Dr. Bi Ying Hu is the director of the Center for Early Childhood Education and Child Development at University of Macau. She is an associate professor and associate editor of the Journal Learning and Individual Differences. Dr. Hu has worked in classrooms for four years before joining higher education. Her research focuses on early childhood program quality assessment and improvement, with a strong focus on Chinese sociocultural and policy contexts. Also, she is interested in developing high quality inclusive preschool programs for children with disabilities. She has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles in reputable journals, such as Early Childhood Research Quarterly. Most of these publications are based on a national longitudinal study led by her team on Chinese preschool quality and children’s short- and long-term development and learning. Most recently, her book Quality Evaluation on Early Childhood Education: Research and Practice has been published by Beijing Normal University Publication Group.  In order to bridge the gap between research and practice. Dr. Hu is now leading several innovative professional development projects aiming to improve teaching effectiveness of preservice preschool teachers.

Effects of MMCI Course and Coaching on Pre-service Preschool Teachers’ Professional Learning

  In this talk I will focus on an experimental study that examined the effectiveness of two professional development models, Making the Most of Classroom Interactions (MMCI) course and MMCI course plus video-based coaching based on a total of 133 Chinese pre-service preschool teachers. The results showed that the combined use of MMCI course and coaching showed more robust effects on knowledge of effective teacher-child interaction, knowledge of effective teaching strategies, and skills of identifying effective teaching practices than the MMCI course alone. Implications for improving pre-service teachers’ knowledge and skills of classroom interactions are discussed.