The Hong Kong government's language policy seeks to ensure that its citizens are trilingual (in Cantonese, Putonghua and English) and biliterate (in Chinese and English). The Singapore government also seeks to ensure that the population is biliterate in English and the speaker's L1. As most of the population is ethnically Chinese, this means that the Singaporean education system is concerned to ensure that people emerge biliterate in Chinese and English. The Chinese government, while insisting that Putonghua remain the medium of instruction in most contexts, is also encouraging the acquisition of literacy in English, and English has recently been introduced as a subject in all primary schools. This talk will consider the cognitive challenges involved in the acquisition of literacy in both Chinese and English and discuss some of the results of the current policies. The talk will include suggestions for ways of helping students acquire literacy in both Chinese and English.

The Education and Manpower Bureau of the Hong Kong Government has promoted 'Learning to Learn' as a crucial feature of student-centred curriculum and the educational reforms over the passed decade have been directed towards this goal. Recently, information literacy, described as: the ability to master the processes of becoming informed, was identified as the missing ingredient in the reform. Interest in information literacy grew out of a realization that the application of modern information and communication technology and related shifts in curriculum integration and a shift away from textbooks and examinations, was not sufficient to deliver learning to learn.

Educational Technology has long been a major component in the teacher education programme in Hong Kong. However, its application in actual classroom teaching is very limited. Recent studies in the science teaching in secondary classes and the trend of using instructional media in primary schools in Hong Kong revealed that the types of media being used are limited to those traditional ones. Textbook, blackboard and printed text materials remain the dominant instructional media in current practice of teaching although there are varieties of other choices (Yeung et al, 1996; Li et al, 1999). Other traditional media such as photos, graphics, OHTs and video were used occasionally and were mainly used as information delivery aids in a teaching process. Reports on the use of computer technology were rare. This phenomenon of limited use of technologies and little use of computer technology in teaching may have relation with the general adoption of directed teaching strategies by most teachers currently or may be a result of insufficient preparation in initial teacher education programme. Teacher educators have been being too emphasised on the teaching "about" technologies- the skills for operation of -equipment and computer software rather than the concepts and knowledge of their applications in real learning situations. That is how teachers and students teach and learn "with" technologies. This study aims at verifying the effects of a new teaching approach in which portfolio was used as a guide, a record and a monitor of the learning process of the revised technology competencies for teachers in a group of pre-service teachers in a primary teacher education programme. A conceptual framework that governs the design of the revised competencies was also established and will be discussed in this paper. Preliminary investigation shows positive result in the acquisition of concepts, ideas and skills in the newly revised technology competencies.

This study explores the influence of digital portfolio on reflective practice of prospective teachers (PTs) with the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge framework (TPACK). A total of 36 PTs studying in a teacher education course (one-year full-time) at a tertiary education institute in Hong Kong took part in the study. Blended learning approach was adopted to facilitate the completion of digital portfolio with various applications of Web services as a pedagogical tool. At the end of the course, the PTs completed the same questionnaire again as a post-test. Results showed that engaging PTs in digital portfolio integrated with different levels of Web services can increase their degree of readiness and maturation in different dimensions under the TPACK framework. The findings shed light on the development of teacher readiness for their entering of teaching profession in terms of technical, pedagogical and content knowledge individually and holistically, and further cultivated a higher degree of sustainability in reflective practice for the prospective teachers.
[Copyright © 2015 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.]

This study aimed to explore the relationship between students’ online participation in Moodle and their learning achievement. Participants in the study were 78 undergraduate full-time students who were enrolled in a general education course entitled “Digital Citizenship” at a higher education institute in Hong Kong. They were required to choose from and participate in different types of Moodle activities including information access (e.g., reading online supplementary resources), interactive learning (e.g., running online simulations), networked learning (e.g., discussing in online forums), and materials development (e.g., writing reflective journals). The online participation of a student was measured by the number of completed activities, while the learning achievement of a student was determined by his/her essay grade. This study applied the Partial Least Squares (PLS) method to the collected data in order to identify whether there was a link between online participation and learning achievement. The results indicate that online participation in networked learning or in materials development, but not in information access nor in interactive learning, was positively and significantly related to learning achievement. This finding highlights the importance of social interaction and individual constructivism for effective online learning.
[Copyright © 2015 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.]

Outdoor education, a general term describing the use of resources (including both natural and artificial environments) outside the classroom, has long been considered a method to improve student learning (Knapp, 1996). It is a popular teaching and learning tool in environmental education due to its anticipated effectiveness in promoting students’ pro-environmental behaviour, knowledge and positive attitudes towards the environment (Rickinson et al., 2004).