Children are expected to read and write Chinese character before they reach their formal schooling in Hong Kong. The 4 to 6 years old children, *non-Chinese speaking (NCS) and native Chinese speaking children are given similar Chinese writing exercise in the preschools. Nevertheless NCS children are still affected by the differences between their mother language and Chinese. NCS children are more likely to encounter difficulties in writing and reading Chinese. According to the past research reports, the NCS students in Hong Kong who enter a mainstream primary school (Chinese medium instruction), their levels of literacy in Chinese tends to remain at a low level, and they are unable to keep up with local Chinese classmates. The aim of the study is to focus on how NCS children who are 5 to 6 years old learn Chinese characters in a realist classroom setting. The study will be conducted in three Chinese preschools in Hong Kong and investigate the teaching and learning of Chinese characters in five classroom settings using with a phenomenographic approach.

This study set out to use phenomenography as a theoretical framework to investigate teaching in classrooms, focusing on how the same object of learning was enacted differently in different teaching activities. We observed in person teaching activities intended to teach children to recognize Chinese characters (i.e. the object of learning) in Hong Kong preschools. Classroom observational data such as the delivery of the teaching activities and the conversation between teacher and children were used as the main data source. Three categories of teaching activities were identified from the data, which correspondingly reflected three ways of seeing the recognition of characters: (A) recognition as matching items, (B) recognition as imitating behaviors, and (C) recognition as constructing meanings. The results of this study were useful for fostering the professional learning of preschool teachers in practical ways. As teacher educators, we were particularly interested in the learning of teachers; thereby in the study we chose to investigate teaching from the perspective of learning to teach. We assumed that the ways teachers acted in enacting the object of learning reflected how they saw the object of learning. We hope to foster more discussion and in turn contribute to the methodology of phenomenography.

The enactment of the revised School Places Allocation Systems at the compulsory stage in 2004 had the aim of desegregating Hong Kong's non-Chinese linguistic minority (NCLM) students by including them into ethnic Chinese-dominated mainstream primary and secondary schools. Because of the presumed cause-consequence relationship between desegregated school participation and academic achievement, in specific second language Chinese (CSL) acquisition, the challenges that such students face in participating in mainstream education and learning Chinese, no doubt, deserve to be examined. This qualitative study conducted in-depth interviews with 18 secondary students of South Asian/Southeast Asian minority backgrounds enrolled in mainstream schools. Drawing on both cultural and institutional paradigms of explanation for educational achievement, we argue that the reasons inhibiting the minority students' academic involvement are not simply their linguistic challenges but also the institutional constraints in the mainstream education system unique to this population. This study calls for a shift in school desegregation arrangement from one focusing narrowly on physical desegregation to a more comprehensive set of policies that embrace the institutional factors including teacher expectation, resource availability, and bilingual support, crucial to reduce racial differences in achievement.

This chapter adopts a cultural perspective to report on a study of teaching and learning early Chinese literacy for young children in one Hong Kong kindergarten. Instead of viewing literacy education as a neutral and standardised cultural process across Chinese speaking communities, I draw on a Sinophone perspective and post-colonialism to investigate how the linguistic dissonance and cultural hybridity of Hong Kong influences teaching practices in one local kindergarten.
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