This study aimed to explore ESL teachers’ perceptions of online teaching during the COVID-19 outbreak in Hong Kong. A qualitative multiple-case study approach was employed, focusing on the online teaching experiences of three teachers in primary school contexts. Through semi-structured interviews and thematic analysis, rich data were collected and analysed. The findings revealed five prominent challenges faced by the teachers, including inadequate infrastructure, limited technical support and training, classroom management issues, teachers’ limited technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPCK) in ELT, students’ unreadiness and lack of parental support. The study also identified three opportunities arising from online teaching, such as changes in teachers’ attitudes and beliefs in technology, opportunities for teacher learning and experimenting with online teaching practice for pedagogical innovations. Despite the significant challenges encountered, the teachers perceived the online teaching experiences as opportunities to enhance their teaching competence with technology. This study has substantial implications, calling for strategic governmental measures to improve online learning in schools, highlighting the need to integrate technology-focused pedagogies into teacher education, revising outdated school curriculums to enhance students’ digital literacy, providing financial support for disadvantaged students, encouraging parental involvement in online learning and fostering collaborative professional learning communities to enhance English teachers’ TPACK. Copyright ©2024 Taylor & Francis.

This study reports on a collaborative research project initiated in 2022 by the authors based in Hong Kong and the Philippines. The overarching goal is to review and assess the impact that the prolonged use of technology for teaching has had on K-12 teachers. Through a narrative inquiry, the study seeks to encapsulate teachers' online teaching experiences: its efficacy, challenges, impacts on teaching, and other relevant issues. These narratives are compared against the backdrop of access to technology in Hong Kong and in the Philippines, as there are immense differences in IT infrastructure. It was found that technological advancement and preparedness did not guarantee smooth delivery of online teaching. In contrast, teachers' own personal circumstances, workload, stress, and mental wellbeing tend to have a much greater impact on themselves and their work. Copyright ©2024 IGI Global.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, numerous schools halted face-to-face teaching and instead resorted to online classes. The impact of online learning on students’ academic worries, social relationships, and psychological well-being has received growing attention. Based on a sample of 1095 students aged 14–16 in 12 secondary schools in Hong Kong, structural equation modeling was used to investigate the association between online learning problems, academic worries and performance, social interaction, and psychosocial well-being during the pandemic. The path relationships among variables were compared by gender groups and socio-economic status (SES). Online learning problems were found to be negatively associated with psychosocial well-being through academic worries and social interaction as mediators. The effect of mediation among female students was larger than that of males, whereas the impact of academic worries on both psychosocial well-being and social interaction was stronger and significant only in the low SES group. As the COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted the learning and well-being of students, attention should be given to gender and SES difference among students. Copyright ©2024 Springer Netherlands.

Continuing education (CE) plays a crucial role in workforce development and economic growth across Asia, yet the landscape of CE research in the region has not been comprehensively mapped. A comprehensive bibliometric analysis of continuing education (CE) research in Asia from 1972 to 2023 was carried out, utilizing data from the Scopus database to map the evolving landscape of CE research in the region. Findings revealed a significant surge in research output since the late 1990s, with East Asian countries, particularly China, Hong Kong (China), and Taiwan (ROC), emerging as leaders in the field. The analysis uncovers several key patterns: institutional collaborations tend to cluster regionally, there's a noticeable generational gap in researcher’s networks, and the healthcare sector dominates CE research topics. Recent trends indicate a shift towards digital learning approaches and learner-centered methodologies. The study also highlights the need for increased cross-border collaborations and expansion of CE research beyond the healthcare sector. This research contributes to a deeper understanding of CE research trends in Asia and provides insights for future directions in the field. Copyright ©2024 Scientific Methodical Center.

The COVID-19 pandemic has necessitated the adoption of distance learning as a new alternative educational approach globally, a shift that has persisted even to the post-pandemic period. Despite identifying online educational advantages in previous studies, the abrupt societal changes brought about by the pandemic have exposed disproportionate difficulties. This study aims to understand how attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) children and their parents are influenced by this educational pattern, and to outline a framework to improve their home-based learning environment from a design perspective. Following the Kolb's Experiential Learning Cycle (KELC), the research commenced with the analysis of ADHD children and online-schooling in Hong Kong. After problems are identified initially, the observational study of 32 school students with or without ADHD in a home-learning environment is conducted to interpret these problems. This process has identified the key issues of domestic distraction and the need for resource support. The study also provides a multi-functional table design as an initial direction for developing supportive frameworks. Then, another study is conducted with a total of 30 school students with or without ADHD and their stakeholders to assess the effectiveness of the design concept. Therefore, the study's findings provide a valuable insight for proposing the framework to improve the home learning experience via the working area for ADHD children. These research findings not only contribute to academic discourse for validating ADHD children challenges in distance education, but also facilitate ADHD parents, educators and designers to enhance the home learning environment by offering a structured design framework. Copyright ©2024 Scientia Socialis Ltd.

Feedback processes are crucial in doctoral supervision but require adaptation to meet the changing nature of the doctorate, and increasing impetus to publish during the candidature. This study builds on concepts of authentic feedback and feedback literacy to chart possibilities for the development of feedback socialization in doctoral education. Semi-structured interviews with twenty doctoral supervisors in a faculty of education in Hong Kong aimed to investigate their understandings of feedback, its enactment within the doctoral process, and broader feedback inputs beyond the supervisor. Data were analyzed through reflexive thematic analysis and trustworthiness was enhanced through a member checking focus group with a sub-set of four of the interviewees. The analysis is informed by sociocultural theory with emphasis on co-construction of insights between supervisors and doctoral students. The findings highlight supervisors’ understandings of feedback as comments, interaction and follow-up; and authentic feedback generated from presenting at conferences or submitting to journals. A contribution of the paper lies in bringing to bear conceptual insights from feedback research in undergraduate education to inform feedback in doctoral supervision. We deploy the concept of authentic feedback, practices that resemble those of the relevant workplace, to demonstrate how journal peer review facilitates the socialization of doctoral students into academic publishing norms. Key supervisor roles lie in guiding the enactment of responses to peer review, and supporting the development of resilience. Proposed features of supervisors’ feedback literacy include sociocultural-based dialogue and co-construction, emphasis on the enactment of feedback and working with authentic feedback of different forms. Copyright ©2024 Taylor & Francis.

In this study, we explore the identity development of PhD graduates transitioning into non‐researcher roles. Through the conceptual lens of identity‐trajectory theory and based on interviews with 26 PhD graduates from three leading research universities in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, we analyse their identity‐trajectory development after their transition to non‐research employment. The findings show that PhD graduates develop their identity trajectories based on their existing sense of researcher‐self through a variety of practices that involve intellectual, networking and institutional dimensions. Individual agency plays a key role in overcoming structural constraints in the workplace, yet its level varies according to one's willingness to pursue a non‐research career. The findings highlight the fluidity in identity development and the role of the researcher‐self as a positive legacy of doctoral training, including for PhD graduates taking non‐researcher roles. Copyright ©2024 Wiley.

Along with the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, the educational systems in the world faced challenges due to the school lockdown and the change from face-to-face to online learning mode to adapt to the emergency health issue. The present chapter reviews the digital divide issues during the pandemic of COVID-19 over three years (2020-2022) in Hong Kong. Regarding the three levels of the digital divide (access, usage, and outcome), this chapter collected and analyzed secondary sources of literature to understand the extent to which digital resources were unevenly distributed among students from different backgrounds in Hong Kong and how various social sectors provided timely support to address these needs. The result showed the good practice of Hong Kong, in terms of the efforts made by multiple parties to provide prompt support to fill the gap of the digital access divide. Nevertheless, the gap in digital capability across individual students may have enduring impacts on their academic study and personal growth, which have not been sufficiently addressed. Copyright © 2025 selection and editorial matter, Huixuan Xu; individual chapters, the contributors.

Master-level postgraduate professional development (PPD) programs have grown rapidly in many parts of the world. Being able to complete written assignments successfully is a significant concern for students pursuing PPD studies. Yet the nature of written assignments in such programs has been under-researched. This paper reports a study conducted in the context of a Master of Education (MEd) program in an English-medium university in Hong Kong. The study addressed the research question "How do MEd written assignments prompt students to engage with academia and the professional world?" Analyses of the documentary data, comprising a collection of written assignment prompts featuring 132 tasks, revealed three categories of assignments: oriented to the professional world, oriented to academia, and connecting academia and the professional world, with the last category being the largest share (75%). The paper illustrates these categories of assignments and considers implications of the study for pedagogy and future research. Copyright ©2024 Canadian Center of Science and Education.

It is well established that COVID-19 pandemic is associated with arousal of feelings of hopelessness and negativity in adolescents regarding future career development outcomes. However, the current literature has yet to clarify the roles teacher social support play in facilitating students' positive career development during the pandemic. This study investigated the effects of career-related teacher support (CRTS) on ameliorating students' feelings of hopelessness and increasing their career self-efficacy among 402 senior secondary students (Grades 10-12) in Hong Kong, China. Results from mediated moderation analyses showed that academic ability was only weakly related to career self-efficacy. Hopelessness was not a significant moderator concerning the link between academic ability and career self-efficacy when CRTS functioned as the mediator. Copyright ©2024 Routledge.