It has become increasingly recognized that what teachers and students value affect teaching and learning in general and in the area of mathematics in particular. Yet, the extent to which this is so varies across cultural regions. In recent years, how the ethnic Chinese teach and learn mathematics has attracted much attention worldwide. It is precisely the purpose of the present study to investigate the value structures of three Chinese regions. Using a recently developed and validated questionnaire, students’ values in mathematics learning in the Chinese Mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan are delineated. In the first place, the results reveal that there are six dimensions in the students’ value structure, namely achievement, relevance, practice, communication, information and communications technology as well as feedback. However, in each of the six value components derived from the principal components analysis, statistically significant differences between the regions were found. Copyright © 2015 Springer Science + Business Media B.V.

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to compare and analyse the role and implementation of nationalistic education in Hong Kong and Macau special administrative regions (SARs) since their respective handover of sovereignty to China in the late 1990s. Both SARs face the educational need to cultivate a Chinese national identification among the students after the sovereignty changes. While Macau SAR has enjoyed a relatively smooth implementation of nationalistic education towards which Macau’s schools and students are largely receptive to nationalistic programmes since its handover in 1999, Hong Kong SAR Government’s nationalistic education was met by reservation from some parents, students and civil society’s groups under allegations of “political indoctrination” and “brain-washing”. The Hong Kong civil society’s resistance to National Education culminated in the anti-Moral and National Education protest in Summer 2012 and then Hong Kong schools and society. This paper attempts to provide an overview and analysis on the development of nationalistic education in both Hong Kong and Macao SARs, and to give some possible explanations on the factors that lead to differences of perceiving and responding to the nationalistic education between both places.Design/methodology/approach - After conducting a literature review, this study utilises different sources of data such as curriculum guidelines, previous studies and other scholarly findings in examining the development of civic education and national education policy in both SAR societies, as well as in discussing the possible developments of nationalistic education in both SARs by making references to previous studies of citizenship and nationalistic education.Findings - This study found out that different relationships between the two SAR Governments and their respective civil society, the extent of established socio-political linkages with China, as well as the introduction of a core subject of Liberal Studies in Hong Kong

Evidence in the literature shows that public-housing residents move less frequently than others. This tendency may restrict school choice for children from public-housing families and lead to school segregation and lower educational outcomes for those children. Our empirical findings from Hong Kong show three strands of evidence that support this hypothesis. (1) Children from public-housing families are more likely to drop out of school after compulsory education. The result is robust after controlling for family background and a series of parental characteristics. (2) Public-housing families with school-age children are less likely to move than their private-housing counterparts. (3) Children from public-housing families are more likely to study in local community schools, which are located on the outskirts of Hong Kong and are of lower education quality. These findings have important policy implications for the public-housing programs such as those which have been implemented in Mainland China since 2011. Copyright © 2015 Brill.

Self-regulated learning (SRL) is of great importance to academic achievement and life-long learning. This study aimed to examine the prediction of three processes of primary students' SRL using students' prior achievement, interest in mathematics, personal best goal orientation, and their perceptions of teachers' feedback one academic year earlier. The SRL processes were planning, monitoring, and adaptive reactions. The sample comprised 2972 (1608 females and 1364 males) primary school students in Hong Kong. Multi-level path analysis determined that prior achievement, interest in mathematics, personal best goal orientation, and feedback predicted students' planning, monitoring, and adaptive reactions after one academic year, with interest and personal best goal orientation being the strongest predictors. Strategies for promoting interest in mathematics and developing personal best goal orientation among primary school students are discussed in the article. Copyright © 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

核心素養已成為近些年來全球教育界關注的焦點，也引領著各地的教育改革。儘管在不同的地區，核心素養的內涵和特質有差異，但更多是呈現出共同之處。然而，如何有效地落實「素養導向的教育」卻仍未明確。本文分析了香港的教育改革經驗，綜合核心素養的相關理論和討論，探索香港在落實課程改革的發展脈絡，以期能對當前推行核心素養導向的教育改革提供參考和借鑑。In recent years, many places have adopted the concept of key competency as the basis of developing school curriculum. Researchers and academics are still debating the definition and nature of key competencies. Yet, they have come to some common understanding of what key competency is. However, it is not yet clear how to nurture students’ key competencies. This paper reports the experiences of Hong Kong in nurturing students’ key competencies. The experience of Hong Kong is reflected through analyzing the theories on key competence, and the implementation of curriculum and instruction reform since 2001. Copyright © 2017 高等教育文化事業有限公司.

Through the participation of local communities in the arts, Community‐Based Arts Education (CBAE) raises awareness of ecology and the environment, and also facilitates the search for and establishment of a socio‐cultural identity. It provides students with specific forms of experiential learning involving out‐of‐classroom experiences. Since 2003 the Education Bureau in Hong Kong has promoted learning arts in the community in an informal arts educational context. To suit the needs of CBAE, since 2011 the Leisure and Cultural Services Department has offered four successful community‐based arts educational schemes to local primary and secondary students. The aim of the schemes is to enrich students' knowledge of arts and culture and strengthen their capacities to learn arts appreciation and criticism. Between 2011 and 2013, over 30,000 primary and secondary students participated in the schemes. This article reports on a study of the schemes which aimed to identify key elements of good practice in CBAE from students' and teachers' perspectives. In this larges‐cale study, a total of 15,430 students between Primary 1 and Secondary 6 (age 6 to 17) and 1,306 teachers who participated in the schemes were invited to take part in surveys and focus group interviews. The results show that the three central tenets of self‐determination theory, namely, competence, autonomy and relatedness, are the key elements of good practice in CBAE. It is hoped that the research findings will enrich existing knowledge of and provide a new research direction for CBAE. Copyright © 2018 The Author.

Little research has explored the challenges of difference and difficulty to principal leadership in changing school contexts. This paper explores two Chinese principals’ journeys to enact different leadership approaches to overcome these challenges during a time of massive education reform. Three specific questions are asked: What challenges do the principals face in diverse student populations? What leadership practices do the principals adopt to support the learning development of these students? What support do the principals need most to enact this leadership? This cross-case study, conducted in Hong Kong, finds that principal leadership that focuses on inclusion is important in efforts to overcome these challenges, with innovative and flexible interventions to ensure equality in student learning development. Despite this, they need support from every part of the school community: the school sponsoring body, the teaching team and parents. The implications of these findings for interpreting the meanings of principal leadership for inclusion are also discussed. Copyright © 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Mathematical disagreements occur when students challenge each other’s ideas related to a mathematical concept. In this research, we examined Hong Kong and U.S. elementary teachers’ perceptions of mathematical disagreements and their resolutions using a video-stimulated survey. Participants were directed to give particular attention to the mathematics embedded within the disagreement and approaches for resolving the disagreement. Results revealed incomplete knowledge structures for the SELECTed mathematical topic for both Hong Kong and U.S. participants. Differences existed between the two groups regarding the resolution of the disagreement, as Hong Kong participants focused on the content within the resolution process while U.S. participants focused on the form of the resolution process. Both groups found value in mathematical disagreements but for different reasons. Hong Kong participants indicated that the mathematical disagreements supported them in identifying students’ misunderstandings. In contrast, U.S. participants reported that mathematical disagreements helped to identify areas in which students lacked prerequisite knowledge. Implications for future work are provided. Copyright © 2016 International Journal of Education in Mathematics, Science and Technology.

Good quality teacher education and training has been acknowledged as an effective strategy to reduce sexual prejudice against sexual minority (lesbian, gay, bisexual and questioning/queer [LGBQ]) students. However, no mandated programmes have been developed to include LGBQ-related content in teacher training in Hong Kong, a Chinese society in which heterosexism prevails. Based on the concepts of sexual prejudice, minority stress and contact theory, this paper explores the international and regional literature on LGBQ students’ school experiences, highlighting the significant role teachers play in supporting these students to transgress sexual prejudice, and presenting suggested themes and strategies for teacher training programmes, drawn from qualitative interviews with eleven Chinese teacher allies. Data analysis led to the identification of the following themes: 1) starting sexual diversity training officially; 2) reconsidering assumptions; 3) engaging with relevant cultural knowledge and skills; and 4) using dialogue as a training strategy. This paper argues that accurate content about sexual diversity should be incorporated into the professional teacher training curriculum, with updated sexuality concepts and prejudice-free, LGBQ-inclusive language relevant to the Chinese cultural context. Teachers need to become more aware of how sexual prejudice is manifested through cultural forces. Intergroup contact can be included as a useful training strategy. Copyright © 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

This study aims to understand teacher emotions through interviewing 28 primary teachers in Hong Kong. The study employed content analysis to analyze the data. The results were allocated to three dimensions of teacher emotions—student and learning, teacher and teaching, and the contextual factors. These teachers described 78 emotions of which approximately an equal number were positive and negative. Emotions relating to the student and learning dimension are the most intense, followed by those in the teacher and teaching and contextual factor dimensions. Data also indicated that teachers can hold positive and negative emotions simultaneously (e.g., happy yet pressurized by child's unconditional trust) and can suffer from paradoxical emotions (e.g., regarding education reform). Teachers demonstrated different ways to manage emotions contingent on their demographic background. Given the powerful role that emotions play, recommendations for including teacher emotion education in both initial teacher education and professional development have been proposed accordingly. Copyright © 2018 Education Research Institute, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea.