With the ability to provide feedback and assistance, humanoid educational robots have been proven effective in assisting students to overcome learning challenges and enhancing individual learning outcomes. However, the strength of humanoid robots in promoting social and emotional skills has not been well investigated. Socially supportive behaviour can contribute more to students’ learning engagement than knowledge transfer. This study focuses on the design of humanoid robots to engage students from functional and affective perspectives. To this end, a pilot test is conducted on 64 primary school students in Hong Kong, comprising a control group ( N  = 33) and an experimental group ( N  = 31). Questionnaires, observations, and language proficiency test are done to ensure the validity of the findings. The results show that the experimental group, which learned with the humanoid robots, significantly improved their behavioural engagement (+ 13.24%), emotional engagement (+ 13.14%), cognitive engagement (21.56%), and intrinsic motivation (12.07%). The impact of utilizing humanoid robots in education is elucidated through the lens of the self-determination theory (SDT), which pertains to students’ learning motivation and engagement. These findings can provide valuable insights into the development of more captivating humanoid robots for extensive learning purposes. Copyright ©2024 Springer.

Prescreening children for specific learning disabilities, e.g., dyslexia, is essential for effective intervention. With a quick and reliable prescreening result, special education coordinators (SENCOs) can provide students with early intervention and relieve their learning pressure. Unfortunately, due to the limited resources, many students in Hong Kong receive dyslexia assessments beyond the golden period, i.e., under the age of six. To this end, information technology could establish automatic prescreening tools to address this issue. However, dyslexia prescreening for children learning Chinese is challenging due to the lack of sound-script correlation in Chinese. In this article, an automatic dyslexia prescreening system (ADPS) is developed to provide a quick test to identify at-risk children. Through a two-stage approach, we first develop a gamified tool based on linguistic characteristics and then evaluate the result by a comparison study. Results from a pilot test on 30 students with dyslexia and 32 students without dyslexia indicate that the ADPS can effectively distinguish between two groups of students. Furthermore, the interactive design elements can motivate students to conduct the prescreening independently. Copyright ©2024 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

This study aims at exploring middle teacher leadership practices for social justice in career and life planning (CLP) education as part of the research collaboration developed in the International School Leadership Development Network (ISLDN) in the past decade. We have identified that young people face challenges to their career development in different types of public secondary schools led by various school leaders. Teacher leaders of the education, as informal or formal middle leaders, are responsible for the whole-school programme development, while senior secondary students are participants to be inspired about potential career pathways before graduation. However, allocation of students to different schools according to their academic achievement is a long-standing social justice issue. A framework of inclusivity was adopted for exploration of the teacher leaders' experiences of the issue in leading the education, and diverse young people's experiences of development in different secondary school types in Hong Kong. A qualitative approach was used for capturing the views of three teachers and three groups of students in three school types in answer to the research questions: What challenges facing the whole-school CLP education for different young people are derived from the social justice issue in secondary schooling? How do middle teacher leaders cope with challenges through their leadership practices in socially just CLP education for students in different types of school? What equal development opportunities for younger people's career pathways can be contextualised from the leadership practices in the schools? Although the students' self-understanding and competencies can generally be awakened, different interests and various abilities beyond academic performance are the common key factors of tailor-made CLP education for every student's development by the school types. A long-term commitment to social justice for youth's future pathways is also discussed.

Teachers in special education, compared with those in mainstream contexts, encounter more challenging situations in teaching and suffer from lower psychological and emotional well-being. The major research purpose was to test the effects of teacher values, emotions and emotion regulation on their psychological well-being. The current sample included 66 teachers from three special education schools. Results showed that teachers’ intrinsic value, enjoyment, as well as cognitive reappraisal all positively predicted teachers’ life satisfaction, while teacher anger negatively predicted occupational stress. Moving a step further, when teachers’ cognitive reappraisal levels were taken into consideration, teachers who reported high anger but low cognitive reappraisal were found to have significantly lower life satisfaction. Comparatively, higher life satisfaction was found among teachers who reported high cognitive reappraisal. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed in relation to research advances in teacher emotions and emotion regulation. Copyright © 2021 selection and editorial matter, Junjun Chen and Ronnel B. King; individual chapters, the contributors.

This paper aims at extending the understanding of principal leadership in support of teachers' development of robot-based pedagogy for students in a cross-school professional learning community (PLC) of Hong Kong's special education. Sixty representative teachers from over 30 special schools, that is 50% of the total number of special schools, participated in the community over the past 2 years. The teachers not only developed the pedagogy but also observed and collaborated in the schools regarding their technological, pedagogical and content knowledge. The development of robot-based learning for individual students' different special educational needs is an innovative differentiated approach to fostering socially just learning in schools. The key research question is: How could teacher professional development of robot-based pedagogies for all students build a social-justice school? We adopted a qualitative cross-case study of four schools participating in the PLC. Although the professional development did not aim at principals' and teachers' social-justice practices for all students, the case study demonstrated the principals' leadership support and the teachers' enthusiasm for learning to change their pedagogies with the use of new robotic technology for socially just differentiated teaching. Implications of the cross-school PLC for building social-justice school communities are also discussed. Copyright © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

The psychological construct of self-efficacy plays a salient role in students’ pursuit of a career path. Career-related self-efficacy is strongly associated with life satisfaction and emotional well-being. Most of what is known about this construct has come from research with mainstream students in the West, and considerably less attention has focused on students with special educational needs. The limited knowledge we have of SEN students’ career-related self-efficacy may be due to lack of appropriate assessment instruments with sound psychometric properties that can be used across cultures. This chapter reports steps taken to validate such an instrument, the Career Development Self-Efficacy Inventory (CD-SEI), for assessing career life skills self-efficacy in SEN students. The authors describe the use of a short form of CD-SEI in Hong Kong with a sample of SEN students and a comparison group without special needs. Theoretical and practical implications of using this instrument to assess career life skills self-efficacy of SEN students are discussed in light of current career development theories. Copyright © 2020 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

While the relationship between self-determination and the academic achievement of students has been widely tested across cultures and groups, limited research has examined the antecedents of self-determination and their impacts on school engagement, which is the pre-requisite of academic achievement. The present study, based on the self-system processes model of motivation, tested the relationships between peer support, school support, self-determination, and school engagement in 118 secondary school students with special needs integrated into mainstream schools in Hong Kong. The results showed that school support has a significant indirect effect on school engagement via self-determination as a mediator. The correlations between school support, self-determination, and school engagement are all positive and significant, whereas peer support did not correlate with school engagement. Controlling for the factors of peer and school support, self-determination was the strongest predictor of school engagement for students with special needs. The current findings may highlight the importance of school support and self-determination interventions to enhance the school engagement of students with special needs in inclusive educational settings. Copyright © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

This proposal reports a case study of four principals’ leadership approaches to equality of learning opportunities towards inclusion for all students with different special educational needs (SEN). The study was conducted in the Chinese education system in Hong Kong where more SEN students are placed in ordinary public schools. The key questions are: What are the challenges facing the principals for equality of learning opportunity for SEN students in ordinary public schools? How do the principals enact leadership for equal learning opportunity for SEN students? What effects of the principal leadership on the student learning are regarded as school improvement towards inclusion? The findings unveil the principals’ concerns with the effects of leadership practice for whole-school inclusion on all students. Copyright © 2019 AERA.

According to two updated statistical reports, in 2014/2015, there are 17,981 students with special educational needs (SEN) integrated in mainstream schools. In 2017/2018, 7,896 students are learning in 62 special schools in Hong Kong. In searching for equality for students with SEN, for both special and inclusive schools, there is a common goal to help these students achieve as much independence as they can and “become well-adjusted individuals in the community”, so as to maximize these students’ potential to the full (Education Bureau, 2017). Unfortunately, there are relatively limited studies to investigate parents’ views of post-school transition options from a comparative perspective. With an aim to collect in-depth data from parents, this study conducted focus group interviews among two groups of parents. Among these options, early employment, sub-degree programmes, and further education in universities are three major options reported. Compared to parents of SEN students in special schools, those in mainstream schools reflected their stronger desire, but a relatively unrealistic transition option for mainly expecting their SEN students to continue education in universities. For parents of SEN students in special schools, although they understand early employment at sheltered workshops may be a main transition option for their children, they also raised their concerns and made recommendations to improve services of existing sheltered workshops in Hong Kong. Based on the results and an official implementation of career guidance and lifelong planning education since 2014 in both educational settings, we discussed potential solutions for catering for SEN students’ successful transition needs. Copyright © 2018 HKERA International Conference.

Policies of career-planning education have been developed and implemented in different societies over the past decades. The policy facilitates the sustainable development of people, particularly the youth, in exploring career aspirations, identities and pathways at different stages of their development. In Hong Kong, the senior secondary school curriculum has been revised to incorporate career-related learning for all students. A teacher in the position of career master/mistress is responsible for the coordination of student career development in each ordinary public school. The teacher has specifically experienced increasing learning diversity in the school setting where integrated education is provided for students with special educational needs (SEN). This paper aims to explore the teacher’s experience in support of career development of students with or without SEN in the school. We adopted an interview method to capture three teachers’ experiences in three schools located in different districts in Hong Kong. What were the teachers’ experiences of implementing the policy of career-planning education for senior secondary students in the schools? What effects on the students’ career development did the teachers perceive? The findings can unveil the challenges facing the teachers for coordination of career-planning programmes in the schools. Although the programme can generally awaken the students’ self-understanding and career competencies, more resources and intense support for SEN students’ career development are needed. This seems to be an agenda missing in the current policymaking. Implications of the education for positive whole-person development of students are also discussed.過去數十年，不同社會都實施職業規劃教育政策。該政策有助於人們，特別是青年人的可持續發展，於不同階段中探索職業志向、專業身份和發展方向。香港的新高中學課程亦為所有學生提供多種職業相關的學習，而學校亦增設職業輔導主任及教師為高中學生制定職業規劃課程。不過，教師也要面對在融合教育環境內，不斷增長的學習多樣性。本文旨在探討職業輔導教師支援學生職業發展的經驗（包括有特殊教育需要學生）。透過面談，研究問题包括：學校為高中學生實施職業規劃教育，教師有甚麼經驗？職業規劃教育對學生的職業發展有何影響？調查顯示教師在統籌學校職業規劃教育活動所面對的挑戰。雖然職業規劃教育活動可以喚醒學生的自我理解和職業能力