This paper describes a research project investigating the workplace learning experience of information technology (IT) workers in Hong Kong. The research project explored in depth the workplace learning experiences of 65 IT workers from three different work sites. It went beyond the identification of workplace learning methods and resources workers used at work by probing into the complexities of workplace learning processes and the theoretical issues of workplace learning. A qualitative approach was used, relying primarily on data collected via in-depth interviews. This paper reports that (1). IT workers found troubleshooting, project work and installation of hardware and software, the most likely contexts to produce significant learning; and that (2). the rapid pace of technological growth in the IT industry results in a different learning environment to traditional industries such as tailoring, thus raising questions about the applicability of the notion of the community of practice as proposed by Lave and Wenger. Furthermore, by probing into the processes of known workplace learning methods such as learning from colleagues and vendors, this study uncovered many interesting findings about the workplace learning experience of IT workers.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01580370802097728 ]

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) represent a crucial force for cultural change in both education and society and possible transitions between old and new learning as well as social values. This is especially so in East Asia, where the young have informally embraced ICTs but learn in formal contexts often still dominated by traditional transmission models of learning rather than the new learner-centred theories which inform policy imperatives for innovation and reform. Educational contexts like Singapore and Hong Kong are particularly exemplary because they have been so progressive in policy initiatives for ICT integration and reform in formal education, imperatives which conflict in practice with still dominant traditional learning expectations, teaching practices and models of assessment. As typified by such contexts, this paper investigates how the pedagogical dilemmas of a tension between old and new models of learning need to be understood and approached in terms of related and overlapping institutional and social dilemmas of change.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1476772042000252470]

Over the past few years, curriculum innovation has been regarded as an essential strategy for educational reform throughout the era of educational change. Because of the changing nature of the knowledge age, students need to develop ways of dealing with complex issues and problems that require different kinds of skills and knowledge they have ever learned. Given the advancement of information and communications technologies (ICT), a number of cases of building learning communities in classrooms have been developed in recent years. Realizing the impact of this new learning culture, six primary schools in Hong Kong participated in the implementation of building learning communities through science project works. During the project, students from different schools engaged in the discussion and knowledge construction using a computer mediated communication (CMC) platform called Knowledge Forum. The aim of this case study is to explore the role of ICT in building learning communities and the conditions are essential to building learning communities from the different ways that students and teachers experienced the processes of community and knowledge construction using Knowledge Forum. Through the analysis of the interviews of students and teachers, conditions that support learning community building were emerged in three major themes, namely; conceptions of learning, knowledge construction processes, and development of social processes.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0952398032000092198]

It has been suggested that although the most theorisation about globalisation has emerged from western contexts, the material implications of globalisation have been felt most strongly in non- Western regions. With this in mind, the authors undertake a situated analysis of how two states, Singapore and Hong Kong, are interacting with the broader processes of globalisation through their educational policies. Foucault's conceptual tool of governmentality is used to understand (i) the conduct of governing in the contemporary nation- state, and (ii) how the right rationalities are being inculcated by government to create desiring subjects who will play their part in ensuring national prosperity. The Asian economic crisis is used as a point of departure to show how global local tensions are being managed by Singapore and Hong Kong. The article concludes that both these global cities have adroitly managed the Asian economic crisis to steer their citizens away from pursuits of greater political freedom and towards concerns of material well being. They have done so through a selective interpretation of globalisation, by simultaneously resisting and embracing the contradictory strands of globalisation. Education has emerged as a critical space for this selective absorption of globalising trends.
[Copyright of Asia Pacific Journal of Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0218879030230104 ]