This study aimed to develop a corpus-aided pronunciation teacher-training programme and examine the effectiveness of a corpus-aided pronunciation teaching approach in English classrooms in Hong Kong. A workshop was conducted for 86 participants to introduce several English learner corpora. After the workshop, eight volunteer participants, pre-service teachers in Hong Kong, were paired off, entered into a seven-stage corpus-aided pronunciation teacher programme and attended interviews. One pair was selected to give a trial lesson, and 13 primary school students were invited to evaluate this lesson. The results revealed that the training provided sufficient knowledge about corpus-aided pronunciation teaching and task design. The pre-service teachers expressed a strong willingness to use corpus data as examples to raise students' awareness of commonly mispronounced sounds. They agreed that the flipped instruction component was effective. Of the 13 primary school students, 83.33% agreed that they learned how to pronounce the target sounds correctly, and 75% were able to identify their mispronounced sounds via the corpus-aided teaching method. The findings will not only provide pre-service teachers with examples of corpus-aided pronunciation lesson plans and materials but also contribute to integrating the flipped classroom approach into teacher education programmes. Copyright © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

FIBER (Flipped Issue-Based Enquiry Ride) is a teacher-facilitated interactive pedagogic framework that the authors propose to integrate flipped learning into social humanities education. This paper reports a quasi-experimental study (with mixed methods) which examined the pedagogic effectiveness of FIBER in the authentic setting of formal curriculum learning and teaching. The study involved totally 611 Secondary-4 students from academically top, middle and bottom schools in Hong Kong. In comparison with the conventional issue-based enquiry learning approach, FIBER had different intensity of positive effects on the high, moderate, and low academic-achieving student participants. This paper provides researchers and educational practitioners with empirical evidence for supporting wider adoption of FIBER in social humanities education, as well as harnessing flipped learning in formal schooling. Apart from discussing the benefits, the authors also underline the challenges of FIBER and suggest future work.
[Copyright of Interactive Learning Environments is the property of Routledge.]

This study investigated the impact of social interactions among a class of undergraduate students on their learning engagement in a social networking environment. Thirteen undergraduate students enrolled in a course in a university in Hong Kong used an Elgg-based social networking platform throughout a semester to develop their digital portfolios and interact with each other. Student online activities were analyzed using content analysis and descriptive statistics with social network analysis. The findings suggest that the social interaction afforded by a social networking environment was short-lived, individual-centered and casual. Communication skills and autonomy on the part of students are required to foster communication. The study further revealed that while such social patterns in the social networking environment appeared to enhance social engagement, a high level of cognitive engagement was not demonstrated. Recommendations are made in relation to the effective utilization of a social networking platform to support productive and meaningful learning.
[Copyright of Interactive Learning Environments is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10494820.2012.680966]

This research aims to study how a resource-based learning environment (RBLE) helps primary students develop better understanding of the Earth's movement. One objective of the study is to establish an RBLE by creating authentic contexts, selecting appropriate resources, designing relevant tools and adopting necessary scaffolds. The other objective is to examine the effects of the RBLE on primary students' understanding of the Earth's movement in different classroom settings with varied teaching support levels. Research methodology includes pre-lesson and post-lesson tests to study students' understanding, observation and analysis of lessons to examine the teaching scaffolding employed, interviews and teacher's written reflection after all the lessons to investigate their views of the use of RBLE. The findings indicated that there is an interaction effect between students' academic background and settings of learning, and that the RBLE provides little support to students of low academic background, but is very effective to students of higher academic background helping them to construct an improved understanding of the Earth's movement. The article suggested an integrated use of teacher-regulated inquiry approach and interactive inquiry approach for the better use of the RBLE.
[Copyright of Interactive Learning Environments is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10494820802393788]