Search

Acculturation is an emerging field of inquiry in the multicultural context of Hong Kong. Behavioural acculturation focuses mainly on cultural practices such as language use, dietary preferences, cu...

Scholars have extensively studied acculturation from different theoretical perspectives among immigrants across the societies of settlement. However, there is a dearth of knowledge about acculturation from a culture learning approach in Hong Kong. This article reports the acculturative challenges among sixteen (16) Pakistani students from six different secondary schools in Hong Kong. The phenomenographic data analysis of semi-structured interviews revealed four categories of everyday experiences in schools that hinder their acculturation. These are mainly related to inter-ethnic interactions, sensitivity towards diverse learning and sociocultural needs, and the Chinese language teaching curriculum for non-Chinese speaking students. Although the study reports Pakistani students' experiences, the findings may also translate the acculturative challenges among students with an immigrant or ethnic minority background in settlement societies. The article also discusses both the theoretical and practical implications for studying and helping immigrant young people in multicultural contexts.

The question of a sense of belonging to a host society is paramount to the study of acculturation in the society of settlement. The study of acculturation seeks to examine how acculturating people ...

School participation rates in Hong Kong are acknowledged to be high but not always for the city’s ethnic minority students. Case study was used to portray the ‘out of school’ phenomenon for ethnic ...

Religion plays an important part in the lives of many immigrants. The second generation is assumed to have a higher level of integration into the host society and lower religious and ethnic identification. This assumption, however, views acculturation as an essentialist process producing common outcomes for all groups. Yet such an assumption needs to be tested with different ethnic groups. This chapter, therefore, explores the cases of second generation Pakistani and Indian immigrant youth in Hong Kong. The findings indicate that it is not possible to generalise across these groups. Indian youth seem to have acculturated with a lower sense of religious and ethnic identification. Pakistani youth, on the other hand, reported relatively strong religious affiliation and sense of belonging to their heritage culture. This suggests that acculturation is a more nuanced process than is often portrayed and is strongly context dependent, influenced by group values, commitments and practices.

This paper explored the impact of religious engagement (religious background, religious service attendance and religious activities participation) on adolescents’ civic and social values. Attitudes...

This book brings together the practice of reflective teaching and the knowledge of inclusive practices in the context of teacher education and continuing professional development. It is a call to leverage reflective teaching for inclusive practices. The first part of the book provides an overview of what constitutes reflective practice in the 21st century and how teachers can become reflective practitioners. It also discusses how teacher professional development can be enhanced for reflective teaching practice. The second part of the book deals with teachers' knowledge development in order to create inclusive teaching and learning environments. It highlights the need for a responsive teaching climate, intercultural competency, pedagogical change and professional literacy. A reflective inclusive teacher is likely to anticipate the multiple needs of diverse learners in pluralistic settings, thus ensuring student success. This book will enhance the efforts of teacher educators and teaching professionals in building a culture of reflective and inclusive teaching practice in the classroom.

An important feature of Hong Kong’s education reform over the past decade has been the articulation of the “no loser principle”. This policy statement was meant to signal that all students are valuable and will benefit from both basic and senior secondary education. Yet barriers remain for the 2.9% of students under the age of 15 who can be classified as ethnic minorities. Until the 2008 Racial Discrimination Ordinance (RDO), the educational needs of these students remained an invisible issue for the school system. This article examines the policy context in which Hong Kong schools have made provisions for ethnic minority students, and reviews classroom practices that operationalize these policies on a daily basis. In an interview study involving 32 teachers’ narratives of how they managed the cultural diversity of ethnic minority students in classrooms (Hue & Kennedy, 2012, 2013), it was reported that at the practical level, teachers struggle to meet the diverse needs of students and to conceptualize a new rationale for responding to cultural diversity. The implications of promoting ethnic minority education at the three levels of policy, practice and research are discussed.Un rasgo importante de las reformas educativas puesta en marcha en Hong Kong a lo largo de la última década ha sido el “principio del no perdedor”. Esta afirmación política estaba orientada a señalar que todos los alumnos son importantes y se beneficiarán de una educación básica y secundaria. Sin embargo, se mantiene una barrera para el 2,9% de alumnos menores de 15 años clasificados como pertenecientes a alguna minoría étnica. Hasta la Orden de Discriminación Racial (Racial Discrimination Ordinance, RDO) de 2008, las necesidades educativas de estos alumnos permanecían ocultas para el sistema educativo. Este artículo examina el contexto político en el que las escuelas de Hong Kong han aprobado medidas especiales para los alumnos de minorías étnicas, y revisa las prácticas de aula que a diario hacen operativas estas políticas. A través de un estudio de entrevistas que recogen los testimonios de 32 profesores sobre cómo abordan la diversidad cultural que representan los alumnos pertenecientes a minorías étnicas (Hue y Kennedy, 2012, 2013), se pude establecer que al nivel de la práctica, los profesores luchan por responder a las diversas necesidades de sus alumnos y encontrar los medios para atender a la diversidad cultural. Se discuten las implicaciones que tiene promover la educación de las minorías étnicas en los tres niveles: político, práctico e investigador.

Schools in Hong Kong are concerned about the growing enrolments of students with special educational needs (SEN) and how these students could be included in school guidance. This study examines teachers’ narratives of the inclusivity of school guidance. The study was qualitative, being a case study of a Hong Kong secondary school. School documents were collected for textual analysis and semi-structured interviews with 13 teachers were conducted, including nine guidance teachers and four other teachers who worked closely with these guidance teachers. Four dimensions for the inclusivity of school guidance were identified: the development of inclusive practices of guidance, the adoption of a proactive approach, the promotion of inclusive discipline, and the clear definition of the partnership between school guidance and professional organization offering specialised services for students with SEN. The study provides insights into contextual influences of Hong Kong education on school guidance and the develop...

Research on and with ethnic minority students is characterised by a growing international literature that privileges ‘liberal multiculturalism’ as a lens through which to understand their experiences, yet ethnic diversity is constructed and responded to in many societies that are not underpinned by liberal democratic values. In this paper we use Joppke's binary to show how researching ethnic minority students outside of a liberal democratic framework requires methodologies that enable researchers to see beyond the invisibility that is often attached to ethnic minorities. We show how invisibility (i.e. antidiscrimination) can also be further culturally constructed, confounding even more any broader multicultural project. We canvass four broad areas including the role of legally binding legislation that seeks to prohibit racism, the views of policymakers attempting to implement policy consistent with the legislation and the views of teachers about their roles in supporting ethnic minority students.

Many Hong Kong schools are concerned about the growing number of ethnic minority students. How they are supported and how the diversity of their pastoral needs is fulfilled become critical. This article examines teachers’, students’ and parents’ narratives of the cross‐cultural experience of ethnic minority students from India, Pakistan, Philippines, Nepal and Thailand, and the diversity of those students’ pastoral needs. The qualitative data were collected from interviews, through which the constructs of 32 teachers and 32 students from three secondary schools were explored. Four groups of focus‐group interviews were conducted, in which 15 parents were involved. This article argues that to implement the ethos of caring, it is not only necessary for the school to promote the intercultural sensitivity of all practitioners, but equally important to develop a connected school system where ethnic minority students and parents can be consistently supported in the subsystems of classroom, school and home.

This article examines how Hong Kong secondary school teachers define caring and the strategies they adopt for behaviour management. The influence of Taoism, emerging as a theme from the data, was prominent, as its principles were incorporated into the teachers’ knowledge of caring. The findings illuminate the influence of Taoism in local schools. Implications for the promotion of culturally responsive programmes of caring are drawn.

Many schools in Hong Kong are concerned with the growing number of enrolments of students from Mainland China. This article examines the immigrant students’ constructs of their cross-cultural identities. It reveals how these students experience a journey of transformation in language, culture and identity. Qualitative data were collected from unstructured interviews with 12 immigrant students from Mainland China from six secondary schools. Two cases which are representative of the sample are reported. The study showed the transformation of the cross-cultural identities of these students, in the process of which they adopted the new culture into their lives and made it their reality while they still strongly connected part of their identity to their Mainland Chinese background. Despite some negative experiences of adaptation, they adopted a meritocratic approach to making sense of their cross-cultural experience. It was used as a form of agency to overcome, or at least ameliorate, feelings of discriminatio...

Hong Kong secondary schools have difficulty in integrating guidance, or counselling, and discipline into schooling. In some schools, discipline is overdeveloped while guidance is underdeveloped. The positive aspect of the caring system is distorted as part of the provision of discipline. This article looks at the distinction between guidance and discipline, and deals with what relatively little is known about in current research, that is, how guidance and discipline function within a school organization. It uses the perspectives of interactionism and social constructionism to contrast the relationship between guidance and discipline in two Hong Kong secondary schools. It employs case study and qualitative methods for data collection. Data for the two schools show that the contextual and organizational factors have a profound impact on the connectedness between guidance and discipline at the three levels of whole school, department and classroom. Finally, the implications for their implementation and integ...

Discipline is a crucial aspect of teachers' and students' classroom lives. Hong Kong secondary teachers, as elsewhere, are concerned with students' misbehaviour. This article examines teachers' constructs of classroom discipline and strategies adopted for behaviour management. Qualitative data were collected by interviews and classroom observation. Sixty teachers were involved. Eighteen classrooms were observed. The influence of the three schools of classic Chinese philosophy, Confucianism, Taoism and Legalism, emerged as a main theme from the data. It was prominent as their key principles were incorporated into the teachers' personal system of classroom discipline. The findings illuminate the influence of Chinese culture in Hong Kong classrooms. Implications for the promotion of culturally responsive classrooms and the development of educational policies on pastoral care are drawn.