The introduction of "differentiated" instruction (DI), tailored to meet students' individual needs, has influenced educational policies throughout the world, including Hong Kong. The impart of Tomlinson's model on curriculum planning is recognized widely and informed thinking on this project. Reported benefits include addressing students' readiness and interest in learning related to content, process, product and learning environment. © 2023 Informa UK Limited.

More and more students are exploring overseas destinations and English-Medium Instruction (EMI) environments for their postgraduate studies. While it is known that students can often struggle in an EMI environment, the challenges faced by postgraduate students, and the support they receive or need, are not fully understood. By adopting a two-stage qualitative sequential data collection approach, this study explored the experiences and perceptions of full-time postgraduate students from Mainland China studying in a one-year Master of Education programme at a Hong Kong university during their first semester. Data were collected through an online survey ( N = 73) and three in-depth group interviews ( N = 12). The analysis of data offered a holistic understanding of the students’ challenges, needs, and struggles. The findings provide suggestions for support that teachers and programmes can provide to postgraduate students, as well as student self-help support strategies. Several sustainable support strategies are proposed to assist students in adjusting and succeeding in the EMI context at the postgraduate level. © 2023 by the authors.

As typical innovation organizations, the structure and efficiency of cooperation among universities’ innovation behaviors are important influencing factors for regional innovation sustainable development. In 2019, the Chinese government promulgated the “Outline of the Development Plan of The Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao Great Bay Area”, which directly promotes a sustainable cooperation network of universities in the Great Bay Area. This study used UCINET to visualize the cooperation network of universities in Guangdong, Hong Kong, and Macao based on the cooperation data generated by 35 universities in the Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Great Bay Area, jointly establishing 37 professional alliances that developed 888 cooperation ties from 2017 to 2022. The results show that the current cooperative network density of universities in the Great Bay Area is high (density = 0.746), but the cohesion trend is not significant (network centralization = 26.92%); a clear circle structure has been formed. The network exhibits a narrow shape at both ends and widens in the middle; the higher the hierarchical position of universities in the region, the more likely they are to enter the core cooperation network and establish more cooperation relationships. Universities in the marginal circles find it especially difficult to initiate cooperative relationships due to their disadvantageous position in terms of limited resources and a lack of administrative intervention. The current cooperation situation still has room for expansion. © 2023 by the authors.

Despite extensive research on student teachers' engagement with university coursework, teaching practicums, and research projects in teacher education curriculums, empirical studies on the coherence among these components are lacking. Coherence refers to the degree to which curriculum supports, reinforces , and reflects shared goals. This research explores curriculum coherence and its influences on teacher learning in a Hong Kong pre-service language teacher education program. The study attempts to answer: How do student teachers perceive the connections between the university courses, teaching practicum, and research projects in the program? © 2023 Informa UK Limited.

Purpose This research studies the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on the operation management of Hong Kong academic libraries for understanding the difficulties and challenges for librarians to adapt to the special arrangements during the pandemic. Design/methodology/approach Qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted with librarians in major universities and higher education institutions of Hong Kong. Participants were interviewed either in the face-to-face format or text-based format. Findings Participants provided a broad scope about the actual library management and operation changes during the COVID-19. According to the respondents, the most challenging problem for librarians during COVID-19 was to strike a balance between concerns of library staff and users. While they described how these arrangements and changes affected the service quality of academic libraries from different perspectives, the pandemic situation also brought some opportunities, such as pushing the digitalization of all collections and using online resources for future development. A hybrid model for library service would be more common in the future with more demands toward online resources and digital collection, in which academic libraries should be prepared after the pandemic. Originality/value This paper provided broad insights into library management and the future development of academic libraries for the post-COVID-19 period. There are scant studies of this topic, especially in an Asian metropolis context with dense population, small campus and limited library physical spaces. © 2023 Emerald Publishing Limited.

The creation of bay areas is one way to develop economies and culture based on natural characteristics and regional connections; successful examples include the San Francisco, New York and Tokyo Bay Areas. In 2019, China established the Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macau Greater Bay Area (GBA). As a result of historical and geographical factors, the GBA is uniquely characterised by being subject to ‘one country, two systems’, ‘three customs territories’, and ‘three legal systems’. This study offered ample empirical evidence based on qualitative methods referring to in-depth interviews with academics and managers as well as publicly available policies and literature in the GBA. A thematic analysis was used to explore the context and characteristics of developing higher education (HE) in the GBA. The study emphasised that developing GBA’s HE improved its partnerships from co-operation to strategic co-ordination to resource sharing. This research contributes to HE and its governance in the GBA, a topic on which there is limited information in the extant international research literature. It is also useful to policymakers and scholars as it provides potential strategies and insights regarding the development of regional higher education. © The Author(s) 2023.

Publication pressure is perceived to be filtering down into doctoral education worldwide. We explore the causes and effects of the perceived centrality of publishing among doctoral students, emphasising the impact of publication pressure on students’ identity trajectories. We draw on a qualitative analysis of 90 mainland Chinese doctoral students at universities in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macau. We find that the credentialisation of publications in the increasingly competitive and publication-dominant academic labour market results in publishing-centred doctoral journeys. Our key finding is that the centrality of publishing affects every aspect of identity trajectory development: it causes doctoral students to commodify knowledge production, devalues coursework, conference participation, and teaching assistantships, encourages students to regard their supervisors as publishing facilitators and their peers as rivals rather than collaborators, and marginalises engagement with external stakeholders. In discussing these dimensions, we emphasise the need for a more comprehensive evaluation of candidates’ abilities and honours in academic recruitment and call for policies to curtail the overemphasis on research output in academic evaluations. © 2022 Society for Research into Higher Education.

The hegemonic wave of neoliberalism in higher education does not eradicate academic freedom in universities one by one. The possibility of resistance necessarily exists within the configuration of contemporary power relations. This study contributes to the theoretical debate on how global neoliberal forces are reproduced with local characteristics by providing a Hong Kong case. Based on interviews with 15 academics, their reactions and responses to a specific research evaluation system in Hong Kong, namely the Research Assessment Exercise 2020, are examined. The findings suggest that academic freedom has survived by adopting different forms of ‘masked resistance’ in the highly performative culture of Hong Kong academia. Such masked acts of resistance include ‘criticisms behind the curtain of conformity’, ‘scepticism and feigned compliance’, ‘cautious acceptance with substantial reservations’, ‘no reaction as an expression of muted dissatisfaction’, and ‘defence without rupture’. The ‘specificity’ of such inconsistent, ambivalent and nuanced responses is discussed by drawing on several local contextual factors: the political–educational culture, the government–institution relationship, and the disciplinary knowledge tradition. This study calls for greater flexibility in assessment regimes to make room for academics’ professional autonomy, which in essence enables, rather than dismantles, accountability in managerial reforms. © International Association of Universities 2021.

This study examines how new ways of learning (NWL) affects students’ study engagement and learning satisfaction with online teaching, and whether subject lecturer support moderates the effect of NWL and study engagement on learning satisfaction. Undergraduate students in Hong Kong were invited to complete a survey about their experience of online teaching. Hierarchical regression analysis indicated that NWL were positively related to study engagement and learning satisfaction. Subject lecturer support moderated the relationship between NWL and study engagement, which mediated their interactive effect on learning satisfaction. The results imply that academic institutions can transform traditional face-to-face teaching into online teaching that achieves learning satisfaction for students. © 2023 The Author(s).

Schools have been considered crucial social contexts for character formation. Hong Kong’s recent education policy has put moral and character education on the agenda of early childhood education (ECE); it states that moral and character education should be integrated into the major kindergarten subjects. However, questions remain on how it should be integrated into the ECE subject areas. Music has been officially identified as part of kindergartens’ daily activities. Scholarship has established the inextricable interconnection between character development and music participation. This study aims to explore subject-based implementation of the moral education through the lens of musical instructions. Literature confirms school leaders’ impact on shaping the implementation of policy, hence, school leaders’ perceptions and challenges regarding the implementation of this newly emphasized policy was explored through semi-structured interviews with 12 purposively selected principals. The results reveal that the principals valued using music education to teach children about morals and ethics, but found that they faced hurdles in the implementation, e.g. teachers’ insufficient pedagogical content knowledge and parents’ attitude. This study identifies traditionalism as the most prevailing view in kindergarten principals’ conceptualizations of moral education. Musical activities for moral education that principals support are play-based but adult-guided. © 2023 The Author(s).