This study aimed to explore ESL teachers’ perceptions of online teaching during the COVID-19 outbreak in Hong Kong. A qualitative multiple-case study approach was employed, focusing on the online teaching experiences of three teachers in primary school contexts. Through semi-structured interviews and thematic analysis, rich data were collected and analysed. The findings revealed five prominent challenges faced by the teachers, including inadequate infrastructure, limited technical support and training, classroom management issues, teachers’ limited technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPCK) in ELT, students’ unreadiness and lack of parental support. The study also identified three opportunities arising from online teaching, such as changes in teachers’ attitudes and beliefs in technology, opportunities for teacher learning and experimenting with online teaching practice for pedagogical innovations. Despite the significant challenges encountered, the teachers perceived the online teaching experiences as opportunities to enhance their teaching competence with technology. This study has substantial implications, calling for strategic governmental measures to improve online learning in schools, highlighting the need to integrate technology-focused pedagogies into teacher education, revising outdated school curriculums to enhance students’ digital literacy, providing financial support for disadvantaged students, encouraging parental involvement in online learning and fostering collaborative professional learning communities to enhance English teachers’ TPACK. Copyright ©2024 Taylor & Francis.

The COVID-19 pandemic has necessitated the adoption of distance learning as a new alternative educational approach globally, a shift that has persisted even to the post-pandemic period. Despite identifying online educational advantages in previous studies, the abrupt societal changes brought about by the pandemic have exposed disproportionate difficulties. This study aims to understand how attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) children and their parents are influenced by this educational pattern, and to outline a framework to improve their home-based learning environment from a design perspective. Following the Kolb's Experiential Learning Cycle (KELC), the research commenced with the analysis of ADHD children and online-schooling in Hong Kong. After problems are identified initially, the observational study of 32 school students with or without ADHD in a home-learning environment is conducted to interpret these problems. This process has identified the key issues of domestic distraction and the need for resource support. The study also provides a multi-functional table design as an initial direction for developing supportive frameworks. Then, another study is conducted with a total of 30 school students with or without ADHD and their stakeholders to assess the effectiveness of the design concept. Therefore, the study's findings provide a valuable insight for proposing the framework to improve the home learning experience via the working area for ADHD children. These research findings not only contribute to academic discourse for validating ADHD children challenges in distance education, but also facilitate ADHD parents, educators and designers to enhance the home learning environment by offering a structured design framework. Copyright ©2024 Scientia Socialis Ltd.

Along with the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, the educational systems in the world faced challenges due to the school lockdown and the change from face-to-face to online learning mode to adapt to the emergency health issue. The present chapter reviews the digital divide issues during the pandemic of COVID-19 over three years (2020-2022) in Hong Kong. Regarding the three levels of the digital divide (access, usage, and outcome), this chapter collected and analyzed secondary sources of literature to understand the extent to which digital resources were unevenly distributed among students from different backgrounds in Hong Kong and how various social sectors provided timely support to address these needs. The result showed the good practice of Hong Kong, in terms of the efforts made by multiple parties to provide prompt support to fill the gap of the digital access divide. Nevertheless, the gap in digital capability across individual students may have enduring impacts on their academic study and personal growth, which have not been sufficiently addressed. Copyright © 2025 selection and editorial matter, Huixuan Xu; individual chapters, the contributors.

Differentiated instruction (DI), an educational philosophy that aims to cater for learner diversity, has been advocated by scholars and teachers over the past two decades. Nevertheless, little is known about how teachers practise DI in online teaching, particularly in the context of English language teaching during the outbreak of the COVID‐19 pandemic. To fill this gap, this single participant case study aimed to delineate concrete ways of implementing DI during an online English writing lesson for English as a second language (ESL) learners in a Hong Kong primary school. To provide a thick description, multiple sources of data were extracted from a rich data pool of a two‐year longitudinal teacher professional development project which included lesson recordings, post‐lesson debriefing meeting recordings, and student work. The findings suggested that the case teacher employed various DI strategies (i.e., providing chances for all student participation, using multisensory pedagogical designs, using information technology) to cater for learner diversity during online English teaching. It is argued that despite the potential challenges, it could be feasible and manageable to employ some DI strategies to address learner diversity during online English teaching. This study contributes to DI theory and practice by deepening our understanding of implementing DI in the context of online English teaching and providing a valuable reference for educational practitioners. It also advances our knowledge of how technology could be leveraged to support DI implementation. Copyright ©2024 Wiley.

This article reports findings from a mixed-method study investigating parents’ perspectives and experiences in navigating their children’s online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study involved surveys of parents (n = 775) and interviews (n = 32) conducted in eight primary schools in Hong Kong. Statistical analyses revealed that parents’ perceptions of online learning (PPOL) were positively affected by their self-efficacy in providing online learning support, their expectations for parent-teacher communication, and their satisfaction with schools’ support. Conversely, increased levels of parental engagement and stress, and the need for regular school updates negatively affected PPOL. Qualitative findings showed that parents’ perspectives were influenced by experiences tied to their normative role expectations and their perceptions of teachers and schools, which subsequently shaped their emotional responses to online learning. These findings offer nuanced insights for developing policies and practices aimed at better supporting parents’ engagement in the digital era. Copyright © 2024 the author(s).

This article reports a case study of an English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher in Hong Kong who conducted lessons via Zoom during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study focused on the factors influencing her technology integration in synchronous online teaching mode. Using data from classroom recordings, stimulated-recall and semi-structured interviews, this study uncovered how Zoom functioned as a substitute for face-to-face lessons. The findings revealed that although there were fewer interactions between the teacher and her students, teaching in synchronous online mode provided the teacher with opportunities to utilize certain online features to augment methods of checking student understanding. The study identified the teacher’s pedagogical beliefs, the context and professional development as factors that influenced the level of technology integration in her Zoom classes. The study concludes that embracing process-oriented pedagogies may be necessary for a higher level of technology integration among ESL teachers who have adequate professional development opportunities and school support. © The Author(s) 2021.

Purpose This study aims to investigate the perceptions of elderly learners in experiencing Zoom learning under the effects of COVID in the case of Hong Kong. Design/methodology/approach An online survey and focus group interviews have been conducted with quantitative and qualitative approaches, respectively. The survey design was based on the input-process-output (IPO) model conceptual framework and used to assess students’ perceptions regarding their Zoom learning experiences at the Elder Academy of Hong Kong Metropolitan University. Thereafter, selected students were invited to participate in focus group interviews to offer more in-depth comments for analysis purposes. Statistical Product and Service Solutions software and SmartPLS were used for data analysis of the survey, and content analysis was used to summarize opinions from the focus group interviews; thus, a comprehensive picture of elderly learners’ learning experiences on Zoom is presented. Findings An overall positive perception was the result of elderly learners’ Zoom learning journeys, particularly in the “input” and “process” stages of the IPO model. Yet, their perception of the “learning outcomes achieved” level in the “output” stage was lower among the rest, thus strongly affected by the factors of “interactions” and “teaching” experienced by elderly learners on Zoom. Although the perception of the youngest age group was more positive, none have agreed that Zoom learning was more favourable when compared with the traditional face-to-face mode. Originality/value Given Zoom as the short-term replacement option under the COVID pandemic, this study will provide recommendations for educators/institutions to improve their design of the whole learning process for elderly learners on the Zoom platform. © 2023 Emerald Publishing Limited.

This paper examines international students’ intercultural experiences during an online course on global media education that was co-organised in 2021 and 2022 by universities in Lapland, Finland and Hong Kong, China. The COVID-19 pandemic started an exponential ascent for teaching and learning in online environments. This is likely to continue in the globalising post-pandemic world, in which the participants are becoming increasingly international and from diverse backgrounds. For positive online intercultural encounters, online pedagogies that enhance intercultural understanding and the development of intercultural communication skills are needed. Through a content analysis of the students’ learning diaries, this paper investigates the ways in which cultural diversity was experienced during online teaching and learning and how the students’ perceptions and cultural sensitivity developed during the courses. The findings are reflected in the five pillars of the online pedagogical framework, which is then expanded to encompass the dimension of intercultural communication to support the development of intercultural sensitivity and interrelationships among students. We propose a pedagogical model for online teaching and learning in intercultural contexts that can support equity and quality in e-learning, or so-called e-quality. This paper concludes by recommending international collaborative teaching in authentic situations for the promotion of intercultural understanding and communication. Copyright © 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

The COVID-19 pandemic posed novel challenges to language teachers and learners, as 'emergency remote teaching' became a necessity in order for teachers and learners to isolate from one another. Much has already been written about the nature of those challenges and language teachers' response to them, which response frequently made use of video-conferencing technology like Zoom in order to facilitate remote interaction, teaching and learning. The existing work has focused heavily on teacher experiences, including the kinds of strategies and competencies that teachers made use of when 'doing' synchronous online learning. However, much less work has examined the student experience. In addition, one challenge consistently identified in the literature is that of fostering meaningful interaction and engagement. In this viewpoint article, we apply the concept of 'virtual distance' to the activity of project-based learning taking place at a university in Hong Kong and mediated by digital technologies as part of emergency remote teaching. We report on the emergence of a socio-technical divide in one particular student team and teacher strategies that tend to bridge the divide. We offer suggestions on how the lessons learned from this experience can inform project-based learning in the post-pandemic future. Copyright © 2023 SAGE Publications.