The aim of this Quality Education Fund project was to set up a school network for teachers to have a platform for an interactive exchange of ideas, resources, services, and expertise among different schools that mutually address the needs of children with dyslexia in Hong Kong. A number of five primary schools were invited to participate in this project. Each school was requested to identify an area of concern in reading or writing for research and development. Each school also designed a 10-week teaching programme for children with dyslexia for the try-out of the chosen area of concern. The identified areas included story-telling for word identification, summarization for reading comprehension, recognition of word functions for writing, use of five senses for sentence making and co-teaching for teaching word recognition. A 5-day cross-site visitation was held among the five member schools during the implementation of the teaching programmes. Individual interviews were conducted for principals and teachers of member schools to evaluate the effectiveness of the network. It was found that teachers of member schools benefitted from the experience sharing in the immediate discussion after each peer observation. The most significant finding was that the motivation of the students was enhanced and their reading and writing skills were improved.

Inclusion is an international trend, and means that all children learn together in the same classrooms, regardless of the presence of a disability. Attitudes, sentiments, and concerns are variables which have been found to influence the success of inclusion. There is a need, then, for the development of a concise tool for measuring these. This paper describes the development of an improved scale for measuring sentiments, attitudes and concerns about inclusive education in pre-service teachers, based on an examination of data gathered from 996 pre-service teachers from five tertiary institutions using a modified version of the Interactions with People with Disabilities scale (Forlin, Jobling & Carroll, 2001; Gething, 1991, 1994), the Concerns about Inclusive Education Scale (Sharma & Desai, 2002), and the Attitudes Toward Inclusive Education Scale (Wilczenski, 1992, 1995). The scale has been developed with international use in mind, and the sample includes pre-service teachers in Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia, and Canada. Based on the statistical results, conceptual judgments, and a critique of content and format from an "expert group", a new scale, the Sentiments, Attitudes and Concerns about Inclusive Education scale (SACIE), is developed. The rationale behind the development of the scale is discussed.

Basing on document analysis and drawing insights from the author’s participation in the evaluation research project of the Pilot Project on Integration of Children with Special Needs in Ordinary Schools (1997-1999), this paper argues that preparing teachers for inclusive education is one of the urgent and prime tasks of teacher education in 21st century Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR). The first section points out that there is a gap between HKSAR school reality and the curriculum of teacher education. Increasingly placing mainland children and those with special educational needs in regular classroom offered by local pre-service teacher education institutions, and research findings show that the issue of integration/inclusion education has either been left out or not been given sufficient attention. The second section suggests that in order to bridge the gap we need to take a paradigm shift in current pre-service teacher education. Successful school integration implementation is subject to teachers’ understanding, attitude and knowledge of inclusive education. Otherwise, recruiting more schools in the integration project will only create more classroom frustrations and failure. The last section presents an inclusive curriculum proposal for teacher education in 21st century HKSAR.
[Copyright © 2000 The Hong Kong Institute of Education.]

152 elementary students age ranged from 8–11 were studied on their affective and social domains in a school with an inclusive school curriculum in Hong Kong. Five questionnaires from the Assessment Program for Affective and Social Outcomes (APASO) (EMB 2001) were used to measure students’ attitude to school, self concept, attitude to learning, interpersonal competence, and problem solving strategy. The differences between normal (N=136) and inclusive (N=16) students were examined by one-way ANOVA tests. The outcome was triangulated with teachers’ perspective through teacher conference and school profile report and curriculum policy to reach a descriptive account is reached. The two groups had significant differences on social and academic self concept which were explained by a “positive discrimination” perspective to suggest a gap between what students perceived and teachers thought. There are discrepancies between teachers’ perception on the school curriculum and the effect that students reflected by the study, which suggests the how an inclusive curriculum could be shaped, such as cultivating a multicultural environment and the perspectives on both teachers and students.

It is the global trend in education to include students with special needs in ordinary schools. Recently, the British are promoting the use of a whole school approach to inclusion using a special programme, the “Index to Inclusive Education”. This paper discusses the issues in the implementation of inclusive education in Macao and Hong Kong SAR schools, explains the aims of the Index and the stages of implementation and the need to develop inclusive schools.
[Copyright © 2003 University of Macau.]

The increasing number of Mainland Chinese immigrant children in the Hong Kong school system mandates our understanding of teacher readiness to work effectively with these students. This case study adopted narrative inquiry to probe deep into participants’ lived experiences to reveal significant insight into teacher readiness in working with Chinese immigrant students with disabilities. Data sources included field notes, unstructured- and semi-structured interviews, and classroom observations. Findings showed that the special education teacher was primarily concerned about the student participant’s difficulty associated with his disabilities, totally unaware of the impact of her limited proficiency in the child’s first language. The government’s concept of acculturation needs and subsequent policy contributed greatly to school personnel’s lack of awareness of student needs and lack of readiness to work effectively. Recommendations focused on government policies for qualification requirements of special education teachers and reforms to integrate special and multicultural teacher education.

The purpose of this study was to compare attitudes of final year students in teacher preparation programs in Hong Kong and Taiwan toward including students with disabilities into regular settings, and to further examine the influences of attitudes on the development of adapted physical education programs. A 15-item questionnaire was used to investigate students' attitudes and concerns toward inclusion. Seventy-seven students from Hong Kong and Taiwan participated in this study. The results of the survey indicated that students in Hong Kong and Taiwan philosophically support inclusion, although there were many concerns and different opinions regarding inclusion. The survey indicated that students from both locations thought special schools and teachers with special training will provide better education for students with disabilities than general teachers, and indicated the needs for more academic preparation for inclusion. The findings also suggest that without well prepared support services and other accommodations, students with disabilities will not benefit from these educational environments.
[Copyright © 2005 The Hong Kong Institute of Education.]

This study was to evaluate the impact of an early literacy intervention program for preschoolers at risk for SpLD. One hundred ten children were identified as at risk for SpLD. They were divided into 2 groups, the at-risk group (AR) and the control-risk group (CR). The at-risk group received a centre-based intervention program which contained 15 training sessions on the four domains: oral language, orthographic knowledge, morphological awareness and word recognition tailored for children poor in literacy skills. The control-risk group received some self-learning materials related to their school curriculum and finished the materials at home. A further group of 50 children (NAR) who were not at risk were selected to act as controls and were assigned equally to the two groups. Nine language and reading related-cognitive tests were administered. Results from the 9 tests before the intervention showed that both AR and CR had similar literacy achievement. Both groups performed worse than NAR particularly in the oral language, word recognition, orthographic awareness and phonological awareness. After the intervention, though AR and CR did not catch up with NAR, AR showed greater improvement in most tests than CR. The differences in improvement were found significantly in orthographic awareness and morphological awareness. This showed that children at risk for SpLD in the preschool years could achieve higher in literacy ability by receiving special intervention program. The results highlighted the important role that early literacy intervention played in the development of language and reading skills in preschoolers at risk for SpLD.

With the increasing diversity and complexity of schools, it continuously demands innovative, responsibility and flexible approaches to teaching and learning. Society places a significant value on the attainment of literacy and the main goal of early education is to establish and acquire reading and writing skills. For students with specific learning difficulties (SpLD), literacy is a right and it continues to receive much concern and attention from professionals and educational policy makers. Over the past two decades, Hong Kong has been increasing research in understanding of SpLD and moving toward the development of services for students with SpLD. These students have specific educational needs which must be addressed to ensure that educational outcomes are achieved and special learning needs are taken into consideration in educational planning and curriculum design. However, educational assessments, learning support and resources to identify and support such children are still being developed in individual schools and research into this problem is limited. This paper will be discussed the characteristics of SpLD and its manifestations will be discussed. The special learning needs of these students will be discussed including assessments, modifications to pedagogy and use of IT equipments will be outlined and details of the expanded curriculum and how it can be taught in classroom will be addressed.

This paper will describe a project that was designed to encourage dialogue and exchange between students taking courses in Special Education at the University of North Texas and The Hong Kong Institute of Education via the Internet. The project was designed for the to develop a peer mentoring relationship sharing their experiences, increasing their cultural awareness, and examining their philosophy. Information will be presented on the manner in which the project was designed. Details of the mechanics of the project, samples of the exchanges and the evaluation of the project as well as future plans will be presented.