Presently, there are a growing number of ethnic minority students in Hong Kong schools. This article examines teachers' views of the cross-cultural experience of ethnic minority students, their influence on the performance of these students, and how the diverse learning needs of these students are being addressed. Qualitative data were collected from semi-structured interviews with 32 teachers from three secondary schools. This study shows that teachers struggle to conceptualize a new rationale for responding to cultural diversity. They develop a sense of intercultural sensitivity, promote cultural responsiveness to diversity, and strengthen the home–school connection. This article argues that, like students, teachers simultaneously engage in a cross-cultural process through which they learn the culture of ethnic minority students, relearn their own culture and reexamine the relevant rationale underlying cultural responsiveness. Finally, a framework for the creation of culturally responsive classrooms, based upon the teachers' new rationale of cultural responsiveness, is proposed.
[Copyright of Intercultural Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14675986.2012.686021]

Schools in Hong Kong are concerned about the growing enrolments of students with special educational needs (SEN) and how these students could be included in school guidance. This study examines teachers' narratives of the inclusivity of school guidance. The study was qualitative, being a case study of a Hong Kong secondary school. School documents were collected for textual analysis and semi-structured interviews with 13 teachers were conducted, including nine guidance teachers and four other teachers who worked closely with these guidance teachers. Four dimensions for the inclusivity of school guidance were identified: the development of inclusive practices of guidance, the adoption of a proactive approach, the promotion of inclusive discipline, and the clear definition of the partnership between school guidance and professional organization offering specialised services for students with SEN. The study provides insights into contextual influences of Hong Kong education on school guidance and the development of an inclusive approach to guidance.
[Copyright of British Journal of Guidance & Counselling is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03069885.2011.646950]

An increasingly important curricular aim of teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) is to develop learners' intercultural competence for communication with people from different cultures through English. English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers' perceptions and practices in relation to integrating culture with English learning have been investigated mainly in Europe and the USA, whereas in Asia, these issues seem to have been less explored. This article reports an interview study that collected views about culture and language teaching from 12 secondary school English teachers in Hong Kong, including native and non-native English teachers. The findings showed that the teachers were unanimously positive in their attitudes towards the motivating power of culture (including popular culture) in language teaching, but also revealed ambivalence or contradictory feelings about the means and the end of culture-integrated TEFL in terms of what cultural resources to draw on; the connectivity between cultural components and examinations; and the role of teachers. The findings suggest the need for EFL teachers to deploy culture as a discursive resource for meaning-making, and to consider culture pedagogy as interlingual and intercultural exploratory dialogues with the students. The need for a closer collaboration among EFL teachers from different sociocultural backgrounds is highlighted.
[Copyright of Language, Culture and Curriculum is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07908318.2012.716849]

This paper provides a co-director's and co-author's review of and commentary on research carried out with Maurice Galton over the past decade. Its principal focus is the burden that recent education policies and ascent of a deleterious culture of performativity have inflicted on teachers' professional and domestic lives. It reports on four studies conducted for the National Union of Teachers (NUT) and two books: Teachers under pressure and Re-inventing schools, reforming teaching. The latter offers alarming, if not surprising, insights into the process of national policy-making. It goes on to relate mutual experiences of recent work in Hong Kong and draws attention to Maurice Galton's contributions to education internationally. The keys to this paper, however, are the persistence, perspicacity and Maurice's personal concern for teachers and children, that have enabled the insights and injustices uncovered in these studies to be published.
[Copyright of Roeper Review is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0305764X.2011.607152]

To examine and identify the current inclusive practices in early childhood educational settings in Hong Kong, this qualitative study looks at the support and educational services available for young children with special needs in Hong Kong mainstream preschools as well as the characteristics of early childhood educational settings that support inclusion. Inclusive practices of each of the three preschools involved in the study are presented. Challenges to enhance the quality of inclusion in early childhood educational settings and future possibilities in the field in Hong Kong are also discussed.
[Copyright of Roeper Review is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13603110903317676]