In 2013 the newly elected Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) of the People’s Republic of China delivered his first Policy Address. Among other things, it highlighted the issues of education for ethnic minority students in Hong Kong focusing on Chinese language difficulties. This paper reviews the Chinese language issues for ethnic minority students as well as other issues and challenges that have been raised. It draws on education reform documents, available policy documents from the Education Bureau (EDB) and other departments regarding the educational provision for ethnic minorities, the Race Discrimination Ordinance (RDO), census and statistics reports including the recent ‘2011 Population Census, Thematic Report: Ethnic Minorities’, existing literature and newspaper articles. While the focus of the discussion is on the challenges that ethnic minority students are facing inside the school, the issue of the ‘out of school’ or ‘dropout’ phenomenon for such students is also highlighted. The paper concludes by suggesting that an exclusive concern with Chinese language education misses other significant issues that impact on the education of ethnic minority students in Hong Kong. Copyright © 2014 by the CESHK.

Although multiculturalism in education has become dominant in many societies, Hong Kong does not have a tradition of multicultural education. This paper asks whether and how multicultural education, or a new variant, “interculturalism,” might be usefully employed in considering diversity and inequality in Hong Kong education. After giving a brief overview of multiculturalism and interculturalism in education, the paper examines the needs of Newly Arrived Students (NAS) from mainland China and ethnic minorities to receive greater educational representation through content integration, and interventions to increase student empowerment and reduce prejudice (in line with a multicultural approach). However, students can also benefit from programs labeled as “intercultural” today: linguistic interventions that assimilate students to dominant languages used for work and equal opportunity in society. The paper compares Hong Kong’s challenges with those of other countries that employ multicultural and/or intercultural education programs, Canada, the United States, France, Japan, and South Africa, and also considers educational implications of the latest Moral and National Education controversy, to argue for the need for a more active role for multiculturalism and interculturalism in Hong Kong education today. Copyright © 2013 Comparative Education Society of Hong Kong.

Purpose - Although researchers have identified correlations between specific attitudes and particular behaviors in the pro-environmental domain, the general relationship between young people’s development of environmental knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors is not well understood. Past research indicates that geographic context can play a role, while social factors such as age and gender can have a more significant impact on predicting attitudes and behaviors than formal education. Few studies have systematically examined the relationships between education and environmental attitudes and behaviors among youth in Hong Kong. The purpose of this paper is to report the findings of a study comparing secondary school students’ environmental attitudes and behaviors with age and related factors in two international schools and two government schools in Hong Kong. Students’ attitudes and behaviors were compared based on school type (curriculum), while the authors additionally compared the significance of social factors and attitudes on students’ behaviors.Design/methodology/approach - Attitudes were measured using the New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) and the NEP for Children (NEPC), the most commonly used, internationally standardized tools for investigating environmental attitudes and values of adults and young people for comparative purposes. The authors compared NEP/NEPC scores and student self-reported environmental behaviors using a short questionnaire.Findings - No significant differences were found in attitudes or behaviors based on school type. However the authors did observe a significant effect of gender and age on students’ attitudes, and a significant correlation of student attitudes in the NEP with students’ self-reports regarding air conditioning consumption.Originality/value - This study builds a foundation for cross-national studies and for evaluating the impact of curricula over time. Copyright © 2016 Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the writing development of Hong Kong kindergarten students over 12 months. They attended 18 kindergartens territory-wide and were followed from June 2002 to June 2003 for the collection of three waves of teacher-rated data at six-month intervals.Design/methodology/approach: First, the construct validity of the translated and culturally adapted version of Morrow's (2012) checklist which assesses writing development was confirmed, considering that the students attended Hong Kong kindergartens who wrote in the Chinese language. The multilevel analysis, which employed corrected measures captured through Wolfe and Chiu's (1999a, 1999b) five-step Rasch scaling method for a common frame of reference, estimated the effects of the factors, namely, student age, gender, class level and schools.Findings: The children's progress over the second six months was also apparently much smaller than the first SIX months for this cohort. The dramatic slow-down in the second six-month period for both cohorts might be partly attributed to the peculiar arrangement of schooling at that time.Research limitations/implications: The recommendation from this study is that random sampling and student test scores on writing need to be taken for the identification of the general trend of young children's writing development in Hong Kong, as well as other Chinese communities alike.Originality/value: The profile of the student's emergent writing development at each six-month follow-up and over the 12 months was explored. Differences between the groups based on age, gender, class level and school in terms of student writing development on average were statistically significant. Copyright © 2019 Emerald Publishing Limited.

Purpose - In 1997, Joseph Boyle critiqued the Hong Kong government’s policy of recruiting native-speaking teachers (NSTs) of English into secondary schools. Boyle examined NSTs from a post-colonial and socio-linguistic stance. He concluded that the scheme was “largely ineffective” and that efforts to expand the scheme would likely fail due to the government's implicit lack of trust in the capacities of non-native speaking teachers’ of English. However, almost two decades later the scheme has expanded across the primary and secondary sectors. This paper explores how changing educational contexts and reform efforts have influenced conceptions of NSTs as articulated in Hong Kong policy. Design/methodology/approach - The research is approached retrospectively through an interpretivist paradigm, analysing policy documents, implementation materials, evaluation reports and interview transcripts. Over 41 scheme stakeholders participated in the interviews, inclusive of policy makers, government officials, academics, teacher educators, principals and teachers, who were active over different phases of the scheme. Findings - The intended role and perceived competencies of the NSTs have been impacted by imported education reforms leading to new rationales for maintaining and expanding NST deployment. These shifts, however, lead to new tensions among idealised images of NSTs, their capacities, and the aims of policymakers and scheme implementers. Originality/value - The value of this paper lies in its reconsideration of the role of NSTs in light of educational reform efforts influenced by global change. This perspective varies from conventional critiques that focus on NSTs' and NNSTs' differing capacities as English language teachers by considering the impact of historic developments on later policies, and the tendency of policy-makers to legitimise reform by importing international innovations. Second, it demonstrates how idealised images of NSTs simultaneously justify

This paper explores role of core values in the brand building processes of higher education institutions (HEIs). The research findings from looking at two universities in Hong Kong show that there are few, if at all, common core value across universities both hierarchically (organizationally and departmentally) and functionally (student offices and academic departments). Interestingly, however, all of the units in the study have their own set of core values directing their branding strategies. These core value-directed branding strategies are linked to the university missions. Consequently, it is possible to suggest a university mission-oriented brand building processes with core value-directed branding strategies. It is argued that universities who hope to balance public good as an educational institute and pragmatic aspect, i.e. competing for funding may get some hints from the results of this study by applying some values or core values in the pragmatic university missions and visions.
[Copyright © 1989-2015 by the CESHK.]

This qualitative multiple-case study research attempts to shed light on controversies associated with National Education in Hong Kong by exploring the perceptions of National Education of secondary school teachers. Since the resumption of Hong Kong's sovereignty by China in 1997, national identification with Chinese has been a policy priority. There has been an increase of National Education which aims at cultivating a Chinese national identity. This study used convenient sampling method on 10 purposively chosen sample of experienced Hong Kong citizenship education teachers, with in-depth interviews as data collection method. The findings reveal that teachers perceive National Education with different aims and teaching methods, and knowledge transmission is highlighted in National Education. There are patriotic, affective, critical thinking approaches, experiential learning and reflective teaching in National Education. Apart from arguing for different pedagogies and assessments in teaching National Education, this paper also calls for recognizing global identity and global citizenship education.
[Copyright © Comparative Education Society of Hong Kong].