Preschool teachers from the 40 kindergartens designated for ethnic minority students in Hong Kong will participate in this study. A mixed method of quantitative and qualitative analyses will be employed. Quantitative analyses will be based on three self-report questionnaires. The Teacher Beliefs and Practices Survey will assess early childhood educators’ beliefs and practices concerning culture and inclusion. This questionnaire is based on the 2009 guidelines for developmentally appropriate practice published by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) in the United States. My past research on preschool teachers in Hong Kong (Leung, 2012) examined the specific types of beliefs and practices assessed by this questionnaire. One interesting finding was that there was a wide range of responses to an item related to cultural diversity, and this item was surprisingly uncorrelated with other items measuring beliefs and practices related to family, culture and inclusion. This finding suggests considerable variation in Hong Kong preschools teachers’ awareness of issues related to cultural diversity in the classroom. Another questionnaire measure based on the NAEYC guidelines, the Developmentally Appropriate Practice scale, was translated and validated by my previous research. Finally, the Multicultural Teaching Scale validated by Spanierman et al. (2011) will assess teachers’ perspectives and behaviors related to multicultural issues in the classroom. Qualitative analyses will be presented as case studies, based on classroom observations, school documents, and semi-structured interviews to investigate the classroom teaching and learning experiences of teachers and students, and to examine differences in these experiences across schools.

Stage 1 findings : Validation of Multicultural Teaching Competency Scale The present study has invited 421 teachers aged 25 to 42 in sixteen schools in Hong Kong to participate in the study (a) to validate the psychometric properties of the culturally appropriate Multicultural Teaching Competency Scale (MTCS) with a Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) model, (b) to assess multicultural teaching competency in three subtypes – skill, knowledge, and relationship among school teachers in Hong Kong, and (c) to inform multicultural education training to teacher education institute and policy makers in government. The MTCS has adopted 16 items assessing two factors: skill and knowledge. The “back-translation” procedure – a commonly used procedure in the translation of cross-cultural research instruments – was adopted. Results indicated that the tripartite model, skill, knowledge, and relationship of the MTCS-14 items statistically fits the results of the Hong Kong samples. No matter how many hours of multicultural training and how many years of teaching experience that teacher got, they also thought multicultural teaching relationship is the most important factor of multicultural teaching competency. Cultural contexts (emic consideration) on factor of multicultural teaching relationship were received attention in future research. Recommendations for incorporating the Confucian beliefs of fairness, justice, and equity in establishing strong, supportive, and harmonious multicultural classroom environment, and concurrent validation of the MTCS (Hong Kong version) were made in the study.

1. Ethnic minority students make up 2% Hong Kong students, and of these, 7.5% (about 12,300 students) attend kindergarten (Education Bureau, 2013). In response to growing cultural diversity, the Education Commission proposed inclusive classrooms, raising questions about teachers’ competence in a multicultural setting (Hong Kong Education Department, 2000). There is evidence that Hong Kong preschool teachers may lack awareness of cultural diversity issues (Leung, 2012), but this finding was based on a sample in which 60% were pre-service teachers. It is critically important also to examine in-service preschool teachers’ views of multicultural issues, and to assess how teachers’ beliefs and practices may impact DAP at both school and classroom levels.
2. The growing number of minority students being taught by majority group preschool teachers has brought about a critical need for implementing culturally responsive beliefs and practice related to DAP, in order to support the learning and academic achievement of ethnic minority students.
3. Teachers’ beliefs related to developmentally appropriate practice and their developmentally appropriate practices are consistent; i.e., what they believe about developmentally appropriate practice is what they practise in the classroom, especially in practising teaching skills (Leung, 2012). It is essential that schools ensure that consonance of teachers’ beliefs and practices is also apparent in a multicultural classroom.
4. Hong Kong preschool teachers’ teacher-oriented beliefs and practices not only shape students’ classroom learning activities, but also their social development (Leung, 2102). It is critically important to examine whether the effects of teacher-oriented beliefs and practices are also evident in multicultural classrooms.
5. .No policy, curriculum or courses on multicultural education have been proposed or enacted to promote cultural responsiveness specifically in early childhood education. It is hence crucial to provide training in multicultural early childhood education to facilitate pre-service and in-service preschool teachers’ acquisition of the attitudes, knowledge, and skills needed to work effectively with ethnic minority students.

Chi-hung Leung joined the Education University of Hong Kong as Associate Professor of the Department of Special Education and Counselling. He is a Chartered Psychologist with practicising certificate at The British Psychological Society. He has been granted the member of the APS College of Developmental & Educational Psychologists since 2004. He is currently teaching Research Methods, Human Development, and Children with special needs courses. He has got many experiences in collaborating with NGOs and schools in promoting the employability of students with autism.  He has taught various special education psychology subjects for nearly 18 years. His research focuses are (a) Play and social competence, (b) Chinese parenting practices, (c) Learning effectiveness among University students, and (d) Assessing moral development of preschool children.

General Research Fund