This study draws on the findings from a STEM education project to examine Hong Kong in-service primary school teachers’ perceived challenges in implementing STEM education, the support they received in STEM teacher professional development (STEM TPD), and their needs for future STEM TPD. The study engaged teacher professional development through a school-university partnership and adopted a practitioner research approach that aimed at enhancing primary school teachers’ professional capacity of designing STEM activities relevant to the Hong Kong curriculum, with an emphasis on the learning of crosscutting concepts and inquiry-based teaching. STEM TPD is aimed at collaborative curriculum development as an opportunity to foster active learning through co-creating curriculum materials among teachers and university facilitators. Twelve primary school teachers from various subject teaching backgrounds were interviewed. Semi-structured interviews were carried out to collect the teachers’ experiences with the STEM TPD and their views on the integration of cross-cutting concepts in designing STEM lessons. Findings of the study revealed teachers' perceived challenges during the preparation and teaching phases related to STEM instruction and lesson planning, limited resources, and other concerns embedded in broader contextual situations. While teachers reported to have received different types of support from the STEM TPD relating to the pedagogical knowledge of STEM, future directions for STEM TPD were expressed in relation to content components of STEM TPD, opportunities for authentic learning and first-hand experiences, and coherence. Finally, this chapter discusses areas that need to be resolved before a further enhancement in terms of quality and quantity of STEM lessons could be expected. Copyright © 2022 The Author(s).

Trees are living organisms that are subject to attack by decay or disease-causing natural enemies as well as weather adversities and long-term climate change in the course of their life span. When they suffer from these intrusions or extensive damage by typhoons, they often express visible symptoms, which may be structural or physiological. Initiated by a group of scholars at The Education University of Hong Kong, with the involvement of student-teachers as well as teachers and students in primary and secondary schools, a project, “Life Education and Citizen Science through Tree Protection and Conservation”, was launched with the objectives of caring, respecting and acting for our nature from preserving trees and enhancing citizens’ contribution to protecting the environment. The initial project experiences revealed that students acquired knowledge and skills in tree assessment and also cultivated positive attitudes towards tree conservation, which are relevant to the balanced development of knowledge, skills, values and attitudes in this new century. Copyright © 2023 selection and editorial matter, Kerry J. Kennedy, Margarita Pavlova and John Chi-Kin Lee; individual chapters, the contributors.

In many disciplines of STEM education, online experiments (OEs), commonly called remote-controlled experiments, become an emerging practice in technology-enhanced learning because of their many merits perceived in educational research. We recently formulated an innovative, low-cost, and open-source approach to developing new OEs rapidly. It won a gold medal and a special prize in an international innovation and invention competition in 2018. Using this new approach, teachers and students can easily access OEs with a lightweight web browser using any hardware and any operating system without installing additional software or apps. They can observe and/or control the experiments and collect authentic data (over a very short or long time) for further analysis by plotting graphs and/or conducting calculations to obtain important results. Some well-accepted instructional approaches or pedagogies have been integrated into online science/STEM experiments, which can also be aligned with school-based curricula to provide self-contained courseware for students’ online self-regulated learning. In this chapter, we will focus on whether OEs could really and effectively provide the essential elements of experimental learning to ‘school students’ as expected in traditional laboratory work. From our pilot implementation in four Hong Kong (HK) and Mainland China (CHINA) secondary schools with a total of 172 participants, we explored the OE experiences of different experiments and cognitive performance among students from different regions and genders using the conventional mixed methods research and design-based research. Students’ feedback and suggestions for improvement of the OEs were also analysed together with some specific implications for science/STEM education. Copyright © 2022 The Author(s).

Life education, originating in the West, has been an increasingly important source of moral and values education in the Greater China region. Life education, to some extent, is linked with different kinds of values education that encompasses moral and citizenship education, environmental education as well as religious and spiritual education. In the 21st century, life education could also be complementary to positive education that is related to the development of positive (life) values and the pursuit of well-being. Life education also echoes with health education under the impact of COVID-19 along with life and planning education including life-long learning perspectives. This chapter explores the theoretical and practical connections between life education, positive education and other values education and proposes an integrated and holistic approach to curriculum development for the context of Hong Kong. Copyright © 2023 selection and editorial matter, Kerry J. Kennedy, Margarita Pavlova and John Chi-Kin Lee; individual chapters, the contributors.

Unprecedented developments in communication and technology have resulted in numerous opportunities for personal and professional contact. The emerging trend of actual and virtual spaces for professional engagement demands that younger generations be equipped with values and skills that govern their everyday interactions with people from diverse backgrounds. Although determining the role of education in preparing future generations should be straightforward, devising inclusive education and supporting students with diverse educational needs in schools is demanding. This chapter investigates the intersection of inclusive education, soft skills and hard values and situates the discussion in the educational context of Hong Kong. It identifies the issues and challenges of inclusion in Hong Kong’s education system and underscores the lack of focus on soft skills and values in education. It then proposes ways to cultivate soft skills and values among students and teachers to promote inclusive education in the city. In addition, this chapter highlights possible ways that schools can prepare students with special educational needs for a competitive working environment and offer equal learning opportunities for all students. Copyright © 2023 selection and editorial matter, Kerry J. Kennedy, Margarita Pavlova and John Chi-Kin Lee; individual chapters, the contributors.

BACKGROUND: The potential of natural language processing tools such as chatbots in learning a second or foreign language has not yet been fully realised (Dale, 2016; Fryer et al., 2019). Language learning occurs through interaction with classmates and teachers, which provides comprehensible input, feedback on output and the opportunity to modify output (Mackey, 2012). Chatbots can serve as an always-on source of interaction. In this study, a chatbot was designed and deployed using Dialog flow Messenger. It acts as a conversational interface for English learners and is available on our website or as a mobile application (app). Language learning is most effective when it is immediate and contextual, so this chatbot not only ‘chats’ but also guides learners to appropriate language study resources. It puts students in control of their learning by answering specific questions (e.g., How do I refer to sources in written texts and oral presentations?, Where can I find IELTS materials?, What is the present perfect?); providing customised learning options; and allowing students to learn at their own level, pace, and at a time of their choosing. This study investigates English language students’ attitudes, beliefs, and perceptions towards using a customised chatbot to enhance language learning.METHODS: Participants consisted of students and teachers (n=4) from a compulsory English for Academic Purposes course at the largest public university in Hong Kong. In this study, the students (n=76) had access to the chatbot for two months. Data on attitudes, beliefs and perceptions regarding the chatbot were collected using a questionnaire and focus groups; transcripts were collected to identify questions put to the chatbot. This mix of methods was chosen to provide rich, detailed, and complex accounts of users’ experiences.RESULTS: Findings from the questionnaire and focus groups are consistent with previous research that reported positive learning experiences with chatbots (Fryer & Carpenter

BACKGROUND: This study introduces the English Language Centre’s Personal Learning Assistant, namely chatbot, an innovative language teaching and study tool for independent and effective language learning. This relatively new and under-researched area of study will, through the use of chatbots, open new and exciting teaching opportunities (Kessler, 2018). Chatbots necessitate communicative exchange, thus enhancing dialogue-based learning (Fryer et al., 2017; Thompson, Gallacher, & Howarth, 2018). In English language acquisition, teachers traditionally adopt a facilitator role. In contrast, chatbots, as conversational agents, provide students with a natural language interface. In many contexts, including English as a second language (ESL) and English as a foreign language (EFL), technology has been developed to assist language learners. However, there is still a need to practice the language with an on-demand ‘conversational partner’ (Kim, 2017), and chatbots can address this requirement (Shawar, 2017; Wang & Petrina, 2013). This study investigates how students perceive the Personal Learning Assistant as a supplement to direct teacher input in language learning.METHODS: Participants consisted of students from a general English course at the largest public university in Hong Kong. The study adopted an exploratory qualitative approach, collecting two types of data in two phases. The first phase, a questionnaire (n=47), provided an overall picture of the research problem and informed the second phase of data collection, which comprised semi structured interviews (n=12) (Ivankova, Creswell, & Stick, 2006). Thematic analysis of the interviews allowed the researcher to interpret participants’ voices and gain a holistic understanding of their views.RESULTS: The questionnaires and semi-structured interviews revealed that participants preferred the chatbot to traditional study methods such as visiting a library or asking a teacher. They benefited from unlimited opportunities to