An important feature of Hong Kong’ education reform over the past decade has been the articulation of the “no loser principle”. It was meant to signal that all students are valuable and will benefit from both basic and senior secondary education. Yet barriers remain for the 2.9% of students under age 15 who can be classified as ethnic minorities. The educational needs of these students also remained invisible in the school system until the 2008 Racial Discrimination Ordinance and the implementation of inclusive education policy in 2002 (Education Bureau 2010, 2011). The paper examines the policy context in which provisions for ethnic minority students have been made in Hong Kong schools and also classroom practices that operationalize these policies on a daily basis. It then reports the findings of an interview study into 32 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. This study shows that teachers struggle to conceptualize a new rationale for responding to cultural diversity. They develop a sense of inter-cultural sensitivity, promote cultural responsiveness to diversity, and strengthen the home-school connection. Finally, a framework for the creation of culturally responsive classrooms, based upon the teachers’ new rationale of cultural responsiveness, is proposed.

Hong Kong is a predominantly Chinese society but just over 6 percent of the population is made up of ethnic minorities. This composition flows into schools where teachers in selected schools need to cater for a diverse school population. The purpose of the present study was to investigate whether assessment environments in Hong Kong schools are able to cater for the learning motivation of ethnic minority students as well as their Chinese peers. Students were surveyed to gain an understanding of the assessment practices they experienced as well as their own learning motivation goals. The results indicated that both Chinese and ethnic minority students experienced teacher-dominated assessment environments most often, and each group strongly endorsed learning motivation goals that stressed academic development and competence. Both groups of students provided moderate support for social learning goals, with somewhat stronger support coming from ethnic minority students. Teachers can build on ethnic minority students' strong learning orientation by providing high-quality feedback even in a teacher-dominated assessment environment. A more interactive classroom characterised by feedback may provide teachers with a better idea of the learning needs of all students.
[Copyright © 2015 NZCER Press.]

Many Hong Kong schools are concerned with the growing number of enrolment of ethnic minority students. This article examines ethnic minority teachers’ cross-cultural experience and their view of the diverse needs of ethnic minority students and how these needs were fulfilled. Qualitative data were collected from unstructured interviews, where the views of fifteen teachers of Pakistani, Indian, Canadian, Pilipino, from three primary and three secondary schools, were explored. This finding was illuminated by the interview study, showing that the diverse learning needs of ethnic minority students and their classroom behavior were culturally different from the majority of Hong Kong Chinese students. To manage the classroom diversity and promote cultural responsiveness, the teachers struggle for conceptualizing a new rationale for cultural responsiveness to diversity, developing a sense of inter-cultural sensitivity and promoting cultural responsiveness to diversity. This paper argues that like students, teachers simultaneously engage in a crossculture process through which they learn the culture of ethnic minority students, re-learn the culture of their own and re-think about the relevant rationale underlying cultural responsiveness. For ethnic minority group of school practitioners, there was a need to give them hope as a way to get them motivated to learn, face new challenges and explore the new opportunities. At last, the implication of the creation of a culturally responsive classroom will be given.