Hong Kong early childhood education runs in the private sector. In recent years, the government has implemented a number of policies to improve the quality of early childhood education. The Pre-primary Education Voucher Scheme is one of important early childhood education policies in Hong Kong. The Scheme aims to improve the quality of early childhood education, by providing financial assistance to parents and upgrading teachers' qualifications. However, this policy raised widespread awareness and debate amongst the stakeholders. This paper will discuss how the scheme affects different stakeholders and explores its way forward. The essay first provides a brief background of the scheme and Hong Kong's early childhood setting. The latter part of the essay discusses how the scheme affects the various stakeholders, including: policy makers, early childhood education sectors, early childhood educators and parents. Finally, suggestions to improve the scheme are made.
[Copyright © The Hong Kong Institute of Education].

This paper first reviews the key changes in early childhood education that was proposed by the Hong Kong Government in the year 2000, including promoting the competence of early childhood education professional, formulating a quality assurance system to improve the quality of the education to be provided to children, diversifying means to subsidize parents to send their children to a childcare centre or kindergarten, standardizing the operations between childcare centres and kindergartens, and facilitating children's transition from early childhood education to primary schooling. Covered next are what have so far been done on those proposed changes, along with commenting on issues/problems that have arisen.
[Copyright © The Hong Kong Institute of Education].

The current policy regarding the meals provided by pre-primary schools in Hong Kong is merely a set of guidelines that, although not practical or even properly implemented, provide suggestions for healthy meals that are beneficial to children. As a result, children have developed poor eating habits that have resulted in an increase in childhood obesity, among other health problems. Some of these health issues even continue through primary school. This study points out why the enforcement of the existing policy failed and the reasons that it was and is not properly applied by early childhood educators. It also addresses whether these educators act as role-models for healthy eating habits or take part in designing and providing healthy meals for their students. School life is a critical opportunity for young children to acquire and practice healthy lifestyles. School settings provide valuable resources for influencing health-related habits through policy measures, education, and food provision. In this study, a self-administered questionnaire survey was used to assess 58 early childhood educators. These educators were also Hong Kong Early Childhood Education students, with one group studying in the first year of a two-year higher diploma (n 28) and the other group studying in the second year of a three-year Bachelor Degree (n 30) in-service training programme. The survey studied a variety of elements, such as the related knowledge of the teachers, school nutrition policies, and the educational background of those who oversee nutrition-related services. The researcher found that the school meals did not meet nutritional standards and the early childhood educators’ perceptions of what constitutes a healthy diet was also found to be weak. Most of the respondents agreed that training the people who plan the school meal menus and cook the meals is not enough. This study provides an overview of the perceptions of early childhood educators about health and their understanding

This study explores a beginning early childhood teacher’s reflective practices and looks for evidence of characteristics of a reflective practitioner. The participant took part in a series of reflective thinking activities over five months. The findings of this study revealed the participant’s reflective practice in the following aspects: on students learning, teacher-students interaction and teaching behaviour. Most of her reflections focused on technical and practical levels. The participant had the characteristic of a reflective practitioner. Through this case study the author wishes to facilitate reflective teaching by early childhood educators which in turn is expected to help improve the quality of their teaching, besides promoting reflective practice among early childhood educators.
[Copyright © 2011 The Hong Kong Institute of Education.]

This study considered commonalities and distinctions in early mathematics teaching by comparing six kindergarten and three Primary 1 teachers. Three consecutive lessons on the teaching of addition were videotaped resulting in a total of 27 lessons, with an equal number from lower kindergarten, upper kindergarten and Primary 1 classrooms. Observations focused on the physical environment and teacher behaviours. Time spent in different modes of instruction and types of activities deployed were determined. Notwithstanding differences in the difficulty of the mathematics curriculum, findings indicated that there were few differences across the two pre-primary years. However, pre-primary and primary lessons varied markedly in three domains: physical environment, scheduling of mathematics instruction and approaches to teaching. Compared to primary schools, pre-primary schools were more child-centered in terms of use of the physical set-up, scheduling and teaching approaches. Reasons for these discrepancies are discussed.
[Copyright © 2005 The Hong Kong Institute of Education.]

This paper attempts to discuss how teachers understand the concept and the role of play in early childhood curriculum in response to the education reform initiated by the Hong Kong Government. Collaboration action research was conducted with 18 teachers in two pre-schools for a period of two years. It was found that the project teachers have different views on work and play as the goal of educating children. To facilitate analysis of data, the researcher has classified play and work into different categories of learning activity. The research revealed that what is considered as play and work depends on the extent to which the child feels free to follow his/her own desire or the extent to which this self is subordinated to the authority of the teacher. As the boundary between play and work becomes blurred, early childhood educators should rethink the role of play and work in early childhood curriculum and pedagogy.
[Copyright © 2008 The Hong Kong Institute of Education.]

Pre-school parents' expectations have considerable influence on the early childhood curriculum. With better understanding of what parents expect for their children from pre-school provisions, constructive partnerships between school and parents could be established. This paper examines parents' expectations of pre-school education with reference to a small-scale study conducted in Hong Kong. Parents' understanding of the purposes of pre-school education and their curriculum expectations were investigated through interviews. Results of the eighteen parents' interviews showed that only a small number of these parents had high expectations on their pre-school children, which was different from some of the previous Hong Kong reports but was in line with a large scale survey conducted by a local pre-school education service provider. The nursery parents seemed to be less demanding on academic learning and showed more concern on learning self-care skills than the kindergarten parents. There was no obvious difference in expectations between parents with high and low education levels.
[Copyright © 2004 The Hong Kong Institute of Education.]

Young children learn a great deal as they move about, explore, experience and interact with the world. Movement is seen as contributing to the total development of young children in preschools. It is an integral part in early childhood curriculum. The aims of this paper are threefold. It firstly examines the constraints of developing early childhood physical education (ECPE) curriculum in Hong Kong. Secondly, it advances a new curriculum approach in ECPE for enhancing whole-child development in early childhood settings in Hong Kong. The key elements of this approach are Creativity, Integration, Fundamental Movement Skills, and Movement Education Concepts. Thirdly, it investigates the effectiveness of the effectiveness of the new approach as implemented in a Hong Kong preschool. The findings of the study have supported that the approach as implemented in a Hong Kong preschool. The findings of the study have supported that the approach is appropriate for ECPE curriculum reform in Hong Kong.
[Copyright © 2008 The Hong Kong Institute of Education.]

Music movement activities have the potential to encourage young children to experience, explore, discover, and interact with the world, their peers and adults in creative ways. However, previous research has shown that some early childhood teachers in Hong Kong have difficulty in fostering children's creativity (Wong & Chu, 2001). This paper reports a study that further explored the understandings and practices of six teachers, and it draws these findings and professional literature to recommend practical strategies that foster creativity through music and movement activities.
[Copyright © 2002 The Hong Kong Institute of Education.]

This paper reports findings from two research projects conducted in Hong Kong. The first study (termed ‘pilot’ study) aimed to obtain baseline data regarding the extent to which the classroom environments of a small representative sample of preschools in Hong Kong are literacy rich. One of the objectives of the second study was also to evaluate the extent of literacy-rich elements in a similar sample of preschool classroom environments before and after intervention. The preschools in the second study were provided with literacy props as a form of intervention. Each preschool centre was provided with one-page sheet with suggestions on how the materials could be used to facilitate literacy elements in children’s dramatic play. Results showed that Hong Kong preschool classroom environments are fairly literacy-enriched but there is little variation in classroom environments by grade level. Implications are drawn from these studies for teachers to foster literacy-rich play environments to encourage meaningful reading and writing activities during play activities.
[Copyright © 2003 The Hong Kong Institute of Education.]