Substantial, broad and varied benefits can be gained from mentoring; however, the key to successful mentoring lies in the mentor/mentee relationship. The present study investigated the dimensions in the mentoring relationships that foster or impede the mentoring process between four kindergarten principals and four student-teachers in Hong Kong. The findings of the study support the view that relationship-building is critical in the mentoring process. The dimensions that may sustain an effective mentoring relationship appear to be a high comfort level, trust, openness, ongoing support, regular communication, and the mentors' expertise and level of commitment.
[Copyright of Early Child Development and Care is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0300443022000022404]

This article presents the findings of a study hypothesizing that school discipline problems are a maladaptive response to the demand of the school environment as a result of deficits in the area of locus of control and attributional style. The findings indicate that an external orientation of locus of control and a passive pattern of attribution remain significant predictors of discipline problems when other factors are held constant. The findings lend support to the idea of establishing programmes that "induce appropriate attributions" in children and train teachers to become aware of the attributional process in order to effectively deal with discipline problems in school. Cognitive re-structuring is suggested as an effective means of intervention aimed at disputing the irrational beliefs, which leads to positive effects and consequences. This study was conducted on a sample of three hundred and eighty-four students recruited from the junior forms of four secondary schools in Hong Kong.
[Copyright of Early Child Development and Care is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0300443032000088203]

The present paper describes the results of a two-year project aimed at developing a motor performance test instrument for a motor performance award scheme for kindergarten children to be organized by the Hong Kong Childhealth Foundation. The subjects were 1404 K1 to K3 children, aged three years, three months to six years, ten months. A set of tests developed for Hong Kong kindergarten children was administered to measure their gross motor proficiency. Boys were superior to girls on agility and throwing. Girls performed better than boys on static balance. It was found that a marked improvement in agility was found at the age of 5.5 years. After four years of age, children's static balance also improved. As expected, young children's overall gross motor performance improved, and this was seen as being age-related. The modified set of tests for motor performance was found suitable for use in measuring gross motor performance of children participating in the award scheme for Hong Kong kindergarten children.
[Copyright of Early Child Development and Care is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0300443022000022468]

There is an increasing demand from the public and the field to improve the quality of early childhood education in Hong Kong. The Hong Kong Education Commission has recently released an "education blueprint for the 21st century", which presents a set of reform proposals for the education system in Hong Kong. In the document, early childhood education has been acknowledged as the foundation for life-long learning. A key reform proposal is to build a new culture for quality early childhood education through upgrading professional competence and enhancing quality assurance mechanisms. The present paper provides a general background of existing practices in the preschool years, highlights issues that require attention in order to improve quality, and outlines the reforms introduced by the Education Commission. The implications of these reforms and the associated challenges are then discussed in the areas of quality assurance, curriculum, professional development, parental involvement and financial assistance for the early childhood education sector.
[Copyright of Early Child Development and Care is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0300443022000022387 ]

This study followed 88 children in Beijing and Hong Kong for three years to investigate the relationships between the early teaching of literacy skills and later literacy outcomes. The children were administered the Preschool and Primary Chinese Literacy Scale at the age of five years, and three years later. Their parents and teachers reported on their involvement in literacy teaching, the home/classroom literacy environment and their beliefs about language learning. Findings showed that the Hong Kong cohort significantly surpassed their Beijing counterparts in literacy attainments at age five and age eight. After controlling for age, site, maternal education and teacher qualification, formal literacy activities in early childhood significantly contributed to literacy attainment at primary school, whereas informal literacy experiences did not. Results suggest that the complicated nature of Chinese orthography may make early instruction particularly valuable in Chinese literacy acquisition. The psycholinguistic, pedagogical and sociocontextual accounts and implications of these findings are discussed.
[Copyright of Early Child Development and Care is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03004430600789365]

As part of the module "Further Studies in Kindergarten Curriculum" in the Certificate in Kindergarten Teacher Education Course conducted by the Hong Kong Institute of Education, teacher-educators made use of semantic webbing to help kindergarten teachers/principals develop reflective and thinking skills regarding subject matter content and teaching curriculum. Semantic webbing/mapping or semantic networking or plot maps may be defined as a strategy in which information is categorically structured in graphic/visual form. However, its use in teacher education is more recent. Kindergarten teachers/principals were interviewed to discern how they developed critical thinking and evaluative skills concerning subject matter content and teaching curriculum through the use of semantic webbing. Interviews of a random sample of participants and analysis of their mind-maps revealed a change in perspectives and attitudes towards subject matter content and teaching curriculum. The present paper examines some of the affective outcomes for both teacher educators and student-teachers resulting from the use of semantic webbing/mapping as a strategy for facilitating reflective and critical thinking skills in four components of the module "Further Studies in Kindergarten Curriculum"; namely, Art, Language, Mathematics/Science, as well as Social Studies. Implications for teacher education are drawn from the findings.
[Copyright of Early Child Development and Care is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0300443022000022422 ]

The present study investigates the views of Hong Kong parents on kindergarten education. A questionnaire was designed to examine the reasons for parents to send their children to kindergartens, their concept of kindergarten education, their views on kindergarten teachers' work and training. There were 14,328 returned questionnaires. The findings indicate that parents had positive attitudes towards kindergarten education; they thought that kindergarten education was important for their children and that well qualified teachers were necessary for kindergarten education.
[Copyright of Early Child Development and Care is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0300443991590103 ]

Narrative provides meaning and belonging in human lives because every human experience is a lived story, and a storied experience. Rooted in Dewey's thoughts on the past-present-future continuum of experience, Connelly and Clandinin define narrative inquiry as "the study of how humans make meaning of experience by endlessly telling and retelling stories about themselves that both refigure the past and create purpose in the future" (1988, p. 21). In the present paper, I first explore the meanings of early childhood education and depict the general background of early childhood education in Hong Kong. Then, by adopting Schwab's (1973) four commonplaces of subject matter, learner, milieu and teacher as a curriculum framework, I examine curriculum issues in kindergarten with illustrations of my experienced stories about the teaching of an in-service kindergarten teacher in Hong Kong. Finally, based on Schwab's four curriculum commonplaces, I analyze the Reform Proposals for the Education System in Hong Kong as published in September 2000 by the Hong Kong Education Commission with special emphasis on early childhood education and pre-primary teacher education in Hong Kong for the new millennium.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0300443022000022431 ]

This paper reports data from a study of children's experiences of transition to school in Hong Kong. Hong Kong research into transition to school has been limited to investigation of curriculum issues and teaching practices by the Education Department (1993), a comparative study of skills preschool and primary school teachers believed children needed (Chow, 1993), and a recently released study on primary one students' transition problems in the Shatin area (Chan et al., 1999). In the present study, Hong Kong parents, primary school teachers and children expressed their views on difficulties in transition to school. Two types of primary schools were chosen for the sample: two with preschools attached and two which served neighbourhood preschools. Children and primary teachers were interviewed twice, once in mid October, in the initial "settling in" phase, and again in mid June the following year, at the end of the school year, while parents were surveyed in mid-October. In general, difficulties of "settling in" were overcome at the end of the first or second month. Nearly all children preferred studying in the primary schools during the first interview. However, the second interview revealed that some children wished to go back to the kindergartens where they claimed they had no pressure for examination and study. The results showed that pedagogical discontinuity is a major issue of difficulties in school transition in Hong Kong. The findings echoed those from the Chan et al. (1999) study on the adjustment of primary one pupils in Shatin.
[Copyright of Early Child Development and Care is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0300443022000022440 ]