In Hong Kong, the knowledge of multiple family groups (MFGs) among social workers has been limited, in particular, in adapting MFG activities to a Chinese context. In this paper, we describe our experience of employing this group approach to assist Chinese parents who are taking care of children with special needs; state the challenges of implementing it and report the families' perception of helpful and unhelpful aspects of the MFG experience. In the perspective of the parents, two activities, namely preparing a joint meal and surrogate parenting have proven efficacious for parents to understand their child's strengths and explore alternate ways of parenting.
[Copyright of Journal of Social Work Practice: psychotherapeutic approaches in health, welfare and the community is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02650533.2012.706217]

Presently, there are a growing number of ethnic minority students in Hong Kong schools. This article examines 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. Qualitative data were collected from semi-structured interviews with 32 teachers from three secondary schools. This study shows that teachers struggle to conceptualize a new rationale for responding to cultural diversity. They develop a sense of intercultural sensitivity, promote cultural responsiveness to diversity, and strengthen the home–school connection. This article argues that, like students, teachers simultaneously engage in a cross-cultural process through which they learn the culture of ethnic minority students, relearn their own culture and reexamine the relevant rationale underlying cultural responsiveness. Finally, a framework for the creation of culturally responsive classrooms, based upon the teachers' new rationale of cultural responsiveness, is proposed.
[Copyright of Intercultural Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14675986.2012.686021]

An increasingly important curricular aim of teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) is to develop learners' intercultural competence for communication with people from different cultures through English. English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers' perceptions and practices in relation to integrating culture with English learning have been investigated mainly in Europe and the USA, whereas in Asia, these issues seem to have been less explored. This article reports an interview study that collected views about culture and language teaching from 12 secondary school English teachers in Hong Kong, including native and non-native English teachers. The findings showed that the teachers were unanimously positive in their attitudes towards the motivating power of culture (including popular culture) in language teaching, but also revealed ambivalence or contradictory feelings about the means and the end of culture-integrated TEFL in terms of what cultural resources to draw on; the connectivity between cultural components and examinations; and the role of teachers. The findings suggest the need for EFL teachers to deploy culture as a discursive resource for meaning-making, and to consider culture pedagogy as interlingual and intercultural exploratory dialogues with the students. The need for a closer collaboration among EFL teachers from different sociocultural backgrounds is highlighted.
[Copyright of Language, Culture and Curriculum is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07908318.2012.716849]

This paper attempts to define cultural globalisation and cultural glocalisation in terms of cultural identity (CI) and language. Homogenisation, heterogenisation and glocalisation are three possible ways to face the challenge of cultural globalisation but glocalisation may be the most realistic solution as it seems to be the way to a better quality of life. The process of exporting CIs to other nations is cultural globalisation while adaptation of incoming foreign CIs to suit local needs is cultural glocalisation. Language is a CI in the domain of lifestyles as well as carrier of CIs of institutional systems and spiritual values. Incoming foreign languages and foreign CIs often cause changes in local CIs. This is an interactive process as changes of any CIs may lead to alterations of other CIs. To be an effective communicator in this multilingual world, people have to develop multilingual and multicultural competencies. The experience of Hong Kong and Singapore in glocalisation of Mandarin and the rapid growth in the number of Mandarin learners and speakers all over the world indicate the potential for development of Mandarin into an international language after English.
[Copyright of Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2010.527344]

近年香港特別行政區政府關注文物保育，學校推行文物保育教育之趨勢有增無減，並以校本學習活動為主要形態。學校文物保育教育，現階段是一項有待開發的重要項目，值得教育工作者加以討論。本文嘗試探討文物保育教育與公民教育配合的意義，並反思文物保育教育於學校教育中可以發展的理念層面及其相關的落實策略。
Since the Government of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region has been paying more attention on heritage conservation in recent years, there is a trend of developing heritage conservation education among schools in Hong Kong with the main form of its implementation as school-based learning activities. As an important area of education to be explored and utilized, heritage conservation education deserves the discussion among education practitioners. This article aims at exploring the relationship of heritage conservation education and civic education, and examining the framework and the related strategies of the implementation of heritage conservation education in school education.
[Copyright of Hong Kong Teachers' Centre Journal is the property of Hong Kong Teachers' Centre at http://www.edb.org.hk/hktc]