Ethnic minorities (EM) comprise 5% of Hong Kong's population of 7 million. In schools 3% (14,000) are ethnic/linguistic minority students whose poor achievement in senior secondary years is evidence of disproportionate educational outcomes compared with those of Chinese speaking students. The government has rolled out support measures to meet the learning needs of EM students. Research reported here gathered perceptions of the impact of these support measures in achieving the stated objectives - minimising language and cultural barriers to school achievement, and facilitating smooth integration of EM students into Hong Kong society. Findings reveal that the singularly focused pedagogical provision for Chinese language acquisition is too narrow and exposes the role language policy plays in the construction of social inequality in Hong Kong. There are absences; unacknowledged culture diversity; unaddressed discrimination, and unrecognised pedagogical challenges emanating from teachers' calls for more support. Copyright © 2013 International Society for Teacher Education.

We examine school choices made by western expatriate parents in post-colonial Hong Kong in order to understand the essence of imagined global citizenship and its implications for existing ethnic and class inequalities in the education system. Responding to changes in the global job market, a small but increasingly visible group of parents are seeking to challenge what they see as the constraints of expatriate life by developing global opportunities for their children through Cantonese language acquisition in the local education system. Drawing on the sociological literature on school choice and middle-class identity, we argue that these parents are negotiating for themselves a global imaginary in which cultures can easily be traversed and social class is levelled. But such global desires, we suggest, can also replicate colonial privilege in a way that marginalises poorer schools and other ethnic minorities in the education system.
[Copyright of British Journal of Sociology of Education is the property of Routledge.]

Through the experiences of Pakistani-migrant families in Hong Kong, this paper explores ethnic minority students' aspirations for education, work and the future in a context where education is highly valued but also extremely competitive. The first part depicts how Pakistani youth and their parents articulate their aspirations and opportunities and investigates the sociopolitical changes in education that are creating new opportunities for young Pakistani students. The second part considers the challenges from the larger Hong Kong society and within the Pakistani community that may hamper aspirations. The last part examines transitions and promises and the ways Pakistani youth negotiate for better futures. This article delineates the intertwining dynamics of cultural consensus, cultural dissonance and children's agency as the youth navigate the terrain of education and career.
[Copyright of Children's Geographies is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd.]

Much of the existing literature on social capital and university choice processes postulates that family networks of underrepresented students from poor and minority backgrounds are disadvantaged in university resources and in turn deficit in social capital returns. The literature implies that school-based networks are essential to fill the university information voids at home. Less research, however, poses questions about whether the university resources occupied by school personnel are automatically available to less-privileged minority youths. To grasp the dynamic interplay between ethnicity, class and school-based social capital, this study drew on Lin's conceptualisation of homophilous and heterophilous social networking and explored the university choice and application processes among poor and working-class South/Southeast Asian minority students in Hong Kong. The participants' accounts uncovered the restrictions of school networks on norms, expectations and accessibility of information sources. The research results raise concerns about how to activate both homophilous and heterophilous ties for minority youths' widening access to higher education.
[Copyright © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.]

The literature on acculturation illustrates that a bulk of non-dominant ethnocultural minorities consider themselves bicultural, involving both dominant and ethnic cultures. Yet, little is known about how bicultural individuals perceive and construct dual cultures, and how their two cultural identities are played out in daily interactions. While these issues are under-researched, they are vital to policy and practice initiation towards ethnocultural minorities’ integration and upward mobility as well as for the receiving society’s social cohesion and economic competitiveness. To this end, this study used the concept of bicultural identity integration and tapped into the processes of biculturalism among 16 secondary school students coming from South and Southeast-Asian groups in Hong Kong. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to unearth the internal construct of bicultural identity and the trajectories of adapting to dual cultural influences across space. The participants’ accounts displayed a high level of cultural harmony yet low blendedness in choosing to separate affiliations into cultural domains. This internal complexity reflects the contradictory juxtaposing of ‘cultural diversity’ in the host society and its segregated schooling for minority student population.
[Copyright © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.]

近年香港少數族裔學童的中文學習備受各界關注。文獻顯示他們經常受到中文能力不足而限制了中小學教育以至日後進修的途徑。當少數族裔學童入讀以粵語為教學語言的主流學校之後，能否駕馭作為第二語言的粵語，成為他們學習成功的關鍵。 本文將報告三十位南亞裔學童小學三年級在一年之間的粵語口語發展與轉變。口語能力測試的重點是詞彙、語法以及敘述能力三個向度，使用了標準化測試工具「香港兒童粵語口語能力量表」中的三個分測驗 : 名詞表達、語法理解及故事重述。另外我們也調查了學童的語言背景以及在不同場所的語言運用。結果顯示，在第一次測試中，所有小三學童在三個分測驗中的表現都遠低於常模的年齡期待值，名詞表達能力與期待值的落差最大，部分學童是低於五歲半常模。在一年之後，學童的語法理解及故事重述都有顯著進步，特別是在語法方面的名詞組和複雜句理解，以及故事重述中的參照指涉標示。但是多數受試學童在名詞表達測試中沒有任何進步，許多與本地文化關係密切的詞彙，如粽、蘿蔔、茶葉等，即使在測試後允許使用英語補充，也無法正確說出名稱。在判斷涉及否定詞的語句時，也有相當困難。以上的結果呈現出南亞裔學童的粵語學習是與本地學童的第一語言發展是有明顯不同的發展軌跡。 另一方面，南亞裔學童語言運用調查的結果顯示，他們在家中是以南亞族語為主(65%)，在鄰舍以及學校教室外的互動則是使用英語 (33%-42%) 和南亞族語 (38%-34%)，粵語的角色相對的低 (29%-24%)。由此可見，粵語在南亞裔學童的日常生活中並沒有明確的功能與地位。以全美外語教學委員會 (ACTFL) 的《全球外語學習標準》來看，這些學童的粵語 / 中文學習，在貫連 (connection) 和社群 (community) 這兩個維度有明顯的不足；許多學童在離開了教室後，英語、南亞族語是他們的主要溝通工具，中文學習形同孤島。所謂沉浸式學習只是空中樓閣。有關當局必須正視少數族裔學童的獨特語言學習環境生態，以學習者為中心，建立一個真正多元多軌的中文為第二語言課程，使得少數族裔學童能夠透過中文，連結不同場所生活與學習經驗的功能，融入社群。

Request is a prominent daily life speech act which a speaker manipulates appropriate linguistic forms to make a hearer perform an action to fulfill the speaker’s needs. Variations in the use of request forms will normally reflect a speaker’s pragmatic competence; i.e. language and culture. Research findings by Rose (2000 & 2009), Achiba (2003), Dewart and Summers (1995) and Ellis (1992) have pointed out that request forms used by young children provide a lot of important information about the pragmatic development of young children in their L1 and/or L2 learning. Previous research on pragmatics has concentrated on the learning of English or other European languages as a second language by adult learners. Not much has been known about pragmatic development among young children learning a second language. As a result of internationalization and global mobility of people, it is getting common that some children start learning a second language in early years for schooling adaptation in the host country. In recent years in Hong Kong, the lack of research evidence in inter-language pragmatics, with special regard to child language (i.e. Cantonese as L2) development, has made it difficult for policy-makers and educators to make decision on the Chinese language (as L2) education instruction and intervention for education equity of ethnic minority children studying in mainstream schools. This paper aims at examining (i) the relationship between L2 Cantonese pragmatic knowledge (language proficiency and cultural knowledge) and Pakistani preschoolers’ expression of Cantonese request strategies; (ii) the relationship between Pakistani parents’ Cantonese proficiency and their children’s Cantonese request strategies; (iii) the difference in the ability of using Cantonese request strategies by Pakistani preschoolers at different grade levels in kindergarten; i.e. K1, K2 and K3. All discussions in the paper are based on findings from an on-going research project which is

This paper reports the findings of a public policy research supported by the University Grant Council on the relationships between the characteristics, school engagement and civic engagement of adolescents in Hong Kong. Data was collected from a sample of 3,024 students, aged 12 to 19, by employing the self-rated modified school engagement scale and the ICCS 2009 student questionnaires. Using local Hong Kong students as a reference, the other students included in the study were non-Chinese South Asians, cross-boundary students who live in Mainland China but who go to schools in Hong Kong, and newly arrived students from Mainland China. Family income and student groups were two predictor variables examined. About 38% of the sample were of low socioeconomic status, in that they reported their family monthly income as being less than 1500 USD. Hierarchical regression was employed to determine the relative influence of student characteristics and school and civic engagement variables. Findings revealed that there was a close connection between the self-assessment of school and civic engagement and there were differences in this regard among the immigrant and minority student groups. Recommendations for both schools and government agencies towards future policy development in facilitating pro-school and civic-oriented attitudes and behaviours of all students were suggested.

This paper explores teaching and learning experiences concerning young Pakistani Muslims in Hong Kong, who are found simultaneously immersed in two divergent systems of education - first, the conventional daytime schools where students are educated formally with general knowledge, and second, the madrasahs (Islamic learning institutes) where student recite Qur’an and receive religious teachings every day after school. Based on the ongoing ethnographic fieldwork (with methods including participant observation and interviews) in both local conventional schools and madrasahs in Hong Kong, this paper reveals that the three parties involved, namely the Chinese-speaking educators from conventional schools, the Qur’anic teachers from madrasahs (along with the students’ parents, who are often supporters of madrasah education), and the ethnic Muslim students, might have different understanding and expectations on education. This paper further argues that such difference could be a result of contrary worldviews and meanings of life to the two groups of educators, as well as limited communication between the two sides of educational institutes.