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Macau, Macau Business, MAG, MB, MB Featured, Opinion | As Macau strives to revive its post-pandemic economy and to reinject life into its ailing society, calls for investment in human capital resurface, alongside endless mantras of economic diversification which, for years, seem to have fallen on deaf ears, and together with plans for further infrastructure development and construction which have already turned Macau into a concrete jungle.

This chapter describes how intellectual capital comprising human capital, structural capital, and relational capital are being created for school development and quality assurance in Macau. Macau has aimed to catch up with the global education reform by subsidising majorities of the non-tertiary sectors and promulgating Decree Laws regarding education policies and development. Despite the significance of the intangible assets of the intellectual capital, the chapter also attempts to analyse the issues and challenges towards the management of intellectual capital emerging simultaneously in the transition process in the educational context of Macau. It suggests capitalising on the accumulated school knowledge for school effectiveness. This chapter depicts the chronological development of Macau's education reform by analysing how Macau has attempted to emancipate its education institutions from the period of quasi-closed system to that of the open system by creating different types of intellectual capital in school. It discusses the emerging issues and challenges simultaneously in the transition process of educational development in Macau, namely before and after returning its sovereignty to the Chinese government.

The objective of this case study is to analyze how two groups of parents, a group who have newly arrived in Macau from Mainland China and the other who have resided in Macau for more than three decades, interact with the class teachers at the levels of ?two-way communication,? ?supervision of children at home,? and ?participating in decision making? in a secondary school. The findings will redound to the benefits of school leaders, teachers, and indirectly the parents in a sense that looking closely at the ethnic and cultural differences between parents can promote effective cooperation between parents and teachers.

The aim of this study was to explore home–school collaboration in the areas of assessment, placement, and Individual Education Plan (IEP) development for children identified with disabilities or special educational needs (SEN) in Macao. Despite the noted benefits of parent–school partnerships from prior research, minimal research has been conducted from the perspective of parents of children with SEN to examine whether these partnerships materialize in the context of Macao. Participants included 115 parents of school-aged children diagnosed with SEN. They provided demographic information and completed a 36-item questionnaire derived from two validated instruments. The research identified a range of factors which hinder parental involvement in decision-making and in the inclusion of children with SEN in optimal ways in Macao schools. Parents indicated they were not receiving relevant information and assessment feedback from the teachers; they were minimally involved in the IEP process, and their children were not receiving one-to-one support, regardless of the type of placement. Parents also underlined issues related to the timing of assessment procedures. Parents of children attending special classes in regular schools voiced more satisfaction with support provision than parents of children following the full inclusion model. Recommendations about how services could be improved for greater parental involvement are discussed. Key Words: parental involvement, school–family collaboration, inclusion, special educational needs, Macao, Individual Education Plans, IEP

Macau, Macau Business, MAG, MB, MB Featured, Opinion | Here we are, at the start of a new academic year in Macau’s higher education (HE). What will students learn? What kind of people are the institutions turning out? For example, look at the thousands of students studying business and technology in Macau, the big recruiters in HE.

Macau, Macau Business, MAG, MB, MB Featured, Opinion | Macau should be proud of its protective handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, as it has managed to contain its spread, and many of its citizens have been able to lead a more normal life than in other parts of the world. We should be grateful for this.

Macau, Macau Business, MAG, MB, MB Featured, Opinion | Here we are, back in full-throttle summer tourism in tiny Macau, with visitors galore, lines of tourist coaches everywhere, and the casinos back on course to welcome gamblers. However, gambling reaches much wider than Macau’s casinos.

Secondary schools do not have the same technical resources and capabilities as universities. They usually need to rely on ready-to-use tools to fulfill their information and communication technology (ICT) structure. Social networking site (SNS) has emerged as a practical solution to this need. However, few have collected empirical data on the application of SNS in a secondary school setting. This paper probes into the current condition of SNS usage among secondary school students using a sample of 851 students in Macau, a Special Administrative Region (SAR) of China. Data in terms of access, profile and activities are collected. The activities on SNSs are analyzed by regression techniques to produce a prediction model relating perceived academic benefit and SNS activities. The model yields a strong positive relationship between that benefit and activities such as raising questions and engaging in study-related discussions. The model also yields a weak dependency on activities such as searching for information and entertainment. The paper also evaluates the actual academic utilization of a Facebook Group for one class of secondary school students for a period of one year. At the end of the year, various opinion parameters are measured, and improvements are observed in most parameters.

The research explores the perceptions of five secondary school students with special education needs (SEN) about their participation in learning, group membership, and agency within an inclusive school in Macau SAR. This goal is achieved by using students' voices documented in open-ended interviews and is underpinned by the conceptual framework of heutagogy. The aim is to shed light on students' perceptions on school effectiveness in supporting their needs through successful participation and agentic possibilities. Findings showed that students were more prone to social rejection and being isolated or bullied than their peers. They were struggling to feel included or participate, their needs were only partially being met, and they had few opportunities to exert influence on their educational trajectories. Recommendations are provided to assist educators and schools in enhancing students with SEN to connect to the learning process and community, with the provision of appropriate learning adjustments and more active approaches to ensure their acceptance by mainstream students, including the formation of coaching peers to assist in developing social and academic skills under teacher's scaffolding practices. This study highlights the contribution of the heutagogical perspective to advance research on the participation and agency of students with SEN in mainstream schools.

Macau, Macau Business, MAG, MB, MB Featured, Opinion | Macau used to be very appealing to expatriates from across the world. Its low tax rate (and zero tax for low-paid expatriates), blends of cultures, business opportunities, life style, history, unique features and a host of other attractions fuelled an ongoing supply of foreign nationals to this small, unusual city. It is an interestingly idiosyncratic place in which to live. For many expatriates, Macau has been home, in many cases reaching back more than one generation. This is perhaps unsurprising, as people here are typically exquisitely polite, a delight to be with, and very accepting. Its acceptance of differences in values is an example to countries across the world. Macau is a safe place to live.

This paper aims to report a case study of exploring the effect of ?assessment for learning? on improving student learning and facilitating teachers? professional development in the examination-oriented context of Hong Kong. By adopting Variation Theory of the Lesson Study approach, data were collected through pre- and post-tests, interviews with students and teacher participants and observation field-notes in order to help diagnose students? learning difficulties and provide evidence for teachers to refine their teaching strategies to enhance students? learning effectiveness. The students? improvement in learning performance informed the teacher participants of the usefulness of ?assessment for learning? in the classroom.