A study was conducted for creating digital classrooms to support students to develop information literacy competency and critical thinking skills through domain knowledge learning in digital classrooms. A total of 107 students from four Secondary 1 classes were invited from a secondary school in Hong Kong to participate in the study. In the 13-week trial teaching, every three students shared a Tablet PC for learning two topics in the Integrated Humanities subject. The pre- and post-tests of the two target subject topics found that the students had a statistically significant growth in domain knowledge. The three identical information literacy tests and critical thinking tests throughout the trial teaching found that the students had a statistically significant growth in information literacy competency and critical thinking skills. The semi-structured interviews found that the students and teachers positively perceived the effectiveness of the pedagogical designs of the digital classrooms on supporting the development of information literacy competency and critical thinking skills. Three implications are drawn for enhancing the pedagogical designs in digital classrooms that put emphasis on fostering students' development of information literacy competency and critical thinking skills through day-to-day domain knowledge learning in class.
[Copyright © Pergamon Press].

Business education has been offered in Hong Kong secondary schools for more than 50 years, and has gone through a number of key stages in response to economic growth. The key developmental stages are: (a) 1950s and 1960s, (b) 1970 to mid-1980s, (c) mid-1980s to 1999, and (d) 2000 to 2008. Another new stage of development will be implemented in 2009. This paper provides a historical review of the four key developmental stages, introduces the forthcoming new stage, and analyses and discusses the curriculum development of all these stages in line with the economic changes. It is recommended that pupils in different forms and at different academic levels be taught both generic business knowledge and vocational aspects of business to sustain Hong Kong’s economic success.
[Copyright © 2008 International Vocational Education and Training Association.]

This paper starts with a broad historical overview of educational reforms and then focuses on those specific to civic education. Lastly we look at the implementation of policy, and examine the effect of the current political climate in the Special Administrative Region (SAR) on civic education.
[Copyright © 2002 Pacific Circle Consortium for Education.]

In Hong Kong, the new Senior Secondary curriculum was introduced at Secondary 4 level in September 2009. The curriculum documents emphasize that textbooks not only provide the core elements of learning in the subjects but should also be designed to develop students’ critical and creative thinking and other generic skills through the information and activities they provide. In addition, textbooks should provide a ‘one-stop shop’ of teaching materials so as to help teachers plan the scope and sequence of their lessons. As teachers still rely on textbooks as an important source of information to support their teaching, all textbooks for Senior Secondary Education have been rewritten for the new curriculum. In this paper, the author presents a case study which aimed to develop a framework for designing a new set of Senior Secondary Information and Communication Technology (ICT) textbooks for use by Hong Kong students. In the study, the author conducted a documentary analysis of textbooks pertaining to the previous version of the curriculum, and interviewed experienced teachers, both in order to examine the design strategies for the new textbooks. The paper also discusses how supplementary teaching materials can be used to support learning, teaching and assessment.
[Copyright © 2011 Common Ground, Yiu Chi Lai, All Rights Reserved.]

In this paper, an excerpt of teacher–student interaction in an EFL junior secondary science classroom in Hong Kong is analysed using the conversation analytic method of sequential analysis. The fine-grained analysis reveals that in the teacher's effort to engage her students in the co-construction of a scientific proof, the students' familiar everyday discourses (e.g. students' examples and experiences as expressed in their familiar language) need to be allowed to play a significant role. It also shows how translanguaging can be well-coordinated with multimodal practices (using blackboard drawings, gestures) to facilitate students' meaning-making in the inquiry-based teacher–student dialogue.
[Copyright of International Journal of Bilingual Education & Bilingualism is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2014.988113]

Information technology (IT) is changing the global economy and has brought many changes in all aspects of life. IT is now being used extensively throughout the world for collecting information, constructing knowledge, distance and flexible learning, online communication and global collaboration for lifelong learning and work. To ensure that students are equipped with necessary skills in a digital and information age, the Hong Kong government has provided several documents to help schools plan for the integration of information technology into the school curriculum; with the aims to improve teaching and learning and to produce students who are confident, creative, independent and life-long learners. The paper begins by reviewing the benefits of integration of IT in education. It focuses on the use of IT in teaching and learning in Hong Kong after the introduction of the five-year strategy in 1998. In order to generate further discussion and development in the integration of IT in Home Economics, the usage of IT in the teaching of Home Economics will be explored and discussed. This will form the basis for a larger scale study to investigate how IT can be used in Home Economics to enhance teaching and learning.

With the surging demands for the use of network-based learning environment in primary and secondary schools, the knowledge and practical skills on school LAN management is increasingly critical for our pre-service and in-service IT teachers. Many of our IT graduates will assume the role of IT coordinators in their employed schools on top of their regular teaching duties. Training on network concepts and hands-on communication skills are essential to them. In this paper, we describe our model LAN project for teaching and learning. The model LAN stimulates a school¡¦s networking environment so that our student teachers can acquire the relevant knowledge and practical skills very close to the real school networking environment.