In addition to enabling students to gain knowledge, education aims to make them competent, confident, and enthusiastic learners. Using TIMSS 2019 data from eighth graders in mathematics classrooms in Hong Kong (N = 1146) and England (N = 1981), this study explored the relevance of classroom management and instructional clarity to students' mathematics self-concept and value, academic emotions (i.e., enjoyment and boredom) and mathematics achievement by using a latent multi-group SEM analysis. The findings corroborated the controlvalue theory and indicated that classroom management was not always beneficial to the increase of students' enjoyment and achievement in Hong Kong, but the favorable effects of classroom management on academic emotions and achievement were observed in England. Additionally, instructional clarity has been demonstrated to improve students' enjoyment and achievement in mathematics while reducing boredom in both groups, with the advantage being greater in Hong Kong classrooms. The limitations and implications are then discussed. Copyright © 2022 Elsevier.

This article begins with a historical overview of the STEM education policy and related classroom practices in Hong Kong. Against the backdrop that the Hong Kong education authority has been promoting STEM education over the past few years, there has been a pressing need for effective strategies of implementing STEM education in the context of reduced class size classrooms (i.e. small class teaching). With a view to addressing this need, this article strives to exemplify the incorporation of STEM education into small class teaching settings. Intended as a conceptual paper drawing on design approaches for STEM lessons and a small class teaching framework, the article demonstrates the relevance of STEM education to small class teaching. Two illustrative lesson design examples are provided to showcase how the design approaches and framework can be operationalised. In addition, the article also offers a thoughtful discussion concerning the potential challenges of delivering the two sample lessons as well as the coping strategies. It contributes to understanding of STEM education theories and provides a valuable reference for educational practitioners. Copyright © 2022 Springer.

The effects of teachers' audio feedback on students' project-based learning and its influencing factors have seldom been empirically explored in the higher education context. To address this research gap, a group of Hong Kong freshmen (18-23 years old) and their teachers were involved in this study. Data were collected from students' retrospective journals, post-journal interviews and teacher interviews after the participants experienced audio feedback during their group projects in a General Education course. The findings demonstrated that teachers' audio feedback enhanced students' learning engagement, critical thinking and project output. The students also reported that audio feedback provided convenience, timeliness, rich information, asynchronous discussion and social presence. Other factors including the features of audio feedback, communication between student and teacher on the received feedback and their learning motivation were also crucial in determining the effects of audio feedback on student project-based learning. Copyright © 2022 Routledge.

Hong Kong’s ‘trilingual and biliterate’ language policy (TaB, 三語兩文) is almost as old as the special administrative region (SAR) itself. Through free education and language support measures in school, students are expected to be conversant in English and Putonghua in addition to Cantonese, and be able to read and understand written Chinese and English. After being implemented for over two decades, however, there are signs that most students’ language standards in Chinese and English fall short of the TaB target, as measured by the public examination results of successive generations of secondary school leavers. Designed with essentially Cantonese-dominant Hongkongers in mind, the TaB policy consists of many measures, with the ‘medium of instruction streaming policy’ introduced since September 1998 being the most controversial. Driven by the twin principles of monolingual English-medium instruction (EMI) and ‘no language mixing allowed’, secondary schools are divided into two streams. Stringent requirements must be met before a school could claim to be an EMI school. According to this ‘late immersion’ model for students aged 11–12 at secondary level, every year about 30 percent of the primary school leavers are allocated to an EMI school. Following Li (Multilingual Hong Kong: languages, literacies and identities. Springer, Cham, 2017), this paper will first discuss why the TaB target is such a tall order for Cantonese-dominant students by reviewing the relevant literature along five inter-related dimensions: contrastive linguistics, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, cognitive neuroscience, and instructional strategies and bilingual pedagogies. I will then examine the SAR government’s language support measures to assess their effectiveness and explore possible alternatives. The paper will end with a number of recommendations, which together constitute an LPP (language policy and planning) roadmap for improving the chance with which the TaB policy is likely to produce

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has fundamentally shifted learning from the traditional classroom approach to online learning. As such, this study used a revision centre as a case study to develop the factors that contribute to the theoretical framework of online peer learning in the higher education sector due to COVID-19. This study also explores the integrated effects of online peer learning on students and investigates whether advanced information technology creates new opportunities or additional burdens for students in adopting online peer learning environments. Descriptive statistical analysis, factor analysis, and correlation analysis were conducted on survey data gathered from 204 sub-degree students in Hong Kong. The results addressed four main factors developed from 39 variables: enhancement of learning ability, the attitude toward learning, motivation for learning, and interpersonal relationship which were closely associated. The study findings provide strategies and constructive recommendations for educators to develop a new online learning pedagogy, construct sustainable online peer learning, and effectively manage students’ online learning to meet the needs for post-COVID online education. Copyright © 2022 Springer.

This study investigates factors affecting university student-to-student interaction within online learning platforms. A new model was proposed based on the United Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT). The single-stage cluster-sampling method was employed, and 113 university students in Hong Kong were respondents. It was found that Information Quality, Social Influence, and Facilitating Conditions affect students’ intention to interact with each other. A quasi-full mediation model was established of the mechanism from Facilitating Conditions to students’ interaction behavior. The direct effect of Facilitating Conditions on students’ interaction and the effect of System Quality on the intention of student interaction were not significant. A fast network, computing facilities, and mobile-friendly software are possible candidates of the virtual environment conditions affecting the intention of student-interaction behavior within online learning platforms. Copyright © 2022 MDPI AG.

Purpose : Free and open-source software (FOSS) has been used worldwide because of the advantages of user control, cost-saving, flexibility, openness, freedom, more security and better stability. The purpose of this study is to explore the status quo of educational application of FOSS and the trends from international perspectives and its implications for higher education in Hong Kong.Design/methodology/approach: The method of cluster analysis was used in this study. The Web of Science database was used as the data source and all relevant literature for the year 2010–2020 on the theme of “FOSS” was collected for analysis. The information visualization software CiteSpace was used for citation visualization analysis, revealing the research results of FOSS worldwide, including hot spots and development trends.Findings: This paper found that FOSS has become an important research area and is playing an important role in the reform and development of education. Meanwhile, the development and application of FOSS have regional imbalances and strong differentiation, including the educational sector. The paper also found that although FOSS has entered the stage of interdisciplinary development, the research and development of FOSS in the field of education is insufficient, which poses a huge challenge to decision-makers, teachers and students.Originality/value: Implications for higher education in Hong Kong including: attach importance to and vigorously promote FOSS research and practice to benefit more teachers and students; teachers and students need to be trained for acquiring the awareness and skills of FOSS applications and formulate different strategies; the government should provide greater support to formulate and implement a short and middle-term development plan to facilitate the application of FOSS; and Hong Kong higher education institutions may strengthen exchanges and cooperation with counterparts around the world to jointly promote the development of FOSS. It is

The present study reports on the effects of a self-regulated (SRL) writing strategy-based intervention supported with e-learning tools on SRL strategy use in English writing with 468 Hong Kong primary school students. The changes to the students’ motivation in English writing, and their e-learning acceptance were also measured. The study adopted a pretest and posttest design and the data was collected through a questionnaire, which consisted of three measures, i.e. SRL writing strategy use, motivation in English writing, and e-learning acceptance. The SRL writing strategy use measure included four types of strategies, i.e. planning, text-generating, monitoring, and revising. The motivation measure had two scales, i.e. interest and self-efficacy, and the e-learning acceptance measure included four scales, i.e. perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, attitude and continuance intention. The intervention saw significant improvements on the students’ use of all four types of SRL writing strategies. Positive changes also took place to one scale of motivation, i.e. interest, and three scales of e-learning acceptance, i.e. perceived usefulness, attitude and continuance intention. There was no significant improvement to self-efficacy and perceived ease of use. Additionally, the correlations between all the scales became stronger after the intervention. Important implications for teaching ESL/EFL writing through e-learning are drawn. Copyright © 2022 Taylor & Francis.

Today, many countries ensure that student teachers get into the real classrooms, practice in there, spend more time and translate theoretical knowledge into practice in schools during Initial Teacher Education. So that they can receive stronger support in the practicum process, and they can develop themselves. However, schools have been closed in so many countries due to the Covid-19 pandemic preventions. Therefore, countries have rearranged the teaching practicum process. The aim of this study, which was carried out with a systematic review, is to comparatively examine the teaching practicum processes of different countries during the Covid-19 pandemic. With a systematic review made according to certain criteria, teaching practicum in the Covid-19 in the countries of Australia, Canada (Ontario State), England, Greece, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Portugal, South Africa, Turkey, the United States of America (New York State) and Zimbabwe were examined. According to the findings, it has been seen that some countries have removed or stretched the teaching practicum requirement during the Covid-19, while some countries have carried out online teaching practicum (i) in K-12 schools, (ii) with peer learning, or (iii) using VR technology, and one country re-opened the schools after a short closure. Copyright © 2022 International Association of Educators.

The main purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness for L2 English learners of a new direct approach to segmental pronunciation instruction that combined articulatory instruction with abdominal enhancement techniques. The participants were Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong, where the school curriculum relies chiefly on indirect instruction within a task-based language teaching (TBLT) framework. Thus a second purpose of the study was to examine whether the direct approach may be a useful addition to the Hong Kong curriculum. Randomly-assigned experimental and comparison groups of recent school graduates completed pronunciation tasks embedded within a TBLT framework. However, the experimental group had direct attention drawn to the segmental sounds, including advice and feedback on how to produce them, while the comparison group did not. Both groups completed a pretest/posttest reading-aloud task. The segments targeted in this test (and in the instruction) involved selected long vowel/diphthong sounds, voiced fricative consonants, and /t/ and /d/ in syllable-final consonant clusters. Results showed the experimental group significantly outperformed the comparison group overall and in each of these segmental categories, highlighting the importance of the direct articulatory–abdominal instruction. The results also suggested such instruction should be given greater attention in the Hong Kong curriculum. Copyright © 2022 Routledge.