We presented a design-based study within the context of a four-session Scratch programming activity among 23 fourth-grade students in Hong Kong. Inspired by the computational thinking (CT) strategies and the 5E instructional model, we investigated students’ mathematical learning of fractions in a Scratch (block-based programming) environment. Students developed CT concepts, practices, and perspectives by building a “fraction magic calculator” in groups. This study analyzed the lesson design, students’ drawings, interviews, and work expressing their mathematical understanding of fractions in Scratch applications. The learning tasks were designed to support the students’ fraction learning and utilized computational abstractions in the form of variables, functions, and iterations to formulate mathematical models in a programming context. Students’ artifacts and feedback showed they were interested in learning fractions in a programming learning context, contributing to exercising and improving their fraction concepts and CT. Ultimately, we emphasized the benefits of CT integrated into mathematics education, promoting students’ understanding of fraction concepts, a set of CT abilities (concepts, practices, perspectives), and learning motivation. Moreover, we suggested a set of non-cognitive skills (e.g., socializing, expressing) to enrich the CT perspectives in the framework and show the importance of developing coding communities to co-create digital artifacts among learners. Overall, we highlighted that mathematics teachers should apply and create learning tasks that promote computational thinking to forge mathematical ideas and thinking. Copyright © 2023 The Author(s).

This study investigated 14 Hong Kong primary school teachers’ conceptions of and concerns about the implementation of integrated STEM education in primary school. Data were collected through concept maps and interviews with the teachers. Results revealed that in addition to representing STEM as simplistic models (e.g., STEM as an acronym), the teachers mostly seemed to model STEM integration conceptually using integrated disciplines, science as context, or real-world problem solving as context. Not many teachers were found to represent STEM using engineering design progress as context. Results also indicated that the teachers expressed intense concerns regarding personal inadequacy of STEM knowledge or skills (personal), student outcomes of STEM education (consequence), and limited instructional time (management). This study suggested providing sustained teacher professional development, creating supportive school environments, and building a collaborative STEM community as strategies to facilitate changes in teachers’ concerns and to advance STEM implementation in primary schools. Copyright © 2022 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden.

Fifty-five Chinese kindergarten teachers from Shenzhen (n = 38) and Hong Kong (n = 17) were surveyed to discern their beliefs and reported practices about multiple literacies related to e-learning and knowledge management. Results indicated that: (1) Shenzhen teachers had a better knowledge about multiple literacies and facilitated the development of multiple literacies in their students more than their counterparts from Hong Kong; (2) Teachers' educational attainment and their beliefs did not predict the multiple literacies practice; and (3) after controlling for these variables, child-PC ratio significantly contributed to the variation in multiple literacies practice. Educational implications and challenges associated with teacher education are discussed. Copyright © 2009 Laboratory for Knowledge Management & E-Learning, The University of Hong Kong.

This study investigated how English learners complete multimodal formative quizzes. Participants included 17,950 students enrolled in a mandatory English for Academic Purposes course at a university in Hong Kong. We retrieved data from Blackboard, a learning management system, and conducted a two-step cluster analysis to examine student self-regulated learning (SRL) profiles with the quizzes. We first identified five clusters of learners with distinctively different self-regulated learning patterns. Then, we performed a multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) to further explore their differences in SRL, in terms of start day, days started before deadline, differences in scores between first and last attempt, and scores in language learning activities. Our findings echoed those of previous studies on the relationship between self-regulated learning and academic success. This research enables us to better understand the needs of EAP students in Hong Kong. Copyright © 2023 International Forum of Educational Technology & Society.

Individuals with higher financial capability not only have more savings, fewer debts and better lives after retirement but also exhibit higher life satisfaction, fewer depressive symptoms and more prosocial behaviours towards others. Unsurprisingly, financial capability has been regarded as one of the most important ‘life skills’ by parents, educators, spouses, employers and the community. Therefore, integrating financial capability into formal school curricula and students’ learning journeys is important. Existing practices have emphasised the relevance of saving and spending to financial education but distinguishing between investment and speculation and sharing and donating has been gaining attention from educators. Most existing programmes, international or local, have been limited because they have focused relatively less on (a) the behavioural aspect of financial capability (e.g., how to save and how to control impulse buying), (b) the pedagogical approach to engage younger children and support their learning and (c) whether they were able to improve the financial knowledge, attitudes, behaviours and self-control and gratitude of the recipients. To date, no financial education programmes have been designed for and evaluated with primary school students in Asia, much less Hong Kong. The goal of this dissertation was to develop a programme that was comprehensive in content, suitable for younger children and effective in improving children’s financial capability in terms of their knowledge, attitudes, skills and behaviours. The programme was called ‘The 4S Programme’ because it targeted effective saving, wise spending, distinguishing between speculation and investment and sharing. The programme consisted of 10 sessions of 60 minutes, equipped with a wide range of interactive pedagogical activities, including discussion, games, role-play, case studies and experiential learning activities. The programme was also equipped with simple, take-home worksheets that involved

隨著二零一五年《施政報告》發佈，香港教育業界開始關注STEM（科學、科技、工程及數學）教育﹔然而，業界的討論主要聚焦於中小學教育，尚未觸及幼稚園處境。事實上，數學與自然科學是本地幼兒教育不可或缺的學習範疇，個別辦學團體及幼稚園已試行STEM教育活動，以培育幼兒的探索與科學精神。為了探討STEM在香港學前教育的出路，本文將運用質性研究方式，以五位幼兒教育工作者的個案訪談為基礎，透視在本地幼稚園推行STEM教育活動時的挑戰，並探討當中給予業界的啟示。 Copyright © 2018 香港教師中心.

This paper aims to investigate the effectiveness of Halliday’s Sydney School genre-based approach in teaching Chinese written composition to South Asian ethnic minority students in Hong Kong. Chinese language, with its heightened status in Hong Kong, holds a key for South Asians with low socio-economic status to obtain upward mobility (Shum, Gao, Tsung, and Ki, 2011). However, South Asian ethnic minority students, as a disadvantaged group of second language learners, lack sufficient parental and institutional support in Chinese language learning. The genre-based pedagogy derived from Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) was applied in this study to improve Chinese language performance of South Asian ethnic minority students for a better chance to participate in mainstream society. The SFL approach is primarily concerned with language choice in social situations and has been widely applied in sociolinguistics (Hyland, 2007, 2012). Its latest model in language teaching methodology, the ’Reading to Learn, Learning to Write’ (R2L) pedagogy, is a genre-based teaching strategy which is designed to guide students to experience different levels of language through extensive classroom reading and writing activities with selected texts. The current study is intended to extend the approach to teaching and learning Chinese as a second language. The employment of genre-based pedagogy aims to support South Asian students with their learning of Chinese written composition in the senior secondary curriculum. The Chinese teachers involved were first provided with appropriate training in the genre-based approach to language teaching focusing on the genres of Narration and Explanation. Research data were collected while the teachers began to use the genre-based teaching approach, by means of pre-and post-tests after and before genre instruction. Text analysis based on SFL was then employed to analyze the students’ written composition in both pre-and post-tests in order to understand

Drawing on Lemke's (1990) “thematic patterns” theory, this research proposes a “Concept + Language Mapping” (CLM) approach and tried it out in an English Medium Instruction (EMI) biology classroom in Hong Kong. Lessons were observed and samples of student work were collected during the intervention with student/teacher interviews conducted afterwards. A quasi-experimental design was also adopted to estimate the impact of the CLM approach. The analysis indicated that CLM facilitated the development of both content and language knowledge.

Although visual arts teachers have free access to high quality online artwork images offering them immense teaching resources, making meaningful use of them remains a pedagogical challenge. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the transition from face-to-face to online teaching caused an immediate need for teachers to enhance their digital competencies and technological capability for planning and delivering a blended art curriculum. Herein, I propose a ‘teacher-curator pedagogy’ via a study in six primary and secondary schools in Hong Kong to assess its effectiveness. The study took place in the academic year of 2021-22 with 331 student participants. The proposed pedagogy puts visual arts teachers in the role of ‘digital curators’ who create virtual exhibitions for teaching art appreciation and artmaking. This paper addresses the theoretical framework, implementation strategies, and the results of the study highlighting its effectiveness, impact and limitations on teaching when using teacher-curated virtual exhibitions in both physical and virtual learning contexts. It was found that the technological capacity and confidence of the teacher participants was enhanced through the use of online resources and virtual exhibition tools. Making use of the 3D presentation of exhibits in themes and context through digital content curation, the teachers engaged students with deep interaction through the blending of online and face-to-face teaching. However, the proposed pedagogy was limited by the high demand of training and preparation work, hardware and software support, and difficulties in assessing and monitoring learning beyond class. Copyright © 2023 The Authors.

Adopting the theory of planned behaviour (TPB), this sequential mixed-methods research investigates Hong Kong kindergarten teachers’ reported beliefs and practices regarding early visual arts education (EVAE). The qualitative part (Phase 1) is an interview study of 19 kindergarten teachers in two focus groups, aiming to develop a conceptual structure of teachers’ behavioural, normative and control beliefs. The quantitative part (Phase 2) is a survey study of 243 teachers from the randomly sampled 21 kindergartens regarding their EVAE beliefs and practices. Most teachers believe in child-centred teaching while practising teacher-directed instruction and support creativity while delivering closed-ended instruction. Four influential factors are identified to account for this gap: (1) practising child-centred pedagogies as a result of behavioural beliefs; (2) undervaluing visual arts as a result of normative beliefs; (3) instructing children directly as a result of normative beliefs; and (4) delivering subject knowledge in studio teaching as a result of control beliefs. These findings imply that Hong Kong kindergarten teachers struggle between two approaches and suffer from a lack of support from educational authorities and society. There is an urgent need to develop appropriate practices for visual arts education in Hong Kong kindergartens. Copyright © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.