外籍人士表示，學漢語最大的困難莫過於漢字（趙金銘，2006）。學漢字必須一個一個地學，一個一個地記。周健、尉萬傳（2004）提出漢字學習三種現象：1. 漢字學習與漢語學習的正相關顯著，漢字學得好的學生往往也是漢語成績好的；2.儘管反復書寫練習是留學生普遍認同的策略，但優秀學生更多地採用音義符歸納策略或整字策略。3.女生成績優於男生，日韓等漢字學習圈學生優於非漢字圈國家學生。本研究試從教學語言方面探討。研究員曾在香港兩所幼兒園，分別以英語及粵語為主要的教學語言進行識字教學的研究。本文將探討這兩所幼兒園的非華語學童識字能力的表現。

Mother tongue language (MTL) curriculum is core to school education in most countries/regions' school curriculum. Through mother tongue language learning, students are expected to enhance their understanding of the nation's culture and foster the sense of cultural and ethnic identity. However, MTL education in Hong Kong is complicated by the colonial history. This study examines Hong Kong Chinese language teachers' perceptions of MTL education, and the implication on MTL curriculum development. The questionnaire was administrated to 97 teachers, and interviews were carried out on 17 teachers. Usually, MTL is both the tool with which knowledge and skills are taught and learned and the vehicle for students to learn about the traditions of the countries' literature and culture. In Hong Kong, 95% of the population is of Chinese descent. Traditionally, education in China was a mixture of philosophy, history, politics and literacy. Chinese as an MTL subject in pre-colonial Hong Kong has always been assigned the mission of developing students' cultural identity in addition to the development of linguistic proficiency. During the colonial period, the Chinese Language curriculum shifted to be more language skills based with less emphasis on Chinese culture and moral education. After the sovereignty of Hong Kong was returned to China in 1997, although a new curriculum was implemented in 2002, teaching and learning in school as well as public examinations seem to be remaining language skills oriented instead of culturally based. This deviation from the trend of both Chinese traditional education and global mother tongue language education makes some Chinese language teachers feel confused. In addition, there is comment that in general Hong Kong students' Chinese language proficiency is becoming weaker and weaker in recent years. Thus, effectiveness of the skills oriented language curriculum has come under question. How a language teacher views the aims and objectives of the language

Differentiated instruction (DI) is nothing new and is believed to be an effective research-based strategy to cater for learner diversity. Differentiation involves finding multiple ways to structure a lesson so that each student is provided with an opportunity to work at a moderately challenging level. Previous studies, however, found that teachers were not well prepared and insufficiently equipped with skills and knowledge about DI. In the recent Hong Kong curriculum reform, DI has been highlighted as one of the ways to catering to learner diversity. The purpose of the study is to examine in-service teachers' readiness for using DI strategies and perceived challenges in its implementation. Using a mixed-methods design, a questionnaire was used to investigate teachers' perceived readiness for and obstacles toward using DI strategies, as followed by semi-structured focus group interviews that were done to in-service teachers of two schools. Qualitative data as obtained from the interviews was used to explain the quantitative data. With the use of factor analysis, two factors were identified in the survey, including Factor 1 Teacher-centred approach and Factor 2 Student-centred approach. Findings indicated that teachers generally tended to be ready for using DI strategies; however, they were more ready for using teacher-centred approach. Three perceived obstacles toward DI were identified: class size and diversity, time, and understanding of teaching strategies. Implications for curriculum development, professional development and research directions will be discussed at the end of the paper.

This study explored two under-researched areas on students' attitudes towards science, that is, the structural models representing these attitudes and the role played by school bands in moderating the gender differences in such attitudes. The participants were 360 ninth graders in Hong Kong from 3 school bands. The structural equation modelling method was adopted to compare four hypothetical models for students' attitudes towards science. Results reflect that (i) the data supported the three-factor structure of the behavioural domain of students' attitudes towards science; (ii) the four lower level dimensions of the attitudes towards science (i.e. value of science to society, self-concept in science, anxiety towards science and enjoyment of science) could be further integrated into broader categories; (iii) male students demonstrated significantly more positive attitudes towards science in five dimensions (i.e. self-concept in science, enjoyment in science, learning science in and outside the classroom and future participation) and (iv) school bands played a prominent moderating role in gender differences in students' attitudes towards science. Implications for studying and developing students' attitudes towards science are discussed in the paper.

This study reveals the perceptions of over one hundred Hong Kong teachers who were asked to reflect upon the implementation of Liberal Studies in secondary schools in response to the latest government review of the subject's curriculum. Questionnaire-based surveys and semi-structured interviews were conducted to probe the participating teachers' perceptions and suggestions in such areas as the subject's objectives, content and assessment, with the ultimate goal of tracing the subject's developmental trajectory. The findings indicate that, whilst the teachers appear to have faith in Liberal Studies' objective to develop students into critical and independent thinkers, they feel that the pedagogical challenges with which they have been confronted have influenced their teaching motivation and support for the subject's mandatory status in secondary education. Further, the potential tension between the challenges they have encountered in reality and the ideal outcomes envisaged by policymakers raises the question of how Liberal Studies can move forward in giving teachers a greater role in educational reform. Recommendations for relieving that tension, as well as the findings' implications for future research on curriculum development in Hong Kong and elsewhere, are also discussed.
[Asia Pacific Education Review is a copyright of Springer, 2017]

Over the past decade, Chinese language teachers in Hong Kong have experienced a series of educational reforms. They are now expected to design and implement their own school-based Chinese language curriculum, and adopt innovative pedagogies and customized materials in the classroom. The current literature suggests that some teachers are not ready for or even resist changes amid new challenges and paradigm changes. This case study highlights the role of emotionality as a key factor for successful teacher change by proposing a local adaptation of the classic model, while pointing out that a combined mode of support inclusive of collective lesson preparation and teaching demonstrations/practical sessions in professional development programs is a key element that helps facilitate teachers' change and provides teachers with experiential learning opportunities and enhanced confidence, leading to their voluntary adoption of the approach and gradual change in their beliefs and attitudes after witnessing the feasibility and effectiveness of the newly introduced concepts.
[© 2017 Teacher Development]

This article presents an overview of language policy in Hong Kong education during the colonial and post-colonial periods. The article is divided into three main sections. The first section outlines the sociolinguistic background of Hong Kong, including the demographic trends that have been crucial in determining the course of educational development in the city in the past 170 years. The second section offers an overview of language policies and practices during the colonial era (1842-1997). This section is divided into the two distinct phases which characterised education under the British; namely, (1) the period between the 1840s and the 1960s, during which English-medium secondary education was the preserve of the elite in society, and (2) the years between the 1970s and 1997, during which the majority of students in each age cohort attended schools in which English was the official medium of instruction. The third section examines developments in language policy since the handover, focusing on the promotion and subsequent fine-tuning of a controversial policy to promote Chinese-medium instruction at secondary level.
[Copyright Liverpool University Press 2017]

The flipped classroom is an educational strategy about inverting the traditional use of in-class time for conducting lower-level learning activities and out-of-class time for conducting higher-level learning activities. Guided social inquiry learning (GSIL), which is a scaffolded constructivist pedagogic approach, has been conventionally adopted in learning and teaching of Liberal Studies (a "young" core senior secondary subject of social and humanities education in Hong Kong). In this research, we aimed to integrate the idea of the flipped classroom into the process of GSIL for promoting students??learning achievement and self-efficacy in studying Liberal Studies. Apart from delineating the pedagogic design of the proposed "flipped" social inquiry learning (FSIL) approach, this paper also reports our quasiexperimental study on investigating the pedagogic effectiveness of FSIL in comparison with GSIL. There was a total of 215 Grade-11 students from top, middle, and bottom academic-banding schools participating in this study. Results indicated that, compared to the conventional approach, FSIL had different degrees of positive effects on the high, moderate, and low academic-achieving participants. The findings provide grounds for further studying a wider adoption of the flipped classroom in social and humanities education, as well as in constructivist learning and teaching activities.

Social diversity is now commonplace in many communities in today's globalised world. This diversity can be seen in any classroom of learners, and international studies have shown the complex ways in which disabilities, race, ethnicity, gender and social class can determine a child's opportunity to succeed or fail in the education system. In Hong Kong, like in many educational contexts around the world, teachers are grappling with increasing diversity amongst their students, including teaching students with special educational needs (SEN) and non-Chinese speaking students (NCS) living in Hong Kong. This paper examines how three primary TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) teachers are constructing identities as inclusive practitioners as they grapple with enacting the inclusive education policy recently introduced into Hong Kong schools. The data are drawn from a small-scale collaborative reflective inquiry for teacher professional development. Drawing upon a sociocultural and critical framing of identity theory, we trace the three teachers' identity construction as EFL teachers and inclusive education practitioners. We view the role of discourse, self-positioning and social context as key processes in teacher identity formation. Implications for furthering the development of inclusive education in EFL classrooms are offered.