Due to the competitive edge it confers on students, educational institutions, and non-English speaking nations in a globalized economy, English as a medium of instruction (EMI) has been gaining popularity in tertiary education in non-native English-speaking (NNES) countries. Institute-wide EMI implementation has often been imposed by top-down decisions, in combination with the optimistic view that the horse should always be placed before the cart. However, emerging evidence suggests that the delivery of such programs to NNES students has led to new pedagogical challenges and learning problems that go beyond the scope of language learning and teaching and deserve immediate attention. For example, how would an instructor respond to situations in which students’ learning of content is compromised by their limited language proficiency? This book draws on the current practice of EMI in diverse disciplines and university settings and examines how these new pedagogical and learning issues can be addressed. The discussion also involves a reflection on the essence of EMI in relation to the use of the first language (L1) as the medium of instruction in tertiary education. In addition, the book includes discussion about how to ensure and maintain the quality of EMI programs and assess the readiness of stakeholders for such programs, which include administrators, teachers, and students. The discussion is led by exemplars in Hong Kong and Taiwan, where the majority of students are native Chinese speakers, in the hope of developing critical perspectives and practical guidelines as references for EMI in other NNES settings. Copyright © 2021 selection and editorial matter, Lily I-wen Su, Hintat Cheung, and Jessica R. W. Wu; individual chapters, the contributors.

This presentation applies interdisciplinary critical approaches to teaching and teacher education with the aim of disrupting schooling inequities found in Hong Kong, and other regions of East, Southeast, and Central Asia. Transgressing typical demarcations between practitioners and scholars, this presentation brings together a diverse panel of EdUHK students, teachers, and teacher educators in primary and secondary classroom settings who are teaching English and Chinese varieties. The background of the teachers involved is a recently-developed program in Hong Kong that helps develop diverse undergraduates, often the first in their family to attend university, to be more transformative teachers and researchers in their everyday practices. The program is The Project for Critical Research, Pedagogy & Praxis (PCRP), which is an 'educational pipeline' that begins with training early undergraduates in critical teaching and research skills, and then branches off into preservice/in-service teaching, postgraduate studies, and collaborative research projects (Chang, 2017). This pipeline project utilizes feminist, critical, and sociocultural theories of learning, pedagogy, and community engagement (Chang, 2013; Gutierrez, 2008; Lau, 2013; Luke, 2018), in an effort to challenge the large disconnects that many EdUHK students have been reporting. These disconnects include just trying to individually matriculate through the university institution, and trying to practice holistic and constructivist pedagogies in Hong Kong and other schooling contexts they experienced in South Korea, mainland China, Thailand, and Kazakhstan. This presentation examines challenges for the PCRP educators as they tried to disrupt common curricula and discourse around cultural deficit, 'teaching to the test,' and banking models of education within their schools, which often included essentialising notions of 'Confucian Heritage Culture' that marginalized students from both Chinese and non-Chinese backgrounds

This chapter aims to introduce the development of and issues related to parent and community engagement in life education in Taiwan and Hong Kong. The development of life education in Taiwan has highly involved parent groups since the early stage. Parents, different community organisations, and school teachers have collaborated closely with each other, enabling a large number of children to have the opportunity to learn about life education. Compared with traditional teaching approaches, alternative ways of conducting life education through parent and community engagement have shown their effectiveness. Utilising various forms of school curriculum such as the Morning Light, Integrated Activity class, and other courses and services, parents join classes and accompany children through activities such as story-telling, drama acting, music, and dancing, bringing a lively atmosphere to life education as well as companionship to their children. Taking the experience of the Rainbow Family Life Education Association as an example, this chapter also discusses parent and community engagement with existing relevant research. Compared with life education in Taiwan, parental involvement in the promotion of life education in Hong Kong tends to be less systematic and there is much room for future enhancement. Copyright © 2021 selection and editorial matter, John Chi-Kin Lee, Stephen Yam-Wing Yip and Raymond Ho-Man Kong; individual chapters, the contributors.

This study aims to investigate, with an action research approach, the possibility of enhancing conscientization by applying critical pedagogy (CP) in the Liberal Studies (LS) curriculum of Hong Kong, in order to introduce a new paradigm of civic education that fosters learners’ transformative actions in sociopolitical issues. Shor’s (1992) model of “empowering education” was taken as the main framework in applying CP. In addition, Shor’s (1992) “Paradigm of Four Domains” was adopted to investigate teachers’ and students’ obstacles and resources in the process. The study was conducted in a local secondary school for approximately 10 weeks, with a Secondary 5 class of 15 students as participants. The findings revealed that there were rich possibilities of conscientization, which means the development of critical consciousness, achieved through applying CP in the LS curriculum. However, some obstacles were found hindering the application of CP in the LS curriculum. Among them were the “teaching to the test” pressure on the teacher and the mentality of didacticism. On students’ side, their weakness in literacy skills and the alienation caused by the authoritarian culture were the main obstacles. Yet, students’ developing interest in experiential learning activities and their willingness for transformative practice were found to be resources that motivated them to learn in the new mode of CP. To complement students’ resources, the willingness and proficiency to support students’ transformative practice, the readiness to explore taboo issues, and an influential relationship with students were the resources that facilitated CP practice on the teacher’s side. This study is significant and advocating in several ways. Throughout this study under the specific school conditions in Hong Kong, Shor’s four-domain paradigm for the practice of CP is developed and enriched. Based on the findings, this study recommends the “Independent Enquiry Study” (IES) in the LS curriculum be expanded

This chapter examines the role of education in the socio-political development of Hong Kong from a historical perspective. Using the framework of “citizenship as process,” it reviews the way in which identity politics and civic movement took place in the condition of a weak political framework for citizenship and explains the Janus-faced nature of the Hong Kong political culture which oscillates between economic instrumentalism and political activism. The chapter proposes how teaching can be designed and conducted for the sake of cultivating a meaningful civic identity and global citizenship against the backdrop of the recent resurgence of nationalism worldwide. It argues that spoon-fed pedagogy of civic and national education is difficult to make positive impact on educational outcome, especially in global and entrepreneurial cities like Hong Kong situated in the digital age. Copyright © 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Using multicultural education as a lens, this article details the discursive formation of Hong Kong’s linguistic landscape with a focus on policy arrangements around teaching Chinese as a second language for non-Chinese ethnic minorities since the early 2000s. We pose two research questions: What are the identifiable policy trends in education for ethnic minorities? And how effective are the policy provisions in managing diversity and social justice for ethnic minorities in Hong Kong? The study draws upon documentary analysis to review existing local literature, which highlight the school admission, curriculum design, language teachers’ professional development practices, and assessment pertaining to the education of ethnic minority students. Our analysis reveals a narrow concentration of policies that focus exclusively on supporting ethnic minority students’ Chinese language learning regarded as the barrier to their advancement in education and an omission of other nonlinguistic, structural and ideological challenges and barriers. This barrier contributes to prejudices in school access, curriculum and assessment that function within an assimilationist integration framework. We call for policy measures that broaden the focus of multicultural education for ethnic minorities and that seek to manage ethnolinguistic diversity for equal citizenship rights in the Asian context. Copyright © 2020 Fang Gao, Jan Gube.

Literature suggests that state–market relations in Asian transnational education appear as a hybrid of economic socialism and economic liberalism as well as of supra-territoriality and sovereignty. Such a notion of hybrid focuses on how Asian states manage the struggles over the meaning and value of higher education, thereby addressing various ways in which states participate in neoliberal globalisation. This paper argues that Asian states’ higher education policy choices are restricted by local politics and the resulting policy agendas. This argument explains the paradoxical situation that Malaysia continuously encounters when developing its regulatory regime to govern transnational education. The argument also illuminates the recalibrations that appeared in the transnational education policies of Singapore and Hong Kong. The paradox and recalibrations reveal how a political perspective on transnational education is important to understand Asian states’ responses to globalisation in higher education regardless of the nature of their regulatory regimes. Copyright © 2021 Society for Research into Higher Education.

Teacher behaviors are one of the most significant factors influencing student learning. Students from different cultures may have different interpretations of their teachers’ behaviors. This study compared the associations between teacher strictness, teacher feedback, and students’ motivational beliefs using data from six Western countries (the United States, the United Kingdom, Finland, Norway, Australia, and New Zealand) and six East Asian regions (Japan, Korea, mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan) in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2015. A total of 89,869 15-year-old students were included in data analysis. The findings indicate that (i) teacher strictness was negatively associated with Western students’ motivation, but positively related to that of East Asian students; (ii) teacher feedback had significant positive associations with the motivational beliefs of both Western and East Asian students; and (iii) there was a positive relationship between teacher strictness and teacher feedback in East Asian context. These results highlight the need to consider cultural factors when interpreting students’ reactions to teacher behaviors. Copyright © 2021 Jiang, Lee, Wan and Chen.

This comparative analysis aims to capture the complex roles and positionings of the International Baccalaureate (IB) in conjunction with local education systems in Hong Kong, Singapore, and South Korea. Our analysis focused on how the IB’s institutional legitimacy is presented in the three societies. We conducted a documentary analysis of texts on the introduction and implementation of IB programmes into local school systems. Our findings suggest that there are commonalities and variations in how the IB is interpreted by key local agents and is positioned into local education systems. Specifically, across the three societies, the IB has expanded continuously. At the same time, its institutionalisation process varies by each society’s socio-historical context and needs: substantive legitimacy as the international curriculum of choice in Hong Kong, a quiet supplement to elite education in Singapore, and instrumental curriculum borrowing for fixing the education system in Korea. We also find that the institutionalisation of the IB is limited at a symbolic level and controlled by the Singaporean government, while the IB is saliently promoted by local education authorities in the context of education reform in Korea. The institutionalisation process of the IB in Hong Kong is primarily swayed by market principles under the existing school choice system. Copyright © 2021 Educational Review.

The evolution of globalisation and ensuing internationalisation of higher education need radical reform of institutional policies and practices to promote education for diversity, equity and inclusion. Extant literature on university/college student persistence/retention witnesses a lack of research on the subjective sense of belonging on campus among ethnic minoritised students who have been historically marginalised in higher education and are now part of the emerging demographic on campus. This study attempted to fill the gap. Engaging qualitative individual interviews with 12 university students of South/Southeast Asian ethnicity in Hong Kong, the purpose of this study was to examine their perceptions and experiences of institutional affiliations and engagement in university. Findings suggested that being connected to the programme and university, and the depth and quality of intragroup dynamics, are key to a sense of belonging among ethnic minority students. Findings also elucidated a lack of cross‐cultural interaction and racial/ethnic diversity within the university environment, which shaped participants’ feelings of isolation and exclusionary experiences as they sought to adjust to the campus academically and socially. The study’s findings could help inform the development and evaluation of institutional strategies that can sustain minoritised students in university transitions and promote institutional connectedness and academic success among all students on campus. Copyright © 2021 British Educational Research Association