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Critical thinking (CT), as a form of higher-order thinking, is intended to help individuals form reasonable reflection and judgment to deal with increasingly severe employment situations. As the primary workforce in the labor market, undergraduates must possess a strong critical thinking disposition (CTD) to make better use of CT. Despite extensive research on components of CTD from the perspective of educational practices, there is limited emphasis on investigating the components and their relationships of CTD in the labor market and the impact of gender differences. Therefore, this study presented an analysis of 1535 Chinese undergraduates (Mage = 20.89; SD = 1.43) using the Employer-Employee-Supported Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory (2ES-CTDI), aiming to explore the CTD that undergraduates should possess before entering the labor market. The relationships among the components were examined using SmartPLS4.0 in conjunction with Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). Additionally, a multigroup analysis (PLS-MGA) with a measurement invariance (MI) test was conducted to validate the moderating effects of gender. The findings indicate that (a) self-efficacy has a significant negative effect on habitual truth-digging, and boys are more affected than girls, instant judgment plays a competitive partial mediating role in this relationship; (b) self-efficacy has a significant positive effect on instant judgment, and boys are more likely to make instant judgments than girls; (c) instant judgment significantly positively affects habitual truth-digging. These findings highlight the dynamic equilibrium among the internal components of CTD in the labor market and call for increased attention from educators to the importance of gender differences in the cultivation process.

This study explores the relationship between student teachers' beliefs and practices in early Chinese literacy instruction. Semi-structured interviews, classroom observation, and document analysis were conducted with six student teachers during their teaching practices. Findings indicated that the student teachers believed explicitly teaching literacy skills and imperceptible acquisition of literacy abilities through communication and meaning-making processes are essential in Chinese early literacy learning. However, they mainly taught Chinese literacy skills in their practices, which means the student teachers still needed to practice what they preached fully. The study suggests that possible reasons for the discrepancies include 'direct teaching' and 'rote learning' might be much easier for student teachers to design and conduct a lesson. Student teachers have limited abilities and experiences in conducting an ideal lesson, and the kindergarten curriculum and onsite supervisors highly influenced their teaching practices. The findings from this study suggested that more operational activities (such as designing lesson plans and conducting micro-teaching) should be used during pre-service training. Furthermore, the communication of educational beliefs between the university supervisor and the onsite supervisor should be strengthened.

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.

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.

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.

It has become increasingly clear that the early use of decomposition for addition is associated with later mathematical achievement. This study examined how younger children execute a base-10 decomposition strategy to solve complex arithmetic (e.g. two-digit addition). 24 addition problems in two modalities (WA: Written Arithmetic; OA: Oral Arithmetic) with sums less than 100 were administered to 22 Japanese and 22 Singaporean 6-year-old kindergarteners. Our findings reveal that they were able to solve complex addition. For instance, Japanese kindergarteners tended to solve complex arithmetic using base-10 decomposition across the modality, whereas Singaporean kindergarteners used standard algorithms and basic counting to solve complex WA and OA problems, respectively. We speculate that Japanese kindergarteners might have a clearer understanding of the base-10 concept and were able to use this knowledge more readily than Singaporean kindergarteners. Mathematical experiences in kindergarten and number-naming systems have been put forward as two of the crucial contributors for such cross-cultural differences. This study also provides new directions for future research on the understanding of the base-10 concept and its application among young children.

The study examined the factor structure, reliability and validity of a Chinese version of the Constructivist Learning Environment Survey (C-CLES), an instrument for assessing students’ perceptions of the extent of constructivist approaches prevalent in classrooms. A convenience sample of 967 students in Secondary Three (Grade 9) in Hong Kong participated in this study by completing a self-administered questionnaire in their class time. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses supported the hypothesised factor structure, indicating five theoretical constructivist environment dimensions that showed goodness-of-fit to 25 items: Personal Relevance, Uncertainty, Critical Voice, Shared Control, and Student Negotiation. Criterion-related validity, involving evidence based on relations to other variables, was assessed by correlations between the constructivist environment dimensions and cognitive strategies and academic ability. Most correlations were statistically significant and in the positive direction. The C-CLES with 25 items provides a useful measure for educational practice and research among school students.

This study examined responses from 508 full-time teachers working in inclusive schools in Macao (SAR). The intention was to understand the teachers’ perceptions about their roles and how they responded to inclusive practices in their school. Teachers’ perceived levels of emotional exhaustion and cognitive work engagement were assessed in relation to several professional competencies (self-efficacy with using inclusive instruction, collaborating with parents and paraprofessionals, and managing disruptive behaviours), as well as the organisational variable of role understanding. Regression analysis showed that teachers’ self-efficacy with using inclusive instruction was found to be the most powerful negative predictor of emotional exhaustion; while self-efficacy for managing disruptive behaviours was a positive predictor of teachers’ cognitive work engagement. Teachers’ level of understanding of their role and that of their schools was a negative predictor of emotional exhaustion and a positive predictor of cognitive work engagement. Moreover, it further confirmed that the concept of co-existence between work engagement and burnout can be applied to inclusive teachers. Results were interpreted in relation to management in inclusive schools in Macao and were followed by a discussion on the implications of enhancing inclusive education.

China’s return to social work education, after a nearly 35-year absence, opened the door for partnerships like the 2012 China Collaborative partnership between the Council on Social Work Education’s (CSWE) Katherine A. Kendall Institute, the China Association of Social Work Education (CASWE) and the International Association of Schools of Social Work (IASSW). The University of Alabama School of Social Work (UA SSW) was selected to participate in the collaborative and was connected to the Southwest China Region, specifically partnered with Yunnan University. This manuscript will share the strategies used to engage faculty and students from each partnering institution. Data collected by UA SSW over the five-year partnership will be utilised to contribute to the discussion of the extent to which Western knowledge and theory about social work education might usefully be applied to the Chinese context.

Despite the prevalence of aesthetic education as one of the main developmental objectives in curricular worldwide, the mainstream philosophical discourse on its definition is predominately framed by western philosophy due to a paucity of cross-cultural studies on the subject. The article aims to achieve a contemporary understanding of aesthetic education from both the Chinese and Western aesthetic perspectives. Through the lens of postmodernism, the relationship between Daoist aesthetics and the western postmodern aesthetic perspectives, particularly the Deleuzian concept of rhizome, is identified. Both aesthetic perspectives concern de-authorship and promote self-consciousness/self-awareness. The study reconceptualises the functions of aesthetic education with the Chinese aesthetic philosophy that promotes the nurture of better people through benevolence.

The following study reflects and explores the dynamics of aesthetic experiences within drama improvisations. This arts-based research was carried out in Hong Kong with six Cantonese children who were aged 3?5?years. Data were collected from the video transcripts of five workshops and the researcher?s own research journal. Two significant milieus were observed: switching in-between roles and intuitive creativity is not talkback. I argue that because each of these two milieus provide the foreground for the complex ? and at times contradictory ? nature of children?s aesthetic experiences where Deleuzian power is at play, opportunities arise for both, challenging the traditional adult?child power relations, and in so doing, educators can be able to reconfigure and reconceptualise teaching goals and practices, both generally and specifically, within the context of early childhood education.

This contribution to the special issue is an historical account of Paulo Freire’s pedagogical and administrative praxis before his forced exile in 1964. It relies on interviews collected during a field trip in 1976, a conversation with Paulo Freire in Geneva one year later and on the secondary literature up to date. Being the head of the first Extension Service of a major Brazilian university in the early 1960s gave Freire and his collaborators the space and time to experiment with the today world famous literacy method bearing his name. The concept of ‘Field of Cultural Production’ (Bourdieu) is used to elucidate better Freire and his team’s avant-gardist production within the spaces opened up by Brazil’s popular movements in the early sixties. The contribution shows how the ‘Paulo Freire System’ developed in the praxis of a cultural movement and received its academic consecration in an incremental and eclectic style.