14 students of the Bachelor of Education (Early Childhood Education) Programme joined a study tour to Brisbane , Australia in June 2016. One major objective of the tour was to participate as volunteers in a biennial festival, namely “Out of the Box (OOTB)” organized by Queensland Performing Arts Centre. Since 1992, OOTB festival has been “a national leader in programming for young children’s creativity and imagination” in Australia, providing a variety of free events, performances and workshops for young children under eight years old. As volunteers, students assisted the set-up and implementation of workshops, navigated school groups and teachers during their visits, and provided general administrative assistance. The practical work allowed students to reflect on their own value of arts and experienced different ways to enhance and nurture children's creativity and imagination. Besides, it was also a wonderful and valuable opportunity for the students to experience the cultural difference through working with the organizer, artists and volunteers from different countries. In addition to volunteer in OOTB festival, the students also visited numerous kindergartens and cultural institutions including museums and art gallery. These visits provided the students with a better understanding of early childhood arts education in Brisbane, Australia.

香港實行的中學新學制及西九文化區的建設為高等教育的課程重組、師資培訓、與社區接軌等方面帶來了契機，香港教育學院文化與創意藝術學系的課程設置也做了相應的調整。本文指出連貫的課程設置與培養有創意及有想象力的下一代是教改的關鍵，並從四個方面論述了課程重組與實施的策略：本科知識與教學法緊扣；正規課程與聯課活動(co-curricular activities) 聯系；開辦相關的音樂教育與文化藝術課程；課程善用社區資源。

Developing generic skills is a core component of the current educational reforms in Asia in response to global demands to shift towards a knowledge-based economy in the last two decades. The study adopted a mixed approach by using a survey and interviews to find out the views of a group of students and teachers about the effects of the school curriculum on developing students' self-management and leadership skills. The findings show that learning self-management and leadership skills has been infused in the school curriculum, and is not exclusive to a particular curriculum area in Hong Kong schools.
[Copyright © 2017 James Nicholas Publishers.]

Since two decades ago, the Hong Kong Curriculum Development Council started to promote the Integrated Curriculum in Early Childhood Education in resonance with the global curriculum change. By engaging young children in the integrated curriculum, young children can obtain an informal learning experience in the school that helps prepare them for a more active involvement with peers, thereby fostering the spirit of democracy and social change in their young hearts. Three types of integrated curriculum with their matching pedagogies and their possible social impact on early childhood classroom will be discussed in this paper.

Identity formation is a major development issue confronting adolescents (Erikson, 1968). By adopting Marcia’s (1966) identity status model and employing part of the Objective Measure of Ego Identity Status, the researcher examined a sample of Hong Kong secondary school students’ identity statuses in the four identity domain areas, say education, career, life-style, and friendship. It was found that 95.9% of the students can be categorized into a particular status, and 31.7%, 25.6%, 20.4%, 22.3% of the students were assigned as diffusion, foreclosure, moratorium, and achievement statuses respectively. Further statistical analysis has been conducted to unpack the relationship between the respondents’ identity statuses and personal characteristics, parents’ influence, and community service engagement. Implications for the enhancement of community service programmes at secondary schools will be discussed at the end.

Critical thinking is regarded as a higher-order thinking skill, which is important in developing a comprehensive competency in modern times. Nurturing children’s critical thinking at an early stage thus becomes an essential target that should be pursued by all school teachers. Facing such a trend, the Education Bureau of Hong Kong started to reform the school curriculum in 2000 in order to develop students’ generic skills through eight Key Learning Areas (KLA), one of which is Arts Education that includes Music. Nine generic skills, including critical thinking, have been identified that should be nurtured through all KLAs. Published in 2003, the Music Curriculum Guide (Curriculum and Development Council, 2003) proposed four learning targets for music. Among all, cultivating critical responses in music is the target achieved by the integrated learning activities of creating, performing and listening. Nevertheless, there are very limited studies investigating the extent to which current primary music teachers can nurture students’ critical thinking in Hong Kong. Furthermore, Hong Kong music teachers may not be capable of developing students’ critical thinking through these integrated activities. This study aims to examine the current situation of cultivating critical thinking in music in Hong Kong’s primary schools and explore how critical thinking skills can be effectively developed. A questionnaire, interviews and class observation were used to collect data for current situation of nurturing critical thinking skills in primary music lessons. The results of the study demonstrate a positive indication of the acceptance of and beliefs in the implementation of critical thinking skills in Hong Kong primary teachers. Difficulties are found that impeded the effectiveness of the implementation, namely, teachers’ professional commitments by using critical thinking skills, teachers’ understanding of and abilities for the implementation, students’ involvement and differentiation

Background: This study is part of a larger study entitled “Secondary Students’ Independent Learning” funded by a Competitive Earmarked Research Grant (Number HKIED 8005/03H) of the Research Grants Committee, Hong Kong SAR Government. The original project aimed to establish and validate with empirical data, a conceptual framework of self-directed learning, the characteristics and processes involved and their relations with academic achievement of secondary students. Aims and Keywords: This study aimed to explore the effect of academic aims, goal setting and planning on academic achievement of secondary students. Sample: The sample comprised 14,846 students currently enrolled at Secondary 1 to Secondary 6 (except Secondary 5) from 23 secondary schools in Hong Kong. Methods: Students completed a self-administered questionnaire comprising 4-point Likert items (1: Strongly Disagree, 2: Partly Disagree; 3: Partly Agree, 4: Strongly Agree) on academic aims, goal setting, planning, and other aspects of self-directed learning not included in this study. Each construct was measured by five items. Measurement quality of the scales according to the framework was established using the Winsteps software (version 3.72.3). Based on Rasch scores of the latent variables and standardized scores of Chinese, English and mathematics, structural equation modeling was undertaken using Mplus (version 6). Results: Analyses indicated that academic aims and academic planning both directly predicted academic achievement, with educational aims being the stronger predictor. Academic goal setting indirectly predicted academic achievement via academic planning. Consistency was found both in the structure and in the effects of the predictor across gender and year levels. Conclusion: The study shows that self-directed learning has positive effect on academic achievement of secondary students of both gender and all year levels.

In many settings a perplexing scenario is unfolding in which school systems claim to move towards whole-person development while students and parents run in the opposite direction of narrowly defined academic achievement enhanced by private supplementary tutoring. Such tutoring is widely called shadow education because much of its content mimics that of regular schooling. It has long been clearly visible in Asia, and is now increasingly visible elsewhere. This study focuses on school teachers' perceptions of shadow education in the context of a flourishing sector that parallels and to some extent contradicts progressive education reforms. Drawing on 47 in-depth interviews with teachers from 12 secondary schools in Hong Kong, the research found ambivalent views towards private tutoring. This ambivalence reflected intrinsic contradictions between the educational ideals of whole-person development and the function of schooling in social stratification. Such tensions are likely to become increasingly evident elsewhere as commercialised forms of private supplementary tutoring expand.