The contribution of teacher knowledge to learning outcomes at the beginning stages of literacy acquisition is of growing concern because the ability to provide quality instruction is central to successful literacy acquisition, particularly for pupils with dyslexia. To date, the majority of research has focused on teachers of English as a first language. Yet, English is the most widely taught foreign language today. The present study extends the exploration of teacher knowledge by probing two heretofore unexamined groups of teachers who are responsible for teaching beginning stages of literacy in English as a foreign language: regular class teachers who are non-native English-speaking (N = 96) and native English-speaking teachers (N = 24) working in the kindergarten setting in Hong Kong. As these two teacher groups serve as gatekeepers of beginning English as a foreign language literacy for kindergarten children in Hong Kong, it is crucial to gather information about the depth and quality of their teacher knowledge. This information can be instrumental to improving the quality of beginning literacy instruction in English and assisting early identification of dyslexia. Both groups completed the basic language constructs survey (Binks-Cantrell, Joshi, & Washburn, Annals of Dyslexia, 62, 153–171, 2012a). Results showed while native English teachers performed significantly better than non-native English teachers, total percentage correct scores were below 50%, except for phonological awareness tasks. All teachers scored higher in items requiring syllable as opposed to phoneme manipulation. Only teacher type predicted teachers’ performance on the survey. The need for quality instruction, particularly for children at-risk for dyslexia or those struggling at the beginning stages of literacy acquisition, is addressed. Copyright © 2020 The International Dyslexia Association.

The dominance of Asian communities in international league tables such as those produced by The Program for International Student Assessment, which monitors competence in literacy and numeracy, has resulted in a policy discourse from the English government of failing schools, deficit curricular and ineffective teachers. This in turn has led to a re-defining of the National Curriculum framework for pupils educated in England with greater focus given in the Early Years curriculum to Mathematical functions particularly those associated with skills in counting; understanding and using number; calculating simple addition and subtraction problems and the understanding of shape, space and measure. Drawing on research carried out in Hong Kong and England this article offers a cross-cultural comparison of the expectations of Early Years Teachers in terms of the capabilities of early learners in achieving elements of number competency. The study of teachers’ expectation is a neglected field in research when applied to compare intercultural achievement. In identifying divergent national expectations, the current panic over what constitutes an appropriate maths curriculum is critiqued and recommendations made for further exploration into teachers’ expectations as to the age and stage at which elements of the maths curriculum are introduced in English schools.
[Copyright © 2016 ASPE.]

English is an important foreign language for children in Asia. In certain economies specializing in international trade (e.g., Hong Kong), parents have high expectations on their preschoolers’ English proficiency. Since instruction time for English in preschools is often limited in these societies (20 to 25 minutes per day, 3 to 5 times a day), school principals sometimes have difficulty deciding how the best teachers of English should utilize the time in their English lessons in order to maximize children’s language development. In this study, I compared three types of preschool English lessons: story-telling, arts and craft, and phonics lessons in order to understand the teacher’s use of the language. In particular, I am interested in the number of times teachers repeat vocabularies and the complexity of the sentences used (as indexed by the type-token ratio and mean length of utterance respectively). The idea is that the type of lessons which affords the richest use of language (i.e., where words are repeated and used in lengthier sentences) is likely to stimulate children’s oral language development, which serves as the foundation for children’s future literacy development. An analysis of six 25-minute English lessons revealed that teachers were less likely to repeat words and more likely to use shorter sentences in phonics lessons in comparison to other lesson types. The implication is that for preschools in which English exposure time is limited, a predominance of phonics lessons (e.g., two out of three lessons in a week) might be detrimental to young children’s oral language development.