Critical content and language-integrated learning (CLIL) has been advocated to attest raciolingusitic ideologies in plurilingual educational settings. However, little is known about how to help students in contesting inequalities about other structures of domination in bilingual education programs. This study aims to address this gap by examining the construction of gender identities in Secondary 4 (Grade 11) English-medium Liberal Studies lessons, which aimed to enhance awareness of gender equality and subject-specific English skills about the topic. The study shows that gender was constructed and reconstructed by conflicting multilingual and multimodal gendered discourses, including the formal curriculum, school lesson materials, and classroom interaction. The paper reveals that teachers and students jointly constructed masculinities of “real men,” “good men” and “gay men” in CLIL classrooms imbedded in curriculum contexts infused with gender dualism and alternative gender values began to emerge after the CLIL lessons. The results suggest that CLIL teachers can facilitate development of critical literacies about gender by enabling encounters of different voices in translanguaging and trans-registering spaces created by students’ familiar L1 everyday discourses and multimodal practices. Pedagogical implications were also discussed. Copyright © 2023 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

Self-regulation is arguably one of the most crucial predictors of school readiness, academic achievement, and lifelong well-being. While educators in the prior-to-school years have a pivotal role to play in stimulating growth in early self-regulation, less is known about their knowledge and practices in this area. This interview study was conducted with 71 kindergarten teachers in Hong Kong. Content analysis and descriptive statistics were employed to analyze the transcripts. We found that participants: (1) had a limited and superficial understanding of the notion of self-regulation; (2) estimated that approximately one quarter of their students displayed self-regulation problems; (3) had difficulties articulating what constitutes indicators for self-regulation problems in young children; and (4) lacked intervention strategies to strengthen children’s self-regulation, specifically preventive strategies. Educational policymakers, researchers, curriculum designers, teacher educators and school leaders are urged to better prepare early childhood practitioners in this area. Limitations and future research lines are discussed. Copyright © 2024 National Association of Early Childhood Teacher Educators.

In multicultural education, empathy has been regarded as an essential teacher disposition that enables teachers to better understand culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students through perspective-taking. However, less is known about the mechanism that underlies how empathy fosters teachers’ competence in supporting CLD students, i.e., their multicultural teaching competence. This study fills the research gap by investigating multicultural beliefs as a potential mediator between teacher empathy (operationalized via perspective-taking) and multicultural teaching competence (as indicated by knowledge, skills, and relationship-building abilities). A total of 445 Chinese preschool and kindergarten teachers in Hong Kong (188 pre-service and 257 in-service teachers) completed a self-report questionnaire assessing teacher empathy, multicultural beliefs, and multicultural teaching competence. Mediation analyses revealed that teacher empathy was related to higher support for multicultural beliefs, which in turn predicted better multicultural skills, knowledge, and relationship-building abilities. The multi-group analysis further indicated equivalent mediation paths for both pre-and in-service teachers. Extending past research underscoring empathy as an essential teacher disposition for multicultural teaching competence, the present study showed that the crucial role of empathy in transforming teachers’ belief in favor of multiculturalism helps foster teachers’ multicultural teaching competence. A practical implication of the present study calls for including perspective-taking and critical examination of teacher beliefs as key elements in teacher education programs that are aimed at facilitating early childhood teachers’ multicultural teaching competence. Copyright © 2024 The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V.

This study utilizes the 2015 data from the Hong Kong sample of the Program for International Student Assessment to examine the relative importance of various factors on the science learning performance of Hong Kong students. Using hierarchical linear modeling (HLM), we examined the effect of students’ affective characteristics, involvement, and perceptions of science by parents and school environment on science achievement in Hong Kong. The results of HLM demonstrated that school characteristics explain 33% variance in science achievement, which indicates that school is a critical predicting factor in identifying science achievement. The findings highlighted that identifying as male, having high socioeconomic status (at the student and school levels), high self-efficacy, low test anxiety, less parental support, positive view of science by parents, more school resources, and less teacher autonomy positively influence the science achievement of students. In the final model, school-level predictors, such as disciplinary climate in science classes and teacher-directed science instruction, explained 58% of variance at the school level in positive directions. Lastly, the study discussed the implications of achievement gaps between gender and socioeconomic status and between parents and school influence. Copyright © 2024 Education Research Institute, Seoul National University.

When multilingual learners traverse across cross-border and study-abroad contexts, they enter different sociocultural spaces, negotiate conflicting identities, and may or may not invest in these identities. Addressing the lacuna, this longitudinal case study draws upon the model of investment to conduct a long-term, systematic investigation of the identities and investment of Miranda, a multilingual learner, and a pre-service teacher—as she studied, over seven years, as a university student (B.A.) in mainland China, a taught postgraduate student (M.Ed.) in Hong Kong, and a research student (M.Phil. and Ph.D.) in New Zealand. Findings reveal how Miranda negotiated, constructed, and performed multiple identities in shifting contexts and how the way her capital was valued shaped the way she positioned herself and was positioned by others. Attending to the fluidity and complexity of identities, this study provides educational authorities and teachers with implications for helping to chart the path for empowering students across contexts. Copyright © 2024 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

Background: The school is one of the most salient developmental contexts for children. However, little is known about the associations linking the school environment to child adjustment in a non-Western context, not to mention the potential processes that may mediate these associations. Aims: This study examined the associations of school- and classroom-level characteristics with child adjustment and tested whether these associations were mediated by teacher–child relationship qualities. Sample: Cross-sectional data were collected on a representative sample of 1777 children (mean age = 55.14 months; 50% of them were girls) from 100 kindergartens in Hong Kong, China. Methods: Using self-reported questionnaires, teachers rated their school-level environments, their classroom chaos, their closeness and conflict with children and children's socioemotional competence and academic ability. Meanwhile, parents rated children's behavioural problems. Results: Multilevel structural equation modelling revealed that the school-level environment and classroom chaos were uniquely associated with children's socioemotional, behavioural and academic adjustment. Moreover, the associations of the school-level environment and classroom chaos with child socioemotional and academic adjustment were mediated by teacher–child closeness and conflict, whereas the associations of the school-level environment and classroom chaos with child behavioural problems were mediated by teacher–child conflict only. Conclusions: Findings indicated how school- and classroom-level characteristics may be uniquely associated with child adjustment and how teacher–child relationships may be implicated in the underlying mechanism, highlighting the potential utility of targeting school- and classroom-level environments and teacher–child relationships in promoting child development. Copyright © 2024 British Psychological Society.

Background: The concept of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) capital can serve as a framework for understanding how various resources contribute to aspiration formation in STEM fields. However, to date, it remains unclear what factors should be included in STEM capital and how they may help explain why students do or do not aspire to STEM careers. Purpose: This study aimed to validate the instruments and explore the predictive effect of various factors, including STEM capital and other non-STEM specific cultural capital factors, on students’ STEM aspirations while comparing these variables among primary, junior secondary, and senior secondary levels. Sample: A stratified sample of students (N = 3,991) from the upper-primary to senior-secondary level in Hong Kong participated in the study. Design and methods: An online survey investigation was conducted for data collection. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were performed to validate the instruments before ANOVA, correlation analysis, and regression analysis were performed. Results: The elementary students had significantly greater scores on the STEM capital variables than did the students at the junior and senior secondary levels. Gender, age, parental school involvement and expectations, informal STEM participation, positive views of professionals, and self-concept in mathematics positively predicted STEM aspirations, while having a parent/guardian with a STEM career negatively predicted students’ aspirations. In addition, the results showed that having STEM books at home and self-concept in information technology were additional predictors at some educational levels. The explored factors can explain approximately 30% of the variance in students’ STEM aspirations. Conclusion: Senior students’ STEM capital factors exhibit lower levels compared to their younger peers. The developed, adapted, and translated instruments are valid for measuring the factors composing STEM capital, where some

English as a foreign language (EFL) education has become increasingly ubiquitous in Eastern Asian early childhood education (ECE) settings, but the studies on this phenomenon have not been thoroughly reviewed. This scoping review investigates the scope and findings of the current literature regarding this under-researched phenomenon. Through a five-step protocol, 17 empirical studies published during 2012–2022 are included. Findings indicate that: (1) there are four major research areas: education policy, education technology, teacher and teacher education, and curriculum and pedagogy; (2) Hong Kong receives the most research attention; (3) teachers’ knowledge and beliefs, implementing early EFL education, and effects of interventions constitute three prominent research themes. This review also identified research gaps and highlighted the need for more quantitative research on early EFL education in other parts of Asia, the planning and implementation of EFL policies in micro-level contexts, and in-service educators’ beliefs and practises. Copyright © 2024 The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V.

This article reports on a study exploring primary students’ after-class social interactions in English vocabulary acquisition using a mobile learner-generated-content (m-LGC) tool. A total number of 29 grade 4 students from an elementary school in Hong Kong were involved. A case study approach was adopted. Data collection included log data on the m-LGC tool and semi-structured interviews. Data analysis included content analysis, visualisation using Gephi, and thematic analysis. The results show two types of students’ social interactions in a m-LGC learning environment. The interview results indicate that students held different perceptions of social interactions using the m-LGC tool. The implications are discussed. Copyright © 2022 Yin Yang, Yanjie Song.