In 2013 the newly elected Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) of the People’s Republic of China delivered his first Policy Address. Among other things, it highlighted the issues of education for ethnic minority students in Hong Kong focusing on Chinese language difficulties. This paper reviews the Chinese language issues for ethnic minority students as well as other issues and challenges that have been raised. It draws on education reform documents, available policy documents from the Education Bureau (EDB) and other departments regarding the educational provision for ethnic minorities, the Race Discrimination Ordinance (RDO), census and statistics reports including the recent ‘2011 Population Census, Thematic Report: Ethnic Minorities’, existing literature and newspaper articles. While the focus of the discussion is on the challenges that ethnic minority students are facing inside the school, the issue of the ‘out of school’ or ‘dropout’ phenomenon for such students is also highlighted. The paper concludes by suggesting that an exclusive concern with Chinese language education misses other significant issues that impact on the education of ethnic minority students in Hong Kong. Copyright © 2014 by the CESHK.

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.

The way culturally responsive teaching is employed in school settings in non-Western contexts is unclear. The question of how to teach Chinese effectively to ethnic minority (EM) children in Hong Kong has recently attracted much attention because their generally low level of Chinese language proficiency hinders their education and social integration. This study investigated teachers’ competence in utilizing culturally responsive teaching to teach Chinese to EM children in kindergartens. Focus group interviews were conducted with 43 teachers from 20 kindergartens. The results showed that teachers from kindergartens with a high concentration of EM children were more competent in adapting their teaching methods to cater for EM children’s learning styles and educational needs. However, teachers from low concentration kindergartens were less competent in incorporating multicultural elements in curriculum design and teaching materials. They demonstrated a more monocultural mindset in teaching Chinese to EM children. Teachers from high concentration kindergartens developed a better understanding of EM cultures, were more caring and had higher expectations of EM children. Implications for teacher education, school level and policy were discussed. Copyright © 2021 National Institute of Education, Singapore.

The evolution of globalisation and ensuing internationalisation of higher education need radical reform of institutional policies and practices to promote education for diversity, equity and inclusion. Extant literature on university/college student persistence/retention witnesses a lack of research on the subjective sense of belonging on campus among ethnic minoritised students who have been historically marginalised in higher education and are now part of the emerging demographic on campus. This study attempted to fill the gap. Engaging qualitative individual interviews with 12 university students of South/Southeast Asian ethnicity in Hong Kong, the purpose of this study was to examine their perceptions and experiences of institutional affiliations and engagement in university. Findings suggested that being connected to the programme and university, and the depth and quality of intragroup dynamics, are key to a sense of belonging among ethnic minority students. Findings also elucidated a lack of cross‐cultural interaction and racial/ethnic diversity within the university environment, which shaped participants’ feelings of isolation and exclusionary experiences as they sought to adjust to the campus academically and socially. The study’s findings could help inform the development and evaluation of institutional strategies that can sustain minoritised students in university transitions and promote institutional connectedness and academic success among all students on campus. Copyright © 2021 British Educational Research Association

Scholars have extensively studied acculturation from different theoretical perspectives among immigrants across the societies of settlement. However, there is a dearth of knowledge about acculturation from a culture learning approach in Hong Kong. This article reports the acculturative challenges among sixteen (16) Pakistani students from six different secondary schools in Hong Kong. The phenomenographic data analysis of semi-structured interviews revealed four categories of everyday experiences in schools that hinder their acculturation. These are mainly related to inter-ethnic interactions, sensitivity towards diverse learning and sociocultural needs, and the Chinese language teaching curriculum for non-Chinese speaking students. Although the study reports Pakistani students' experiences, the findings may also translate the acculturative challenges among students with an immigrant or ethnic minority background in settlement societies. The article also discusses both the theoretical and practical implications for studying and helping immigrant young people in multicultural contexts. Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

This article reports on a qualitative study investigating the teaching experiences of ESL teachers of ethnic minority students from South Asian countries. Eight ESL teachers from two secondary schools in Hong Kong were interviewed. Informed by the concept of neoliberal governmentality, this study explores the shaping effect of neoliberal education on these teachers’ professional development, their negotiation with the current examination-oriented educational policy, and the overall neoliberal discourse in education. The teachers were found to be ambivalent in their contradictory positions regarding whether to encourage or prohibit the use of heritage languages in English learning, whether to conform to the curriculum or develop new materials and try out new ways, and how to unravel social responsibility for ethnic minority groups’ development. This study has implications for the importance of awareness of the impact of macro-level neoliberalism on micro-level educational practices among teachers, principals, and policy makers, and for the necessity of developing teacher education programmes to prepare teachers with a particular concern about the well-being of children (especially those in underprivileged communities), and enable them to think critically about scripted curriculum packages and to work within more diverse and challenging contexts. Copyright © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

This article examines the cross-cultural experience of immigrant students in Hong Kong and the U.S. state of California and the role of their cultural capital in the cross-cultural identity process. It begins with a review of studies on the challenges of immigrant students in schools. A theoretical framework is then established to examine the cross-cultural experience of these students based on the evidence obtained from the literature. The article concludes with a discussion of the study’s implications for educational provision to immigrant students. Copyright © 2018 [National FORUM Journal]. All rights reserved.

This presentation explores acculturation and identity of ethnic minority students in Hong Kong schools, and how they are associated to their learning needs in schools and to what extend culturally responsive classroom environment has been created for fulfilling their diverse learning and cultural needs. This study was qualitative in nature. Semi-structured interviews were conducted in three secondary schools where large numbers of ethnic minority students from low socio-economic backgrounds were enrolled. With school permission, thirty-two teachers were invited to attend one-on-one interviews. Eighteen were female and 14 were male. The enrolment of ethnic minority students was regarded by the teachers as one of the key factors which made the classroom more diverse and multicultural, with the range of diversity covering race, culture, religion, customs and socioeconomic background. When fulfilling their students’ needs, the teachers struggled with conceptualizing a new rationale for cultural responsiveness to diversity, developing intercultural sensitivity, promoting cultural responsiveness among the students, strengthening the home-school collaboration and broadening ethnic minority students’ aspirations for their education and careers. Copyright © 2019 CiCea.

This paper provides a critical re-examination of prevailing case study approaches that select ethnic minority cases based on racial identities. It revisits the importance of distinguishing between concepts of ‘race’ and ‘ethnicity’ (Brubaker, 2004 Wallerstein, 1991), and proposes a language-informed approach to reconceptualize these constructs in view of the power dynamics that results in their conflation.I examine the language developments that structure the school context to highlight the power dynamics of Hong Kong’s shifting identity from special administrative region to its eventual integration into Mainland China. A language-informed approach provides an illustrative case of language developments that propel schools into the unintended consequence of enculturating Cantonese-speaking (Hong Kong) students to embrace Mandarin (Mainland). Language developments coalesce into a coherent strategy that elicits the voluntary cooperation of autonomous Hong Kong schools to conflate the race and ethnic identities of Mandarin and Cantonese-speaking students.Lexis Elementary is a school in Hong Kong located near the border of Mainland China. Due to poor school enrolment, it had a close-shave with school closure. The school survived by enrolling students from across the border from Mainland China, where the language is Mandarin rather than Cantonese spoken in Hong Kong. The consequence is a transformation in the school language profile. From juggling between English and Cantonese, Lexis Elementary students are now predominantly Mandarin speakers.The case study demonstrates how the economics of school survival coalesce with language developments to produce trickle-down effects on the conflation of race and ethnic identities. It highlights the need for language-informed case studies to chart the structural racism that underlie the complex webs race and ethnic identities entrenched in language development. I draw attention to how ethnic minorities are sequentially rendered invisible

This paper elucidates a critical reading of language policies that uncovers its racial discourse arising from its intersection of power, equity and diversity, particularly the historical remnants and recent demographic changes in Asia. Home to Asia are a sizeable number of Confucian societies that respond differently to equity and diversity when compared to their Western counterparts. Underlying this response is the Confucian conception of social justice expressed through the idea of impartiality rather than equity (Kennedy, 2011). Such conception invites new challenges on striking a balance among supporting the ethnic identities, languages and cultures of minority groups and avoiding social separation and ethnic conflicts.In this paper, we turn to this challenge in Hong Kong, where Chinese language acquisition is a repeatedly reported concern of ethnic minorities in the local (government-funded) education system. We draw on two studies with ethnic minorities, their parents and teachers that involved a documentary analysis, interviews, and classroom observations. We particularly attend to the interests of the dominant group to unpack the nature of these language policies, several important factors related to complexity, contextuality, complicity, complementarity, and continuity of linguistic capital (Pennycook, 2000, p. 50).By plotting the continuity and transformation of language policies in the pre- and post-handover periods in Hong Kong, the emerging findings suggest how certain Confucian ideologies manifest in past and current policies and linguistic practices in education for ethnic minorities. The paper highlights conflicting educational expectations, policies and practices, revealing how centrism in educational intervention reflects the proclivity towards new-integrationist (assimilationist) approaches to cultural diversity (Gube & Gao, in press). The outcome can be a cultural condition that privileges impartiality and sameness.Going against the “grain” of such