Internationally, there is growing concern regarding the insufficient preparation of teachers in mainstream kindergartens in terms of teaching for ethnically diverse children. As teacher educators, we are concerned about how to help kindergarten teachers in Hong Kong improve their teaching. In this study, we adopted the research approach of phenomenography to investigate the following research question: In what qualitatively different ways do teachers experience the teaching for ethnically diverse children? We conducted individual semi-structured interviews with 26 in-service kindergarten teachers. Four ways of experiencing were identified. Teaching for ethnically diverse children can be experienced as: adjusting instruction (A), expanding modes of expression (B), exploring new possibilities (C), and embracing inclusion (D). We recommend that teacher educators discuss our results with teachers in professional development programmes, making them aware of alternatives and appropriate advanced ways of experiencing such teaching. Moreover, our results also revealed the benefits that ethnically diverse children bring to all children. Copyright © 2023 Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research.

This study set out to use phenomenography as a theoretical framework to investigate teaching in classrooms, focusing on how the same content is enacted differently in different teaching activities. We observed teaching activities intended to teach children to recognize Chinese characters in preschools and collected data about the delivery of the teaching activities. A total of 3 categories of teaching activities were identified from the data, which correspondingly reflected 3 ways of seeing the recognition of characters: (A) recognition as matching items, (B) recognition as imitating behaviors, and (C) recognition as constructing meanings. Our results were useful for fostering the professional learning of teachers in practical ways as well as holding the potential to further advance the methodology of phenomenography.
[Copyright © 2016 Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research.]

This study is part of a cross-cultural investigation that was initiated in Sweden followed by studies in Australia and Singapore. This paper shows how a phenomenographic approach may be used to reveal the qualitatively different ways in which 40 students in Hong Kong primary and secondary schools experience and understand the phenomenon of graphic representations of quantitative data. An outcome space depicting four variations of the children's understanding are revealed.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0031383990430102]