Seminar on Curriculum Reform in HK

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Seminar on Curriculum Reform in HK

• Lee Wing On
• HKIEd

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Changing Social Realities

• Rapid changes, particularly economic
  restructuring
• Knowledge Economy
• Fewer jobs, changing job nature
• Intensive global competitions
• Increased uncertainties
• Schooling for tomorrow
• Learning for tomorrow
• Sustained competitiveness

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Calling for Lifewide Learning Perspectives

• Learning throughout a lifespan thus lifelong and
  lifewide learning come together
• Learning beyond the school setting learning to
  make good use of community resources, learning to
  tap opportunities
• Learning what is learning for adaptability,
  flexibility, diversifiability, comprehensibility,
  sustainability, transformability, applicability

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Breaking the Learning Divide

• between acquiring knowledge today and applying
  knowledge tomorrow
• between school and career
• between public and private sectors
• between policy sectors and the school sector
• between formal and nonformal/informal education
• between disadvantaged and advantaged learners

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A quote

• To ensure that HK will not lose out in a
  knowledge-based, globalized economy, the HKSAR
  has made education and skill training the number
  of one priority of our social policy. We have
  launched a massive education reform program which
  aims, among other things, to help our young
  people learn how to learn and to inculcate in
  them a commitment to lifelong learning.
• Fanny Law, 2002

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Common Needs/Problems Common Solutions
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Common Needs/Problems

• China the better the teacher teaches, the more
  the students dislike learning
• HK Not to lose out in the knowledge-economy
• Malaysia Public outcry that the existing
  curriculum is overloaded, student no. sizeable,
  students unable to read

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Common Needs/Problems

• Singapore globalization challenges
• Thailand economic crisis, science and technology
  and way of life
• Korea standardized individuals who lack
  individuality intellectuals who lack creativity
  students who lack moral values
• Japan achievement decline

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Common solutions

• Integration and diversification of the curriculum
• Lifelong and lifewide learning
• Civic moral values
• Individual development, creative and critical
  thinking
• Key Learning Areas (HK, Taiwan, Malaysia)
• General education

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Common terminologies

• Generic skills
• Reducing loads
• ICT
• Decentralization
• School-based curriculum development
• Flexible curriculum
• Relevance

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Change in Curriculum Definitions

• Static, content-based perspectives
• Narrow Definition of the curriculum
• French scolarie
• German Lehrplan
• English syllabus

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Change in Curriculum Definition

• Change-oriented perspectives with various foci
• The complicated, dynamic and continuous process
  of organizing education
• Objectives intended for students
• Teaching strategies schools plan to use
• The actual implementation and learning
  achievements
• An ongoing search for qualitative improvement, in
  response to changes in society

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Challenges for the Implementation of Change

• Reminders from Torres comments on teacher
  education reform
• Each new policy, plan or project starts from
  zero, disregarding pervious knowledge and
  experience
• Considers training principally as a need for
  teachers rather than their supervisors
• Views training isolated from other dimensions
• Adopts a top-down approach
• Provides homogeneous proposal
• Oriented toward correcting mistakes

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Challenges for the Implementation of Change

• Udo Bude
• The implications of the panic approach to
  curriculum reform
• Changes come about often as a reaction to problem
  or emergency situation
• Based on perceived problems and solutions rather
  than systematic and planned research
• Often come from high authority
• Experts tend to be fashionable in proposals
• Teachers are regarded as conveyors of the
  curriculum

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Challenges for the Implementation of Change

• What will happen to our curriculum reform, if we
  adopt the view that curriculum means continuous
  response to changing social circumstances, what
  kind of mechanism can we think of? Who has the
  right to respond? And at what stage are
  unintended response become legitimized?

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Challenges for the Implementation of Change

• Collective decision making (from the Malaysian
  paper)
• This implies the need for widened participation
  in curriculum reform, decision, and curriculum
  design. How much, and how, are we opening up for
  participation?
• What roles do the teacher play in curriculum
  responses?
• What roles do the students play in knowledge
  creation?

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Challenges for the Implementation of Change

• The concept of teaching still seems to be a
  top-down or unidirectional concept. Even the best
  approaches aim at students receiving teaching in
  the most pleasant way. If we agree that the new
  curriculum concept requires responsiveness to
  change, what role do students play in this
  process? How can their contribution be
  recognized? How can their lifewide experiences be
  formalized as a part of learning?

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Challenges for the Implementation of Change

• School-based development has become a natural
  direction of development under the new concept of
  curriculum. However, its not a matter of whether
  we agree development to be school-based, but how
  far can their autonomy go? How far
  decentralization can be accepted by the
  government?

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Higher Order Thinking Project in a School in HK

• Classification skills
• Relationship skills
• Decision making skills
• Interaction skills
• Problem solving skills
• Self development skills

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The Present Curriculum Reform

• Responding to the changing social realities
• Keeping abreast of curriculum development trends
  taking place elsewhere

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Highlights of the Curriculum Reform Documents

• Key learning areas
• Generic skills
• Learning experiences
• Lifewide learning, authentic experiences
• Construction of knowledge
• Flexible time-tabling

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HKIEds Curriculum Development

• Moving from teacher isolation to collaborative
  teaching, peer observation, peer coaching
• Developing a demand for reflection in teachers
  professional development
• Emphasis on diverse teaching practices by
  exposing student teachers to diverse educational
  settings
• Making good use of student teachers diverse
  backgrounds

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Examples teaching approaches introduced in HKIEd

• Problem-based learning in various Departments
• Experiential learning in developing language
  skills in English
• Performing magic and artwork presentations for
  creative teaching in Mathematics
• Interdisciplinary approaches, field-based and
  lifewide learning in General Studies

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• IT skills in teaching and learning
• Interactive enquiry in art education
• Cognitive approaches combining listening,
  performing and composing in music education
• Movement approaches in teaching ball games in PE
• Group dynamics in writing in Chinese
• Reflective enquiry and issue-based approaches in
  civic education
• Student learning experience projects
• Portfolios..

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Further Development and Challenges New
Terminologies and New Perspectives

• Flexibility
• Further strengthening of school-based development
• Rethinking of level of learning as a result of
  project learning
• Teacher and student participation in knowledge
  construction and reduction of reliance on
  textbooks

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• Partnership
• to be further strengthened policy-making
  bodies, schools and teacher training institutes
• Partnership required in the curriculum reform
  process, e.g. the new documents extracts examples
  from schools
• Partnership between teachers and students in the
  process of learning becomes essential

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• KLAs and Generic Skills
• Challenge to CDI substantiation of concepts,
  redefinition, assessment
• Challenge to HKIEd What does this mean to the
  teacher education curriculum, teacher training
  methods and approaches?
• Challenge to the community redefining knowledge
  boundary and focus of education
• -Challenge to schools Do the schools provide a
  reform-induced context for attempts of innovation?

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• Thank You