English as a foreign language (EFL) education has become increasingly ubiquitous in Eastern Asian early childhood education (ECE) settings, but the studies on this phenomenon have not been thoroughly reviewed. This scoping review investigates the scope and findings of the current literature regarding this under-researched phenomenon. Through a five-step protocol, 17 empirical studies published during 2012–2022 are included. Findings indicate that: (1) there are four major research areas: education policy, education technology, teacher and teacher education, and curriculum and pedagogy; (2) Hong Kong receives the most research attention; (3) teachers’ knowledge and beliefs, implementing early EFL education, and effects of interventions constitute three prominent research themes. This review also identified research gaps and highlighted the need for more quantitative research on early EFL education in other parts of Asia, the planning and implementation of EFL policies in micro-level contexts, and in-service educators’ beliefs and practises. Copyright © 2024 The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V.

Concerns of equity with respect to the community college model in East Asia persist in educational research. In this study, we described and analysed students’ “lived experience” in community colleges in Hong Kong in terms of the “warming up” or “cooling out” of their educational desire. Semistructured interviews with 14 graduates of community colleges in Hong Kong were conducted to determine how their experiences at community colleges affected their educational expectations and the extent to which community colleges help students reconsider their educational disadvantages in a competitive, meritocratic and massified higher education system. The qualitative interview data were inductively thematised into four aspects of college experience in relation to their educational expectations. The data revealed that Hong Kong’s community colleges help some students develop their capabilities and change their educational expectations through democratic admissions, liberal pedagogic environments, learner-centred formative assessment and student services for strategic university articulation. Rather than cooling-out students’ educational desire (characterised by gradual disengagement, objective denial, alternative achievement), community colleges in Hong Kong provide a second chance for failing and disadvantaged students to pursue a university education, but this warming-up function applies only to students who benefitted from the liberal mode of assessment and discovered and developed their academic capabilities in their college experience. The paper ends with a critical analysis of the problem of such warming up of educational desire and the extent to which community colleges can empower disadvantaged students for a good life. Copyright © 2022 The Australian Association for Research in Education, Inc.

Cross-border partnerships are increasingly important for higher education in the twenty-first century. Drawing from the business sector’s resource-based theory, this paper explores international partner selection among higher education institutions in Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan. According to resource-based theory, institutions may seek partners with specific technical capabilities, managerial capabilities or other intangible resources to access external knowledge and capabilities, develop internal resources and gain competitive advantage. Through document analysis and interviews, this investigation identified twelve attributes that influenced international partner selection for higher education institutions in these contexts. Eleven fit within resource-based theory’s criteria areas of technical capabilities, managerial capabilities and intangible resources. These determined the attractiveness of potential partners. However, existing relationships, the twelfth attribute, wasoften the deciding factor of whether or not a partnership would move forward. Importantly, while contextual differences were observed, these attributes were present across contexts.
[Copyright of Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management is the property of Routledge.]

Across East and Southeast Asia, the International Baccalaureate (IB) is expanding and diversifying. More students from affluent families are 'opting out' of mainstream schooling to take the IB's Diploma Programme (DP), which is marketed as a distinctive skill-based education that prepares students for university. This research investigated how DP alumni reflect on their educational experiences in developing cognitive and non-cognitive skills and as preparation for elite universities in Hong Kong. An online undergraduate survey (n = 734) found that DP alumni self-perceived higher capacities than non-DP alumni in communication, creativity, critical thinking, cultural sensitivity, global-mindedness, leadership, and time management. In interviews (n = 42), DP alumni perceived the DP as a privileged educational experience that 'worked' in developing cognitive and non-cognitive skills. The DP alumni were overall positive about their DP experiences in developing skills for university preparation. However, there were complexities as the DP alumni also perceived that students from mainstream schools were often better prepared for pedagogy and assessments in the context of higher education in Hong Kong. Copyright © 2020 Society for Research into Higher Education.

This paper explores the concept of miniature students to interrogate the ways in which early childhood care and education systems in East Asian countries are being constructed. Experiences drawn from working in the Hong Kong education system and observations of teaching and researching in Hong Kong have enabled an analysis about the ways in which young children are conceptualized, normalized, and governed from the beginning of preschool. The purpose of the analysis presented is not to create an alternative grand narrative of childhood or studenthood, but rather to explicate the ways in which young children are being shaped into miniature students from the beginning of their (in)formal educational experiences. A post-structuralist lens is used to explore the ways in which this concept has become manifested within the context of a privatized system, regulated by government and supported by new forms of funding to increase participation. Going beyond the geopolitical space of Asia, the making of miniature students can also be observed in many other countries in which governments focus on 'rigorous' assessment schemes or systems that are considered to result in improved high stakes test scores. The making of miniature students is perpetuated by a drive by governments toward narrow education outcomes.
[International Journal of Early Childhood is a copyright of Springer, 2017]

Education reform is increasingly based on emulating the features of world-class' systems that top international attainment surveys and, in England specifically, East Asia is referenced as the inspiration' for their education reforms. However, the extent to which the features identified by the UK Government accord with the situation within East Asia is problematic. This paper examines the relationship between the English representation and the reality' of East Asian education systems, using school autonomy as an illustrative example. We focus on Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai, which are cited extensively to legitimate policies providing greater autonomy for schools in England. We argue firstly that the English representation has been largely discursive and inaccurate; has failed to recognise the variations across the region; and has been selected to endorse the Government's ideological preferences. Secondly, the scope, form and nature of school autonomy vary markedly, and are operationalised in each society in ways reflecting the prevailing sociopolitical priorities.

Despite sharing a common cultural heritage, recent developments in gifted education in several countries and regions within East Asia, including the People’s Republic of China (mainland China), Taiwan, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR), Singapore, Japan, and South Korea, show that each country and region is now characterized by different approaches to gifted education. However, the challenges facing many of these countries and regions are remarkably similar, including a number of fundamental issues such as misconceptions as to the role of gifted education within communities that are dominated by extensive and pervasive examination systems, and the limited roles of indigenous research in conceptions of giftedness and curriculum development. In contrast, gifted education in Japan has had a “virtual” existence over many years, although the ability of its education systems – both public and private – to meet the specific needs of its “gifted” students is yet to be determined.
[Copyright © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009.]