In 2013 the newly elected Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) of the People’s Republic of China delivered his first Policy Address. Among other things, it highlighted the issues of education for ethnic minority students in Hong Kong focusing on Chinese language difficulties. This paper reviews the Chinese language issues for ethnic minority students as well as other issues and challenges that have been raised. It draws on education reform documents, available policy documents from the Education Bureau (EDB) and other departments regarding the educational provision for ethnic minorities, the Race Discrimination Ordinance (RDO), census and statistics reports including the recent ‘2011 Population Census, Thematic Report: Ethnic Minorities’, existing literature and newspaper articles. While the focus of the discussion is on the challenges that ethnic minority students are facing inside the school, the issue of the ‘out of school’ or ‘dropout’ phenomenon for such students is also highlighted. The paper concludes by suggesting that an exclusive concern with Chinese language education misses other significant issues that impact on the education of ethnic minority students in Hong Kong. Copyright © 2014 by the CESHK.

This introductory article for the special issue of “The International Journal of Diversity in Education” weaves the research interests and histories of members of the local organizing committee for the Fifteenth International Conference on Diversity in Organizations, Communities & Nations held at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) in July 2015. These members share a common research context—diversity and education in Hong Kong and the article aims to reflect that, although from diverse disciplinary backgrounds and concerns with different sectors and approaches to education, our collective interest centers on education and social justice in Hong Kong. Issues explored in K-12 schooling range across: inclusive education, Chinese language support for special education needs children and non-Chinese speaking (NCS) learners, and multicultural education. Issues explored in higher education focus on the academic workforce in Hong Kong, both in terms of internationalization policy and academic mobility in professional education, and with regard to gender equity and the role of women in the academy. Copyright © 2016 Common Ground Publishing, Susan M. Bridges, Liz Jackson, Patcy Yeung, Kit Chan, Ida A. C. Mok, Sarah Jane Aiston, All Rights Reserved

Mother tongue language (MTL) curriculum is core to school education in most countries/regions' school curriculum. Through mother tongue language learning, students are expected to enhance their understanding of the nation's culture and foster the sense of cultural and ethnic identity. However, MTL education in Hong Kong is complicated by the colonial history. This study examines Hong Kong Chinese language teachers' perceptions of MTL education, and the implication on MTL curriculum development. The questionnaire was administrated to 97 teachers, and interviews were carried out on 17 teachers. Usually, MTL is both the tool with which knowledge and skills are taught and learned and the vehicle for students to learn about the traditions of the countries' literature and culture. In Hong Kong, 95% of the population is of Chinese descent. Traditionally, education in China was a mixture of philosophy, history, politics and literacy. Chinese as an MTL subject in pre-colonial Hong Kong has always been assigned the mission of developing students' cultural identity in addition to the development of linguistic proficiency. During the colonial period, the Chinese Language curriculum shifted to be more language skills based with less emphasis on Chinese culture and moral education. After the sovereignty of Hong Kong was returned to China in 1997, although a new curriculum was implemented in 2002, teaching and learning in school as well as public examinations seem to be remaining language skills oriented instead of culturally based. This deviation from the trend of both Chinese traditional education and global mother tongue language education makes some Chinese language teachers feel confused. In addition, there is comment that in general Hong Kong students' Chinese language proficiency is becoming weaker and weaker in recent years. Thus, effectiveness of the skills oriented language curriculum has come under question. How a language teacher views the aims and objectives of the language

This paper aims to study the current challenges of Chinese language education in the multilingual societies of Hong Kong and Singapore through policy documents. After the handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997, the role of Putonghua is far more important than before due to political and economic reasons. However, the medium of instruction for the Chinese Language subject in Hong Kong has long been Cantonese since the British colony days. A change in the medium of instruction from mother-tongue Cantonese to Putonghua is a shift from L1 to L2. This paper will discuss the feasibility of this long term policy of Hong Kong Education Bureau with reference to Singapore’s experience. Currently, Singapore faces the problem of declining standard of reading and writing in Huayu (Putonghua in China) and this paper will investigate the reason for that and suggest possible remedies.
[Copyright © 2008 Canadian Center of Science and Education.]

This paper aims at describing and explaining how drama pedagogy is appropriated in Chinese language classrooms in Hong Kong. Drawing on the theories of dialogue and appropriation of Mikhail Bakhtin, the research shows that the dialogicality of drama in Hong Kong's classrooms is conditional, and therefore deviant from the conventional as conceptualised and described in the major literature. A spectrum of the appropriation of drama pedagogy in language classrooms in Hong Kong is developed and discussed. At one end of the spectrum, there is still the domination of the teacher's monologic input of official knowledge and skills; at the other end, destabilisation of the centrality of the text and the authoritarian role of the teacher is identified suggesting alteration in the classroom communication routine, and even the opening of the drama world. This spectrum illustrates how the teachers waver between persisting with monologue and embracing dialogue, the result of which is the development of a hybrid approach to appropriate drama pedagogy.
[Copyright of Pedagogy, Culture & Society is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14681366.2010.505717]