Using a qualitative descriptive design, researchers describe andidentify similarities and differences in the professional preparation of infant-toddler care and education (ITCE) teachers at university based teacher education programmes in Hong Kong China, Aotearoa New Zealand, and the USA. Researchers overview the ITCE landscape, describe statutory regulations, and consider major documents and prevalent ideas influencing ITCE teacher education in their respective countries. Key findings are presented from each researcher’s analysis of the teacher education programmes at their own institutions and then summarised in descriptive narratives around four major themes: (1) country-specific values, (2) pedagogical elements, (3) curriculum focus, and (4) teaching practicum expectations. On the basis of a dialogic deliberative process, the three researchers then discuss the findings together by deliberating upon how culture in the forms of norms, values, prevailing beliefs, and expectations, appeared to–intentionally or unintentionally–shape the three different approaches to preparing students to become fully-qualified teachers of infants and toddlers. Copyright © 2023 TACTYC.

The integration of generative artificial intelligence (AI) in English language teaching presents opportunities and challenges for instructors. This study explores the attitudes of higher education English language instructors towards generative AI tools, their intentions to use them and the institutional support and professional development necessary to teach and learn with them. As the field continues to evolve rapidly, it is essential to comprehend the readiness of front-line language instructors. This qualitative interpretive study seeks to identify the digital competencies and pedagogical knowledge required to implement generative AI in education and provide guidance for the design of professional development programmes that address the challenges and concerns associated with adopting AI. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with twelve instructors at a higher education institution in Hong Kong, the findings reveal the significance of familiarity and confidence with using AI-driven teaching tools, the challenges and concerns language instructors face and the need for tailored support and professional development. The study offers ten practical implications to cultivate language instructors’ digital competencies, pedagogical knowledge and positive attitudes towards integrating AI to enhance their students’ learning experiences. Copyright © 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

School counselling is a well-established means of supporting the mental health of children. Counsellors are most effective when they collaborate with parents, so it is important that parents have a good understanding of and access to school counselling services. Despite this, little is known about parents’ perceptions of counselling in Hong Kong schools. We interviewed 27 parents in Hong Kong to investigate how they perceived the counselling services provided by their children’s local and international schools, and analysed the data thematically. International school parents recognised the potential of school counselling as a means of support for their children and wanted to work more closely with counsellors to a greater extent than local school parents. Parents were confused about the roles of counsellors and experienced stigma and concerns about confidentiality which inhibited them from engaging with counselling services. Our findings suggest that school principals should work with counsellors to establish and communicate roles more clearly. Greater recognition of counsellors’ professionalism, and clearer role differentiation between counsellors and other mental health and educational professionals may improve parental engagement with and support for school counselling. Copyright © 2023 NAPCE.

This chapter aims to briefly review the recent developments in early childhood education in Chinese societies such as the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan. Varying greatly in political and economic contexts, these societies share some common patterns and face similar challenges in their development. First, this chapter analyzes the shifting landscape in Chinese economies and societies with a focus on the changes in education systems and policies and the associated impact. Second, it evaluates all the efforts that these societies have made to promote the accessibility, affordability, and accountability of early childhood education in the past decades. Third, it critically reflects on the early childhood curriculum reforms and pedagogical changes in these societies. Last, this chapter summarizes the challenges in defining culturally appropriate early childhood education in a globalized world as well as the lessons that we could learn from these Chinese societies.

In recent years, the practice of using a second/foreign language to teach non-language content subjects (e.g. science) has become increasingly popular, especially in English-as-foreign-language (EFL) contexts. Such a practice can be categorised as 'Content and Language Integrated Learning' (CLIL). However, EFL learners may encounter difficulties in accessing content knowledge through English, especially with regard to the subject-specific academic literacy. Hence, content subject teachers may need to provide more scaffolding to help EFL learners in CLIL bridge the gap between everyday language and academic literacy. A genre-based approach, which emphasises contextualised language learning and use, serves as a useful framework to integrate content and language teaching in CLIL. This chapter shares an example of how university language specialists collaborated with science teachers in one secondary school in Hong Kong, where CLIL is practised. Drawing insights from the genre-based approach, the university-school collaborative team designed and tried out a set of materials to help grade 8 students write a piece of sequential explanation text. Lesson observations revealed how teachers integrated language scaffolding into their science lessons, and students' sample work and teachers' reflection showed that the materials were useful for helping the students develop science literacy. These findings yield significant implications for literacy development in science education and language across the curriculum in CLIL.

In this paper the notion of critical practice in English language education (ELE) is explored through examples from the critical work of educators and researchers in Hong Kong. The paper then concludes with a discussion of both the challenges and possibilities of engaging in critical practice in ELE in Hong Kong and possibly in other East Asian contexts, where similar cultures of teaching and learning predominate.

In this chapter, the journey of a school administrator in initiating a curriculum reform to cater to the diverse special learning needs of students in a working class school in Hong Kong is presented. Poon, a senior teacher for 9 years before being appointed the administrator in charge of academic changes in 2006, provides an insider’s account. Lin, a university professor and Poon’s mentor, provides additional theoretical analyses to conceptualize the importance of the school changes presented for other contexts. Before 2006, HKRSS was a traditional secondary school in Hong Kong where teachers taught a standardized curriculum in isolation from each other, with little understanding of students’ individual learning needs. Today, teachers engage in a process of collaboration and a collective discovery of the importance of differentiated instruction and assessment for all students. Constant sharing and collaboration among teachers regarding curriculum adaptations, pedagogical innovations as well as task and assessment differentiation have formed the new school culture. This new philosophy is the result of a comprehensive restructuring of curriculum, learning materials, instructional practices and assessment methods. This chapter provides an account of this difficult journey, the ups and downs experienced, and the lessons learned in the process.

Changing times and postmodern perspectives have changed the traditional beliefs about child development knowledge, early childhood learning and curriculum and their relationships. Despite ongoing exchanges about how best to respond to the critique of the developmental knowledge base, few descriptions of how particular educators have reconceptualized their curriculum exist. Employing postmodern views of knowledge, learning, and curriculum, this chapter describes a new narrative curriculum developed by the authors to enact a postmodern early years learning in a typical Chinese context: Story Approach to Integrated Learning (SAIL). It first reflects on the existing early childhood curricula in Hong Kong and the associated problems and challenges. Second, it reviews the literature about the reconceptualization of early years learning and curriculum to seek possible solutions to Hong Kong problems. Third, a brief introduction of SAIL is presented and an example is given to illustrate how SAIL can put postmodernism curriculum into practice. Last, this chapter concludes with a discussion of some of the challenges and future directions relating to the shift from developmental to postmodern practices in the development of early childhood curriculum.