Online pronunciation teaching becomes particularly challenging because of the distance between teachers and students, and the lack of interactions, feedback and supervision (Dumford & Miller, 2018). The study aims to describe the process of designing an e-teaching package on English phonetics and pronunciation course for pre-service teachers in Hong Kong, and to evaluate the effectiveness of this online teaching package. Thirty-nine pre-service teachers divided into the control group (CG) and experimental group (EG) attended five training sessions on Zoom, an online conference platform. Participants in the CG received traditional Powerpoint lectures with pre-set Zoom functions for interaction, while participants in the EG received training with an e-package of Edpuzzle, Nearpod, Padlet, Mentimeter and Kahoot. Pretest–posttest designs and questionnaire were employed to evaluate students’ pronunciation improvement and their attitudes towards the e-package. Results showed that participants from both groups made fewer errors on English consonants and vowels after the training sessions. 80% of the participants in the EG agreed that the e-package was well-designed and could make the online instruction more interactive compared with the traditional online instruction. 75% of them reported that they received more feedback when the e-package was applied. 45% of the participants reported that their favorite e-tool was Edpuzzle. This tool not only helped them review and consolidate the content knowledge but provided more input for them to identify their pronunciation errors. As for two online quizzes, students showed more interest in Kahoot as it was more competitive compared with the individualized quiz using Nearpod. Copyright © 2021 International Conference on Learning and Teaching.

Social-emotional learning (SEL) in early childhood lays the foundation for children’s later adjustment (Bornstein et al., 2010). Among existing SEL programs, OpenMind (OM) is a mindfulness-based kindergarten curriculum that has demonstrated effectiveness in the United States and Korea (Jackman et al., 2019; Kim et al., 2020). To enhance children’s SEL in Hong Kong, this study adapted and implemented OM activities over a one-month period. Initial efficacy on children’s SEL was examined, alongside teachers’ attitudes toward OM. Fifty-two Chinese children in K1-2 (3-5-year-old; nintervention=27; nwaitlist control=24) and four trained kindergarten teachers participated in daily meditation practices. They also completed pretest, immediate posttest, and a four-week follow-up posttest. Results suggest that teachers find OM activities useful, particularly during disruptive incidents. Children also had greater improvements in emotional control and shifting than did children in the waitlist control group. Through these practices, we hope to build a stronger foundation for children’s social-emotional competence. Copyright © 2021 HKERA-APERA International Conference.

Hong Kong has faced the suspension of primary, secondary, and post-secondary schools due to COVID-19, which has put over one million students out of the classroom. Educators were abruptly forced to shift to online and virtual classes without sufficient time and resources to prepare for such an enormous transition. While shifting from traditional face-to-face format to modern e-learning ensures that students can be educated outside of the classroom, its impact on the quality of learning and teaching can be mixed because professionals cannot solely rely on conventional teaching approaches. This project aims to address the knowledge gap in the traditional teacher-training by developing an online programme called “T.E.A.C.H.” to enhance pre-service teachers’ psychological competence for conducting online L&T. This programme consists of five modules, with each focusing on a specific domain of psychological competence (i.e., creativity, curiosity, love of learning, judgment, and perspective) and applied to the ‘three foci’ for online L&T (i.e., attendance and participation, engagement, and assessment). The modules consist of lecture videos, readings, practical tips and suggestions, and e-learning resources. The learning experience is consolidated and enriched by a series of interactive activities, practice exercises, critical evaluations, reflections, and short quizzes. The effectiveness of the programme for enhancing pre-service teachers’ psychological competence and online L&T outcomes are assessed through questionnaire measures, objective behavioural tasks, and knowledge checks. Pre-service teachers are expected to show more positive attitudes toward online L&T, higher self-efficacy to teach online, greater motivation to use information and communication technologies, and increased online pedagogical competence. Copyright © 2021 ICLT.

Along with the global trend of developing students’ 21st-century skills, teacher education must enable preservice teachers (PSTs) to improve students’ learning outcomes with Information and Communications Technology (ICT), and school practicum plays an essential role in the process. This study investigated Hong Kong PSTs’ ICT competency with or without teaching practicum completed and explored factors contributing to ICT competency in and beyond the practicum. This mixed-methods study began with a questionnaire to give a broad picture of the ICT competence of Hong Kong PSTs of English (N = 127), who were found to perceive themselves as competent with educational technology and their competencies of understanding ICT related policy and using ICT for professional development was enhanced after school practicum. A purposeful subset of the sample (N = 10) was interviewed based on their ICT competency scores, exploring the factors shaping interviewees’ readiness and ICT use in their teaching practicum. It highlights that digital native students do not naturally transform into teachers with ICT competency to facilitate 21st-century learning, and the practicum could play a more critical role in enhancing their ICT competence to future-proof their skills. Promoting ICT-friendly school culture and designing better teaching practicum programmes are suggested. Copyright © 2022 National Institute of Education, Singapore.

Educational researchers, policymakers, and administrators agree that providing in-service teachers with high-quality professional development (PD) opportunities is essential to educational success. Despite the substantial sums invested in teacher PD by countries and jurisdictions, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused serious challenges to teacher learning around the world. As conventional face-to-face initiatives became impracticable (e.g., workshops, conferences, school-based PD) and the need to prioritize pandemic-specific topics intensified (e.g., emergency remote teaching), teacher PD was recast both formally (where and how teachers engaged in PD) and substantively (what teachers sought to learn from PD). Amidst the international upheavals caused by COVID-19, how have teacher PD infrastructures (policies, practices, theories) responded? For this Special Issue, we put this and other questions before a panel of PD scholars in six contexts: United States, Scotland (United Kingdom), Uruguay, Australia, United Arab Emirates, and Hong Kong (SAR China). In their respective contributions, authors discuss issues such as the limitations of PD systems based on compliance and external accountability mechanisms, the need to center teacher motivation in existing PD frameworks, matters of access and equity, the importance of developing technological infrastructures for online and hybrid learning, problems of online safety and wellbeing, and more. The Special Issue shows that the uncertainty of today’s times requires new, global perspectives on PD design, implementation, evaluation, theory, and scholarship. To nurture agentic, highly motivated, and effective teachers for the pandemic era and beyond, countries and jurisdictions should think more creatively about how to best support teacher learning. Copyright © 2022 International Journal for Research in Education.

The ability to formulate problems is an important part of computational thinking (CT) development for nurturing creative problem solvers. However, problem formulation is inadequately addressed in primary school education. This study aimed to investigate the problem formulation processes of primary school students. Students from eight winning teams in a primary school CT competition in Hong Kong participated in the study. Focus group interviews were conducted with the students and teachers separately. Data analysis revealed that the students’ problem formulation processes could be divided into three stages, namely, the Find, Investigate, and Define stages. The Investigate stage was an essential stage connecting the Find and Define stages. Interviews showed that support from teachers and parents was necessary for students to gain a positive experience of formulating problems in primary school context. Findings suggest that CT curriculum should be designed to allocate sufficient project time and learning space for students to develop their problem formulation ability. Problem formulation abilities are critical in the development of students’ creativity in computational thinking. Copyright © 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.

This study investigates the effects of student use of self-regulated learning (SRL) strategies on their computer programming achievement. Ninety-six students from undergraduate teacher training programmes offered by a Hong Kong university voluntarily participated in the study. Sixty-six of them were first-year students enrolling on an introductory Java programming course, while 30 were second-year students enrolling on an advanced Java programming course. The SRL strategies adopted by participants were measured by the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) and were exemplified from the reflective writing of their electronic portfolios. Their achievement in computer programming was evaluated using continuous and end of course assessments. The findings of this study suggest that higher-order cognitive strategies (i.e. elaboration, organization, critical thinking), metacognitive control strategies (i.e. self-regulation) and resource management strategies (i.e. time and study environment management, help seeking) are likely to facilitate a prolonged achievement of computer programming for both novices and non-novices. They can provide insights into designing adequate SRL strategy training to support student learning in computer programming. Copyright © 2021 SCHOLINK INC.

This demo/poster will report a web-based assessment database funded by a Teaching Development Grant given to the present researcher, who designed and maintained the database and made it freely-accessible to students, teachers, teacher educators and researchers. The purpose of the database is to improve preservice teachers’ language assessment literacy and enhance their skills to design assessment instruments with sufficient quality and variety. The database stores selected language assessment tasks innovated by cohorts of postgraduate and undergraduate TESL students enrolled in the language assessment courses taught by the present researcher in a university in Hong Kong. During the demo/poster, I will present the theoretical framework underlying the design and organization of the database, how the database is integrated into the assessment literacy courses given to pre-service teachers, and an analysis of students’ reflections on their experience of using the database to learn to adapt, design and evaluate assessment tasks, as well as to validate teacher-designed language tests. At the end, I will discuss the project’s implications for language assessment literacy education of pre-service teachers and potential areas of AL research. Copyright © 2020 LTRC.