Browse

Assessment is an important part of effective teaching and learning. It allows achievements to be recognized and helps both teachers and learners to reflect on and review their performance and progress. While assessment has long been an end-of-learning activity to measure what learners can do, the outcome-oriented approach does not always foster learning motivation effectively. A new perspective now encourages ongoing appraisal in the classroom to improve learning. This book reflects current thinking of assessment with a stated focus on assessment for learning (AfL). It informs teachers about the latest developments and provides teachers with important tools for integrating assessment in the classroom. The discussions on assessment theories are in-depth and the examples used for illustrating the concepts are plentiful.

Questions regarding whether a first or a second/foreign language should be used as a medium of instruction (MOI) in schools, and if yes, for whom, and when, have been enthusiastically debated in recent years in Hong Kong and many Southeast Asian societies. The public debates, however, have largely not been able to benefit from the existing international body of research in bilingual education as well as the educational experiences of other countries. The reason is that such knowledge is often either couched in specialized, technical language or scattered over diverse journals and books, which are often off-putting to teachers, parents, school principals, policy makers and the general public. There is an urgent need to critically integrate and review the international research literature with a view to informing public debates and policy making regarding the medium of instruction in Hong Kong and other Southeast Asian contexts. This book aims at meeting this urgent need by discussing, in accessible language, research findings on key concepts of bilingual education, and recent developments of bilingual education policies in Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia. Teachers, students and researchers in the areas of bilingual education, language policy and planning (LPP), and studies of medium of instruction policy and practice both in Hong Kong and other Southeast Asian contexts will benefit from the book. Government officials and policy makers involved in language policy and planning, as well as school principals, parents and university administrators will also find this book especially useful in providing them with a research-based LPP framework for discussing and studying the pivotal issues in LPP in their respective contexts.

This book is principally about the management of student conduct in the classroom, which is the number one area of concern of many teachers. The chapters include discussions and real-life cases with specific reference to the influences of Chinese culture on Hong Kong classrooms. Numerous examples are provided to illustrate how positive learning environments can be created and maintained in the classroom. The topics covered include managing challenging behaviour, establishing classroom rules, conveying authority, and coping with bullying.

This book is an introductory textbook on Hong Kong’s school curriculum. Written in an approachable style using illustrative case studies, the textbook provides an introduction to the basic concepts and theories of “curriculum” as a field of study. It also discusses how socio-political and economic changes as well as technology advancements help transform teachers’ roles and reshape curriculum policies. The chapters cover a wide range of topics, including curriculum design, planning, implementation and evaluation. These discussions are included to help readers critically reflect on their roles as change agents in curriculum development.

Hong Kong is a fascinating place for the study of curriculum. Its schooling system is influenced by the legacies of a Chinese tradition and British colonialism and was developed at a time when, around the world, that state was taking more responsibility for the education of young people and educational policies were increasingly influenced by the impact of globalization. To this we can add the complexities of Hong Kong as a society—one that has witnessed major political and economic changes over the past 150 years or so, and particularly since the late 1970s. The dynamics produce an intricate interplay of innovation and conservatism, globalization and localization, liberalism and authoritarianism, devolution and centralization, and many other tensions. This book provides a comprehensive introduction to curriculum as a field of study in a way which highlights its inherent dilemmas and complexities by illustrating the diverse ways in which a curriculum can be developed and analyzed. It also presents a specific analysis of the Hong Kong school curriculum and highlights the ways in which the curriculum both reflects and changes in response to broader socio-political shifts.

Hong Kong's Chinese History Curriculum from 1945: Politics and Identity investigates the ways in which Chinese history has evolved as a subject in Hong Kong secondary schools since 1945, and the various social, political and economic factors that have shaped the curriculum, through an examination of a wide range of primary and secondary source materials and interviews. This book examines how the aims, content, teaching, learning and assessment of the Chinese history curriculum have evolved since 1945. It describes how Chinese history became an independent subject in secondary schools in Hong Kong despite the political sensitivity of the subject, how it consolidated its status during the colonial period, and how it has faced threats to its independence since the return of Hong Kong to China in 1997. An important element of the book is its in-depth analysis of the major socio-political and socio-economic forces that have been involved in the development of Chinese history. This book will be of interest to all who are interested in history education and curriculum development, and readers who are concerned with history education.

How Assessment Supports Learning: Learning-oriented Assessment in Action invites teachers in higher education to rethink the purposes of assessment and to revise their assessment practices in the interests of improved student learning. It combines practice, theory, research and extensive examples of assessment techniques to support academics in this vital part of their multi-faceted role. This book presents 39 innovative assessment practices from a range of disciplines and located in a clearly articulated theoretical framework. This framework is congruent with outcomes-based approaches, currently being implemented in universities in Hong Kong and elsewhere. The practices, which can be modified for use in a wide range of contexts, illustrate how assessment can be used to engage students in productive learning, provide genuinely helpful feedback efficiently, and help students learn to evaluate and improve the quality of their own work. The book concludes with suggestions for responding to challenges at the interface between assessment and learning.

This book is unprecedented as a comprehensive study of the multilingual circumstances in China. It tracks policy changes in the learning of Chinese, foreign languages and minority ethnic languages in China since the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949. On the basis of survey and interview data, the experiences of different age cohorts of learners are presented as ‘windows’ to the realities of language education policy implementation over the last half century. The effects of political changes, language backgrounds and various motivations for learning, at both the national and individual levels, are vividly presented in this composite story of China and learners in China.

A unique feature of Learning Diversity in the Chinese Classroom is its Chinese context for meeting the educational requirements of children with special needs. At a time when many of the currently available texts in the area have a general perspective, Asian teachers and students have long felt the need for a text that specifically recognizes the local context. This book notes that international trends, including those in many Southeast Asian countries are moving toward inclusive education and special needs. The book is categorized into three major sections, namely ‘The Chinese Classroom’, ‘Catering for Learning Diversity’ and ‘Whole-School Approaches to Learning Diversity’. The individual chapters put under the aforesaid sections revolve around the themes about giftedness, counselling, behavioural management and the like.

This edited volume brings together essays by leading experts exploring different aspects of ethnic minority education in China: among these are the challenges associated with bilingual and trilingual education in Xinjiang and Tibet; Han Chinese reactions to preferential minority education; the role of inland boarding schools for minority students, and the mediation of religion and culture in multiethnic schools. The book covers these topics from a range of different perspectives: Uyghur, Tibetan, Korean, Mongolian, Han, and those of the West, combining empirical field studies with theoretical approaches. Previous scholarship has explored the pedagogical and policy challenges of minority education in China; this is the first volume to recast these problems in light of the Chinese Party-state’s efforts to balance ethnic diversity and cohesion through a shared sense of national belonging in the twenty-first century.

This book describes and theorizes the experiences of Uyghur graduates of the “Xinjiang Class” national boarding school program. These experiences reveal how young, educated Uyghurs strategically and selectively embrace elements of the corporate Chinese “Zhonghua minzu” identity in order to stretch the boundaries of a collective Uyghur identity. More specifically, Xinjiang Class students establish cross-regional bonds with Uyghur classmates and non-Xinjiang Class Uyghurs in inner China (neidi) and transnational bonds based on shared faith with foreign Muslims living in Chinese cities. These networks activate and perpetuate a transregional and often transnational ethno-national identity that is regularly communicated through Islamic practice.

This book provides a comprehensive introduction to school guidance and counselling services in Hong Kong. It draws extensively on current research in the field, with a special emphasis on how guidance and counselling could be systematically planned to meet the personal, social and educational and career needs of students. The chapters discuss how counselling could be infused into school activities by employing a team approach, wherein all staff members have specified roles to play. The book also focuses on the Confucian heritage practices in Chinese societies, such as the emphasis on examinations, the contestations between discipline and guidance, and the role of class teachers in school guidance.

Service-learning is a form of experiential education that combines academic study with community service. Learning occurs as students work with others through applying their academic knowledge to community needs and at the same time, reflecting on their experience and the real-world relevance of their skills. This book describes the development of service learning in Asia around three themes: service-learning and indigenous traditions; service-learning and social justice education; and service-learning and multicultural education. The essays in this collection are multi-disciplinary, ranging from the field of social work to business. The discussions are also comprehensive, covering every dimension of service-learning from curricular designs to learning outcome assessment.