The symposium aims at sharing the personal experience of the principals of the Hong Kong Catholic Diocesan Kindergartens on the effect of Staff Development Programme on promoting quality kindergarten programme in their schools. In order to promote the quality of the Hong Kong Catholic Diocesan Kindergarten education, the Management Committee of Hong Kong Catholic Diocesan Kindergartens had organized a series of staff development programme for the teaching staff and principals. The staff development programme which included a one workshop on teaching approaches, a 13-session staff development seminars for principals and head teachers funded by the Quality Education Fund and a project on reading stories with young children had been conducted from March 98 to July 98. the principals found that the series of staff development programme had enhanced their construction of professional knowledge and the management of their kindergartens. The symposium will provide opportunities for the presenters and the audience to share their first hand experience on the related issues.

The seminar aims at disseminating the research findings of the research project exploring the “Project Approach in Hong Kong Preschools: A Collaborative Effort” funded by the Teaching Development Grant. The research was led by two lecturers of Hong Kong Institute of Education, School of Early Childhood Education, in collaboration with 5 graduates of CE / KG Course who separated into two teaching teams implemented two different projects in two collaborated kindergartens. One objective of the research was to explore how the project approach could be implemented in Hong Kong preschools as a contemporary teaching approach that provides children with the opportunities for interactive learning, intrinsic motivation and child directed activities. The research started in July 1997 and two major findings were observed: (a) Teacher conception of their roles in the Project Approach is crucial to the successful implementation of this approach; (b) For kindergartens beginning to implement the Project Approach, the concept of scaffolding’ initiated by Vogosky should be applied to help the less experience staff. Two videos, one on the implementation of the two projects and the other on the changing roles of a teacher during the implementation process will be shown in the seminar. Discussion will focus on issues arisen from the videos. The participants will be requested to fill in a questionnaire evaluating the effectiveness of the videos as a guide to implementation of the Project Approach in the Hong Kong context.