The Methodist Church of Hong Kong has promoted a life education programme since 2004, and has progressively applied it in all affiliated schools. This article analyses the characteristics of the latest primary school life education curriculum compiled by this Christian school sponsoring body. There are three significant findings: 1) religious elements remain rich in the four strands of life education the Universe, oneself, other people, and environment; 2) biblical stories have been removed, but Christian beliefs are integrated into the curriculum materials and summaries in terms of Christian role models and the Holy Scriptures, in order to develop students' relevant values, good character and positive attitudes towards life; and 3) the importance of prayer as a religious practise for action. The intended curriculum demonstrates how religious elements like Christian beliefs can be applied in secular education to build students' sense of meaning and purpose in life.
[Copyright of Journal of Beliefs & Values-Studies in Religion & Education is the property of Routledge.]

Guided with an integrated theoretical framework of textbook and ideology, this study compares two versions of Chinese history textbooks published by one publisher in two different publication systems which were enacted immediately before and soon after President Xi Jinping's 2012 ascendancy. Critical discourse analysis shows that, despite seeking to balance differ groups' histories, sharing a desire of consolidating the Communist Party of China's (CPC's) domination, and supposedly following curriculum standards made before 2012, the new version of textbooks greatly differed from the old version, reflected Xi's formal ideology and authority, and updated his informal ideology while following established guidelines for conveying historical materialism. This study concludes that knowledge in Chinese history textbooks serves the CPC's political needs, and especially reflects the-then top leader's efforts at consolidating Party dominance, signifying his power, and cultivating nationalism.
[Copyright of Compare-a Journal of Comparative and International Education is the property of Routledge.]

This article analyses and compares the responses of parents to education policy initiatives in Singapore, Shanghai and Hong Kong. The education reform in three localities converges on changing an exam-centric culture and equipping students to thrive in a globalised world. Through a discussion of three representative policy initiativesDirect School Admission in Singapore, extended and inquiry/research curricula in Shanghai and Liberal Studies in Hong Kongthis article contends that the parents variously make sense of, negotiate, support and circumvent the policy initiatives. Their strategies, it is argued, are grounded in and shaped by their shared habitus, manifesting the four processes identified by Zhao, Selman and Luke (Bourdieu and Chinese education: Inequality, competition, and change, Routledge, Oxon, 2018) for understanding the formation of habitus. A major implication arising from the study is the usefulness of the concept of habitus in illuminating the educational expectations and proposed actions of parents when confronted with educational changes.
[Copyright of Asia Pacific Education Review is the property of Springer.]

This paper presents findings of a qualitative inquiry into international students' experiences and perceptions of their language use in an English-medium international university in multilingual Hong Kong, with particular attention to the use of English as a lingua franca (ELF) in relation to other languages. Based on data collected from in-depth interviews with a group of international students, the study found that the participants embraced a pluralistic conceptualisation of ELF. While they emphasised the importance of ELF for their academic and social integration in the university, the perceived resistance against the use of ELF by local students means that the language norms operating in the university cannot be pre-determined. It was also found that the participants expressed monolingual ideologies with respect to the use of ELF as a result of their concerns about social exclusion and linguistic disadvantage. Meanwhile, multilingual language practices and multilingual ideologies in relation to the use of ELF were also found in the participants' accounts of language experiences and perceptions. The findings also point to the tensions arising from the language choice between ELF and the local language, as well as the co-existence of contradictory language ideologies concerning monolingualism/multilingualism in the international university context.
[Copyright of Language Culture and Curriculum is the property of Routledge.]

This study examines language features that students are likely to encounter in chemistry textbooks in EMI classrooms. In consultation with teachers, the presentation of science knowledge was examined in three chemistry textbooks commonly used in Hong Kong secondary English Medium Instruction (EMI) classrooms. Student textbooks were collected from eight Grade 10-12 chemistry classrooms. Adopting a functional linguistic approach (e.g., Veel's (1997) framework of text taxonomy), analyses showed that explanation is the most common text type in the three chemistry textbooks, and the five subtypes of explanations represented in the textbooks are causal (40%), factorial (24%), sequential (15%), consequential (13%) and theoretical (8%). The distribution of these different types of explanation texts and their features were examined to reveal the kind of language that students in EMI classrooms are likely to encounter when learning chemistry. The results show that explanation texts served as a primary linguistic reservoir for EMI students to learn the language of science. The analysis of the language features of these texts could be used to inform future pedagogies aiming at making these textbooks more accessible to students learning in English and facilitating both their science learning and control of scientific English.
[Copyright of Journal of English for Academic Purposes is the property of Elsevier Ltd.]

This paper investigates mainland Chinese students? experiences of learning English as a second language (L2) in a multilingual university in Hong Kong, with particular attention to their negotiation of participation and identity. Drawing on a series of in-depth interviews with a group of mainland Chinese students, the study revealed that their participation in L2 practices appeared to be shaped by the contextual conditions in different communities within the university and mediated by their agentic responses to the contextual realities of these communities. While they gained fuller participation in L2-mediated activities in the local student community and the classroom community as a result of their appropriation of the associated language practices and their display of knowledge and competence in the related social practices, they struggled to gain access to L2 interactional opportunities in the community of exchange students, where their negotiation of positionalities was subject to the perceived unequal power relations between native and non-native speakers of the English. It is argued that their participation in L2-mediated activities in the university could be understood as a complex, dynamic, situated and co-constructed process of negotiating access, competence, membership, positionality, identities and discursive practices associated with different communities.
[Copyright of Research Papers in Education is the property of Routledge.]

This article compares and re-examines citizenship education (CE) teaching and learning in Hong Kong (HK) and Guangzhou (GZ), China. It questions two stereotypical perceptions-that China schools indoctrinate students, and that CE lessons in HK are more open than those in mainland China. Data are drawn from some 30 lesson observations, 1,200 questionnaires, and 80 teacher/student interviews from six sampled HK and GZ schools. The study used NVivo to examine qualitative data, and employed hierarchical linear modelling with the help of SPSS and AMOS to analyse quantitative data. The findings suggest both cities are similar in terms of teaching/learning CE, due to globalization and domestic changes, and have similar CE conditions more conducive to open pedagogies (e.g., inquiry-based approaches) than indoctrination. HK's greater socioeconomic openness does not ensure its CE is more open than GZ's, for pedagogical and non-pedagogical reasons.
[Copyright of Journal of Curriculum Studies is the property of Routledge.]

This study explores the professional learning of ten pre-service teachers from Hong Kong and ten host teachers in a school in China who participated in a teaching abroad project. The participants' professional learning during the project is conceptualised within five knowledge domains of quality teaching for the twenty-first century: personal, contextual, pedagogical, sociological and social. The findings suggest that by immersing pre-service teachers in an unfamiliar teaching environment, they can learn professional knowledge for teaching in an increasingly complex world. This complements the knowledge they are acquiring in their domestic courses and practicums. Furthermore, through the pedagogical exchange of ideas, the host teachers are also found to benefit. We recommend that teaching abroad opportunities be included in initial teacher education (ITE) programmes and that host teachers' professional learning are considered in their development.
[Copyright of Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education is the property of Routledge.]

In this decade, assessment literacy has emerged as a significant research agenda. Yet, not much has been done to explore teacher assessment literacy in L2 writing. This study investigates what Hong Kong secondary school teachers know and think about, and how they practice classroom-based writing assessment through a questionnaire, telephone interviews, and classroom observations. The study qualitatively examines the extent to which sixty-six respondents achieved teacher assessment literacy from their perspectives, and which aspects of teacher assessment literacy needed further consolidation and why. Self-reported findings show that most respondents had pertinent assessment knowledge and positive conceptions about alternative writing assessments. Despite this, observation data indicate that some respondents had a partial understanding of assessment of learning (AoL) and assessment for learning (AfL), but not assessment as learning (AaL). In fact, when attempting AaL, the respondents could merely mimic its 'procedures' rather than internalise its 'essence'. Implications are discussed concerning how to develop teacher assessment literacy in L2 writing classrooms.
[Copyright of System is the property of Elsevier Ltd.]

In Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) programmes, students are expected to master content knowledge and language simultaneously. The worldwide popularity of this kind of programme has called for professional development, particularly for content subject teachers who have to shoulder some responsibilities of language teaching in CLIL. There have been several frameworks or proposals for professional development of CLIL teachers. Yet, empirical studies investigating the effectiveness of CLIL professional development programmes remain scarce. This gap is particularly important, since the relationship between professional development and teacher change is complicated and there are various factors affecting whether and how teacher would change. This study implemented a 6-month professional development programme for a group of content subject teachers in CLIL in Hong Kong. With data gathered with questionnaires, interviews, lesson observations and post-lesson reflections, this paper reports the trajectory of three case teachers who seemed to experience different degrees of changes in beliefs and language awareness. These differences could be explained by the influence of such factors as school context, learning experience and subject discipline. This study yields important implications for teacher education in CLIL and teacher change.
[Copyright of International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism is the property of Routledge.]