Previous studies on English private tutoring (EPT) have mainly focused on students and tutors who directly engaged in it. However, as EPT is a paid service and it is usually provided outside of school, parents are also important stakeholders of EPT, but EPT research has so far focused less on them. This chapter examines Chinese parents’ agency in their children’s English learning in EPT. Fourteen parents from Hong Kong and 11 from Nanchang participated in two studies respectively. These two studies adopted similar research methods by collecting data through semi-structured interviews which, from an ecological perspective, provide further evidence of the complex nature of parents’ agency in their children’s learning. Although all the parents in the two studies supported their children to attend EPT programmes, they enacted their agency differently, depending on the affordances and constraints they perceived in the situated contexts. Copyright © 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Self-regulated learning (SRL), defined as a capacity for autonomy and control exhibited by individuals who direct, monitor, and regulate actions towards certain learning goals (Paris & Paris, 2001), has received much research attention over the past four decades (Panadero, 2017). Students’ SRL capacity can be developed in various settings (Kim, 2015) and this paper will report on how a group of primary school students who are from families with a low socioeconomic background have enhanced their SRL capacity through participating in an after-school tutoring program provided by university students. Key influential factors, in the design and delivery of the program, are identified. The study collected data in a youth community center in Hong Kong. The center has provided tutoring service for school students over years. The center has a need to improve their service for students who attend their after-school programmes. The intervention was designed according to Zimmerman's (2000)three phases model. Both implicit and explicit teaching of SRL strategies were incorporated. 18 university students, serving tutors received training before the beginning of the intervention. Twenty three primary school students participated in the programme, completed pre-post questionnaires on self-regulated learning capacity, and attended interviews at the end of each of eight sessions throughout the programme. As the data analysis is on going, more details about the findings will be reported in the conference, if the paper is accepted. Copyright © 2019 ECLL.

Access to private tutoring, or shadow education, significantly contributes to the increasing disparities in the attainment of language learners from different family backgrounds worldwide. In ESL/EFL contexts, many students subscribe to English private tutoring (EPT) in hopes of getting good English results in high-stakes examinations to secure a university place. This longitudinal narrative inquiry investigates the experiences of a financially disadvantaged student who managed to pay the tuition to subscribe to an EPT class in Hong Kong. Multiple sources of data collected throughout the year from six rounds of in-depth interviews with the student; three reflective essays; classroom observations and interviews with the student's tutor, schoolteacher and parent yielded thick description of the student's narrative. Informed by Norton Pierce's notion of investment, the analysis reveals how the participant invested in EPT to overcome existing educational inequalities. The tutorial class was perceived by the student as a place to expand her social network with students from prestigious schools, with a hope to ultimately gain the economic capital for escaping poverty. This study has implications regarding the effects of inequalities of educational opportunities in affluent societies. It indicates the need for further research on language learners' experiences in the shadow education context. Copyright ©Routledge.

As many students worldwide receive second language (L2) English private tutoring (EPT) that shadows school curricula, examining student perceptions of it is essential to understanding their L2 learning. From the L2 Motivational Self perspective, students’ ideal L2 self, ought-to L2 self and L2 learning experience are linked to student enjoyment of EPT. This study explores these links via analysis of survey responses of 2,216 Secondary Six (Grade 12) students who attended a company’s L2 EPT lectures in Hong Kong. Most of these students (80%) enjoyed EPT. They were more likely to enjoy EPT if they perceived more financial resources in their families, attended schools taught in Chinese (students’ first language), had internalized instrumental goals, liked English, were not influenced by advertisements to attend EPT, attended face-to-face tutoring (rather than video tutoring), had a specific tutor, or liked their EPT tutor more than their English teacher. This study offers theoretical implications and directions for further research in EPT and L2 motivation. Copyright © 2020 The Author(s).

With the aim to provide proper educational support for socially and economically deprived students, the present study examined a homework tutoring programme that focused on self-regulated learning (SRL) and implemented at an afterschool setting in Hong Kong. The programme was designed according to Zimmerman's SRL model, integrated explicit and implicit instruction, and took a social psychologist perspective. The findings from multiple sources of data showed that the overall effect of the programme was observed as small to moderate yet the tutees' positive changes in the use of four SRL strategies were reported: managing time, monitoring the use of cognitive strategies in doing homework, maintaining motivation and handling distraction, and arranging the sequence of assignments. The present study confirms the role of SRL-based homework tutoring in the promotion of deprived pupils' SRL capacity. This result may encourage more research efforts in the future to explore proper educational support for deprived students at after-school settings, with an ultimate aim to reduce the gap of inequality in education. Copyright © 2020 ASPE.

Private tutoring, or shadow education, has become a widespread phenomenon globally. Its growth can be attributed to the expansion of cram schools offering live and video tutoring. This study critically analyses students' perceptions of video-recorded classes. Specifically, it problematises students' preference for video-recorded classes by exploring their reasons for enrolment and their perspective on the benefits and shortcomings of video tutoring in a Hong Kong cram school. It adopts an exploratory sequential mixed-methods approach. Data were collected through classroom observations, student interviews and questionnaire. The findings reveal that students chose video-recorded classes mainly because of their flexibility of timeslots and locations. A critical discussion of the findings unveils students' contradictory attitude towards the presence of tutors in classrooms, their preference for passive learning and anxiety about tutor–tutee interactions. This study contributes to the growing literature of shadow education and offers implications for potential policy change in the private tutoring context. Copyright © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

The emergence of literature critically examining reciprocity in the determination of service-learning outcomes has signalled a need to rethink and re-evaluate service-learning research and practice. The current study seeks to give clarity by investigating the bidirectional benefits accrued by college students and their partners in four tutor-based service contexts. Quantitative results indicated that there is a reciprocal relationship between college students and their paired service recipients at the end of the service-learning program, in terms of interpersonal skills and personal responsibility. Overall, the study makes a case for the bidirectional nature of service-learning in promoting meaningful community engagement. Copyright © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

本文從一名內部人士的視角來說明在香港參與補習的生活經歷，分別以學生、補習導師和研究人員的角色，對影子教育普遍存在的幾個問題給予分析並獲得啟示。本文採用自傳式敘事研究方法，數據來源於作者的事件回憶錄，受啟發於自身作為學員和導師時使用的教材、自己的視頻錄課，以及研究項目的反思日記。基於作者在補習行業扮演不同角色的敘述，本文討論了幾個主要問題，包括(1)影子教育對主流教育積極和消極影響的反思，(2)缺乏對補習教師和廣告質量的嚴格規範，(3)影子教育如何加劇教育不平等以及一些補習機構和非營利組織如何解決這一問題。就作者所知，本文是唯一一篇從作者自身作為學生、導師和研究人員的個人經歷來討論影子教育問題的文章，它從內部人士視角闡述了香港補習行業的實踐和政策發展。 This article aims to illustrate the lived experiences of engaging in private tutoring in Hong Kong as a tutee, a tutor, and a researcher and draw implications on several issues arising from the prevalence of shadow education. This article adopted an autobiographical narrative approach. Data were collected through the author’s memoir of events, stimulated by the tutorial materials he used when he was a tutee and a tutor, his video-recorded lessons of tutoring, and reflective journals from his research projects. Various issues are discussed based on the narrative of the author playing different roles in the tutoring industry, including the positive and negative washback on mainstream education; the lack of strict regulation of the quality of tutors and advertisements; how shadow education may exacerbate education inequality; and how some tutorial companies and nonprofit organizations are addressing the issue. This article, to the best of the author’s knowledge, is the only one that discusses the problems of shadow education from an author’s own personal experiences as a tutee, a tutor, and a researcher. It illustrates how practices and policies of the private tutoring industry are evolving in Hong Kong from an insider perspective. Copyright © 2020 華東師範大學.