This article unpacks how neoliberal discourse functions as a dominant but problematic system of reasoning that changes and shifts the ways in which we come to think about early childhood education and care. A post-structuralist lens is deployed to understand the production of fears and hopes under the looming shadows of contemporary education reforms and social policies. Highlighting Taiwan, Hong Kong and Korea as three cases from East Asian cultures, this article seeks to elucidate how a similar neoliberal economic and political imaginary is at work to (re)construct East Asian children as human capital for the alchemy of productive citizens in the 21st century.
[Copyright of Policy Futures in Education is the property of Symposium Journals.]

One way that universities assess teaching effectiveness is by eliciting student feedback. However, what standards do students themselves use to judge whether a lecturer is a 'good' teacher? As part of a study carried out at a Hong Kong university, students were interviewed about their first-year learning experience and asked what they felt constituted 'good' and 'bad' teaching. Unlike when asked to complete teacher effectiveness surveys, no criteria or characteristics were given. Responses focused primarily on teaching skills that supported student learning and encouraged critical thinking, particularly the teacher's ability to give clear explanations supported by relevant, practical examples.
[Copyright of Journal of Further & Higher Education is the property of Routledge.]

In the previous literature on gifted education in Hong Kong, there has been little mention of special schools for gifted and/or talented students in Hong Kong except for GT College, Hong Kong's first college for the gifted. Some notable researchers in gifted education in Hong Kong have described the college briefly with regard to its admission policy but have not discussed its programmes. The present article aims to provide a more extended introduction about how GT College successfully nurtures its gifted and/or talented students to become future leaders in Hong Kong. The present article comprises a systematic overview of the historical developments of gifted education in Hong Kong. This is followed by a historical review of GT College. Then, GT College's learning and teaching philosophy is addressed followed by its innovative curriculum for gifted and/or talented students--Talent Development Programmes and Youth Development Programmes.
[Copyright of Gifted Education International is the property of Sage Publications Ltd..]

The study seeks to understand the relation between preschool children's mode of participation and negotiation strategies during play and their theory of mind (ToM) development in the Hong Kong context. Forty-two 5-year-old children were recruited. Their emotional and cognitive ToMs were assessed along with expressive language ability. Children's play was observed twice in naturalistic and laboratory settings. Parents completed a questionnaire on their child's emotional and cognitive ToM development, including demographic information and social economic status indexes. The results showed that 5-year-old Hong Kong children mostly engaged in associative and cooperative play and employed two-way, reciprocal strategies in their play. Parent report of emotional ToM predicted children's play strategy in both naturalistic and laboratory settings. Child measure of cognitive ToM predicted their play strategy in the laboratory setting. The study advocates more play time in kindergarten in order to foster an empathetic generation.
[Copyright of Early Child Development and Care is the property of Routledge.]

Research conducted in the late twentieth century pointed to a gulf in Hong Kong's universities between institutional medium-of-instruction policy, which stipulated the use of English, and lecturers' classroom practices, which often involved the use of Cantonese to present and explain the content of English-language textbooks and teaching materials. This article examines the findings of a study which sought to determine whether the policy-practice divide had widened or narrowed in the past two decades under the pressure of two potentially competing forces: globalisation and decolonisation. The evidence suggests that the policy-practice disjunction may have narrowed significantly in recent years, with most of the participants' teachers evidently making a determined effort to instruct and interact with their students in English in lectures and seminars.
[Copyright of World Englishes is the property of Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd..]

Research on transnational Higher Education governance has provided a thesis explaining how East Asian states have successfully selectively blended elements of globalisation in Higher Education with their pre-existing regulatory regimes. However, this paper argues that the thesis overlooks the significance of local politics in understanding the formulation of Higher Education policy, thus insufficiently acknowledging the indeterminacy that arises in the globalisation process. To address this argument, this paper examines the transnational Higher Education development in Singapore and Hong Kong and explains how political resistance and corresponding policy changes that emerged in these two societies help reconceptualise transnational Higher Education governance.
[Copyright of Higher Education Quarterly is the property of Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd..]

The present study examined the relationships among grit, academic performance, perceived academic failure, and stress levels of Hong Kong associate degree students using path analysis. Three hundred and forty-five students from a community college in Hong Kong voluntarily participated in the study. They completed a questionnaire that measured their grit (operationalized as interest and perseverance) and stress levels. The students also provided their actual academic performance and evaluated their perception of their academic performance as a success or a failure. The results of the path analysis showed that interest and perseverance were negatively associated with stress, and only perceived academic failure was positively associated with stress. These findings suggest that psychological appraisal and resources are more important antecedents of stress than objective negative events. Therefore, fostering students' psychological resilience may alleviate the stress experienced by associate degree students or college students in general.
[Copyright of Journal of adolescence is the property of Academic Press.]

This study investigates how teacher background, subject knowledge and pedagogic efficacy affect Grade 4 children's (aged 9-10) mathematical achievement in 10 primary schools in Hong Kong. Mathematics teachers were selected for their strong commitment to teaching mathematics and their pupils' consistently high international mathematics performance. Teacher measures (i.e. level of mathematics education, teaching experience, mathematics subject knowledge, performance in mathematical operations and pedagogic efficacy) were checked for factor consistency and assessed against age-appropriate pupil mathematical achievement. The results showed that teachers were secure in their subject knowledge, and that such knowledge was related to their performance of mathematical operations, but it was high levels of pedagogic efficacy and the ability to perform age-appropriate mathematics operations (rather than subject knowledge) that positively affected their pupils' achievement. These findings contradict ongoing international calls for the enhancement of primary school teachers' mathematical subject knowledge, as they show pedagogic efficacy to be more strongly associated with pupil achievement.
[Copyright of International Journal of Educational Research is the property of Elsevier Ltd.]

Despite decades of research, little is known about the dynamics of sustaining change in school reform and how the process of change unfolds. By tracing the nine-year reform journeys of four primary schools in Hong Kong (using multiyear interview, observational, and archival data), this study uncovers the micro-processes the schools experienced during their reform. New practices first took root in a group of pilot teachers before gradually disseminating to other teachers and eventually transforming the entire school. Challenges differed across the reform journey. Synergy between school leadership, external support, and organization redesign was critical for initial success. Continued progress depended on whether school leaders and external partners could adapt their roles and redesign the organization to address the school's changing capacity and needs. The study reveals the long-term process of school reform and has crucial implications for policy, research, and practice.
[Copyright of American Educational Research Journal is the property of American Educational Research Association]

Studies on school leadership in Hong Kong have mainly focused on primary and secondary schools, with only a handful of studies looking at leadership in early childhood education. This paper aims to report the findings of a study on strategic leadership in Hong Kong's kindergartens. It discusses the challenges that Hong Kong kindergarten leaders are facing and the need for practising strategic leadership. It then reports the findings of practices valued by the leaders of Hong Kong kindergartens. The findings of this study reveal, that apart from the abilities to exercise sound planning and management in school, leaders' reflective, flexible and systems thinking and their willingness in continuous professional and network development are crucial to leading today's kindergartens. This study also indicates that leaders' contextual intelligence is important for exercising strategic leadership. The significance of this study lies in its contribution to the investigation of leadership practices in early childhood education, the need to further explore how well kindergarten leaders are practising strategic leadership and the implications for the development of principal preparation programmes.
[Copyright of Educational Management Administration & Leadership is the property of SAGE Publications Ltd.]