This study followed 88 children in Beijing and Hong Kong for three years to investigate the relationships between the early teaching of literacy skills and later literacy outcomes. The children were administered the Preschool and Primary Chinese Literacy Scale at the age of five years, and three years later. Their parents and teachers reported on their involvement in literacy teaching, the home/classroom literacy environment and their beliefs about language learning. Findings showed that the Hong Kong cohort significantly surpassed their Beijing counterparts in literacy attainments at age five and age eight. After controlling for age, site, maternal education and teacher qualification, formal literacy activities in early childhood significantly contributed to literacy attainment at primary school, whereas informal literacy experiences did not. Results suggest that the complicated nature of Chinese orthography may make early instruction particularly valuable in Chinese literacy acquisition. The psycholinguistic, pedagogical and sociocontextual accounts and implications of these findings are discussed.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

Photography is increasingly used in research with children and as a learning tool in early childhood classrooms. However, very few studies have examined how young children encounter and experience the use of cameras. This paper describes a project conducted over a three-month period in which a class of 31 five-to six-year-old children in a Hong Kong preschool learned to use digital cameras. The project had three stages: (1) learning to use a camera, (2) practising photography skills, and (3) expression through photography. The children's experiences of learning to use digital cameras throughout the project were documented infield notes, photos taken by the children, and photos and video taken by the researchers. The project demonstrated the potential and possibilities of using photography in research and learning in early childhood education. The substantive steps used in this project to introduce photography to children can be a reference point for both teachers and researchers.