Since the end of the 1980s in the NIE4 - Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore - in Asia, progressive cultural and educational policies have developed along with tremendous economic growth, and a belief in the value of cultivating excellent human resources has provided the fertile ground to plant the seeds for Drama Education and Applied Theatre in schools and community settings. Drama Education and Applied Theatre projects have therefore been implemented in different ways and manners in different policy contexts and funding systems in the NIE4 either through government programmes or Non-governmental Organization (NGO) and civil organisations. They have developed in different directions as well as encountering different problems over 20 years. This essay aims to give a brief survey and investigation into these innovative imaginings and actions in the NIE4 and it ventures to present the issues and concerns that practitioners are seeking to ponder and solve. It also aims to explore the relationship between these praxes and the respective social, cultural and political changes in these areas and investigate the various responses and efficacy these praxes in Drama Education and Applied Theatre have done to their respective societies as well as investigate the challenges they posed to the existing social and educational orthodox ideologies.
[Copyright of Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13569783.2012.756182]

Humanities includes a diverse range of disciplines in which little literature has explored in any depth the desired learning outcomes. This study was designed to articulate and illustrate learning outcomes in the humanities from students' voices and work. Undergraduate students in their final year, postgraduate students and recent alumni from the Faculty of Arts at a Hong Kong university were interviewed individually or in groups of three to four. They discussed their desired and actual learning outcomes in three areas: the overall university experience, studying in the humanities and their studies in their specific majors. The students' comments were grouped into 16 categories of description. Seventy-three pieces of student work were collected and matched to the 16 categories to illustrate students' perceptions. A common set of qualities was found in all the humanities programs. From the data, knowledge is the most valued by humanities students, followed by rational thinking. Accomplishment and self-direction are relatively less mentioned. Further discussion is presented on how and why humanities students value different qualities, based on students voices interfaced with some relevant literature. The findings have been helpful in bringing the student voice into internal discussions about outcomes-based approaches to teaching and learning and how these approaches relate to internal quality-assurance and curriculum-change processes.
[Copyright of Higher Education Research & Development is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2010.542558 ]

This longitudinal study (2001-09) of two Hong Kong secondary schools highlights six issues with an integrated arts curriculum: first, integration of knowledge and skills negatively precedes the integration of learners' construction of meaning; second, integration is perceived as challenging the profession's status; third, teachers are unaccustomed to co-teaching; fourth, teachers have little prior experience conceptualizing cross-discipline teaching and learning; fifth, Hong Kong's current systemwide education reform places arts integration as a relatively low priority; and sixth, because integrated arts curriculum implementation is not mandatory, the vagaries of individual school management create a plethora of integration approaches that confound the task of forging a common definition. Remedial recommendations include cascading "seed projects" to broaden teachers' views of integrated arts and teaching, facilitating supportive school timetabling, and sharing integrated learning outcomes in the individual schools.
[Copyright of Arts Education Policy Review is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10632913.2012.687339 ]