Malaysia’s agenda for establishing itself as an education hub is driven by the need to build its capacity in human capital, knowledge, and innovation, as well as strengthening education as a trade sector for revenue generation. Malaysia’s current profile is that of a student hub based on the exponential growth of the international student body, particularly in the private sector, during the past decade. This chapter explains that while the country’s commitment and progress is much lauded, there are still several critical issues that need to be addressed for Malaysia to stand firm on its status as an education hub. These include the diversification of the current international student demography, graduate employability, skilled workforce development, and brain drain. Malaysia’s future rests on its ability to integrate the various components of education hub to ensure that there is added value gained from its diverse and important cross-border education activities.
[Copyright © 2014 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.]

The internationalisation of higher education in countries such as Australia and the UK has resulted in increased numbers of South-East Asia students in higher education classrooms. While considerable attention has been given to exploring the implications of internationalisation on students in ‘Western’ university contexts, less attention is given to researching the effects on teachers of higher education, and in particular those employed to teach in countries culturally foreign to their own. This aims to initiate such discussion through an exploration of the current results of an ongoing ethnographic study of two teaching academics working in Hong Kong. Issues that will be addressed include language and communication, social and cultural distance and the effect of hierarchy and related teaching strategies developed to meet the inter-cultural learning needs of themselves and their students. The authors argue that the development of inter-cultural understandings must permeate the curricula and be a shared goal and responsibility of both teachers and students.

Since the early 1990s, the pace of educational reform in Hong Kong has accelerated and broadened to incorporate almost all areas of schooling. The reforms introduced during this period can be subsumed under what has generally been labelled the quality movement. In this paper, we review and comment on a number of policy reform initiatives in the four areas of "Quality Education," English Language Benchmarking, Initial Teacher Training and the Integration of Pupils with Special Needs into Ordinary Classrooms. Following a brief description of each policy initiative, the reforms are discussed in terms of their consistency, coherence and cultural fit.
[Copyright © 2000 The Education Policy Analysis Archives.]

This paper provides an analysis of recent educational reforms in Hong Kong that aim to transform the ideological basis of the curriculum, teaching and learning. While the reforms appear compatible with current international developments in higher education and school curriculum—movements, for example, towards standards-based accountability, the development of technological expertise and meeting the needs of diverse learners—major aspects of the reforms appear to contradict one another. The implications of current reforms for teacher education, in particular, are discussed together with issues related to the politicisa-tion of reforms and teacher education pedagogy. The discussion highlights the need for an alternative approach to educating and preparing both new and in-service teachers in Hong Kong to cope with the current and future educational reforms.
[Copyright © Nanyang Technological University & National Institute of Education.]

In the summer of 1998, 234 Hong Kong student teachers attended commissioned English immersion programmes in Canada, Australia and Britain. Previous Hong Kong-focused research (Crew 1994, MacLennan and Tse 1995, Tse 1997) has indicated that participants gain temporarily in language proficiency but that attitude change is perhaps the most profound result of their overseas experience. Anxiety has been noted as a primary factor in language attainment for Hong Kong student teachers, as has culture shock in UK-based immersion programmes (Crew 1994, 1996). Recent research (e.g. Crew 1997) indicates that major sources of overseas immersion programme anxiety are not directly related to language issues, though the specific anxieties which arise may well be amenable to moderation or resolution by the use of language. The current paper expands on previous work by seeking to identify and compare the cultural and anxiety factors applicable to the more varied societal contexts now available and to report on successful coping strategies employed by participants.
[Copyright © 2000 The Hong Kong Institute of Education.]

All of us, who visit schools, or who have worked as teachers, at one time or another have become aware of the significant effect the physical environment can have on learning. As learners, we all try to construct learning and working environment, that contain both artefacts and psychological features that emancipate us, and thus support our learning and study. Pupils and teachers alike frequently complain about the noise, temperature, lighting, space, furniture, seating arrangements and materials that constitute the physical aspects of a classroom environment. There are also complaints, often by principals, but increasingly by teachers and parents, about psycho-social elements of classrooms. That is, the amount and nature of classroom talk, the use of groups, the role expectations of teachers and pupils. The appropriateness of the psycho-social and physical objects and conditions inherent in classrooms affect the teacher's and pupil's ability to concentrate, to think and/or attend to classroom activities. Classroom environment, language acquisition and teacher thinking research reinforces the role teacher's play in creating effective learning environments. Close-up examinations of 'life in classrooms,' beginning with Jackson (1968), indicate how teachers can arrange the physical and psycho-social environment in ways that make them more effective scaffolds for pupil learning. Consequently, the nature of the physical environment is viewed as one determinant of a teacher's effectiveness, i.e., their ability to facilitate pupil learning. In addition, research has also shown that the content and nature of the physical classroom environment -the learning facilities, the instructional materials, the equipment used, and the displays of pupil work- amount to a public statement of the beliefs about teaching and learning that each respective teacher holds (Sipco, 1996; Tessmer & Harris, 1992). This presentation will report findings of a study that explored 70 primary classrooms

This paper looks at the need for a comparative cross-cultural view of leadership in Hong Kong schools.

This paper explores issues arising from large-scale, relatively short-term (4-16 week) overseas language immersion and study abroad programmes for Hong Kong's pre-and in-service teachers. It argues that shortterm study abroad is an under-researched and under-valued field that both benefits and suffers from intuitive, often ill-informed judgements of worth. An overview is provided of: typical issues encountered by staff and students in the course of delivering and taking part in such programmes; possible solutions to problems observed; and the type, range and scale of gains that might reasonably be expected of participants. Reference is made to various contexts - under- and post-graduate programmes; culturally diverse locations ranging over three continents and to changing global circumstances - which may impinge on such programmes. Discussion takes account of the literature on generic study abroad and addresses the specific learning environments required of successful commissioned programmes of this type. In particular, issues of classroom vs communitybased learning, combined focuses of learning within a single multiply-oriented context, implicit learning and reflection vs pedagogical cultural imperialism, intercultural communication and constructive engagement are explored. Finally, recommendations for optimisation and research-based development are offered, based on hard and soft data acquired during extensive formal and informal evaluation and ongoing development of shortterm English language immersion programmes. The paper is of interest to academics seeking a framework from which to approach learning-focused links between tertiary education, language and culture and to current or potential study abroad providers and commissioners.