This session could be seen as the regional discussion of ISME Policy Commission in Asia. One of the missions in this commission is ‘to examine and explore issues concerning cultural, education and media policy development and implementation'. As a result, we have invited present and past commissioners, participants, as well as other researcher from various Asian regions to discuss the issue we have encounters pertaining to culture and policy in music education. In addition, other researchers who are interested in this issue are all welcome to join our discussion and commission. European music's autonomy and hegemony has been believed and taken for granted for at least a century, and this tradition based on Western aesthetics has exerted a great influence on music education in Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan. However, Asian music traditions differed fundamentally from the music tradition of the West. The European concept of tonality or key functions, for example, was absent from those Asian sound cultures. In this discussion, questions are asked about: 1. Introductions of Euro-American Music into Asian countries. 2. How traditional and folk music in Asia survives. 3. How music educators in Asia should deal with this duplicity. 4. How music educators in Asian develop music education policies for the future. Korea: (Korean traditional music has its name called “gugak,” which literally means ‘national music' but has been relative concept of ‘western music.') Compared to popularity of K-pop music, the number of listeners of gugak has been absurdly small. Music educators suggest that having students experience gugak in school education is the key for traditional music to survive and insist to raise the percentage of covering gugak in statutory curriculum. Although music teachers who are used to western music have difficulty to teach gugak, but the difference between western/ gugak has been the facilitation to broaden the concept of music and enrich the understanding

Music is the integral and core curriculum in early childhood education. It plays a very important role for children's holistic development. In Hong Kong, kindergarten teachers have adopted different approaches in the teaching of music. Among them, Carl Orff approach has been viewed as one of the most popular approaches. According to the Guide to the Pre-primary Curriculum (The Curriculum Development Council, 2006), the appropriate time allocation for half-day and full-day music activities are 45-60 and 60-105 mins respectively; including the physical fitness and arts activities. The aims of this paper are three-fold. Firstly, it examines the changes of the school-based Carl Orff curriculum as compared to that of in 2014. Secondly, it investigates the existing constraints on the curriculum reform in the kindergarten. Thirdly, the practical recommendations on the successful implementation of the school-based Carl Orff curriculum will be discussed. It is a qualitative Case Study with emphasis on collecting qualitative data from class observations, unstructured interviews with the music teacher and principal, unstructured conversation with students, video analysis and curriculum study. The analysis and recommendations will be conducted according to Schwab's (1973) four Commonplaces in Curriculum: Subject Matter, 60 Learner, Teacher, and Milieu. The five existing major constraints have been grouped into: curriculum design, teaching resources; facilities and equipment; professional support; teacher education and development.

This study aims at exploring student writing of Chinese characters at their teachers’ dictation in a primary school in Hong Kong. Sample writings of 106 Primary 3 students produced in 12 dictation lessons were collected over a school term. The students wrote a total of 1441 characters. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the student writings. The main results are: First, the students correctly produced a large majority of about 90% of the characters at the dictation. Second, the categories of errors that the students made in writing the characters were diverse. Third, the students made a different combination of errors in writing the semantic and phonetic radicals of the characters. Fourth, a considerable portion of their errors was related to whether they were able to reproduce the specifics of the characters. This study examines the performance of the students after they have been taught to write, hoping to have direct implications to how teachers should teach students to write.
[Copyright © 2015 Journal of Educational Research and Development.]

課室情境的研究資料能助教師評估課室的氣氛，發揮他們的教學潛能，改善或改變課室的氣氛，有助教師的專業發展。Fraser (1986) 提議老師可在各學科和各年級的課堂中反思課室的情境，了解課室的氣氛，以提高教學效能，達專業發展，這對常識科教師尤其重要。自一九九六年九月開始這一新課程已成為香港的小學的共同核心課程中的一科。教師除了設計「以兒童為中心」的學習活動以輔助兒童學習 (香港課程發展議會1994)，亦應不斷評估課室的氣氛，以改善自己的教學，提高教師的成就感 (Fraser, Barry J. & Walberg, Herbert L. 1991)、作終身教育的一環。本研究邀請在香港教育學院接受在職訓練的常識科教師和學生，利用課室情境量表反思他們的常識課課堂氣氛，藉所獲資料評估反思常識科的教與學，供其他常識科教師作不斷評估、專業發展之參考。

進入廿一世紀的新時期，香港人對身份認同相關的議題討論日漸增多，一方面這和香港的主權在一九九七年回歸中國有關，另方面亦反映出在邁向國際文化大都會的過程中，面對日趨多元文化發展的全球一體化環境，港人對自我文化身份問題的關注。最近本地的教育改革將「德育及公民教育」列為四大關鍵項目之一，當中「藝術教育學習領域」配合文化身份和價值觀的議題能夠發揮怎麼樣的功能，將是業界值得探討的課題。本文首先檢視香港的文化環境，分析在殖民地政府管治時期存留於文化政策和藝術教育的問題，繼而指出整體文化與藝術教育環境均欠缺文化定位及在文化認知上存在重西輕中的偏差，最後提出在進一步拓展本地多元的文化空間及方向下，在藝術教育中強化本土與中華文化意識和價值觀的理據及建議。