This study examines the effects of kindergarten teachers' self-efficacy on their perceived teacher-child relationships, and explores the associations between self-efficacy and two types of positive affective states (i.e., flow experience and psychological well-being) as the antecedents of efficacy beliefs. A sample of 796 kindergarten teachers in Hong Kong participated in this study. The results showed that teachers' flow experience and psychological well-being were significantly associated with their perceived positive teacher-child relationships, and teacher self-efficacy significantly mediated the effects of teachers' positive affective states on their perceived teacher-child relationships. The results highlight the significance of integrating social cognitive theory and positive psychology into the understanding of the relationships between teachers' positive affective states, self-efficacy, and teacher-child relationships in early childhood education settings. The implications for theory and practice are discussed. Copyright © 2022 Elsevier.

The impact of neoliberalism in higher education has been widely discussed and debated, yet most analyses have viewed the changes on university governance and academic work in different countries as slavishly bound by more global neoliberal factors without paying sufficient attention to the local contextual factors. This empirical study foregrounds the local dimension by examining how the actual quotidian effects of RAE 2020 operate within higher education institutions and on working academics in Hong Kong. The paper reports on an interview-based study with 15 education academics from two government-funded universities in Hong Kong. Neoliberal forms of university governance based on a set of RAE-defined performance indicators were identified; academics’ divergent forms of ‘practice of freedom’ in coping with RAE 2020 were delineated. This study discusses why the universities displayed strong ‘reactivity’ to RAE 2020 and explains academics’ practicality and resilience in coping with policy changes by drawing upon Hong Kong's colonial history, government-university relationship and institutional culture in the specific academic environment. This article calls for greater flexibility in assessment regimes to restore trust and autonomy to the professions and development of alternative patterns of academic prestige to elicit a healthy diversity of policy responses. Copyright © 2022 Taylor & Francis.

This article compares and discusses three prevailing approaches used to understand the concept of school culture and school culture phenomena. The approaches are typology-functionalist approach, process approach, and improvement-effectiveness approach. Compared with the other two, improvement-effectiveness approach is identified as more appropriate to conceptualize school culture when the concept is applied to promote school improvement and effectiveness. Moreover, the School Improvement Model of School Culture developed by Cavanagh and Dellar is introduced with the implications of the model to Hong Kong school leaders, policy-makers and educational researchers are being discussed. Copyright © 2009 Hong Kong Teachers’ Centre.

Studies have shown that the School Kindness Scale (SKS) has adequate psychometric properties in different societies such as Canada, Turkey, and the Philippines. However, there is scarce evidence on the psychometric validity of this scale across multiple societies and educational contexts. This study explores the cross-national invariance of the SKS among high school students in the Philippines, Hong Kong, and mainland China. Results showed that the modified unidimensional model of school kindness with correlated error terms on item number 2 and 3 had the most optimal fit. There was evidence supporting partial invariance of the modified unidimensional model of school kindness across setting and year level, and full invariance across gender. Whereas school kindness also demonstrated positive correlations with perceived academic performance in Hong Kong and mainland China, this construct was linked to higher emotional and social engagement in math in all contexts. Copyright © 2022 Wiley Periodicals LLC.

Students are now living in a world that is both rapidly changing and complex. This study aims to examine the effects of school subjects and the classroom climate they create on 15-year-old students’ global competence. A multilevel analysis was conducted on a representative sample of 5,873 Hong Kong participants in PISA 2018. The results showed that student perception of a better classroom disciplinary climate contributes to their global competence directly (.07) and indirectly via their skills in mathematics (.03), science (.03), and reading (.07) at the student level, and indirectly via their skill in reading (.38) at the school level. In addition, about one-third (.32) of the variance of global competence was explained at the school level. These findings suggest that schools play an essential role in cultivating students’ global competence, via traditional learning in core subjects such as mathematics, science, and reading, and a good learning environment. Copyright © 2021 HKERA-APERA International Conference.

Operating as a hegemonic, market-driven governmentality, neoliberalism has been colonizing academic institutions and academic professionals’ everyday lives globally. This article demonstrates how several sets of academic event posters displayed at a public Hong Kong university work as spatialized multimodal branding devices that discursively entangle certain types of individuals, activities, institutions, and political economy under a specific mode of neoliberal governmentality. It shows that the posters position the university and its academic units as internationally competitive, Global-North-oriented knowledge enterprises in a mutually shaping relationship with a globalized neoliberal political economy par excellence in Asia. The study signals the need for research on neoliberal academic discourses to pay closer attention to the spatialized, multi-semiotic nature of discursive practices and the multi-layered institutional, politico-economic and cultural contexts in which the neoliberal discourses are situated. Copyright © 2022 The Author(s).