In 1998, a five-year strategic plan in IT education—the Information Technology for Learning in a New Era: Five-Year Strategy 1998/99 to 2002/03 was launched to promote the use of IT to enhance teaching and learning in Hong Kong. An integral part of the government’s IT policy is that comprehensive IT integration across the curriculum has been encouraged by the provision of ample of resources to implement various proposals in the strategic plan including the acquisition of hardware and software, the development of ICT infrastructure, and the provision of IT training for teachers. This paper describes the context regarding the professional development for music teachers associated with ICT integration in primary school music education in Hong Kong. Through an extensive study of government documents and review of related literature, the provision of professional development in IT for music teachers were discussed and analysed. Findings revealed that, on the average, general IT training for music teachers might be inadequate with regard to the desired level of IT competence. Whereas the provision of music-oriented IT training for teachers as a whole is practically adequate in terms of quantity and content.

This paper reports the findings from a study of understanding images of popular visual culture created by young adolescents in a Hong Kong school context. It adopted a phenomenological case study method to investigate the images created by eight students from a secondary school, in which students participated in a manga creation program. The study suggested a matrix for the investigation that stressed investigating the meaning of the images young adolescents create through their art creation experiences, the reasons for creating images in the particular way, and the way of interpreting their creation process. The study found that there were two types of aesthetics in the image of popular visual culture affecting young adolescents’ image creation: the stereotyped aesthetics and the counter-stereotyped aesthetics. They not only affected young adolescents’ artistic representations, but they also influenced the representation forms of the images of both sexes. Besides, they revealed a psycho-cognitive learning process for self-transformation. Each had its specific functions and meanings contributing to understanding images. The matrix demonstrated a self-actualised and self-autonomous ecological system formulated by the socio-cultural context and individual real world problems, in which young adolescents sought solutions to their real world problems through being sophisticated in drawing skills and techniques.

The paper focuses on the analysis of a curriculum plan of art practitioners in Hong Kong to generate perspective of how art education can be best serve the needs and interest of the current century. Different ideas of art education have made implications to art teaching in its content and delivery. Wolcott (1997) conceptualizes art teaching by referring to the evolvement of art in culture and history. The modernist school believed that art was the vehicle for subjective expression and, like the essentialist, valued that aesthetic quality that lies in art marking itself. More specifically the modernist school concentrated on the formal qualities of art and considered aesthetic experience as an end itself (Eaton, 1998; Fehr, 1994). This is where the traditional art education based to best cultivate the artistic literacy if a person. Alternatively, the post modernists art education is characterized by pluralism in style and expression. Art is considered as a means of discourse, contemplating politics, society, religion, or culture. Its content is critiques of both culture and society (Lloyd, 1997). The latter approach always creates ambiguity in implementation, and is not popular in Hong Kong schools. Based on the post modernist ideas, a curriculum plan is discussed and evaluated and a framework of developing a post modernist art curriculum is suggested with implications drawn to how the new idea is well suited to the globalized and information society of the twenty first century.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the aims, content and assessment method of the music curriculum in Hong Kong, with particular emphasis on singing and instrumental playing. How far music teachers followed the guidelines as suggested by the Education Department in these two areas will be dealt with. The methods used for this investigation will be mainly through documentary research, supplemented by interviews with music teachers.

Approaches to teaching art were studied through interviews with 18 art teachers at secondary schools in Hong Kong. Grounded analysis revealed that the approaches to teaching fitted into a four category model with category labels: instructional, discipline inquiry, social interactive, and personal. The categories were defined and described by six dimensional features: aim; content; role of teacher; role of student; teaching methods; and assessment orientation. The four categories of approaches to teaching could be placed under a higher-order spectrum between subject- and student-centred pole This article reports the findings of a study of art teachers’ approaches to teaching art. Before the findings are illustrated, it is necessary to deal with how the term approach to teaching is operationalised and how it relates to other constructs, such as conceptions and beliefs about teaching.

Teaching Cantonese opera in schools has been advocated by the Hong Kong Government for more than a decade. However, Hong Kong music teachers find teaching Cantonese opera difficult due to their lack of relevant training. Research suggests that Hong Kong music teachers would be modestly confident and competent to teach the genre if a partnership approach is undertaken in which a professional artist collaborates with the teacher in teaching. Nevertheless, what are the problems that music teachers face in such partnership? A group of music teachers comprising six from four primary schools and six from three secondary schools participated in a collaborative teaching project with professional practitioners of Cantonese opera in 2009-10. Each school collaborated with one Cantonese opera artist in teaching a unit within eight weeks. All the classes were videotaped and observed with a focus on any constraints that teachers would face during their teaching. In addition, they were invited to participate in semi-structured interviews for further validating and triangulating the observation by the researcher. Initial findings from the study mainly include the misconception of pedagogy used in teaching the ethnic genre by employing Western music concepts including equal temperament, Bel Canto singing and Western notation system. The impact of using Western music concepts include: a) hindering students’ understanding of the nature of the genre such as the freedom of improvisatory development in life performances; b) hindering understanding of the authentic ‘Hepta-equal temperament’ used in the genre; and c) misleading students that the voice projection method is similar to the one in the Western music. This study identifies the issues raised and warrants discussion and implications of strategies in solving the problems. Initial implications include the need of professional development of both the music teacher and the artist.

A fundamental objective of Hong Kong in the 21st century is a vision of itself as an international cultural metropolis. This sits within a wider culture of change initiated by the comprehensive educational reforms launched in 2000, all aimed at preparing the future workforce for the challenges of the new millennium by encouraging students to take the learning initiative while simultaneously nurturing in them the ability to think and create. At the same time Hong Kong, at both an educational and at a wider, societal level, is a high-stakes, results-based environment generated by a culture of assessment. It is within this context that the article uses Music (through its traditional espousal of cultural values) as a "barometer" of the present climate to report the findings of a survey of Hong Kong secondary students in an attempt to gauge, and consequently articulate, the place of this particular subject within the curriculum. The subsequent confirmation that the cultural aims of the HKSAR are at odds with a mindset which is essentially commercial at heart reveals more than a simple mismatch in 2 terms of drivers: the wider implication that, in real terms, little has effectively changed in the past decade is a finding which clearly has important repercussions. Hinting that a "back to basics" tripartite process of rethinking, reevaluation and reorientation may well be required in order to help ensure that Hong Kong successfully realizes its ongoing policy goals, the article concludes with some suggestions of its own for the various relevant stakeholders.
[Copyright © The Hong Kong Institute of Education].

One proposed initiative of the Hong Kong Government is maintaining the city's competitiveness and strategies by cultivating the creativity of her people. Thus, understanding the economic outputs generated by people's creativity, and the structural and environmental conditions that allow people to remain creative is important. This paper examines the concept of creativity and the two main forms of creativity cultivation in schools. Based on interviews with teachers of a local secondary school excelled in drama education, the contributions of a whole-school approach, internal support and opportunities, and capital resources to creative education in school are explored. Finally, a stronger emphasis on creativity education in extra-curricular activities, and vocational education and training is proposed, especially for students of lower academic achievements and those from backgrounds of lower socioeconomic status.
[Copyright © 香港靑年協會].

Education in Hong Kong is currently facing the great challenge of reformation in the new century. Music, being a school subject for more than four decades in Hong Kong, provides one of the aesthetic experiences to all pupils in primary and junior secondary schools, which has been recognized as one of the core elements in an all-round education system. However, there is a lack of research studies that investigate how musicianship should be nurtured in general music classes in Hong Kong. Teaching strategies in music classes were ignored yet practical and important for teacher preparation. This paper reports the findings of a case study in which a number of successful music teaching strategies in a primary school were revealed. Through a semi-structured interview with the music teacher of the school, participant observation of 24 music lessons in two weeks, and an analysis of the video recordings of the class teaching, this study aimed to identify the successful teaching strategies employed in the classroom. Findings include four identified strategies that employed by the music teacher: 1) performing with aural training, 2) sound before notation, 3) repeats with slight variations, and 4) positive reinforcement.
[Copyright © 2003 The Hong Kong Institute of Education.]