This paper reports on the development of an online inventory to measure the preferences for open education programmes among school leavers and adults in Hong Kong. The study was a collaborative effort headed by the Centre for Research in Distance & Adult Learning at the Open University of Hong Kong and included a local Student Guidance Centre (the Hok Yau Club) and eight secondary schools in Hong Kong. Trait-factor theory and personality type theory were employed. The inventory was developed by the project team and consisted of academic scholars and practitioners in education. The final version consisted of 128 items and was validated by 7 local guidance counselors and 20 international experts in psychology. 1,288 respondents in Hong Kong were surveyed. Schools were selected based on geographical location, academic level and language of instruction. Ten personal attributes were found including: Influential, Mechanical, Scientific, Sociological, Organizational, Mathematical, Literary, Musical, Aesthetic, and Social Service. The test-retest reliability coefficient was 0.72. It is hoped that the inventory could help school leavers and adults in Hong Kong in making wise decisions on their career path and strengthen their opportunity for academic success.
[Copyright © 2004 The Asian Society of Open and Distance Education.]

This article is concerned with parental involvement and participation in preschool education in Hong Kong. Based on the experience gained from a parental education programme, it is argued that three issues are crucial in the development of parental education: (1) an ecological approach to recognise the nature of parental education; (2) parental involvement as an indicator of school performance; and (3) training teachers or relevant professionals to work with parents from diverse families. In response to the changing nature of families’ and children’s growth and development in Hong Kong, preschool parental education in the twenty-first century has a special mission and vision regarding parental involvement and participation. This article indicates that the empowerment issue of parents and teachers has evidently been addressed by a belief in the notion of ‘people participation for development and improvement’.
[Copyright © 2004 Symposium Journals Ltd.]

A high quality timetable in a school can reduce grievances of the teaching force and enhance teaching quality. This survey aims to understand the scope of the timetabling exercise and the profile of the timetabling process in Hong Kong secondary schools, and to investigate existing problems encountered. The ultimate goal is to have a complete picture of the timetabling exercise so as to provide a basis for suggesting solutions which will improve this exercise. We sent out questionnaires to 480 secondary schools in Hong Kong; 173 schools responded. The result indicates that timetabling in a typical secondary school involves the allocation of an average of 53 teachers to teach subjects of 29 classes in 48 blocked time slots and 38 constrained locations under several constraints. Nearly 80% of the secondary schools used computers to assist the scheduling task. About one-third of the schools used timetabling software to generate their timetables. However, it was found that the use of automated timetabling systems could only complete some 67% of the available slots. The remaining part involves more constraints, and hence timetablers spend much effort in filling the last slots. 40% of users were frustrated by the changing constraints of the timetabling task. The survey results indicated that further research on the automation of the timetabling task is urgently needed.
[Copyright © 1997 Elsevier.]

Following the education reform in 2001, the Education Bureau (EDB) in Hong Kong initiated a review of early childhood education (ECE) in 2006. The main focus of this review is the quality assurance mechanism for ECE, including the training of teachers, teaching quality, the potential pressures on teachers to upgrade their qualifications etc. This review is supported by the Chief Executive’s Policy Address (2006), which outlines concrete ways to achieve the targeted goals. This paper compares the provision of music training at four major ECE professional teacher-training institutions and examines the perspectives of in-service teachers, principals and early childhood education lecturers on the music training of ECE teachers. Using focus group interviews and survey, in-service ECE teachers expressed their general satisfaction with their pre-service training in music teaching. However, they did not feel prepared and confident enough to teach music in their schools compared to other subjects. They suggested aspects of pre-service training which would have better prepared teachers to teach music and identified three areas of professional development needs of ECE teachers in music teaching. A practical framework of professional development is also presented.
[Copyright © 2007 The Hong Kong Institute of Education.]

Pre-school parents' expectations have considerable influence on the early childhood curriculum. With better understanding of what parents expect for their children from pre-school provisions, constructive partnerships between school and parents could be established. This paper examines parents' expectations of pre-school education with reference to a small-scale study conducted in Hong Kong. Parents' understanding of the purposes of pre-school education and their curriculum expectations were investigated through interviews. Results of the eighteen parents' interviews showed that only a small number of these parents had high expectations on their pre-school children, which was different from some of the previous Hong Kong reports but was in line with a large scale survey conducted by a local pre-school education service provider. The nursery parents seemed to be less demanding on academic learning and showed more concern on learning self-care skills than the kindergarten parents. There was no obvious difference in expectations between parents with high and low education levels.
[Copyright © 2004 The Hong Kong Institute of Education.]

In this study, the authors investigated the implementation of adopted information technology (IT) policy in representative institutes of the Vocational Training Council in Hong Kong. The article first introduces the context of the government’s 1997 IT initiative. It then reviews the literature on generally acknowledged advantages and limitations of IT in education. Next, the research methodology is briefly set out. In the study, the authors attempted to achieve a degree of triangulation by employing instruments from both the positivist and subjectivist paradigms, namely, questionnaire surveys of current staff-student IT use, and focused interviews with lecturing staff concerning personal evaluations of the project’s viability. Quantitative findings suggest some initial movement in the desired direction, but the qualitative data call for skepticism. It was concluded, therefore, that full implementation will be far from unproblematic.
[Copyright © 1999 International Vocational Education and Training Association.]