COVID-19 has forced universities around the world to suspend in-person teaching and adopt emergency remote teaching (ERT). To compensate for the suspension of in-person teaching, many universities mandated that teachers utilise video-conferencing software (VCS) to deliver synchronous online lessons conducted through VCS. This study explored the impact of ERT and the requirement to teach synchronously online through VCS on the motivation of university teachers at a major university in Hong Kong. In-depth interviews were conducted with nine teachers who had completed a full semester of ERT. The findings suggest that the teachers fell into two distinct groups. Teachers in one group (n = 5) seemed to thrive, reporting mainly positive effects of ERT on their motivation, while the others (n = 4) seemed to be just surviving, reported mainly negative effects. For members of the “thriving” group, the semester reinvigorated their teaching and provided them with new skills; members of the “surviving” group, by contrast, questioned their ability to teach, found it hard to build a rapport with learners, felt isolated, and struggled to find job satisfaction. The study concludes with a discussion of measures that could help university teachers to maintain their motivation during online instruction. Copyright © 2021 De La Salle University.

This study explored emotions and self-regulatory learning in postgraduate students, forced to transition to emergency remote teaching, at a Hong Kong university after the start of the academic semester. Self-regulation is a critical factor for successful online learning, and emotions are important antecedents of self-regulated learning. The study adopted a two-phase research design, with an initial online questionnaire (n = 52) followed by semi-structured interviews (n = 16) to gain a rich and holistic understanding of students' experiences. Our findings indicate that: (1) locating a suitable location to attend online classes and sharing problems with classmates were the two most frequently self-regulatory learning strategies employed by students; (2) students experienced some enjoyment attending online classes but experienced increased pressure and time commitment to complete assigned work; (3) students found online learning to lack a sense of community, making it challenging to interact with classmates. The findings suggest teachers need to incorporate various synchronous and asynchronous collaborative activities, and they need to increase their own and students' presence online to motivate and facilitate effective teaching and learning. Copyright © 2021 by the authors.

With the increasing concern in school teachers’ well-being and growing focus on the early childhood education sector in recent years, the present study explored the factors that contribute to the psychological well-being of kindergarten teachers in Hong Kong. Based on a sample of 459 kindergarten teachers in Hong Kong, the authors demonstrated that teachers’ psychological well-being was strongly determined by their self-belief, which were contributed by their relationship with colleagues, and their positivity in attitude towards life and work. The authors further demonstrated that teachers’ self-belief was influenced by their perception of the school culture. Implications for establishing a positive attitude in kindergarten teachers and enhancing their psychological well-being were discussed. Copyright © 2021 The International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies (ISQOLS) and Springer Nature B.V.

Teachers play a crucial role in promoting motor development in early childhood. A series of focus-group discussions was conducted with kindergarten teachers in Hong Kong to co-design movement activities. This paper reports the process and implications to teachers’ professional development. Copyright © 2021 International Review of Finance Ltd.

To be successful, international students must adapt psychologically and socio-culturally to their host context. This research, funded by Hong Kong research grant committee, is grounded in cross-cultural psychology (Shiraev & Levy, 2010), and present insights into the psychological and behavioral variations of individual international students as they adapt to study in an Asian context — Hong Kong universities. The purposes are to find out those factors that affect the psychological and sociocultural adaptation of those international students. In addition it explores the level and effect of contact between non-local students and local students and international students’ views of social and institutional support with regard to their adaptation. In this presentation, preliminary findings based on both quantitative and qualitative data collected from six UGC-funded local universities in Hong Kong will be reported, with a special focus on international students’ psychological and sociocultural adaptation and their interactions with local students. Copyright © 2016 IACCP.

Students attending universities or colleges come from diverse groups, including racial, ethnic, ability status, sexual orientation, gender and intersex identities. Institutions of higher education may encounter challenges in acknowledging the needs of diverse groups of students. Particularly, these institutions could possibility have difficulties in understanding transgender students’ needs. In the education literature, transgender students often face intolerant/negative attitudes, prejudice and discrimination against them in society (Beemyn, 2016; Wernick et al., 2014). Transgender or, to use a more inclusive term, ‘trans’ students in this chapter are defined as those students who ‘do not identify with or normatively enact the gender assigned to them at birth’ (Wernick et al., 2014, p. 927). Scholars in the field of trans prejudice often adopt the concept of genderism to conceptualize prejudice, discriminatory and intolerant attitudes against trans people. For instance, Hill and Willoughby (2005) perceived genderism as ‘an ideology that reinforces the negative evaluation of gender non-conformity or an incongruence between sex and gender’ (p. 534). Copyright © 2021 selection and editorial matter, Neil Harrison and Graeme Atherton; individual chapters, the contributors.