This study investigated the direct and indirect roles of verbal and visuospatial memory in Chinese reading comprehension. One hundred twenty-eight Cantonese-speaking children participated in the study at the end of their 3rd year of kindergarten in Hong Kong. Both verbal and visuospatial memory were found to be significantly associated with Chinese reading comprehension. Path analysis showed that visuospatial memory was significantly associated with reading comprehension through word reading. Verbal memory was associated with reading comprehension indirectly through listening comprehension. Additionally, the direct path from visuospatial memory to reading comprehension was significant when word reading and listening comprehension were considered simultaneously. The findings of the direct and unique role of visuospatial memory in reading comprehension in Chinese elaborated and extended our understanding of the simple view of reading in young children in a non-alphabetic language. Copyright © 2020 Springer Nature B.V.

This study examines the quality of Hong Kong centre-based childcare services with the aim of identifying areas for further improvement. With the use of the Chinese version of the Infant/Toddler Environment Rating Scale-Revised (ITERS-R), the quality of the classrooms in nine non-profit centres located in different districts of Hong Kong was systematically assessed. The findings revealed the global quality of the childcare centres in Hong Kong and indicated the relative strengths and weaknesses of the specific areas of childcare services compared with findings from the international community. The results showed that the quality of centre-based care servicesfor infants and toddlers in Hong Kong was minimal. Compared to other countries, the health and safety practice in Hong Kong scored higher. However, the scores were especially low in space and furnishings, listening and talking, activities and programme structure. These results revealed that Hong Kong faced challenges with the quality of its centre-based care servicesin general. It was also surprising to find a negative correlation between the quality of the childcare centres and the teachers’ experience. The findings also indicated the importance of early childhood education training and continuous professional development. Copyright © 2019 The Author(s). All Rights Reserved.

Limited research has examined STEM education in early childhood, or addressed how STEM is integrated into the curriculum in the kindergarten level. Teachers‟ conceptions of STEM appear to differ from the pedagogical theory. They may be aware of the basic subject concepts, but they lack the effective teaching approaches required to integrate the subject concepts into playful learning processes. Thus, it is important to investigate how teachers can design STEM activities that involve digital toys, in addition to the subject concepts, pedagogical approaches, and factors that affect teachers‟ pedagogical designs. The aims of this study were to 1) investigate the different types of STEM activities in a kindergarten in Hong Kong; 2) understand the perspectives of school management teams and teachers on implementing STEM activities, and 3) provide recommendations for STEM activities appropriate to kindergartens. Copyright © 2019 The Author(s). All Rights Reserved.

Educators and policy makers have increasingly recognized the importance of computational thinking (CT). Despite the growing body of CT literature, how to cultivate CT is still underexplored and undertheorized in early childhood education. Informed by Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development, this exploratory study was conducted with a focus on three CT skills: pattern recognition, sequencing, and algorithm design. The framework for the study was developed in two stages. First, we designed two sets of unplugged activities (relying on tangible materials), aiming to (1) provide students with more concrete experiences of CT and (2) equip them with the necessary vocabularies/instructions for the subsequent plugged activity (with a digital device). The theoretical foundation for such an unplugged and plugged design comprised Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development and Asher’s Total Physical Response. In the second stage, we offered our CT course in a kindergarten in Hong Kong, involving six teacher participants and a total of 11 students from K1 to K3 (aged 3 to 6). After 10 h of CT training, almost all students demonstrated their mastery of pattern recognition and sequencing. However, the K1 students could only partially complete the tasks of algorithm design while the others generally reached the target level of achievement. Strengthening preschoolers’ training on CT language and differentiated instruction are some possible strategies to improve the CT instructions. Copyright © 2019 De La Salle University.

This study adopted a pre- and post-intervention design to develop and investigate the efficacy of the social inclusion intervention for pre-schoolers with social communication deficit (SCD). It is based on the operant conditioning theory to promote peer acceptance and positive attitude towards children with SCD for their friendship formation in inclusive preschool settings. The participants were 128 pre-schoolers aged from 3 years 9 months to 6 years 11 months old (Mean age = 4 years 9 months) in Hong Kong. There were 54 children with SCD and 74 without SCD with 71 boys and 57 girls. A quasi-experimental research design was conducted, and quantitative data analysis methods were applied. The data were analyzed using a mixed measures ANOVA, followed by two-way ANOVA and independent samples t test or pair samples t test for further analysis. By comparing the sociometric, observation, and questionnaire data before and after the social inclusion intervention, the changes in the sociometric status, interaction frequency, and questionnaire scores of the participants were analyzed. The results indicated a significant increase in popularity and decrease in peer rejection for social acceptance level (SAL) and gain in mutual friendships (MF), F (1, 124) = 4.74, p < .05, ηp² = .04, for all children (both SCD and non-SCD) in the experimental class. No significant differences were found in the Mutual Social Interaction (MSI) and Social Inclusion Status (SIST) scores for all children in the experimental and control class, ps > .05. The performance across the diagnostic types (SCD versus non-SCD ) were further compared. The results in the SCD group revealed a statistically significant gain in the production of SAL and MF, F (1, 124) = 5.08, p < .05, ηp² = .04, and no statistically significant differences in MSI and SIST, ps > .05. The key findings suggested that the novel intervention in the current study is effective to enhance children’s social acceptance level and friendship formation

Inclusive education has been promoted in primary and secondary schools in Hong Kong since the 1990s, and it has now spread to pre-primary education. Without qualified teachers and sufficient resources, however, it is difficult to implement inclusion in early childhood settings. This case study investigated how inclusive education was practised in an ordinary kindergarten in Hong Kong with a focus on its benefits and challenges. Two children with special educational needs, their teachers and parents, the learning support team members, and the school principal were involved in the study, which included the triangulation of observations, interviews, and documentation analysis. The results indicated that (1) the chosen kindergarten demonstrated a variety of inclusive practices and (2) although there were some problems and difficulties, all of the participants interviewed showed positive attitudes towards the inclusive programme. The implications and challenges of implementing inclusion in Hong Kong early childhood settings are discussed.
[Copyright of Early Child Development and Care is the property of Routledge.]

Using a holistic support framework, this study investigated teachers' conceptions of effective play-based learning development and how their perceptions of its effectiveness related to whole-child development. Data were collected from a mixed method study. A total of 286 questionnaires from 50 Hong Kong kindergartens were collected and then 29 principals, head teachers and teachers were interviewed after the completion of the survey. Results of quantitative analyses showed that school collaborative culture facilitated various aspects of children's development through the mediation of teachers' enactment of play pedagogy and home-school cooperation. Qualitative interview data also confirmed the survey results that the roles and functions of parents and teachers were significant in supporting the implementation of play-based learning in kindergarten settings. Findings of the study have shed light on the conceptualizations of effective play-based learning which are perceived by teachers as part of a school collaborative culture, teachers' enactment of play pedagogy and home-school cooperation. The practical and policy implications of the study may suggest adopting a holistic support model in the analysis and actively seeking to integrate parents, teachers and kindergartens in constructing an optimal play learning experience for young children.
[Copyright of Early Childhood Education Journal is the property of Springer Netherlands.]

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.The grantees of Hong Kong Research Grants Council, Dr James Ko, Professor Doris Cheng, and Dr Jyrki Reunamo, have collaborated to find relationships between young children's involvement, adaptation and agency in early childhood settings through systematic observations. More than 100,000 observations were documented in research and professional development programs conducted in Finland, Taiwan and Hong Kong. By using simple cross-tabulation, researchers and teachers can obtain information about the context-specific aspects of learning, emotions and social relations. For example, children’s strategies to confront bullying were connected to their observed activities (Reunamo, Ko, Cheng, Lee, Wang, & Salminen, 2016). Agency and openness orientations observed in children were found affecting their differential development trajectories including their school readiness (Ko, 2015) and some children may show a higher risk in certain aspects of growth (Ko, 2015; Reunamo et al., 2016). It is well-known that "play" related activities in Hong Kong are very different from Finnish one (Cheng & Stimpson, 2004, Cheng, 2012), though western teaching approaches are translated in the Hong Kong early childhood curriculum (Cheng, 2006). By systematic observations, Cheng and Chen (2017) also showed that children in play-based activities showed the strongest class involvement. Recently, three researchers have developed self-accessible training materials with video clips and demonstrated how

This study was to examine the impacts of staff-child ratio on the quality of care and education for toddler-age children through controlling the variables of demographic features and structural characteristics of the compared classrooms. Two toddler classrooms in Hong Kong adopting different staff-child ratios were selected for the comprehensive quality assessments by using the Infant/Toddler Environment Rating Scale - Revised (ITERS-R) approach. The findings indicated a negative association between the staff-child ratio and the global quality of centre-based care and education for toddlers. The quality related to the "Interaction" and "Personal Care Routines" was found to be significantly related to the ratio, while the quality associated with the "Space and Furnishings" and "Program Structure" was less affected. The results of the study demonstrate the applicability of the ITERS-R in a new cultural and linguistic environment, and provide information on how staff-child ratio affects various aspects of the quality of care and education for toddlers. Copyright © 2019 The Author(s). All Rights Reserved.