The establishment of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region has brought about enormous structural, social, economical, political and cultural changes to society. The government, the public, and other parties concerned find the need to cope with the multi-faceted changes by reviewing the existing systems and policies as to provide information for improvement or reform, wherever necessary. Education is undoubtedly on the reform agenda. Art education, which forms part of the core curriculum of general education and plays a role for developing an all-round being, deserves due attention. This study intends to obtain a thorough picture on the changes of the philosophy and rationale of art education in the past forty years by a descriptive study on the aims of art education in the official art syllabi of junior secondary schools. The study finds that there is a paradigm shift in art education in Hong Kong: from emotional personal experience to the cognitive and affective learning; from a single dimension of educational aims to multi-dimensional; from mere personal development to personal development, socialization, economic productivity, and further learning.[Copyright © 2000 The Hong Kong Institute of Education.]
