Inclusion of students with disabilities into regular schools is now one of the most significant issues facing the education community both nationally and internationally. In order to address this issue there is widespread acceptance that teacher training institutions must ensure that new teachers are trained to teach effectively in classrooms where there are students with a variety of learning needs. Utilizing a data set of 603 pre-service teachers from Australia, Canada, Hong Kong and Singapore this study reports the effects of training in inclusive education on pre-service teacher attitudes towards inclusion, their sentiments about people with a disability and their concerns about inclusion. The results are discussed in relation to a range of factors that could have produced different gains in their attitudes, sentiments and concerns among cohorts from different countries.
[Copyright of Disability & Society is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09687590802469271]

As elsewhere, vocational education and training (VET) has a poor image in Hong Kong. To remove the stigma, the Vocational Training Council of Hong Kong embarked on pro-active strategic planning to make it more relevant and cost-effective, exposed long and widely held myths that VET is for dullards which leads only to low-paid and low-status jobs, provided a through-train education system to ensure that VET is no longer an educational cul-de-sac, and sought external accreditation aggressively. Though it is early days, there is strong evidence that these strategies have worked.
[Copyright of Journal of Education and Work is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13639080801957246]

This paper focuses on efforts to promote environmental education andcommunity mobilization around environmental issues in Hong Kong. It is primarily concerned with efforts directed at the broader community(i.e. the population as a whole) rather than with environmental education through formal school and college curricula. The paper draws ona recently completed study commissioned by the Environmental Campaign Committee, the principal source of financial support for such efforts undertaken by environmental NGOs, community groups and educationalinstitutions in Hong Kong. The study examined how and to what effectthe Committee had used its financial resources between 1994-1999. Italso examined international experience with a view to recommending changes in the overall approach to environmental education and community mobilization initiatives and their funding in Hong Kong. The papersuggests that the existing approach to community wide environmental education and its funding in Hong Kong have suffered from various weaknesses, most notably the absence of an integrated and goal-oriented strategy, an over-reliance on a `top-down' campaign-based approach, afailure to establish explicit linkages with the concept of sustainable development and to ground initiatives at the local neighborhood and community levels, and a preoccupation with the financial inputs provided to support this work at the expense of effective monitoring andauditing of project outputs and benefits.
[Copyright of International Journal for Sustainable Development & World Ecology is the property of Taylor & Francis. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13504500109470071]

The University of New England (Australia) and Chinese University of Hong Kong offer a collaborative graduate diploma and master of health science in gerontology via mixed-mode and web-based education. The multidisciplinary curriculum takes into account Hong Kong's health care system and cultural context.
[Copyright of Educational Gerontology is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/036012700407866 ]

This paper explores the impact of the internationalization of higher education on the formation of student identity. It does so in the context of increasing developments in offshore education and the rapid emergence of the professional doctorate in Australia and overseas. Drawing on data from a larger qualitative study of student experiences of offshore education, the focus is on professional doctorate candidates located in Hong Kong. Identity is characterized by a series of dilemmas experienced by the students as they seek to become members of the academic community. These dilemmas centre on a range of inter‐related issues, including sense of belonging, educational goals, learning style preferences and relationships with supervisors.
[Copyright of Educational Review is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00131910600748190]