In the past ten years, Hong Kong Government has promoted the concept of biliteracy (Chinese and English) and trilingualism (Cantonese, Putonghua and English) in education. Putonghua has become an important issue in the school curriculum. Educators debate how and when Putonghua should be taught. In the preschool context, whether Putonghua should be taught as a formal subject or informally through fun and games has been debated. Another critical issue is how parents could help children to learn better outside schools. This paper presents findings on the learning and teaching of Putonghua from interviews with parents and school teachers and principals.

The popularity and desirability of English language education has become somewhat unbeatable in Asian countries. In this essay, highlighting the examples of Taiwan and Hong Kong, I seek to understand the multiple threads of reasoning systems that come together to constitute and sustain the desirability of English learning. In that, I conceptualize that language education is more than teaching and learning a new/foreign language. Language is intertwined with the sphere of culture. Thus, I hope to encourage an alternative perspective for rethinking the “heat” of English language education in Asian countries.In that, I seek to underscore that it is imperative to rethinking the effects of English language education.

The Hong Kong Institute of Education (HKIEd) is the main provider of teacher education programmes in Hong Kong; the courses offered range from sub-degree, degree, to post- graduate levels. This study reported on a study which aimed to find out the beliefs about mathematics teaching held by a group of mathematics student teachers taking a Certificate in Education programme. The study made use of the Beliefs About Teaching Mathematics (BTM) Questionnaire developed by Van Zoest et al. (1994). The questionnaire was administered to a group of student teachers enrolled in the Mathematics Teaching Methodology Module of the HKIEdÑof which the author was the lecturer in chargeÑat the start of the semester. The paper will report on the findings and discuss the implications for designing a mathematics methodology course.

To prepare children for the globalized world, General Studies, an integrated subject in the primary curriculum stresses on the provision of “learning experiences that enable them to construct knowledge and develop a global perspective, and develop life-long learning skills” (CDC, 2002, p.2). A separate strand, Global Understanding and the Information Era has been incorporated into the curriculum to strengthen the global dimension of the subject. However, the literature shows that citizenship education has long been an underdeveloped curriculum area in Hong Kong. The development of global citizenship, a core area of study in citizenship education, has also been affected by the great emphasis on the fostering of children's national identity in the post-colonial period. Being a contested concept, global citizenship causes great confusions to teachers in developing and implementing global studies in schools. To evaluate the role of General Studies and its effectiveness in enhancing global citizenship, this paper reviews the global learning elements in the General Studies curriculum in a primary school. This paper further seeks to describe the "lived curriculum" on global learning based on the results of a critical examination of selected classroom practices in the related strands of study. Building on the initial findings, this paper discusses the tensions in promoting global education through General Studies and the possible ways for further developing this integrated subject as a vehicle for enhancing global citizenship in Hong Kong primary schools.

Early Childhood Physical Education (ECPE) is core curriculum in preschools. Children are physical beings and full of curiosity and drive to learn through physical play and movement which have been named as early childhood physical education. Young children are learning a great deal as they move about (Davis, 1996), and explore, learn, experience and interact with the world and its myriads parts (Whitehurst, 1971). Gallahaue and Donnelly (2003) has emphasized that movement is at the centre of young children’s lives. In Hong Kong, the Curriculum Development Council (2006) has issued the Guide to Pre-primary Curriculum and has emphasized the aim of early childhood education as fostering children’s whole person development. In light of this, the core of the curriculum framework is the four developmental objectives for young children, namely physical development, cognitive and language development, affective and social development; and aesthetic development. Given that, the Hong Kong Institute of Education (HKIEd) has developed various ECPE modules since 1995 for different levels of programmes from Certificate, BEd (Hons), and to Postgraduate Diploma. The main purposes of this paper are twofold: first, to review the development of ECPE modules in the HKIEd; and secondly, to make recommendations for early childhood teacher education in Hong Kong. The findings have revealed that due to the inadequate credit points, tutors has been facing the dilemmas / difficulties in teaching both theoretical and practical core elements in these modules. Besides, students’ altitudes and abilities towards Physical Education have influenced their learning greatly. To provide high quality teacher education in ECPE, recommendations have been made in program structure, module contents, credit points and resources in this paper.

Come August 2009, schools in Hong Kong will be rolling out a new Language Arts Elective called "Learning English Through Popular Culture" to be offered to the Senior Form. This new Popular Culture elective in the New Senior Curriculum is of analytic interest as Hong Kong is the first schooling system, at least in Asia, to take Popular Culture seriously and translate it as "curriculum-as-knowledge" in the national curriculum. While the relationship between Popular Culture and its relevance for schooling and classroom pedagogies has been explored in educational research, in the last decade or so, research conducted in this field has yielded a somewhat tentative and predictable finding often expressed as "pedagogical implications for literacy education and curriculum development" and, as isolated case studies. Yet the Hong Kong education system has taken up what appears to be a bold move to re-design its English Language Curriculum to include Popular Culture - a new curriculum that ostensibly takes into consideration students' interests in popular cultural texts to promote the learning of English. Promising as this new curriculum might be, there are however inherent pedagogical trouble spots in the spelled out curriculum. This paper critically examines and unpacks the articulation of the pedagogical knowledge of the new elective. Although the "curriculum-in-use" remains to be seen, I argue in this paper that the pedagogical investments of this new elective as defined in the curriculum, is reduced to "reading" and "writing" text types, where students are likely to be locked into a procedural way of "thinking" and "doing" popular cultural texts. I suggest how a critical pedagogical practice might be a more productive way of teaching the popular culture curriculum.

Creative dance is one type of art forms, which is an international language for young children’s expression and exploration in their experienced world. However, creative dance has not been accepted in the Hong Kong official curriculum Guide to the Pre-primary Curriculum (The Curriculum Development Council, 2006). It is recommended that appropriate time allocation for half-day and full-day music activities are 45-60 and 60-105 mins respectively; only for Physical Fitness / Music / Arts activities. In fact, creative dance is the integral curriculum to enhance young children’s holistic development. The aims of this paper are three-fold. First, it examines the constraints on the development of preschool creative dance in Hong Kong. Secondly, it introduces an innovative Creative Dance Framework for early childhood curriculum in aesthetic education. Thirdly, it recommends the possible strategies on the development of creative dance in Hong Kong. The five major constraints include: Curriculum Guide, School Curriculum Policy, Curriculum and Resources, Professional Support, Teacher Education.