Fundamental movement skills (FMSs) are essential building blocks for children’s physical development and future participation in physical activities. While early childhood curriculum frameworks recognize the importance of teaching FMSs, little research has been conducted to explore actual teaching practices in center-based programs and their variations across different grade levels. The goals of this study were to investigate (1) the frequency of a variety of FMSs in the physical activities conducted by Hong Kong kindergarten teachers, (2) the association among these FMSs based on the frequency of use in the classroom, and (3) potential differences in FMSs across the three grade levels of kindergarten education in Hong Kong. The participants were 526 kindergarten teachers. Descriptive statistics, principal component analysis, and parametric statistical techniques (e.g., one-way ANOVA) were employed to analyze their responses to a survey, in which we asked teachers to report the frequency with which FMSs are involved in their classroom physical activities. Overall, we found that the participants practiced an imbalanced set of FMSs in classrooms. K3 teachers were found to incorporate a wider variety of FMSs into their physical activities compared to K1 and K2 teachers. Through principal component analysis, seven components of activities were identified. K3 teachers were found to implement more activities involving springing, object manipulation, uneven locomotor movements, and agility and coordination. We concluded that there is a need to provide structured opportunities for teachers to better facilitate children’s FMS acquisition. Offering more explicit guidelines and further professional development for teachers is crucial to enhancing this situation. Copyright © 2024 by the authors.

This study investigated the extent to which preschool teachers and children (ages 4–6) used literal and inferential language within the context of whole-group instruction in four kindergarten classrooms in Hong Kong. A total of 20 sessions of videotaped classroom observations of linguistic interactions between teachers and children were transcribed and then analyzed using a coding scheme to determine the cognitive complexity of teacher questions and child responses with reference to four levels of abstraction, representing a literal-to-inferential continuum. The results indicated that the teachers' questions were predominantly literal in nature (83 %), and similarly the majority of the children's responses (77 %) were also literal. Furthermore, it was revealed that in an average instructional session: (a) teachers produced significantly more utterances than children; (b) the difference in the quantity of teachers' questions between literal and inferential levels was statistically significant; (c) similarly, the difference in the quantity of children's responses between literal and inferential levels was also statistically significant; and (d) children produced a significantly larger quantity of shorter than longer utterances. As there is distinct value in whole-group instruction as a salient context for teacher–child interactive, linguistic engagement in kindergarten classrooms in Hong Kong, it is particularly vital that early childhood educators understand what types of linguistic interactions are occurring there and how to target professional development for teachers to better support language learning in young children.
[Copyright of Early Childhood Education Journal is the property of Springer Netherlands.]

Understanding student teachers’ development of conceptions of teaching and learning is critical for teacher educators. Drawing from the findings of a four-year longitudinal study in Hong Kong, this paper examines the trajectories of the student teachers’ changing conceptions of teaching and learning approaches throughout their undergraduate programme. Three types of trajectories: guided touring, experiential detouring and self-guided touring, as the changes in both conceptions of teaching and learning approaches, are presented. The results suggest that three factors: faculty, learners’ attitudes towards learning and ability to integrate different learning resources, influenced the development of the student teachers’ trajectories. This study adds to the international body of knowledge on the interconnected development of conceptions of teaching and learning approaches. The paper concludes with the implications for teacher education.
[Copyright © 2015 Taylor & Francis.]