring and had higher expectations of EM children. Implications for teacher education, school level and policy were discussed. Copyright © 2021 National Institute of Education, Singapore.

Background: Studies have shown that word dictation and syntactic skills are significant predictors of written composition performance among Chinese children in elementary grades. However, there is a paucity of research on the bidirectional relationships between these two cognitive‐linguistic skills (i.e., word dictation and syntactic skills) and Chinese writing skills. Methods: This paper reports the findings of a 1‐year longitudinal study tracking the developmental patterns of Chinese writing among students in Grades 3 and 5 in Hong Kong. The participants were administered tasks involving cognitive‐linguistic skills (working memory, word dictation and syntactic skills) and writing skills (narrative writing and expository writing). Results: Multiple regression analysis revealed that word dictation and syntactic skills in Grades 3 and 5 were significant longitudinal predictors of Chinese written composition performance in Grade 4 and Grade 6. Syntactic skills, but not word dictation, contributed a significant amount of unique variance to writing performance after controlling for the autoregressor effect of writing. The results also showed that written composition performance in Grades 3 and 5 contributed unique variance to individual differences in syntactic skills in Grades 4 and 6, after controlling for syntactic skills in the preceding year and other cognitive‐linguistic variables. Conclusion: The patterns of results underscore the significance of syntactic skills in Chinese written composition in upper elementary grades and the bidirectional relationship between syntactic skills and written composition in Chinese. Highlights: What is already known about this topicChinese word dictation, syntactic skills and verbal working memory are the major types of developmental skills important in Chinese writing among children in elementary grades. What this paper addsThe longitudinal contribution of word dictation to writing performance across grades was mediated by the contribution

The number of Chinese children living in poverty has risen steadily in Hong Kong, China. However, little is known on the longitudinal effects of family socioeconomic status (SES) on cognitive-linguistic skills, word reading and writing in children from low-SES backgrounds. This study examines differences in cognitive-linguistic skills and word reading and writing across kindergarteners from the low- and middle-SES groups. It also investigates the direct link between SES and children's concurrent Chinese literacy skills and how cognitive-linguistic skills mediate the longitudinal associations between SES and word reading and writing. One hundred and nine children were assessed at Kindergarten K2 (Time 1) and reassessed at Kindergarten K3 (Time 2). Children were administered the measures of vocabulary knowledge, phonological awareness, morphological awareness, executive functioning, Chinese word reading, and Chinese word dictation at both time points. Results revealed that low-SES children performed less well on Chinese word reading and dictation than their middle-SES peers at both time points. Moreover, hierarchical regression and mediation analyses suggested that SES had a direct relation with Chinese word reading at Time 1 after controlling for age and cognitive-linguistic skills, and an indirect link with Chinese word dictation at Time 2 which was fully mediated by phonological awareness and vocabulary knowledge at Time 1. The results highlight that SES may exert an impact on children's early Chinese reading and writing and suggest the benefit of improving phonological awareness and vocabulary knowledge of low-SES children. Copyright ©Springer Netherlands.

The present study investigated the executive functioning of working memory, inhibition, shifting, and planning in Chinese adolescent readers with dyslexia and how they related to Chinese (L1) and English (L2) reading comprehension. Fifty-seven Hong Kong Chinese students at Grade 7 were compared with 57 typically developing readers of chronological-age-matched controls on their performance on working memory, inhibition, shifting, planning, vocabulary knowledge, rapid naming, and reading comprehension in Chinese and English. Results from the multivariate analysis of variance showed that readers with dyslexia performed worse than the typical readers in executive functioning, vocabulary knowledge, rapid naming, and reading comprehension. Hierarchical regressions indicated that working memory, inhibition, and vocabulary knowledge were significant predictors of reading comprehension in L1 after controlling for age, IQ, and group membership. Furthermore, working memory, inhibition, shifting, vocabulary knowledge, and rapid naming contributed uniquely to reading comprehension in L2. Taken together, these findings suggest executive functioning difficulties in Chinese readers with dyslexia and highlight the differential contributions of executive functioning to Chinese and English reading comprehension; working memory and inhibition appear to play an important role in reading comprehension across different languages. Copyright ©Springer Netherlands.

The present study investigated the co-occurrence of word reading and spelling difficulties for Chinese first language (L1) and English second language (L2) and the role of morphological awareness in word reading and spelling ability across two languages. A total of 110 Hong Kong Chinese-speaking students in Grade 7, including 55 adolescents with dyslexia (28 males, mean age = 152.11 months) and 55 typically developing adolescents (27 males, mean age = 151.85 months) participated. They were assessed on the cognitive-linguistic measures of morphological awareness, phonological awareness, vocabulary knowledge, rapid naming, word reading, and word spelling in L1 and L2. Multivariate analysis of variance showed that compared with the typical students, adolescents with dyslexia had poorer performance in all L1 and L2 measures except the phonological awareness in Chinese. Hierarchical regression analysis indicated that for both groups of students, morphological awareness contributed uniquely to word reading and spelling in L1 and L2; rapid letter naming contributed uniquely to English word spelling. Findings highlight the importance of co-occurring difficulties in L1 and L2 reading and spelling and that morphological awareness may play a critical role in predicting word reading and spelling across languages for Chinese adolescents with dyslexia and those without difficulty. Copyright © Sage Publications Ltd.

This study examined the bidirectional relationships among Chinese children's mathematics, executive functioning, and visual–spatial skills during their transition from kindergarten to primary school. Participants were 172 Cantonese-speaking Hong Kong children (mean age at Time 1 = 62.75 months; 88 male) and their parents. At Time 1 (kindergarten K3), children were administered the measures of mathematics (calculation and applied problems), executive functioning (working memory and inhibitory control), and visual–spatial skills. They were reassessed on these measures at Time 2 (primary 1) 1 year later. Results from the cross-lagged panel model showed that, controlling for child age, gender, and family socioeconomic status, children's visual–spatial skills at Time 1 were significantly predictive of their mathematics at Time 2 and children's executive functioning and visual–spatial skills reciprocally predicted each other across times. However, children's mathematics at Time 1 were not predictive of their executive functioning or visual–spatial skills at Time 2. The findings highlight the desirability of improving children's executive functioning and visual–spatial skills to promote their mathematical performance during the formal school transition. Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

This study examined the bidirectionality between kindergarten children's executive functioning (EF) and word reading across two time points. Participants were 523 Hong Kong Chinese-speaking children (mean age at Time 2 = 64.59 months; 52.9% male) and their parents. At Time 1, children were administered the measures of EF skills: inhibitory control, attention shifting, working memory and Chinese word reading. They were reassessed with these measures at Time 2 one year later. Results from the cross-lagged panel model revealed that, controlling for child age, gender and parental education levels, children's word reading at Time 1 was significantly predictive of their working memory at Time 2, but that the three EF skills at Time 1 were not predictive of word reading at Time 2. These findings underscored the role of early word reading in promoting children's working memory. Copyright © 2020 UKLA.

Research findings: This study explored the latent structure of socioemotional competence among Chinese kindergarten children in Hong Kong, China, developing and validating a culturally relevant, teacher-reported measure, the Chinese Inventory of Children’s Socioemotional Competence (CICSEC). Cross-sectional questionnaire data were collected on two samples of children from Hong Kong (N₁ = 1,731; N₂ = 475). Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses revealed that, children’s socioemotional competence was best represented by a two-level, four-factor model, a model that was invariant across child gender and grade levels. Four first-level factors, cognitive control, emotion expressivity, empathy and prosocial behaviors, and emotion regulation, were identified, and they were subsumed under a second-level, overarching factor: socioemotional competence. CICSEC demonstrated many good psychometric properties: The entire scale and the four subscales exhibited excellent internal consistencies. Moreover, it demonstrated criterion validity by being correlated positively with school readiness and negatively with problem behaviors. It also demonstrated incremental validity by explaining unique variance in school readiness, above and beyond an existing measure of children’s socioemotional competence. Practice or policy: Findings pointed to the advantages of using culturally specific, locally derived measures in assessing socioemotional competence and understanding child adjustment. Copyright © 2020 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

This study examined the longitudinal associations of emotional regulation and school readiness among Chinese kindergarten children. Data were collected from 523 children (mean age at time 1 = 52.42 months; 52.9% male) at two time points separated by approximately 1 year in Hong Kong, China. At times 1 and 2, children's school readiness was assessed by their teachers and parents while their emotional regulation was directly tested. Teachers also rated children's emotional regulation at both time points. The results from the two reciprocal path models showed that, controlling for the corresponding autoregressive effects, school readiness at time 1 was predictive of emotional regulation at time 2. However, emotional regulation at time 1 did not emerge as a significant predictor of school readiness at time 2. Theoretically, these results underscored children's school readiness as a potential contributor to their emotional regulation. Practically, these findings suggested the utility of supporting children's school readiness to foster their emotional regulation. Copyright © 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.