The increasing number of Mainland Chinese immigrant children with difficulties in Hong Kong schools mandates understanding of the complex interactions between cultural-linguistic differences and disabilities. This case study adopted narrative inquiry to probe deep into participants' lived experiences to reveal 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. Researchers called for government policies to integrate special and multicultural teacher education.
[Copyright © Elsevier Ltd.].

School-based Assessment (SBA) in English Language is a new core component recently included in the Hong Kong university entrance public examination. It goes together with the promotion of an assessment for learning culture, in which enhancing students' learning is the major concern. This initiative marks an important and ambitious change in examination policy and school practice. Besides its assessment function, feedback forms a prominent tool in facilitating student progress in learning. It is important to understand students' perspectives towards feedback as students' ability to learn from feedback relates to their capacity to make sense of and apply feedback to further their learning. This study looks at students' perceptions of feedback in SBA and whether students react to feedback as a means to 'feed-forward'. The data were gathered from forty-five Form 5 (Grade 11) students in 3 schools through student focus groups and semi-structured interview with teachers. Findings suggest that students did not react in the same way to assessment feedback. Not all students had the strategies to effectively collect, organize and use feedback. The findings suggest that it is through mutual construction of achievement and improvement that students can become active participants in the process of classroom assessment and feedback.
[Copyright © Malaysian English Language Teaching Association (MELTA)].

This chapter aims to enhance teacher’s knowledge of the codes of ethics in counselling, to heighten their awareness of ethical issues and their competence in handling them, and to highlight the need for recognizing professional counselling work. The chapter begins with an exposition of the necessity for teachers to study counselling ethics, followed by a discussion of the importance and limits of the ethical codes, covering also significant ethical issues relevant to school counselling. In the discussions a case study format is adopted. By referring to several typical school counselling cases, the complicated and contradictory nature of ethical issues is illustrated. On the basis of the ethical codes laid down by Western and local professional counselling organizations, methods appropriate to the Hong Kong school culture and social environment are proposed.

This chapter aims at giving teachers a comprehensive view of the origin of guidance, the development of school guidance in Hong Kong and the impact of social changes on the implementation of school guidance. In this chapter, two major policies concerning school guidance in Hong Kong will be introduced: (1) Whole-school Approach to Guidance, and (2) Comprehensive Student Guidance Service. The rationale, objectives, principles and strategies of the implementation of these policies will be explained with a view to reflecting on how to work with the present approach of school guidance service, help students develop the abilities required in everyday life and meet the challenges they encounter in their personal growth and development.