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.

This qualitative study investigates how two dance teachers (one in Toronto and the other in Hong Kong) shifted issues of pedagogy and autonomy in virtual dance classes during the COVID-19 pandemic. It reveals that participants quickly adapt to new environments and utilize available technologies in both teaching and learning. The study shares insights and practical strategies for dance educators to adapt and apply in regular dance classes even after the pandemic. In addition to teachers' perspectives on virtual teaching, selected student works highlight how the shift of autonomy fosters creativity and boosts confidence. Copyright ©2024 Routledge.

Prior research on classroom interaction has investigated how the teacher's feedback turn following students' responses can be used to transform students' turns into academic expressions during whole class discussions. Nevertheless, more empirical studies are needed to explore how teachers' translanguaging practices can play a role in shaping students' contributions into pedagogical opportunities for introducing academic terminologies in English-Medium-Instruction (EMI) classrooms. Adopting translanguaging as an analytical perspective, this study explores how an EMI history teacher deploys available linguistic and multimodal resources to connect students' responses with academic concepts and terminologies. The study draws its data from a larger linguistic ethnographic project that took place in an EMI secondary history classroom in Hong Kong. The classroom interaction data is examined using Multimodal Conversation Analysis, and this analysis is further triangulated with video-stimulated-recall-interviews that are analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. This paper argues that the EMI teacher's translanguaging practices facilitate the process of transforming student contributions into academic terminology and concepts. The process of deploying translanguaging for transforming student contributions highlights translanguaging as an important component of the teacher's classroom interactional competence for constructing new configurations of language practices and achieving specific pedagogical purposes. Copyright ©2024 Routledge.

This study explores how Hong Kong’s latest Chinese history curriculum hybridizes Romantic and Enlightened approaches and how that hybridization converges with/diverges from mainland China’s, given the two societies’ increased integration in the People’s Republic of China. Data were drawn from Hong Kong’s and mainland China’s latest junior-secondary Chinese history curricula policies and textbooks and Hong Kong’s earlier curriculum. Despite approaching mainland China’s Chinese history in curriculum structure and promoting China as a unified multi-ethnic nation, Hong Kong’s latest history curriculum retains its earlier orientation towards the Communist Party of China and the Enlightened approach. Hong Kong’s junior-secondary Chinese history curricula try to balance Romantic and Enlightened approaches, while mainland China’s symbolically promotes and selectively uses the latter to serve the former. Theoretical and practical implications and directions for future study are provided. Copyright ©2024 Routledge.

Performing arts education has been significantly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic crisis around the world since early 2020. Educators had to adapt the classes with remote learning when face-to-face instruction had been suspended during the pandemic. Although frustrations and confusion continued to abound with the implementation of new pedagogies, online teaching, and learning spurred new practices, innovative ideas, and breakthroughs. Some performing arts educators took this opportunity to explore new skills and strategies and provided performing arts students with more impactful learning experiences. Presently, with the COVID-19 pandemic gradually showing a sign of easing, many Hong Kong schools have returned to in-person instruction. Meanwhile, the impactful learning feedback from students triggered calls for redesigning the pedagogy of performing arts education. This study placed the impact of COVID-19 on performing arts education into context and drilled down into the delivery of performing arts education in the post-pandemic era. This study reviewed teaching and learning experiences of performing arts education, with the following three research questions addressed: (a) What is the correlation between performing arts students' academic traits and their proficiency in utilizing technology during the COVID-19 pandemic? (b) What are the influential factors impacting the hybrid learning experience and outcomes of performing arts students during the COVID-19 pandemic? (c) What are the anticipated expectations of performing arts students regarding future models of arts education? Furthermore, practical solutions and insights for performing arts educational delivery in the post-pandemic era are provided in this study. Copyright ©2024 SAGE Publications.

A growing number of studies have explored the ways how teachers contingently respond to students' unexpected responses or a lack of student responses in second language classrooms. From a sociocultural perspective, teacher contingency involves a departure from the lesson plan in local response to the unexpected or unforeseeable actions in the classroom interactions (van Lier, 2001). This study adopts translanguaging as an analytical perspective in order to examine how a teacher employs various resources to contingently respond to students' initiatives and reformulate his utterances in order to prompt student participation. The data are based on a larger linguistic ethnographic project in a Hong Kong English-Medium-Instruction secondary history classroom. This paper reconceptualizes the notion of teacher contingency and argues that the process of how the teacher contingently responds to the unexpected outcomes that arise in real-time interactions is a process of translanguaging. Such a process requires the teacher in orchestrating the available linguistic and multimodal resources to construct pedagogical actions on the spot, instead of being planned in advance. Copyright ©2024 Oxford University Press.

This study explores the narration of China as a nation in history education in two regions – mainland China and Hong Kong – that share cultural roots but different socio-political contexts. Inductive analysis of data from junior-secondary Chinese history textbooks used in the regions in the late 2010s revealed that whereas mainland China’s textbooks constructed China as a nation by stressing its constitutive territory and ethnic inclusiveness, Hong Kong’s highlighted its constitutive ethnicity and changing territory, more frequently and directly narrated interethnic conflicts, and more explicitly promoted Han superiority. The study proposes constructing the nation in history education as a contextualised and socio-political exercise of reinterpreting the past to reflect current contexts and needs. Copyright ©2024 Routledge.

There has been a clear shift in higher education to prepare and empower the current students for a future quite different and more complex than that faced by previous generations. In particular, it is expected that they will possess comprehensive abilities to deal with challenges arising from new employment demands and beyond. While liberal arts education has a long history in the West, it has been increasingly implemented more recently in East Asia as one response to the need for educational reform. The research reported here is an empirical study of how liberal arts education has affected individuals from two institutions with distinctive interpretations of "liberal arts education" - University N, the first Sino-foreign joint university in mainland China, and University L, the only public liberal arts university in Hong Kong. Drawing on Bourdieu's Theory of Practice, this study illustrates the interplay and balance among students' practical concerns, their sense of social obligation fostered through liberal arts education elements and the wider social structure. Semi-structured interviews with senior students, fresh graduates, and educators were conducted to gather in-depth primary data. These reveal that, by providing interdisciplinary knowledge and transferable skill sets, a liberal arts education experience does enhance individuals' personal agency and intellectual competencies in a professional context - they are trained to become independent thinkers and learners. Moreover, the "humanistic" aspect of liberal arts is also relevant: having engaged in various activities and programs, students in both universities are encouraged to care, cooperate, and make positive differences in their increasingly interconnected communities. Copyright ©2024 Eurasian Society of Educational Research.

Parents play a crucial role in facilitating their children's participation in extracurricular music activities. Guided by the framework of concerted cultivation, this survey study conducted with Hong Kong parents investigates (1) the types of extracurricular music activities in which their three- to eight-year-old children participate, (2) the importance parents attribute to music education and its correlation with key demographic factors, and (3) the predictive relationship between the importance parents attribute to music education and their children's music participation. A self-designed survey was completed by 430 parents. Descriptive statistics, correlation, and binary logistic regression were conducted. Children's participation rate in extracurricular music activities was found to be low. While younger children tended to engage in collaborative and unstructured activities, older children participated more in individual and guided activities. The importance attributed by parents to music education was relatively high and correlated with their background and family demographics. The higher the parents rated the importance of music education, the more likely they were to have signed up or intended to sign up their children for music activities. This study offers insights into children's extracurricular music participation, highlights parental roles in children's music education, and underscores the necessity of educating parents about the importance of music education. Copyright ©2025 MDPI.

A key pedagogical goal in any classroom is to engage students in learning. This study examines how an English-Medium-Instruction (EMI) teacher employs available resources to engage his students in the classroom for promoting participation, keeping the lesson moving forward and meeting the pedagogical goals. The data for this study is based on a intensive fieldwork in an EMI secondary history classroom in Hong Kong. Multimodal Conversation Analysis is deployed to analyse the classroom interactional data. The classroom analysis is triangulated with the video-stimulated-recall-interviews that are analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. The study's crucial theoretical contribution is that it broadens our comprehension of an EMI classroom as an integrated translanguaging space, which may involve various fluid and mobile translanguaging sub-spaces. This paper aims to illustrate the process of engaging students affords the teacher to create different translanguaging sub-spaces at a whole-class level and at an individual level. It is argued that creating these translanguaging sub-spaces requires the teacher to mobilise available resources for catering for the different needs of all students, which promotes interaction and inclusion in the classrooms. Copyright ©2025 Routledge.