With the rapid development of technology, Early Childhood (EC) educators have been urgently required to appropriately integrate various and cutting-edge digital technologies to support the diverse learning needs of students in Hong Kong. The Future Classroom of EdUHK offers an opportunity for educators to integrate innovative toolkits to explore students’ potential learning opportunities, embracing their design thinking and creativity. This study applies an exploratory case study approach to learn the ways of improving students’ learning by using digital technologies in the Future Classroom, and develop practical toolkits for EC educators. Data was collected by activity plans, class videos, and students’ artifacts. Three students aged 6-8 in Hong Kong were invited to participate in this study. Content analysis was employed to analyze the effectiveness of the toolkits on students’ learning modal and engagement. The findings show that digital technologies can help change students’ learning modal from passive to interactive by stimulating multimodal learning, i.e. making an AR vocabulary card required modals of linguistic, gestural, visual, and aural. The toolkits can build a platform for design thinking and creativity, i.e. a map and digital story of the ocean were created by using a toolkit composed of 3D printing models, coding robots, and a digital book App. Students’ learning engagement can be improved by the toolkits, especially on the emotional aspect since they took the initiative to create their stories and characters at a later stage. Lastly, a list of practical digital resources is provided. Copyright © 2020 International Conference on Learning and Teaching.

This paper reports on the long-term effectiveness of a non-formal co-curricular educational program based on a campus ecogarden at a Hong Kong university in developing pro-sustainability awareness, attitudes and behavior among undergraduate students. This service-based, nature-based experiential learning program, termed the Ecogarden Farmer and Biodiversity Surveyor, has been running at the university since 2015. The program is divided into two consecutive phases: a training phase comprising various learning activities and a successive internship phase consisting of the all-round practical tasks involved in managing the garden. A retrospective evaluation of the program using phenomenographic approach and content analysis was adopted to reveal the diversity of students’ learning experience, as the indicators of the success of the program. Of 112 participants from 4 cohorts, 32 completed online questionnaires, and semi-structured interviews were successfully conducted with twelve participants, three from each of the four cohorts. The results indicated that the program’s outcomes could be categorized into five themes. Most outcomes fit into the theme ‘an increase in knowledge and skill level,’ followed by ‘rise in environmental awareness,’‘facilitation of personal growth,’ and ‘enhancement of career development.’ Many structural experiences revealed may suggest the success of the program. The longer the participants had participated in the program, the more in-depth and diversified reflection of the senior participants relating to personal development were mentioned. This study provides critical insights into the validity of retrospective program evaluation for assessing the long-term impact of EfS programs by introducing a cross-sectional study of different cohorts as a serial time-point sampling strategy. Copyright © 2021 Cheang, Ng, Wong, Li and Tsoi.

While existing research has well-recognized educational plan as an important predictor of students’ educational achievement, the alignment of educational plan and achievement should not be taken for granted. As plan-achievement misalignment is liable to negative psychological and social consequences, this study aims to examine the extent to which parents vis-à-vis teachers could guide students into plan-achievement alignment. Specifically, this study is set within two comparable cases of Taiwan and Hong Kong to explore whether the relative importance of parents’ and teachers’ guidance would differ according to the institutional contexts of education systems. Methodologically, society-specific (multinomial) logistic regression analyses are conducted based on the data of the Taiwan Education Panel Survey and the Hong Kong Survey on High School Students’ Aspirations for Higher Education and Employment. In Taiwan, we find students not only received more guidance from parents, but parents’ guidance was also more effective in helping them reach plan-achievement alignment. By contrast, teachers are found to have played a key role in these regards in Hong Kong. The findings provide support to our propositions that the relative importance of parents’ and teachers’ guidance may vary by the opportunity structures of post-secondary education and the level of school-based parental involvement. Copyright © 2021 National Institute of Education, Singapore.

This study explored the associations between secondary school students' sense of school belonging, their perceptions of school kindness, and character strength of kindness, and examined possible differences in these constructs across gender groups. The study, which included 1973 Hong Kong secondary school students, revealed that students' sense of school belonging was positively correlated with their perceptions of school kindness at the school and student levels (0.021 and 0.185, respectively). Furthermore, students' sense of school belonging was positively linked to character strength of kindness at the student level, although this relationship was found to be non-significant at the school level. At both levels of analysis, the positive relationships between students' perceptions of school kindness and character strength of kindness were significant. In addition, girls reported higher levels of character strength of kindness than boys. The findings of this study provide a better understanding of the relationships between sense of school belonging, school kindness, and character strength of kindness. Implications for research are also discussed. Copyright © 2020 Society for the Study of School Psychology.

In the existing literature of knowledge exchange (KE) and higher education, there is limited but emerging cluster of research which undertakes a comprehensive analysis of various types of higher education institutions and patterns of KE engagement. Employing the empirical example of Hong Kong, this paper examines the interconnections between institutional types and patterns of knowledge exchange (KE) activities in the context of a global city. It found that during the short history of KE policies and activities, all public universities in Hong Kong have been building their capacities for this new intellectual premise in the last decade. Meanwhile, disciplinary comprehensiveness and research/education intensity of the universities affect their institutional responses to the global trend of KE. The typology of higher education institutions suggested by this paper puts forward a perspective to further understand the institutional patterns of KE in the twenty-first century. Copyright ©Taylor & Francis.

In this study we used grounded theory framework to explore how preparation for studying abroad affects the academic success of East Asian undergraduate students in U.S. universities. Based on interviews with 12 participants from China, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Taiwan, we found that knowledge of English language and American culture, which is closely involved with their preparation for study abroad and their undergraduate study in the United States, are two core categories affecting East Asian students' academic success. High levels of preparation for study abroad help East Asian students better adapt to American universities. At the same time, East Asian students spend more time on English proficiency tests than learning the culture both before and after they arrive to the United States, which can be detrimental. We suggest that U.S. universities provide more support for cultural adaptation such as learning communities to have active cultural exchanges within context. Copyright ©Nepalese Student Association at University of Louisiana at Monroe.

This study investigates the perceptions of teaching competency in multicultural classrooms held by 421 teachers at 16 schools in Hong Kong. The aims of the study are (a) to use confirmatory factor analysis to validate a culturally appropriate version of the Multicultural Teaching Competency Scale (MTCS), (b) to assess three types of multicultural-teaching competency, and (c) to provide recommendations for teacher-education institutes and policy makers on developing effective training in multicultural education. The results indicate that a tripartite model assessing skills, knowledge, and relationships, the core features of multicultural-teaching competency as assessed by the MTCS from a Hong Kong sample. The teachers all identified multicultural-teaching relationships as the most important component of multicultural-teaching competency. Future researchers should examine the concurrent validity of the MTCS and the cultural contexts of multicultural-teaching relationships. Recommendations are also made for incorporating the Confucian beliefs of fairness, justice, and equity into multicultural classroom. Copyright © 2020 Edith Cowan University. All rights reserved.