During the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers faced challenges conducting data collection. However, emerging communication technologies, such as web-conferencing platforms, provided an alternative mode of data collection. Among these platforms, Zoom stands out for its functional affordances and unique features that support data collection methods, including screen-capturing, digital photography, drawing, polling, and artifact-based interviews, which attempt to reveal a child's viewpoint and ability. In this article, we explore the feasibility of using Zoom to conduct educational research by investigating the mathematical learning experience among 26 primary 1 and 2 students in Hong Kong on two topics—understanding time and addition and subtraction. Five mathematics teachers were recruited to participate in 2-month online workshops with assessments among three groups of students to understand the suitability for data collection. Based on teachers’ observations and students’ responses, our findings suggest that Zoom is a viable and effective tool for qualitative data collection. It offers a cost-effective method for researchers and educators to examine students’ mathematical performance in an online environment. We also investigate students’ perceptions of online assessment strategies, perceived usefulness of various Zoom functions, and explore the benefits and challenges teachers and students perceived throughout mathematical education using Zoom. However, several technical difficulties were encountered, such as the digital literacy gap and privacy concerns. Therefore, improving students’ digital literacy for remote learning and triangulation is important for online mathematical data collection and assessments. Copyright © 2023 The Author(s).

Portfolio assessment, as an alternative writing assessment approach, has received growing attention in the past few decades. Although the benefits of portfolio assessment are well validated, there is a dearth of empirical research on how portfolio assessment can be sustained over time and the support teachers need to sustain portfolio assessment practice in their teaching contexts. To fill this significant void, the present study examines the influences that contribute to the sustainability of portfolio assessment in second-language writing. Drawing on data from interviews with the principal, English department chair and four English teachers from one elementary school in Hong Kong, as well as classroom observation and teachers’ team meeting observation, the study revealed that administrators’ role in dispersing decision-making authority to teachers, exploiting learning opportunities and providing a stimulating environment for teachers, and the sharing of common vision and goals, as well as collective flows of learning among team members, are the cornerstone of transformation and sustainability for the practice of portfolio assessment. The paper concludes with practical implications on how the innovative attempts in portfolio assessment can be sustained over time. Copyright © 2024 The Author(s).

With a focus on the neglected ‘L2 learning experience’ component in Dörnyei’s L2 Motivational Self System (L2MSS), this study investigated secondary students’ L2 motivation in the context of online English private tutoring (EPT). Through narrative inquiry, students narrated their EPT experience online and reflected on it in comparison with that in the face-to-face environment. Through an initial questionnaire, in-depth interviews and follow-up conversations with 12 senior secondary students in Hong Kong, the study revealed the participants’ generally negative L2 learning experience in online EPT. This negativity stemmed from constant distractions and poor concentration, limited interaction with the tutor and peers and insufficient learning support in the online environment. These experiences disengaged and demotivated the students in the language learning process. The findings contribute to our understanding of the L2 learning experience component in L2MSS and the impact of L2 contexts on students’ L2 motivation. The study indicates that, for our participants, there are some irreplaceable elements in face-to-face tutoring (e.g. physical proximity, facial expressions), lack of which affected students’ engagement and motivation. This highlights the importance of researchers and practitioners in language education taking into account learners’ situated contexts and immediate learning environment when conducting relevant studies on L2 motivation. Copyright © 2024 Association for Language Learning.

A wealth of studies has shed light on how the identity and emotions of English as a Second Language (ESL) teachers are formed and interinfluenced. However, very few studies focus on a specific emotion of ESL teachers that adversely affects teacher professionalism. Drawing upon the notion of melancholy (Brady and Haapala 2003), this chapter conducts narrative inquiry and thematic analysis to investigate how melancholy is experienced by early career English teachers in their narratives. The research is conducted through a longitudinal qualitative multiple-case study of three ESL teachers working in secondary schools for seven years in Hong Kong. Specifically, the chapter elucidates how socio-cultural factors, such as self and personality, school culture, peer relationships, and student performance, contribute to the melancholy experienced by ESL teachers. The findings of this study serve to conceptualize the melancholic sense of ESL teachers regardless of institutional changes and provide implications for enhancing the well-being and career sustainability of ESL teachers in Hong Kong. Copyright © 2024 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

The present study explored the use of digital tools by English language schoolteachers in Hong Kong. Using a qualitative-dominant sequential mixed-methods design, wherein an online mixed-methods survey of primary and secondary school English language teachers (N = 83) and follow-up in-depth interviews (N = 22) were employed, this study collectively explored which digital tools the participants used, why the participants used these tools, and how the participants used them. Fourteen categories of tools utilized by teachers in their professional practice were identified. These were further categorized into core, additional, and remote digital tools based on their mode and frequency of use. Affordances of the core digital tools for language teaching were identified, with examples of teachers’ pedagogical uses of the tools presented. By providing an overview of digital tool use, teachers, school leadership, and professional development providers can better understand how teachers should be prepared for the digital realities of schools. In addition, this study provides a model for understanding the context and subject-specific bidirectional relationship between tools, their affordances, and teachers’ professional tasks. © 2023 by the authors.

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).

The COVID-19 pandemic has instigated considerable unprecedented challenges to tertiary education in the aftermath of the mass shutdown of universities across Hong Kong since early 2020. Accordingly, shifting the traditional modalities to the online model has been opted for as the only reasonable alternative in the breakout period. It is, then, essential for educators to perceive the extent to which students’ learning attainments and experiences have been negatively impacted by these educational changes in the post-pandemic era. With the aim of examining the abrupt changes which the freshmen students’ e-learning experiences and their learning environment have undergone before and after the pandemic, the present quantitative study was conducted at a Liberal Arts Institution in Hong Kong, whose data was collected via the web-based questionnaire FYSLES, or “first-year student learning experience survey”. Quantitative analysis of responses indicated that students’ impressions and experience of liberal arts education, and students’ personalities and skills development, presented a U-shaped trend during the COVID-19 pandemic. The underlying rationale of this study is addressed to higher education policymakers to orient and add value to their safety measures, pertinent recommendations, as well as in context strategies that could be established in view of the pandemic’s detrimental effects. © 2023 by the authors.

Perusall, a web-based collaborative reading platform characterised by its social annotation functionalities, was introduced in a postgraduate teacher-training language-awareness course in Hong Kong during the shift to online teaching and learning brought about by the global COVID-19 pandemic. Tasks were designed on Perusall to engage the participants in reading the literature and references on grammar and lexis teaching and in analyses of coursebook materials and classroom-teaching excerpts. In this article, I discuss why Perusall was adopted, the pedagogic innovations at different stages, the impact this had on sharpening participants’ teacher language awareness, and the implications this has for both teacher education and language learning. I aim to highlight how autonomy can be fostered via effective task design and student-centred pedagogies. I maintain that it is not just the platform that matters but how Perusall is utilised with a strategic blend of synchronous and asynchronous classroom activities and instructor intervention to promote teacher language-awareness gains and the empowerment of teachers as grammar specialists and critical coursebook analysts and users. © The Author(s) 2023.

This study explores teachers’ perspectives with regards to teaching English in virtual classrooms, specifically with regards to teaching English as a second language within the context of emergency remote learning in Hong Kong during COVID-19. Through undertaking thematic analysis of six interviews with English language teachers at a university in Hong Kong, this study explores how teachers view the benefits, challenges and personal and professional consequences of the shift to emergency remote teaching during the pandemic. Taking a social constructivist approach to the topic, the study also seeks to uncover how teachers view such provisions as being improved under future emergencies and with respect to online English language teaching moving forwards generally. This research topic contributes both to a longstanding debate on the ways in which digital technologies can enhance education and language learning, as well as the emerging body of literature examining how teachers and students have responded to the implementation of digital learning in online classrooms during the COVID-19 pandemic. © The Author(s) 2023.

Service-learning (SL) is a pedagogy that can consolidate students' learning of academic knowledge and nurture their care about the needy in the community. In the West, SL is a popular pedagogy to promote civic engagement in high school students. In contrast, although high schools in Hong Kong emphasize the importance of community service provided by high school students, such service is seldom conducted within the context of academic service learning. In response to the lack of systematic academic SL programs for high school students in Hong Kong, we have launched a project supported by Chow Tai Fook Charity Foundation and Keswick Foundation to promote SL amongst high school students in Hong Kong. Besides developing an online training program on Service-Learning for high school students, we argue that there is a need to strengthen the leadership foundation of students who intend to carry out SL. As such, we have developed an online Service Leadership education program based on the Service Leadership Theory, which highlights the importance of 3Cs (competence, character and care) of an effective leader. In this paper, we outline the design and content of an online Service Leadership education program for high school students which is unique in the literature on youth leadership particularly in different Chinese contexts. © 2023 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.