This paper discusses whether practitioners' gender subjectivities influence pedagogies and practices in early years education and care (EYEC) settings and whether an increase of men's participation can improve gender diversity in EYEC. It draws on poststructuralist theories, understanding gender as the product/outcome of the social formation of subjects and the process of subjectification. This is illustrated through accounts for how individual practitioners from Scotland, Hong Kong, and Mainland China discursively construct their gender subjectivities, in accordance with the respective cultural discourses that shape work with young children in EYEC in the three contexts. Thirty-four practitioners from 17 EYEC settings (1 male and 1 female practitioner from each setting) in the cities of Edinburgh, Hong Kong, and Tianjin were interviewed. The study finds that participant practitioners' constructions of gender subjectivities vary within and across contexts, and gender-binary discourses are to different extents prevalent in all three contexts. This paper argues for a cross-cultural approach to gender-sensitive teacher training, to interrogate popular discourses that advocate for men to fulfil complementary roles in EYEC to women and to challenge gender binary thinking that persists in EYEC and beyond.
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The purpose of this research was to explore gender differences and cultural differences in school motivation among students from eight culturally diverse groups from Western and non-Western societies. The selected groups come from Hong Kong, the Philippines, Singapore, Australia, the Netherlands, and Qatar. More than 10,000 secondary school students reported their mastery, performance, social, and extrinsic motivation. Results showed (very) small to moderately large gender differences, which were largely in line with prior research in Western societies. Moreover, significant differences in school motivation across the eight cultural groups were found, however, only the Qatari sample strongly deviated from the other samples. In all cultural groups, females had slightly higher scores on mastery motivation and social motivation (except for Qatari students), and in several Western and non-Western samples, males had slightly higher scores on performance motivation. Gender differences in extrinsic motivation were less straightforward.
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The possible roles of culture, gender, and age-related factors in decision making about socioscientific issues (SSIs) have been underexplored. To study the impact of culture and cross-cultural understanding on students’ decision-making, and how these impacts are possibly mediated by age and gender-related variables, 106 11–13 year old students and 60 15–17 year old students from three Hong Kong schools and four UK schools were engaged in decision-making about shark fishing. Data were collected on how students make decisions before and after interacting with their own peers and considering the views of their international counterparts, using discussion records, supplemented with focus group interviews. The findings show that students associated with the culture of shark eating do not necessarily identify with shark fishing. Three dimensions characterise students’ decisions: the human activities to be controlled, the ways to address issues arising from shark fishing, and the concerns underlying students’ decisions. Although students showed support for conserving sharks, there were nuanced differences between the two cultural groups, which were possibly mediated by gender and age factors. The findings provide support to the impact of cultural exchange on their own and others’ views on broadening students’ perspectives and stimulating their critical reasoning. Copyright © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

In the past two decades, young women's educational performance in Hong Kong has gradually improved; yet this has sparked concern over boys' "under-achievement." Despite prevalent concern, however, few academic studies have seriously considered this complex phenomenon. Inspired by feminist discussions on this topic, this chapter explores the contradictory construction of successful female leaders in an elite girls' school in Hong Kong. The discussion aims to show that the discourse and expectations of "successful girls" are similar to those in Anglophone countries and that they are intimately linked to Hong Kong's neoliberal educational reforms, middle-class oriented, and fraught with contradictions. Copyright © 2018 selection and editorial matter, Kerry J. Kennedy and John Chi-Kin Lee; individual chapters, the contributors.