Effect of sport education on students’ perceived physical literacy,motivation, and physical activity levels in university required physical education: a cluster-randomized trial

Higher Education - Originating from the field of physical education, physical literacy is an individual disposition that accentuates the importance of lifelong physical activity. Sport education is...     

Designing STEAM Education: Fostering Relationality through Design‐Led Disruption

A significant contention underpinning the commentary around STEM / STEAM is the evidence of discipline hierarchies, and inherent binary perspectives and/or biases that lend themselves to privileging one or more disciplines over another in an interdisciplinary education context. The current focus on increasing engagement with STEM in Australian schools provides opportunities to explore how the creative and liberal arts, and arts‐based approaches to teaching and learning are being adopted to significantly enhance teaching and learning outcomes in and for STEM education. This article examines how design for a STEAM education programme evolves and is adopted in an Australian context. Tasmania represents one of the most vibrant creative communities in Australia. At the same time it has one of the lowest levels of educational attainment. Entrenched teaching habits and disciplinary hierarchies often create significant barriers to the implementation of STEAM despite genuine goodwill and enthusiasm for STEAM among teachers and within schools. This article argues that, despite the contrasting dynamics extant in the Tasmanian educational context, it is here that some of the nation’s most curious and exciting examples of STEAM teaching and learning have emerged. It offers an example of an innovative learning project and proposes the means by which these disciplinary strands have been effectively entwined.     

Capacity building for school development: current problems and future challenges

This article offers a theoretical discussion on the current problems and future challenges of school capacity building in early childhood education (ECE), aiming to highlight some key areas for future research. In recent years, there has been a notable policy shift from monitoring quality through inspection to improving quality through school capacity building in early childhood institutions in the global discourse for quality. Reflecting this policy shift and its implications on school development, ECE in Hong Kong is used as an illustrative example to deliberate the issues of school capacity building in Chinese educational contexts. We identify three challenging contexts: (1) low professional qualification and minimal teacher education resulting in a deficit approach to processional development, (2) absence of school-based professional learning culture for empowering teachers as internal agents of change, and (3) hierarchical culture within a school and between university and school hindering the process of school capacity building. Corresponding to these challenges, we aim to propose two suggestions, including (1) empowering teachers in ECE through school-based professional learning community and (2) promoting authentic external support in the process of university–school collaboration. Finally, we further propose specific directions for future research on school capacity building in ECE in Hong Kong. In doing so, it will contribute to knowledge-based development in school capacity building in Chinese educational contexts.     

Training in phonological strategies improves Chinese dyslexic children’s character reading skills

This study investigated Chinese dyslexic children’s efficiency in employing phonological strategies (i.e. the use of orthography-phonology correspondence rules) in reading and the effectiveness of training phonological strategies in improving Chinese dyslexic children’s reading performance. An Experimental Group of 15 Chinese dyslexic children received a five-day intensive training in phonological strategies while a comparable Control Group did not. The results showed that Chinese dyslexic children did not use the phonological strategies as efficiently as Chinese average readers, and the training programme was effective in significantly improving the Experimental Group’s reading performance. This suggests that Chinese dyslexic children can benefit from training in phonological strategies.     

The impact of a dialogic reading program on deaf and hard-of-hearing kindergarten and early primary school-aged students in Hong Kong

The present study investigated the effects of a special interactive dialogic reading method developed by Whitehurst et al. (1988) on deaf and hard-of-hearing children in Hong Kong. Twenty-eight deaf and hard-of-hearing children in kindergarten, first, or second grade were pretested on a receptive vocabulary test and assigned to one of three conditions, dialogic reading, typical reading, and control, with age and degree of hearing loss matched. After an 8-week intervention, the children were re-tested. The dialogic reading group had a significantly greater improvement in vocabulary scores than did the other two groups. Parent-child interactions of high quality and the use of pictorial materials are likely the key successful factors in the program. The educational value of this intervention is discussed.     

The role of socioeconomic status in Chinese word reading and writing among Chinese kindergarten children

Reading and Writing - The number of Chinese children living in poverty has risen steadily in Hong Kong, China. However, little is known on the longitudinal effects of family socioeconomic status...     

Individual to collaborative: guided group work and the role of teachers in junior secondary science classrooms

This paper, through discussion of a teaching intervention at two secondary schools in Hong Kong, demonstrates the learning advancement brought about by group work and dissects the facilitating role of teachers in collaborative discussions. One-hundred and fifty-two Secondary Two (Grade 8) students were divided into three pedagogical groups, namely ‘whole-class teaching’, ‘self-directed group work’ and ‘teacher-supported group work’ groups, and engaged in peer-review, team debate, group presentation and reflection tasks related to a junior secondary science topic (i.e. current electricity). Pre- and post-tests were performed to evaluate students’ scientific conceptions, alongside collected written responses and audio-recorded discussions. The results indicate that students achieved greater cognitive growth when they engaged in cooperative learning activities, the interactive and multi-sided argumentative nature of which is considered to apply particularly well to science education and Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development framework. Group work learning is also found to be most effective when teachers play a role in navigating students during the joint construction of conceptual knowledge.     

Angry Anglos and aspirational Asians: everyday multiculturalism in the selective school system in Sydney

ABSTRACT

‘Asian whiz kids’ perfect test scores.’ ‘Selective schools and tiger parents.’ These types of headlines highlight the increased visibility of academically successful students from Asian migrant backgrounds, in Australia and other Western countries. They also point to anxiety about the perceived aggressive ‘tiger’ parenting often associated with Asian academic success. This paper focuses on the forms of everyday multiculturalism found in and around high-performing selective schools and classes in Sydney, Australia, almost all of which are dominated by Asian-Australian students. Drawing on interviews with parents and students from Anglo- and Asian-Australian backgrounds, it documents the different positionalities adopted by participants within these culturally diverse settings, including anger, aspiration and cosmopolitanism. This potentially volatile combination of approaches to diversity reveals some of the social consequences of neoliberal migration and education policies.