This article reports the results of a case study involving two ethnic Chinese students, one from Malaysia and one from Indonesia, who chose to pursue higher education in Hong Kong. By placing the students at the centre of an investigation of the social, political, economic and educational contexts of their home countries and host territory, the study sought to gain a holistic understanding of cross-border mobility. The findings suggested that the students’ personal backgrounds and dispositions mediated the external push-pull factors involved in their decisions. The data showed that the two students’ cross-border mobility allowed them to redefine their ethnic identities and create global academic and professional identities. The implications of the purposes of cross-border mobility and methods for examining student mobility are discussed.
[Copyright © 2016 Springer Science+Business Media Singapore.]

Global student mobility and the internationalisation of higher education is characterized by the movement of Asian students to North America, Europe and Australasia. Recently the global student mobility has featured the entry of many Asian providers including Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia. This growing international presence is attributed to policy settings in each country designed to promote the notion of “education hubs”. This paper reports on qualitative structured interviews with over 60 international students studying in Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia. The students interviewed were from China, Italy, Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Indonesian, Myanmar, Germany, Thailand and Jordan and were studying a mix of postgraduate, undergraduate and pre-university studies. The paper reports on the reasons for studying and motivations for an Asian destination and their experiences of the academic and social environments of their host countries. The paper documents the social and cultural challenges that students experience particularly in dealing in a multilingual environment where English is used as the language of instruction. The research also looks at the ambitions of the students and their future plans. The interviews also provide evidence of some of the strengths and challenges for providers in Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia in securing a position as leading providers of international education. From the experience of students and interviews with some administrators, the paper also reports on the commonalities and differences associated with the development of “education hubs” in Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia.

Hong Kong secondary schools are concerned about the prevalence of student misbehavior. This paper reports the finding of a study investigating the characteristics of a resilient school and how resiliency was developed. Case studies of four secondary schools were conducted using interviews and textual analysis. Teacher and student discourses on discipline and resiliency were explored from the perspective of social constructivism. The narrative approach will also be employed (Clandinin & Connelly, 1995). The similarities and differences between school features were identified. Qualitative data from interviews and school texts, i.e., data concerning the school ethos, school rules, policy on behavior management, and the handbook for the school guidance team and school discipline team, were collected. Themes generated from the data were analysed, with the use of Grounded Theory Approach (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). The findings have shown that the narratives of school participants revealed the features of school resiliency, which could be built up with the dynamics of school, home, police force and social workers. Implications for the development of guidance and discipline policies and that of resiliency programme will be given. There will also be policy implications for the enrichment of teacher training programs.

Sending children to school is a big issue to thousands of parents. In order to enroll a ‘desirable’ primary school, parents spend plenty of time in getting an application form and to prepare their children to take the grade one admission test. It seems that going to school is very significant in the eye of the parents; however, what is school really meant to children? This study which aims at describing the feelings and thoughts of children about school, interviewed with 54 students in three primary schools. Results show that most children like going to school due to the variety of school lives like meting friends during recesses. Lessons like physical education, arts and craft were very attractive. They also felt that going to school is necessary. Some children believed that the aim of study and the main role of being students was to achieve good results. As educators, we need to listen to children’s voices and examine their perspectives and opinions carefully because they would provide us with a remarkable reflection of how to run an ideal school.
[Copyright © 2000 The Hong Kong Institute of Education.]

The increasing number of Mainland Chinese immigrant children in the Hong Kong school system mandates our understanding of teacher readiness to work effectively with these students. This case study adopted narrative inquiry to probe deep into participants’ lived experiences to reveal significant insight into teacher readiness in working with Chinese immigrant students with disabilities. Data sources included field notes, unstructured- and semi-structured interviews, and classroom observations. Findings showed that the special education teacher was primarily concerned about the student participant’s difficulty associated with his disabilities, totally unaware of the impact of her limited proficiency in the child’s first language. The government’s concept of acculturation needs and subsequent policy contributed greatly to school personnel’s lack of awareness of student needs and lack of readiness to work effectively. Recommendations focused on government policies for qualification requirements of special education teachers and reforms to integrate special and multicultural teacher education.

Noun of locality acts as an indicator to identify the relationship of object location. Anderson (1971) and Lyons (1977) established the Localist Hypothesis and the Localism in the 70s’. They realized that spatial concept can derive other related vocabulary, particularly the extended meaning and metaphor, It plays an important part in the human cognition. When people try to express their spatial concept, direction, shape, or location of the object will be considered. However different culture of people will have very different spatial and locality concepts. Comparative analysis is employed for different meanings and usages of “shang(上)/up/on/in” and “xia(下)/down/under” as words of locality which are commonly used in Chinese, but are often misused by the L2 students (they are the Pakistani primary students in this study) due to the variety and asymmetry of “shang, xia” in their culture, including the two-dimension concept, three-dimension concept and the mechanical movement concept. Based on our analysis, we examine their literal learning difficulties, and to identify their misunderstanding and misuse of locality “shang, xia” on spatial concept. From the result of error analysis, it did reveal the very different spatial and locality concept of Pakistani students with that of the Chinese Hong Kong students. Through the contrastive analysis from linguistic and sociolinguistic perspectives of both languages and culture, it helps us to provide strategic help for the non-Chinese students with focus!

The purpose of this study was to compare attitudes of final year students in teacher preparation programs in Hong Kong and Taiwan toward including students with disabilities into regular settings, and to further examine the influences of attitudes on the development of adapted physical education programs. A 15-item questionnaire was used to investigate students' attitudes and concerns toward inclusion. Seventy-seven students from Hong Kong and Taiwan participated in this study. The results of the survey indicated that students in Hong Kong and Taiwan philosophically support inclusion, although there were many concerns and different opinions regarding inclusion. The survey indicated that students from both locations thought special schools and teachers with special training will provide better education for students with disabilities than general teachers, and indicated the needs for more academic preparation for inclusion. The findings also suggest that without well prepared support services and other accommodations, students with disabilities will not benefit from these educational environments.
[Copyright © 2005 The Hong Kong Institute of Education.]

This article is based on a recently completed research project examining the school experiences of two student groups in Hong Kong: cross-border and newly arrived students from mainland China. The study represents a comparative case study of the school experiences of 18 students from six primary schools with a range of crossborder and mainland immigrant students. The overall objective of the empirical work was to examine the school experiences of the two student groups in Hong Kong from a student perspective. Specifically, the study aimed to find out: (a) their curriculum and social experiences in schools and their coping strategies in adapting to Hong Kong schooling; and (b) their perceptions of and sense of belonging within Hong Kong society. Research methods included student tracking and pre and post tracking indepth individual interviews. Implications for future educational policy of and provision for the two student groups will be offered.

The concern to develop rigorous techniques of assessment for sandwich placement performance seems to be motivated by a number of considerations. Assessment, as is often argued, helps to give the placement, and the experiential learning, which occurs, in the placement, due academic weight, and hence the integration of theory and practice would be given a higher priority. Furthermore, assessment of placement performance is occasionally implicitly used as a proxy for the evaluation of the idea of sandwich placements per se. it is argued here that none of these motives for assessment is strong enough to justify the disruption to placements that an undue emphasis on assessment may produce, and that the final reason, i.e. that assessment stands proxy for evaluation, is just plain illogical. It can be argued therefore, that the use of assessment is to facilitate genuine, meaningful experiential learning; part of a ‘conversation’ between students and teachers (whether placement tutor or on-placement supervisor), which is aimed at an ongoing negotiation of significant personal objectives and an appraisal of the students’ success in fulfilling them. In addition, that the summative assessment processes, as a human and social enterprise, involves three phases: 1. the perception of relevant students’ behaviour; 2. the judgement as to its quality as placement performance, and 3. the communication of this assessment to an audience. When analyzing these processes in detail, it can be deducted that they are fraught eith difficulty, and that they certainly ought not to be used to provide the basis for quantitative measure. In addition, these problems are not amenable to technical solution, that is, there is no possible measuring technique, which could magically render the human process of erecting a scale of measurement of performance. Yet it is justifiable to require an overall report of placement performance. Hence, it is suggested that a qualitative account includes a transcript of