Search

At the beginning of 2018, the Beijing government announced the state plan concerning The Greater Bay Area (GBA) integration of Guangdong Province, Hong Kong and Macau' ("Dawan district"). Since then, there have been numerous discussions among local governments, government departments, businesses and academics about this plan. With this call for "greater political and national assimilation", it is time for Hong Kong to review its position in the Greater Bay Area. What role can Hong Kong play? What are the pros and cons of this regional economic and social integration? This paper analyses and discusses the role of Hong Kong universities in the development of the Greater Bay Area from the perspective of educational sociology. It proposes that the social capital of Hong Kong universities for internationalization and integration should be the main driver behind the development of the innovative knowledge economy in the Greater Bay Area. This paper is the first paper to apply the "social capital" theory to identify the possible structural opportunities under the new political, economic and social agenda of developing and integrating the Greater Bay Area. This article also aims to provide a cutting-edge discussion calling for more comparative and international higher education studies about the pattern of internationalization and globalization in the context of Chinese convergence and divergence.

External accountability policies have spread fast across various educational systems over the past decades. This research examines the relations of internal and external accountability with students' math achievement drawing on PISA 2012. With a sample of 44 educational systems, of which external accountability policies were identified, the research conducted three-level hierarchical linear modelling (HLM) analyses. This research found that some internal accountability factors had tighter relations with math achievement, while the relations of external accountability policies with student performance were rather tenuous. However, equity of student math achievement was better ensured under strong accountability systems. The results suggest that policy makers of each country should consider strengths and weaknesses of external accountability in their own educational contexts.

It is believed that the effectiveness and efficiency of school administration can be enhanced in a privatized system of education. However, such belief is narrowly based on studies on school choice and such impact on the quality of teaching and learning. The issue of staff management in understanding school administration is essentially overlooked. Using Macao as a case study for illustration and drawing on data from a qualitative study, this paper seeks to argue that school administration against a specific context of privatization can actually contribute to the unprofessionalism of teachers. The study illustrates that staff management should not be merely taken at an individual level as an interpersonal issue about trust or a matter of conflict management, but should be understood against a wider context, and also shows that schools in a privatized system of education are not necessarily effective or efficient in managing their staff.

The purpose of the present study was to examine whether parents' utility value perceptions predicted their children's utility value perceptions, demonstrating social contagion effects. We also examined whether utility value would predict achievement. This is a cross-sectional study that utilized data from a subsample of adolescent students from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA 2015), which focused on science learning and achievement from 18 regions. We performed multi-level structural equation modeling to analyze the data. Results revealed that parents' utility value perceptions predicted students' utility value perceptions, which, in turn, predicted science achievement. The findings of this study provide evidence of the social contagion of utility value perceptions from parents to their children and the critical role of utility value in predicting achievement across various regions/countries. Our study highlights the crucial role parents play in adolescents' motivational and learning outcomes and suggest parental involvement in programs toward enhancing adolescents' motivation and achievement.

In language arts programs in the Greater China Region, textbooks are the primary materials used to teach children to read and write. Learning to read and write in Chinese is particularly challenging because elementary grade students are expected to learn, recognize, and write thousands of characters (the basic linguistic unit in Chinese). Recognizing Chinese characters or words made from a combination of characters provides access to word meanings, which in turn leads to comprehension of text. Likewise, production of Chinese characters and words are essential to writing a meaningful message or text for oneself or to share with others. The current study examined three language arts textbook series approved by the Hong Kong Education Bureau which are used by teachers in elementary schools in Macao, focusing on how character recognition and production (i.e., handwriting) are taught. Across the three textbooks, new characters are first presented in text and characters are taught as words along with their spelling in Pinyin. The total number of characters taught during the elementary grades, however, is less than the number commonly recommended. The number of instructional activities in student textbooks for promoting character recognition, handwriting, and the use of these skills in reading and writing, including reading comprehension, varied considerable across the three series as did the number of instructional recommendations provided to teachers for promoting these same outcomes. Recommendations for instruction and future research are provided.

In this study, we examined the teaching emphasis of the history of science (HOS) in science lesson plans. The examination was based on a five-dimensional framework, which comprises conceptual, procedural, epistemological, affectional, and social dimensions. Content analysis was employed as the research methodology, targeting 71 copies of science lesson plans receiving awards between 2006 and 2020 in Macao. Both qualitative and quantitative results of content analysis were obtained. Some categories of teaching emphasis were identified within each dimension. It was found that the conceptual, procedural, and affectional dimensions occupy more proportions while the epistemological and social dimensions less. Moreover, some differences between three science subjects (biology, chemistry, and physics) and between the junior and senior secondary schools were identified. In addition, the percentage of the conceptual teaching emphasis showed a remarkably decreasing trend while the other four showed varying degrees of upward trends over the past 15 years. The findings are discussed against the social background of Macao and three conclusions have been drawn: (1) the nature of science has been ignored when including HOS in science teaching, (2) subjects and educational levels could be variables that influence the inclusion of HOS in science teaching, and (3) the effect of science curriculum reform is positive on the implementation of HOS in practice. It is suggested that the concept of the teaching emphasis of HOS and the five-dimensional framework created in this study can be used in future research and practice.

A number of studies have found that teacher-student interaction plays a significant role in student learning and in the quality of teaching. A number of studies have found that teacher-student interaction plays a significant role in student learning and in the quality of teaching. However, studies of teacher-student interaction on art and design college students are missing. As a result, The purpose of the current study is to investigate the relationships among students' perceptions of instructor-student interactions, students' satisfaction, and students' achievement outcomes. The sample for the current study consisted of 104 second-year art and design students from five sections of an Introduction to Animation course in Macau. The present study found support for associations between specific teacher-student relationships, levels of student satisfaction and engagement, and academic performance. Based on a stepwise regression analysis, however, "strict" was the sole predictor of academic performance (with stricter teacher behavior leading to lower student performance), and only 8% of the variance in academic performance could be explained by our model. Limitations and suggestions were also discussed.

Success of ICT integration in the classrooms is, to a large part, accounted for by teachers' engagement with technologies. However, while many studies have identified the factors that affect teachers' decision to use technology, few have considered student perception as a likely influence. Increasingly, there is evidence in the literature to support a trend that recognizes student perception more explicitly in examining teachers' motivation in engaging technologies for instructional purposes. This study examined the role of student perception to understand why teachers decide to use technology in their teaching. Participants were 169 university students in Macau who responded to an open-ended question on what they thought were factors that motivated teachers to use technology in the classroom. Data were analyzed using a two-stage coding strategy. Results revealed nine possible themes to explain students' perceptions of the factors that acted as motivators for teachers' decision to use technologies in the classroom. Implications for theory and practice were discussed.

A great number of overseas students have studied medicine at Jinan University Medical School over the past decade. Statistics from the past ten years show that these students' test scores on diagnosis and medicine I & II are lower than those of their classmates from mainland China. To address the underlying causes of this phenomenon, we implemented a series of questionnaires for overseas and mainland Chinese medical students. The results indicate that there are no significant differences between overseas students and mainland Chinese students with regard to their attitude towards the study of medicine, their approval of the teaching and learning environments or their ability to improve their independent study capabilities at Jinan University Medical School; however, overseas students prefer to study at night and sleep later than their mainland Chinese classmates. One outstanding difference between these groups is that overseas students like to arrange their studies based on their interests, regardless of available time and subject contents, and this might lead them to perform poorly on examinations during their academic term at Jinan University Medical School. Overseas students might not have achieved scores as high as their Chinese classmates is that they do not completely focus on the content taught by teachers in class, which would later be assessed by exams at the end of each academic term. This observation is actually part of our medical educational concepts, especially in Chinese medical schools. Attention should be paid by both overseas students and medical schools to this discrepancy.

This research expanded the three-dimensional vocational identity status model proposed by Crocetti et al. (J Adolesc 31(2):207-222, 2008b, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adolescence.2007.09.002) to develop the Macao Vocational Identity Status Assessment (MVISA). The MVISA was then validated on two samples of 274 and 245 college students in Macao, China. The original in-depth exploration dimension was differentiated into inter- and intra-exploration, and the original reconsideration of commitment dimension was extended into self-doubt and flexibility. The MVISA exhibited solid psychometric characteristics and was able to identify the theoretical vocational identity statuses proposed by Marcia (J Pers Soc Psychol 3(5):551-558, 1966, https://doi.org/10.1037/h0023281), with the culturally meaningful variations being assessed using cluster analyses with differentiated constructs.

While it has been well noted that novice EFL teachers are subject to identity change when transitioning from pre-service to novice stage, the nuanced process of such change remains underexplored. Based on data gathered from four novice EFL teachers in Macau, this paper examines such process using the constructs of imagined identities and the social representation theory. Findings from a qualitative interpretive analysis revealed four distinctive trajectories of identity shifts, i.e., renegotiation, evolution, establishment, and sustainment. These findings suggest that novice EFL teachers' identity shift is not a linear transformation from imagined identities formed in the pre-service stage to practiced identities in the novice stage, but a dynamic process mediated by personal beliefs, prior learning experiences, teaching practice, and the institutional exam-oriented culture. These findings call for attention to the resilient power of imagined identities and the role of affiliating with imagined communities in novice teachers' construction of practiced identities and to how novice EFL teachers' identity transition can be better scaffolded.

An art curriculum is a composite of cultural expressions, the values and experiences that students and teachers bring with them into the classroom, and the social contexts of the learning environment (Kraehe, 2010). In developing art curricular materials, educators are encouraged to integrate a diversity of cultural perspectives. The contemporary art of Chi Hang Leong can be used as part of a multicultural art curriculum to explore the cultural perspectives associated with Chinese spirituality. In this instructional resource, educators and students will learn about Chinese spirituality, religions, and cultural beliefs through examining symbolism in illustrations of cultural practices, such as incense burning and the lion dance by artist Chi Hang Leong.

Both formative assessment and growth mindset scholars aim to understand how to enhance achievement. While research on formative assessment focuses on external teaching practices, work on growth mindset emphasises internal psychological processes. This study examined the interplay between three formative assessment strategies (i.e. sharing learning progressions, providing feedback, and instructional adjustments) and growth mindset in predicting reading achievement using the PISA2018 data. We focused specifically on samples from the West (the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) and the East (Mainland China, Hong Kong SAR, Macau SAR, Chinese Taipei, Japan and Korea) which comprised of 109,204 15-year old students. The results showed that formative assessment strategies were positively, albeit weakly, related to a growth mindset in the East, but not in the West. In contrast, growth mindset was positively related to reading achievement only in the West, but not in the East. The impacts of different formative assessment strategies on reading achievement demonstrated cross-cultural variability, but the strongest positive predictor was instructional adjustments. These findings highlight the potential synergy between formative assessment and growth mindset in enhancing academic achievement as well as the importance of cultural contexts in understanding their roles in student learning.

This study applied a three-step latent class analysis (LCA) approach to explore latent classes of learning strategy use and their moderation effects on the relationships between motivation and mathematics performance. The data of 15-year-old students from five East Asian educational systems related to Chinese culture in the Programme of International Student Assessment (PISA) in 2012 were analyzed. The findings indicated that Shanghai, Singapore, Taiwan, and Macau showed three latent classes of learning strategies, whereas Hong Kong had two latent classes. Most students in the five educational systems reported to use the control strategy, some students reported the use of combined learning strategies, and few students reported the use of memorization except for students in Shanghai. Furthermore, we found the moderation effects of learning strategy use on mathematics performance depended on the types of motivation and educational systems. This study provides insights into the advantages of a three-step LCA approach in educational research.

Research on the beliefs of pre-service and in-service English teachers at the primary, secondary, and tertiary levels has provided useful knowledge to teacher education curriculum designers. However, the beliefs of pre-service pre-primary English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers have not been addressed. Thus, a case study was conducted in one pre-primary education program at a public university in the Macau Special Administrative Region of China. Data was collected by providing participants (N = 63) a writing prompt aimed at gathering their beliefs about the teaching and learning of English in the pre-primary context. Qualitative content analysis was used to analyze these written reflection reports of third-year pre-service pre-primary English teachers with the aim of uncovering their beliefs about teaching and learning EFL. Results showed the participants held beliefs about classroom practice, EFL learners and learning, pedagogical knowledge, teaching, content, goals of language teaching, the role of teaching, subject, schooling, hearsay, self, learning to teach, and the teacher education program. Most participants mentioned their beliefs about classroom practice, EFL learners and learning, and pedagogical knowledge, while very few participants wrote about self, learning to teach, or the teacher education program. While many of the beliefs held by the participants were found to be substantiated by early childhood education research, some unfounded beliefs were also uncovered. The results highlighted a need for curriculum designers to reconsider the education program's ability to meet the needs of the pre-service teachers. Participants required additional training in English content knowledge, use as a medium of instruction, and pronunciation. The polarized view of teaching the mother tongue and EFL should be reconsidered in light of the current views on bilingualism and bilingual education.

Internalizing Western culture can facilitate English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) learners' motivation to learn and confidence to use English. However, the role of heritage cultural internalization and the interactive impact of Western and heritage cultural internalizations on English learning are unclear. We surveyed 172 EFL students from Macao and found that those who internalized Western culture to a greater extent indeed held more a positive view towards English learning and were more autonomous learners, which in turn predicted their confidence in using English. However, for those who internalized Western culture to a lesser extent, internalizing Chinese culture was also linked to positive attitudes and English use confidence. These findings suggest that a strong heritage cultural orientation is also important for EFL learners' English language development, especially among those do not embrace Western culture. This research suggests that language researchers and teachers should pay attention to learners' orientations towards not only the target culture but also their heritage culture.

This study addresses the link between overeducation and intention to migrate to the Greater Bay Area (GBA) cities in mainland China in a sample of Hong Kong's young adults employed in lower occupational classes (elementary occupations, plant and machine operators and assemblers, craft and related workers, and service and sales workers). The results indicate that overeducation has a unique negative effect on attitudes towards migration to GBA. The findings suggest that social capital theory rather than human capital theory is better able to explain the motivation of Hong Kong's young people to invest in higher education. This research may help policy makers review the expansion of higher education in Hong Kong and provide valuable policy implications for regional integration between Hong Kong and mainland China.

This study took 'context' as a focal point in the context-based approach and its investigation was anchored on an analytical framework, which is composed of three dimensions of context: origins, intentions, and occasions. Content analysis was employed as the research methodology with 878 contexts identified from 96 copies of awarded chemistry lesson plans being the analysis targets. The occurrence of context adopted in these chemistry lesson plans was analysed along the three dimensions, each of which comprises three sub-dimensions. For each dimension, content analysis focused on the proportion of three sub-dimensions, different proportions between junior and senior high schools, and the changing trends of the three sub-dimensions during the period from 2001 to 2020. As found in this study, discrepancies existed in the proportions of the sub-dimensions of origins, intentions, and occasions of context that were adopted by chemistry teachers, and some significant differences lay in chemistry teaching between junior and senior high schools. The findings are discussed against the social background in Macao, where this study took place. This study has provided several implications for the research and practice of the context-based approach in chemistry education and beyond.

While English as a medium of instruction (EMI) is becoming a widespread institutional practice across the world, how and by what strategies students whose first language is not English cope with EMI is under-represented. Drawing on data gathered through semi-structured interviews and reflective journals from 14 Mainland Chinese EMI learners in a Macau university, this study reports on the strategies used by students to cope with EMI learning. The findings yield empirical supports for the positive role of L1 in EMI learning. The findings call for a critical attention to the role of learner agency and contextual realities in shaping EMI learners' actual strategy use in contexts.

Classroom climate in seven Confucian Asian countries/systems was examined with respect to three dimensions: teachers' affective qualities, behavioural-classroom management style and cognitive-pedagogical approaches. The results based on PISA 2012 data showed that there were substantial variations in classroom climate across the seven Confucian countries/systems, with Shanghai and Singapore showing the most positive climate; Korea and Japan showing the least positive; and Hong Kong, Macao and Taipei being in-between. The latent profile analysis further revealed the existence of four classes: "Low Cognitive-Pedagogical Approaches" (Class 1), "The OECD Averages" (Class 2), "High Affective Qualities" (Class 3) and "High Cognitive-Pedagogical Approaches" (Class 4). While disciplinary climate was the strongest predictor of students' mathematics performance, consistently across all countries/system, Class 3 characterised by high affective qualities showed the highest mathematics performance. The findings suggest that both discipline and teacher support are the important and meaningful dimensions of classroom climate for Confucian Asian students.

It is important to identify suitable parameters to measure and assess the quality of physical education. This paper aims to understand such measuring tool by focusing on professional perceptions and areas of concern of quality physical education (QPE). The research survey includes data gathered from 799 professionals in 11 cities in Asia. These professionals had experience working at primary schools (n = 155), secondary schools (n = 249), and universities (n = 395). To examine professional perceptions of quality physical education, at the preliminary stage of this study, 65 potential items were identified; of these, 48 items on 8 dimensions were retained, following an exploratory factor analysis. The 8 dimensions covered "skill development and bodily awareness" ([alpha] =0.935), "facilities and norms in PE" ([alpha] =0.932), "quality teaching of PE" ([alpha] =0.923), "plans for feasibility and accessibility of PE" ([alpha] =0.824), "social norms and cultural practice" ([alpha] =0.825), "governmental input for PE" ([alpha] =0.859), "cognitive skills development" ([alpha] =0.920), and "habituated behaviour in physical activities" ([alpha] =0.933). These factors indicated excellent internal consistency and model fit, enabling the construction of highly relevant statements to measure professional perceptions of QPE.

While the role of professional commitment in retaining early career teachers has been widely acknowledged in the literature, few studies have examined the commitment change of early career teachers over time. Informed by a developmental perspective, this study explores three early career English teachers' commitment change across the teacher education programme, the practicum, the first year, and the second year in teaching. Drawing on data from in-depth individual life history interviews, this study reveals how the participants' commitment shifted among four commitment levels, i.e., committed passionate, committed compromiser, undecided, and uncommitted. The findings also show that such commitment change over time is an ongoing interaction between individual's self-efficacy, outcome expectation and the professional autonomy and social support afforded by institutional contexts. These findings call for a need to take teacher commitment as a multidimensional construct and to how early career teachers' commitment to teaching could be promoted over time.

According to the findings of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2015 Well-being Study, Taiwan's school learning environment, in terms of teen bullying, is more harmonious than that of Macao's. This study seeks to identify pertinent risk and protective factors discriminating between the low-achieving students who are frequently bullied and those who are not. Respectively for Macao and Taiwan, personal and low-achieving-related student characteristics, alongside the potential risk and protective factors of teen bullying, are predictor variables in the multilevel logistic regression analyses. The findings show that "teacher unfairness" is a risk factor whereas "sense of school belonging" and "disciplinary climate" are protective factors of the victims who are frequently bullied. The significant effect size of the risk and protective factors found indicates that Macao can learn from Taiwan so as to scale down the prevalence of teen bullying in schools.

Recent studies indicate that the academic and social integration of overseas students in the destination country often plays a major role in their academic performance, employability outcomes and integration into the wider community. This study investigates these issues in more depth from the perspective of overseas Chinese in the Southwest UK, aiming to improve understanding of their academic, well-being and sociocultural adaptation. The results indicate that academic and social integration continue to hold a strong positive correlation as previously indicated. Other factors and barriers against integration are addressed and policies are suggested to promote integration not only within the university but also the wider community.

Asian culture has been test-centric for over 1,400 years. U.S. education has been since the 1990s. Based on Kim's creative Climates, Attitudes, and Thinking skills (CATs), creativity indicators were developed using the 2015 PISA questionnaires. Study I examined: (1) relationships between students' PISA science scores and CATs; (2) differences between Asian and U.S. students in PISA scores and CATs; and (3) relationships between teachers' years of teaching and nurturing CATs. Study I found: (1) negative relationships between students' PISA scores and CATs; (2) Asian students demonstrating higher PISA scores but lower CATs than U.S. students; and (3) U.S. teachers decreasingly nurture CATs. Study II examined how U.S. CATs changed from 1990 through 2017 by analyzing TTCT norming data (N = 273,441) and found continued declines in CATs, especially in imagination and in young children.

This case study examines postgraduate students' practices, sources of knowledge, and difficulties and challenges in regard to providing genre-based peer feedback on their peers' academic writing at a research-oriented university in Macau. The analysis of multiple sources of data including the students' written feedback on their peers' thesis drafts, the thesis drafts, semi-structured interviews and stimulated recalls revealed that while the participants were able to provide genre-based feedback, most of the feedback focused on the linguistic features, content and organisation of the theses, and helped the students meet the institutional requirements of what constitutes a thesis. The study also found that the participants perceived giving genre-based peer feedback to be difficult and challenging. Their difficulties stemmed from a lack of specific knowledge about the thesis genre, their concerns about their own linguistic proficiency, their concerns about the usefulness and correctness of their feedback, and the effects their criticism would have on the writers' feelings and emotions.

The COVID-19 pandemic launched the use of online courses in Chinese medical schools during February 2020. To evaluate the state of gross anatomy education in China during the pandemic, a nationwide survey was conducted through convenience sampling by email or respondent invitations on social media. A total of 359 questionnaires were received from the respondents. The first response from a given school was included in the study to represent that school, thus, 77 questionnaires were used for analyses. Schools represented were from all provinces in mainland China as well as Hong Kong and Macao. The survey found that before the pandemic, 74.0% and 33.8% of the 77 schools conducted online theoretical and practical sessions, respectively, on gross anatomy, and 36 (46.8% of 77) had temporarily suspended practical sessions at the time the survey was conducted. Body donation programs were also affected with 26.0% and 27.3% of the 77 schools having suspended donation programs or saw a decreased number of donations. During the pandemic, 40.3% of the 77 schools kept or initiated the implementation of active learning, and online assessment was continued in 49.4% of the 77 medical schools. Another 26 (33.8%) schools initiated online assessment during the pandemic. A total of 359 answers were included for the analysis of the "teachers' perception of the online teaching experience." Over half (51.0%) of the 359 responded teachers were very satisfied or satisfied with the effectiveness of online teaching during the pandemic. A total of 36.2% of these respondents preferred to implement online teaching of theoretical sessions after the pandemic, and 89 (24.8%) teachers were keen to return to traditional face-to-face anatomy education.

The present study aims to delineate the effects of family violence and parent-adolescent conflict on antisocial behavior exhibited by adolescents in the Chinese casino city of Macau. The social interaction perspective indicates the significance of coercive family processes in relation to adolescents' antisocial behavior, and the related moderating role of positive parenting behavior. How this process is experienced by Chinese Macau adolescents, who are influenced by traditional Chinese culture, is explored. This article examines the relationship of family violence and parent-adolescent conflict with adolescents' antisocial behavior in Macau. It also examines the possible moderating role of parental support in this relationship. Using a stratified proportional approach, a random sample of 1889 Grade 7 to Grade 12 students was taken from Macau high schools. The young people reported their neutral/positive behavior and delinquent behavior, family conflict, and emotional and instrumental support they received from parents. Multiple regression analyses suggest that family violence and parent-adolescent conflict are correlated with adolescent antisocial behavior. Moreover, both instrumental and emotional support from parents can moderate the effect of family conflict on adolescents' antisocial behavior. Parents providing instrumental and emotional support to Macau Chinese adolescents is negatively correlated with adolescent antisocial behavior in Macau. In view of the long and unstable working hours of parents working in a gambling city, social workers in Macau could develop more innovative programs to support parents in Macau.

With the globalization of higher education, the tertiary institutions in Macao have adopted English as the main medium of instruction in order to strengthen their competitiveness, having attracted a large number of Mainland Chinese students. However, little has been known about their experiences and perceptions of English use in Macao, especially in English-medium universities. In this regard, this paper takes an integrated approach of language survey and interviews, examining how Mainland Chinese students use English in different settings and perceive their English use in Macao by looking into the students studying at the University of Macau. It is found that Mainland Chinese students use English mainly in the academic-related settings inside campus, yet rarely use English in non-academic-related settings. Also, English is infrequently used due to the dominant use of Putonghua. Moreover, the paper discusses the implications for how English-medium programmes help improve Mainland Chinese students' English learning and use, along with the practical suggestions for the universities and Macao government.

This research investigates whether the flipped classroom can lead students to increased gains on learning outcomes in 2 ESL/EFL contexts in Macau, China, and the US. A pretest posttest quasi-experimental mixed-methods design (N = 64) was used to determine any differences in student achievement that might be associated with the flipped approach (FA). The effectiveness of the FA on students' achievement with grammar-student learning outcomes was evaluated with a pretest and posttest grammar test, along with students' perceptions of their increased comfort and confidence using English grammar through a grammar survey. These data were triangulated with student focus groups and means of completed grammar assignments. The findings suggest that although both the control and experimental groups showed increased comfort in the self-report data, gains on actual achievement were significant only for the experimental groups. The researchers of this study make recommendations for a flipped curriculum and materials design for ESL/EFL teachers in any context globally.

Recently there has been an increase in the number of students learning Mandarin Chinese (in mainland China and internationally). This increase has led to speculation that Mandarin Chinese is becoming a mainstream global language to the point of becoming a "lingua franca." This paper utilizes research findings from different regions and focal points and argues that Mandarin Chinese could be accepted as a "lingua franca" within some contexts, but is unlikely to do so in others. It argues that Mandarin Chinese is generally accepted as the "lingua franca" of China and a possible "lingua franca" within the East Asian region, while unlikely to become a "lingua franca" globally. The paper compares a number of different reasons for studying Mandarin Chinese by different stakeholders (i.e. governments, school boards, individual students) as well as comparative numbers of language learners. This paper also examines if Mandarin is the dominant and undisputed form of global Chinese. It concludes by demonstrating that there is a greater need for further research into Mandarin Chinese as a "lingua franca."

I am a Chinese-Australian musician-educator of over three decades. In this autoethnography, I act as an agent of change by presenting my life as a social project. This assists understanding of a larger relational, communal and political world that moves us to critical engagement, social action and change. Evolutionary psychology asserts that language has evolved from the use of music. Empirical research maintains that children who start learning music early become better learners of languages. Music psychologists argue that music education is crucial in identity construction. Being a multi-lingual, multi-instrumental, and multi-occupational individual, I consider myself primarily a musician. My various identities in music as pianist-accompanist, singer, choral conductor, composer, and dance instructor informed and shaped my other identities as psychotherapist, interpreter-translator, author, teacher and academic researcher. The findings of this study suggest that formal/informal musical engagement fosters executive brain functions that determine my learning outcomes. My research contributes to the national debate about the benefits of music in education. It addresses a research gap identified about the effect of musical engagement on identity formation, and learning in other curriculum areas. The findings can assist music advocacy and provide insight to the preparation of future educators for multicultural Australia.

In large-scale assessments, performance differences across different groups are regularly found. These group differences (e.g., gender differences) are often relevant for educational policy decisions and measures. However, the formation of these group differences usually remains unclear. We propose an approach for investigating this formation by considering behavioral process measures as mediating variables between group membership and performance on the 2012 Programme for International Student Assessment complex-problem solving (CPS) items. We found that across all investigated countries interactive behavior can fully explain gender differences in CPS, but cannot explain differences between students with and without a migration background. However, in some countries these results differ from the cross-country results. Our results indicate that process measures derived from log data are useful for further investigating and explaining performance differences between girls and boys and students with and without migration background.

Tangible objects are devices that connect physical objects and digital worlds through tangible user interfaces. With the availability of tangible objects in the market, teacher education courses should be updated to provide opportunities for pre-service teachers to engage in digital environments; by these means, they can make more informed decisions about their teaching. This paper explores the views of pre-service teachers regarding the use of tangible objects to facilitate early childhood learning, from within the framework of the theory of planned behaviour. The participants were teacher candidates specialising in early childhood education in a teacher-education programme in Macau. Various tangible objects in the market were presented to them and they were invited to design a lesson with them. After their implementation in a real classroom, the candidates' views on the value of and problems attending the use of tangible objects; these data were collected through open-ended questions. Content analysis was conducted to elucidate their views. The teacher candidates seemed to appreciate this modality but, at the same time, expressed concern regarding the new challenges of using tangible objects in their classroom.

Education for learners with special education needs has become one of the major concerns of education policies in every corner of the world. In Macau, however, the transformation of schools into inclusive environments is reported to be slow because many teachers in Macau have not accepted the key values of inclusive education and possess little knowledge of their responsibilities as inclusive education teachers. Despite being nonempirical, the aim of this article is twofold: to inform inclusive education teachers, especially those in Macau and other developing regions, of the necessary knowledge, skills and strategies of working collaboratively with parents of children with SEN and provide policy makers concerned with practical ideas of designing effective professional development programmes for teachers working in the inclusive environment. The ultimate aim is to ensure that children with SEN benefit from an education process that includes quality learning opportunities.

Academic libraries in Macao, China, began to use the term "information literacy" and to offer information literacy programs approximately three years ago. At the University of Macau, information literacy is considered important to help the honors students become junior researchers. Using the Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education as the teaching guide, the University of Macau Library offered one-time research workshops to second-year honors students in 2017 and 2018. The challenges included the variety of subjects studied by the honors students, a lack of understanding of the students' information literacy skills prior to the workshop, and limited opportunities to examine the long-term learning impact. The workshop convinced the students of the importance of information literacy. Raising awareness of the importance of information literacy to the students and educators campus wide, offering workshops to one or two disciplines, and forming a university library team to create and implement a compulsory information literacy exam are recommended.

This study investigates self-reported attitudes about technology-enhanced language learning in the flipped classroom across borders in three tertiary-level contexts. As a method to address students' needs for twenty-first century education, the flipped classroom pedagogical approach was chosen to explore student attitudes towards technology for language learning in credit-bearing language courses in USA and Macau and non-credit-bearing courses in Colombia. This study implemented an experimental design with a mixed methods approach for data collection. Data was collected from a technology survey, focus group sessions, and reflective essays. Before each class, students in the experimental groups in all three countries previewed lessons and engaged in activities through online videos and screencasts in order to better prepare for in class activities. Results showed that the USA experimental group showed a statistically significant difference in all self-reported attitudes in using technology for language learning overtime. Between groups statistical analyses found flipped classrooms experienced a statistically significant different change in self-reported attitudes on instrumentality, digital literacy, and anxiety. Overall, students in the USA and Columbian contexts may have less anxiety about using technology for language learning in a flipped classroom, and the flipped classroom may positively impact students' attitudes towards technology in Columbia, Macau, and USA.

Inquiry-based science instruction is widely advocated, but studies based on international large-scale assessments often show inquiry to be negatively associated with achievement. We re-examine this issue by examining whether the association between inquiry and learning depends upon the provision of teacher guidance. Participants were 151,721 students from 5089 schools from 10 highest and 10 lowest science performers in PISA 2015. Multi-group confirmatory factor analyses found that measurement invariance cannot be established, suggesting substantial regional variation in the pattern of inquiry-based instruction. Nonetheless, exploratory factor analyses indicated that at the conceptual level, many regions exhibit a pattern which contrasted between 'Guided inquiry' and 'Independent inquiry'. Results of structural equation modelling showed that inquiry is positively associated with outcomes when it incorporates teacher guidance, and negatively when it doesn't. However, the strength of the positive associations is stronger in regions where guided inquiry is measured with fewer items referring to student-centred activities. These findings are in line with current theories regarding the importance of scaffolding in learning from inquiry. This study suggests that it would be misguided to use PISA findings to support arguments to scale back inquiry and other constructivist approaches to teaching science.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to contribute to a better understanding of the international mobility of mainland students in special administrative regions of China and in places outside China. Design/methodology/approach: There have been studies using the framework of push-pull and reverse push-pull factors to explore the movement of mainland students to North America, Australia, Singapore and Hong Kong. This study follows up by exploring such research directions in Macau, which is another special administrative region of China. Different from previous studies, the sample of this study came specifically from 130 students enrolling in teacher education undergraduate programs in Macau. Findings: In this study, using data collected from questionnaires and interviews, the factors affecting mainland student teachers' choice of Macau as a place for their undergraduate studies are examined. Other related issues such as the challenges these students face and their intentions after their graduation are also studied. Originality/value: The data collected for this study were primary and original, drawing specifically from students enrolling teacher education programs. Following the various studies on the global movement of mainland students, this study aimed at understanding mainland students' mobility pattern in one of China's special administration regions, Macau. In this regard, cultural identity and cultural factors were considered on top of other factors.

The present study aimed to investigate factors predicting inquiry-based teaching in science across One Belt One Road countries and regions (OBOR economies). Teacher-level (N = 8,603) and school-level (N = 1,385) data were drawn from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2015. Hierarchical linear modeling was adopted for data analysis. The results showed at the teacher level that teacher collaboration was positively correlated with inquiry-based teaching in OBOR economies, and that teacher beliefs were positively associated with inquiry-based teaching in each sample. At the school level, no consistent result was found among OBOR economies. School location was positively related to inquiry-based teaching in the Dominican Republic, Macao, and the United Arab Emirates. By contrast, science-specific resources showed a negative association with inquiry-based teaching in Taiwan, the Czech Republic, and Macao. Other specific findings were presented and the implications of all findings were discussed.

This study examined learning strategy use in mathematics among East Asian students in East Asian educational systems. By employing latent class analysis on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2012 data, we found four classes of learning strategy types, namely memorization with metacognitive strategies (17.49%), metacognitive strategies with memorization (50.70%), elaboration only (10.33%), and metacognitive strategies with elaboration (16.47%). The results showed that the majority of the students in all seven East Asian educational systems belonged to the 'metacognitive strategies with memorization' class, and most students adopted more than one type of learning strategy when learning mathematics. Additionally, students who reported the use of metacognitive strategies along with either memorization or elaboration showed higher mathematics achievement. We conclude that the cognitive processes employed by students of East Asian backgrounds are more complex and nuanced than the previous perception that they relied heavily on memorization.

This study investigated the relationship among gender, sibling constellation, age, and young children's creativity performance in the Fluency, Imagination, Originality dimensions of creativity, as well as the developmental trajectory of their creativity performance. In total, 493 young children took the Torrance's Thinking Creatively in Action and Movement tests (TCAM), Chinese version -- Taiwan. Statistical results of independent samples t-tests and correlational analyses showed that amongst gender, sibling constellation, and age, the predictive power on the three dimensions of creativity in TCAM all increased with age, regardless of gender and sibling constellation. More specifically, across age, boys performed better than girls in all three dimensions while children without siblings were more creative than those with siblings in Fluency and Originality, but not in Imagination. Regression analyses results confirmed that taking gender and sibling constellation into consideration, the developmental trajectory of these age 4 to 8 children had an overall upward trend in all three dimensions; yet, there was a period of stagnation and even a gentle decrement for boys' and girls' Originality between age 5 and 7. Possible social and environmental factors such as curriculum and pedagogy changes these children experienced during ages 5 to 7 were discussed.