This study compared the structure and level of Chinese teachers' compensation in public or non-profit-making early childhood settings in Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Singapore, and Taipei. Document analysis method was employed to compare the compensation structure, and two indicators were used to compare the pay level: (1) the Economist's Big Mac Index and (2) the house price-to-income ratio. The results indicated that: (1) Hong Kong employs a single-salary scheme, whereas the other cities use a mixture of competency-based plus performance-based compensation; (2) Taipei's compensation system features the most comprehensive structure, the highest hourly pay, and the shortest working hours, whereas Singapore's system features the lowest pay level and the longest working hours; and (3) Taipei's early childhood teachers have the strongest purchasing power in housing, whereas Singapore teachers have the weakest purchasing power in food and housing. Implications and suggestions are made to address the challenges facing the compensation of Chinese early childhood teachers. Copyright © 2014 Li; licensee Springer.

Using a qualitative descriptive design, researchers describe andidentify similarities and differences in the professional preparation of infant-toddler care and education (ITCE) teachers at university based teacher education programmes in Hong Kong China, Aotearoa New Zealand, and the USA. Researchers overview the ITCE landscape, describe statutory regulations, and consider major documents and prevalent ideas influencing ITCE teacher education in their respective countries. Key findings are presented from each researcher’s analysis of the teacher education programmes at their own institutions and then summarised in descriptive narratives around four major themes: (1) country-specific values, (2) pedagogical elements, (3) curriculum focus, and (4) teaching practicum expectations. On the basis of a dialogic deliberative process, the three researchers then discuss the findings together by deliberating upon how culture in the forms of norms, values, prevailing beliefs, and expectations, appeared to–intentionally or unintentionally–shape the three different approaches to preparing students to become fully-qualified teachers of infants and toddlers. Copyright © 2023 TACTYC.

This chapter aims to briefly review the recent developments in early childhood education in Chinese societies such as the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan. Varying greatly in political and economic contexts, these societies share some common patterns and face similar challenges in their development. First, this chapter analyzes the shifting landscape in Chinese economies and societies with a focus on the changes in education systems and policies and the associated impact. Second, it evaluates all the efforts that these societies have made to promote the accessibility, affordability, and accountability of early childhood education in the past decades. Third, it critically reflects on the early childhood curriculum reforms and pedagogical changes in these societies. Last, this chapter summarizes the challenges in defining culturally appropriate early childhood education in a globalized world as well as the lessons that we could learn from these Chinese societies.

In this paper the notion of critical practice in English language education (ELE) is explored through examples from the critical work of educators and researchers in Hong Kong. The paper then concludes with a discussion of both the challenges and possibilities of engaging in critical practice in ELE in Hong Kong and possibly in other East Asian contexts, where similar cultures of teaching and learning predominate.

This article reports the findings of a multi-site qualitative study of 31 Chinese homeschooling families in Taipei and Hong Kong. Homeschooling, a significant source of inspiration for school innovation, has been growing around the globe in recent years, particularly in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic highlighting the challenges facing mainstream schools. The findings reveal that the families under study chose to homeschool their children mainly because they were dissatisfied with mainstream schools in the Chinese context, which, as they described, were not sufficiently child-centric. Notably, their homeschooling practices were highly diversified and hybridised, including a variety of organisational methods, actors, and materials. Based on lessons learned from homeschooling, the findings indicate the need for mainstream schools to reimagine their relations with families and the outside world in terms of pedagogic time, space, relations, and resources to better respond to every student’s unique needs as well as the challenges ahead in the post-pandemic world. Copyright © 2023 Educational Review.

Higher education professional development trends increasingly focus on areas of quality improvement, quality assurance and optimal technology delivery models to achieve academic excellence. World-class universities rely on their faculty professional development centres for an array of professional development programmes to support teaching, research and student learning. This article examines faculty development centres at eight world-class universities in Australia, China, the United Kingdom and the United States: Australian National University, London School of Economics and Political Science, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Hong Kong, University of Melbourne, University of Oxford, University of Pennsylvania and University of Pittsburgh. Findings from this study include the structural characteristics of each centre as well as a summary of best practices in terms of programme development and resource management. We provide suggestions and recommendations to assist higher education administrators interested in establishing or strengthening professional development programmes at their own institutions. Copyright © 2015 Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. All rights reserved.

An exploration of children’s lifeworlds must necessarily go beyond school, to consider children’s everyday out-of-school lives. In this chapter, we focus on the out-of-school activities of Year 4 (9- and 10-year-old) children in the global cities of Melbourne, Hong Kong, and Singapore. We draw on survey responses from 627 children to consider their activities on weekdays after school and weekends, as well as their enjoyment of these activities. Leisure activities were most common across the cities, which are likely to be easily accessible to children, along with the academic activity of homework. To provide a closer reflection on children’s lifeworlds, we also explore the out-of-school activities of one child in each city, drawing on data (re)produced as a re-enactment of their Thursday afternoons, and a discussion of their regular activities across a week. We suggest similarities amongst the children’s activities may be partly attributed to shared features of their lives, such as their age and positioning as children, temporality, school attendance, and location in a global city, rather than constituting a universal global childhood. We also reflect on the need to consider diversity amongst children within cities to provide a more complex picture of children’s everyday out-of-school lifeworlds. Copyright © 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

This chapter draws on the Global Childhoods ethnographic data from Year 4 classrooms in Hong Kong, Melbourne and Singapore to elucidate what everyday learning looks like in the three global cities. Acknowledging that learning assumes varied shapes and forms, our primary focus aims to explicate some key features of everyday classroom life in each city, with a focus on time and space. In doing so, we examine the class timetables and explore how time was organised in the schools, and consider the design of classrooms and playgrounds, including the ways in which these spaces were typically used by students and teachers to create learning opportunities. Our analyses are situated within the position of critical onto-epistemological perspective though which we offered critical insights to provoke new understandings about how educational practices are deeply situated within local sociocultural contexts with greater implications for broader learning outcomes and students’ educational success. We seek to provide discussions that are both critical and comparative for rethinking the ways in which opportunities, challenges and diversity in the three education systems became evident from the classroom ethnographies. We also consider the implications of structured learning for shaping children’s multiple ways of being, belonging and becoming learners. Copyright © 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

This chapter considers the articulation of education discourse through visual representations of curriculum policies in Australia, Hong Kong and Singapore under the umbrella of the Global Childhoods project. We are concerned with the ways that policy and culture are co-implicated in the everyday lives of children in global cities. We explore how, in contexts of high-stakes testing, rankings and intense competition, discourses of education are depicted in officially produced visual texts. Texts selected for analysis here focus on curriculum content, learning, and the imagined skills and characteristics of idealised learner-citizens. Drawing insights from social semiotics and using Foucauldian notions of discourse and governmentality, we show how these visual policy texts represent education in broadly instrumentalist terms concerned with “what” and “who” is being taught in a nation’s schools. In all three study sites, these concerns connect to broader economic and social goals, and tacitly reiterate ideologically inflected narratives concerned with the purposes and potential of education. We highlight distinctions between visual policy texts that acknowledge education as an interconnected human endeavour, and those that rely on imagery and bounded lists. We also argue that such images and lists are largely devoid of reference to the students, teachers and societies. Copyright © 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.