With the increasing concern in school teachers’ well-being and growing focus on the early childhood education sector in recent years, the present study explored the factors that contribute to the psychological well-being of kindergarten teachers in Hong Kong. Based on a sample of 459 kindergarten teachers in Hong Kong, the authors demonstrated that teachers’ psychological well-being was strongly determined by their self-belief, which were contributed by their relationship with colleagues, and their positivity in attitude towards life and work. The authors further demonstrated that teachers’ self-belief was influenced by their perception of the school culture. Implications for establishing a positive attitude in kindergarten teachers and enhancing their psychological well-being were discussed. Copyright © 2021 The International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies (ISQOLS) and Springer Nature B.V.

Acculturation is an emerging field of inquiry in the multicultural context of Hong Kong. Behavioural acculturation focuses mainly on cultural practices such as language use, dietary preferences, customs and traditions, socialization and media consumption. Despite a phenomenal growth of research on the educational predicament of immigrant youth based on a deficit-based “stress and coping” approach, there is a dearth of literature on how non-Chinese young people experience the phenomenon of intercultural learning in Hong Kong. This article reports a qualitative study on the behavioural acculturation of a group of Pakistani secondary school students in Hong Kong from a culture leaning perspective. The study findings challenge the deficit-based perspective and advocate a culture-learning approach to the study of acculturation. Copyright © 2021 National Institute of Education, Singapore.

The advantages and disadvantages of ability grouping for student achievement are strongly contested, with studies presenting different results. However, much of this research has focused on class-level or subject-level ability grouping. Relatively less research has focused on school-level ability grouping. More importantly, the role of teacher support has often been neglected in the ability grouping literature. The aim of this study was to shed light on the under-investigated area of school-level ability grouping, with teacher support examined as a crucial theoretical mechanism. We examined whether teacher support plays a mediating and/or moderating role in terms of how school-level ability grouping is related to student achievement in English and mathematics. The participants were 554 Hong Kong secondary students from the high- (Band 1), medium- (Band 2), and low- (Band 3) ability groups. The results indicate that students from high-ability groups enjoyed greater levels of teacher support, which partly explains their higher levels of achievement. This finding supports a mediation mechanism. Moreover, the results also provide support for a moderation mechanism. When students in low-ability groups received high levels of teacher support, they were able to achieve as much as students in the high-ability groups, in English but not for math. Copyright © 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Teachers play a crucial role in promoting motor development in early childhood. A series of focus-group discussions was conducted with kindergarten teachers in Hong Kong to co-design movement activities. This paper reports the process and implications to teachers’ professional development. Copyright © 2021 International Review of Finance Ltd.

Programming is perceived to be an indispensable type of literacy in the digital era. To effectively promote and implement programming in K–12 education, it is necessary to understand school principals' perception of programming education. This study adopted a mixed methods design to explain principals' understanding, expectations, and support for programming education in primary schools using Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA). In study 1, survey questionnaires were distributed to all principals from public primary schools in Hong Kong. Two hundred and sixty-six principals responded to the survey (response rate = 55.6%). In study 2, a follow-up interview study with 13 principals was conducted to further explore their perception of programming education. The results of study 1 indicated that principals with a better understanding of programming education tend to have clearer expectations of how to implement programming education in their schools, which consequently leads to greater support for the implementation of programming education. In study 2, the thematic analysis further supported the results obtained in study 1. Specifically, the results of study 2 demonstrated that most principals show understanding, expectation, and support for the implementation of programming education, which in turn results in various positive student and teacher outcomes. The results also showed that challenges are inevitable during implementation, principals show capabilities and willingness to adjust their expectation and support to better integrate programming education into their school curricula. Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Existing research on the psychosocial and academic experiences of China-born students studying outside of China has primarily been conducted in English-speaking countries using acculturation models. Such research has generally indicated the importance of various personal and interpersonal resources in understanding China-born and other international students' cross-cultural adaptation. Using a similar coping resources framework, we investigated factors in both the psychological and academic adaptation of a survey sample of 2,201 mainland Chinese students (74% female) studying in universities in Hong Kong, China's Special Administrative Region. We found that academic self-efficacy, social support, and a low level of perceived discrimination predicted both psychological and academic adaptation, while proficiency in English and Cantonese further contributed to mainland Chinese students' academic adaptation. Implications for future research and higher education policies and practices are discussed. Copyright © 2019 The 11th IAIR Biennial Conference and the 15th CAFIC Annual Conference.

Although mathematical modeling plays an important role in many curricula worldwide, significant discrepancies persist in the importance of mathematical modeling in ordinary mathematics classrooms and teacher education. This paper compares pre-service mathematics teachers' professional mathematical modeling competencies in three different regions—Germany, Mainland China, and Hong Kong—where educational and cultural traditions differ, including the role of mathematical modeling. In total, 232 pre-service mathematics teachers from the three regions completed a modeling task covering mathematics content knowledge (MCK) of modeling and mathematical pedagogical content knowledge (MPCK) of modeling. The results show that pre-service teachers from Germany demonstrated the strongest MCK and MPCK of mathematical modeling; by contrast, pre-service mathematics teachers from Mainland China and Hong Kong demonstrated relatively weaker MCK and MPCK of mathematical modeling. MCK and MPCK of mathematical modeling were also found to be unevenly developed at different competence levels for the three regions. These differences may be attributed to the history of mathematical modeling in mathematics curricula, teacher education, and teaching culture in these three regions. Copyright © 2021 The Author(s).