Chinese pre-school children perform well in learning mathematics compared with English-speaking children. This study investigates the scenes behind Chinese preschool children's mathematics performance using teacher questionnaires and interviews. Results indicated that the Chinese number system appeared to afford advantages to Chinese children in…

With the restructuring of the senior secondary education system in Hong Kong in 2009, the senior secondary curriculum was overhauled substantially by the conversion of the two-year Certificate Level and the two-year Advanced Level to a new three-year senior secondary level. This process entails changes to the contents and organization of various…

Background: Deliberative mode of curriculum development has been hailed as one effective way of developing school-based curriculum. Its participatory, egalitarian and discursive characteristics have helped to generate the much-needed synergy and ownership feeling among the curriculum team members that lead to curriculum success. Nevertheless there…

Liberal studies is a new subject in the new senior secondary curriculum in Hong Kong. This study attempted to identify factors that shape liberal studies student teachers' decisions in lesson planning. Based on interview data and lesson plans developed by the student teachers, this article maintains that four factors interacted with the subject…

This article attempts to unpack the complexity of teachers' professional knowledge construction in Assessment for Learning (hereafter, AfL). It presents a qualitative study of a school-based AfL Project which took place in a secondary school in Hong Kong. Thirty lessons video-recorded in the AfL Project and nine teacher interviews conducted after…

Donald Schon's theory of reflective learning (1983, 1987) has been the model of professional education for decades. Yet little research is done to examine the role of practitioners as part-time teachers in professional education in light of his ideas. This research investigated four programmes of professional education in Hong Kong: (a) a master…

In Hong Kong, once a British colony, sex has traditionally been viewed as taboo and, as such, seldom talked about or openly discussed in public. As a result, there is reluctance on the part of most pre-to-secondary schools to implement sex education. The aim of this preliminary study was to investigate teachers' perceptions of preschool sex…

For decades there has been no formal evaluation system to ensure the quality of art teaching in Hong Kong. Additionally, although the syllabi for art are open and flexible, art teachers do not have adequate knowledge to develop a balanced curriculum. This study investigates what constitutes good art teaching and the extent to which art teachers…