Teaching and Teacher Education 59 (2016) 146e158

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Teaching and Teacher Education

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/tate

Hong Kong and Canadian students experiencing a new participatory

culture: A teacher professional training project undergirded by new
media literacies
Zheng Zhang a, *, Jia Li b, Feifei Liu c, Zhuang Miao c
a
Faculty of Education, The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, N6G 1G7, Canada
b
Faculty of Education, University of Ontario Institute of Technology, Oshawa, Ontario, L1H 7R7, Canada
c
Faculty of Education, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, N. T., Hong Kong

h i g h l i g h t s

The project vested teacher candidates’ agency in negotiating curriculum & pedagogy.

It deepened their understanding of local and global educational challenges.

It nurtured their skills to design new ways to address these challenges.

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: This research linked 47 Hong Kong and 35 Canadian teacher candidates in a new participatory culture
Received 12 May 2015 project within the theoretical framework of new media literacies. This paper reports the qualitative data
Received in revised form with quantitative descriptions of participants’ social interactivity within the cross-border communities of
9 April 2016
practice. Besides the constraints of the designated online forum, findings relate that participants’
Accepted 18 May 2016
Available online 16 June 2016
engagement in the new participatory culture contributed to their knowledge- and awareness-building of
harnessing online participation, new media technologies, and cultural/linguistic diversity in education.
The paper concludes with implications of cultivating communities of practice buttressed by new media
Keywords:
New media literacies
literacies for teacher professional development.
New participatory culture © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Communities of practice
Teacher education

1. Introduction
Responding to the fast information technology changes in the
new era, the International Reading Association (IRA) (2009) advo-
cates a changed landscape for educators who now have re-
sponsibilities to integrate new information technologies into
curriculum to “prepare students for successful civic participation in
a global environment” (n.p.). Likewise, Jenkins’s (2009) report on
media education for the 21st century acknowledges the social
dimension of new media literacies. It expands the notion of literacy
from “individualized skills” for personal expression to “social skills”
that nurture collective and creative meaning making (p. 32). New
media literacies’ concerns with participation, multimodality, and
* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: zzhan58@uwo.ca (Z. Zhang), jia.li@uoit.ca (J. Li).
cultural and linguistic diversity provided us with entry points into
this new participatory culture project. In this project we provided
Hong Kong and Canadian teacher candidates with potential op-
portunities to participate in globalized communities and develop
“cultural competencies and social skills needed for full involve-
ment” (Jenkins, 2009, p. xiii). We also segued into the affordances of
Open Education Resources (OERs) (e.g., Jacobi & Woert, 2012) to
inform Hong Kong and Canadian students of the global movement
of OER applications (e.g., the 2007 “Cape Town Open Education
Declaration” and UNESCO’s 2012 “Paris OER Declaration”) so as to
enhance their awareness of harnessing OERs as free, multimodal,
and high quality digital learning resources in their future teaching.
2. Theoretical framework: conceptual constructs of new
media literacies
Building on an extended notion of literacy, the new media

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2016.05.017
0742-051X/© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
 Z. Zhang et al. / Teaching and Teacher Education 59 (2016) 146e158
literacies framework has made connections between literacy and
new information and technology. While referring to the new liter-
acies literature (Lankshear & Knobel, 2003, 2011), we particularly
anchored our project in three major conceptual constructs under
the new media literacies, namely, participation, multimodality, and
cultural and linguistic diversity.
Participation: Jenkins (2009) defines new media literacies as a set
of cultural competencies and social skills that young people
develop through networking and collaboration in the new media
landscape. Alluding to the social dimensions of literacy, Lankshear
and Knobel (2003) also contend that education with new forms of
literacies goes beyond the use of technology-mediated literacy
practices in school settings. They propose that a changed
“grammar” (p. 33) of curriculum in the new era of technological
changes lies in the changed mind-sets from “outsiders” to “in-
siders” (p. 32). The “outsider” mind-set perceives literacy practices
“as the same as before, only more technologized” (p. 32). In
contrast, the “insider” mind-set subverts teachers’, schools’, and
adults’ authoritative roles in curriculum and pedagogy and cele-
brates the new media knowledge that students bring to school
settings. Lankshear and Knobel (2011) later refine the notion of new
literacies and accentuate the “participatory” and “collaborative”
nature of literacy practices in the new media culture (p. 141).
Likewise, highlighting the focus shift of literacy from “individual
expression” to “community involvement”, Jenkins argues that
youth are actively involved in participatory cultures and develop
their new literacies skills through participation and collaboration
(p. xiii). Wenger, McDermott and Snyder (2002) characterize a well-
designed community of practice as allowing for participation in
group discussion or one-on-one dialogues, exposure to new ideas,
or observations of experts addressing cutting-edge issues. Similarly,
addressing a knowledge-building community mediated by com-
puter, Scardamalia and Bereiter (1994) accentuate the importance
of engaging learners as legitimate partners in collective participa-
tion and social dynamics in scientific inquiry. Connecting teaching
and learning in the new era of technological changes, new partic-
ipatory cultures allow for: 1) low barriers to artistic expression and
civic engagement, 2) strong support or informal mentorship for
sharing new creative forms, 3) collaborative problem-solving to
complete tasks and develop new knowledge, 4) strong member
belief in the value of their contributions, and 5) strong sense of
membership or social connections among members (Jenkins,
2009).
Multimodality: Scholars in the new literacies camp take a “se-
miotic turn” (e.g., Sheridan & Rowsell, 2010, p. 8) and highlight the
myriad forms of literacy practices pertinent to information and
communications technology (Jenkins, 2009). Kress (2000) refers to
this mode plurality as multimodality. The notion of “text” has thus
extended to multimodal texts (Flewitt, Nind, & Payler, 2009).
Acknowledging the meaningfulness of “extra-linguistic” phenom-
ena (Kress & Jewitt, 2003, p. 2), scholars argue that ideas that can be
represented in more traditional symbols (e.g., speech and writing)
can also be communicated in symbols of image, music, and video
(e.g., Kress, 2009; Stein, 2008). Jenkins particularly aligns new
media literacies with an “ecological approach” that attends to the
“interrelationship” among diverse communications technologies
(p. 7). That said, meaning makers respond to the new communi-
cative conditions and tend to orchestrate a combination of media in
their social practices of “digital remixing” (Jenkins, p. 55). New
media hitherto offer innovative and powerful ways of “appropria-
tion”, that is, “a process by which students learn by taking culture
apart and putting it back together” (p. 55). The emphasis on
multimodal representations is in strong alignment with the
emphasis on cognitive pluralism (Eisner, 2002), multiple in-
telligences (Gardner & Hatch, 1989), creative thinking (Wesch,
147
2008), and “collective intelligence” (i.e., the social production of
knowledge [Jenkins, p. 68]). The notions of “media creator” (Jen-
kins, p. 3) and “active media producers” (Lange & Ito, 2010, p. 244)
subvert the positioning of youth as “media consumers” (p. 244).
Cultural and linguistic diversity: The new media culture has
shown a great capacity to break through the geographical, lin-
guistic, and cultural boundaries. Closely related to new media lit-
eracies skills are students’ abilities to traverse diverse communities,
negotiate and respect “multiple perspectives”, and grasp “alterna-
tive norms” (Jenkins, 2009, p. 97). Against the backdrop of global-
ization and technological advancement, scholars tend to conceive
of 21st century literacy capacities as encompassing: 1) nurturing
respectful imagining of foreign others and a genuine openness to
the social and linguistic practices of foreign others (e.g., Saito,
2010), 2) negotiating meanings “across divergent cultural, linguis-
tic, geographic, and ideological landscapes both on- and off line”
(Hull & Stornaiuolo, 2010, p. 86), and 3) taking up local and global
projects for individual transformation and societal changes (e.g.,
Zhang & Heydon, 2014).
The three conceptual constructs of participation, multimodality,
and cultural and linguistic diversity offered us insightful lenses to
view existent literature on participatory, cross-border inquiries
enabled by new media and technologies within the teacher edu-
cation arena. Empirical inquiries that investigated novel ways of
leveraging participatory and technology-based learning in teacher
education are prolific (e.g., Bonk, Malikowski, Angeli, & East, 1998;
Caywood & Duckett, 2003; Cowham & Duggleby, 2005; Ertmer
et al., 2011; Hou, 2014; Keller, Bonk, & Hew, 2005; King, 2002;
Oner & Adadan, 2011; Reingold, Rimor, & Kalay, 2008); however,
there are limited inquiries that harnessed virtual transnational
connections in teacher professional training where in- and pre-
service teachers are geographically separated.
Riel (1993) accentuates a notable involvement of teachers and
students in collaborative problem-solving, particularly endeavors
that can strengthen “teachers’ links to world events and to global
issues” through participation in global networks (p. 222). In Wan’s
(2014) research, she involved pre- and in-service teachers from
Hong Kong, Canada, and Spain in an online discussion platform and
solicited pre-service teachers’ views on the use of cross-border
online discussion as a form of e-learning. Findings generally refer
to how globally collaborative online interactions had potentials to
facilitate participants’ ownership of discussion and sustain
continuous interactive learning. Nonetheless, Wan’s paper does not
specifically address implications for teacher training.
There are a few studies that explored the effects of online, cross-
border communities on teacher candidates’ intercultural compe-
tence development. Belz’s (2003) telecollaborative language study
examines the impacts of telecollaboration (i.e., the use of Internet
communication tools such as e-mail, synchronous chat, and
threaded discussions by geographically distant students to promote
social interaction, cross-border dialogues, and intercultural ex-
changes) on foreign language linguistic competence and intercul-
tural competence. The findings of this study relate the importance
of teacher education programs’ roles in educating teacher candi-
dates to “discern, identify, explain, and model culturally-contingent
patterns of interaction in the absence of paralinguistic meaning
signals” (p. 92). McCloskey’s (2012) literature review of empirical
studies specifically addresses teachers’ intercultural competence-
building via technologically-mediated intercultural learning com-
munities, which the author claimed as under-researched in teacher
education inquiries. Findings of examined literature (e.g., Celentin,
2007; Dooly, 2007; Lieberman & Wood, 2001; Müller-Hartmann,
2006) reveal “meaningful, durable impacts” of online, cross-
border interaction on teachers’ intercultural competences and
awareness-building of the “cultural dimensions of technologies and
148 Z. Zhang et al. / Teaching and Teacher Education 59 (2016) 146e158
of communication” (p. 48). Basharina, Guardado and Morgan’s
(2008) collaborative inquiry connected English language learners
in Canada, Mexico, and Russia and focused on teachers’ perceptions
of tensions of cultivating global online learning environments. They
propose that to better facilitate such learning communities,
teachers need to be aware of their own educational beliefs (e.g.,
learner-centred or curricular/teacher-centred paradigm) and cul-
tural values of electronic communications in local contexts that
might have shaped their decisions of using and facilitating inter-
national telecollaboration in global, online learning environment.
Suffice it to say, existent literature barely addresses in a sys-
tematic way the effects of cross-border, new media-oriented,
participatory learning upon teacher professional training when
teacher candidates are geographically and temporarily confined
during their regular coursework. It is with the purpose to fill this
gap, we conducted this research project.
3. Research design
3.1. Research context and project details
Hong Kong and Canada have had a variety of bonds. About
500,000 people of Hong Kong descent are currently residing in
Canada. Hong Kong, as one of the largest Canadian communities
abroad, hosts around 295,000 Canadian citizens (The Government
of Canada, 2012). Specifically, according to the Government of
Canada, Hong Kong and Canada recently bolstered their interre-
latedness through cooperative initiatives in Internet learning. It is
our belief that teacher candidates’ “participation in dialogic en-
counters” with interconnected others would help evolve “one’s
own individuality” “deeply and creatively” (Wang, 2004, pp.
76e77). Hence, with the purpose to cultivate cross-border com-
munities of practice that pursue the effects of cultivating global
communications, civic participation, and intercultural competence-
building, we embarked on this journey with our Hong Kong teacher
candidates and Canadian students to collaboratively create an on-
line, cross-border community of practice that could encourage
students’ “pursuit of real and relevant questions” (Wesch, 2009,
n.p.) in Hong Kong and Canadian education. Our research asked:
1) What were the characteristics of Hong Kong and Canadian
students’ interactive dynamics in the three-round online
sharing of the real-world opportunities and challenges for
incorporating cultural/linguistic diversity, online participatory
learning, and new media literacies in their respective education
systems?
2) What were participants’ perceived impacts (including affor-
dances and constraints) of the learning experience within the
new participatory culture community on their knowledge- and
awareness-building of harnessing online participation, new
media technologies, and cultural and linguistic diversity in
education?
3) How were those impacts reflected in Hong Kong teacher can-
didates’ multimedia instructional designs?
For the purpose of connecting Hong Kong teacher candidates
and Canadian students, we created a private space on Web
Knowledge Forum (the Forum) for discussing and sharing infor-
mation. The Forum features a key affordance that suited the main
purpose of project, namely, to create knowledge-building com-
munities where individuals could contribute to new, collective
knowledge that leads to “innovation and growth” (Knowledge
Forum, n.d., n.p.). To explore the impacts of cultivating global
communications, civic participation, and intercultural competence-
building, we purposefully forged a cross-border community of
practice by encouraging students from both sides to: 1) interact and
discuss on the Forum on three themes with prompt questions (See
details in 3.1.1); 2) share their multimedia group projects and
provide constructive suggestions for further revisions (See details
in 3.1.2). To drive the evolution of the community of practice, we
purposefully followed Wenger et al.’s (2002) key design principles
of crafting communities of practice, for instance, “Design for evo-
lution”, “Create a rhythm for the community”, “Open a dialogue
between inside and outside perspectives”, “Focus on value”, and
“Invite different levels of participation” (p. 2). Specifically, the
theme-based, project-based, cross-cultural, and student-value-
oriented interchanges spanned from early January 2014 to late
March 2014 for intensive, multi-level, and well-paced interactions.
3.1.1. Online sharing
The collaborative Canadian university helped ensure that the
Forum as a secure space was only accessible by the two instructors,
the students registered in their courses, and research assistants.
Zhang’s course of “Principles of Curriculum and Instructional
Design” was on-site while Li’s course of “Culture and Digital Tools”
was offered online. To better align the project activities with the
respective goals of the two courses and address the logistical
challenges of the project involving two universities across two
countries, we only invited the Hong Kong and Canadian students to
interact and discuss on the following three themes with prompt
questions on the Forum:
Theme 1: Engaging cultural and linguistic diversity in teaching
and learning:
1) How multiculturalism is perceived and communicated through
modern media and new technologies?
2) How can digital technologies enable us to enhance our under-
standing and learning of other cultures? Please provide a couple
of examples from your observations and personal experiences.
3) Given the increasing capacity of new technologies, how can we
collaborate across continents to enhance our mutual un-
derstandings of education, histories, arts, and religions
embedded in unique cultural and linguistic landscapes?
Theme 2: Engaging participation in social learning platforms
(e.g., social networking sites [SNSs]):
1) Based on your own learning experience, to what extent are/were
SNSs incorporated in teaching and learning?
2) In which senses can SNSs enhance transnational learning in
various subjects?
3) What should be changed in the Hong Kong and Canadian
schooling contexts if you were having your own instructional
design?
Theme 3: Engaging multiple intelligences and multimedia in
teaching and learning:
1) How can new technologies best cater for students’ multiple
intelligences and diverse interests?
2) What are your suggestions to improve instruction and learning
using new technologies in the Canadian/Hong Kong schooling
contexts if you plan to develop an instructional design?
3.1.2. Collaborative learning and group projects
Hong Kong students developed multimedia instructional de-
signs as group projects and posted the drafts on blogs, YouTube,
and Google Sites. Canadian students’ group projects concerned
culture and media analysis via technology and were made public on
 Z. Zhang et al. / Teaching and Teacher Education 59 (2016) 146e158
YouTube. In the middle of the coursework, students from both sides
were invited to view their respective group projects and provide
feedback on WebKF for further revisions. In this paper, we only
included Hong Kong students’ multimedia instructional design
projects which are more relevant to the focus of this paper on
teacher education.
3.1.3. Online qualitative survey
Toward the end of the project, surveys were administered dur-
ing class time for about 20 minutes through SurveyMonkey at both
collaborative institutions. The original surveys incorporated both
quantitative and qualitative questions to elicit participants’ per-
ceptions of their participatory and collaborative learning experi-
ence. Given the focus of this paper, we only present data related to
students’ anonymous qualitative accounts from the survey which
include: 1) students’ feedback about the cross-border collaboration
and OER applications and 2) their suggestions for future projects.
3.2. Methods of data collection
With a keen interest to probe students’ social experience in
virtual spaces, we used netnography (i.e., online ethnography)
(Kozinets, 2010a). The netnography approach is a newly emerged
methodology specifically designed to study social media settings.
We used netnography to explore the online aspects of our partici-
pants’ social interactions, dialogues, and instructional design
practices. The purpose was to show “how knowledge creation and
learning occur through a reflective ‘virtual re-experiencing’
discourse among the members of innovative online communities”
(Kozinets, 2010a, p. 2). Data collected through netnography
include: 1) downloaded observation data of Hong Kong and Ca-
nadian students’ online interactions in the three rounds of online
discussions and their feedback to each other’s group projects, 2)
online qualitative survey data via SurveyMonkey, and 3) archived
digital forms of Hong Kong university students’ group projects
posted on blogs, YouTube, and Google Sites. Given the manageable
number of online postings, we downloaded and archived the forum
posts as observational data for analysis. The online surveys gener-
ated supplementary data for triangulation about participants’ “local
understanding” (Kozinets, 2010a, p. 43) of the online community.
3.3. Participants
Our proposed project intended to recruit students who were
going to or would like to become educators after graduation. How-
ever, in the process of participant recruitment, students enrolled in
our respective courses who came from other programmes also
expressed interests in participating in this cross-border project.
Concurring that the proposed project shall be organic and inclusive,
we welcomed participants who were not registered teacher candi-
dates at both faculties of education. However, we still used the terms
such as teacher candidates and pre-service teachers at times in this
paper to refer to our participants as this was the focus of the project
and the majority of our participants were going to serve in K-12
(Hong Kong site) or adult (Canadian site) education (See Table 1 for
participants’ majors and years of study).
Forty seven students in Zhang’s class participated in the
research. On the Canadian side, 35 students1 submitted consent
1
In this paper, despite the international students enrolled in both courses, we
generally refer to student participants from the Hong Kong and Canadian univer-
sities as Hong Kong students/student participants and Canadian students/student
participants. These terms are just references of students’ affiliations but have no
indication of students’ ethnic backgrounds.
149
forms, only 28 of them participated in the three rounds of online
interactions. The social network and statistical analyses were
therefore based on the actual number of participants on both sides
(i.e., 47 Hong Kong and 28 Canadian participants). English was the
sole medium of communication on the Forum to facilitate cross-
border communications, but the research team provided
language-related support where needed.
Zhang and Li consciously addressed ethical concerns about
involving their own students in the research as they were the in-
structors who were supposed to grade their group projects2 and/or
final papers. They provided sufficient scaffolding to all groups of
students to help them revise their original project designs. They
also incorporated peer evaluation on group projects to avoid po-
tential researchers’ biases. To ensure fair marking of Hong Kong
students’ final papers, the doctoral student Liu was trained to mark
blind.3
3.4. Data analysis
SPSS facilitated our statistical summaries of students’ three-
round postings and interactions in the Forum, for instance, the
total number of Hong Kong and Canadian students’ postings, the
total number of responses, and M and SD of their postings. We also
recruited social network analysis (SNA) to further illuminate the
“participatory aspects” of online interactions and the “structural
characteristics of the developed networks” on the Forum (Lu &
Churchill, 2014, p. 405). Binary relational data of each round of
online discussion were entered in a person-by-person relationship
matrix4. Each student was coded with a working number (e.g.,
HK1-HK47 for Hong Kong participants; CA1-CA28 for Canadian).
Our analysis of the downloaded observation data was in line with
netnography’s attentions to both “content” (e.g., words present in
online interactions) and “context” (e.g., forum features, types of
social interactions, backgrounds of communicators/participants)
(Kozinets, 2010b, p. 4). We then used the social network analytical
tool kits UCINET (version 6.546) to extract values of density (i.e., the
proportion of all possible social ties that are present in a social
network) (Hanneman & Riddle, 2005) and centrality (i.e., “a family
of node-level properties relating to the structural importance or
prominence of a node in the network” [Borgatti, Mehra, Brass, &
Labiancam, 2009, p. 894]).
We retrieved three major sources of data for analysis on NVivo
10 (i.e., three rounds of online-discussions, Hong Kong students’
group projects with Canadian students’ feedback to the group
projects, and participants’ qualitative comments entered in the
online surveys). We deductively developed codes and categories in
accordance with the major constructs of new media literacies while
remaining open for emerging themes from the data (See Appendix
A for an example of coding and thematic analysis). NVivo 10
assisted with the identification of recurring codes and categories
and the frequency counts of categories. In order to uncover the
network effects of participating in this virtual, cross-border teacher
education project, we particularly attended to “contagion of ideas”
(i.e., an idea that flows along a network path from one node/actor to
another) (Borgatti et al., 2009, p. 894), belief/attitude changes (i.e.,
through online interaction, actors effect influences upon each
2
The participants from both institutions formulated their own groups to work on
their respective group projects.
3
There was no final paper requirement in Li’s course at the Canadian side,
therefore, the blind marking was only done at the Hong Kong site.
4
We used 1 or 0 to indicate either the presence or absence of an interaction/
relationship between two students in the Excel matrix, particularly with the stu-
dent in the row initiating a posting and the student in the column responding to
that specific posting.
150 Z. Zhang et al. / Teaching and Teacher Education 59 (2016) 146e158

Table 1
Participant profile.

Number of Major & discipline Year of study Ethnicity and first language
participants (Undergraduate)

Hong Kong n ¼ 47 Education (n ¼ 45) Year 1 (n ¼ 43) Native Cantonese and

participants (i.e., English Language Education [n ¼ 26]; Liberal Year 4 (n ¼ 4) Mandarin speakers from Hong
Studies Education [n ¼ 18]; Chinese Language Kong, Mainland China, and
Education [1]) Taiwan (n ¼ 46)
Arts (n ¼ 1) Native Korean speaker (n ¼ 1)
Psychology (n ¼ 1)
Canadian n ¼ 35 (28 Adult Education and Digital Technology Year 1 (n ¼ 3) Native English speakers
participants participated in (n ¼ 20) Year 2 (n ¼ 1) (n ¼ 28)
three rounds of Accounting (n ¼ 6) Year 3 (n ¼ 10) Edo (n ¼ 1)
online Business (n ¼ 3) Year 4 (n ¼ 8) Italian (n ¼ 1)
interactions) Marketing (n ¼ 2) Game Development (n ¼ 2) Year 5 (n ¼ 9) Urdu (n ¼ 1)
Networking and IT Post Bridge (n ¼ 1) Other (n ¼ 4) Indonesian (n ¼ 1)
Computing Science (n ¼ 1) Cantonese (n ¼ 1)
Mandarin (n ¼ 1)
Sinhalese (n ¼ 1)

Table 2
Statistical summary on postings of three themes.

Theme Participants N Total number Total number Minimum Maximum Mean SD

of postings of responses posting/person posting/person

Theme 1 Canada 28 18 41 0 8 2.11 1.96

Hong Kong 47 48 51 0 5 2.11 1.02
Theme 2 Canada 28 23 26 0 6 1.75 1.21
Hong Kong 47 44 45 0 5 1.89 0.76
Theme 3 Canada 28 13 21 0 8 1.18 1.68
Hong Kong 47 39 46 0 4 1.81 1.04

other’s beliefs or attitudes) (Borgatti, 2005), and changes in stu-
dents’ agency (i.e., the state of taking actions). Given the original
focus on thematic analysis, we did not approach the data using a
detailed developmental analysis at different stages of the online
interactions. Instead in this paper we provide thick descriptions of
students’ dialogic exchanges in network centres and sub-centres to
capture the participants’ interaction dynamics (e.g., how deeper
understanding of a certain topic happened).
4. Findings and discussion
Adopting a theoretical proclivity that examines the intersection
of participation, multimodality, and cultural and linguistic di-
versity, we organize findings around the research questions and the
three major constructs of new media literacies.
4.1. Dynamic social interactivity in three rounds of discussions
To answer the first research question, in below we present
quantitative social network analysis data and visualizations of on-
line interaction dynamics generated through the built-in Netdraw
of UCINET.
In Theme 1 discussions, students from the Canadian university
wrote 18 original postings and 41 replies; Hong Kong students
posted 48 new threads and 51 responses. As is shown in Table 2, on
average Hong Kong (M ¼ 2.11, SD ¼ 1.02) and Canadian (M ¼ 2.11,
SD ¼ 1.96) participants contributed similar number of postings and
responses under Theme 1; however, the SD values unravelled that
there were relatively uneven contributions among Canadian stu-
dents, with the maximum of 8 postings coming from one single
Canadian student. Only 18 out of 28 Canadian students contributed
original postings to Theme 1 discussions, but most of the Canadian
participants seemed active in commenting on others’ postings (41
responses in total).
The density value of the Theme 1 network was 0.0175 and the
corresponding SD was 0.132, which means that only 1.7% of the
maximum social ties were established. We interpreted that the
observed Theme 1 network was sparse since Hong Kong and Ca-
nadian participants’ interactions with all others were not salient
(See Table 3). The centrality value of the network was 0.4975;
student coded CA14 was the centre of the network (See Fig. 1), who
was the most active actor in the network, held more ties than
others, and received the highest number of comments. Students
CA2, HK47, CA20, and CA25 were sub-centres.
Table 2 illustrates that under Theme 2 the Canadian students
posted 23 original threads and 26 responses whereas Hong Kong
participants wrote 44 original postings and 45 replies. While Hong
Kong students maintained a similar level of contribution under
Themes 1 and 2, Canadian students’ responses to original postings
decreased from 41 in Theme 1 to 26 in Theme 2. Drops in Theme 2
online contributions were also evident in the average numbers of
postings on both sides (HK M ¼ 1.89; Canada M ¼ 1.75), with Hong
Kong students maintaining even contributions within their own
cohort (HK SD ¼ 1.21; Canada SD ¼ 0.76).
The density value of the second round network was 0.013 and
the corresponding SD was 0.117 (See Table 3). That said, only 1.3% of
all possible ties were established in the network. The participants’
involvement with all others was not enhanced from their Theme 1
online interactions. The centrality value of the Theme 2 network
was 0.7035 and CA2 was the centre of this network, who held more
interaction ties with other participants while receiving the highest
number of comments. Students HK46, CA6, CA8, and HK18 were
sub-centres in Theme 2 interactions (See Fig. 2).
As is illustrated in Table 2, less than half of the Canadian
5
According to Lu and Churchill (2014) the maximum value of the density for a
network is 1.
 Z. Zhang et al. / Teaching and Teacher Education 59 (2016) 146e158
Table 3
SNA summary on online interactions of three themes.
Theme Density 0.017
1 SD of each 0.132
student
Network 0.4975
centrality CA14 (centre of network); CA2, HK47, CA20, CA25 (less
centralized)
Theme Density 0.013
2 SD of each 0.117
student
Network 0.4975
centrality CA2 (centre of network); HK46, CA6, HK18, CA8 (less
centralized)
Theme Density 0.0196
3 SD of each 0.1386
student
Network 0.5745
centrality CA25 (centre of network); CA2, HK 20, HK41, CA20 (less
centralized)
students (13 original postings in total out of 28 Canadian students)
circulated original postings in Theme 3. Some of them were able to
keep up the level of posting responses (21 responses in total)
(M ¼ 1.18; SD ¼ 1.68). In contrast, the majority of Hong Kong stu-
dents had persistent contributions in both original postings (39
original postings in total) and replies (46 in total) (M ¼ 1.81,
SD ¼ 1.04).
The density value of the Theme 3 network was 0.02 and the
corresponding SD was 0.1386. The centrality value of the network
was 0.5745. CA25 was the centre of the network whereas CA2
received the highest number of comments (See Table 3). Students
CA2, HK20, HK41, and CA20 were sub-centres (See Fig. 3).
The SNA statistics show that despite the three rounds of online
interactions, our participants’ engagement in communicating with
all others was not significantly improved. One possible reason
might be the size of the network. Lu and Churchill (2014) contend
that smaller social network (e.g., N ¼ 12) is more likely to be denser
than a network with a larger number of members. Another expla-
nation might be that participants’ interactions were generally task-
oriented, that is, to address the prompt questions for the three
rounds of discussion and provide comments and suggestions for
the media design project drafts. As Wenger et al. (2002) accentuate
the import of combining “familiarity and excitement” (p. 6), both
routine and exciting events might have provided “a sense of com-
mon adventure” (p. 7) for an alive community of practice.
4.2. Perceived impacts of new participatory culture community
upon teacher education
To respond to the 2nd research question, in this section we focus
on participants’ perceived affordances and constraints of the
learning experience within the new participatory culture commu-
nity with regard to their knowledge- and awareness-building of
harnessing online participation, new media technologies, and cul-
tural and linguistic diversity in education.
4.2.1. Engaging cultural and linguistic diversity in teaching and
learning
Negotiating meanings in their Theme 1 online sharing, Hong
Kong and Canadian students evolved their situated understandings
of “multicultural education” in the Hong Kong and Canadian con-
texts. Students’ qualitative reflections in the survey corre-
spondently mirrored their appreciation of participating in the
online, cross-border interactions. In particular, the Hong Kong pre-
service students’ collaborative multimedia instructional designs
151
exhibited their enhanced agency in engaging cultural and linguistic
diversity in teaching and learning.
In the network flow under Theme 1, both Canadian and Hong
Kong participants expressed enhanced sensibilities toward multi-
culturalism and multicultural education. Five Canadian students
particularly communicated the controversial multiculturalism in
Canada and illustrated their life stories about marginalized immi-
grants and aboriginal citizens and “discrimination toward ‘out-
siders’” in rural Canada (e.g., CA24).6 CA14 flagged that Canadians
are “not truly ‘multicultural’ unless they are “active in engaging
other cultural threads” and “going beyond one’s safe boundaries in
meeting and forming understanding relationships with other
people whose cultural backgrounds and experiences are different
than our own.” Almost all of the Hong Kong students depicted the
reality of Hong Kong as a multicultural and multilingual metropolis.
Fourteen Hong Kong participants concurred that Hong Kong
learners’ positive attitudes toward ethnic minorities and cultural
diversity owed a lot to Hong Kong’s K-12 curricula, for example, the
General Studies curriculum in the primary and secondary school
curricula such as history and liberal studies highlighted Hong
Kong’s reality as a pluralistic society and accentuated the impor-
tance of cultivating respect toward pluralism and differences.
Nevertheless, after collective debates centred around Canadian
students’ postings (e.g., CA14 and CA2), half of the Hong Kong
participants identified the assimilation agenda of Hong Kong’s K-12
public schooling and demonstrated the contested nature of multi-
cultural education in Hong Kong. Nineteen Hong Kong participants
concurred that Hong Kong’s multicultural education has only been
lingering on the surface of acknowledging and showing respect to
diversity and differences. HK18’s response serves as a typical
example of Hong Kong participants’ evolving views about multi-
culturalism in Hong Kong:
Before reading your post (CA14), I thought Hong Kong has
achieved multiculturalism to a great extent as we have schools
which allow students from different countries to have lessons
together and subjects such as history which provide students
some opportunities to know more about others’ cultures.
However, I realized that all these methods would not be effec-
tive for forging a common nation from the cultural diversity
without communication.
Based on the thematic analysis of the first round online dis-
cussions, 27 Hong Kong participants expressed that the curricular
hidden agenda of assimilating ethnic minority students to the
mainstream was identifiable in the following aspects: 1) the Chi-
nese language curriculum that was mainly designed for the local
Cantonese-speaking students with few pedagogical accommoda-
tions made for ethnic minority students’ diverse needs, 2) limited
resources and support for South Asian students who struggled with
Chinese, 3) Chinese teachers’ limited understanding of the essence
of multicultural education7 as promoted by scholars such as Gay
(2004), and 4) the mandatory requirements of writing public ex-
aminations in Chinese, which further “worsen their [South Asian
students’] academic performance” (HK23) and their chances to get
into universities.
In the online discussions, quite a few Canadian and Hong Kong
6
We have corrected all the typos and mistakes in the direct quotes from our
student participants to avoid confusion. However, Hong Kong students’ sample
instructional designs were presented as faithfully in the appendices as what were
posted on their selected websites.
7
Gay’s (2004) multicultural education focuses on engaging cultural diversity in
all aspects of education to ensure educational equity and excellence for learners
from diverse backgrounds (e,g., racial, ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and social-class).
152 Z. Zhang et al. / Teaching and Teacher Education 59 (2016) 146e158

Fig. 1. Visualization of Theme 1 online interactions.

Fig. 2. Visualization of Theme 2 online interactions.

students exhibited enhanced awareness of their responsibilities as
citizens to engage people from other backgrounds in Canada and to
engage ethnic minorities in Hong Kong. For instance, reflecting on
CA14’s original posting, HK5 said,
Your brilliant statement of “going beyond one’s safe boundaries”
reminds me to actively learn the culture from other countries
especially the minorities. Having been Britain’s colony before
1997, Hong Kong is heavily influenced by the British culture.
With the continuation of economic influence of the English
world including the United States, most people are only inter-
ested about and fascinated by the “Western culture”. However,
the minorities like the Indian and the Pakistani have long been
contributing to Hong Kong like being policemen during the
 Z. Zhang et al. / Teaching and Teacher Education 59 (2016) 146e158
Fig. 3. Visualization of Theme 3 online interactions.
colonial period and domestic helpers currently have been
ignored to certain extent. It is a shame that we haven’t worked
hard enough to go beyond our safe boundaries to learn more
about their cultures.
Toward the end of their critical reflections, half of the Hong Kong
students (24 of them) suggested curricular changes in the current
Hong Kong schooling to cater for the specific needs of the ethnic
minorities, for instance, providing easier versions of Chinese lan-
guage tests for minority students in public examinations and
developing elective courses of minority students’ heritage lan-
guages so that they have a better chance to pursue tertiary
education.
HK34 and HK35 expressed that CA25’s sharing of her own
learning experience as a child from an immigrant family growing
up in a non-multicultural environment in Canada inspired them to
think about ways to better accommodate non-mainstream stu-
dents’ needs in Hong Kong. To quote HK35, “I think I will take a page
from your kindergarten teacher’s bookdto find study buddies for
the [minority] students. Then, they will not feel lonely or helpless.”
In a similar vein, in his response to HK3’s original posting about
local Hong Kong students’ fear “to meet or chat to the minorities”,
CA22 also pointed to the necessity for the Canadians to engage
ethnic minorities:
I find that in Canada we also face this issue. My school had a
number of ethnic minorities and it seemed that sometimes they
had troubles getting to know other people. I believe that edu-
cation from the institution is definitely a great place to start.
Teaching students about the cultures of others helps them better
understand them and can help those with various ethnic back-
grounds to feel more understood.
As is evident in the interactive dialogues, students from both
institutions also showed their changed attitudes towards
leveraging new media and technologies to promote
153
multiculturalism (17 Hong Kong and 17 Canadian students). Three
Canadian students (CA10, CA12, and CA23) commented on how
digital and online gaming (e.g., WOW and MMOs) could help
learners acquire knowledge about different cultures and help them
mingle in the gaming platform to directly engage with cultural
diversity. Seventeen Hong Kong students specifically lauded the
affordances of online interactive platforms in fostering multicul-
tural education. To quote HK12:
For instance, we have Web KF, which is a brilliant platform for
students from Canada and Hong Kong to share their thoughts
and insights about their local education. We can easily exchange
our local teaching methodologies and ideas with each other. In
this way, we would have our world vision expanded and
thinking stimulated.
The thematic analysis of the qualitative survey reveals Hong
Kong and Canadian participants’ identification of the benefits of
being engaged in online discussions on multicultural education: 1)
increased opportunities to make cross-cultural connections (24
Hong Kong participants; 18 Canadian participants), 2) expanded
visions and access to different perspectives (24 Hong Kong partic-
ipants; 6 Canadian participants), and 3) enhanced mutual under-
standing toward the global others (7 Hong Kong participants; 10
Canadian participants).
To sum up, participants from both institutions appreciated their
collaborative exploration of multicultural education in their
respective educational contexts. Findings from online exchanges
and survey comments exhibit participants’ growing sensibilities
and agency toward engaging cultural and linguistic diversity in
teaching and learning.
4.2.2. Engaging participation in social learning platforms
The participants’ flows of ideas in Theme 2 discussions and their
qualitative survey reflections illustrated their appreciation of the
lived experience of cross-border participatory learning and their
154 Z. Zhang et al. / Teaching and Teacher Education 59 (2016) 146e158

enhanced awareness of social learning platforms’ affordances and able to perform face-to-face, sharing our experiences, thoughts,
constraints in teaching and learning. and opinions on topics related to the course with real students
While 14 Canadian students identified the use of online social living culturally different.
learning platforms in their prior and current schooling experiences,
15 Hong Kong students lamented the restricted incorporation of
Our participants’ appreciation of SNSs’ role in engaging learners’
SNSs in their learning experiences in various Hong Kong schooling
participation through the presence of international audience was
contexts. To quote HK29,
also mirrored in their reflective comments in the qualitative survey
For all the adoption of multimedia resources such as PowerPoint (10 Hong Kong and 5 Canadian students anonymously commented
presentation and video clips by primary and secondary school on this). As one Canadian student reflected,
teachers in Hong Kong, only are students allowed to sit there
It was fascinating to see other students’ views on our group
and watch or listen to the multimedia resources provided by
work. Although I think there are much better tools available
their teachers instead of really having a chance to express their
than the Forum, it was a great way to easily communicate with
opinions and learn through the Internet.
people digitally and helped garner discussion and improve upon
our final projects.
The thematic analysis of the second round of online discussion
foregrounds the specific barriers to SNSs mentioned by Hong Kong
It is worth noting that in the survey reflections, 30 Hong Kong
participants: 1) parents’ and teachers’ concerns with Internet
and 14 Canadian students shared that the Forum might not be an
addiction, 2) school policies of prohibiting SNSs due to class man-
ideal platform to assist cross-border communications. Comments
agement challenges, 3) teachers’ and parents’ perceptions of SNSs
centred around the Forum’s limited user-friendliness, limited
as distracting students’ time and efforts from academic preparation
support of multimodal texts, inconvenient Java bindings, difficulty
given Hong Kong’s dominating examination culture, and 4) teacher
in navigation, inaccessibility on mobile devices, and lack of member
and/or student preference of face-to-face teaching to online in-
intimacy.
teractions. Most Hong Kong students concurred that their teachers
While celebrating SNSs as useful tools for learning, in the online
in elementary and/or secondary schools tended to use more
dialogues the participants showed explicit awareness of incorpo-
multimedia tools to teach, but they allowed little online
rating critical media literacy components to emphasize the
interactions.
importance of “caveat emptor” (A direct quote from CA3) in
Drawing on their authentic social interactions with the global
learning via online social learning platforms. The thematic analysis
others via the Forum, both Hong Kong and Canadian cohorts
shows that 29 students from both institutions identified the caveats
expressed their perceived merits of recruiting social learning
of using SNSs as learning tools: 1) diverging attention from learning
platforms in teaching and learning in the second round online
and incurring addiction to online interactions, 2) cyberbullying, 3)
conversations:1) enhancing learning efficiency (38 Hong Kong
blurring the boundary between private and academic life, 4) false
students; 14 Canadian students), 2) developing cognitive and
information, and 5) marginalizing individuals/generations whose
higher thinking skills (21 Hong Kong students; 5 Canadian stu-
learning styles are not tuned to online interaction. In accordance
dents), 3) fostering cross-border communication and mutual un-
with the existent literature on the necessity of teacher monitoring
derstanding (44 Hong Kong students; 18 Canadian students), and 4)
on SNSs (Callaghan & Bower, 2012), the participants proposed
facilitating group collaboration and participation through the
suggestions for teachers to incorporate specific guidelines to
presence of an international audience (29 Hong Kong students; 14
mediate activities on SNSs so that the learning aspects of idea ex-
Canadian students). For instance, 21 Hong Kong and 5 Canadian
changes on SNSs were emphasized over social aspects.
students echoed how their participatory learning experience
To conclude, the participants’ online exchanges and survey re-
within the Forum enhanced their cognitive development in various
flections demonstrated their critical reception of the learning op-
facets as identified by Bloom’s Taxonomy (e.g., analytical thinking,
portunities afforded by online social learning platforms. Their
critical thinking, and creativity) (Bloom, Engelhart, Furst, Hill, &
cross-border dialogues enabled by the Forum also helped convey
Krathwohl, 1956). In particular, the participants expressed their
their appreciation of “collaborative knowledge building” (Laferrie re
appreciation of how interactive SNS platforms afforded their user
& Breuleux, 2014) (i.e., their participation in collective processes of
behaviours in cross-border “social connectivity” and “social inter-
negotiating meanings) even though they were geographically
activity” (O’Riordan, Feller, & Nagle, 2012, n.p.), which enhanced
confined by their coursework in Canada and Hong Kong.
their cross-cultural communication and understanding of different
sociocultural realities in Hong Kong and Canada. For example, HK6
communicated a “community approach” of learning afforded by the 4.2.3. Engaging multiple intelligences and multimedia in teaching
new participatory culture, and learning
In the Theme 3 online discussions, Hong Kong and Canadian
As a user of several educational discussion boards, including the
students illustrated the varied affordances of multimedia to cater
“less-cool” ones provided by the university, I think the Forum
for students’ multiple intelligences. They also expressed the bar-
has to be my most memorable one so far. It offers us a com-
riers and ethical issues that they had witnessed in recruiting new
munity approach to assess knowledge - by interacting with
media and technologies in their respective schooling systems.
other people, we have a new approach to learn outside the
The participants from both universities (22 Hong Kong and 4
traditional confines of schooling.
Canadian participants) circulated detailed narratives about how
multimedia and new technologies were incorporated in their prior
Forty four Hong Kong and 18 Canadian students applauded the and current education experiences. Hong Kong students recognized
affordances of online collaborative learning in increasing their their teachers’ or professors’ use of new technologies and
exposure to multiple perspectives from the world. CA9 commented, expressed their perceived learning effectiveness due to instant re-
sponses and feedback afforded by new technologies. They shared
We are able to use SNSs to connect and communicate directly
moments when technologies facilitated interactive learning,
with students in Hong Kong, an opportunity we would never be
learning efficiency, and customization of their individual learning.
 Z. Zhang et al. / Teaching and Teacher Education 59 (2016) 146e158
When reflecting upon their learning experiences with multimedia,
15 students from the Hong Kong university shared that via this new
participatory culture project their multiple intelligences shone
through, particularly their linguistic and interpersonal intelligences
(Gardner & Hatch, 1989). As HK6 communicated about his OERs
creating and sharing experience via the Forum,
The Forum, as a place for discussion, can facilitate creativity and
provide support by such interaction. Indeed, by the use of this
technology, we have more variety in learning: our Canadian
peers are creating videos and we are creating websites for our
projects. The process of creation can cater for our diverse in-
terests; and by creating videos and websites, we are in fact using
abilities of multiple intelligences that are rarely valued in
normal schooling, like musicalerhythmic, visualespatial and
interpersonal abilities.
HK6’s appraisal of the opportunities enabled by interactive,
design-oriented learning echoes the sentiment expressed by most
participants.
In the meantime, the thematic analysis of the third round online
exchanges brings to the spotlight both Hong Kong and Canadian
students’ critical examination of the exclusion of multimedia and
technologies in their own learning experiences. Students from the
Canadian university spotted difficulties such as: 1) exclusion of
parents in the new learning processes and their unfamiliarity with
various technologies and 2) teachers’ reluctance to embrace new
technologies and generation gaps (learners as digital natives and
teachers as digital immigrants) in the use of new technologies.
Besides, Hong Kong participants articulated the following barriers:
1) the exam-oriented culture has made people believe that the
incorporation of technologies in lessons is time-consuming and
ineffective in preparing students for public examinations, 2) lack of
subsidies from the government to ensure every student’s access to
technological devices at school, 3) parents’ assumption that “stu-
dents’ usage of computer equals to playing” (HK20), 4) social ste-
reotypes of learning that focus on rote learning and reading print
books, and 5) teachers’ misconception that using new technologies
is about Internet searching skills rather than higher order thinking
such as critical thinking and evaluation of information. Nineteen
Hong Kong participants illustrated that the current use of multi-
media and new technologies in various Hong Kong schooling
contexts positioned learners as “media consumers” (Lange & Ito,
2010, p. 244). Only one Canadian and three Hong Kong students
depicted their memorable experience as media designers where
their teachers encouraged them to film a video for an IT project,
create a video trailer for a short story, design a game on iPad, or
create a Google survey to elicit people’s opinions about new
products. These findings are in line with Livingstone and Bober’s
(2005) report on the new divide on UK children’s online activ-
ities, namely the “quality of use” (p. 34) between “those for whom
the Internet is an increasingly rich, diverse, engaging and stimu-
lating resource and those for whom it remains a narrow, unen-
gaging, if occasionally useful resource of rather less significance” (p.
2).
In conclusion, participants expressed their enhanced under-
standing and awareness of the constraints and affordances of
recruiting online participation, new media technologies, and cul-
tural and linguistic diversity in education through their participa-
tion in this online, cross-border teacher training community.
4.3. Impacts reflected in multimedia instructional designs
To answer the third research question, here we address how
participants’ perceived impacts upon their professional
155
development were reflected in Hong Kong teacher candidates’
multimedia instructional designs.
Hong Kong students’ group projects of instructional designs
further exhibited their enhanced awareness of actualizing multi-
cultural education in their simulated classes. All the Hong Kong
groups stated that the majority of their intended learners were
local Cantonese-speaking Hong Kong students with a handful of
Mandarin-speaking Mainland Chinese students and South Asians.
According to them, the simulated demographics were a true
reflection of the reality of local Hong Kong schools. Responding to
the pluralistic student populations, all of their instructional designs
integrated Gay’s (2004) components of multicultural education to
engage cultural and linguistic diversity within their simulated
classrooms. For example, Group 5’s instructional design focused on
preparing students’ writing skills for their future career develop-
ment. They intentionally built in expert scaffolding for Pakistani
students in their simulated class, as was expressed in their design
explanations:
As Hong Kong is a society with Cantonese as the mainstream
language, Pakistani students may find it frustrating when
making career choices because of their weak Chinese ability.
However, it is important for them to know that Chinese ability is
not the only factor determining possible careers for them.
As such, they incorporated examples of successful individuals of
ethnic minorities in Hong Kong in the teacher’s presentation, such
as Nabela Qoser, a Pakistani news reporter for TVB, and Heina
Rizwan Mohammad, the first Pakistani policewoman in Hong Kong.
Group 3’s design had a salient component of celebrating the
interconnectivity of languages in their simulated lesson on English
loanwords. They reasoned, “By uniting students from different
cultural/linguistic backgrounds, students can widen their world
visions and learn about the influences of their own languages as
well as other languages upon English.” Group 1 designed a course
on “cultural integration” and explained their rationale as such,
Though the learning atmosphere among these students of
different ethnicities is harmonious at our teaching practicum
school, a dominant kind of national culture can be found at
school. Students do not seem to know well about the subordi-
nate cultures either. Therefore, we, as the practicum teachers of
this school, would like to develop an extended curriculum to fill
the gap by promoting students’ awareness of cultural
integration.
Hence, Group 1 built in various activities and new media and
technologies in their instructional design to develop their intended
learners’ cultural awareness (See Appendix B: A sample group work
of multimedia instructional design and Appendices C to F as sup-
plementary materials for this instructional design), for example,
encouraging learners to bring objects of their choices from home to
represent their cultural identities and share stories, showing a
YouTube video entitled “A Friendship beyond Language” to activate
learners’ schemata of diversity, and engaging students in the online
discussion and journal sharing on interactive platforms such as
Padlet and Penzu8 about what they have learned about cultural
8
Padlet is a virtual discussion wall that is used to facilitate people’s online ex-
changes of ideas on specific topics. It is like a blank online noticeboard where users
can incorporate their expressions of ideas through various modes of representa-
tions (e.g., written texts, images, and videos) (https://padlet.com/). Penzu is a free
online platform for individuals to keep secret diaries, personal journals, or private
journals of notes (https://penzu.com/).
156 Z. Zhang et al. / Teaching and Teacher Education 59 (2016) 146e158
diversity and integration.
The participants from both universities (5 Hong Kong students;
5 Canadian students) reported that the collaborative group projects
solidified the importance of creating a new participatory culture for
learning in the era of technological revolution. It is noteworthy that
all of the Hong Kong university students’ group projects incorpo-
rated social learning sites in their instructional designs. For
example, learners in their simulated classes were expected to
partake in online diary sharing on Penzu, share photos that learners
take in their daily lives about loanwords on Facebook, participate in
online discussions about cultural integration on Padlet, conduct
role-playing on the online forum of Muut9, vote for learner-
recommended movies, and post individual cover letters on self-
created e-class platforms. Providing suggestions for improving
the group project drafts, four groups of Canadian students com-
plimented Hong Kong pre-service teachers’ incorporation of
various online tools to engage their intended learners’ participation
in learning communities. Hong Kong participants identified the
following reasons to include SNSs in their design explanations: 1)
to stimulate learners’ interests by encouraging their sharing of
authentic life experience, 2) to engage learners’ participation in
discussion and contribute ideas for knowledge construction, and 3)
to encourage free expression of feelings and reflections.
As a result of participating in this virtual first-hand experience,
all of the Hong Kong teacher candidates’ group projects unveiled
their skills of appropriating OERs in various forms, such as YouTube
videos, online news articles, self-created English writing rubrics
posted online as OERs, Flickr pictures, movie review vocabulary
shared on Wikispaces, and free online aptitude tests. These
instructional designs harboured opportunities for their intended
learners to engage in new media literacy practices. For example, in
Group 3’s design, their prospective learners were given the
freedom to present their selected English loanwords in the forms of
PowerPoint, drama, mind map, drawing, skit, collage, and craft. In
their design explanations, four groups expressed that their pur-
poses to build in multimodal OERs were to cater for learners’
“different learning styles” (Group 1), “multiple intelligences”
(Group 1, 2, and 3), and “different abilities” (Group 1 and Group 5).
On top of that, three groups specifically communicated that their
purpose of remixing OERs in their instructional designs was to
“enhance intended learners’ creativity by being a media designer”
(a quote from Group 4 design explanations). When commenting on
each other’s group project drafts, four groups of Canadian students
appraised Hong Kong students’ skilled use of multimedia in their
instructional designs.
To sum up, Hong Kong students’ collaborative multimedia
design projects showcased their willingness and capacities to
incorporate SNSs, multimedia, and multicultural education com-
ponents for their intended learners.
5. Conclusion and limitations
Concurring with Wesch’s (2008) notion of Crisis of Significance
(i.e., the fact that learners are “struggling to find meaning and
significance in their education” [p. 5]), we linked Hong Kong
teacher candidates and Canadian students in this new participatory
culture project with the intent to foster their search of their own
significance in shaping the 21st century education in inter-
connected world communities. Consistent with the published
literature, findings from various sources imply that participants at
both institutions perceived this cross-cultural, participatory, and
9
Muut is an online forum which intends to facilitate natural and meaningful
online discussion (https://muut.com/).
design-based learning experience as enabling their collective and
critical reflection, their increased ease to negotiate and pool
knowledge across cultural differences, and the growth of their
situated understanding of the local and global educational chal-
lenges. New to the existing literature, data from this project were
suggestive that the new participatory culture that we created for
teacher professional training harboured potentials to foster pro-
spective teachers’ agency in collaboratively re-designing new ways
to addressing educational challenges.
First, the “affinity spaces” (new participatory cultures as
informal learning environments [Jenkins, 2009, p. 10]) validated the
participants’ cross-cultural peer-to-peer support and their
engagement in civic debates about three major challenges in their
respective education milieux. Participation in online, cross-cultural
spaces were reported to deepen the teacher candidates’ situated
understanding of multicultural education in various schooling
contexts. Hong Kong and Canadian participants’ cross-cultural di-
alogues demonstrated their skills to negotiate and take into ac-
count multiple viewpoints and put in perspective the local and
global connectedness and differences in educational challenges.
Major findings also relate that the meaningful cross-cultural
learning environment enabled by the new participatory culture
project vested teacher candidates’ agentive roles in negotiating
curriculum and pedagogy. Their online sharing revealed their
enhanced awareness of the interconnectedness of local and global
as they consciously acted upon the necessity to engage ethnic mi-
nority students’ participation in local matters. Learning practices
that the Hong Kong participants incorporated in instructional de-
signs, to connect minority students’ heritage languages and cul-
tures, are in line with the nurturing of respectful imaging of foreign
others’ cultural and linguistic heritages as a key 21st century lit-
eracy capacities (Saito, 2010). Their cross-border participation and
interaction in turn positively influenced Hong Kong teacher can-
didates’ inventive application of SNSs and discussion forums in
their simulated teaching. They shared in various data sources that
they appreciated the opportunities provided by SNSs to participate
in social movements. Such appreciations motivated them to apply
social learning platforms in their simulated teaching for purposes
such as mediating their prospective students’ social interactions
and facilitating their information gathering and knowledge
construction.
The teacher candidates also reported affordances of this new
participatory project in validating their informal support and
mentorship for collaborative problem-solving to appropriate OERs.
The Hong Kong and Canadian participants’ awareness of re-
examining the correlations between modal choices and in-
telligences is in line with new literacies scholars’ positioning that
re-analysing and re-defining learners’ competences and in-
telligences are needed given the impacts of globalization, digital
technology, the new knowledge economy, and the diverse and
mobile population (e.g., Stornaiuolo, Hull, & Nelson, 2009). Hong
Kong pre-service teachers’ instructional designs showcased their
skilled orchestration of multimodal tools to cater for their intended
learners’ diverse needs and intelligences. Hong Kong students’ re-
mixing, appropriations, and sharing of OERs in the instructional
designs demonstrated their awareness of the intellectual property
of new media and capacities of using free, multimodal, and high
quality digital learning resources with Creative Commons License
in their simulated teaching.
It is evident in various data sources that by engaging in this
participatory, design-based project, our teacher students demon-
strated knowledge, motivations, and skills to move beyond “ready-
made sources of entertainment or information” but toward “op-
portunities for critical engagement, user-generated content pro-
jection or active participation” (Livingstone & Bober, 2005, p. 34).
 Z. Zhang et al. / Teaching and Teacher Education 59 (2016) 146e158
The Hong Kong participants’ instructional designs also featured
these teacher students’ abilities to remix, appropriate, and recir-
culate OERs into their own instructional designs as media creators.
That said, the study reinforced the “insider” mind-set by affirming
teacher students’ authoritative roles in curricular and pedagogical
decision-making. As a result, Hong Kong teacher students posi-
tively projected their own learning experience in their instructional
designs by celebrating the new media knowledge that the youth
bring to school settings.
Regarding limitations of the research, the SNA statistics showed
that the participants’ involvement in communicating with all
others did not significantly improve over the three rounds of in-
teractions. As is mentioned earlier, possible explanations might be
the size of the network and the task-oriented nature of the online
interactions. As reported by the participants, the feature of WebKF
as a discussion forum instead of a social network site might have
further monitored their interaction patterns. That said, the partic-
ipants might have perceived the Forum for academic rather than
socialization purposes. Given the limited duration of this project
(12 weeks), we did not reach the stage to see the evolution of the
learning community, namely, how members’ interests and dynamic
interactions may develop the focus of a community of practice into
different directions (Wenger et al., 2002). Besides the strategy of
assigning sufficient time for such cross-border, participatory com-
munities of teacher education to evolve, we also concur with
Wenger et al. that developing both public and private community
spaces within the Forum might help build enduring relationship
and enable organic growth of such communities (e.g., synchronous
chats, emails, and one-on-one, face-to-face communications via
Skype). In particular, our future inquiries will focus on how to
mobilize peripheral members through main levels of community
participation (e.g., participants who are scattered far away from the
centres and sub-centres of online interactions). We would also give
due attention to teacher candidates’ agency in the design of com-
munities of practice so that they can diagnose their own needs and
values in professional development (e.g., Scardamalia & Bereiter,
1994; Wenger et al., 2002).
This research is a timely response to the “slow” reaction of
formal schooling worldwide to the emergence of the new media
landscape (Jenkins, 2009, p. xiii). We picked up a novel way of
teacher education in order to “prepare youth for their increasingly
public roles as media makers and community participants” in
global communities (p. xiii). Transnational projects as such have the
potential to facilitate international collaboration between teacher
students and enable transnational professional training commu-
nities. The findings of this study can be used for recalibrating
benchmarks for teacher professional development in globalized
schooling contexts.
Acknowledgements
We are grateful for the generous support from the Chinese
University of Hong Kong (CUHK) and the University of Ontario
Institute of Technology (UOIT) in funding this project (i.e., IT in
Education Project Fund from CUHK; UOIT SSHRC Small Research
Grant).
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary data related to this article can be found at http://
dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2016.05.017.
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