This paper captures the group dynamics underpinning preservice teacher identity formation to understand how childhood schooling and teacher education shape the teaching metaphors teachers construct of intercultural education. We propose a theory of identity grafting (IG) for a precise framing of the diverse ways teachers identify with intercultural education vis-à-vis other pre-established aspects of their teacher identities. Studying their IGs helped us connect the preservice teachers’ experiences with the experiences of other teachers that had emerged in global literature. We draw insights from our efforts to co-construct with preservice teachers their professional development in facilitating intercultural education. Adapting the activities based on their responses, we co-constructed with each other during the workshop teacher identities with a sense of connectedness between intercultural education and other pedagogical forms. We observed preservice teachers as we facilitated their discussions, employing ethnographic approaches to immerse ourselves in the interactions of the workshop participants. The findings revealed that preservice teachers had become more mindful of the implications of their intercultural education practices after having reflective dialogues with each other. However, although the teachers successfully integrated each other's views about intercultural education practices, this could not be sustained when they attempted to contextualize these efforts. The teachers could not reconcile their disparate childhood experiences with cultural diversity as students graduating from schools with differing academic performance rankings (school banding). Therefore, they struggled to connect their experiences with other pedagogical forms that they had previously encountered. Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Developing cultural inclusiveness has been a prominent agenda in European and North American teacher preparation programmes. Beyond these societies, however, discussion on teacher education programme diversity remains tokenistic. Hong Kong, a city often marketed as Asia's World City, is not an exception, given the relatively recent history in the representation of minority groups and the enactment of an anti-racial discrimination ordinance in 2009. This lacuna thus raises questions about teachers’ preparedness to engage with the growing concerns for educational equity for ethnically diverse learners. This chapter describes and reflects on an informal learning programme within a Hong Kong university that has taken up the challenge of engaging pre-service teachers more explicitly about cultural diversity. The informal programme applies a ‘to know, to care, to act’ approach in collaboration with a social enterprise to offer students virtual experiential learning opportunities with ethnically diverse communities. The programme aimed at developing learners’ global competence as aspiring teachers of diverse learners. In doing so, this chapter advances theoretical arguments about merging global and multicultural education frameworks. This is a means to foster contact and learning between pre-service teachers and ethnically diverse learners and provides a pathway for promoting cultural inclusion in schools. Copyright © 2024 selection and editorial matter, Paul Downes, Jim Anderson, Alireza Behtoui and Lore Van Praag; individual chapters, the contributors.

This article presents a study that examines the impact of a Philosophy for Children (P4C) program on teachers in Hong Kong, specifically focusing on its effectiveness in fostering dialogic and inquiry-based teaching approaches. While dialogic teaching has been acknowledged as beneficial for cultivating vital competencies such as creativity, critical thinking, and communication skills, existing literature reveals a prevalent tendency towards monologic teacher-student interactions across various subjects, grades, and countries. By providing training and support to teachers, enabling them to implement P4C in Integrated Humanities and English lessons, this study aimed to evaluate the program’s effectiveness in enhancing teachers’ classroom practices. The results indicated that P4C significantly contributed to improving teachers’ ability to engage in dialogic and inquiry-based teaching, thereby enhancing their overall effectiveness in the classroom. These findings highlight the significant role of P4C in promoting teachers’ professional development and its relevance to innovative teaching pedagogies in higher education. Copyright © 2024 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

Critical content and language-integrated learning (CLIL) has been advocated to attest raciolingusitic ideologies in plurilingual educational settings. However, little is known about how to help students in contesting inequalities about other structures of domination in bilingual education programs. This study aims to address this gap by examining the construction of gender identities in Secondary 4 (Grade 11) English-medium Liberal Studies lessons, which aimed to enhance awareness of gender equality and subject-specific English skills about the topic. The study shows that gender was constructed and reconstructed by conflicting multilingual and multimodal gendered discourses, including the formal curriculum, school lesson materials, and classroom interaction. The paper reveals that teachers and students jointly constructed masculinities of “real men,” “good men” and “gay men” in CLIL classrooms imbedded in curriculum contexts infused with gender dualism and alternative gender values began to emerge after the CLIL lessons. The results suggest that CLIL teachers can facilitate development of critical literacies about gender by enabling encounters of different voices in translanguaging and trans-registering spaces created by students’ familiar L1 everyday discourses and multimodal practices. Pedagogical implications were also discussed. Copyright © 2023 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

Self-regulation is arguably one of the most crucial predictors of school readiness, academic achievement, and lifelong well-being. While educators in the prior-to-school years have a pivotal role to play in stimulating growth in early self-regulation, less is known about their knowledge and practices in this area. This interview study was conducted with 71 kindergarten teachers in Hong Kong. Content analysis and descriptive statistics were employed to analyze the transcripts. We found that participants: (1) had a limited and superficial understanding of the notion of self-regulation; (2) estimated that approximately one quarter of their students displayed self-regulation problems; (3) had difficulties articulating what constitutes indicators for self-regulation problems in young children; and (4) lacked intervention strategies to strengthen children’s self-regulation, specifically preventive strategies. Educational policymakers, researchers, curriculum designers, teacher educators and school leaders are urged to better prepare early childhood practitioners in this area. Limitations and future research lines are discussed. Copyright © 2024 National Association of Early Childhood Teacher Educators.

In multicultural education, empathy has been regarded as an essential teacher disposition that enables teachers to better understand culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students through perspective-taking. However, less is known about the mechanism that underlies how empathy fosters teachers’ competence in supporting CLD students, i.e., their multicultural teaching competence. This study fills the research gap by investigating multicultural beliefs as a potential mediator between teacher empathy (operationalized via perspective-taking) and multicultural teaching competence (as indicated by knowledge, skills, and relationship-building abilities). A total of 445 Chinese preschool and kindergarten teachers in Hong Kong (188 pre-service and 257 in-service teachers) completed a self-report questionnaire assessing teacher empathy, multicultural beliefs, and multicultural teaching competence. Mediation analyses revealed that teacher empathy was related to higher support for multicultural beliefs, which in turn predicted better multicultural skills, knowledge, and relationship-building abilities. The multi-group analysis further indicated equivalent mediation paths for both pre-and in-service teachers. Extending past research underscoring empathy as an essential teacher disposition for multicultural teaching competence, the present study showed that the crucial role of empathy in transforming teachers’ belief in favor of multiculturalism helps foster teachers’ multicultural teaching competence. A practical implication of the present study calls for including perspective-taking and critical examination of teacher beliefs as key elements in teacher education programs that are aimed at facilitating early childhood teachers’ multicultural teaching competence. Copyright © 2024 The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V.

This study utilizes the 2015 data from the Hong Kong sample of the Program for International Student Assessment to examine the relative importance of various factors on the science learning performance of Hong Kong students. Using hierarchical linear modeling (HLM), we examined the effect of students’ affective characteristics, involvement, and perceptions of science by parents and school environment on science achievement in Hong Kong. The results of HLM demonstrated that school characteristics explain 33% variance in science achievement, which indicates that school is a critical predicting factor in identifying science achievement. The findings highlighted that identifying as male, having high socioeconomic status (at the student and school levels), high self-efficacy, low test anxiety, less parental support, positive view of science by parents, more school resources, and less teacher autonomy positively influence the science achievement of students. In the final model, school-level predictors, such as disciplinary climate in science classes and teacher-directed science instruction, explained 58% of variance at the school level in positive directions. Lastly, the study discussed the implications of achievement gaps between gender and socioeconomic status and between parents and school influence. Copyright © 2024 Education Research Institute, Seoul National University.