School guidance seeks to promote the whole person growth of students. It is regarded as an integral part of an educational programme. In Hong Kong secondary schools, a team of teachers are responsible for school guidance. This article examines how guidance teachers made sense of their caring work in general and specifically the counselling services they offered to students. With the use of a narrative analysis and personal experience methods, the study explores the experience of guidance teachers in counselling. Twelve in-service teachers who had enrolled in the Postgraduate Diploma in Education programme at the Hong Kong Institute of Education were interviewed. The influence of the Chinese philosophy of Confucianism, emerging as a theme from the data, was prominent, as its key principles were incorporated into the teachers' personal systems of counselling. The findings illuminate the influence of Chinese culture in Hong Kong schools. Implications for the promotion of culturally responsive approaches to counselling and culturally competent practices for helping are discussed.
[Copyright of British Journal of Guidance & Counselling is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03069880802088929]

This study aims to report how Hong Kong teachers handle a seemingly conventional, orderly schooling phenomenonXthe teaching of the newly arrived children (NAC) migrated from mainland China. Semi-structured interviews with ten teachers from nine primary schools were conducted. The principal findings are that the teachers are not prepared for the challenges of teaching NAC, that the traditional approaches adopted by many teachers are ineffective, that subtle transformation of the pupil population due to the everlasting influx of NAC has yet to be appreciated by the teachers, and that teachers' logic - their worldview, mindset and conceptualisation of forces at work in Hong Kong schooling - remains unchanged. This paper highlights the various issues of monoculturalisation. Implications are discussed.
[Copyright of Teaching Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10476210500122691]

This article reports findings from a qualitative interview study that examined the provision of integrated kindergarten education for children with disabilities from the perspectives of general education teachers implementing integrated kindergarten programs. Analysis of interviews with eight informants led to the identification of two broad generalizations: the interviewed teachers emphasized teaching academics to children without disabilities, but they focused on social development at the exclusion of academic instruction for children with disabilities; and, according to the teachers, instruction was academic and skill-oriented in the integrated kindergarten programs. Research procedures are described and data supporting the findings are presented. Ways to improve program quality are discussed in terms of three major components: the Hong Kong government should include early childhood education within the compulsory education system, and enforce the formally recommended approach of developmental appropriateness; teacher education institutions should prepare prospective teachers to work in school settings where program goals may be contradictory with the ideology of inclusion; and educational researchers should monitor program quality in integrated childcare centers by conducting further research.
[Copyright of Early Child Development and Care is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03004430600563430]

This article draws on a longitudinal study of a group of mainland Chinese students' English learning experiences in an English medium university in Hong Kong, and explores the dynamic nature of their language learning motivation prior to and after their arrival in Hong Kong. The study identified context-mediated and self-determined elements in the participants' learning motivational discourses. The context-mediated motivational discourses echoed the societal discourses of learning, and were shaped by the contextual conditions on the Chinese mainland and in Hong Kong, including the roles of English, academic competition and medium of instruction. Through an extended socialization process, mediated by various social agents, some of these context-mediated motivational discourses became internalized and transformed into self-determined ones among many participants in later stages of their learning. The article argues for an integrated perspective, viewing learner motivation as a dynamic construct emerging from learners' interaction with contextual conditions.
[Copyright of Studies in Higher Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03075070802373107]