In accordance with the Education Commission's consultation paper "Learning for Life", life-long learning is the hinge of HKSAR's educational development in the new millenium. In the ever-changing world life-long learning is essential to keeping oneself competitive and employable. Teachers need to exemplify and cultivate the ethos of life-long learning among the students. Continuous teacher education is important as it helps reorientate Hong Kong's teachers to embrace a life-long learning attitude. In schools, adjustments and arrangements need to be worked out for continuous teacher education to be fruitful.

This chapter explores the positive contribution that ideas and constructs from both the business and management training and the adult education literature can make to the theory and practice of workplace ELT curriculum design. Specifically, the chapter looks at how workplace stakeholders can provide a business voice to the ELT curriculum processes, how business-training planning and evaluation frameworks can assist ESP workplace practitioners in reconceptualizing the curriculum process, and how a review of adult learning research can help ESP workplace practitioners better understand the English language needs of professionals in the workplace. Unfortunately, the applied linguistic literature is, for the most part, school-based, leaving workplace ELT programs poorly researched and documented in terms of curriculum theory and practice. The chapter will report on studies of workplace English carried out in Hong Kong and the Philippines. The first Hong Kong study (Lockwood, 2002) investigated the way in which frameworks from business management and training can be used in ESP workplace training to ensure workplace stakeholders and thus the organization as a whole are better represented in the process. The second Hong Kong study (Hamp-Lyons et al., 2002) provides insights into how different stages in a professional career (in this case accountants) impact the kind of written language expectations of that professional. Two studies conducted in the Philippines in the business processing outsourcing (BPO) industry, specifically within call centers in Manila, illuminates further the language demands of the increasingly globalized workplace.
[Copyright © 2007 Springer Science + Business Media, LLC.]

Technical and vocational education and training (TVET) is often seen to be constraining and focused on specific skill development for specific occupations. This goal is at odds with the demands of a knowledge economy that requires more general educational outcomes for an uncertain and unpredictable labour market. For this reason, Hui (2012) has adopted a broader definition of student learning outcomes and assessed the extent to which ‘cultural literacy’ might be a preferred goal for TVET to supplement the skills training element. Cultural literacy refers to an individual’s world view, ways to interact with people, character, personal ethics, values and style. Hui’s study highlighted the need for TVET to emphasise the development of these generic outcomes, students’ comprehensive attitudes and personal qualities in particular. To achieve greater control over the quality of outcomes, this study aims to investigate the influence of students’ participation in institutional activities on their growth. Through modifying the well-known National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), this study examines the relationship between the five benchmarks of effective educational practice and students’ cultural literacy and their self-reported academic performance. Results of a survey study of 238 Hong Kong TVET students indicated that some of the benchmarks could predict to a strong and moderate degree these two important outcomes. It is argued that proper planning and facilitation of educationally purposive activities could enhance both their learning and development. This article will contribute to the discussion on how to advance TVET students’ learning performance.
[Copyright © 2014 Behalf of UCU.]

In response to reform of the senior secondary school curriculum, parents, professionals and schools voiced out the significance of the learning equity and opportunities of school graduates in special schools. Different parties urged the government to clarify the academic structure, curriculum arrangement and resources for these SEN students in senior academic structure reform. This was a territory-wide study on parental views and preferences of the senior secondary curriculum among special schools for students with mental handicap, physical handicap and visual impairment in Hong Kong. In the study, it was found that at the initial stage of policy planning, the further education opportunities of children with intellectual disabilities and multiple disabilities after the 9-year basic education were not fully considered. The opportunities remained unchanged and were of limited variety. Other than the extension program in the special schools, there was no innovative policy and practice in offering further education for these students. Parents were dissatisfied the limited choice of the further education and career placement for their children after the graduation at the age of 18. They expressed their strong view on the equal opportunity in the reform of senior secondary academic structure. With regard to the scenario of development, the study further reported the views and expectations and preferences of parents. Parents expected a clear division of secondary education into junior and senior, two stages, as opposed to a six-year education without such distinction. The curriculum, arrangements and assessment of senior secondary education should be further enriched and strengthened. Education and vocational training for schools leavers were expected. The results were significant and the empirical data provided teachers, school administrators, curriculum planners, teacher educators and the authority with the insights for further actions. The teacher education in empowering

Global trends have led to marketization of higher education. The rapid development of Information Technology and the Internet challenge the established paradigms of educational enterprise. Hong Kong has restructured its economy in line with the Asian Pacific region and is undergoing change in order to establish itself as service based and technologically driven. This paper address online higher education in Hong Kong, with a focus on non-government funded continuing and professional education. Three cases of online education courses organized by public funded universities are identified together with online higher and continuing education in the private sector. Public-private partnership is developed between the higher education institues (HEI) and the online education service providers. The state intervention is only on traditional higher education programmes but the area of cyber education for adults is left to the market.

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.]

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.]

In the knowledge economy, many companies are well aware of the vital need to maintain the professional expertise of their workers at a high level. Though there have been a lot of research studies in the areas of professional expertise and workplace learning, few examined the learning pathways novice workers went through to become experts in their professions. Most of the research studies on expertise focused on the nature of expertise and few on its development. As for workplace learning research, most studies focused on the learning resources and methods workers used and the affordances of the workplace in making learning possible. Based on the accounts of expertise development collected from individual information technology (IT) workers in Hong Kong, this paper proposes a four-phase model of professional expertise development in the workplace and discusses its similarities to and differences from extant theories of expertise and skill development.
Copyright of Studies in Continuing Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0158037X.2014.967347