The innovative use of technologies in language learning and teaching significantly impacts language education. This paper aims to investigate technology-enhanced language learning (TeLL) and teaching (TeLT) in higher education through surveying 223 students and 93 teachers across four Hong Kong universities, and interviewing around 50 students and 20 teachers. The current study investigated the e-resources/tools frequently adopted in language learning and teaching, how participants perceived the affordances of TeLL and TeLT, and challenges they had faced in technology-enhanced language learning and teaching. The results reveal that students and teachers perceived several affordances of TeLL and TeLT, such as provision of authentic materials, enhancement of interactivity, and enhancement of learner autonomy. A list of commonly adopted e-resources/tools for language learning and teaching were identified. The students and teachers also indicated what support they would hope to receive from a Community of Practice (CoP) on technology-enhanced language learning and teaching. Copyright © 2022 IGI Global.

Introduction: Understanding the sources and the effects of collective teacher efficacy has been one of the central interests to many educational researchers and practitioners, because it is critical to understand how teachers can shape, and are shaped by, the educational processes in schools. Following the social cognitive perspective on the sources and consequences of efficacy beliefs, this study examined how school support influences collective teacher efficacy which in turn affects teachers’ organizational commitment. Method: The participants included 969 teachers sampled from 28 primary and secondary schools in Hong Kong. To appropriately address the nature of collective teacher efficacy and school support as school-level variables, the doubly latent multilevel structural equation modeling approach was used to analyze the data. Results: The results revealed the mediation mechanism played by collective teacher efficacy in explaining the effect of school support on teachers’ organizational commitment. Discussion: Schools are suggested to consider fostering a supportive school environment as a strategy to improve teachers’ collective efficacy beliefs if it is wished to enhance teachers’ commitment to schools. Copyright © 2023 Zhang, Lee, Yin and Yang.

Trees are living organisms that are subject to attack by decay or disease-causing natural enemies as well as weather adversities and long-term climate change in the course of their life span. When they suffer from these intrusions or extensive damage by typhoons, they often express visible symptoms, which may be structural or physiological. Initiated by a group of scholars at The Education University of Hong Kong, with the involvement of student-teachers as well as teachers and students in primary and secondary schools, a project, “Life Education and Citizen Science through Tree Protection and Conservation”, was launched with the objectives of caring, respecting and acting for our nature from preserving trees and enhancing citizens’ contribution to protecting the environment. The initial project experiences revealed that students acquired knowledge and skills in tree assessment and also cultivated positive attitudes towards tree conservation, which are relevant to the balanced development of knowledge, skills, values and attitudes in this new century. Copyright © 2023 selection and editorial matter, Kerry J. Kennedy, Margarita Pavlova and John Chi-Kin Lee; individual chapters, the contributors.

Life education, originating in the West, has been an increasingly important source of moral and values education in the Greater China region. Life education, to some extent, is linked with different kinds of values education that encompasses moral and citizenship education, environmental education as well as religious and spiritual education. In the 21st century, life education could also be complementary to positive education that is related to the development of positive (life) values and the pursuit of well-being. Life education also echoes with health education under the impact of COVID-19 along with life and planning education including life-long learning perspectives. This chapter explores the theoretical and practical connections between life education, positive education and other values education and proposes an integrated and holistic approach to curriculum development for the context of Hong Kong. Copyright © 2023 selection and editorial matter, Kerry J. Kennedy, Margarita Pavlova and John Chi-Kin Lee; individual chapters, the contributors.

This study investigated the mediation role of teacher resilience between job demands and resources and their well-being and job performance using a sample of 407 teachers from Hong Kong, SAR and mainland China. Confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling were employed to deal with the dataset. The results indicated that the professional dimension and the emotional dimension of teacher resilience were affected by decision latitude (potential control over the job tasks and conducts) and school support respectively and predicted teacher well-being. The motivational dimension and the social dimension of teacher resilience promoted teacher job performance, influenced respectively by task overload (negatively) and role demand (positively) along with school support. This model is the first attempt to represent the relevance of the Job Demands-Resources theory that teacher resilience can buffer negative job demands and boost positive job resources to promote their well-being and performance in a specific societal and educational context. Implications for cultivating teacher resilience to everyday challenges and adversities were proposed in order to assist teachers to not only survive, recover, and thrive, but also to establish a school resilience cascade (potential resilience chain affecting a system due to an act of teacher resilience) for these turbulent times. Copyright © 2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Creativity is an important 21st Century skill that enhances students’ ability to see new opportunities, confront new challenges, and adapt flexibly to the changing study, work and life situations. To nurture students with strong self-efficacy in creative thinking is as important as the contexts and strategies involved in its application. But how to develop sustainable interventions (without generating excessive workload for teachers) to promote students’ self-efficacy in creativity is a long-lasting challenge. This study presents a simple and relatively cost-effective instructional intervention, i.e., self-assessment mind maps, and examines its effect on students’ self-efficacy in creativity, self-efficacy in learning English, and academic performance in English language tests. A pretest-posttest non-equivalent design was adopted for the experimental and control groups of students in a Hong Kong primary school in 2021/22 Spring semester. The results show that students from the experimental group significantly outperformed those from the control group on self-efficacy in creativity after the intervention. However, the intervention did not improve students’ self-efficacy and test performance in English learning. The findings demonstrate the potential of self-assessment mind maps as an effective and sustainable instruction intervention to promote students’ higher-order abilities. This study sheds light on designing sustainable instructional strategies for empowerment in creativity. Copyright © 2022 Yan, Lee, Hui and Lao.

A museum is an educational fair which facilitates individuals to explore and discover through inquiry. Museums provide participants with direct learning experience with objects and exhibits that relate to concepts and disciplinary subjects in the arts, history, science, and social science of specific time and space. Learning through museums is considered as one of the informal learning ways which is very different from formal learning in schools. This study aims to investigate Hong Kong primary school teachers’ and students’ perspectives, learning experiences and motivations in museum learning and visits. A survey study is adopted to gather the views and experiences of a sample of senior primary school students and teachers, in the local primary school context, on museum learning and visits in the past three years. Learners’ actual and preferred visits to museums as well as the types of motivations involved in visiting museums in a Chinese culture and context will be explored. The ways of interactions and various types of museum learning will also be examined, and teachers’ and students’ perspectives will also be compared. This study will provide insights into the enhancement of meaningful museum education journeys for students. Copyright © 2021 International Conference on Learning and Teaching.

This paper reports on the results of part of a questionnaire survey on the relative extent to which senior secondary geography teaching in Hong Kong and England contributes to environmental education. A substantial proportion of geography teachers indicated a strong preference for traditional and resource-based strategies in teaching selected topics of environmental emphasis. Furthermore, they often relied upon textbooks, notes and worksheets with occasional use of audio-visual materials as teaching resources. Whilst teachers from both places shared some common problems in implementing environmental education, there was a significant difference in their emphasis on environmental issues. The author suggests some possible measures for future improvement of geography teaching with respect to environmental education. Copyright © 1993 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. All rights reserved.

Objectives: Research shows that compassion from others and from the self may enable university students to face, overcome, and bounce back from adversity and generate a greater sense of thriving and meaning in life. However, the underlying processes are largely unknown. The present study aimed to examine the associations of compassion with psychological distress, flourishing, and meaning in life among university students and explore the mechanisms underlying these associations. Methods: A total of 536 Hong Kong university students completed questionnaires measuring their experiences of compassion from others, self-compassion, resilience, psychological distress, flourishing, and meaning in life. Results: Serial mediation analyses showed that compassion from others was associated positively with self-compassion, which was, in turn, linked to greater resilience and consequently lower levels of psychological distress and higher levels of flourishing and meaning in life. Conclusions: Our findings reveal the associations of compassion from others and self-compassion with the well-being and life meaning of university students. The findings highlight the importance of being open and receptive to love and kindness from others. The findings also point to the importance of developing a caring attitude toward oneself. Copyright © 2022 The Author(s).

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to offer direct tests of the effectiveness of renaming vocational education and training (VET) in enhancing the image and popularity of the subject. Although many proponents of renaming argue that the word “vocational” is associated with lower levels of skills and knowledge and should therefore be supplemented by better recognised words, empirical evidence regarding the effectiveness of this strategy is scant. Design/methodology/approach: This study exploits a rare policy change in Hong Kong, where VET was renamed as vocational and professional education and training (VPET) and conducted an original survey experiment of 1,004 parents in the city to test if the new name would improve respondents' perceptions of the subject. Findings: The findings reveal a complex picture regarding the effects of renaming. Although renaming does not seem to improve the overall popularity of vocational education, it may widen the support base for vocational education by diluting its class character. Specifically, while attitudes toward VET are significantly and negatively correlated with family income, no such association is found in regard to VPET. Originality/value: This paper offers the first direct and comprehensive test of the effectiveness of renaming vocational education – a popular policy suggestion in many countries. Its findings complicate conventional expectations and contribute to the study of educational preferences in advanced economies. Copyright © 2022 Emerald Publishing Limited.