This chapter explores different factors that contribute to the school failure of ethnic minority young people in Hong Kong. It draws on a case study approach based on 15 in-depth interviews with 11 “out of school” ethnic minority young people, of whom 6 were dropouts, 4 were at risk of dropping out, and 1 never attended a school. It was also augmented with an additional 22 in-depth interviews with 20 other stakeholders related to ethnic minority education including 3 principals, 6 teachers and support staff, 3 school social workers and NGO professionals, 2 government officials, 3 ethnic minority community leaders, and 3 parents. Several themes were created using schema analysis that help explain different factors making them “out of school.” It has been common to attribute school failure for ethnic minority students in Hong Kong to problems with Chinese language education, yet this study shows that a number of other interrelated factors contributed to their lack of successful schooling. The key influences are multilevel – with individuals themselves, within families, within schools, and within the community. Implications are drawn at the levels of policy, practice, and theory to better support ethnic minority young people’s schooling success in Hong Kong. Copyright © 2019 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

After the “National Education” issue arose in Hong Kong in 2012, the Hong Kong Government “shelved” the Moral and National Education Curriculum Guide. However, the government still claimed that national education would be implemented via different formats. One of the main objectives of national education would be to promote a sense of patriotism regarding (Communist) China, and to teach students about their Chinese “national identities”. However, some of the students in the public schools in Hong Kong are members of ethnic minorities: Pakistanis, Nepalese, Filipinos, etc. The Education Bureau of Hong Kong has designated certain schools which should cater to these students' educational needs, and the students are being taught the official curriculum, the same as the local students. This paper will examine the national education curriculum of these “designated schools”, in order to analyze the ways in which, and the extent to which, this curriculum will promote the establishment of a “national identity” for these ethnic minority students. Copyright © 2018 APNME.

有關中文二語的教學研究，世界各地在教材和教法方面都有卓越的成就。無論開發教材或探索有效的教學途徑，都必需一個目標清晰的課程，做為教與學的規範，以致評量學習成果及教育資歷的依據。過去十多年，中文二語教學在香港漸趨多元化，外籍學生有學習讀寫繁體字而聽說粵語者，也有學習讀寫繁體字而聽說普通話者，甚或學習讀寫簡化字而聽說普通話者，學習中文的媒介語言完全視乎入讀學校的取向而定。對只是過境香港的外籍學生而言，學習中文與升學和就業的關係或許不大；但對在香港出生和打算在香港長期生活的外籍學生來說，能否學好中文，影響則極其深遠。按 2016 年中期人口統計報告，香港的外籍少數族裔主要包括菲律賓人、印尼人、白人、印度人、尼泊爾人、巴基斯坦人、泰國人和日本人等，各佔總人口 2.5% 至0.1%不等，這些家庭語言並非中文的少數族裔學生為數一萬多人，就讀於不同的本地學校。除了應付日常生活外，中文還是這些學生在香港升學和就業必須跨越的門檻。隨著少數族裔的人口逐步增加，如何處理非華語學生的中文教育問題越趨迫切。要徹底解決非華語學生的中文教育問題，社會輿論對設置中文二語課程有強烈的呼聲，因為學校難以在非華語學生身上實以中文為母語的語文課程原則、策和建議。本來非華語學生學習一些基本的中文口語，已經可以用中文與人溝通，掌握「基本人際溝通能」，但要運用中文學習其他知，卻要增加大量語彙，並培養和心智發展相應的讀寫能，才能達致「認知學術語言水平」。本文關注的是，如何在中文二語課程闕如的情況下，提高學生發展認知學術語言的效能。雖然輿論沸沸揚揚，直接面對教學考驗的始終是前線教師。為此，通過訪問教師所得的啟示，本文建議在非華語學生中文課程中結合小學常科的相關學習內容（例如：個人、家庭、學校、社會事物等），為調適非華語學生中文課程作嶄新嘗試。 Copyright © 2018 國立臺灣師範大學.

新移民學童的母語各有不同，即使他們的母語是廣東話，他們不同的文化背景亦會影響到他們的語言能度不同，詩春桂和寧春岩(1997)認為語言態度會影響教師對學生的態度，相對地，新移民學童對語言的態度又會否影響教師怎樣看他們呢?本研究會採用異語配對/改變裝束測試法(the match-guise techniquc)，探討新移民學童對於第二語言的態度，調查對象共有57名新移民學童，其中20名為同一間小學的小學生，37名為同一間中學的中學生。研究結果顯示新移民學童對不同的語言確存在不同的態度，而學童的語言態度普遍偏好廣東話和英語，同時普遍覺得英語比普通話優勝。
[Copyright of 香港特殊教育論壇 is the property of 香港特殊教育學會有限公司. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
https://sites.google.com/a/seshk.org.hk/seshk-org-hk/c_publication]

Good quality teacher education and training has been acknowledged as an effective strategy to reduce sexual prejudice against sexual minority (lesbian, gay, bisexual and questioning/queer [LGBQ]) students. However, no mandated programmes have been developed to include LGBQ-related content in teacher training in Hong Kong, a Chinese society in which heterosexism prevails. Based on the concepts of sexual prejudice, minority stress and contact theory, this paper explores the international and regional literature on LGBQ students’ school experiences, highlighting the significant role teachers play in supporting these students to transgress sexual prejudice, and presenting suggested themes and strategies for teacher training programmes, drawn from qualitative interviews with eleven Chinese teacher allies. Data analysis led to the identification of the following themes: 1) starting sexual diversity training officially; 2) reconsidering assumptions; 3) engaging with relevant cultural knowledge and skills; and 4) using dialogue as a training strategy. This paper argues that accurate content about sexual diversity should be incorporated into the professional teacher training curriculum, with updated sexuality concepts and prejudice-free, LGBQ-inclusive language relevant to the Chinese cultural context. Teachers need to become more aware of how sexual prejudice is manifested through cultural forces. Intergroup contact can be included as a useful training strategy. Copyright © 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

The influx of new immigrant children accentuated the need of immediate attention to the immigrant education. It was necessary for educators to think about modifying our curriculum to make adaptation for newly arrived children and preparing our teachers to meet this challenge. This research was intended to find out about teachers' perception of new immigrant children and their perception of programs offered to these children. None of the teachers have any pre-service and in-service training in teaching newly arrived children. A total of 145 questionnaires from primary schools in five regions were sent and 99 questionnaires were returned. A quantitative approach was used in the data analysis. Most of the respondents agreed that newly arrived children had adaptation problems and tended to regard 'low English proficiency" as the greatest obstacle to newly arrived children. Consequently, about 99% of the respondents thought that newly arrived children needed the service of "English language course". The general impression was that the present adaptation services for newly arrived children were unsatisfactory.
[Copyright of Hong Kong Special Education Forum is the property of Special Education Society of Hong Kong Ltd.. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
https://sites.google.com/a/seshk.org.hk/seshk-org-hk/c_publication]

How migrants, refugees and minority groups acquire a sense of belonging in their adopted society is a concern for nations worldwide as they aim to balance the diversity and inclusion of growing numbers of migrants with ensuring harmony and cohesion across society. In postcolonial Hong Kong, the population diversity is accompanied with a swift change in the racialisation of Hong Kong where minorities in schools find themselves categorised as 'non-Chinese speaking' ('NCS') rather than a 'Hongkonger'. The NCS label stigmatises young people as linguistically and academically deficit, de-legitimises acceptance by the local Chinese, Cantonese speaking majority designated as 'Hongkongers'. Yet how minority youth interpret their status as 'NCS' and negotiate belonging in Hong Kong has received scant attention. This qualitative study is a substantive and theoretical contribution to the literature on how multilingual minorities can construct a positive sense of place-belonging to their adopted city. Reflecting the contentious nature of the politics of belonging, we found that students challenged and sought to redefine the narrow, prevailing identity of a 'Hongkonger'. Rather, they stressed their multilingual identity, historical affiliations, emotional attachments and place-belongingness to the city in order to legitimate their entitlement to sociopolitical belonging in Hong Kong. Copyright © 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

This qualitative study investigates the language ideology of a groups of Chinese language teachers working in Hong Kong’s secondary schools when they teach ethnic minority students. Drawing on interview data, this study reports on how these teachers’ language ideologies are in accordance/discordance with dominant discourse, and in what ways their ideologies impact their teaching approach and attitudes towards the students’ heritage language and culture. Key findings indicate that instead of promoting homogeneity as a prerequisite for success, the teachers hold a pluralistic language ideology and outline the potential for ethnic minority students to become linguistic and cultural brokers between the heritage communities and mainstream society. An inconsistence was found between the teachers’ positive language attitude towards heritage language and their self-distancing from the heritage language learning and use in school contexts. The findings implied that teacher education courses could enable teachers, as active agents, to re-negotiate the separate language ideology of the language policy at the macro level, deconstruct it in classroom settings and develop knowledge and beliefs to challenge and resist the ideologies that sustain the marginalisation of heritage language and culture. Copyright © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

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.]