The purpose of this study was to examine changes in children's depressive symptoms using CES-DC depression scale during the first year of primary school in Hong Kong, as well as examine similarities and differences in the results as a function of rater—mother versus child. Children from two primary schools were studied—one primarily serving higher SES families and one primarily serving lower SES families. Children showed high levels of depressive symptoms at the beginning of primary school in both schools. Six year old children (N = 99, 55% were male) in the two schools showed different patterns of change over time. Mothers did not appear to recognize the changes in their children's depressive symptoms, reporting high levels of depressive symptoms in their children at each time point, showing no changes in depressive symptoms over time. Mother and child ratings of depressive symptoms showed a low positive correlation (similar in size to correlations found in studies of older children in Western samples), and in general, mothers reported higher levels of depressive symptoms in their children than did their children. Based on the findings, implications for future studies and early intervention services for strengthening young children's coping strategies during the transition to primary schools are discussed. Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The study looked into how school partnership generates benefit. It aimed to identify the structures of partnership among collaborating schools and to examine elements that can contribute to sustainable eLearning development. Six cluster project cases were purposefully selected from an e-Learning pilot scheme in Hong Kong to investigate how school partnership functions in e-Learning implementation through semi-structured focus group interviews. The findings identified five types of partnership structures that were adopted by the six e-Learning cluster projects, namely, a traditional leader-centered team leadership; a fusion of traditional leader-centered and distributed team leadership; a distributed-coordinated team leadership; an intermediate form of distributed-coordinated and distributed-fragmented team leadership; and a duplicated distributed team leadership structure. Elements including mutual benefit, active school engagement with dynamic communication and interaction, reasonable team size, and co-building of online sharing platform for channeling ideas and actions efficiently are critical to keep e-Learning school partnership sustainable. Copyright © 2019 National Taiwan Normal University.

Guided by the “opportunity–propensity” (O‐P) framework, this study explores how immigrant status might affect students’ civic knowledge through an antecedent factor (socioeconomic status [SES]), opportunity factors (civic learning at school and civic participation at school), and propensity factors (perceived open classroom climate, perceived student–teacher relationship, and perceived importance of conventional citizenship). The data were taken from the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) 2016. The sample comprised 2,544 eighth graders from Hong Kong. Results of two‐level path analysis showed that, at the student level, mainland Chinese immigrant grant students had a higher level of civic knowledge. Although perceived open classroom climate and perceived importance of conventional citizenship were found to be two positive mediators and family SES (via civic learning at school) was a negative mediator, the mediation effects at the student level were quite small. In contrast, quite a large amount of variance was explained at the school level: School‐aggregated immigrant status was positively linked to school‐aggregated civic knowledge and negatively via school‐aggregated students’ family SES via school‐aggregated civic learning. Copyright © 2019 The Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences and John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd.

生命教育及其相關領域，近年在香港中小學界，日益受到重視；另一方面，因各種原因，這兩三年學童自殺的個案有所上升，亦引起大家關注。我們喜見有學校嘗試探討生命教育一個比較困難的範疇：生死教育的課題。本文透過兩位學者與四位佛教小學老師的合作，闡述這所佛教小學推行生死教育的概念、起動、課程設計、同工對校本生死教育課程的反思，並作出相關的分析與討論。Life education and its related fields have been paid more and more attention in Hong Kong's primary and secondary schools in recent years. On the other hand, the number of suicide cases in these years has also increased due to various reasons. We are pleased to see some schools trying to explore a more difficult area of life education: life and death education. Through the cooperation of two scholars and four Buddhist primary school teachers, this paper expounds the concepts, launching, curriculum design and co-workers' reflection of school life and death education curriculum in this Buddhist primary school, and makes relevant analysis and discussion. Copyright © 2018 香港教師中心.

以粵語為中文教學媒介語在香港由來已久，如何能指導學生兼顧口語與書面語的表達要求──能以粵語口語有效表達，同時又能避免現代漢語書面語受粵語方言干擾，對教授香港非華語學生中文的教師而言，是艱鉅的考驗。根據一次支援“多元文化教學助理先修課程”的教學實踐，本文發現善用粵語拼音，編製特色的粵語文本，不但方便中文二語學生溫習，而且減少因同時學習粵語口語與中文書面語而造成的困擾，能促進學習中文的效能。Cantonese has been the medium of instruction in Chinese language teaching in Hong Kong for decades. Given the discrepancies between the spoken Cantonese dialect and the written form of Modern Standard Chinese, how to develop students’ spoken and written language proficiencies in Chinese in tandem is a huge challenge for Hong Kong teachers, especially those who teach Chinese as a second language. Based on an attempt in teaching a Chinese enhancement course for a “Multicultural Teaching Assistant Programme”, this paper reports how the romanization of Cantonese was used to bridge the gap and concludes that the incorporation of Cantonese romanization in compiling teaching materials not only facilitates students’ self-study, but also minimizes the confusion caused by learning the spoken language and the written language at the same time, enhancing the effectiveness of Chinese language learning. Copyright © 2019 香港中文大學中國文化硏究所吳多泰中國語文硏究中心.

It is important for us to be on the same page from the outset of our discourse. Thus, I will make clear who and what are included in this chapter. The primary subsets of the population included in this discourse of education for all in Hong Kong are school-age children (up to the completion of secondary education) with disabilities and persons from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. Hong Kong’s journey is closely tied to its historical and political past as a British colony. As such, this chapter begins with an examination and analysis of Hong Kong’s policy development in education as a British colony and examines legislation and policies toward education equity for the above subgroups of the population before July 1997. This is followed by a critical review and analysis of the change after the handover of sovereignty to the Chinese government when the implementation of the inclusive education policy officially began. The persistent challenges caused by the elite-oriented education system and social demands in Hong Kong’s struggle toward education for all permeate the discourse. Finally, this chapter stresses the importance of understanding issues regarding difficulties in distinguishing and assessing certain disabilities (e.g. language-related disabilities) from difficulties due to cultural and linguistic diversity. This would aid the move toward education equity in Hong Kong, a vital and multicultural gateway to China, Asia, and beyond (Hong Kong Government, Brand Hong Kong. Retrieved from http://www.brandhk.gov.hk/en/#/en/about/development/launch.html, 2014a). Copyright © 2019 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

This chapter explores different factors that contribute to the school failure of ethnic minority young people in Hong Kong. It draws on a case study approach based on 15 in-depth interviews with 11 “out of school” ethnic minority young people, of whom 6 were dropouts, 4 were at risk of dropping out, and 1 never attended a school. It was also augmented with an additional 22 in-depth interviews with 20 other stakeholders related to ethnic minority education including 3 principals, 6 teachers and support staff, 3 school social workers and NGO professionals, 2 government officials, 3 ethnic minority community leaders, and 3 parents. Several themes were created using schema analysis that help explain different factors making them “out of school.” It has been common to attribute school failure for ethnic minority students in Hong Kong to problems with Chinese language education, yet this study shows that a number of other interrelated factors contributed to their lack of successful schooling. The key influences are multilevel – with individuals themselves, within families, within schools, and within the community. Implications are drawn at the levels of policy, practice, and theory to better support ethnic minority young people’s schooling success in Hong Kong. Copyright © 2019 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

A number of East Asian education systems (e.g. Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Shanghai, Singapore and Taiwan) have gained international prominence over the years, due to their rapid climbs to top positions in international tests such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) and Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). For example, Hong Kong was placed 17th in PIRLS reading literacy, and Singapore ranked 15th in 2001, but within 5 years, they garnered 2nd and 4th places in 2006, respectively. In the 2015 PISA results, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taipei, Japan and Beijing-Shanghai-Jiangsu-Guangzhou (B-S-J-G), China, were top achievers (OECD, Report on PISA 2015: results in focus. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2016).The sterling report cards of these East Asian systems, combined with the declining performance of western systems such as those of the United Kingdom and the United States, have led the West to a “look East” drive for inspiration. Whether it be scholarly publications or media articles, much literature has been generated on the “success” of education in East Asia, which has become “the new ‘poster boy’ in the global discourse of education policy borrowing” (You and Morris, Compare 46(6), 2016, p. 883).Increasingly, a good education system is considered one that not only produces high achievements but is also equitable in terms of the distribution of its success across the system and its student population. Perhaps a more nuanced understanding of these East Asian education systems could be facilitated if we could examine them considering both equity and quality issues, since the pursuit of each often affects the other. The chapters in this book illustrate that excellence and equity are not independent and separate but can be paradoxically intertwined. Copyright © 2019 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

This chapter examines women’s representation in the leadership positions at key world-class research universities in the Asia Pacific region. It engages with documentary research into the case studies of various Asian flagship universities, namely National Taiwan University, Peking University, Seoul National University, the University of Hong Kong, and the University of Tokyo. The documentary research is based on an in-depth review of the academic literature comprising empirical studies which investigate and explain the representation of women academics and their involvement in intellectual leadership at Asia Pacific higher education institutions. Special attention is paid to the significant factors that structure female engagement in leadership roles. The determinants that either facilitate or impede the women’s representation in academe and senior managerial positions are reviewed to make sense of the empirical findings of this study. The findings indicate that the University of Hong Kong (HKU) has the highest representation of women leaders (28.9%) who are mainly from non-STEM backgrounds and are also most prevalent at the departmental level. HKU has also, among the five case-study universities, higher representation of female institutional leaders (14.3%). Another East Asian world-class university which has made better progress in gender equality and university management is National Taiwan University (24.6%). For working toward inclusivity of intellectual leadership in the East Asian academic profession, there needs to be more culturally sensitive and gender-appropriate policies and practices in the human resource management in universities, which are sensitive to the personal and professional lives, including marriage and family obligations (Tang 2017). The inclusion of more women professors in leadership positions can serve as much-needed role models for mentoring young female academics. Through better gender-informed and humanistic implementation of human resources