Today, Information Technology (IT) continues to bring tremendous changes in society. One of the challenges facing educational institutions worldwide is that the student body has dramatically changed, thus enlarging the range of individual differences in the classroom. The purpose of this study was to design an effective teaching and learning environment to accommodate individual differences in order to produce high-quality learning outcomes. The present study, undertaken in Hong Kong, analyzed student population diversity to identify its characteristics in terms of background, experiences, and subject knowledge, and designed instructional activities using IT (Blackboard) as a platform to cohere these diversities into a source of knowledge. Tow steps were taken in this study. First, specific instructional activities to guide students’ collaborative experiences were designed. Second, the Blackboard platform was employed to conduct collaborative interactions between instructor and students, and between students to accommodate diversity. A Blackboard-based course design was utilized as an example to demonstrate the executing procedures. The present study illustrates an innovative instructional structure that uses IT to establish a multiple-way communication network which transforms teacher-centered educational activities into student-centered collaborative learning activities. Through this innovative approach, students’ diverse experiences, physical and mental characteristics, attitudes, and perspectives are converted into a collaborative learning environment that transforms diversity into a positive source of knowledge.
[Copyright © 2008 The Chinese University Press, Hong Kong Institute of Educational Research.]

This study is designed to investigate the impact of a curriculum leadership project financially supported by the Quality Education Fund on teacher development and pupil learning, within the tradition of school-based curriculum development in a primary school in Hong Kong. Teacher and pupil interviews are used to evaluate the extent to which teacher engagement in curriculum decision-making processes within a school-based structural approach has led to teacher professional development. Pupils’ perspectives about how the innovation is perceived were collected in order to extend understanding of the underlying principles in implementing curriculum changes in schools, in particular the role of pupil feedback. Qualitative evidence has revealed positively that participating teachers have developed themselves professionally through the process of planning, experimenting and reflecting (PER model) upon curriculum practice and innovation under certain conditions. However, the complexity of these conditions – the structures and processes that were established for involving teachers in curriculum decision-making processes needs further empirical and theoretical work. This chapter reports only the findings from the semi-structured interviews with teachers and pupils taken before the tryout lessons and after the reflection meeting of the mathematics curriculum development team together with the data from the videotaped meetings and lessons for triangulation and further illumination purposes in the second action cycle of the project.
[Copyright © 2008 The Chinese University Press, Hong Kong Institute of Educational Research.]