The outbreak of Covid-19 has posed serious challenges to schools and teachers as it forced schools to close and traditional face-to-face teaching was suspended. How did Hong Kong geography teachers respond to these challenges in the first nine months of the outbreak? How did they adapt to the social distancing measures such as school closure? Why did they adapt in the way they did? The researchers interviewed 18 teachers with different lengths of teaching experiences and teaching students of different academic abilities to answer these questions. It was found that even though there were few specific suggestions from the Government and their schools, the teachers interviewed, as a whole, have taken self-initiated steps to adapt teaching strategies and proactively try various means to help their students continue to learn under the constraints of the Pandemic. Copyright © 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Mathematics has be stereotyped as a male-dominated subject, and there is considerable evidence to support this belief. There has been much research in the past three decades on gender-related differences in elementary and secondary school mathematics. The research found that teachers possess different beliefs about male and female students that influence their teaching behaviour, which then directly or indirectly impact their students' behaviours, beliefs, and achievements in mathematics. Based on data collected from teacher questionnaire surveys in the Chinese Mainland and Hong Kong, this study examines teachers' beliefs about the achievements of boys and girls in mathematics. The study also compares the findings in the two regions surveyed. Results showed that teachers gave more attention to boys than girls, regardless of the teacher's gender. Not only are teachers more likely to recall more boys than girls, but also more boys than girls with average academic standards. Copyright © 2013 Korean Society of Mathematical Education.

在英式的學制傳統下，香港的大學以培養專才為重。在三年的大學生活中，大部分學習時間集中在主修的科目上。近年，受到美國大學的影響，大學的通識教育受到重視。334學制的推行，學生學業年期增加了，提供了空間讓大學發展通識教育。由於學制轉變，進入大學的新生所經歷的中學背景也有不同。在這情景下，大學的通識教育的目標應是甚麼呢？

The present research aims at exploring the effectiveness of spiral bianshi mathematics curriculum on the teaching of speed and circumference to Primary 6 students in Hong Kong. Cognitive and affective learning outcomes, together with students’ beliefs are investigated. Teaching materials of these two topics are designed basing on the framework of spiral bianshi mathematics curriculum and were implemented in three primary schools in Hong Kong. The effectiveness of the curriculum was investigated with a pre-test/post-test, experimental/control group design. Preliminary analyses of the cognitive learning outcomes revealed that the students using the bianshi curriculum and teaching materials performed better than their counterparts. The experimental group also showed more positive attitude in some of the affective variables, though such changes did not happen in all the affective components. The experimental group also showed more positive attitude in some of the affective components. Further statistical analyses could be performed to see why the improvement was not as prominent as expected. A possible further analysis could be, by separating those who had sizable improvement with those who had not, we may attempt to identify the characteristics of students, to see who benefit most (in the affective domain) from the bianshi curriculum. It is hoped that these qualitative data would help unveil the secret of the learning process that leads to the desirable learning results.
[Copyright © 2010 Anna Mei-Yan Chan, Ngai-Ying Wong & Chi-Chung Lam.]

Liberal Studies will be a core subject in the new senior secondary curriculum to be implemented in 2009 in Hong Kong. The subject is very new to many pre-service and serving teachers who will be taking up teaching in this subject specialty. The present study is intended to be an exploratory one, with the aim of learning about how pre-service teachers majoring in Liberal Studies in a Postgraduate Diploma in Education programme offered by a local university make decisions when planning for lessons in the subject. The findings show that three factors played a key role in these teachers’ instructional decision making – disciplinary backgrounds, curriculum considerations, and considerations of how to represent knowledge for students. The findings will contribute to an understanding of the professional learning needs of Liberal Studies teachers.

School choice gives parents greater power over their children's education. But ever since the Pre-primary Education Voucher Scheme (PEVS) was introduced in Hong Kong in 2007, school choice has become a hotly debated topic. The scheme was introduced to empower kindergarten parents in choosing a school for their children by offering them direct fee subsidies that, in return, could propel education quality forward. Parents in the private kindergarten sector, however, have long enjoyed the privilege of choice, and they have been preoccupied with an intense interest in their children's academic upbringing, even if it means compromising the holistic development of their children. This runs counter to the principles of a quality education. Therefore, the urge to further promote parental kindergarten choice will likely allow parental academic interests to continue to prevail and hence invalidate the PEVS' promise to improve education quality. The result is a unique dilemma between school choice for parents and the promise of education quality within Hong Kong's unique private kindergarten sector.
[Copyright © 2011 Arizona State University.]

The research team developed a mindfulness course for less academically able adolescents that aims to help them improve their emotional regulation and affective control with the ultimate aim of improving their academic performances. For the duration of the course in three secondary schools in Hong Kong high dropout rate and low attendance rate among the participants were recorded. Interviews with the students revealed that most students were not interested in the mindfulness course because of the quiet and static nature of mindfulness activities. Based on these findings, possible ways of improving the course are proposed.
[Copyright of Social Work in Mental Health is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15332985.2014.932885]

The restructuring of the academic structure and curriculum of the senior secondary education in 2009 has witnessed the on-going drive of the Hong Kong Education Reform in 2000 for a “more flexible and diversified” curriculum (Education and Manpower Bureau, 2005, p.9). To develop students’ ability to make connections across knowledge and concepts from different disciplines and to examine issues from multiple perspectives, new interdisciplinary subjects like Liberal Studies and Integrated Science are introduced into the new senior secondary curriculum. Whilst their introduction would definitely create stress and concerns of teachers, in preparing for new but broader subject content that may require completely different teaching strategies, teachers of traditional disciplinary subjects would also face new challenges through changes in the subject curriculum, teaching and assessment. This symposium therefore aims to discuss how teachers perceive the challenges of teaching interdisciplinary subjects and discipline-based subjects. Before the actual implementation of those new curricula, we have developed and administered specific research tools (in form of interview guidelines and questionnaires) to collect qualitative and quantitative data from curriculum planners and school teachers for the aforementioned interdisciplinary subjects and a number of disciplinary subjects, including Biology, Physics, Chemistry and Geography. Interview data will be used to discuss on how teacher-practitioners’ views are compared with the curriculum planners towards the implementation of Liberal Studies and Integrated Science, whereas both interview and questionnaire survey data from teachers of disciplinary subjects of Biology, Physics, Chemistry and Geography have been analysed to reveal the teachers’ key concerns and perceived problems as arisen from the change in curriculum organization and structure, emphasis on nature of science, science, technology, society and environment, fieldwork and