The developmental trend of the medium of instruction in secondary schools of Hong Kong: Prospect and retrospect

The developmental trend of the medium of instruction in secondary schools of Hong Kong: Prospect and retrospect

• Ho, Belinda Dept. of English and Communication, City University of Hong Kong
• Ho, Kwok Keung Dept. of Curriculum and Instruction, Hong Kong Institute of Education

Language and Education, 18(5), 400-412, 2004

Routledge

2004

• F Learning & Teaching
  • FE Medium of Instruction, Language of Teaching, Bi-& Multilingual Education, Problems of Bilingualism, Code-mixing & Code-switching
• R Educational Policy & Administration
  • RC Educational Planning & Decision Making Process, Educational Administration
• P Social Context of Education
  • PA History of Hong Kong Education

Foreign Countries Economic Factors Language of Instruction Secondary Schools Second Languages Politics of Education Teaching Methods Educational Practices English (Second Language) Sino Tibetan Languages Hong Kong China

• Hong Kong

• 1997.7 onwards

• Secondary Education

The use of students' second language as the medium of instruction in schools is quite common in former colonies of Western countries. Schools in Hong Kong have had this kind of experience for more than 150 years. In this study, three factors, namely economic, political, and educational, are found to affect the choice of medium of instruction in schools. In particular, the economic factor is found to be the dominant one for most of the time, while the educational factor has the smallest influence. Due to the change of the above three factors and their interactions over time, there were more Chinese-medium secondary schools in the first 100 years (1842-1949) and then more English-medium secondary schools during the transitional period 1950-97. However, the political factor suddenly becomes dominant after the change of sovereignty--there is an abrupt drop in English-medium secondary schools after government intervention in 1998. Educators should be more vocal and involved in politics in order to push the Government to make decisions that are educationally right.
[Copyright of Language and Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09500780408666891]

• English

Journal Articles

• 09500782

• 10.1080/09500780408666891

https://bibliography.lib.eduhk.hk/en/bibs/27cc6cdf

2010-09-27