This paper compares teachers’ values (risk-taking, power distance, and uncertainty avoidance) that prevail in Hong Kong and Singapore, and the teachers’ collaborative professional development practices in school to develop insights to how different approaches to school reforms shape convergent / divergent ways of cultivating teachers’ professional capabilities. Using statistical cluster analysis, teachers are sorted into different levels of PLC engagement (high, medium, and low professional capital) in the respective contexts, and compared for differences in teachers’ values relative to their local compatriots. The results are compared between teachers in Hong Kong and Singapore to identify policy implications arising from different approaches to reforms in collaborative teacher professional development in two Chinese contexts. Copyright © 2021 CESHK.

This preliminary study gathered principals’ and teachers’ views of Hong Kong’s citizenship education as well as the ways it could be facilitated for democratic purposes. On some measures the views of both groups were compared while principals were asked what they did to facilitate democratic citizenship education. The findings revealed principals were more positive than teachers in regard to their schools and citizenship education, and attempted to provide teachers with the autonomy to facilitate civic teaching. Teachers perceived more strongly than principals that the Chinese national government has influenced their schools’ attitude to citizenship education and they showed less confidence than principals in the possibility of nurturing students’ patriotism. Copyright © 2021 AERA21.

In polarized and pluralistic societies, schools are critical for nurturing students towards becoming informed, active citizens. This study of 18 school staff (teachers, principals and vice-principals) at six secondary (high) schools showed three paradigms through which they cultivated students to become good citizens while navigating media influences. School staff in the laissez-faire paradigm were facilitators that emphasized knowledge, social concern, and conservative characteristics of “good citizens.” By contrast, staff in the mediate diversity paradigm inform students and share balancing information from other perspectives. Lastly, staff in the school mission paradigm support student engagement in citizen responsibilities and political processes. All staff reported that media influenced students’ values and perspectives, and sought to reduce students' confirmation bias by fostering their critical thinking skills and media literacy. Understanding how school can nurture citizens can inform instruction and policies. Copyright © 2021 CESHK.

Due to the competitive edge it confers on students, educational institutions, and non-English speaking nations in a globalized economy, English as a medium of instruction (EMI) has been gaining popularity in tertiary education in non-native English-speaking (NNES) countries. Institute-wide EMI implementation has often been imposed by top-down decisions, in combination with the optimistic view that the horse should always be placed before the cart. However, emerging evidence suggests that the delivery of such programs to NNES students has led to new pedagogical challenges and learning problems that go beyond the scope of language learning and teaching and deserve immediate attention. For example, how would an instructor respond to situations in which students’ learning of content is compromised by their limited language proficiency? This book draws on the current practice of EMI in diverse disciplines and university settings and examines how these new pedagogical and learning issues can be addressed. The discussion also involves a reflection on the essence of EMI in relation to the use of the first language (L1) as the medium of instruction in tertiary education. In addition, the book includes discussion about how to ensure and maintain the quality of EMI programs and assess the readiness of stakeholders for such programs, which include administrators, teachers, and students. The discussion is led by exemplars in Hong Kong and Taiwan, where the majority of students are native Chinese speakers, in the hope of developing critical perspectives and practical guidelines as references for EMI in other NNES settings. Copyright © 2021 selection and editorial matter, Lily I-wen Su, Hintat Cheung, and Jessica R. W. Wu; individual chapters, the contributors.

This presentation applies interdisciplinary critical approaches to teaching and teacher education with the aim of disrupting schooling inequities found in Hong Kong, and other regions of East, Southeast, and Central Asia. Transgressing typical demarcations between practitioners and scholars, this presentation brings together a diverse panel of EdUHK students, teachers, and teacher educators in primary and secondary classroom settings who are teaching English and Chinese varieties. The background of the teachers involved is a recently-developed program in Hong Kong that helps develop diverse undergraduates, often the first in their family to attend university, to be more transformative teachers and researchers in their everyday practices. The program is The Project for Critical Research, Pedagogy & Praxis (PCRP), which is an 'educational pipeline' that begins with training early undergraduates in critical teaching and research skills, and then branches off into preservice/in-service teaching, postgraduate studies, and collaborative research projects (Chang, 2017). This pipeline project utilizes feminist, critical, and sociocultural theories of learning, pedagogy, and community engagement (Chang, 2013; Gutierrez, 2008; Lau, 2013; Luke, 2018), in an effort to challenge the large disconnects that many EdUHK students have been reporting. These disconnects include just trying to individually matriculate through the university institution, and trying to practice holistic and constructivist pedagogies in Hong Kong and other schooling contexts they experienced in South Korea, mainland China, Thailand, and Kazakhstan. This presentation examines challenges for the PCRP educators as they tried to disrupt common curricula and discourse around cultural deficit, 'teaching to the test,' and banking models of education within their schools, which often included essentialising notions of 'Confucian Heritage Culture' that marginalized students from both Chinese and non-Chinese backgrounds

This chapter aims to introduce the development of and issues related to parent and community engagement in life education in Taiwan and Hong Kong. The development of life education in Taiwan has highly involved parent groups since the early stage. Parents, different community organisations, and school teachers have collaborated closely with each other, enabling a large number of children to have the opportunity to learn about life education. Compared with traditional teaching approaches, alternative ways of conducting life education through parent and community engagement have shown their effectiveness. Utilising various forms of school curriculum such as the Morning Light, Integrated Activity class, and other courses and services, parents join classes and accompany children through activities such as story-telling, drama acting, music, and dancing, bringing a lively atmosphere to life education as well as companionship to their children. Taking the experience of the Rainbow Family Life Education Association as an example, this chapter also discusses parent and community engagement with existing relevant research. Compared with life education in Taiwan, parental involvement in the promotion of life education in Hong Kong tends to be less systematic and there is much room for future enhancement. Copyright © 2021 selection and editorial matter, John Chi-Kin Lee, Stephen Yam-Wing Yip and Raymond Ho-Man Kong; individual chapters, the contributors.

This study aims to investigate, with an action research approach, the possibility of enhancing conscientization by applying critical pedagogy (CP) in the Liberal Studies (LS) curriculum of Hong Kong, in order to introduce a new paradigm of civic education that fosters learners’ transformative actions in sociopolitical issues. Shor’s (1992) model of “empowering education” was taken as the main framework in applying CP. In addition, Shor’s (1992) “Paradigm of Four Domains” was adopted to investigate teachers’ and students’ obstacles and resources in the process. The study was conducted in a local secondary school for approximately 10 weeks, with a Secondary 5 class of 15 students as participants. The findings revealed that there were rich possibilities of conscientization, which means the development of critical consciousness, achieved through applying CP in the LS curriculum. However, some obstacles were found hindering the application of CP in the LS curriculum. Among them were the “teaching to the test” pressure on the teacher and the mentality of didacticism. On students’ side, their weakness in literacy skills and the alienation caused by the authoritarian culture were the main obstacles. Yet, students’ developing interest in experiential learning activities and their willingness for transformative practice were found to be resources that motivated them to learn in the new mode of CP. To complement students’ resources, the willingness and proficiency to support students’ transformative practice, the readiness to explore taboo issues, and an influential relationship with students were the resources that facilitated CP practice on the teacher’s side. This study is significant and advocating in several ways. Throughout this study under the specific school conditions in Hong Kong, Shor’s four-domain paradigm for the practice of CP is developed and enriched. Based on the findings, this study recommends the “Independent Enquiry Study” (IES) in the LS curriculum be expanded

This chapter examines the role of education in the socio-political development of Hong Kong from a historical perspective. Using the framework of “citizenship as process,” it reviews the way in which identity politics and civic movement took place in the condition of a weak political framework for citizenship and explains the Janus-faced nature of the Hong Kong political culture which oscillates between economic instrumentalism and political activism. The chapter proposes how teaching can be designed and conducted for the sake of cultivating a meaningful civic identity and global citizenship against the backdrop of the recent resurgence of nationalism worldwide. It argues that spoon-fed pedagogy of civic and national education is difficult to make positive impact on educational outcome, especially in global and entrepreneurial cities like Hong Kong situated in the digital age. Copyright © 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Using multicultural education as a lens, this article details the discursive formation of Hong Kong’s linguistic landscape with a focus on policy arrangements around teaching Chinese as a second language for non-Chinese ethnic minorities since the early 2000s. We pose two research questions: What are the identifiable policy trends in education for ethnic minorities? And how effective are the policy provisions in managing diversity and social justice for ethnic minorities in Hong Kong? The study draws upon documentary analysis to review existing local literature, which highlight the school admission, curriculum design, language teachers’ professional development practices, and assessment pertaining to the education of ethnic minority students. Our analysis reveals a narrow concentration of policies that focus exclusively on supporting ethnic minority students’ Chinese language learning regarded as the barrier to their advancement in education and an omission of other nonlinguistic, structural and ideological challenges and barriers. This barrier contributes to prejudices in school access, curriculum and assessment that function within an assimilationist integration framework. We call for policy measures that broaden the focus of multicultural education for ethnic minorities and that seek to manage ethnolinguistic diversity for equal citizenship rights in the Asian context. Copyright © 2020 Fang Gao, Jan Gube.