The practice of documentation has been a "hard to reach place" for many preschool teachers despite the fact that it has largely been encouraged and used as a tool in early childhood settings to assess young children's learning. Recent policy changes in Hong Kong have also called for the continuous documentation and authentic assessment of children's performance to replace traditional examinations in preschools. In this study, 62 preschools in Hong Kong were surveyed to determine the current situation of documentation as a tool for assessment of children's learning in Hong Kong preschools in the face of the new governmental requirements and interventions. The results showed that (1) preschools generally recognized the importance and necessity of using documentation to assess children's learning, (2) governmental influences were clearly demonstrated in the learning areas documented and assessed, and (3) there was a dissonance between the practice and belief of preschools, and various concerns related to the implementation were also reported. Implications for policies, professional development, and research are discussed.
[Copyright of Early Childhood Education Journal is the property of Springer.]

Since the mid-1990s, important education policy changes, such as the growth of Direct Subsidy Scheme (DSS) schools and the reform of the medium of instruction (MOI) policy, have been made in Hong Kong. Little is known about their impact on school segregation and educational inequality. We address this issue using six successive cycles of the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study data. We found evidence for rising levels of secondary school segregation in terms of family socio-economic status and mathematics achievement from 1995 to 2011, whereas segregation declined from 2011 to 2015. We speculate that the salience of the MOI policy in expediting the segregating tendencies of the DSS sector might explain a growing magnitude of the effect of family socio-economic status on academic achievement between 1995 and 2011, and the reversed direction of such trends between 2011 and 2015. Implications are discussed.
[Copyright of British Journal of Sociology of Education is the property of Routledge.]

The purpose of this research was to explore gender differences and cultural differences in school motivation among students from eight culturally diverse groups from Western and non-Western societies. The selected groups come from Hong Kong, the Philippines, Singapore, Australia, the Netherlands, and Qatar. More than 10,000 secondary school students reported their mastery, performance, social, and extrinsic motivation. Results showed (very) small to moderately large gender differences, which were largely in line with prior research in Western societies. Moreover, significant differences in school motivation across the eight cultural groups were found, however, only the Qatari sample strongly deviated from the other samples. In all cultural groups, females had slightly higher scores on mastery motivation and social motivation (except for Qatari students), and in several Western and non-Western samples, males had slightly higher scores on performance motivation. Gender differences in extrinsic motivation were less straightforward.
[Copyright of Research Papers in Education is the property of Routledge.]

This study explores how master's students perceive their learning experiences and build their identities as postgraduate learners. It also investigates how these students' perceptions affect their aspirations regarding academic careers. By applying the Community of Practice (CoP) framework, this study focuses on three dimensions of master's students' experience; community, practice and identity. Seventy master's students from one research-intensive university in Hong Kong were interviewed regarding motivations for doing a master's degree and reflections on learning. The interview results showed that master's students build their communities partly around shared academic interests. However, the boundaries of these communities are loose and flexible, due to the nature of master's programmes with their short periods of study and large numbers of part-time students. The study also showed how master's students develop their knowledge and skills through doing research and how they evaluate the prospect of becoming an academic.
[Copyright of Studies in Higher Education is the property of Routledge.]

This article is a response to Allan Luke's [(2018). Critical literacy, schooling, and social justice: The selected works of Allan Luke. New York, NY: Routledge] provocation to "join an international, intercultural and peer-conversation" about the imaginings and possibilities of "an education for critical literacies" (p. xii). Using Edward Said's [(1983). The world, the text, and the critic. Cambridge: Harvard University Press] "traveling theory" to reflect on my own engagement with critical literacy over time, place and space, I stitch together an account of how I mobilized critical literacy within the challenging national contexts of Hong Kong and Singapore after first encountering critical literacy in Australia with Allan Luke. Finally, drawing on emerging theories of postcritique (e.g. Anker, E. S., and Felski, R. (Eds.) (2017). Anker, E. S., and Felski, R. (Eds.) Critique & postcritique. Durham: Duke University Press; Felski, R. (2015). The limits of critique. Chicago: University of Chicago Press; Moi, T. (2017). Revolution of the ordinary: Literacy studies after Wittgenstein, Austin, and Cavell. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press), I explore how top-down, "methods" frameworks in critical literacy might be re-oriented towards more radical and inquiry-based approaches, resisting the imposition of artificial limits to critical literacy pedagogy.
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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.]

This paper explores how notions of race, ethnicity, and blood are mobilized in educational texts in Hong Kong. It elaborates how civic identity is racialized as part of a nationalist education operating beneath the surface of expressed commitments to global citizenship, human rights, etc., in curriculum and textbooks. Many have commented on how cultural and ethnic ties are prioritized over political principles as bases for civic education in Asian societies. These cultural/ethnic bases should be critically examined, however, as they imply racial/ethnic exclusions. Examining how race, ethnicity, and blood are used to justify cultural framings of civic identity leads to questions about how education can be used to unify some, while alienating others from a sense of belonging and community. I argue that racialization of Hong Kong civic identity is not a happy solution for all members of society, and for more inclusive visions of identity in education.
[Copyright of Discourse-Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education is the property of Routledge.]

This study investigated the pedagogical interactions between teachers and young children in six sampled Chinese kindergarten classrooms. Altogether 4320 turns of dialogue were coded from 27 videotaped pedagogical activities, and the 12 class teachers were surveyed and interviewed. The results revealed a unique Chinese pedagogical interaction that is a fusion of participatory and transmissive pedagogies: teachers directed the interactions with open-ended questions and whole-class dialogues, whereas children responded with short answers based on the learning content. This was reported by the teachers to be associated with the joint influence of related child, teacher, and cultural factors.
[Copyright of Teaching and Teacher Education is the property of Elsevier Ltd.]

The importance of social interaction in a community of practice for promoting effective teacher learning is well established (Johnson & Golombek, ; Lave & Wenger, ). Research outlines the challenges language teachers experience in transitioning between teacher education programmes and the classroom, particularly regarding the theory-practice nexus, and emphasizes the professional community's key role in providing mentoring and support. In this regard, language teachers' experiences in transitioning from theoretically oriented language education master's programmes to the language classroom are underresearched. This study reports data gathered from 21 mainland Chinese participants transitioning from master's programmes in three locations (Hong Kong, Scotland, and China) to language classrooms in China. In line with other research on teacher education programmes, this study's findings suggest interesting common experiences among these new teachers regardless of the context where their studies took place, including a sense of isolation, a "sink-or-swim" phenomenon leading to the abandonment of theoretically grounded pedagogical beliefs in exchange for adherence to "safe" practice, confusion regarding the relationship between learning on university programmes and the practice of teaching, and weak self-efficacy as transitioning teachers face internal and external pressures. Implications and consequences are discussed in the context of the theory-practice nexus.
[Copyright of Tesol Quarterly is the property of Wiley-Blackwell Publishing, Inc.]

This study explores critical incidents regarding differing cultures-of-use in telecollaboration against the backdrop of Hong Kong and German teacher education contexts. The rationale for the exchange was to model technology use and task design with the ultimate goal of internationalizing teacher education and supporting global citizenship. Participants in this project are 58 English majors in a graduate-level sociolinguistics course at a public research institution in Hong Kong and 15 EFL student teachers in a language teaching and new media elective course at a public education university in Germany. Using social media tools for interaction such as Facebook, Skype, WeChat, and WhatsApp, 11 telecollaborative teams engaged in three sequential tasks: (a) engaging in topical exchanges using Facebook, (b) writing a literature review in Google Docs, and (c) making recommendations on team websites using Wix. Research questions focus on critical incidents identified by participants during these tasks, particularly in relation to tool engagement. Data triangulation includes reflections, surveys, and online interactions. Findings indicate that the majority of Hong Kong teams cite low experience with certain tools, unfamiliarity with alternative tools (e.g., WeChat), and differences in tool access and use as constraints in achieving effective communication. Implications address sensitizing participants to their partners' tool socialization through implementing the critical incident technique.
[Copyright of Language Learning & Technology is the property of University of Hawaii. National Foreign Language Resource Center.]