Classroom discipline is a topic of international interest and teachers are bombarded with advice regarding how to and why they should manage children' s behaviour in their classrooms. This paper draws on data related to classroom discipline gathered from a detailed classroom observation schedule, teacher interviews, and field notes with four purposively selected kindergarten teachers working in Hong Kong with children aged 5–6 years. The findings of this qualitative case study show that the teachers were concerned about disciplining children to ensure good behaviour. They expected all children to follow the rules and used characteristic discipline strategies such as stating expectations and ‘praising the opposite' to maintain good behaviour. The paper discusses these findings in light of the Westernisation of kindergarten teaching practices in Hong Kong.
[Copyright © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.]

Early childhood education (ECE) in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region entered an exciting and challenging phase after the handover of sovereignty from Britain to China in July 1997. The Government began to play a more proactive role in promoting the development of high-quality preschool education in the private sector by providing financial assistance to parents, upgrading teachers’ qualifications, and promoting quality learning environments. This chapter examines developments in early ECE in Hong Kong from a historical perspective. Policy changes that have impacted ECE, challenges in the pursuit of high quality, and opportunities for enhancing the provision of ECE are discussed.

This book provides an up-to-date account of relevant early childhood policy and practice in five Chinese societies: the People's Republic of China or Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macao, Singapore, and Taiwan. It analyses how traditional Chinese values, Eastern and Western curricular approaches, and socio-political, economic, cultural and demographic changes influence current policies, services and practice. It addresses responses to global concerns about the excluded and disadvantaged, and about quality, and explains lessons from and for Chinese early childhood education. This book is the first English-language research-based review of early childhood education and the factors that affect it in different Chinese societies. It is particularly timely given the increased recognition of the importance of early childhood education for human capital development globally, and the international interest in understanding early education in Chinese societies.

In recent years, many governments of East Asian countries, such as Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong have initiated educational reforms to transform schools for sustainable outcomes. Promoting teacher leadership has been identified as part of the educational reform agenda in global quality discourses. This paper aims to offer insights into the practice of teacher leadership in a Chinese early childhood education context. The central tenet of teacher leadership is change agentry. Like its counterparts in the Asia Pacific Region, early childhood education in Hong Kong has historically been characterized by minimum training and a modified form of apprenticeship. Therefore, preschool teaching is likely to be identified as non-professional occupation. Preschool teachers seldom play a key role in supporting, stimulating, or catalyzing change. After the change of sovereignty from British to China in 1997, the local government has increased investment in early childhood education. Over the past 20 years, upgrading teacher professional qualifications has been used as amain strategy to enhance the quality of ECE. This raise an important question: Can preschool teachers move beyond the role of apprentice and become change agents for school development? Adopting a case study approach, the study reported in this paper is to examine the changing role of teachers in school development. The construct of change agency was examined from the perspectives of various school stakeholders (i.e. preschool principals, key stage coordinators, and classroom teachers). The findings indicated that the key stage coordinators who are teachers holding functional posts acted as teacher leaders to play the role of agents in leading changes beyond classroom in various areas including curriculum and pedagogy, teacher professional development, home-school collaboration, and community-school involvement. Meanwhile, the classroom teachers mainly acted as followers in the change process. The practice

This article offers a theoretical discussion on the current problems and future challenges of school capacity building in early childhood education (ECE), aiming to highlight some key areas for future research. In recent years, there has been a notable policy shift from monitoring quality through inspection to improving quality through school capacity building in early childhood institutions in the global discourse for quality. Reflecting this policy shift and its implications on school development, ECE in Hong Kong is used as an illustrative example to deliberate the issues of school capacity building in Chinese educational contexts. We identify three challenging contexts: (1) low professional qualification and minimal teacher education resulting in a deficit approach to processional development, (2) absence of school-based professional learning culture for empowering teachers as internal agents of change, and (3) hierarchical culture within a school and between university and school hindering the process of school capacity building. Corresponding to these challenges, we aim to propose two suggestions, including (1) empowering teachers in ECE through school-based professional learning community and (2) promoting authentic external support in the process of university–school collaboration. Finally, we further propose specific directions for future research on school capacity building in ECE in Hong Kong. In doing so, it will contribute to knowledge-based development in school capacity building in Chinese educational contexts.
[Copyright © 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.]