Learning Study has been implemented for teacher professional development in Hong Kong since 2000. Guided by variation theory, Learning Study has three unique features. First, it focuses on student learning of the object of learning in planning, teaching and reviewing lessons. Second, variation is used as a pedagogical tool for lesson design in the hope of enabling students to discern the critical features. Thirdly, teachers collaborate together throughout the process of planning, teaching and reviewing lessons (Lo, et al., 2005). However, sustaining Learning Study may be inhibited by many challenges, including teachers’ pressures from the examination-oriented system, heavy workloads, pressures from parents and lack of support and trust among staff (Zhang, 2015). How to sustain Learning Study in schools is yet to be explored. This presentation reports a study investigating the Learning Study practices in two Hong Kong schools (a primary school and a secondary school), which have adopted Learning Study for teacher professional development for over 10 years. The study utilized qualitative research methods including interviews with school leaders and teachers (2 leaders and 4 teachers from each school) and observation of Learning Study activities to identify the forces facilitating and inhibiting Learning Study in the schools.
Content analysis (Northcutt & McCoy, 2004) of the data from interviews and observations was conducted and the data were coded with the theoretical framework in Markee (1997), which categorizes the contextual factors facilitating and inhibiting the sustainability of Learning Study into four aspects: features of Learning Study, macro-context (e.g., socio-economic development, education reform, teacher education), school leadership practices (e.g., understanding and developing staff in the school; designing organization and cultivating a learning culture; managing internal and external resources) and teacher characteristics (e.g., personality, motivation

With the rapid development of sophisticated technologies, many innovative e-Learning tools or applications with increased inter-activities and improved features have been adopted in tertiary institutions. This paper serves as a platform for industry and academia to exchange higher education practices in innovative course and programme design. We investigate current practices in tertiary institutions with e-Learning technologies and applications to enhance academics’ teaching excellences and research capabilities in order to achieve social, cultural, environmental, or economic impacts. In particular, we investigate all public universities and one private college in Hong Kong in terms of various e-Learning technologies. The results demonstrate that all these e-Learning technologies for being used in higher education help to enhance teaching and learning experiences, and make it more efficient and effective. Students can also benefit from these e-Learning technologies to become life-long learners. Moreover, by taking a closer look at current e-Learning technology trends, we list some possible e-Learning applications and tools that are expected to surge in the coming years.

The rapid development of social media tools has increased interest in their pedagogical value. It has been suggested that social media tools such as wikis can promote online collaborative and interactive learning. This study investigated the value of wikis in supporting collaborative group writing quality among secondary school students in Hong Kong. Students from a local secondary school engaged in group writing projects using Pbworks, a popular wiki tool. Data were gathered from (1) the revision tracking history, (2) a questionnaire on the perceived pedagogical value of the wiki, and (3) group interviews with students. Findings showed that students who made more collaborative revisions on the wiki produced higher-quality writing output. In general, students reported a moderately positive attitude towards the pedagogical value of the wiki. The findings suggest that wikis promote collaborative writing, but teachers need to adopt pedagogical strategies that would equip students to use wikis.
[Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd.]

This study explored the effects of the classroom learning environment of a Liberal Studies course on the critical thinking skills and disposition of 3,869 Grade 12 students in Hong Kong. Through combining both exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, a two-level model of the classroom learning environment for critical thinking with seven dimensions (i.e., Student Negotiation, Challenging Task, Multiple Perspectives, Shared Control, Skeptical Voice, Uncertainty and Personal Relevance) at the first level and three broader aspects (i.e., Pedagogy, Relationship and Content) at the second was generated. The correlation and structural equation modelling analyses indicated that the classroom learning environment had a stronger relationship with critical thinking disposition than skills. Structural equation modelling analysis also indicated a mediation effect of critical thinking disposition between the classroom learning environment and critical thinking skills. It is suggested that different approaches be combined so as to achieve a balanced development of students’ critical thinking skills and disposition.
[Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V.]

This paper aims to discuss an exploratory study that a student teacher carried out on applying the “flipped classroom” approach in his information and communication technology (ICT) class. The study examined student perceptions of the new teaching approach and investigated whether it can help promote higher-order thinking. This study involved 28 students in a public secondary school in Hong Kong. They were attending an ICT class on 3D modelling. A mixed methods approach was adopted. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected through surveys, online quizzes and focus group interview. The students’ assignments were also examined and analysed. The findings show that students are inclined to accept the new teaching model. We can conclude that it is possible to improve students’ higher-order thinking capability using the flipped classroom approach to teaching.
[Copyright © 2017 The Author(s).]

The paper reports a quasi-experimental study comparing the "traditional flipped classroom" pedagogical design with the "productive failure" (Kapur, 2016) pedagogical design in the flipped classroom for a 2-week curricular unit on polynomials in a Hong Kong Secondary school. Different from the flipped classroom where students are provided video clips with new concepts and associated procedures to review at home before solving problems in class, the "productive failure" pedagogical design in the flipped classroom worked the other way around. Supported by mobile technologies, students explored, discussed and solved problems related to the new concepts first in class even though they might come across failures, followed by consolidating the concepts and associated procedures using video clips at home. The pedagogical design is referred to as "productive failure-based flipped classroom" in this study. The study was carried out in two Grade 7 classes: one with "traditional flipped classroom" and one with the "productive failure-based flipped classroom". Findings show that both classes had significant improvement in procedural knowledge. However, regarding conceptual knowledge, students in the "productive failure" condition performed better than those in traditional flipped classroom. This suggests that the "productive failure-based flipped classroom" pedagogical design may be better able to improve students' problem solving skills.
[Copyright © 2017 International Forum of Educational Technology and Society.]

This research linked 47 Hong Kong and 35 Canadian teacher candidates in a new participatory culture project within the theoretical framework of new media literacies. This paper reports the qualitative data with quantitative descriptions of participants' social interactivity within the cross-border communities of practice. Besides the constraints of the designated online forum, findings relate that participants' engagement in the new participatory culture contributed to their knowledge- and awareness-building of harnessing online participation, new media technologies, and cultural/linguistic diversity in education. The paper concludes with implications of cultivating communities of practice buttressed by new media literacies for teacher professional development.

The enactment of the revised School Places Allocation Systems at the compulsory stage in 2004 had the aim of desegregating Hong Kong's non-Chinese linguistic minority (NCLM) students by including them into ethnic Chinese-dominated mainstream primary and secondary schools. Because of the presumed cause-consequence relationship between desegregated school participation and academic achievement, in specific second language Chinese (CSL) acquisition, the challenges that such students face in participating in mainstream education and learning Chinese, no doubt, deserve to be examined. This qualitative study conducted in-depth interviews with 18 secondary students of South Asian/Southeast Asian minority backgrounds enrolled in mainstream schools. Drawing on both cultural and institutional paradigms of explanation for educational achievement, we argue that the reasons inhibiting the minority students' academic involvement are not simply their linguistic challenges but also the institutional constraints in the mainstream education system unique to this population. This study calls for a shift in school desegregation arrangement from one focusing narrowly on physical desegregation to a more comprehensive set of policies that embrace the institutional factors including teacher expectation, resource availability, and bilingual support, crucial to reduce racial differences in achievement.

e-Portfolios are a form of authentic assessment with formative functions that include showcasing and sharing learning artifacts, documenting reflective learning processes, connecting learning across various stages and enabling frequent feedback for improvements. This paper examines how e-portfolios take up these formative roles to support productive learning. Qualitative findings from interviews with selected first-year undergraduate students at a higher education institution in Hong Kong are reported concerning students' experiences of constructing e-portfolios as assessment tasks. As part of an institutional teaching and learning initiative, e-portfolios were incorporated into three core courses for first-year students. The findings reveal that several conditions necessary to foster productive learning were missing in students' experiences: strengthened formative role of e-portfolios through coherent assessment design; encouragement for students' pursuit of authentic tasks to develop learning interests; engagement of students in reflective and self-regulative learning as an essential learning process; provision of constructive feedback for sustained learning support; and support for students' autonomy through facilitation of collaborative knowledge building. By explicating how the lack of these conditions impeded students' active involvement in e-portfolio tasks and suggesting relevant strategies for teachers at the institution in question, this paper offers implications for harnessing information and communication technology (ICT) to support students' productive learning.

This paper evaluates the exceptionally forceful "mother-tongue" (MT) education policy in force in Hong Kong from 1998 to 2010, where instruction, print materials and assessments were required to be done in students' first language, Chinese. Apart from relevant literature, a number of sources are searched, including the quantitative data obtained from the Hong Kong Examination and Assessment Authority (HKEAA), qualitative data of surveys, and the official documents commissioned by the Education Bureau (EDB) within the period. While MT education has arguably minimized mixed-code teaching in content subjects, there is clear evidence that it failed to raise L2 standard through specialized teaching as promised. Much more students off the top tier being denied for admission to university, the principle of equality of educational participation is violated. A postmortem analysis, drawing on the more recent findings from the field of applied linguistics, shows that the adoption of bifurcation medium of instruction model and the ineffective L2 exposure are the culprits. All this, together with the lack of monitoring of the policy in its initial stage, are speculated as the major causes of its failure.