This longitudinal study examined the interactive effects of individual- and classroom-level teacher-child relationships on developing externalizing, internalizing, and prosocial behaviors in kindergarten children over time. On two occasions separated by about 1 year, data were collected from 473 kindergarten children (52% boys, M[subscript age] =…

Globalisation has significantly influenced preschool education around the world, including Hong Kong, where the official curriculum framework has recently integrated the Western notion of creativity as part of arts education, forming a new learning area: Arts and Creativity. The purpose of this study was to investigate how Hong Kong preschool…

Self-regulation is arguably one of the most crucial predictors of school readiness, academic achievement, and lifelong well-being. While educators in the prior-to-school years have a pivotal role to play in stimulating growth in early self-regulation, less is known about their knowledge and practices in this area. This interview study was…

Internationally, there is growing concern regarding the insufficient preparation of teachers in mainstream kindergartens in terms of teaching for ethnically diverse children. As teacher educators, we are concerned about how to help kindergarten teachers in Hong Kong improve their teaching. In this study, we adopted the research approach of…

Since the 1990s, Hong Kong has been promoting globally-endorsed, Western-derived early childhood ideologies and approaches, such as the Project Approach (*Chen et al., 2017). This orientation appears to be influenced by policies and practices linked to global neoliberalism and neocolonialism. To shed light on the state of knowledge concerning the…

The purpose of this study was to investigate Hong Kong preschool teachers' music-specific professional development (PD) preferences and analyze the potential differences among teachers with varying levels of teaching experience (beginning, experienced, and advanced). A survey was developed to assess four music-specific PD preferences: content,…

While play-based learning is important for a high quality early education, only when teachers are confident and competent in enacting play-based learning in their everyday practice are expected benefits of play-based learning for whole-child development realized. A sample of 592 early childhood educators who assumed different job titles in Hong…

Teachers' well-being and self-efficacy are two important factors linked to quality education. Recent research examining their bidirectionality has revealed inconsistent findings, while those examining the relationships among pre-service and in-service teachers are scarce. This study investigates the reciprocal relationships between teachers'…

In multicultural education, empathy has been regarded as an essential teacher disposition that enables teachers to better understand culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students through perspective-taking. However, less is known about the mechanism that underlies how empathy fosters teachers' competence in supporting CLD students, i.e.,…

With technology integration efforts expanding to early childhood education globally, assessing preschool teachers' technological competence beliefs is imperative. However, most existing tools measuring teachers' information and communication technology (ICT) competence beliefs focused on primary through secondary grades. This study examined the…

With a sample of 470 kindergarten teachers in Hong Kong, this study first examined these teachers' emotion regulation strategies assessed by a newly adapted scale, the Kindergarten Teacher Emotion Regulation Scale. Then, the study adopted a person-centred approach and conducted the latent profile analysis, identifying different profiles of…

Post-colonial Hong Kong is an officially trilingual city with significant numbers of residents speaking English, Cantonese, Mandarin, or some combination of all three. Competency in these languages is promoted through educational policies and practices at all levels of schooling. Using concepts from the Deweyan framework of democracy and…

This is a study of progressive education in the context of virtual preschool. The COVID-19 pandemic has challenged teachers globally to adapt to new e-learning environments while finding creative solutions to support child engagement and learning. In this case study, we examined a preschool program in a progressive and multilingual Hong Kong…

Guided by a sociocultural perspective, this study aims to explore the views of kindergarten teachers on ChatGPT, its potential benefits and challenges in education, and the support and training required for effective implementation. The study involved 10 teachers from several kindergartens in Hong Kong. Face-to-face interviews were conducted. The…