Research Findings: Western ideas and progressive pedagogies have been introduced to China (including Shenzhen), Hong Kong, and Singapore to replace traditional Chinese pedagogy. But these imported ideas are not congruent with traditional Chinese culture and thus have encountered resistance from Chinese teachers. The present study observed and analyzed 18 early childhood classrooms in the 3 localities and questioned the class teachers about their respective teaching practices to see how those ideas were actually turned into practice. Whole-class direct instruction was found to be the predominant Chinese pedagogical mode. This indicates that Chinese traditional pedagogy still dominated those Chinese preschool classrooms. Slight societal differences in classroom practice were also found, reflecting the spectrum of openness and Westernization of the 3 cities.
Practice or Policy: The findings suggest that people should adapt rather than adopt those pedagogical innovations developed in other sociocultural milieu, as different societies have different social, cultural, and educational traditions. Cultural appropriateness should be seriously considered when choosing the pedagogies to be adapted. Moreover, influences from the culture, language, teachers, parents, resources available, and the prevailing education system should also be taken into consideration when planning for pedagogical reforms.
[Copyright of Early Education & Development is the property of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10409289.2010.536441]

This paper reports on school-university collaboration during an action research project, which aimed to build a writing pedagogy for students with Learning Disabilities in the trilingual, biliterate educational context of Hong Kong. The project was established through interpersonal relationships built from the ground up between stakeholders from a university department and a secondary school. The informal social networks were the locus of innovation and creativity within the project. This paper examines four broad dimensions of collaboration: the relationships created, the resources shared, the action taken and the pedagogy created. We discuss these dimensions of collaboration from the perspectives of the stakeholders. We found that each stakeholder aligned their motivations and expectations with other stakeholders to achieve the common goals of the research and consequently we call such alignments of interests "research networks". Finally, we suggest that "research networks" constitute an important, yet overlooked component of action research.
[Copyright of English Teaching: Practice & Critique is the property of Universidad del Zulia.
Access via Directory of Open Access Journals: http://edlinked.soe.waikato.ac.nz/research/journal/index.php?id=1]

This longitudinal study examined the relationship between pedagogical continuity in literacy education and early literacy development by comparing Chinese children in Hong Kong and Shenzhen. Stratified random sampling was used to select 24 preschool and Primary 1 classes in four communities catering to middle-class families in each city. The 24 teachers were interviewed about their teaching methods and views on pedagogical continuity in individual sessions. Further, their teaching activities were videotaped over a period of a week. Their students (n = 758) completed a Chinese literacy attainment test at the beginning and at the end of the same academic year. Analyses indicated that Hong Kong students outperformed their Shenzhen counterparts in Chinese literacy attainment, at both preschool and primary levels, concurrently and longitudinally. This suggests that the holistic approach followed in Hong Kong might have a more positive impact on childrens literacy development than the approach followed in Shenzhen. Implications of the findings for early childhood curriculum reform are discussed.
[Copyright of Early Years: An International Journal of Research and Development is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09575146.2010.515944 ]

Eighty-six Hong Kong Chinese kindergarten children were pretested on the Preschool and Primary Chinese Literacy Scale (PPCLS) and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test - Third Edition (PPVT-III), and assigned randomly within schools to 1 of 3 conditions, dialogic reading, typical reading and control. After an 8-week intervention, the children were posttested. Results indicated a significant main group effect for performance on both the PPCLS and the PPVT-III, with children in the dialogic reading group benefiting significantly from the intervention. These results indicate that early literacy-related activities in the home have strong and direct effects on both children's literacy growth and language development in Chinese. The success of the dialogic reading technique in this study contributes to the goal of raising global literacy standards and educational achievement.
[Copyright of Early Education & Development is the property of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15566935eed1402_6 ]

This paper reviews literacy learning conducted in two laboratory preschools in Hong Kong and Canada, and examines the link between cultural values and educational practices. Both preschools maintain that a constructivist view of child learning underpins their practice. However, the author's experience in these two settings illustrates how similarities and differences are identified in the scope, focus, implementation strategies and learning outcomes of the activities observed. Reasons for these findings are explored from the perspectives of cultural values and societal beliefs in education of the East and the West, and how the constructivist ideology is espoused in these settings. Implications of this cross-cultural comparison on the issue of 'best practice' in early childhood education are discussed.
[Copyright of Early Years: An International Journal of Research and Development is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09575140802057554]