Guided by a sociocultural perspective, this study aims to explore the views of kindergarten teachers on ChatGPT, its potential benefits and challenges in education, and the support and training required for effective implementation. The study involved 10 teachers from several kindergartens in Hong Kong. Face-to-face interviews were conducted. The findings revealed that teachers had mixed opinions about ChatGPT, with some considering it a powerful tool while others seeing it as mediocre. Potential benefits of using ChatGPT in education were identified in the areas of lesson planning, pedagogical and content knowledge, and twenty-first-century skills. However, teachers also highlighted concerns regarding hardware issues, lack of resources, and accuracy. To facilitate the effective use of ChatGPT in teaching practices, teachers identified the need for policy and school support, as well as teacher training. It is crucial for policymakers and school administrators to recognize the potential of ChatGPT in enhancing teaching and learning and to provide resources and develop supportive policies accordingly. Moreover, providing teachers with adequate training on how to utilize ChatGPT effectively can boost their confidence and competence in incorporating this technology into their classrooms. Copyright ©2023 Routledge.

Despite the increasing use of English as a medium of instruction (EMI), teachers who teach at EMI schools encounter significant challenges, such as difficulties in teaching content-subjects in English and students' limited understanding of content presented in English. To examine the extent of these challenges, six early-full and 14 late-partial EMI science teachers from eight schools in Hong Kong were invited to participate in semi-structured interviews on the challenges they faced as teachers of EMI science subjects. A biographic approach was used to analyse the interviews, and the results showed that despite the metacognitive overlap between the two groups of teachers, there were noticeable differences in their pedagogical strategies. These findings suggest that the implementation of EMI instruction influences teachers' metacognition and pedagogical practices. Teachers' frequent use of Cantonese (L1) further suggest that English language skills are not as prioritised compared to the subject content. Further research is needed to investigate the complex and diverse factors that influence teachers' metacognition under EMI contexts. Copyright ©2023 Routledge.

This paper reports on an exploration into difficulties in junior secondary science lessons taught through English in the largely Cantonese-speaking context of Hong Kong. The study was carried out by an educational linguist and a science education specialist working in collaboration, and identified difficulties through student questionnaires, interviews with teachers, and classroom observation. Understandings of genre based in systemic functional linguistics were used in conjunction with knowledge of the science curriculum to investigate these difficulties. Extracts from lessons and teaching materials on energy conversion are discussed, with additional reference to interviews and questionnaires. Analysis revealed the influence of teaching materials on coherence between curricular objectives and teacher discourse. In particular, complex description detracted from explanations, affecting student understanding of the lesson. Copyright ©2024 Elsevier.

Against the backdrop of internationalisation and growing attention to intercultural experiences in tertiary education, this mixed-methods study examined, in part I, language learning benefits reaped by active participants in intercultural activities. As English is widely used for communication among multilinguals, part II of the study focused specifically on English. We set out to investigate the relationship between individuals' language background (actual and self-perceived English proficiency) and intercultural participation, as well as their views of the formal English language education they received prior to entering universities. The participants (n = 518) recruited from two universities in Hong Kong responded to a questionnaire and 11 of them also attended individual semi-structured interviews. Overall, five categories of benefits emerged from the interview findings, namely psychological benefits, proficiency enhancement, identification of problems, communicative strategies for accommodation, and communicative strategies for expression. A weak positive correlation was found between self-rated English speaking proficiency and participation. The interviewees also commented on the formal English education they received from curricular and environmental perspectives. Copyright ©2023 Routledge.

E-learning has been proposed as a sustainable delivery method for higher education. During the COVID-19 pandemic, online/e-service-learning was widely adopted around the world as a replacement for face-to-face service learning, providing an opportunity to explore whether e-learning as a sustainable delivery method could be applied to service learning. The present study adopted a qualitative approach to investigate the e-service-learning experiences of Mainland Chinese students studying at a Hong Kong university with regard to their general perceptions about the e-service-learning projects, perceived learning gains, and factors associated with their learning gains. A total of 28 undergraduates who participated in e-service-learning in the 2020/21 academic year were recruited from different faculties of the university. Seven focus groups were established with the participants. The results showed that Mainland Chinese students generally had positive perceptions about their experiences in e-service-learning during the pandemic. They appreciated the convenient and effective online learning and service, although they needed contact that is more direct with service recipients to deepen their reflection. Students perceived that they had improved their problem-solving skills and subject knowledge; they also gained meaningful personal growth and positive emotions through e-service-learning. Facilitators of and barriers to students' effective learning were also identified. The findings provide important evidence for the effectiveness of e-service-learning from the perspective of Mainland Chinese students at Hong Kong universities and the potential of e-service-learning as a sustainable delivery method for service-learning programs in the post-pandemic era. Copyright ©2023 Mdpi.

The use of English in international communication has focused scholarly attention on L2 learners' development of interactional competence (IC), that is, the ability to co-construct interactions purposefully and meaningfully in specific contexts. Under Hong Kong's bilingual education policy, students mainly learn and speak English in two classroom contexts: (1) English language and (2) English-medium-instruction (EMI) content-area subject lessons, which may contribute to their IC development. This study compared the English-speaking/learning experiences of students in these two classroom settings in three Hong Kong secondary schools. Task-based language teaching (TBLT) was the recommended teaching approach in the English language subject in all these schools, but they adopted different medium-of-instruction arrangements in content-area subjects. Their students also had different academic attainments. The investigation adopted a case study approach consisting of a questionnaire and semi-structured focus group interviews (N = 160). Our findings suggest that students generally lacked opportunities to speak English, regardless of the specific school-based policies. The higher-proficiency students were given more opportunities to speak English in group/pair activities both in English language and EMI content-area subjects. In contrast, the lower-proficiency students received more explicit teaching of the linguistic forms/structures required in English examinations. The paper concludes by highlighting several critical issues concerning students' IC development in bilingual education, namely, the effects of English-medium education on students' speaking ability, implementation of TBLT, the influence of examinations on teaching practices, and teachers' role in promoting students' interactional competence through classroom interactions. Copyright ©2023 Wiley.

Adopting a language other than the first as the medium of instruction in teaching mathematics can create significant problems for students' mathematical learning. However, there is little research on the ways in which bi/multilingual mathematics teachers can make use of diverse multilingual and multimodal resources to keep students engaged in learning abstract mathematical knowledge. This article aims to explore how an English-medium-instruction (EMI) mathematics teacher creates different hypothetical scenarios through embodied enactments to enhance students' mathematical understanding and motivate students' interest in learning mathematics. The data of this study is obtained from a focused classroom observation in a Hong Kong EMI secondary mathematics classroom. Multimodal conversation analysis is employed to analyse the classroom interaction data, and the analysis is triangulated with video-stimulated-recall interviews which are analysed with interpretative phenomenological analysis. This article aims to extend the notion of embodied enactment as a form of translanguaging to facilitate mathematical learning and develop students' motivation in learning mathematics in the EMI setting. Particularly, this article argues that embodied enactment creates a translanguaging space for the EMI teacher to achieve mathematical teaching. Copyright ©2023 Sage Publications Ltd.

The paper introduces an approach that facilitates whole-class curriculum co-creation and presents a case study conducted in a higher education institution in Hong Kong where it was implemented. The approach enables students to actively contribute to constructing a curriculum in partnership with teachers and practitioners, using scenario development techniques within the technology-enhanced learning environments. In this sense, the study is compatible with and contributes to contemporary higher education requirements for future-ready students, able to work in fast-changing, digitalized and globalized working environments. The case study describes the implementation of the approach in undergraduate and postgraduate knowledge management courses. The mix-method design was employed, including content analysis of scenarios, a questionnaire asking for students' feedback, and teacher's observations. The findings revealed that the approach enabled students and the teacher to work more collaboratively and co-create some aspects of the knowledge management courses (e.g., identifying and compiling relevant subject trends), even if some challenges were experienced. The paper points to the need for students' ownership when it comes to developing curricula that better consider students' experiences and meaning-making processes. The paper contributes to contemporary higher education discourse by providing conceptual and practical guidance on how to enact whole-class curriculum co-creation for teachers interested in such practice. Copyright ©2023 Springer.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, kindergartens in Hong Kong have sought ways in which to support children's learning at home while schools were closed. We report on a proof-of-concept study: short videos intended to support playful learning at home were distributed to parents/caregivers of preschool children via a smartphone app; toys and a storybook were provided to their children. No significant changes were observed in the importance attached to literacy and numeracy by parents/caregivers over time, perhaps because parents/caregivers place high value on children's academic progress in Hong Kong. However, significant increases in mean scores were observed for the intervention group but not the control group with regard to reported frequency of playing counting games and discussing/participating in weighing or measuring activities. Readily accessible opportunities to recognize learning in playful activities may have contributed to changed practices at homes. Copyright © 2023 Wiley.

With the rise of multilingualism and the use of a local variety of English in Hong Kong, the current article proposes a framework for EMI teacher training for university teachers ("WEMTT-Framework") to expose them not only to a theory of World Englishes but also a practicum of teaching in multilingual settings. Even though Hong Kong has been regarded as a trilingual (Cantonese-English-Mandarin) city where English is taught as a second language, the EMI teaching in Hong Kong is still highly exonormative-oriented. With an increasing number of studies revealing the possibility of EMI teaching with the help of multilingual and World Englishes elements, the current paper also explores how World Englishes and multilingualism help in the present EMI teaching environment. The framework and the discussion are not only applicable to Hong Kong but also places with similar multilingual settings, thus expanding to many Asian cities with colonial backgrounds. The paper ends with a call for action from educators and researchers to work on the implementation of teacher training and carry out further studies in different settings. Copyright © 2023 Language Institute, Thammasat University.