An increasingly important curricular aim of teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) is to develop learners' intercultural competence for communication with people from different cultures through English. English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers' perceptions and practices in relation to integrating culture with English learning have been investigated mainly in Europe and the USA, whereas in Asia, these issues seem to have been less explored. This article reports an interview study that collected views about culture and language teaching from 12 secondary school English teachers in Hong Kong, including native and non-native English teachers. The findings showed that the teachers were unanimously positive in their attitudes towards the motivating power of culture (including popular culture) in language teaching, but also revealed ambivalence or contradictory feelings about the means and the end of culture-integrated TEFL in terms of what cultural resources to draw on; the connectivity between cultural components and examinations; and the role of teachers. The findings suggest the need for EFL teachers to deploy culture as a discursive resource for meaning-making, and to consider culture pedagogy as interlingual and intercultural exploratory dialogues with the students. The need for a closer collaboration among EFL teachers from different sociocultural backgrounds is highlighted.
[Copyright of Language, Culture and Curriculum is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07908318.2012.716849]

This paper provides a co-director's and co-author's review of and commentary on research carried out with Maurice Galton over the past decade. Its principal focus is the burden that recent education policies and ascent of a deleterious culture of performativity have inflicted on teachers' professional and domestic lives. It reports on four studies conducted for the National Union of Teachers (NUT) and two books: Teachers under pressure and Re-inventing schools, reforming teaching. The latter offers alarming, if not surprising, insights into the process of national policy-making. It goes on to relate mutual experiences of recent work in Hong Kong and draws attention to Maurice Galton's contributions to education internationally. The keys to this paper, however, are the persistence, perspicacity and Maurice's personal concern for teachers and children, that have enabled the insights and injustices uncovered in these studies to be published.
[Copyright of Roeper Review is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0305764X.2011.607152]

To examine and identify the current inclusive practices in early childhood educational settings in Hong Kong, this qualitative study looks at the support and educational services available for young children with special needs in Hong Kong mainstream preschools as well as the characteristics of early childhood educational settings that support inclusion. Inclusive practices of each of the three preschools involved in the study are presented. Challenges to enhance the quality of inclusion in early childhood educational settings and future possibilities in the field in Hong Kong are also discussed.
[Copyright of Roeper Review is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13603110903317676]

An interview with David W. Chan, founding director of Program for the Gifted and Talented at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, is presented. Chan states that he started at the field of gifted education when he proposed for a summer gifted program at the school. He says that the topic perfectionism was his favorite topics of all his research because the trait is the fundamental characteristic of giftedness. He adds that young scholars must think on the importance of curiosity.
[Copyright of Roeper Review is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02783193.2011.580495]

Abstract Hong Kong schools are concerned about how students with behavioural problems could be supported. This article reports the findings of a study investigating teachers’ constructs of students’ resilience. Specifically it examines how it could be promoted through school guidance and factors affecting the development of students’ resilient capability. Twenty-four teachers from four secondary schools were interviewed. Their constructs of resiliency were explored from the perspective of social constructivism and the narrative approach was also employed. The study identifies the challenges school guidance faced in developing resiliency are identified. Also four means through which school guidance could be made more resilient are suggested, including helping students explore the natural tendencies of students’ inner-strength, developing a resilient approach to behaviour management, including the resiliency into whole-school guidance curriculum, and building connections between school, home and community. The findings also show that the construct of resiliency was culturally grounded upon Confucianism. The direction for future research is given
[Copyright of Roeper Review is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02643944.2011.626067]