In Hong Kong, the Education Bureau (EDB) regularly assesses the quality of services provided by publicly subsidized kindergartens to children aged 3 to 6. Quality Review (QR) reports are written by government officials and published on the EDB's website. This study analyzes the feedback pertaining to Arts and Creativity to better understand the role this learning area plays in Hong Kong kindergartens. Lexical and content analyses were applied on 164 QR reports published between 2017 and 2020. Findings showed that: (1) the role of Arts and Creativity in the QR reports is relatively minor, which suggests that this learning area is somewhat secondary in Hong Kong kindergartens; (2) presence of the various art forms differs significantly, with Music and Visual Arts being more frequent than Drama and especially Dance; and (3) classroom activities seem to be teacher-centered, product-oriented, and reproductive. Findings suggest that the Arts and Creativity pedagogies enacted in Hong Kong kindergartens are not fully consistent with the official kindergarten Curriculum Guide, which draws on a Western conceptualization of creativity in the arts. We argue that this curriculum/practice gap reveals the need for local stakeholders to embrace a "glocalization" paradigm. Limitations, future research, and implications are discussed. Copyright © 2022 Jerry Yeung et al.

Learning through play and free exploration are emphasized in the recent curriculum review in Hong Kong. This experimental project aims to investigate how children play with and without teachers’ direction instruction. Thirty-one children aged 4-5 (15 boys and 16 girls) attending a typical Hong Kong preschool participated in this study. The children are randomly divided into the control group and experimental group. The study consists of three phases: (1) Pre-test: Play without instructions for 30 minutes. A set of block play newly bought by the preschool is presented to children. Children are free to play and explore with the block as they like. (2) Treatment: Play with teachers’ instructions. In two-week period, the teachers will provide the experimental group with various instructions like picture book, puppet or probing whereas the control group will keep playing with the block set on their own. (3) Post-test: Play without instructions for 30-minutes for both groups. All block playing sessions will be videotaped. Behaviours of the children will be coded and analyzed based on the nature of play, content of play and complexity of ideas to delineate how teachers’ input may influence the quality of play and free exploration. Copyright © 2019 20th Pacific Early Childhood Education Research Association International Conference (PECERA).

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.

This paper examines the field of art education for young children in Hong Kong with a focus on the curriculum policy. A number of researchers have found that effects of cultures on the conceptions and understanding of art education for young children and its values are significant in their process of formation (e.g., Duncum, 2000, 2002; Freedman, 2000; Gardner, 2004; Green, 2000; Piscitelli, 1999; Piscitelli, Renshaw, Dunn & Hawke, 2004; Schirrmacher, 2001; Wright, 1991, 1997, 2003). This paper has applied the framework of the three orientations from Efland (1990), i.e. expressionism, reconstructionism and scientific rationalism in the analysis of Hong Kong curriculum policy documents and found that contradictions in terms of principles and practices are embedded. It is argued that these hidden but value-loaded assumptions about theories and practices in early childhood education and art education should be made explicit both in the formation of the policies and their implementation in schools if success is expected.
[Copyright © 2009 HKIEd APFSLT.]

In order to help student teachers to clarify what they know about art, thus to improve the quality of learning and teaching about art for kindergarten teachers, an action research was designed and implemented during the Qualified Kindergarten Teacher Education Course offered by the Hong Kong Institute of Education. This paper presents the changes of conception of art for the student teachers in the course. Before and after the art activities, the students were invited to discuss as well as complete open-ended questionnaires to express their own ideas on art. They were requested to explain what they thought art is for themselves as well as for the early childhood children. It is interesting to find that after they had undergone the process of the project they showed that art is not only for art’s sake. Art activities mean more than an abstract term. Then the relationship between art learning and other aspects of children’s development was identified and disputed.
[Copyright © 2000 The Hong Kong Institute of Education.]