This paper examines the early childhood context of Hong Kong (HK) which is characterised by an entirely privatised system. The level of knowledge a child possesses in early childhood can be a determining factor in their admission into desirable kindergartens or primary schools. Given HK’s privatised early childhood education system, the quality of a child’s learning is directly tied to the education services their parents provide independently or can afford financially. The study reported in this paper adopts a narrative inquiry approach to an under-researched area of early childhood education, namely the voices of parents within home learning environments and how the lengths they go to provide their children with a quality education.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03004279.2017.1310272]

In this article we share our experiences of using poems in teacher-training courses where the students are predominantly second-language learners. We describe how we tried to help learners engage with a creative text through its language and meaning. We share our experiences of helping to facilitate the open expression of opinions and feelings in L2 teachers (both inservice and preservice) on creative texts, specifically the poem "My Papa's Waltz" by Theodore Roethke. The use of this poem and others like it in teacher education courses in three of Hong Kong's tertiary institutions has produced consistently impressive outcomes in terms of teachers' responses to poetry in general. We aim to illustrate a teaching strategy that emphasizes the reader as expert and to show how this process leads EFL/ESL teachers as well as English-language learners (ELLs) to experience more lived, esthetic responses as part of their coursework.
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