A significant feature in the Chinese literature concerning giftedness is a deemphasis on natural ability and an emphasis on the impact of nurturing and learning. Through a qualitative approach, this project explores Hong Kong Chinese parents’ understandings and beliefs of giftedness, and their expected parental behaviours with their children. Thirty-two Hong Kong parents of young children are interviewed to examine their understandings of giftedness, and both qualitative and quantitative analyses are employed. The research findings offer insight to parents, educators and policy makers on the education of gifted and talented young children. This research project is the first of a three-phase longitudinal study that has the broad aim of uncovering the relationship between young parents’ conceptions of giftedness toward the education of gifted children, and their subsequent behaviours in the education of their children. In this phase of the project, the specific aims are to determine the conceptions of giftedness among Hong Kong Chinese parents, and their parenting behaviour and practices in relation to their children’s education – given the possibility that their child may be identified (or labelled) as “gifted”. Total of thirty-two semi-structured interviews are conducted with Hong Kong Chinese parents of children age 3-6 years old. This approach will be repeated in the subsequent two phases of the project to uncover any changes in their conceptions, and to characterize their actual behaviours in relations to their child’s education. Against the recent intense public interest in a small number of gifted children in Hong Kong, the findings of the first phase of this project will contribute to our basic understanding of the cultural basis of conceptions of giftedness, help shape future policy initiatives of the Hong Kong government. In the first and subsequent phases of the project, findings are also expected to provide specific advice to schools on how to implement these

This article explores the ideological complex in a Hong Kong primary school where a large number of immigrant mainland Chinese students study by examining the interview data from teachers and immigrant students. Drawing on the notions of monoglot ideology and misrecognition, this study indicates that disqualifications of some linguistic resources in the emergent repertoire of their students exist in the primary school as a political and social context dominated by particular language ideologies. This study also explores how the language ideologies of the students are constructed and how the students censor their use of the native language through internalisation of the language attitudes held by the teachers. The findings suggest that a flexible language ideology would help the students value their own language resources and construct a new identity in the new hibitus. It is also suggested that the immigrant students can employ the multilingual practices as a symbolic resource rather than as a disadvantage constructed by the institutional ideologies.
[Copyright of Research Papers in Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02671522.2014.970227]

Since the retrocession of Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty in 1997, the Hong Kong SAR government and key curriculum developers have been determined to make use of the school curriculum (formal and informal) and in particular, the two history subjects, 'Chinese History' and 'History,' to promote a national identity among students. This study shows that a Chinese national identity in ethnic, cultural and historical terms has been promoted through 'Chinese History.' At the same time, through the other history subject, 'History,' a Hongkongese identity that includes both an international and a national dimension has also been made possible. However, it is argued that in promoting a sense of national identity through the school curriculum, the government has turned the curriculum to a form of nationalistic propaganda. In addition, the emphasis on national identity would create tension between Hong Kong students, students from China and ethnical minority students.
[Copyright ©2014 National Academy for Educational Research.]

Although on-campus residence allows easier access to campus facilities, existing studies showed mixed results regarding the relationship between college residence and students' well-being indicators, such as sleep behaviors and mood. There was also a lack of studies investigating the role of chronotype in the relationship between on-campus residence and well-being. In particular, the temporal relationships among these factors were unclear. Hence, this longitudinal study aims to fill in these gaps by first reporting the well-being (measured in terms of mood, sleep, and quality of life) among students living on and off campus across two academic semesters. We explored factors predicting students' dropout in university residences. Although students living on campus differ in their chronotypes, activities in campus residence (if any) are mostly scheduled in the nighttime. We therefore tested if individual differences in chronotype interact with campus residence in affecting well-being. Our final sample consisted of 215 campus residents and 924 off-campus-living students from 10 different universities or colleges in Hong Kong or Macau. Their mean age was 20.2 years (SD = 2.3); 6.5% of the participants are female. Participants completed self-reported questionnaires online on their sleep duration, sleep quality, chronotype, mood, and physical and psychological quality of life. Across two academic semesters, we assessed if students living on and off campus differed in our well-being measures after we partialed out the effects of demographic information (including age, sex, family income, and parents' education) and the well-being measures at baseline (T1). The results showed that, campus residents exhibited longer sleep duration, greater sleep efficiency, better sleep quality, and less feeling of stress than off-campus-living students. From one semester to the next, around 10% of campus residents did not continue to live on campus. Logistic regression showed that a morning type

The present study evaluates the impact of the fine-tuning medium of instruction (MOI) policy in Hong Kong in the early stages of its implementation. It explores the key stakeholders' perspectives on a school-based policy via a case study, which gathered multiple sources of qualitative data (i.e. focus groups/interviews, open-ended questionnaires, school documents and lesson observations). The findings reveal that the increased amount of English-medium teaching encouraged by the new policy has led to the emergence of numerous controversial pedagogical and practical issues, many of which resemble those also occurring in bilingual education programmes worldwide. The evidence suggests that the school-based MOI policy and practices have only benefited the more capable students but sacrificed the interests and learning needs of less able students. The paper, therefore, highlights the need to inform local teachers and administrators on how to confront these difficulties based on their own experience so as to maximise the effectiveness and learning outcomes of the majority of the students.
[Copyright of Language and Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09500782.2014.904872]