A student’s ‘meaning in life’ and his/her connectedness to school, friends and family are believed to be factors that influence the development of life skills. Teachers could be aware of these factors in their endeavours to foster ‘whole-person development’ in their students. In this small-scale study, twelve secondary school teachers participated in three focus groups and reported their perceptions of students’ meaning in life, connectedness and life skills. In general, they believed that having a definite goal means students have found preliminarily the meaning in life and the source of motivation. The teachers also observed that high achievers tend to set goals for future achievement, whereas the goals and aspirations of low achievers are much more short-term. Teachers suggested that development of students’ connectedness and life skills can be facilitated by the opportunity to converse with teachers, and the creation of a caring culture in schools that makes students feel valued. Conversely, parental expectations and strong academic orientation of the school may restrict students’ personal goal-setting. The findings have practical implications for teachers, counselling professionals and other support staff in schools because specific guidance activities can be devised to strengthen students’ connectedness, meaning in life, and life skills. Copyright © 2020 NAPCE.

The Methodist Church of Hong Kong has promoted a life education programme since 2004, and has progressively applied it in all affiliated schools. This article analyses the characteristics of the latest primary school life education curriculum compiled by this Christian school sponsoring body. There are three significant findings: 1) religious elements remain rich in the four strands of life education the Universe, oneself, other people, and environment; 2) biblical stories have been removed, but Christian beliefs are integrated into the curriculum materials and summaries in terms of Christian role models and the Holy Scriptures, in order to develop students' relevant values, good character and positive attitudes towards life; and 3) the importance of prayer as a religious practise for action. The intended curriculum demonstrates how religious elements like Christian beliefs can be applied in secular education to build students' sense of meaning and purpose in life.
[Copyright of Journal of Beliefs & Values-Studies in Religion & Education is the property of Routledge.]

This study examined the relationships between leadership practices, professional learning communities, teachers' efficacy beliefs and perceptions of whole-child development in the context of kindergarten education. A sample of 2120 teachers from 153 Hong Kong kindergartens participated in a questionnaire survey. The results showed that principals' leadership practices had significant effects on all five professional learning community components. Leadership practices were also positively related to teachers' perceptions of whole-child development directly and indirectly through the mediation of three professional learning community components, namely a shared sense of purpose, collaborative activities and a collective focus on children's learning. Moreover, three professional learning community components (i.e. a collective focus on children's learning, deprivatized practice and reflective dialogue) were positively associated with teachers' perceptions of whole-child development via their efficacy beliefs. The findings support the mediating role of professional learning communities in developing kindergarten teachers' collaboration for improving their efficacy beliefs and perceptions of the whole-child development of children. Kindergarten principals play a key role in cultivating a supportive culture and facilitating teacher learning.
[Copyright of Educational Management Administration & Leadership is the property of Sage Publications Ltd.]

Research Findings: This study employed data from the TIMSS 2015 survey to investigate whether parental educational involvement behaviour in early childhood and parental attitudes towards education can enhance children's mathematics achievement in the 4th grade via influencing children's learning interests. Samples from Singapore (N=6237) and Hong Kong (N=3316), which share similar cultural backgrounds, and students demonstrating outstanding mathematical performance were selected to examine whether a hypothesized model fit the data. The overall model fit was found good. As hypothesized, after controlling for gender, immigration status, and family learning resources variables, both parental involvement in learning activities and parental attitudes towards education had positive significant effects on children's mathematics achievement in the 4th grade. However, a variation was also discovered in terms of the influences of parental attitudes in the two samples. Practice or Policy: The current findings shed light on the importance of parents' attitudes on education and their involvement in their children's mathematics activities during early childhood. The importance of family education should be communicated thoroughly to the public, and the government should provide more support for parents to involve more in early learning activities at home.
[Copyright of Early Education and Development is the property of Routledge.]

Ethnic minority parents often appear to be less involved in school functions and activities than their culturally dominant counterparts. Their invisibility is usually assumed due to a lack of either interest or parental capacity to oversee their children's education. However, the simplistic equation between parental involvement in children's education and their participation in school is largely informed by middle-class cultural norms that ignore diversity. Data drawn from home visits and in-depth, semi-structured interviews amongst Pakistani parents and children in Hong Kong reveals that the involvement of these parents only seems less visible because it is largely based at home rather than in schools. The parental involvement of this ethnic minority is influenced by socio-economic and cultural factors that separate school from home, divide parental responsibilities by gender, and set expectations for children with primary reference to the parents' own experiences. These research findings on how such characteristics shape the outcomes of parental involvement can inform school practices to build more effective home-school collaboration and enhance children's academic achievement.
[Copyright of Asia Pacific Journal of Education is the property of Routledge.]

Children from families of low socioeconomic status (SES) tend to experience lower academic achievement than children from middle-SES families. This discrepancy can be attributed to a range of parental factors. The present study tested: (1) the extent to which academic achievement in three core subjects differs between children from low- and middle-SES backgrounds; (2) the differences in parental expectation, parental involvement, and child engagement across the two groups; and (3) the mediating role of parental expectation, parental involvement, and child engagement in explaining how SES influences children's academic achievement. The sample consisted of 184 primary students with low SES and 165 primary students with middle SES from mainstream primary schools in Hong Kong. Results revealed significant differences in parental expectation, parental involvement, child engagement, as well as academic achievement in Chinese and English subjects between the low-SES and middle-SES groups. Our findings also suggest that parental expectation, parental involvement, and child engagement may be important mediators in the relationship between SES and academic achievement. Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

This study investigated the relationships between students' self-efficacy and self-concept for learning languages and students' academic achievement in learning English and Chinese. 1092 eighth to eleventh graders from four Hong Kong secondary schools completed questionnaires reporting their self-efficacy, self-concept and academic results for Chinese language and English language. Results indicated that Chinese language self-efficacy and self-concept were significant predictors for Chinese language learning achievements. English language self-efficacy and self-concept predicted both students' English and Chinese learning achievements. These results provide some support for both the domain specificity of self-efficacy and the internal/external frame of reference effect. There is also support for the notion that learning English language facilitates the learning of Chinese language but not the other way around.
[Copyright of Asia-Pacific Education Researcher is the property of Springer.]

The discussion of moral dilemmas has long been a teaching strategy for moral education. However, the questioning techniques teachers use to lead moral discussions are not fully understood. With reference to a collaborative teaching research project on a values education video-story, this study explored the authentic practice of teacher questioning in moral education classes. Data were collected in a Hong Kong primary school through lesson observations, interviews, document reviews and field notes. Teachers used three techniques when leading moral discussions: posing hypothetical questions, asking role-switching questions and playing devil’s advocate. Collectively, these three techniques helped to enhance students’ thinking. The study suggests that teachers’ questioning in moral discussions can be seen as a contextualised activity that involves the analysis of the key characters, plot points and moral values embedded in the story throughout the processes of curriculum planning and teaching. Teacher questioning strategies offer directions for future studies of moral discussions. Copyright © 2020 Journal of Moral Education Ltd.

While the relationship between self-determination and the academic achievement of students has been widely tested across cultures and groups, limited research has examined the antecedents of self-determination and their impacts on school engagement, which is the pre-requisite of academic achievement. The present study, based on the self-system processes model of motivation, tested the relationships between peer support, school support, self-determination, and school engagement in 118 secondary school students with special needs integrated into mainstream schools in Hong Kong. The results showed that school support has a significant indirect effect on school engagement via self-determination as a mediator. The correlations between school support, self-determination, and school engagement are all positive and significant, whereas peer support did not correlate with school engagement. Controlling for the factors of peer and school support, self-determination was the strongest predictor of school engagement for students with special needs. The current findings may highlight the importance of school support and self-determination interventions to enhance the school engagement of students with special needs in inclusive educational settings. Copyright © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.