Multicultural education in many industrialized, diverse societies aims to positively represent and include minority groups in the curriculum. Though there is some discussion of this aim in Hong Kong curriculum, the positive inclusion of minorities in subjects dealing with social life remains minimal. This paper aims to defend the need for multicultural education in Hong Kong by comparing the sociological and representational challenges there with those of other societies with traditions of multicultural education. Using comparative methods this project provides sociological and historical context to multicultural education programs in diverse societies including Canada, the United States, France, Japan, and South Africa. The historical backdrop of these countries will be considered as well as the nature of their multicultural education. Hong Kong faces unique dilemmas in developing multicultural education, including the problem of prejudice toward mainland Chinese people, and the common notion that to be a Hong Konger one must be both (a) of Chinese (Han) ethnicity, and (b) Chinese (Cantonese and/or Mandarin) speaking. This paper will examine these and related issues in the context of the broader comparative discussion, also considering other essential challenges to the concept of multicultural education. Copyright © 2013 The CESHK Annual Conference.

Morphological awareness (MA) was defined as “awareness of morphemic structures of words and the ability to reflect on and manipulate that structure” (Carlisle, 1995, p.194). MA is viewed as a multi-faceted construct, including aspects like inflectional, derivational and compounding morphology. It has been identified as a crucial metalinguistic awareness influencing children’s literacy outcomes. Though a growing body of evidence has shown positive the effects of MA instructions, it remains relatively unclear regarding what components of MA instructions uniquely contribute to literacy outcomes. This study adopted randomized controlled trial design and examined the effects of English morphological instructions on improving word reading, reading comprehension and spelling skills in 29 Hong Kong Chinese third graders who speak English as a second language. Students were randomly assigned into three groups: a) derivational morphology group (n = 10), b) compounding morphology plus derivational morphology group (n = 10) or c) business-as-usual group (n = 9). All children received intervention for 8 hours (two 30-min sessions per week for 8 weeks) and were administered a battery of linguistic and cognitive tasks, including non-verbal intelligence, inflectional, derivational and compounding morphology, vocabulary, word reading, spelling skills and reading comprehension at pretest and posttest. The results of the study would be discussed in the presentation. The findings may shed light on the causal role of morphological awareness on literacy development as well as the optimal manner in teaching morphological awareness. Copyright © 2020 ARWA.

Learning through play and free exploration are emphasized in the recent curriculum review in Hong Kong. This experimental project aims to investigate how children play with and without teachers’ direction instruction. Thirty-one children aged 4-5 (15 boys and 16 girls) attending a typical Hong Kong preschool participated in this study. The children are randomly divided into the control group and experimental group. The study consists of three phases: (1) Pre-test: Play without instructions for 30 minutes. A set of block play newly bought by the preschool is presented to children. Children are free to play and explore with the block as they like. (2) Treatment: Play with teachers’ instructions. In two-week period, the teachers will provide the experimental group with various instructions like picture book, puppet or probing whereas the control group will keep playing with the block set on their own. (3) Post-test: Play without instructions for 30-minutes for both groups. All block playing sessions will be videotaped. Behaviours of the children will be coded and analyzed based on the nature of play, content of play and complexity of ideas to delineate how teachers’ input may influence the quality of play and free exploration. Copyright © 2019 20th Pacific Early Childhood Education Research Association International Conference (PECERA).

1. Objectives or purposes of the paper.The primary purpose of this paper is to analyze how religion is portrayed and explored within the Liberal Studies curriculum in Hong Kong schools. Liberal Studies is the main place for social studies and moral and civic education in Hong Kong today, as one of four required subjects (alongside math, English, and Chinese). Liberal Studies aims in part “to help students appreciate and respect diversity in cultures and views in a pluralistic society.” However, it is also a new part of curriculum which teachers can find hard to implement. This paper specifically analyzes how religion is discussed and described in Liberal Studies curriculum materials including major textbooks used, as textbooks are thus far often directing the course of classroom teaching in Liberal Studies.2. Main perspective or theoretical/conceptual framework used.A comparative multicultural framework undergirds this project. The researcher’s past experience in multicultural religious education in the United States informs the choice of topic. Though both the United States and Hong Kong are proudly diverse places with strong traditions of religious freedom, Hong Kong lacks the tradition of common schooling of many Western societies and its aim to help students understand and assimilate with one another. As a result, the multicultural content may not be as celebratory about diversity there. Additionally, in Hong Kong it is understood that individuals can participate in various religious traditions at the same time, while in Western societies people tend to be more exclusive in their religious belief or unbelief. Though comparisons of multiculturalism in education are a backdrop to this project, its ultimate aim remains to consider whether students are learning what they should learn to understand religiously diverse others from the Liberal Studies curriculum, from an intercultural-multicultural stance which values dialogue and initial respect and good faith in the midst

Many are concerned with education’s role in preparing societies to meet challenges related to globalization. Among various educational aims related to globalization is that of developing in young people a critical awareness of the lives of disadvantaged people, in their communities and across the world, to become compassionate, or socially responsible, ‘global citizens’. This general interest is shared by policy makers envisioning global or twenty-first century citizenship education, as well as by philosophers of education and social justice-oriented teachers. However, the aim of such education or its most appropriate pedagogy or schooling context is not always spelled out, owing to the controversial nature of various interpretations and recommendations related to poverty and injustice today (i.e., economic redistribution versus austerity; privatisation versus socialism).In this essay, I ask whether altruism can be usefully elaborated as an educational aim for global citizenship and social responsibility. First, I examine philosophical treatments of altruism such as by Thomas Nagel and Lawrence Blum, and consider the educational implications of significant features of a useful definition of the concept. Next, I juxtapose these views with those of Confucian and Buddhist scholars, to consider whether a universal value of altruism for contexts of west and east is plausible. Finally, I apply my conceptualization of altruism to Hong Kong curriculum, providing a concrete context for considering altruism as a useful educational aim. I end by highlighting the tension of teaching for altruism in settings (unlike Hong Kong) where moral education is contentious, while citizenship education is not. Copyright © 2013 PESA CONFERENCE.

"Content and Language Integrated Learning" (CLIL) aims at enhancing both the academic language awareness and academic content awareness in teachers. Such a special curriculum approach necessitates that teachers' pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) consists of distinctive categories and domains that are different from either the PCK of teachers of content subjects (e.g., mathematics, sciences or liberal studies) or that of language teachers (e.g., SLA/L2 education). Drawing on the frameworks of studies on PCK (Grossman, 1988, 1990; Shulman, 1986, 1987; Tsui, 2003) and Teacher Language Awareness (Andrews, 2003; 2006; 2007), this research starts with the assumption that effective representation of subject content in L2 English demands PCK that goes beyond simple addition of the subject matter knowledge and the pedagogical knowledge of both subject content and the English language. Such PCK inevitably involves the integration of other knowledge and skill domains that are unique to the CLIL context. More importantly, how does teacher identity change interact with change in the teacher's pedagogical content knowledge? When does a content teacher start to see him/herself also playing the partial role of an academic language teacher, and when does a language teacher start to see him/herself also playing the partial role of helping students to learn academic content? Through ethnographic case studies, this research explores the CLIL PCK as well as the CLIL teacher identity change in three content teachers (in science, mathematics, and liberal studies) as well as two English language teachers. All of them have enrolled in a part-time Master of Education programme specializing in CLIL in Hong Kong schools. The study examines and explores the transformation of the teachers' PCK as well as their identity during their participation in the teacher education programme. The implications on our understanding of the teacher knowledge base of CLIL as well as its impact on teacher identity

This paper examines the gender components in the Hong Kong New Senior Secondary Liberal Studies (NSSLS) and evaluates whether the various discursive construction of gender converge to education of gender equity. Using Reisigl and Wodak (2009)'s discourse-historical approach to critical discourse analysis, the study analyzes the gender discourses in the Liberal Studies Curriculum and Assessment Guide (secondary 4-6) (2007). It is found that inconsistent and contradictory conceptions of gender are existent in the curriculum document. I therefore call upon policy makers to warn against the nuanced ways in which gender inequality can be implicitly embedded in curriculum documents. The study is the first empirical study that examines gender politics in secondary general education in Hong Kong. Copyright © 2016 American Educational Research Association.

This paper investigates the application of Sydney School genre-based approach (Rose and Martin, 2012) for developing critical literacies in L2 settings. Genre-based pedagogy was originally developed in Australia to provide disadvantaged learners with more accessible instruction of academic literacy and its potential to improve students' critical thinking skills remains considerably under-investigated. With comparative case studies of one Secondary 6 class in a Thai bilingual secondary school, one Secondary 4 class in an EMI school in Hong Kong, and one Secondary 6 class in a Content and Language Integrated Learning program (CLIL) in Sweden, where English is not the medium of everyday communication, the paper explores the affordances of the genre-based pedagogy to improve secondary students’ critical literacies in L2 English regarding gender issues in the EMI Social/Liberal Studies curricula. Results indicate that a) the Sydney School genre-based pedagogy is effective for enhancing students' ability to express critical thoughts in L2 English in the three cases and b) it is important to adapt Sydney School genre-based pedagogy to the specificity of the L2 settings. The paper therefore proposes that more lexical and grammatical support should be offered to ESL secondary students for development of critical thinking in the social science classrooms. Copyright © 2015 The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. All Rights Reserved.