With the increasing demand for communicatively competent citizens with global perspectives, culture learning has become an important component in the English language curricula in Hong Kong and mainland China in recent years. This paper will examine how culture is represented in two series of textbooks for junior secondary students in Hong Kong and Shanghai, both published by the same popular publisher. The study adopted Moran’s framework (persons, products, practices, perspectives and communities) and Kachru’s three concentric circles (inner circle, outer circle and expanding circle) to investigate how the authors managed the breadth and depth of cultural presentation. Unlike many previous studies which merely relied on manual analysis, this study combined both manual analysis and corpus linguistic tools to conduct a more comprehensive and objective study. The results show that the Hong Kong series outperformed the Shanghai series in terms of the breadth of the local and foreign cultures represented, as well as in terms of Moran’s cultural dimensions. Nevertheless, both series showed an imbalance in terms of Moran’s cultural aspects, with products (e.g., food, sightseeing places) being the most frequently depicted cultural element, and perspectives the least. This reveals a ‘tourist’s perspective’ and a lack of depth in cultural materials, which may not favour learners’ intercultural communicative competence development. Copyright © 2021 IAFOR.

隨著漢語學習在全球範圍內逐漸升溫，國際漢語教師的培養成為了焦點。迫於全球疫情的蔓延，教師教育開始普遍採用線上教學的模式，然而關於國際漢語教師的線上教學研究十分缺乏。本研究以國際漢語教學專業研究生為物件，實施了關於任務型教學法的線上教學。研究收集了學生在Moodle 論壇上的反思和討論，運用文本挖掘（text-mining）技術提取出有意義的、具有代表性的資訊，展示了學生對任務型教學法的認知發展過程。基於研究結果，本文建議針對國際漢語教師的線上教學需要充分發揮資訊技術的能供性，為啟動教師先備知識、促進教師反思、合作討論以及知識建構創造條件。Since the widespread of learning Chinese in the global context, increasing attention has been paid to teacher education of Chinese as an international language (CIL). Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, online teaching mode has been widely employed in teacher education. However, a dearth of research has investigated the training of CIL teachers via online teaching mode. The study conducted online teacher training about task-based language teaching (TBLT) to master’s students of teaching CIL. The study applied the text mining technique to analyze the reflections and collaborative discussion that were generated by the students on the Moodle and extracted the meaningful and representative themes from the students’ written texts to demonstrate development in their understanding of TBLT. Based on the results, the study suggests that online teacher education should use technology to provide teachers with opportunities for reflecton, collaborative discussion and knowledge construction. Copyright © 2021 香港教育大學中國語言學系、哥倫比亞大學中文部、中華書局（香港）有限公司.

This paper reports significant findings from an exploratory investigation of factors influencing kindergarten teachers’ perceptions of holistic early childhood education (HECE) following the release of a recent policy document relating to Early Childhood Education by the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. A comprehensive four-page survey questionnaire was completed by 165 teachers, in 22 Kindergartens across three Districts in Hong Kong. The questionnaire sought responses on demographics (including spiritual well-being); six aspects of ECE detailed in the HKSAR document; teachers’ expectations of HECE; and their perceptions of parental involvement in their young children’s development. This study revealed that kindergarten teachers’ spiritual well-being was a key demographic factor contributing to their expectations of holistic early childhood education. Copyright © 2022 Informa UK Limited.

Blended learning pedagogical practices supported by learning management systems have become an important part of higher education curricula. In most cases, these blended curricula are evaluated through multimodal formative assessments. Although assessments can strongly affect student outcomes, research on the topic is limited. In this paper, we adopted a learning analytics approach to explore student engagement with formative assessments and the power of these assessments to predict student outcomes in an English for Academic Purposes courses in a Hong Kong university. The study retrieved the data logs from 7,815 students and used the data to analyze student engagement with the formative assessments. The results suggested that the students put effort into completing the assessments. The degree to which assessments predict learning outcomes depend on students’ level of subject knowledge and their understanding of the relevance of the assessments. This study showed that learning analytics provided reliable evidence for understanding students’ engagement and identifying at-risk students. Therefore, learning analytics research has the potential to inform pedagogical practice. Copyright © 2022 The Author(s).

Esports have grown to become a core part of popular culture in many countries, including Hong Kong. Albeit the low participation rates in Esports in Hong Kong, it was starting to gain traction, yet the local Esports advocates were experiencing challenges in promoting and popularizing the Esport. Hence, the current study was aimed to identify and reveal the determinants of participating in Esports, as well as strengthen the work on Esports behaviors using the theory of planned behavior (TPB), a reliable and valid prominent theory in predicting human behavior across a plethora of contexts, ranging from health-related behaviors to sport consumption behaviors. In the current study, the convenience sampling method was used to recruit over 2000 students (secondary school, N = 1567 (female = 615); university students, N = 1525 (female = 255). The students were invited to participate in the survey for collecting their perception on Esports participation using TPB-based questionnaire. Results were analyzed using theoretical analysis and structural equation modeling (SEM). The results show that both secondary school and university students have positive attitudes toward Esports. The outcomes indicated that participating in Esports develops social networks, and people with professional Esports’ skills capability and being fortitude tend to be models of Esports participation. However, inadequate resources are a significant barrier to participation in the Esports business. The SEM model verified that the variables of intention in Esports participation among the students in Hong Kong with an adequate goodness of fit index. As a whole, the current study has identified the factors and determinants of Esports’ intention and behavior among Hong Kong students, which were successfully displayed in terms of the theory of planned behavior. In addition, the findings are expected to provide the Hong Kong government with a documented framework to advocate Esports-related policies on a long-term

Dialogic teaching has been demonstrated to be conducive to the development of important competencies and skills such as creativity, communication skills and critical thinking skills. Yet, the literature confirms that teacher–student interactions in the classroom are predominantly monologic rather than dialogic across subjects, grades and countries. This article reports the results of a study that evaluates the effectiveness of a Philosophy for Children (P4C) programme in facilitating the development of dialogic and inquiry teaching in teachers in Hong Kong. In the study, training and support were provided for teachers to enable them to teach P4C to their students during Integrated Humanities and English lessons. P4C was found to help enhance the teachers’ effectiveness in the classroom in terms of their ability to engage in dialogic and inquiry teaching. The findings of this study suggest that P4C plays a significant role in promoting the professional development of teachers. Copyright © 2022 University of Cambridge, Faculty of Education.

Synchronous online teaching through video-conferencing software (VCS) has become a common mode of instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic. This mode brings unique challenges for teachers that require specific professional digital competences. One such challenge is conducting formative assessment. Through the use of in-depth interviews with nine Hong Kong university teachers who had taught synchronously online for one semester, this exploratory study explored the challenges of conducting formative assessment during synchronous online lessons and the strategies teachers deploy to conduct formative assessment. The findings indicate that the key difficulties include gathering information on students’ needs, checking students’ understanding, giving individual feedback, and building relationships with students. To address these challenges, the teachers suggested four pedagogical strategies: (1) Combine synchronous with asynchronous approaches; (2) Utilise breakout rooms; (3) Utilise poll functions of the VCS and combine it with other online platforms; and (4) Provide time before or after lessons for informal conversations. The findings suggest that teachers need to develop specific pedagogical strategies to conduct formative assessment. This provides an initial conceptualisation of one important dimension of Professional Digital Competence, teaching using digital technologies, and one aspect of that dimension, how teachers use digital tools and strategies to conduct formative assessment. Copyright © 2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

High-quality caregiver-child relationships are critical to healthy development, including the acquisition of language and literacy skills. However, their potential benefits to early mathematical development and its underlying mechanisms have been minimally explored. In view that language and literacy development play prominent roles in mathematical development, this study investigated whether very young children’s relationship quality with parents and teachers were linked with their mathematical ability through language and literacy abilities. One hundred and thirty two-year-olds from pre-nursery classes in Hong Kong were tested on their early academic abilities. Furthermore, their parents and teachers evaluated on questionnaires the quality of their relationships with the children. Results of path analyses indicated that after controlling for children’s age, parent–child closeness was associated with children’s mathematical ability via language ability. Teacher–child closeness had a direct link to children’s mathematical ability, as well as indirect links through language and literacy abilities. Parent–child conflict and teacher–child conflict had neither direct nor indirect relations with children’s mathematical ability. These results suggest that mathematical development is interwoven with language and literacy development beginning in the early years. Also, parents and teachers should be reminded the importance of building close and affectionate relationships with very young children when nurturing the foundation for academic development. Copyright © 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V.

Past studies identified isolated factors influencing teachers' formative assessment practices (FAP) but did not show a comprehensive model of it. Hence, this study systematically creates and tests a theoretical model of FAP by determining whether personal or contextual factors are linked to teachers' FAP. We collected longitudinal data from 296 Hong Kong primary and secondary teachers through two waves of the survey. The results of a multivariate outcome, multilevel analysis showed that personal (teacher rank, years of teaching experience, and self-efficacy) and contextual factors (school support, total number of teachers in a school, and teaching grade) significantly impact teachers’ FAP. Copyright © 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.