Under the influence of globalization, Asian countries have borrowed educational notions and policies from Western societies in recent years. One of these notions is that of creativity. In Hong Kong, Arts and Creativity is included as one of the six learning areas in the Kindergarten Curriculum Guide. The Guide encompasses four art forms: visual arts, music, drama, and dance. Kindergarten teachers are expected to design lessons that support children to develop creativity through active exploration in art activities. However, the literature in this area has important research gaps. There is no research on how kindergarten stakeholders (specifically teachers, principals, and teacher educators) understand the notion of creativity. Similarly, there has been no research to examine how stakeholders perceive the teaching and learning of Arts and Creativity in Hong Kong. Furthermore, local studies have focused on documenting the presence of individual art forms in the classroom, without considering the content of the four art forms in an integrated fashion.Drawing on the constructs of policy borrowing and glocalization (i.e., hybridization of global and local perspectives in education), this dissertation includes three empirical studies which aim to address the above-mentioned research gaps.• Study 1 is an interview study exploring how Hong Kong ECE stakeholders defined the notion of creativity in relation to young children. This study showed that all stakeholders have a relatively partial understanding of creativity.• Study 2 is an interview study on how stakeholders perceived Arts and Creativity and its viability in kindergarten settings. The results showed that this learning area is not perceived to be implemented in accordance with the curriculum framework.• Study 3 is a survey study examining the provision of the four art forms and its relationship with teachers' demographics. This study provided an overview of the status of arts education in Hong Kong kindergartens. Results

Educators and researchers are becoming interested in cultivating computational thinking (CT). However, in the Hong Kong context, CT-related studies regarding young children are rarely found. The present study aimed to use an unplugged digital arts activity to examine the CT concepts that children performed and document their CT developmental trajectories. Constructionism theory highlights the importance of children engaging in hands-on activities and developing independent thinking skills. Meanwhile, social constructivism theory emphasizes the role of teachers as scaffolders, supporting children in their learning processes. A sample of children (N = 27, aged 3-6) was recruited from a nursery school in Hong Kong to participate in an animation art workshop. A total of 540 min of video data was recorded and collected for content analysis. The teaching team (N = 4) for this workshop were invited to write up their reflective journals, capturing their observations of the scaffolding strategies employed and their perspectives on how children at various levels demonstrated their understanding of CT concepts throughout the entire process. Within an analytical framework based on powerful ideas, the findings from the observations and field notes revealed that the children's CT concepts and practices could be linked with the CT conceptual framework. In this study, older children showed a sophisticated competency and a more complicated mind structure in terms of the CT concept. Our findings highlight the importance of designing an age-appropriate curriculum for nurturing the computational thinking of young children through animation art. Copyright © 2024 Springer.

There has been an increasing number of calls to apply new technologies to learning contexts for STEM education. However, limited studies have explored the role of technology in bridging teachers and children to create STEM knowledge collaboratively. Therefore, early childhood teachers encounter challenges integrating digital technologies to support children’s STEM learning. The challenges include developing effective and innovative scaffolding strategies to incorporate digital technology and visualize the processes of using technologies in children’s STEM knowledge building. This study reports on an in-depth exploratory case study from a kindergarten classroom in Hong Kong, exemplifying a new approach to integrating digital technologies within spatialized STEM learning. The case selected continuity learning episodes from a spatially directed STEM learning unit on making a safe traffic city. Under digital technology-integrated scaffolding, the teacher and children co-created a traffic symbolic system by designing symbols of landmarks, developing and applying spatial language, making maps and traffic games with rules. The thematic analysis was adopted to analyze the teachers’ STEM activity plans and reflective reports. The finding indicated that the process through which the teacher and children collaboratively created STEM knowledge via technology-integrated scaffolding involved recalling spontaneous understanding about everyday concepts, exploring ideas in authentic contexts, sorting and organizing their collected information, and identifying and correlating abstract concepts with corresponding everyday practices. The children required two levels of technology-integrated scaffolding strategies to engage in STEM knowledge collaborative creation: scaffolding for technology using and scaffolding through use of technology. Three novel roles of technology emerged that transform learning from knowledge delivery to collaborative creation in inquiries STEM tasks for young children

High-quality teacher-child interactions benefit children’s learning and developmental trajectories. However, professional development (PD) opportunities for early childhood teachers on how to interact with children are typically insufficient. To enhance teacher-child interactional quality in Hong Kong kindergartens, we designed an online PD entitled Chat with Children, composed of 10 units of learning resources and activities. The objective of this study was to explore how this online PD influenced teachers’ beliefs and intentions regarding teacher-child interaction. Participants were 217 in-service Hong Kong kindergarten teachers. Pre-post evaluation was conducted to examine teachers’ beliefs and intentions in the dimensions of Organization of the Teaching Experience, Group Sensitivity, Encouragement of Communication, and Behavioral Support. After taking the course, teachers had stronger beliefs and intentions to organize interactive activities, address children’s needs with sensitivity, and engage children in communications. Furthermore, teachers believed that they should give children more freedom to settle conflicts, rather directing their misbehaviours immediately. This study provides evidence on the potential of online PD to enhance teachers’ beliefs and intentions regarding how to engage children. Implications, limitations, and future research are discussed. Copyright © 2025 The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V.

This study investigated the development of computational thinking (CT) in young children within the specific context of Hong Kong. The researchers utilized an unplugged digital arts activity to explore the CT knowledge exhibited by children and document their developmental trajectories. A sample of 23 children aged 3 to 6 years participated in an animation art workshop conducted in a Hong Kong kindergarten. The video data were recorded and analyzed in terms of content. Drawing on a three-dimensional framework combining powerful ideas for teaching coding, the observations and field notes revealed that children's CT knowledge construction aligned with the CT conceptual framework. Notably, older children demonstrated more advanced competences and more complex cognitive structures in terms of the design process, representation, algorithms, modularity, sequences, connecting, choices of conduct, and utilization of hardware/software. These findings emphasize the importance of designing age-appropriate curricula that foster children's CT skills through the animation art. Copyright ©2024 Routledge.

In the global world, globalization influences education worldwide; therefore, the dynamics between local and global, termed “glocalization,” is crucial to curriculum guidelines that officially represent an ideal education. The latest Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) curriculum was announced during the 2012–2017 period in China, Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan. Following Bereday’s four-step comparison method, this article systematically compares four guidelines and, referring to their socio-historical backgrounds, examines how global trends, Chinese culture, and local context interactively influence their ECEC guidelines. Within the Chinese context, this study coins a new concept of “glo-re-calization “ based on glocalization and regionalization by which we examine how global trends, regional culture, and local forces co-contribute to the sameness and differences in four curriculum guidelines. Based on the four guidelines analysis, we propose the Glorecal Power Model with four patterns. A “logloblization” is a model that overwhelmingly weighs a local force, seen as a regional force, as in the case of China pursuing loglobalization towards regionalization. A “GloRecalization” model weighs global and regional forces much more than the local ones, as in the case of Hong Kong, which is rushing towards globalization and regionalization. A “gloreCalization” model considers mainly local force, as in the case of Macau, which calls for localization. A “Glorecalization” model takes place where global trends are the most significant feature among the three powers as in the case of Taiwan walking on global trends. Copyright ©2024 Springer.

In the past, visual arts education in Hong Kong was not considered an important area of early childhood education. While the Hong Kong kindergarten curriculum has recently been updated to encourage creativity, there remains a lack of adequate visual arts education for young children. This deficiency stems from the fact that the visual arts receive minimal attention within Hong Kong teacher education programs. Little research has been conducted on how visual arts education is actually delivered in local kindergarten classrooms in Hong Kong and what kinds of artistic knowledge and skills kindergarten teachers need. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate kindergarten teachers' content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge in early visual arts education (EVAE) and to identify the challenges they faced in teaching visual arts to children. The study surveyed 342 in-service kindergarten teachers in Hong Kong and conducted individual interviews with 12 participants. The findings revealed that Hong Kong kindergarten teachers generally performed well in terms of their pedagogical content knowledge, but they lacked content knowledge in various forms of early visual arts (EVA) and faced challenges in teaching visual arts effectively. This study has the potential to change how early childhood visual arts teaching is conceptualized and taught in Hong Kong and other Asian regions. Copyright ©2025 Springer.

The early childhood education system in Hong Kong operates within a corporate governance framework. However, there is a lack of research on the interaction between principalship and corporate governance in kindergartens and childcare centres. This study aims to address this gap by examining how a preschool education coordinator (PEC), working under corporate governance principles in a non-governmental organization (NGO), influenced the resignation decisions of principals. Using micro-political theory, this study examines power dynamics, conflicts, and decision-making processes that led to principals’ resignations. This phenomenological case study utilized a focus group discussion with three principals who had resigned from the NGO. Through thematic analysis, three key themes emerged from the study: changing governance and accountability, conflicting educational values and beliefs between the preschool education coordinator and the principals, and contrasting leadership behaviours and styles. The findings of this study have significant implications for the local community, as well as offering valuable insights that can inform and benefit international audiences interested in early childhood education leadership development and human resources management. As early childhood education systems worldwide grapple with similar challenges, understanding the relationship between corporate governance and principalship can help devise strategies for enhancing organizational effectiveness and ensuring principal retention. Copyright ©2024 Sage Publications.

香港特區政府近十年積極推動職業專才教育（下稱「職專教育」），以滿足未來社會的人力資源需求。大專院校在港開辦職前幼稚園教師課程已近四十年，持續影響本地幼兒教育與服務的發展。為了探討課程在職專教育下的發展前路，本文透過文獻研究分析，先回顧其歷史發展，然後根據特區政府的「推廣職業專才教育專責小組」檢討報告為基礎，從「資歷級別」、「進階路徑」及「職場學習」三方面審視課程的現況與前路，以給予業界與學界啟示。 Copyright © 2024 教育研究獎勵計劃工作小組秘書處.

We investigated the provision of musical activities in Hong Kong kindergartens and analysed potential differences among teachers with different levels of teaching experience. Using a self-designed survey, we asked 1,019 teachers how often they conducted 18 specific musical activities. Overall, we found that participants provided considerable music exposure to children. Advanced teachers (more than 15 years' experience) reported conducting more musical activities for children than Beginning teachers (less than 5 years). Principal component analysis revealed the existence of four components: Singing and Transitions (the most frequent); Movement, Technology and Thematic Activities; Sound Production; and Creativity and Self-expression (the least frequent). Teachers with varying teaching experience tend to focus on different musical activities in the classroom. Specifically, Beginning teachers reported to conduct significantly fewer musical creativity activities than Advanced teachers. We conclude that teaching experience is a crucial factor that affects the provision and types of musical activities conducted by kindergarten teachers. Findings May guide subsequent professional development efforts to better prepare kindergarten teachers with different profiles to achieve the learning objectives established in the curriculum framework. Copyright © 2024 Australian Society for Music Education.