This thesis explores multiple relationships among school missions, developmental programs, and the spiritual well-being of students and teachers at 5 Hong Kong secondary schools in which only 3 schools namely an Anglican school (School A), a nonreligious school (School B), and a Catholic school (School E) were selected for further case study according to their quantitative results and school management approval.A mixed methods approach was applied to examine these relationships. A quantitative instrument, the Spiritual Health and Life Orientation Measure, was adopted to assess the spiritual well-being of 2,125 students and 96 teachers. Statistical results revealed that students from School E showed the most highest level of spiritual well-being, followed by School A and then School B, with significant differences observed among the three schools. Teachers’ spiritual well-being were also ranked in the same order of School E, School A and School B but the differences were not significant.A qualitative investigation involved a textual analysis of school documents including the guidelines of school sponsoring bodies and the schools’ mission statements (first-order documents), as well as their school development plans and annual plans (second-order documents). Individual interviews with principals and teachers (n = 21), focus group interviews with senior students (n = 31), and school visits for ethos observations were conducted to identify daily practices and real interactions indicating the influence of developmental programs, teachers’ values, and the schools’ mission statements on the nurturing of the students’ spiritual well-being.The content of developmental programs was found to be closely related to the content of the schools’ mission statements and the values of the schools’ sponsoring bodies. Positive relationships were observed between the number of developmental programs at the schools and the students’ level of spiritual well-being. For all 3 schools, both the

Based on a case study of a faculty at a university in Hong Kong, this chapter examines how a grassroots approach to professional development enhances the capacity of the teaching staff for blended learning. Professional development plays a pivotal role in supporting the teaching staff to adopt blended learning in their courses to enhance the quality of learning and teaching. However, professional development policies and practices do not always meet the professional learning needs of staff, and many of them do not feel supported in their blended learning practices after attending the professional development sessions. This chapter first discusses how the grassroots approach to professional development in blended learning was developed and implemented in the faculty. Both qualitative and quantitative data were collected and analysed to document the impact of the professional development on staff’s adoption of blended learning in their courses. Based on the key findings from this set of data from the faculty, the grassroots approach is refined and customised for each faculty at the university as part of the scaling-up process. Copyright © 2021 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

大自然是幼兒早期成長階段的重要學習環境。幼兒樂於在充滿趣味的大自然環境中探索和主動學習。而目前，在城市中生活的幼兒越來越缺乏和大自然接觸的機會，讓幼兒與大自然建立聯繫成為香港幼兒教育課程中的一個新的發展取向。本講座將分享香港幼師專業發展中加入大自然教育的歷程，包括幼師培訓課程及校本培訓的策略。此外，講者將分享幼兒在室内和室外融入大自然學習的經歷，探索透過多元模式的學習幫助幼兒主動探索社區周圍的大自然元素。The nature is an important learning environment for early years development. Young children are happy to explore and learn proactively in the interesting natural world, but those living in cities are losing touch with the nature. In the local context, the ECE curriculum is heading in a new direction to engage children with the nature. This seminar will present the trajectory of integrating nature education into local ECE teacher development, including strategies for ECE teacher education programmes and schoolbased teacher preparation. Furthermore, the seminar will also share the experience of immersing children in nature-based learning both indoor and outdoor, and investigate the use of multimodal learning to support young children in exploring the nature elements in the community proactively. Copyright © 2020 幼教研討會.

According to recent census figures, the number of ethnic minority and non-local Chinese youths has doubled from 27,322 in 2001 to 42,644 in 2011, many of whom are receiving secondary or tertiary education. Despite efforts in promoting diversity, equality, and cultural sensitivity, stigma towards ethnic and cultural minorities remains common in the local context. Minority members’ negative experiences give rise to stress and poorer well-being. Within the existing local teacher education curriculum, there are general education courses that focus on multicultural and race issues. However, they are elective courses and engage a relatively small number of students. We believe basic aptitude in multiculturalism should be cultivated in all student teachers. As such, this intervention study was conducted to enrich student teachers’ training to manage diversity in school setting. The intervention involved a three-hour guest lecture, a three-hour e-learning session, and a three-hour multicultural discovery tour. Participants were pre-service teachers from five undergraduate courses at a local University. Following the intervention, the participating course lecturers commented that the intervention boosted multicultural competencies in preservice teachers innovatively. In addition, 100% of the multicultural tour participants agreed that their learning performance has improved through the activity, and that they would continue to apply the knowledge in the future. Based on these findings, it is recommended that similar activities should be incorporated in the teacher education curriculum in Hong Kong. Copyright © 2020 International Conference on Learning and Teaching.

本研究旨在探討香港中國語文教師「自主學習」（SRL）的反思特徵，並檢視職級和教學年資對反思表現的影響。研究參與者是在職教師專業進修課程的學員，研究樣本是他們的反思報告。本研究採用質化和量化混合法—文本分析法、內容分析法及數據統計分析。結果顯示，參加者反思「自主學習」理念的更新，贊同「自主學習」理念，並聚焦於「自主學習」實踐；事實陳述和推理探索的反思表現較佳，而感情表達的反思表現稍遜；他們的反思表現受教師職級的影響，而非教學年資的影響。This study aims at identifying the characteristics of Hong Kong in-service Chinese language teachers’ reflective writing on self-regulated learning (SRL) and examine how the teaching ranks and years of teaching experience affect their reflection performance. A mixed method approach was adopted in the analysis of the written reflections. Text analysis and content analysis of the written reflection was conducted. The cross tabulations of reflective and thematic categories were calculated to investigate how the each category interacted. Results demonstrated that the participants were impressed by the theories of SRL and most of them focused on the practices of SRL. The reflections on facts and reasoning were the strengths of the participants while the reflections on feelings were their weakness. Moreover, the reflective performance was affected by teaching ranks, but not years of teaching experience. Copyright © 2020 香港教育大學中國語言學系、哥倫比亞大學中文部、中華書局（香港）有限公司.

Teacher behaviors are one of the most significant factors influencing student learning. Students from different cultures may have different interpretations of their teachers’ behaviors. This study compared the associations between teacher strictness, teacher feedback, and students’ motivational beliefs using data from six Western countries (the United States, the United Kingdom, Finland, Norway, Australia, and New Zealand) and six East Asian regions (Japan, Korea, mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan) in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2015. A total of 89,869 15-year-old students were included in data analysis. The findings indicate that (i) teacher strictness was negatively associated with Western students’ motivation, but positively related to that of East Asian students; (ii) teacher feedback had significant positive associations with the motivational beliefs of both Western and East Asian students; and (iii) there was a positive relationship between teacher strictness and teacher feedback in East Asian context. These results highlight the need to consider cultural factors when interpreting students’ reactions to teacher behaviors. Copyright © 2021 Jiang, Lee, Wan and Chen.

This study aimed to identify teachers’ perceived challenges in implementing assessment-as-learning (AaL) in classrooms, and evaluate the impact of a one-year professional development programme (PDP) designed for 47 teachers in a Hong Kong primary school to promote AaL implementation. Findings showed that the PDP increased the frequency and appropriateness of AaL implementation when on-site support was also provided, otherwise changes were not substantial. It suggests that systematic supporting measures should be provided together with PDPs to address the challenges teachers encountered in implementing AaL. Copyright © 2021 International Review of Finance Ltd.

This paper examines the influence of professional learning communities (PLCs) on informal teacher leadership in Hong Kong schools to overcome issues reported in the literature on the challenges to teacher leadership posed by Chinese hierarchical school contexts. We test the relations among PLC, informal teacher leadership, teacher focus on improving student learning, principal instructional leadership, and middle leadership (e.g., subject heads) with structural equation modeling of survey responses from 638 teachers of primary and secondary schools in Hong Kong. The results show an overall positive influence among all factors in the study. PLCs have the highest positive influence among the factors considered in this study. PLCs are highly influential in promoting informal teacher leadership, which in turn has a high positive linkage to teachers’ focus on improving student learning. In addition, principal instructional leadership has a high positive influence on PLCs, while middle leadership has a moderate positive influence on PLCs. To further enhance teacher leadership capabilities that promote teachers’ focus on improving student learning, we provide recommendations to boost PLC and middle leadership capacities in schools. Copyright © 2021 The Author(s).

Although extracurricular music activities are common in Hong Kong, private music teachers’ perceptions of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are underexplored in research in this context. This study examined private music teachers’ knowledge of ASD and their attitudes toward students with ASD in Hong Kong, and the relationship between these two factors. The study collected data from a questionnaire survey (n = 200) and eleven individual interviews. Unexpectedly, the findings showed that the teachers had a good understanding and a marginally positive perception of ASD, despite some anxiety about teaching students with ASD. Furthermore, knowledge of and attitude toward ASD were positively correlated. Teachers with previous training in special education needs had a better understanding of ASD and a more positive attitude toward ASD than those without related training. These results imply that further formal and public education could promote acceptance of and equal learning opportunities for students with ASD. Copyright © 2021 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.

The quasi-market condition of education intensified the need to seek ongoing school improvements, manage uncertainty, and innovate school-wide pedagogy and curricula. Sequentially, interest in teachers’ entrepreneurial behavior (TEB) has grown rapidly in recent years, which established the importance of entrepreneurial behavior as an effective response to the changing, uncertain, and increasing demanding context in the education system. However, the notion of TEB has not been clearly conceptualized or operationalized. This study attempted to offer a clear definition of TEB and identify its conceptual components. We first offered a semi-systematic literature review of entrepreneurial behavior, and then conducted a multiple-site case study at three schools in Hong Kong. We identified three competency components and three attribute components of TEB, from which we established a conceptual definition of TEB. This clarification of TEB and its components enabled the linkage to prior literature and future research. Copyright © 2021 Springer Nature B.V.