As varieties of the Chinese language, Mandarin and Cantonese are both tonal in nature and involve pitch cues for distinguishing characters and words. Chinese as a second language (CSL) learners often find Chinese tones difficult to grasp, especially for those at the preschool stage. In Hong Kong, Cantonese is the dominant variety of Chinese for daily communication and serves as the medium of instruction in local kindergartens, whereas Mandarin is used in Chinese language teaching in international kindergartens. Children’s songs are widely used to foster preschoolers’ CSL learning in the aforementioned settings. With adequate phonological input in a pleasurable learning environment, such an approach helps facilitate tone perception, which is key to the development of prosodic competence for better facilitation of reading comprehension. However, the tone-melody mismatches in children’s songs and their negative influence on CSL learners’ tone learning have long been underestimated. This chapter looks into the problems concerning teaching CSL through children’s songs from a comparative perspective. Based on a contrastive analysis of the Mandarin and Cantonese tone systems with reference to multimodal learning, the authors recommend that teachers and curriculum developers should be more sensitive to tone-melody relationships when selecting or creating children’s songs for pedagogical purposes to better support CSL literacy development. It is also important to raise the preschoolers’ tone awareness, particularly in Cantonese-medium CSL classrooms, given the distinct tonal features of the target variety. Copyright © 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

This study investigates the impact of Filipina domestic workers (FilDWs), a marginalized group in Hong Kong (HK), on HK children's language development. It focusses on FilDWs' influence on the second language (L2) English of bilingual HK primary school children attending an English Medium of Instruction school. The elements investigated are L2 English spoken complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF), and reading accuracy and fluency. Participants comprise 34 children (17 boys and 17 girls, mean age 8;11) from homes with FilDWs and 30 (15 boys and 15 girls, mean age 8;11) from homes with no FilDW. Participants completed an English reading and speaking task, and an English working memory capacity (WMC) test. Participants from households with FilDWs scored significantly higher on all aspects of both English language measures, while no significant differences for WMC were observed. These suggest that FilDWs exert a positive impact on children's L2 English proficiency, placing them in a different position to the low status they are usually ascribed. These findings have implications for decolonizing and decentring language learning and teaching. Copyright ©2023 Oxford University Press.

This study aimed at exploring kindergarten teachers' perceptions and usage of digital devices in their classrooms. A multiple case study (n = 4) was conducted to investigate how in-service experienced (n = 22) and novice (n = 24) kindergarten teachers interpreted the functional significance of digital devices, including the needs and challenges faced when applying digital devices in visual arts activities in their classrooms. A non-randomised convenience sampling strategy was used to recruit four local kindergartens in Hong Kong, whose teachers were invited to participate in focus group interviews. In total, 540 min of interview data were collected. We examined the in-service teachers' perceptions of the affordances of digital devices in terms of (1) transparency, (2) challenge and (3) accessibility. Based on the teachers' responses in the interviews, the findings indicated issues related to the use of digital devices in terms of these three areas here. The informants shared how their understandings of film language limited their intentions and usage patterns (including frequency of use) with respect to digital videos. Nevertheless, they admitted that digital videos were important tools for facilitating children's learning and communication with their parents. This study reflects the current situation of technology education in Hong Kong, including how teacher educators perceive the usage and roles of digital videos in early arts education. Copyright ©2024 Routledge.

Despite the increasing use of English as a medium of instruction (EMI), teachers who teach at EMI schools encounter significant challenges, such as difficulties in teaching content-subjects in English and students' limited understanding of content presented in English. To examine the extent of these challenges, six early-full and 14 late-partial EMI science teachers from eight schools in Hong Kong were invited to participate in semi-structured interviews on the challenges they faced as teachers of EMI science subjects. A biographic approach was used to analyse the interviews, and the results showed that despite the metacognitive overlap between the two groups of teachers, there were noticeable differences in their pedagogical strategies. These findings suggest that the implementation of EMI instruction influences teachers' metacognition and pedagogical practices. Teachers' frequent use of Cantonese (L1) further suggest that English language skills are not as prioritised compared to the subject content. Further research is needed to investigate the complex and diverse factors that influence teachers' metacognition under EMI contexts. Copyright ©2023 Routledge.

Cultivating students' enjoyment of science is one of the significant aims of science education. However, it seems challenging to achieve this goal in most countries or economies. Using the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 2019 Hong Kong data, this study aims to identify multiple configurations of school conditions to develop students' science enjoyment with a School Analytics model. A fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) was employed to capture the potential asymmetric relationships and measure multiple combinations of different conditions. Results indicated that no single school condition was necessary or sufficient for high enjoyment of science (ES). While lacking instructional clarity was a sufficient condition for low enjoyment of science (similar to ES). Three different configurations resulted in ES and similar to ES respectively. The combination of supportive school discipline and high instructional clarity jointly constituted a crucial science learning environment for developing science enjoyment in Hong Kong secondary schools. Under this environment, the effectiveness of science investigation was further discussed to enhance science enjoyment. Our study enlightens educational practitioners to improve students' science enjoyment with multiple combinations of school conditions. Copyright ©2023 Routledge.

This paper reports on an exploration into difficulties in junior secondary science lessons taught through English in the largely Cantonese-speaking context of Hong Kong. The study was carried out by an educational linguist and a science education specialist working in collaboration, and identified difficulties through student questionnaires, interviews with teachers, and classroom observation. Understandings of genre based in systemic functional linguistics were used in conjunction with knowledge of the science curriculum to investigate these difficulties. Extracts from lessons and teaching materials on energy conversion are discussed, with additional reference to interviews and questionnaires. Analysis revealed the influence of teaching materials on coherence between curricular objectives and teacher discourse. In particular, complex description detracted from explanations, affecting student understanding of the lesson. Copyright ©2024 Elsevier.

Adopting a language other than the first as the medium of instruction in teaching mathematics can create significant problems for students' mathematical learning. However, there is little research on the ways in which bi/multilingual mathematics teachers can make use of diverse multilingual and multimodal resources to keep students engaged in learning abstract mathematical knowledge. This article aims to explore how an English-medium-instruction (EMI) mathematics teacher creates different hypothetical scenarios through embodied enactments to enhance students' mathematical understanding and motivate students' interest in learning mathematics. The data of this study is obtained from a focused classroom observation in a Hong Kong EMI secondary mathematics classroom. Multimodal conversation analysis is employed to analyse the classroom interaction data, and the analysis is triangulated with video-stimulated-recall interviews which are analysed with interpretative phenomenological analysis. This article aims to extend the notion of embodied enactment as a form of translanguaging to facilitate mathematical learning and develop students' motivation in learning mathematics in the EMI setting. Particularly, this article argues that embodied enactment creates a translanguaging space for the EMI teacher to achieve mathematical teaching. Copyright ©2023 Sage Publications Ltd.

A lack of evidence bridging the chasm between professional learning practices and commonly used, publicly available resources such as YouTube videos, remains a long-term challenge in both research and practice. The study introduced a YouTube video club for female early childhood teachers in Hong Kong (N = 29) to view, analyse and discuss STEM teaching videos. The participants wrote reflections and discussed with peers to exchange views on teaching content and strategies. All participants completed pre- and post-intervention surveys reporting their teaching beliefs, and five participants from the experimental group were invited for individual interviews. The questionnaire survey data were analysed using statistical analysis, while the interview data were analysed through inductive thematic analysis. The study, which was pre-post quasi-experimental, showed that the video club enhanced teachers' beliefs and attitudes towards professional practices in early childhood education. Qualitative analysis of teacher interviews revealed benefits and constraints of using YouTube videos for professional learning. The study transformed video clubs into a web-mediated mode using YouTube, Google Classroom and Zoom. The results have implications for the design and implementation of video clubs in teacher learning programmes. Copyright ©2023 Wiley.

Background: The number of artificial intelligence (AI) literacy studies in K-12 education has recently increased, with most research focusing on primary and secondary education contexts. Little research focuses on AI literacy programs in early childhood education. Objectives: The aim of this mixed-methods study is to examine the feasibility of an AI literacy program called AI4KG and explore how it might affect kindergarteners' perceptions of robots and attitudes towards engineering and science. Methods: A total of 26 child-parent dyads recruited from a Hong Kong kindergarten were involved in this study, consisting of 26 children (Mage = 4 years, SD = 0.28) and their parents. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected through surveys and interviews designed to explore children's perceptions of robots and attitudes towards engineering and science, and parents' perceptions of the AI4KG intervention. Results: It is found that children have increased their perceptions of robots after the AI literacy program, but the AI4KG curriculum had no significant effects on kindergarten children's engineering and science attitudes. Most parents (22 out of 26) agreed that their children's AI knowledge, AI skills, and AI attitudes have been enhanced after learning through the AI4KG curriculum. Conclusions: This study suggests that the AI4KG curriculum is potentially effective in promoting early AI literacy and favourable attitudes towards the technology, but further research is needed to develop age-appropriate measures and assess its long-term impact on children's education and career paths. Copyright ©2024 Wiley.

This study investigated instruction in vocabulary consolidation strategies over eight months and vocabulary learning among a group of secondary students in Hong Kong. Two vocabulary tests and one vocabulary learning strategies (VLSs) questionnaire survey were administered near the end of the school year. The data were analysed using t-tests and correlation coefficients. The results show that the eight-month VLSs instruction was significantly correlated with students' vocabulary knowledge. It was also found that: (1) students favoured cognitive strategies and word analysis strategies to other VLSs; (2) more successful learners employed a wider variety of VLSs than less successful learners, with significant, positive correlations found between the repertoire of strategies and vocabulary performance; and (3) the strategies taught were effective for students' vocabulary learning and were significant predictors of more successful students. Students' responses from group discussions revealed their positive experiences with learning VLSs through explicit instruction, supporting the effectiveness of consolidation strategies. This study adds to the limited research literature on the role of VLSs instruction for EFL secondary learners. Strategies conducive to vocabulary learning and the implications of this study are discussed. Copyright © 2023 Routledge.