Objective: This study investigated how school counsellors in international schools in Hong Kong supported the wellbeing of students and families during the period of school closure caused by the COVID-19 pandemic from the perspective of parents.Method: Sixteen parents with children in eleven different international schools in Hong Kong were interviewed and the data were analysed thematically.Results: Strong pre-existing relationships, role clarity, and open communication between counsellors and parents were associated with the effective adaptation of counselling services to the changing needs of parents during the school closure period, but these characteristics were often weak or absent.Conclusions: Parents’ perceptions of counselling during the school closure period provide important feedback that schools can use to build more integrated and responsive support services. Counsellors can support students’ wellbeing more effectively during crises by communicating their roles clearly, building strong relationships with parents, and helping students to maintain a diverse experience in their schooling. Copyright © 2021 Informa UK Limited.

Dialogic teaching has been demonstrated to be conducive to the development of such important competencies and skills as creativity, communication skills, and critical thinking skills. However, the literature confirms that teacher-student interactions in the classroom are predominantly monologic rather than dialogic across subjects, grades, and countries. This article reports the results of a study that assesses the effectiveness of a Philosophy for Children (P4C) programme in facilitating the development of dialogic and inquiry teaching in teachers in Hong Kong. In the study, training and support were provided for teachers to enable them to teach P4C to their students during Integrated Humanities and English lessons. P4C was found to help increase the teachers’ effectiveness in the classroom in terms of their ability to engage in dialogic and inquiry teaching, to develop relevant curricular materials for such teaching, to reflect on their own teaching, to recognise their students’ capacity for constructing knowledge through dialogic inquiry, to transfer the teaching strategies learned in P4C to other non-P4C lessons, and to identify and analyse philosophical concepts in the school curriculum. The findings of this study suggest that P4C plays a significant role in promoting the professional development of teachers. Copyright © 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

A major cluster of economic engines that have changed Asian higher education, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan have all developed high-income societies as well as world-class universities which linked local “knowledge economies” to global science and created hubs for international collaborations and mobility. However, there has been limited analysis of interdependencies between the rise of world-class universities and changes in the flows of international talent. This paper elaborates on the concept of higher education internationalization that aims at enhancing geopolitical equity in global mobility and re-positioning local students for improved access to the world-class excellence. The paper compares key themes and patterns that define the Tiger societies’ unique positions in the field of global higher education. Copyright © 2021 The Author(s).

COVID-19 and the shift to online teaching necessitated a change in approach for English for Academic Purposes (EAP) teachers in preparing their students for university studies. This study explored how EAP instructors coped with and adapted their provision for emergency remote teaching. The study was conducted at an English-medium university in Hong Kong and a qualitative case study approach was adopted. The results revealed two overarching themes of opportunity and challenge. While the sudden shift to online teaching forced innovation and fostered collaborative learning and feedback, teachers experienced difficulties in communicating with students and monitoring their learning. The study voices teacher perspectives in delivering EAP courses online and highlights important implications for the successful delivery of future online EAP provisions. Copyright © 2021 by the authors.

Literature offers a theoretical framework exemplifying the inherent tensions between “becoming Chinese” and “remaining global” in the evolution of the international status of Hong Kong. Adopting this framework, this paper examines the global position of Hong Kong’s higher education through an investigation of universities’ participation in China’s Belt and Road Initiative and Greater Bay Area development plan. Specifically, drawing on data from interviews about universities’ engagement with the two Chinese grand strategies, the paper discusses university leaders and academics’ experience and perception of Hong Kong’s global status against a policy context that foregrounds a deeper integration with the Chinese national development. This discussion offers a theoretical dialogue that reveals different but overlapping scenarios for the future of Hong Kong’s higher education and sheds light on the link between the changing geopolitical contexts and international higher education. Copyright © 2021 The Author(s).

While technology use is becoming increasingly common in education, teachers remain reluctant to use it and hesitant on how best to incorporate it into their teaching and practice.  There is a strong demand from institutions for English language teachers to cope with the changing landscape of teaching in the 21st century.  This explorative study investigated Hong Kong tertiary teachers’ beliefs on continuing professional development activities to enhance their teaching.  The study had a two-phase research design, with an initial questionnaire (N = 58) followed by semistructured interviews (N = 12) to unpack the participants’ hidden voices.  The findings illustrated that most teachers are enthusiastic about professional development activities, though there is a misalignment between what universities value and reward and what teachers see as most beneficial for enhancing their teaching practices.  The results suggested that professional development activities should focus on sharing good teaching practice (e.g., informal chats, mentoring) within universities rather than on rewarding attending conferences and on-off, nonintegrated workshops. Copyright © 2021 Lucas Kohnke.

Acculturation is an emerging field of inquiry in the multicultural context of Hong Kong. Behavioural acculturation focuses mainly on cultural practices such as language use, dietary preferences, customs and traditions, socialization and media consumption. Despite a phenomenal growth of research on the educational predicament of immigrant youth based on a deficit-based “stress and coping” approach, there is a dearth of literature on how non-Chinese young people experience the phenomenon of intercultural learning in Hong Kong. This article reports a qualitative study on the behavioural acculturation of a group of Pakistani secondary school students in Hong Kong from a culture leaning perspective. The study findings challenge the deficit-based perspective and advocate a culture-learning approach to the study of acculturation. Copyright © 2021 National Institute of Education, Singapore.

This article aims to generate a better understanding of Hong Kong teachers’ perception of national education as implemented in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (hereafter referred to as Hong Kong SAR) and the interrelationship between their perception and the methods they adopt to teach the topic. We outline the Hong Kong context relevant to our research and review the relevant literature to consider typologies and teaching methods about and for national education. Questionnaire data focused on the seven typologies of nationalism and the three teaching methods of national education identified in the literature review. A total of 601 questionnaires were returned from 198 schools. The typologies of cultural nationalism, civic and peripheral nationalism, authoritarian nationalism, unification nationalism and cosmopolitan nationalism, and the teaching methods of group discussion and an affective approach characterize the views of Hong Kong secondary school teachers about national education. We suggest that teachers’ diverse views about nationalism and their varied use of teaching methods to achieve their goals suggest the powerful influence of current initiatives from the Chinese mainland and the need to reflect on established academic literature that proposes the decolonization of the curriculum and interactive and critical teaching methods. Copyright © 2021 Intellect Ltd Article. English language.

In this chapter, a case study of implementing blended learning in a linguistics course will be reported. Traditionally, this course was taught in the mode of a 1-hour face-to-face plenary lecture plus a 2-hour small group tutorial session each week for 13 weeks. To promote blended learning and give students an enhanced learning experience that allows more flexibility and more peer interaction, two of the plenary lectures were converted into online lessons, and Moodle was used as the online platform for hosting the online content. Three levels of online activities were designed and provided online: every online lesson consisted of 3–4 mass open online course (MOOC)-style high-quality lecture video clips (Level 1, resource-based activities) followed by online quizzes (Level 2, response-based activities) and discussion forums (Level 3, collaborative activities). Post-lesson analysis shows that over 320 threads were posted by students on the Moodle forums, suggesting that students were actively engaged in online discussions. A post-lesson survey was conducted after the first online lesson, and the feedback was very positive. The majority enjoyed the flexibility of the online lesson and felt more independent during the learning process. They found the video lectures attractive and effective and the online discussion engaging and beneficial. Other than the online lessons, other resources and activities such as stand-alone course-specific website, weekly online quizzes, and Wikibook projects have been adopted to further promote blended learning. To ensure a fulfilling learning experience, instructional design plays a crucial part, especially in arranging the online lessons and other blended learning experiences. Clear and detailed instructions and guidance were also vital for the success of blended learning. Copyright © 2021 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.