Developing intercultural competence plays an essential part in language learning. This resonates with Halliday’s (1978) apt observation that culture provides meaning to language-in-use. Intercultural competence is a complex concept, including dimensions such as attitudes, knowledge, skills, and awareness (Byram, 2009). Cultivating students’ intercultural competence has become one of the objectives of language teaching, and a range of courses has been designed and conducted for preparing students to take an active part in the global world. As more college students are willing to work in multinational corporations or study abroad, language teachers play an important role in providing students with more opportunities to enhance their intercultural knowledge and skills.Based on Byram’s (1997) intercultural competence model and guided by the intercultural language teaching approach proposed by Liddicoat (2003; 2013), the researcher developed a course that seeks to cultivate students’ intercultural competence in four dimensions, attitudes, knowledge, skills, and awareness. One class of second-year English major students took part in the 12-week course with another class as the control group. During the course, students experienced a process which involved noticing, comparing, and reflecting through various intercultural activities. This study employed a range of methods including questionnaire, interview, and reflective journals, and it was found that students’ intercultural competence was improved, and the course showed significantly positive influence on the cultivation of students’ attitudes, facilitation of cultural knowledge acquisition, and the development of intercultural skills and awareness. Further analysis led to identification and detailed discussion of a range of aspects of the four dimensions of intercultural competence such as willingness to explore otherness and enriched knowledge of value systems and various intercultural skills.The study has shown an example

This paper reports the initial findings of a study about the learning process of 17 pre-service kindergarten teachers in a higher diploma programme at a vocational training institute in Hong Kong. The existing literature regards experiential learning as a reflective process that allows student teachers to make new meaning from learning experiences gained during their training. However, these reflective processes lack commonality, and the findings are rarely situated in the context of vocational education. In this regard, empirical data were gathered as evidence of how student teachers develop their ideas of competence in a vocational training programme based on the perspective of Kolb’s experiential learning model. This paper addresses the further implications for programme administrators, institutional fieldwork supervisors and researchers. Copyright © 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

香港自2012年推出新高中學制之後，除了考試制度的改革，非正規教育的改革亦馬不停蹄，生涯規劃教育與職業教育的變化特別明顯。自2014年開始，香港全面推行生涯規劃教育，以求改善舊有升學及就業輔導之弊，2015年則開始重塑職業教育為職業專才教育，將職業教育重新納入主要的教育政策議題之中。相對下，生命教育的發展較為停滯不前。直至2019年，香港政府委託顧問就生涯規劃教育推行成效發表研究報告，並建議將生涯規劃教育結合生命教育一同推行，推動學生的全人發展，生命教育方重新成為整個教育改革藍圖的一部份。同年，香港政府提出進一步推動價值觀教育的發展，尤其優先重視生命教育，可見生命教育與價值觀教育將成下一步非正規課程改革的重心。明顯地，生涯規劃教育、生命教育與職業教育三者的拓展似乎正在呼應《教育行動計劃2030》宣言的提倡。有鑑及此，本文將申論三者其實應該如何貫穿實踐，以切合香港實況，並以香港一項大型生涯規劃的項目為切入點作深入分析。Since the introduction of the New Academic Structure in 2012, policy reform in non-formal education was implemented along with a structural change of the public examination system. In 2014, Life Planning Education was launched to optimize the problem in the over-reliance on career counselling and guidance, while Vocational Education was officially rebranded as Vocational Professional Education and Training in 2015, and it is now regarded as one of the main agendas in the current Hong Kong education policy. In comparison, the development of Life Education has stalled for a long time until the publication of one policy consultancy research report in 2019, which recommended the possible merge of Life Education with Life Planning Education in the future implementation. In the same year, the Hong Kong government proposed the strengthening of support on Values Education in schools through prioritizing Life Education in the policy. This implies that critical role of Life and Values Education in the forthcoming non-formal curriculum reform. It is apparent that the newest development of Life Planning Education, Vocational Education and Life Education are all well-aligned with the initiative of ＂Education 2030＂ proposed by UNESCO. In light of this, this paper will examine how these three components have developed and implemented in the local Hong Kong context, with the support of an analytical case study based on a large-scale youth programme for Career and Life Planning for illustration. Copyright © 2020 台灣教育研究院社.

In this article, factors contributing to the poor perceptions and inferior status of vocational education in Hong Kong are discussed. Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is employed as the methodology in examining the discursive construction of vocational education in the policy context. A total of five policy documents published between 1970 and 2015 are included. Our findings show that the socioeconomic transformation of Hong Kong in recent decades, massification of higher education, and cultural factors such as parental expectations are pertinent to the stigmatization observed in vocational education. This article discusses the implications from the findings and concludes with possible solutions for the future development of vocational education in Hong Kong under the novel vocational and professional education and training (VPET) initiative launched by the government.
[Copyright of Chinese Education & Society is the property of Routledge.]

In response to the early Education Reform Proposal's recommendation to provide more diverse opportunities for lifelong learning at the senior secondary level and beyond, there has been a considerable expansion in the post-secondary education sector -- Professional and Vocational Education (PVE) -- in Hong Kong over the past ten years. The curriculum intention underlying these PVE programmes is straightforward: to equip youth with the necessary knowledge and skills to face future work challenges and continue their studies. However, this ideal is being challenged with regard to the extent to which students are 'culturally literate'. This paper reports 214 Hong Kong PVE students' views about how important it is for people to possess the knowledge and skills for cultural literacy, and how well they think they are performing in relation to the corresponding indicators. Supported by qualitative interviews, the results indicated that the proposed eight constructs are critical to understanding cultural literacy in the Hong Kong PVE context. Also, while students agreed that these sets of knowledge and skills were important, they were not performing them well. A paired samples t-test suggested a significant difference between their perceptions and performance, and large values of Cohen's d confirmed the size of the effect was medium to large. Among the measured eight constructs, nurturing students for 'social and civic responsibility' was found to be critical. This paper will contribute to the discussion about how to better position the PVE curriculum in Hong Kong to nurture students' cultural literacy.
Copyright of Journal of Further and Higher Education is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd.

The article discusses the professionalization and vocationalization of continuing education in Hong Kong, China as a result of educational reforms. Topics include public and private sector involvement in professional and vocational education (PVE), the relation between education and occupational or job training, and the emphasis on learning outcomes assessment.
[Copyright of International Journal of Lifelong Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02601370.2013.774066]