This qualitative study has investigated how a group of bilingual university students in Hong Kong understand digital citizenship and construct it through digital literacy practices in social media. Drawing on interview data and examples of digital activity shared by the students, we adopt the theories of digital literacies and translanguaging and transsemiotizing to reveal how they construct digital citizenship through an complex interplay between several factors, most prominently (1) a variety of digitally mediated social, cultural and educational practices the students engage in, (2) their agency of deploying diverse linguistic and semiotic recourses to achieve varied communicative effects in different settings and (3) their personal pursuits of intellectual and professional development and social engagement in a digitalized and globalized society. We then discuss how the findings can enrich our understanding of digital citizenship and its relationship with digital literacies in a multilingual and multicultural context such as Hong Kong. The implications for digital citizenship education are also discussed. Copyright © 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc.

Collaborative Science Inquiry (CSI) is a pedagogical approach that fosters students’ scientific skills and competencies through group-based inquiry activities. However, CSI poses various challenges for teachers (i.e., recognizing the problems and needs of each group, identifying appropriate strategies to address them, and reviewing the impact of these strategies) to support students’ learning process across different contexts and social levels, especially in a Mobile Learning Environment (MLE). To address this problem, this study adopted Design-Based Research (DBR), aiming to design, develop, implement, and evaluate a theory-led LA tool on a mobile app, namely, the m-Orchestrate app to support teacher orchestration in CSI. The tool aligns with the inquiry cycle model and provides teachers with real time data and feedback on students’ inquiry progress, collaboration, and learning outcomes. The DBR lasted three years, involving four phases, including (1) Phase I: Analysis of practical problems in orchestrating CSI in an MLE, (2) Phase II: Design and development of a theory-led LA tool, (3) Phase III: Three iterative cycles of testing and refining the LA tool in practice, and (4) Phase IV: Reflection and further implementation of the LA tool. The researcher collaborated with two primary schools, four teachers, two pre-service teachers in General Studies, and around 250 students in Grade 4 in Hong Kong. The research questions focused on (1) investigating the affordances of the LA tool with theory-led and interactive design for teacher orchestration of CSI; (2) the impact of the tool on teacher orchestration in CSI; and (3) the impact of teacher orchestration supported by the tool on student performance in CSI. Data collection included log data from the LA tool and the m-Orchestrate app, teacher interviews, and students’ pre- and post-quizzes. Both qualitative and quantitative data analysis methods were adopted. The research findings show that (1) the affordances of the developed

This study investigates different types of social capital which are developed in play-based learning settings through a Family-School-Community partnership. Social capital is understood as the accumulated resources from existence of networks and connections with others. Data was collected through focus groups with 49 principals, senior and class teachers in Hong Kong kindergartens. Bonding social capital is formed in professional development activities among teacher groups while bridging social capital is developed through parental involvement. There is a potential for linking social capital to be mobilized through interactions between schools and community networks. Capturing such social capital could facilitate play-based learning practices. Copyright © 2023 The Authors.

中文寫作一直是二語學習者的重點和難點，特別是小學階段，如何讓二語學童對中文寫作產生興趣並更願意動筆寫作是很多中文教育工作者不斷探討的話題。同時，在科技資訊發達的今天，各種軟件和在線平台越來越廣泛地使用在中文二語學習當中。因此，基於長期的實踐和教學經驗，本文就二語學生的中文寫作學習提出一個可行性的教學方案 —基於過程導向的寫作框架，將資訊科技融入中文寫作前、中和後的階段中，從而幫助二語學習者增加背景知識和相關詞彙句型，延長寫作的計劃時間，提高中文寫作的動機和效果，培養學生的自主學習與寫作的能力。本研究以香港一間國際學校二十位小四學生為研究對象，通過教學實踐，了解資訊科技融入跨學科的中文寫作教學成效，希望探討資訊科技與中文寫作學習的關係。 Copyright © 2023 香港教育大學.

This paper studies the identity dilemmas of a teacher negotiating the tensions underpinning the transformations in the language profile of a Hong Kong primary school. Using a rigorous triangulation of written journals and in-depth interviews, the study reconstructs a case narrative personified as “Lily”, an English language teacher at “Lexis Elementary”, a school that previously struggled with low student enrolments. As a solution, the school now enrols students from Mainland China, where the spoken language is Mandarin rather than Cantonese spoken in Hong Kong. Resulting tensions arose because of transformations in the school’s language profile. Lily constructs the language terrain she negotiates in her interactions with cross-border Mainland Chinese and local Hong Kong parents and students, and her responses to interactions among students. This paper provides original conceptual tools to explain complex “born-again” sentiments that trigger people to act in reverse against the stipulated conditions of the powerful. The concept of “born-again reversals” connects to global literature on resistance against “language learning for economic benefits”. Insights from this study reconcile theoretical debates on using economic power as soft power, providing teachers with the conceptual tools to understand the identity dilemmas they experience with language planning initiatives worldwide. Copyright © 2023 National Institute of Education, Singapore.

The shift from face-to-face teaching to emergency remote teaching has become the new normal due to the pandemic in 2020. However, little research has been conducted in Hong Kong to investigate pre-service teachers’ perceptions of the immediate adoption and delivery of online face-to-face teaching. In response to this call, the present research conducted a questionnaire survey with 48 pre-service teachers at a Hong Kong university to examine their perceptions of Zoom as a viable alternative to the suspended traditional face-to-face delivery mode of instruction. It also discussed key factors that lead to better online learning outcomes. The results showed that the participants had overall positive perceptions of Zoom-supported synchronous online education. The Zoom feature that most students considered useful was screen sharing on computers. Zoom-supported synchronous online learning benefited students by helping them to attend class meetings remotely, study course materials and content, communicate and collaborate with their instructors and classmates, and develop a sense of community and social presence. Four main factors may influence learners’ perceptions of synchronous online learning: the quality of online communication and collaboration, learning efficiency, learner autonomy and the usability of technology. Copyright © 2023 Laboratory for Knowledge Management & E-Learning, The University of Hong Kong.

This study explores the readiness of pre-service primary school teachers in Hong Kong to develop future-ready learners. Societal advances require the education sector to continuously update curricula to prepare young people for the future. Schools must equip students with the flexibility to use technologies that have not yet been invented and solve unanticipated problems. In this qualitative study, we analysed the perceptions of 15 pre-service primary school English language teachers at a university in Hong Kong. The study focused on the knowledge and learning environment necessary for developing future-ready learners. Via semi-structured interviews, the findings revealed that the participants believed it is essential to integrate technology into classrooms to address future digital literacy needs. They also noted that students must develop critical thinking skills, problem-solving skills, and soft skills to succeed in the future. The findings also suggest that teachers need to be innovative and adaptable in their pedagogical approaches as the existing primary school curriculum is not cultivating learners’ future-readiness. Copyright © 2023 National Institute of Education, Singapore.

Content and language integrated learning (CLIL) is characterized by using students’ additional language (L2) as the medium of instruction of non-language content subjects. In recent decades, this type of program has been gaining worldwide popularity, especially in English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) contexts, because of the assumption that it can facilitate L2 learning. However, this assumption may not be realized in many classrooms in EFL contexts, where both teachers and students are often not well-prepared to cope with the heavy linguistic demands to learn content and language simultaneously. Owing to a combination of sociopolitical and socioeconomic forces, Hong Kong has a rather long history of practicing some form of CLIL in secondary schools, in the form of English-medium instruction (EMI) education. Following some recent changes in the government’s medium of instruction policies, there are different models and practices of EMI in Hong Kong schools to accommodate students with different English proficiency levels and also the expectations of different stakeholders. This chapter will illustrate these different models and practices and discuss their implications and challenges for English language learning, content learning, and teacher education. Copyright © 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Critical thinking is believed to be an essential skill for 21st century survival and therefore has been widely promoted in education. In Hong Kong, critical thinking is one of nine generic skills to be developed across all subjects, including English. How students do critical thinking in ESL, which is seldom used outside school and yet holds high social value, has, however, been underresearched. This article is concerned with how some low-English-proficiency senior secondary students in Hong Kong conducted critical talk in English. The study specifically investigates how the students used English to express ideas that were first developed in Cantonese (the students' first language). Based on a discourse analysis of the criticality and elaborateness of the Cantonese and English utterances of one group of students, the authors discuss findings that reveal a significant contrast between the students' more elaborated discourse in Cantonese and a restricted discourse in English characterised by reduced content and limited lexicogrammatical structures. The findings call for more attention to the impacts of linguistic proficiencies on critical thinking performance of ESL learners and to how the communicative gaps in critical literate talk revealed in ESL learners' first and second languages can be gradually reduced.