In response to the wave of global education reform, the Hong Kong Government has initiated an educational reform to promote the child-centred approach to meet the changing society in the recent ten years. The Holistic Child-centred Educational Approach which enshrine a distinct kind of spirituality of interconnectedness is considered as Quality education. In order to foster the holistic curriculum in young children, the Government has recognized the values of play in the ECE informal curriculum and its allied pedagogy. Despite the Government’s persistent attempts to foster the policy, the feedback from practitioners is less than satisfactory. Through a qualitative research with two preschools with religious affiliations, it is found that spirituality education has an important role to play in fostering the good lives of young children. Children are being ‘equipped’ with skills to deal with life adversity and handling the complex human relationships. A successful implementation of spirituality education however must rest on a clear understanding of the difference between the traditional religious education and spirituality education. A genuine understanding on the part of practitioners would increase the chances for a successful implementation of the ECE Educational reform promoted by the SAR Government. (The Author)
[Copyright © Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker-Society.]

In his 2006-07 Policy Address, the Chief Executive of Hong Kong committed HK$2 billion to enhancing holistic ECE through the instigation of a school voucher scheme. The new paradigm of a child-centred curriculum is considered necessary to keep pace with international quality educational developments. The paradigm of spirituality education for young children, which enshrines interconnectedness (Taggart, 2001), is in essence the holistic education that is advocated in child-centred ideology. Religious education, in contrast, is underpinned by teacher-centred ideology and has the aim of transmitting traditional religious values to the younger generation. The article reports on six case studies on three different faith schools which suggest that elements of spirituality are embedded in the newly advocated curriculum. The preliminary data collected, however, also suggest that there is a misunderstanding on the part of stakeholders in their view of the conceptualisation of Spirituality Education as nearly synonymous with Religious Education. Based on these findings, the author hopes to arouse the public at large to the potential educational inequalities existed alongside the educational reform policy; firstly to the parents when exercising their rights under the school voucher scheme and secondly, to faith schools being distracted from their school mission by a misconception that Spirituality Education and Religious Education are nearly synonymous.
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The concept of God and spirituality has often been considered crucial in the development and form of an individual’s personal faith and faith development in most of the developed western countries while little research has been done in the case of Hong Kong. The aim of this study is to trace dimensions in God concepts of preschoolers in two Hong Kong Chinese Kindergartens by documenting what young children know and believe about God and Spirituality orally and by pictures/artwork that the children drawn. Parents and teacher’s concept of God and spirituality would be examined by interviews as to see their relations with young children’s God concepts and spirituality concepts. Through a qualitative investigation on the origins of these concepts from the perspectives of two young children in a K3 class, their parents, head teacher and teachers in the form of case study, it is anticipated that a deeper understanding on the form of young children’s personal faith and spiritual development could be gained on the part of the ECE practitioners and the parents. Implications from findings could be drawn for fostering a suitable curriculum for the young children.

In a revealing passage of his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle cites a popular saying with approbation: a friend is someone with whom one shares a single soul. It is a man who values friendship as indispensable to human flourishing. Aristotle claims that it is necessary to value our friends in the way that we appropriately value ourselves. So much is neither haughty nor excessively self-occupied (Shields, 2014). A review of literature has ascertained that it is not uncommon to understand that young children enter school with a wealth of unanswered questions. By incorporating the philosophical elements into the curriculum, teacher could facilitate young children to rediscover and validate their innate curiosity. Philosophy of young children is about asking important questions about life and its immediate contacting environment, such as people and things related to life. In the process of looking for an answer for their teachers, young children’s creative thoughts in these arenas are revealed. The aim of this research study is to unfold the creative mind of the young children through the technique of questioning and scaffolding by their teacher in a preschool in Hong Kong. This research has employed the qualitative method of case study for its conduction. The research outcomes met with the aims of the research. In the process, new philosophical ideas of young children have been identified by the teachers through their use five types of scaffolding techniques. Two themes in philosophy have emerged in this research. One is on “friendship/love” and the other is on “Man who abduct young children”. This paper is going to report the case studies themed on friendship. The researcher has tried to identify the meaning of friendship collected in the research and compare with those identified in the Aristotelian concept of friendship through analyzing the data. It is interestingly to find that the concept of friendship as explained by the young children in this research has matched

Since the late 1990s, early childhood education in Hong Kong has progressively lounged a series of reforms to raise the quality of early year education. Along with the emphasis on adopting the 'child-centred' concept of children's learning, the Guide to the Pre-primary Curriculum issued in 2006 recommend an integrated approach in the curriculum design. The integrated "holistic" approach calls for a shift of paradigm from the formal didactic teaching of academic knowledge to an informal development of the children through quality teacher-children interactions. Hitherto, small class teaching environment is created via the increase in teacher-student ratio at the start of the 2003-2004 academic year. A review of literature on small class teaching suggested that teacher-children ratio, classroom settings and the relevant pedagogic applications are important ingredients for the philosophical enhancement of the small class spirit. This paper will report some preliminary data collected in a pilot study conducted in two classrooms in a Hong Kong Kindergarten. The findings are reported as case studies which suggest that the spirit of small class teaching is not restricted in an informal teaching environment but in some formal teaching settings in the school as well. Discussion and implications on this understanding will be made.

This paper attempts to discuss how teachers understand the concept and the role of play in early childhood curriculum in response to the education reform initiated by the Hong Kong Government. Collaboration action research was conducted with 18 teachers in two pre-schools for a period of two years. It was found that the project teachers have different views on work and play as the goal of educating children. To facilitate analysis of data, the researcher has classified play and work into different categories of learning activity. The research revealed that what is considered as play and work depends on the extent to which the child feels free to follow his/her own desire or the extent to which this self is subordinated to the authority of the teacher. As the boundary between play and work becomes blurred, early childhood educators should rethink the role of play and work in early childhood curriculum and pedagogy.
[Copyright © 2008 The Hong Kong Institute of Education.]