This study looks closely at the relation between background knowledge and L2 proficiency in L2 reading performance in two groups of university learners of English, one from Mainland China and one from Hong Kong. The students (n = 214) shared Chinese culture in general, but differed in terms of their local sub-cultural and social background. They were divided into intermediate and post-intermediate groups on the basis of a test of General Proficiency in English. Two English cloze tests were then constructed to assess reading comprehension, one with cultural content that would have been familiar to the Hong Kong students, and one that was culture free. The results show a strong cultural effect on reading comprehension, but not on post-intermediate readers. The findings have implications for teaching reading to L2 learners.
[Copyright of Language, Culture and Curriculum is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07908310308666657]

Our main concern is to see if cultural studies can intervene more productively in the dominant educational processes, in ways that align with the sustainable interests of its critical project. As cynicism becomes the commonplace 'distinction' of our young graduates, we raise two questions: why should cultural studies be concerned with the spread of cynicism within our own institutional and pedagogic space? And what would be the implications of such critical reflection on our current practices, as scholar and teacher of this critical project? The paper draws on our continual engagement with the curriculum reform of secondary school subjects (Integrated Humanities and Liberal Studies) in Hong Kong, in an attempt to explore the limits and opportunities of education as social practice, as well as the effectivity of cultural studies within the contemporary contexts and crises of education. First we describe how taking part in the specific school reform projects has begun to change the critical and pedagogic orientation of cultural studies we do at the university. Then we discuss the implications of our recent experiments in doing cultural studies in and with the local schools. In all, we want to examine what brings us to our own search for a certain 'politics of hope', by re-thinking and re-mapping cultural studies as a collective, pragmatic programme in the local educational set-up. For, without a constructive pragmatics, the students of cultural studies cannot be expected to work effectively across diverse institutional settings. Thus, criticism and the production of critical knowledge in the contemporary academy would go on to foster a state of cynicism among its graduates and the 'stakeholders' concerned. Cultural studies, we believe, can make itself more useful through concrete ways of mediating its expertise in the complex processes of education. As such, we emphasize the contemporary relevance and uses of cultural studies for educational transformation.
[Copyright

This paper discusses the concept of 'cultural cross‐currents,' their implicit nature and the potential they have to effect second language literacy learning, teaching and curriculum reform in Hong Kong primary classrooms. Despite the substantive implications for learning, the exploration of cultural influences upon teacher and student thinking and the resultant educational consequences, remains a largely unrecognized area. The central argument in the paper is that cultural differences in attitudes, beliefs and values of cultural groups toward the way first and second languages are acquired needs to be made explicit in order to facilitate second language literacy teaching and learning.
[Copyright of Intercultural Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14675980600693947]

Dance education has not played a significant role in Hong Kong schools. Teacher education may be at a crossroads in determining its future directions in relation to dance as art rather than physical activity. Taking Marcel Mauss's characterizations of the techniques of the body as the ways in which, from society to society, people learn how to use their bodies, this paper looks back at the context in which forms of dance education were introduced into the physical education curriculum of Hong Kong schools and examines social, cultural and political constraints upon their directions and development in a colonial and post-colonial society. Viewing dance education as forms of socially mediated practices, we show how bodies that are subjected to formal and informal programmes of dance education can be both inscribed and inscribing. Developments in dance education inevitably involve statements about the body, attempts to capture it, impose disciplines upon it, or mitigate their force. To reflect upon Hong Kong's changing destiny is to ask how the history of colonialism's disciplining of the body can be shaken loose from the domination of categories and ideas it produced and incorporated into the educational system, and what potency might dance education practices have in the future for troubling and negotiating meanings around identity and "Chinese-ness".
[Copyright of Sport, Education and Society is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13573320601081575 ]

This paper presents a comparative study of extra-musical learning in the music classes of the schools of Hong Kong and Taiwan, where education is geared towards democracy and citizenship at a time of unstable national identity for both communities. Taiwan has been undergoing a process of indigenisation since 1945, whilst Hong Kong's sovereignty was returned to the People's Republic of China after 1 July 1997. This paper argues that the transmission of extra-musical learning is essentially a response to the particular needs of these two Chinese historical-social contexts, which require their music curricula to be securely grounded in the ideology of a culturally based education for 'citizenship'. Despite different approaches to western-based musical knowledge in schools, Hong Kong and Taiwan attempt to promote a sense of national identity and an essentially Confucian set of moral values as a central goal of school music education. The promotion of ethno-cultural nationalism in Taiwan's music education is regarded as a democratic goal for the Taiwanese state, though in practice, the educational systems of both Taiwan and Hong Kong are coloured by the global context.
[Copyright of Compare: A Journal of Comparative Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0305792032000070066]

This study considered curricular and instructional influences on early Chinese literacy attainment in Beijing, Hong Kong and Singapore. The participants included 198 pre‐school children, their teachers and parents. Children were administered the Pre‐school and Primary Chinese Literacy Scale at the age of either two or three years, and again one year later. Teachers were asked to report on their beliefs and practices related to literacy education, and classroom observations were conducted to determine the extent to which directives issued by the Beijing, Hong Kong and Singapore governments were implemented. Investigation showed that there were marked differences across the societies in curriculum guidelines and approaches to literacy teaching. Results indicated that by the age of four, pre‐schoolers in Hong Kong and Singapore had significantly better Chinese literacy attainment than those in Beijing. Although age was the best predictor of attainment, location, teachers' qualifications and classroom experience also significantly contributed to children’s literacy attainment.
[Copyright of International Journal of Early Years Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09669760500295870]