There is little consensus among different early childhood education stakeholders in Hong Kong on whether it is beneficial or detrimental for children to receive an English bilingual education before the age of 6. This longitudinal study investigated the issue of potential detrimental effects of learning English' on Hong Kong kindergarten children's performance in L1(Cantonese) and L2(English) over a six-month period. The sample consisted of 53 children, 29 of whom went to international schools and received 90 minutes of daily in-class English instruction, and 24 of whom went to local schools, and received 20 minutes of daily in-class English instruction. Analyses of the relationship between L1 and L2 development showed no evidence that learning a second language is detrimental to the learning of the first. This was despite the large difference in the amount of in-school instruction time the children who went to local vs. international schools received. Children in the international schools vastly outperformed those in the local schools in English. We found no evidence that learning a second language is detrimental to learning more general cognitive skills. The results provided very weak evidence for the opposite. Thus, learning English as a second language in Hong Kong before the age of 6 did not harm children's learning in any way.
[Copyright of Early Child Development and Care is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03004430.2013.788819]

This paper reports on a qualitative study that investigated the lived experiences of a group of pre-service English language teachers during a teaching practicum in Hong Kong. Multiple, in-depth interviews with student teachers were conducted during a 6-week practicum to understand the students' experiences of becoming teachers. A contribution of this study is to use the analytic lens of teacher identity to understand the challenges, one group of pre-service teachers confronted as they positioned themselves, and were positioned by others, as particular types of teachers during their practicum. The results of this study suggest that a critical perspective, grounded in an identity-theoretic understanding of pre-service teachers' practicum experiences, is needed to reveal and then overcome antagonistic relations that might threaten the identity work of trainee teachers. Endorsing calls to rethink the practicum, the types of support that might be offered to pre-service teachers are critically examined and suggestions for the ways in which stakeholders, such as teacher educators and school-based supporting teachers, can best facilitate the identity work of pre-service teachers undertaking a teaching practicum are offered. Implications for future research are also discussed.
[Copyright of Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1359866X.2013.838621]

This pilot study is to examine whether it is valuable to implement jazz choral practice in Hong Kong primary school setting. The findings can serve as a reference to explore the possibilities of promoting jazz education in Asian countries or in China. The participants were 70 public primary school students from grade 2 to 5 in Hong Kong. All participants were asked to sing jazz warm up exercises written by Kirby Shaw in their choral rehearsals. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected. Findings were presented from two perspectives - student perspective and observer perspective - in this study. After rehearsals, students were asked to complete a questionnaire related to the response in singing jazz music. Video recording and field notes were captured to observe the behaviour and expression of the participants. Six dimensions of contents were observed during the rehearsal including physical actions, verbal behaviour, expressive behaviour, spatial relations, temporal patterns and verbal records. The results have indicated that it is beneficial to use Jazz warm up exercises in the traditional choral practice in Hong Kong primary school setting.
[Copyright of Music Education Research is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14613808.2013.788142]

The Hospital Authority employs over 60,000 staff and manages 41 public hospitals and institutions, 47 specialist outpatient clinics and 74 general outpatient clinics throughout Hong Kong. It received HK$41.14 billion (L3.475 billion) of funding from the government in the year 2012 to 2013, which represented 92% of its funding income (Census & Statistics Department, 2013). This public healthcare system uses 3% of the Hong Kong gross domestic product (GDP) to provide 88% of inpatient services and 28% outpatient services locally, while the private sector provides only 12% of inpatient services and 72% of outpatient services with 2.3% of GDP. There is a heavy reliance on the public sector to provide healthcare to most of the patients requiring more intensive hospitalization. Hong Kong currently only has about 280 specialists in psychiatry serving a population of over 7 million people, of whom 90 work in the private sector. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) Mental Health Atlas 2011 country profiles (WHO, 2011), the number of psychiatrists per 100,000 population is 4.39, compared to 12.76 in Australia, 10.1 in Japan, 5.12 in Korea, and 2.81 in Singapore. There is a shortage of psychiatrists, especially in the public mental health sector, which urgently needs to be tackled. This article looks at the current trend in psychiatry teaching and recruitment from medical school and the training scheme provided by the Hong Kong College of Psychiatrists.
[Copyright of International Review of Psychiatry is the property of Informa Healthcare. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.3109/09540261.2013.816656]

This article adds to computer-assisted language learning by extending a study on an essay critiquing system (ECS) feedback to secondary school language learners' writing. The study compared two groups of participants' performance, namely the treatment group which received both the system feedback and teacher feedback (i.e., blended learning mode), and the control group which received teacher feedback only. The study was conducted in a secondary school in Hong Kong in the form of an extra-curricular activity after school. Fifty-three students from the ages of 16 to 17 with different argumentative writing experience participated in a series of five writing workshops once a month voluntarily. The participants were assigned to a treatment and a control group based on the stratification approach. Their scores were compared and an interview with the treatment group was conducted. Analysing the total and content and organisation scores of the two groups, it was found that both groups demonstrated statistical significant gains. Nevertheless, the treatment group's gain appears to be more meaningful than the control group's in view of its group composition. The blended learning mode contributes to the encouraging results as revealed through the treatment group's scores, high rating and positive comments on both system and teacher feedback in the survey and interviews. The analysis also implies the need to improve the system feedback on paragraph coherence, workshop design and grading criteria.
[Copyright of Computer Assisted Language Learning is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09588221.2011.630672]