Hong Kong has put forward a package of education reform proposals in 2000. The education reform is to set the blueprint for Hong Kong's development of education for the 21st century. An analysis of the values orientation of the reform proposals shows that the impact of globalization and the economic restructuring are the guiding forces. The main concern of the education reform is human investment - to produce the manpower demanded by a new economy of the era of information technology. At the same time, the proposals also promote democratization and equal opportunities and this implies a paradigm shift.
[Copyright of School Effectiveness and School Improvement is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1076/sesi.15.2.201.30431]

Nearly every school in Hong Kong claims to provide ethics/religious education as part of the curriculum, but teachers find it difficult to teach values and attitudes without having students find ethics/religious lessons boring. While much has been said about how students learn, it remains that it is the teacher s task to provide the relevant experience and conditions for learning so that learning takes place. Thus such questions arise as, What is relevant experience? and What do students experience? Since most students are exposed to popular culture, the use of it as examples in teaching ethics/religious education may be a solution. This research finds that teachers and students in general enjoy the use of popular culture in the teaching and learning of ethics/religious education. The problems lie with the lack of resources and the already too heavy workload of teachers.
[Copyright of Religious Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00344080308292 ]

This paper reviews literacy learning conducted in two laboratory preschools in Hong Kong and Canada, and examines the link between cultural values and educational practices. Both preschools maintain that a constructivist view of child learning underpins their practice. However, the author's experience in these two settings illustrates how similarities and differences are identified in the scope, focus, implementation strategies and learning outcomes of the activities observed. Reasons for these findings are explored from the perspectives of cultural values and societal beliefs in education of the East and the West, and how the constructivist ideology is espoused in these settings. Implications of this cross-cultural comparison on the issue of 'best practice' in early childhood education are discussed.
[Copyright of Early Years: An International Journal of Research and Development is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09575140802057554]

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) represent a crucial force for cultural change in both education and society and possible transitions between old and new learning as well as social values. This is especially so in East Asia, where the young have informally embraced ICTs but learn in formal contexts often still dominated by traditional transmission models of learning rather than the new learner-centred theories which inform policy imperatives for innovation and reform. Educational contexts like Singapore and Hong Kong are particularly exemplary because they have been so progressive in policy initiatives for ICT integration and reform in formal education, imperatives which conflict in practice with still dominant traditional learning expectations, teaching practices and models of assessment. As typified by such contexts, this paper investigates how the pedagogical dilemmas of a tension between old and new models of learning need to be understood and approached in terms of related and overlapping institutional and social dilemmas of change.
[Copyright of Globalisation, Societies & Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1476772042000252470]