The research reported here investigated pre-service English language teachers' perceptions of newly arrived immigrant children from Mainland China in Hong Kong. Seventeen participants, who had at least 10 weeks of experience working with these immigrant children during teaching practicum, participated in focus group discussions and shared their perceptions. The data analysis revealed that the participants widely perceived these children as deficit and consider them a serious professional challenge. Further examination of the data helped reveal media, life and teaching practicum experiences with immigrant children as crucial sources that contributed to the formation of these perceptions. The findings call for teacher education programmes to involve pre-service teachers in critical engagement with the mass media and their own experiences so that they can address the deficit model applied by teachers to immigrant children.
[Copyright of Journal of Education for Teaching is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02607476.2013.869966]

Media education has been around for quite some time in the West (Bazalgette et al. 1990), but it only started to gain acceptance in Asia (Cheung 2005), particularly in Hong Kong, in the last decade. Recently, it has been gaining more attention in Hong Kong thanks to the curriculum reform in which liberal studies will become one of the four core subjects to be taken by students in the New Senior Secondary Curriculum and media is one of the six themes to be studied in the subject of liberal studies. This article argues for the need for teaching media education in liberal studies and shows the many connections between the two subjects that facilitate this integration.
[Copyright of Curriculum Journal is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09585170903424997]

This study critically examines Hong Kong's environmental education initiatives beyond schooling in the last 5 years with reference to the engagement of environmental non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in this process under an emerging sponsorship regime. It highlights that the manifested form and mode of environmen-talism in general and environmental education in particular are embedded within the socio-political context of colonial governance, the proliferation of green ideas and the local adaptation of ideas of environmental education. It is observed and argued that environmental education programmes in the last 5 years, promoted mainly in the mass media domain, have been partially successful in changing people's perception on environmental affairs, but environmental groups' autonomy is questioned under a sponsorship regime. The paper ends with remarks on the future of environmental education under a new political regime in 1997 and beyond.
[Copyright of Environmental Education Research is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1350462980040303]

In this age of advanced technology, the pervasive influences of the media on pupils has aroused widespread concern among educators in general and religious educators in particular. This article argues for the teaching of religion through media education. It first discusses the interest of religious groups in media education and how media education might make an important contribution to the teaching of religion. Then it provides data from two schools who have adopted media education in the teaching of religious education to see how teachers and pupils have responded to this initiative.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00344080600956723]

The tremendous influence of today's mass media can hardly be matched by the sum of its works from the past. There are more sources of media, more types of information and entertainment, more interactive modes for consuming these messages of the mass media in a more interconnected global village available than ever before. Since many pupils spend much of their time on the media, the call for media education is urgent. This article first describes the aims and objectives of media education, then portrays the power of the media and how the education sectors have responded. Finally, it argues for the need to implement media education into the secondary curriculum in response to proposed curriculum reform in Hong Kong.
[Copyright of Curriculum Journal is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09585170110050846]