Valid feedback is essential for the administrators, educators, parents and, of course, for children to be able to steer their development in a sustainable way. Key influential theorists such as Montessori, Piaget, Vygotsky, and others all used observations extensively to understand how children learn and use knowledge about children's learning to improve pedagogies and children's lives. However, most adults including teachers in the ECEC settings have not always observed children and tracked their growth. Based on the research and professional development programs conducted in Finland, Taiwan and Hong Kong with more than 100,000 observations, we found some relationships between young children's involvement, adaptation and agency in early childhood settings through systematic observations. We will introduce observation strategies with video clips and demonstrate our latest mobile application for observation for practitioners to contribute to a big data pool aimed to enhance the teaching quality in ECEC settings. Copyright © 2018 EARLI.

This paper reports the outcomes of a 2-year research project designed to investigate the practice of assessment for learning by Hong Kong teachers. The project was a collaborative one, involving the School Development and Evaluation Team (SDET) of The Chinese University of Hong Kong and teachers from 10 kindergartens and 10 primary schools. In the project, training programmes, workshops and meetings were provided to the participating schools for the purpose of enhancing teachers’ Assessment for Learning (AfL) competency in their daily teaching. A questionnaire was administered twice to all teachers in the project schools at the beginning as well as towards the end of the project to tap any improvement regarding teachers’ habits in utilizing AfL strategies in their classrooms. Results indicate that there is a remarkable improvement regarding teachers’ habits in utilizing AfL strategies during the study. It is recommended that more professional development programmes and school support for teachers should be provided for enhancing teachers’ AfL literacy in their daily teaching. Copyright © 2011 Hong Kong Educational Research Association.

This study explores kindergarten teachers’ understanding of, comments on their actual practice of giving feedback to children in Hong Kong. The research employed a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, with data being collected through questionnaires and interviews. The sample was chosen from the in-service kindergarten teachers who were enrolled in the teacher certificate course offered at Hong Kong Institute of Education during the academic year 2015-2016. Questionnaires were sent to 150 in-service kindergarten teachers and six teachers were interviewed. Finding indicates that many teachers have the basic understanding of using feedback. They can analyze the aims of giving students feedback not only from the perspectives of students, but also the interaction between teachers and students. However, they seldom explore it through the views from teachers. Teachers’ aims of giving students feedback are mostly for encouraging and it is mainly positive and appreciation. It is common for teachers to give motivational feedback in kindergartens, however, over-emphasize has its disadvantage. It is found that teachers encountered two problems. Firstly, teachers do not have adequate training about giving students feedback. Secondly, teachers lack follow-up work after giving feedback to students. Some suggestions for teachers’ development are made at the end of the paper. Copyright © 2018 The Author(s). All Rights Reserved.

Early childhood is viewed as a fundamental stage of life in terms of physical and cognitive development; therefore, the investigation of pedagogy used in kindergarten and young children’s surrounding environment becomes essential. Play is being viewed as a central pedagogy in kindergartens of many countries, and teachers are considered as a vital element affecting child development. In Hong Kong, the importance of “Play” has been stressed for over 30 years; however, government reports and researches reflect the reality that learning and teaching in early childhood settings is deviated from the government’s expectations. In fact, kindergarten teachers face many challenges implementing play in their classroom. Factors such as parental expectations and school policy may discourage kindergarten teachers to further develop quality play time. Playwork is considered as the art and science of facilitating children’s play, and in this poster more about playwork and teachers as playworkers would be explored. Teachers will have a general idea on the benefits of having quality play time in early childhood, how playwork can facilitate play time, and strategies applying playwork theories in early childhood education settings. Strategies such as evaluating play values of different materials, creating playful environments and assessing play environment would also be mentioned. The intended results of this poster presentation are to increase teachers’ awareness in improving play quality in their classroom and to enhance their self-efficacy when hosting play activities. Copyright © 2017 The Education University of Hong Kong.

The implementation of a school-based integrated curriculum enables schools to plan a balanced, flexible and coherent curriculum in order to reduce subject specification, especially in kindergartens. Despite kindergarten teachers in Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) being encouraged to integrate music content across subject areas, these boundaries still exist and prove challenging. This instrumental case study shows how one kindergarten teacher attempted to integrate other subjects into the music curriculum through movement and games, and encourage children's creativity. Eight detailed observations of music lessons and an interview with the kindergarten teacher depict her efforts at integration. Findings show that some progress was made and that the support of the principal was pivotal. They also suggest ways in which kindergarten teachers might begin to incorporate more creative integrated approaches to music education and have some applicability to other kindergarten settings where transmission approaches tend to dominate and teachers want to encourage music integration and children's musical creativity. Copyright © 2018 Cambridge University Press.

This study investigated the extent to which preschool teachers and children (ages 4–6) used literal and inferential language within the context of whole-group instruction in four kindergarten classrooms in Hong Kong. A total of 20 sessions of videotaped classroom observations of linguistic interactions between teachers and children were transcribed and then analyzed using a coding scheme to determine the cognitive complexity of teacher questions and child responses with reference to four levels of abstraction, representing a literal-to-inferential continuum. The results indicated that the teachers' questions were predominantly literal in nature (83 %), and similarly the majority of the children's responses (77 %) were also literal. Furthermore, it was revealed that in an average instructional session: (a) teachers produced significantly more utterances than children; (b) the difference in the quantity of teachers' questions between literal and inferential levels was statistically significant; (c) similarly, the difference in the quantity of children's responses between literal and inferential levels was also statistically significant; and (d) children produced a significantly larger quantity of shorter than longer utterances. As there is distinct value in whole-group instruction as a salient context for teacher–child interactive, linguistic engagement in kindergarten classrooms in Hong Kong, it is particularly vital that early childhood educators understand what types of linguistic interactions are occurring there and how to target professional development for teachers to better support language learning in young children.
[Copyright of Early Childhood Education Journal is the property of Springer Netherlands.]

This article unpacks how neoliberal discourse functions as a dominant but problematic system of reasoning that changes and shifts the ways in which we come to think about early childhood education and care. A post-structuralist lens is deployed to understand the production of fears and hopes under the looming shadows of contemporary education reforms and social policies. Highlighting Taiwan, Hong Kong and Korea as three cases from East Asian cultures, this article seeks to elucidate how a similar neoliberal economic and political imaginary is at work to (re)construct East Asian children as human capital for the alchemy of productive citizens in the 21st century.
[Copyright of Policy Futures in Education is the property of Symposium Journals.]

The study seeks to understand the relation between preschool children's mode of participation and negotiation strategies during play and their theory of mind (ToM) development in the Hong Kong context. Forty-two 5-year-old children were recruited. Their emotional and cognitive ToMs were assessed along with expressive language ability. Children's play was observed twice in naturalistic and laboratory settings. Parents completed a questionnaire on their child's emotional and cognitive ToM development, including demographic information and social economic status indexes. The results showed that 5-year-old Hong Kong children mostly engaged in associative and cooperative play and employed two-way, reciprocal strategies in their play. Parent report of emotional ToM predicted children's play strategy in both naturalistic and laboratory settings. Child measure of cognitive ToM predicted their play strategy in the laboratory setting. The study advocates more play time in kindergarten in order to foster an empathetic generation.
[Copyright of Early Child Development and Care is the property of Routledge.]

Studies on school leadership in Hong Kong have mainly focused on primary and secondary schools, with only a handful of studies looking at leadership in early childhood education. This paper aims to report the findings of a study on strategic leadership in Hong Kong's kindergartens. It discusses the challenges that Hong Kong kindergarten leaders are facing and the need for practising strategic leadership. It then reports the findings of practices valued by the leaders of Hong Kong kindergartens. The findings of this study reveal, that apart from the abilities to exercise sound planning and management in school, leaders' reflective, flexible and systems thinking and their willingness in continuous professional and network development are crucial to leading today's kindergartens. This study also indicates that leaders' contextual intelligence is important for exercising strategic leadership. The significance of this study lies in its contribution to the investigation of leadership practices in early childhood education, the need to further explore how well kindergarten leaders are practising strategic leadership and the implications for the development of principal preparation programmes.
[Copyright of Educational Management Administration & Leadership is the property of SAGE Publications Ltd.]