An important feature of Hong Kong’ education reform over the past decade has been the articulation of the “no loser principle”. It was meant to signal that all students are valuable and will benefit from both basic and senior secondary education. Yet barriers remain for the 2.9% of students under age 15 who can be classified as ethnic minorities. The educational needs of these students also remained invisible in the school system until the 2008 Racial Discrimination Ordinance and the implementation of inclusive education policy in 2002 (Education Bureau 2010, 2011). The paper examines the policy context in which provisions for ethnic minority students have been made in Hong Kong schools and also classroom practices that operationalize these policies on a daily basis. It then reports the findings of an interview study into 32 teachers’ views of the cross-cultural experience of ethnic minority students, their influence on the performance of these students and how the diverse learning needs of these students are being addressed. This study shows that teachers struggle to conceptualize a new rationale for responding to cultural diversity. They develop a sense of inter-cultural sensitivity, promote cultural responsiveness to diversity, and strengthen the home-school connection. Finally, a framework for the creation of culturally responsive classrooms, based upon the teachers’ new rationale of cultural responsiveness, is proposed.

互聯網的普及和全球經濟一體化，促使世界各地的人更親近。在全球化情境下，各地的跨境教育日益普遍；香港是亞洲國際都會，不同形式的跨境教育與學生流動皆有出現。本文將從香港學生留學、境外生來港升學、大學生交流、境外設分校及每天跨境的學童等方面論述香港跨境教育的情況，並剖析當中發展趨勢和香港特色。
[Copyright © 2015 香港教師中心.]

This article reports the results of a case study involving two ethnic Chinese students, one from Malaysia and one from Indonesia, who chose to pursue higher education in Hong Kong. By placing the students at the centre of an investigation of the social, political, economic and educational contexts of their home countries and host territory, the study sought to gain a holistic understanding of cross-border mobility. The findings suggested that the students’ personal backgrounds and dispositions mediated the external push-pull factors involved in their decisions. The data showed that the two students’ cross-border mobility allowed them to redefine their ethnic identities and create global academic and professional identities. The implications of the purposes of cross-border mobility and methods for examining student mobility are discussed.
[Copyright © 2016 Springer Science+Business Media Singapore.]

The increasing number of Mainland Chinese immigrant children in the Hong Kong school system mandates our understanding of teacher readiness to work effectively with these students. This case study adopted narrative inquiry to probe deep into participants’ lived experiences to reveal significant insight into teacher readiness in working with Chinese immigrant students with disabilities. Data sources included field notes, unstructured- and semi-structured interviews, and classroom observations. Findings showed that the special education teacher was primarily concerned about the student participant’s difficulty associated with his disabilities, totally unaware of the impact of her limited proficiency in the child’s first language. The government’s concept of acculturation needs and subsequent policy contributed greatly to school personnel’s lack of awareness of student needs and lack of readiness to work effectively. Recommendations focused on government policies for qualification requirements of special education teachers and reforms to integrate special and multicultural teacher education.

Noun of locality acts as an indicator to identify the relationship of object location. Anderson (1971) and Lyons (1977) established the Localist Hypothesis and the Localism in the 70s’. They realized that spatial concept can derive other related vocabulary, particularly the extended meaning and metaphor, It plays an important part in the human cognition. When people try to express their spatial concept, direction, shape, or location of the object will be considered. However different culture of people will have very different spatial and locality concepts. Comparative analysis is employed for different meanings and usages of “shang(上)/up/on/in” and “xia(下)/down/under” as words of locality which are commonly used in Chinese, but are often misused by the L2 students (they are the Pakistani primary students in this study) due to the variety and asymmetry of “shang, xia” in their culture, including the two-dimension concept, three-dimension concept and the mechanical movement concept. Based on our analysis, we examine their literal learning difficulties, and to identify their misunderstanding and misuse of locality “shang, xia” on spatial concept. From the result of error analysis, it did reveal the very different spatial and locality concept of Pakistani students with that of the Chinese Hong Kong students. Through the contrastive analysis from linguistic and sociolinguistic perspectives of both languages and culture, it helps us to provide strategic help for the non-Chinese students with focus!

This article is based on a recently completed research project examining the school experiences of two student groups in Hong Kong: cross-border and newly arrived students from mainland China. The study represents a comparative case study of the school experiences of 18 students from six primary schools with a range of crossborder and mainland immigrant students. The overall objective of the empirical work was to examine the school experiences of the two student groups in Hong Kong from a student perspective. Specifically, the study aimed to find out: (a) their curriculum and social experiences in schools and their coping strategies in adapting to Hong Kong schooling; and (b) their perceptions of and sense of belonging within Hong Kong society. Research methods included student tracking and pre and post tracking indepth individual interviews. Implications for future educational policy of and provision for the two student groups will be offered.