Background: The remarkable academic advancement of Asian students in cross-national studies has been attributed to numerous factors, including the value placed on education by Chinese parents. However, there is a dearth of research on how exactly Chinese parents are involved in children's early learning. Purpose: This study has two major research questions: (1) How are Chinese parents involved in young children's learning?; and (2) What is the relationship between their involvement and children's readiness for school? Sample: A total of 431 kindergarten students (194 girls) with a mean age of 72.24 months (SD = 4.34) from five kindergartens in Hong Kong and five kindergartens in Shenzhen and their parents participated in the study. Design and methods: Children's Chinese literacy and cognitive readiness were assessed. Their parents were surveyed on their child's readiness for school and their own parental involvement with their children. Means across parental involvement dimensions were compared to explore the pattern of Chinese parental involvement in early childhood education, while correlational and regression analyses were conducted to examine the relationship between parental involvement and children's readiness for school. Results: Chinese parents had a higher level of home-based involvement than school-based involvement during the early years. Parental involvement was highly correlated with overall readiness for school. Parent Instruction, Language and Cognitive Activities and Homework Involvement were the significant predictors of overall readiness for school, whereas home-based involvement predicted more variance of readiness for school than did school-based involvement. Only Language and Cognitive Activities and Home–school Conferencing were associated with children's Chinese literacy and cognitive readiness. Conclusion: Cross-cultural studies are needed to explore the real reasons for Chinese parents to practise more home-based than school-based involvement. The importance of parental involvement during the early years for maximising children's readiness for school has also been emphasised. Nevertheless, the present study is limited in its lack of ability to be generalised to the whole of China and other cultural contexts. This study is also limited as it relied on parents' report for assessing parental involvement. Finally, the present study is limited in its lack of longitudinal assessment of parental involvement as well as its lack of examination of other dimensions of parental involvement, the quality of parental involvement activities, and other possible mediators or moderators (e.g. parent education) of parental involvement, which may have limited the understanding of Chinese parental involvement in the early years.

Digital devices play a significant role in the learning and living of children and adolescents, whose overuse or addiction has become a global concern. This scoping review seeks to synthesize existing studies to investigate relevant interventions and their effects on digital addiction in children (ages 0–18). To understand the latest advances, we have identified 17 studies published in international peer-reviewed journals between 2018–2022. The findings revealed that, first, most interventions for digital addiction in children and adolescents were cognitive–behavioral therapies (CBT) or CBT-based interventions, which could improve anxiety, depression, and related symptoms of digital addiction. Second, rather than directly targeting addictive behaviors, some family-based interventions aim to strengthen family functions and relationships. Finally, digital-based interventions, such as website-based, application-based, and virtual reality interventions, are promising in adolescent digital addiction interventions. However, these studies shared the same limitations: small sample sizes, short intervention durations, no control group, and nonrandomized assignments. The small sample size problem is difficult to solve by offline intervention. Meanwhile, online digital-based intervention is still in its infancy, resulting in limited generalizability of the findings and the inability to popularize digital intervention. Accordingly, future intervention studies should integrate various assessments and interventions to form an integrated platform to provide interventions for addicted children and adolescents worldwide.

Parents of 480 Chinese preschoolers in Beijing, Hong Kong, and Singapore reported on their involvement in literacy teaching, the home literacy environment, and their beliefs about language learning. The preschoolers, ranging in age from 2 to 6 years, completed the Preschool and Primary Chinese Literacy Scale (PPCLS), in individual sessions. Results indicated significant age and societal differences on the total PPCLS score and also on the following subscales: Character Identification, Visual and Auditory Discrimination, and Word Recognition. In all three societies, older children outperformed younger children on these subscales. Preschoolers from Hong Kong and Singapore did significantly better than those from Beijing. Despite sociocultural variations (e.g., status of the Chinese language, government directives regarding the age at which to start literacy teaching, documented goals of the preschool curriculum), which contributed to societal differences, home literacy education significantly contributed to the prediction of Chinese literacy attainment in Beijing, Hong Kong, and Singapore.

Research Findings: Western ideas and progressive pedagogies have been introduced to China (including Shenzhen), Hong Kong, and Singapore to replace traditional Chinese pedagogy. But these imported ideas are not congruent with traditional Chinese culture and thus have encountered resistance from Chinese teachers. The present study observed and analyzed 18 early childhood classrooms in the 3 localities and questioned the class teachers about their respective teaching practices to see how those ideas were actually turned into practice. Whole-class direct instruction was found to be the predominant Chinese pedagogical mode. This indicates that Chinese traditional pedagogy still dominated those Chinese preschool classrooms. Slight societal differences in classroom practice were also found, reflecting the spectrum of openness and Westernization of the 3 cities. Practice or Policy: The findings suggest that people should adapt rather than adopt those pedagogical innovations developed in other sociocultural milieu, as different societies have different social, cultural, and educational traditions. Cultural appropriateness should be seriously considered when choosing the pedagogies to be adapted. Moreover, influences from the culture, language, teachers, parents, resources available, and the prevailing education system should also be taken into consideration when planning for pedagogical reforms.