Mobile devices are increasingly being used by undergraduate students to access online information in the problem-based learning (PBL) process, initially in the self-directed phase, and more recently within face-to-face tutorials. This qualitative study across three undergraduate health professional programs used semi-structured interviews to…

The impact of parental involvement on school management has been recognized by many education professionals and policy-makers. Thus parental involvement in school education becomes one of the prime focuses in the current education reform movement in Hong Kong. Particularly, specific guidelines and policies for involving parents at various levels…

Curriculum reform in higher education has been taking place in many countries, with much attention paid to many such as the national-level Bologna process in Europe, institutional-level Melbourne Model in Australia and discipline-level Engineering Criteria 2000 (EC2000). This paper gives a detailed account of the reform initiatives taking place in…

A synchronous blend of online learning and "face-to-face" teaching is becoming a feasible instructional approach in higher education with the advent of technology. Although this learning mode is not new in higher education, little research has been done to contextualise social presence experiences in which effects of interactions were…

This article aims to address the practical question of whether there is educational value to embedding second-language (L2) learning experiences in intergenerational contexts. In particular, a case study was conducted of a novel, university-based ESL program in Hong Kong in which a group of older adult volunteers with a high level of English…

Background: In the past decade, educational settings worldwide have experienced a significant increase in the number of school-based teaching assistants (TAs). The deployment of these TAs has been accompanied by reports of confusion and uncertainty about their roles and responsibilities within schools. While the need to reframe the role and…

Discourse connectives (DCs) are multi-functional devices used to connect discourse segments and fulfill interpersonal levels of discourse. This study investigates the use of selected 80 DCs within 11 categories in the argumentative essays produced by L1 and L2 university students. The analysis is based on the International Corpus Network of Asian…

This paper reports on a qualitative multiple case study that examined the implementation of innovations in English language education by three teachers in Hong Kong. Grounded in an analytical framework of teacher identity, in-depth interviews over an entire year provide a longitudinal understanding of the participants' experiences of…

Studying task repetition for adult and young foreign language learners of English (EFL) has received growing interest in recent literature within the task-based approach (Bygate, 2009; Hawkes, 2012; Mackey, Kanganas, & Oliver, 2007; Pinter, 2007b). Earlier work suggests that second language (L2) learners benefit from repeating the same or a…

This paper reports a qualitative case study of a collaborative project between an ESL researcher and a history teacher teaching in a late immersion school in Hong Kong. The project aims to help a Grade 9 class to write history essays on their own instead of copying from the textbook, which is a common phenomenon in Hong Kong schools. The…

This paper reports the findings from the interview data of a research aiming at studying how to trigger students' situational interest in physics and its implications on learning and teaching in the New Senior Secondary (NSS) physics curriculum. 49 students from a boys' school were invited to write one to three learning experiences in physics that…

This study explored the impact of the role of teacher-researchers on in-service teachers' professional development, as well as the reasons behind the lack of a teacher-as-researcher ethos in schools. In the study, teachers from four Hong Kong primary schools participated in a school-university collaborative research project that promotes…

In Hong Kong, inclusive education is concerned with educating all students, including those who are categorised as having special educational needs (SEN). This qualitative study reports three challenges faced by primary schools music teachers required to implement inclusive education. The first two challenges echo those reported…

Empirical studies of e-learning practices in Chinese higher education are still controversial. Shared Chinese beliefs in education, moving towards mass higher education for global competitiveness and improving e-readiness levels press for ubiquitous use of e-learning in mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong. This is a small-scale case study using a…

Enormous variation exists among nations and regions in their inclusive education provisions. In addition to comparisons based on policy documents and figures, in-depth and contextually grounded comparative studies involving qualitative data based on stakeholder experiences are needed, especially between western and Asian regions or nations where…