Early childhood education and care (ECEC) provision can have long-lasting positive effects on children's learning and development. A key feature in fostering educational outcomes is the enhancement of parental involvement. This article builds on critical concerns with the emergent 'schoolification' of ECEC and corresponding orientations of…

Agency, understood as the capacity to act independently and to make one's own choices, is considered central to children's development. Thus, education, and hence education curricula, have a role in the development of learner agency. While curriculum development is a key focus for educational theory, research, policy, and classroom practice, the…

This study highlights the importance of mentorship focused on reflective practice during preservice teacher education and early years of teaching. Thoughtful reflection about teaching practices during early years of teaching is critical in preparing teachers for a child-centered curriculum. To successfully distinguish between teacher-directed and…

Elite schools around the world aspire to produce perfect students and yet there are always obstacles to this perfection being achieved. In this paper, we suggest that this process of perfectionism and obstruction can best be understood using a methodology that looks to the creative arts, rather than the usual social science orthodoxies. Our focus…

Legitimate teacher authority is fundamental to effective teaching, but is often a thorny issue that teachers need to grapple with when teaching in cross-cultural teaching contexts. By interviewing 18 pre-service Chinese language teachers on their understanding of legitimate teacher authority throughout teaching practicum at international schools…

This paper analyses how the impact of international student achievement studies and the recent economic crisis in Europe are influencing the development of educational policy transfer and borrowing, from East to West. This is contrasted with education reform movements in East Asia, which have long legacies of borrowing from so-called…

An inquiry-based learning pedagogy coupled with a seamless learning environment is a potential way to realise the educational goal of learner-centred learning in digital classrooms in the 21st century. An overarching research framework is proposed for preparing teachers to effectively develop pedagogical designs that are premised on theoretical…

Since 2008, Outcome-Based Learning (OBL), a student-centred strategy aiming to enhance the quality of teaching and learning, has been launched as a major initiative among higher education institutions in Hong Kong. When adopting OBL at course level, other than designing the OBL framework, it is also very important to evaluate the effectiveness of…

To his article reports on two case studies of teachers' managing the challenges associated with gaining acceptance for child-centeredness curriculum practices in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. These teachers intended to respond to the newly published "Guide to the Preprimary Curriculum" (Education and Manpower Branch, 2006)…

Background: Almost three decades have passed since the Grunwald Declaration on Media Education was issued by the representatives of 19 nations at UNESCO's International Symposium on Media Education in Germany (UNESCO 1982). Cycles of information revolution and education reform over this period have led to significant changes in the sectors of…

This article describes the Dim Sum and Chinese Restaurant Project undertaken by 6-year-old kindergarten children in Hong Kong. The article discusses the importance of listening, observing, and documenting children's actions to meet their needs and interests. The kindergarten program that participated in this project is a nonprofit kindergarten…

Hong Kong has been actively promoting a student-centered approach to teaching since the 1980s. Despite this effort, students in Hong Kong still tend to be traditional learners who rarely experience and gain from real student-centered learning. While teachers hold a "quantitative" concept of learning and focus on transmitting declarative…

Background: In the era of education reform when new teaching approaches are being advocated, it is important to investigate how different classroom discourse patterns are related to different educational outcomes. Aim: The purpose of the study was to analyse the whole classroom discourse of two teacher interns' writing classes. It was conducted…

Purpose: This paper aims to report empirical research investigating how school-based management (SBM) and paradigm shift (PS) in education are closely related to teachers' student-centered teaching and students' active learning in a sample of Hong Kong secondary schools. Design/methodology/approach: It is a cross-sectional survey research…

The effectiveness of informal primary schools in Hong Kong, using the activity approach, was studied since 1976. The results suggested that student satisfaction was high; that it was conducive to language learning; and that it did not provide a adequate structure for learning mathematics or English as a second language. (GDC)