As part of the module "Further Studies in Kindergarten Curriculum" in the Certificate in Kindergarten Teacher Education Course conducted by the Hong Kong Institute of Education, teacher-educators made use of semantic webbing to help kindergarten teachers/principals develop reflective and thinking skills regarding subject matter content and teaching curriculum. Semantic webbing/mapping or semantic networking or plot maps may be defined as a strategy in which information is categorically structured in graphic/visual form. However, its use in teacher education is more recent. Kindergarten teachers/principals were interviewed to discern how they developed critical thinking and evaluative skills concerning subject matter content and teaching curriculum through the use of semantic webbing. Interviews of a random sample of participants and analysis of their mind-maps revealed a change in perspectives and attitudes towards subject matter content and teaching curriculum. The present paper examines some of the affective outcomes for both teacher educators and student-teachers resulting from the use of semantic webbing/mapping as a strategy for facilitating reflective and critical thinking skills in four components of the module "Further Studies in Kindergarten Curriculum"; namely, Art, Language, Mathematics/Science, as well as Social Studies. Implications for teacher education are drawn from the findings.
[Copyright of Early Child Development and Care is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0300443022000022422 ]

Girls' education has been considered a site of struggle where ideals of femininity and domesticity are translated into curricula and practices that seek to shape and regulate. In colonial Hong Kong, British mission societies had a significant share in providing girls' education, which was predominantly in the hands of European missionaries in the nineteenth century. The dual mission of evangelising and civilising colonial subjects in the Victorian era of empire expansion constituted a pertinent focus of inquiry in the writing of history of girls' education. Drawing on selected texts on missionary literature and government reports, this article examines in what ways a domestic ideology framed within evangelical beliefs and the imperial gaze interplayed with the politics of race and class in shaping girls' education. It challenges the presumed impartiality in education policies and practices concerning both sexes, and discusses women's agency in re-defining identities and boundaries in a colonial society.
[Copyright of History of Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00467600802368715]