A school-based environmental field project "What Happens Around You and Your School Area?' was designed under the School-based Curriculum Project Scheme (2001–2002) supported by the Hong Kong Education Manpower Bureau (formerly the Education Department). This school-based environmental field project, with heavy inclusion of environmental elements, was designed in the form of issue-based field inquiry based on student-centred learning to encourage subsequent meaningful learning activities such as group discussion, role-playing exercises and photograph exhibition in class. The field project possesses distinctive geographical and environmental characteristics of the school surrounding environments to bring about meaningful learning among students who study in a local standard new town secondary school in Hong Kong. This paper aims to share this field project experience of designing meaningful issue-based field inquiry using the theory of learning and awareness (Marton & Booth, 1997) to open up the space of learning for students (Marton et al., 2004; Runesson & Marton, 2002). Also based on the framework of educational and environmental ideologies (Fien, 1993), the intended learning outcomes of the field project are to empower students to become active small environmentalists (Kwan, 1995) who are well prepared in terms of geographical and environmental knowledge, skills and values.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14724040408668453 ]

In this short paper, we review the geographical education research carried out in Hong Kong and discuss their relevance to teacher education. The methodologies used in these reviewed studies will also form part of our discussion here.
[Copyright of International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10382040308667538]

This paper examines the extent of gender differences, and discusses the role of gender in musical instrument learning. It focuses on the collective instrumental experiences of 1493 Chinese students (774 boys and 719 girls attending grades 7–13) within Western and non-Western musical traditions in Hong Kong. The discussion draws attention to gender differences in the learning of Chinese and Western musical instruments, in musical interest and instrumental learning, and in the reasons why students learn or do not learn musical instruments. The paper argues that, while female and male students exhibit different attitudes towards the types of instruments learnt, significant correlations exist between their interest in music and parental support for their instrumental learning. Gender is brought to the fore by the pedagogical actions of the teacher, the mass media and by parental efforts to reduce gender bias and stereotypes through school, public and family education.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09540250802537596]

This study is a qualitative case study of a geography field trip of secondary four (year 10) students in a Hong Kong school. It conceives fieldwork as an experiential activity in which an understanding of the experiences of teachers and students in their contexts is important. The results revealed that the students' intent before the trip and their learning experiences after the trip were much richer than their teachers had intended. Despite some students' negative experiences of previous field trips, there was a universally strong desire to escape from their perceived boredom and constraints of the classroom. Field trips were cherished for their rarity and freedom, and the field sites were sought for their novelty. The study has revealed the relative freedom of the field as a learning environment in which the students were more proactive and teacher-student rapport improved. Besides deepening their understanding of what they had previously learned in class, some students were able to see things in new perspective. For many of them, there was a desire to be free from the presence of the teachers and to have greater control over their learning. The findings also indicated that upon return to school, there was a quick return to the status quo. The inspiration which resulted from freedom of learning from the field trip was often not transferred to the classroom setting.
[Copyright of International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10382049908667614]

This study investigated the environmental learning of a group of senior geography students through a problem-based learning (PBL) field program to see if the goals of education for the environment could be accomplished. In the PBL field program, the students were given a problem statement concerning a real-life scenario of an old lady living in a remote village of Hong Kong. During the PBL field program which also has adopted an action research framework, the students were observed to have identified the problem statement, set hypotheses, constructed the research methods and collected empirical data in an authentic environment all by themselves. This paper reports on the first cycle of this piece of action research. Data were collected both quantitatively and qualitatively via questionnaires, students' reflective journals, field observation notes and group interviews. The initial finding of this PBL field program reveals that students had acquired more in-depth knowledge and extended their comfort zones in learning. They were able to develop and practice their critical thinking and problem-solving skills while they were working on the problem in the field. Although there was no evidence of sustained self-directed learning among the students, the PBL field program offered them a framework for developing self-directed learning. An initial conclusion is that PBL in the field can provide a useful framework and direction for EE to accomplish the goals of education for the environment.
[Copyright of International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.2167/irgee230.0]