This paper reports on a research project that monitored four key features in an in-service teacher education course for secondary art teachers in Hong Kong. First, the content of the course was reframed to include focus on the attributes of good art teachers and standards of good art teaching. Second, the theory-into-practice model of previous courses was reframed to include a focus on understanding theory through its practical implications. Third, teachers were encouraged to use dialogue journals to reflect on how the ideas and information presented in the course confirmed or challenged their beliefs and practices. Fourth, jointly developed “standards of good practice in art teaching” were used for self and peer evaluation in the teaching practice. Data from dialogue journals and end-of-course interview as well as questionnaires suggest the value of such approaches for in-service teacher education.

In 1998, a five-year strategic plan in IT education—the Information Technology for Learning in a New Era: Five-Year Strategy 1998/99 to 2002/03 was launched to promote the use of IT to enhance teaching and learning in Hong Kong. An integral part of the government’s IT policy is that comprehensive IT integration across the curriculum has been encouraged by the provision of ample of resources to implement various proposals in the strategic plan including the acquisition of hardware and software, the development of ICT infrastructure, and the provision of IT training for teachers. This paper describes the context regarding the professional development for music teachers associated with ICT integration in primary school music education in Hong Kong. Through an extensive study of government documents and review of related literature, the provision of professional development in IT for music teachers were discussed and analysed. Findings revealed that, on the average, general IT training for music teachers might be inadequate with regard to the desired level of IT competence. Whereas the provision of music-oriented IT training for teachers as a whole is practically adequate in terms of quantity and content.

This paper reports the findings from a study of understanding images of popular visual culture created by young adolescents in a Hong Kong school context. It adopted a phenomenological case study method to investigate the images created by eight students from a secondary school, in which students participated in a manga creation program. The study suggested a matrix for the investigation that stressed investigating the meaning of the images young adolescents create through their art creation experiences, the reasons for creating images in the particular way, and the way of interpreting their creation process. The study found that there were two types of aesthetics in the image of popular visual culture affecting young adolescents’ image creation: the stereotyped aesthetics and the counter-stereotyped aesthetics. They not only affected young adolescents’ artistic representations, but they also influenced the representation forms of the images of both sexes. Besides, they revealed a psycho-cognitive learning process for self-transformation. Each had its specific functions and meanings contributing to understanding images. The matrix demonstrated a self-actualised and self-autonomous ecological system formulated by the socio-cultural context and individual real world problems, in which young adolescents sought solutions to their real world problems through being sophisticated in drawing skills and techniques.

The paper focuses on the analysis of a curriculum plan of art practitioners in Hong Kong to generate perspective of how art education can be best serve the needs and interest of the current century. Different ideas of art education have made implications to art teaching in its content and delivery. Wolcott (1997) conceptualizes art teaching by referring to the evolvement of art in culture and history. The modernist school believed that art was the vehicle for subjective expression and, like the essentialist, valued that aesthetic quality that lies in art marking itself. More specifically the modernist school concentrated on the formal qualities of art and considered aesthetic experience as an end itself (Eaton, 1998; Fehr, 1994). This is where the traditional art education based to best cultivate the artistic literacy if a person. Alternatively, the post modernists art education is characterized by pluralism in style and expression. Art is considered as a means of discourse, contemplating politics, society, religion, or culture. Its content is critiques of both culture and society (Lloyd, 1997). The latter approach always creates ambiguity in implementation, and is not popular in Hong Kong schools. Based on the post modernist ideas, a curriculum plan is discussed and evaluated and a framework of developing a post modernist art curriculum is suggested with implications drawn to how the new idea is well suited to the globalized and information society of the twenty first century.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the aims, content and assessment method of the music curriculum in Hong Kong, with particular emphasis on singing and instrumental playing. How far music teachers followed the guidelines as suggested by the Education Department in these two areas will be dealt with. The methods used for this investigation will be mainly through documentary research, supplemented by interviews with music teachers.

Approaches to teaching art were studied through interviews with 18 art teachers at secondary schools in Hong Kong. Grounded analysis revealed that the approaches to teaching fitted into a four category model with category labels: instructional, discipline inquiry, social interactive, and personal. The categories were defined and described by six dimensional features: aim; content; role of teacher; role of student; teaching methods; and assessment orientation. The four categories of approaches to teaching could be placed under a higher-order spectrum between subject- and student-centred pole This article reports the findings of a study of art teachers’ approaches to teaching art. Before the findings are illustrated, it is necessary to deal with how the term approach to teaching is operationalised and how it relates to other constructs, such as conceptions and beliefs about teaching.