Background: Given the technological revolution and the social, political and economic changes, the Chinese educational system, an important factor to ensure that Chinese youth are prepared for the changing world, has undoubtedly become the focus of many conversations. It is especially beneficial to listen to various perspectives, including those…

Background: In his discussion of higher education, Fred Newman (1985) explained that university graduates should "have a profound understanding of what it means to be a citizen", and be "capable of an interest larger than self-interest" (p. xiv). "Art and Well Being", an elective course offered by the Department of Visual Studies at Lingnan,…

Background: Action research (AR) for school-based curriculum innovations (SCI) has been ardently pursued in Singapore schools for the past few years, leading to a plethora of project reports published as monographs and in a new journal, the "North Star". Training workshops were conducted at the national, zonal, and school levels to equip teachers…

Background: The implementation and integration of computer technologies in K-12 education has seen nearly constant growth since the early 1980s (Culp, Honey, Mandinach & Bailey, 2003), in part because this trend has become synonymous with skills that students will need as participants in a competitive global economy (Culp et al., 2003). It has…

Background: Collaborative action research provides teachers with the framework and methodology to reflect upon their work and take action with regard to specific concerns and situations in their classrooms. Within this approach, internal evaluation could be a useful tool to help teachers develop critical thinking about their work by locating areas…

Background: Media education is the study of the media with the aim of cultivating people's media literacy. In the past four decades, media education has rapidly developed in school systems and communities all over the world. Each country has its own developmental trajectory. With the rise of the interactive new media, media education is going to…

Background: Almost three decades have passed since the Grunwald Declaration on Media Education was issued by the representatives of 19 nations at UNESCO's International Symposium on Media Education in Germany (UNESCO 1982). Cycles of information revolution and education reform over this period have led to significant changes in the sectors of…

Background: Singapore is experiencing great demographic change. These demographic trends show fewer young people and declining birth rates, greater longevity for ageing generations and an increase in the number of non-Singaporean residents. Statistics also show that more than half of the total population increase in the last decades was…

Background: The Education Commission (EC) of Hong Kong, the advisory body set up by the government on the overall development of education in Hong Kong, began developing a policy of education reform in 1998 and published its blueprint in 2000. In 2006, the EC published its fourth official report on the progress of the reform--"Progress Report on…

Background: Teaching Games for Understanding has been promoted as an innovative curriculum model in the past decade in Hong Kong. It focuses on developing pupils' tactical awareness and decision making capability through integrating the cognitive and contextual dimensions of learning in physical education. Aims: This article reports a qualitative…

Background: In the early 1980s, the author of this article researched, in her M.Ed thesis, the state of adult education in Hong Kong with regard to its general support and delivery through university channels. At that time, adult education had a separate identity and, since, has generally become vocationalized, creditized or subsumed into…

Background: During the era of education reform, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region has launched a series of measures to enhance the learning of the students and the effectiveness of teaching. In the Curriculum Development Council document, Learning to Learn--the Way Forward in Curriculum, the policy of school-based curriculum is…

Background: The riots in Paris '68 marked among others, the creation of a "Centre universitaire experimental" in Vincennes of which especially the philosophy faculty became the testing laboratory for educational reform. There, scholars like Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Alain Badiou and Jean-Francois Lyotard developed new ideas on education…

Background: Recognizing that arts education is important in facilitating learning and in enhancing creativity in students, recent education reform in Hong Kong has sought to promote arts education and efforts to encourage creative expression through different art forms. Among different modes of creative arts expression, drawing has been suggested…

Purpose: This paper presents experiences of in-service teacher education in Macao which seeks to educate preprimary teachers to teach for multiple intelligences. A thematic topic unit designed by a group of teachers is included to reveal what teachers can do to achieve the ideal of individually configured education. Argument: This paper starts…