With technology integration efforts expanding to early childhood education globally, assessing preschool teachers’ technological competence beliefs is imperative. However, most existing tools measuring teachers’ information and communication technology (ICT) competence beliefs focused on primary through secondary grades. This study examined the factorial validity, reliability, and measurement invariance of the Basic ICT Competence Beliefs (BICB) questionnaire among 209 preschool teachers in Hong Kong and the Philippines. Confirmatory factor analyses supported the original nine-factor structure over plausible alternative models. All factors showed good reliability (α = 0.83 to 0.91) and theoretically meaningful factor intercorrelations. Multigroup CFA results supported the measurement invariance of the scale. Specifically, the results demonstrated the configural, metric, scalar, and strict invariance across cultural groups. Findings provide further validity for the BICB as a psychometrically sound instrument for assessing preschool teachers’ ICT competence beliefs within and across contexts. The BICB can help identify teacher strengths and needs, guide professional development, and evaluate technology integration efforts in early childhood education in Asia. Copyright ©2024 Springer.

With a sample of 470 kindergarten teachers in Hong Kong, this study first examined these teachers' emotion regulation strategies assessed by a newly adapted scale, the Kindergarten Teacher Emotion Regulation Scale. Then, the study adopted a person‐centred approach and conducted the latent profile analysis, identifying different profiles of teachers' use of the emotion regulation strategies. It also examined the relationships between these profiles and teachers' self‐efficacy and two contextual antecedents, instructional leadership and trust in colleagues in kindergartens. The study validated a three‐dimensional measurement of kindergarten teachers' emotion regulation in Hong Kong, namely cognition‐focused regulation, (negative) emotion‐focused regulation, and behaviour‐focused regulation. Moreover, it identified four profiles of kindergarten teachers' emotion regulation strategy use with distinctive characteristics, and revealed some significant relationships between teachers' emotion regulation and self‐efficacy as well as school contexts. The findings highlight the role of beneficial school climate in eliciting teachers' effective emotion regulation and thereby enhancing their self‐efficacy. Copyright ©2024 Wiley.

The increase in ethnic and cultural diversity in kindergartens requires teachers to leverage their professional capacity to work competently with students from ethnically diverse backgrounds. This article reports the results of a teacher professional development (PD) programme infused with culturally responsive teaching for developing the multicultural teaching competence of early childhood teachers in Hong Kong regarding their knowledge, skills, and relationships. Sixty-six teachers attending the programme took 20 sessions of PD courses over eight months, whereas 58 teachers who did not attend were recruited to form a control group. The pre- and post-test data were examined via multilevel modelling. Results revealed significantly positive changes in programme group teachers’ reported knowledge, skills, and relationships after controlling for teacher demographic characteristics. The promising PD effects suggested that the PD opportunities enhanced teachers’ perceived multicultural competence; thus, they reported becoming more competent in engaging in culturally responsive practices upon completing the programme. Copyright © 2024 Teacher Development.

This article reports on a qualitative study conducted at primary schools in Hong Kong exploring the use of microlearning to support the self-directed continuing professional development (CPD) of English language teachers. Microlearning refers to short, concise, and easily consumable segments of learning about a knowledge point or skill. These activities tend to be multimodal and delivered through digital platforms, making them accessible anytime and anywhere. Currently, little is known about teachers’ perceptions of microlearning. To address this gap, we developed and delivered a mobile course that followed a microlearning approach and covered various aspects of digital technologies and English language teaching. Eight primary school English teachers engaged in the course and shared their perceptions of the experience in semi-structured interviews. The findings suggest that they found microlearning to be more enriching and conducive to developing their digital competence than traditional CPD. It allowed them to address their immediate needs, develop practical skills, and integrate technology into their practices. The study provides important insights into the use of microlearning to support self-directed CPD. Copyright © 2024 The Open University.

This paper reports the preliminary findings of an ongoing project to understand and compare the teaching practices and their contexts of teachers regarded by principals of some outstanding schools and the accomplished teachers who were awarded The Chief Executive's Award for Teaching Excellence (CEATE) by the Education Bureau in Hong Kong (Education Bureau, 2023) for their exemplary teaching practices. Most education systems, including Hong Kong and the USA, rely on principals to identify effective teachers, evidence of principals' subjective performance evaluations of teachers was reliable for identifying teachers who generated the most significant and most negligible achievement gains in students than those in the midrange (Jacob & Lefgren, 2008). Fifty-eight teachers from thirteen primary, secondary and special school sectors were recruited for lesson observations and interviews. The overall teaching quality between the two groups of teachers in systematic classroom observations was similar, suggesting that CEATE teachers did not necessarily perform significantly better in teaching. Interviews revealed that CEATE awards reflected incidental collaborations of teachers that were hard to replicate by other individual teachers or subject departments. Teacher learning networks also played a significant role where a mentor could support junior teachers. Distributed leadership promote collective capacities through organizational culture rather than enacting school policies and initiatives. These results contributed to establishing a new theoretical model that extends Gu and Day's (2007) teacher resilience theory to explain the professional growth of teachers and leaders as a function of context and organizational capacity in addition to resilience for achieving teaching quality sustainability. Copyright © 2023 World Education Research Association.

This study aimed to establish sex- and age-specific reference values for motor performance (MP) in Hong Kong preschoolers aged 3–5 years old and examine the relationship between MP and BMI status. A cross-sectional study was conducted among 5579 preschoolers in Hong Kong. Three MP tests were administered, and height and weight information were collected. GAMLSS was used to compute the normative values of the motor tests. Boys outperformed girls in activities requiring muscle strength and power, while girls outperformed boys in activities requiring balance and coordination. The MP scores increased with age for both overarm beanbag throw and standing long jump for both sexes, while the one-leg balance scores showed larger differences between P50 and P95 in older preschoolers. Children with excessive weight performed worse in standing long jump and one-leg balance compared to their healthy weight peers. This study provides valuable information on the MP of preschoolers in Hong Kong, including sex- and age-specific reference values and the association between BMI status and MP scores. These findings can serve as a reference for future studies and clinical practice and highlight the importance of promoting motor skill development in preschoolers, particularly those who are overweight or obese. Copyright © 2024 The Author(s).

Interpersonal teacher behaviour refers to the teacher–student interactions in the classroom. One way to measure these interactions is through the Questionnaire on Teacher Interaction (QTI), which is based on the Model for Interpersonal Teacher Behaviour (MITB). This study examined the structure of the Chinese version of the QTI (C-QTI) among a convenience sample of 612 secondary-school students in Hong Kong, using Smallest Space Analysis (SSA) to cross-validate a previous study of primary students utilizing the same approach. Results indicated that the C-QTI fits the MITB circumplex structure in terms of the scale order in a circular structure. The SSA map yielded six sectors: leadership-understanding, helpful/friendly, student responsibility/freedom, uncertain, dissatisfied-admonishing and strict. The two merged sectors demonstrate students’ inability to distinguish between their distinct behaviours. Eight items appeared in a sector different from their original MITB location, which could be attributed to the meanings attached to the different behaviours in the Chinese cultural context of Hong Kong or to the items’ lack of clarity. Comparison of secondary and primary students indicated similarities in scale and item location. However, secondary students were better able to distinguish between the different behaviours, reflecting the possible effect of their developmental level. The study highlights the need to construct contextually-relevant items and examine their existence and clarity as reflected by students’ perceptions. It also suggests the utility of SSA as a useful approach to study interpersonal teacher behaviour and facilitate the QTI adaptation process. © 2021 The Author(s).

This paper investigates the making and governing of Hong Kong teachers along and beyond a Foucauldian governmentality lens, untangling how the three technologies along neoliberalism, Confucian thesis, and affective dimensions play with and against one another in conducting the conduct of teachers. Through a discourse analysis of 27 local teachers' interview texts, we find Hong Kong teachers are both morally divided and redeemed as an effect of the entangled governing dynamics. First, the neoliberalized technologies of performativity and accountability are turning teachers into "service providers" accountable for incessant evaluations from the institutions, students, and parents. Second, such neoliberal rationalities collide with a Confucian respect for teachers to the extent that teachers feel not-respected, sad, and disappointed. Last, some teachers, amidst such contested situations, turn to affective support, i.e., a family-like teacher-student relationship, that ends up redeeming them from a negative governing grid towards maintaining a congruent self-identification. With this finding, this paper further explicates Confucian affective teacher-student relationship as a foundational historical-cultural episteme that largely conditions today's teaching and learning in Confucian context. This recognition enables us to re-ponder the theoretical-methodological-epistemological complexities in applying Foucault's framework to an Asian context along a (de/anti/post)-colonial gesture. Copyright © 2023 Routledge.

This paper proposes and describes a context- and subject-specific professional digital competence (PDC) framework for beginning English language teachers in Hong Kong. Taking a localised approach, the framework was developed through a four-stage data collection process, (1) Literature review of empirical studies conducted in Hong Kong of English language teachers’ technology use, (2) Review of local government curriculum documents; (3) An online survey of English language teachers’ technology use (n = 83); (4) follow-up individual interviews (n = 22). The study revealed that the local subject-specific PDC of teachers includes five aspects; Technological proficiency; Pedagogical compatibility; Preparing students for the digital world; Risk, well-being and ethical awareness and Professional work. Each aspect includes ability statements. The framework can be used to evaluate existing teacher education programmes, support the development of pre-service English-language teachers and facilitate self-, peer- and teacher assessment. The elements of PDC can be converted into programme- and course-level learning outcomes or incorporated into assessment rubrics. In addition, the methods used to develop the framework can be used by scholars in other contexts and subject areas to develop localised subject-specific PDC frameworks. Copyright © 2023 De La Salle University.