Empirical Research Background: Recent waves of Fullbright and other charity foundations‘ sponsored American English Teaching Assistants (ETAs) integration into tertiary module teaching and learning in Asian countries, has raised concerns whether the ETAs are welcomed by students. Empirical Research Aims: The present study discusses the development and piloting of an instrument to evaluate students‘ perspectives of ETAs‘ role in module teaching and learning in a tertiary context in Hong Kong. Empirical Research Sample: Participants were 153 students from modules that involved ETAs, ranging from first to third year students of four year undergraduate programmes. Empirical Research Method: Students were asked to rate their agreement to 20 statements related to ETAs‘ role in and out of classroom situations on a 4-point category. Empirical Research RASCH: Rasch analysis was used to determine the fit and reliability of the items and the performance of the category structures. Empirical Research Results: Adequate item and person separations were found for all items except for two. Repeated analysis without these items showed improvements in item and person fit and separations. Individual item category structures were generally found to fulfill Linacre‘s (2004) eight guidelines for well performing categories. Empirical Research Conclusions: The resulting 18-item tool is suitable for future evaluations of ETA‘s role in module teaching and learning in tertiary context.

In the era of colonial rule, citizenship education was characterized by depoliticization in which the British government did not allow teachers to do any form of political teaching in schools before the 1990s and there was a lack of any democratic values and critical thinking skills in the content of civic education or social studies curriculum. After the sovereignty was returned to China in 1997, Civic Education in Hong Kong has still been criticized as being apolitical in nature. The intention of developing students with the ideology of participatory democracy and active citizens has been minimised while patriotic and national education has been put in top priority in the curriculum reform since 2001. Interestingly, a few secondary students took initiatives to participate in the mass demonstrations on 1st July and in the candle nights of memorizing the victims in the Tiananmen Square Incident on 4th June every year. The aim of this article is to report a study of how some young people have become active and participatory citizens in an apolitical educational context of Hong Kong. The interpretive methodological approach for collecting and analyzing data was employed in this qualitative study. Based on data collected from focus group and individual interviews with secondary school students and civic education teachers respectively, this article explores how students are socialized to be active and participatory citizens. The results show that students experience primary socialization in schools where civic education teachers having critical mindsets and deep beliefs in pursuing social justice will help catalyze their political socialization process during which the students gradually develop within themselves the passion of civic consciousness and the competence of civic courage. These are the necessary qualities that help facilitate youngsters to participate in social services, social and political gatherings and demonstrations. It is also found that other secondary

Celeste Yuen points out that with their ever increasing migrant populations, diversity is a pressing educational issue for Hong Kong, Singapore and Shanghai. Teachers’ worldview and intercultural sensitivity link with school effectiveness. This paper presents nine case studies of student teachers with high, medium and low intercultural sensitivity from three teacher education institutions as measured by the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) questionnaire survey. An attempt is made to tease out the life factors that contribute to intercultural development, and implications for teacher education are discussed.

Modern classroom learning models have delineated that student characteristics factors, the teaching context and the learning process all have important influence on learning outcomes. Biggs' 3P model of classroom learning has provided a comprehensive conception of the interrelationships of the various components involved. It has also provided a conceptual framework for many studies in student learning in recent years. Following Biggs' conceptual model, this study investigates students' personality characteristics, the learning context as perceived by learners, the way they go about studying and the influence they cast on achievement outcomes. Previous studies have shown that motivational orientations, self-esteem, and the way students approach their learning have effects on their academic achievement. Contextual factors such as course demand, workload pressure or method of assessment also contribute to the final learning outcomes. A number of studies have investigated the nature and the interrelationships of these variables following the quantitative paradigm. While the quantitative approach provides objective, scientific evidence, the opportunity for probing deeper into the phenomenological experiences of the learners is limited. It was believed that an investigation using a qualitative method would bring more light to the subject under study. This study adopts a qualitative approach making use of interview analysis to tap deeper into the causal attributions, self-concept, perceived environment and learning approaches of Hong Kong university students. The objective was to examine the complexities of these characteristics and their impact on academic achievement. The interview sample consisted of 36 students drawn from the construction and engineering discipline in one of the universities in Hong Kong. Of the 36 students, half were high achievers and half low achievers who represented the top 10% and the bottom 10% range of academic results respectively. The author carried

Population of ethnic minorities in Hong Kong has been growing, and many Muslim minorities are now studying in the mainstream kindergarten. In the midst of global wave of Islamophobia and the lack of understanding towards the cultural traditions of local Muslim minorities, this paper explores teaching Islam art as an inclusive attempt of childhood education program. With the example of promoting Islamic art workshop of Hong Kong Islamic schools and madrasahs, this paper foresees broadening Chinese students’ world map and cultural geography through teaching and learning Islamic art. Interacting with ethnic Muslim students, it may help students avoid unintentional insults and errors of etiquette.

This study reconceptualizes and operationalizes peer status in elementary school classrooms by considering both teachers’ and peers’ preferences. Within this framework, a sample of 1411 students (Grades 1-6) in Hong Kong were classified into four types based on combinations of their peers’ and teachers’ preference scores: (1) popular stars—those liked by both peers and teachers; (2) teachers’ pets—those liked by teachers but not by peers; (3) students’ heroes—those liked by peers but not by teachers; and (4) rejected—those disliked by both peers and teachers. Results of MANOVA tests revealed significant differences among the four status groups in their leadership, aggression, social withdrawal, and academic performance. Path analyses showed both similarities and differences among the four status groups in terms of students’ attributes and how they predicted teachers’ and peers’ preferences.
[Copyright © 2015 Canadian Center of Science and Education.]

在2013/14學年就讀公營學校的非華語學童為25,384人，政府以非華語學童政策來照顧這些少數族裔的教育；而因近年南亞裔學童在香港增加，指定學校的存廢和非華語學童學習中文成為了香港教育的爭議課題。為了剖析香港少數族裔學童的教育情況，本文從少數族裔在香港的教育、政府對非華語學童教育的照顧、非華語學童教育的現況、香港指定學校的興替、支援非華語學童的中文學習、非華語學童的其他需要和挑戰等方面作出分析和討論。
[Copyright © 2015 香港青年協會.]

Despite its rapid expansion in many countries around the world, private tutoring has attracted only limited attention from policy makers and researchers. This is especially surprising in the case of Asia, where high rates of private tuition have been reported. In particular, comparatively few studies have considered the views of the individual stakeholders in private tuition; students, parents, teachers, and tutors. This study addresses this research gap by using in-depth interviews to provide detailed descriptions of the challenges one group of private tutors in Hong Kong confronted as they positioned themselves within the teaching profession. The findings expose and problematize discourses which establish a rigid division between educators providing private tutoring and those in mainstream schools and constrain the capacity of the former to construct their preferred professional identities. It is argued that educational authorities should respond to the growth in private tutoring in ways that overcome the antagonisms that such division can imply for professional relations between educators in private tutoring and those in mainstream schools.
[Copyright © 2015 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.]

This article explains why the massification of higher education in Hong Kong has, contrary to the predictions of received wisdom, failed to enhance the upward social mobility of the youth in the city. Building upon recent literature in political science, it argues that massification can take different forms, which in turn determine the effects of massification on various social groups. Through exploring three critical phases in the city’s higher education reform, this article demonstrates how higher education policies have been heavily shaped by the interests of the city’s elites, who, on the one hand, see the expansion of higher education as a solution to such social and economic problems as unemployment and regional integration but, on the other, remain reluctant to increase public spending on the education sector. As a result, higher education has expanded almost exclusively in the private sector. Due to poor planning and implementation, graduates from self-financed programmes are severely disadvantaged in terms of employability, resulting in wage compression and unemployment. The findings of this study shed light on the regressive nature of higher education.
[Copyright © 2015 Routledge.]