In order to help student teachers to clarify what they know about art, thus to improve the quality of learning and teaching about art for kindergarten teachers, an action research was designed and implemented during the Qualified Kindergarten Teacher Education Course offered by the Hong Kong Institute of Education. This paper presents the changes of conception of art for the student teachers in the course. Before and after the art activities, the students were invited to discuss as well as complete open-ended questionnaires to express their own ideas on art. They were requested to explain what they thought art is for themselves as well as for the early childhood children. It is interesting to find that after they had undergone the process of the project they showed that art is not only for art’s sake. Art activities mean more than an abstract term. Then the relationship between art learning and other aspects of children’s development was identified and disputed.
[Copyright © 2000 The Hong Kong Institute of Education.]

Music teaching in Hong Kong has played a minor role in the pre-primary educational curriculum, and music education in the kindergarten is one of the weakest areas. These are undesirable as the all-round development of young children is at stake. In this paper, a strategic implementing procedure is recommended to preschool educators. It aims to enable them to engage in early childhood creative activities and to feel more comfortable about introducing singing and other kinds of music making - Musical Games, Musical Mapping, Musical puzzles, Highlighting, Creative Movement and Storytelling. Music and Movement are special dimensions in the pre-school children classroom. The Song-Experience-Games strategy to be introduced here provides children with opportunities for aesthetic experiences at their own level, with the experience games built on the song work as a learning tool for the development of social awareness; the strategy also affects children in such a way that they are better able to think, to invent, to discover, to respond and to communicate. Such a variety of explorations and the process of problem solving and creation will enhance the self-esteem and confidence of children of all ages. The Creative Music Curriculum implications are discussed in this paper. The subjects of this research are kindergarten teachers and supervisors.
[Copyright © 2000 The Hong Kong Institute of Education.]

The aim of the paper is to discuss the thinking process of a preschool teacher's knowledge of child development and the concept of creativity in designing art activities. The design of an art curriculum will reflect the adults' knowledge of child development (Morgan, 1995). Child development knowledge is very important in designing art activities for promoting children's creativity. The design of curriculum will depend on teacher's training, teaching experience, observation skills, concept of their theories of creativity and child development and the ability to reflect (Ngan 2006). Schon (1987) suggested 'theories-in-use' 'reflection-on-action', which indicate the importance of the teacher's thinking. A qualitative methodology was applied in a study of a typical preschool in Hong Kong. A semi-structured interview was conducted. Video-tape recordings of the classroom teaching was used as a stimulated recall of the activities to find out the rationale, focus of the activities and the reflection of the teacher. The findings indicate that the teacher needs to develop her observation skills in order to be more sensitive to children's needs. Finally her knowledge of creativity and children development are very important.

The debate about the effectiveness of the liberal arts curriculum is centuries old, but recent financial and social pressures have placed the survival of the liberal arts in the United States at even greater risk. Using Kimball's (1995) notion of the oratorical and philosophical traditions of liberal education, this article first identifies the critical importance of balancing breadth and depth in the curriculum before honing in on breadth as being in particular danger in the current climate. After analyzing the major threats to breadth in American higher education, the article looks overseas to find a new case for the value of breadth in the curriculum. It focuses on Hong Kong's university system, where a large-scale, multiyear project is underway to graft a fourth year of general education onto a three-year model of discipline- or profession-specific training. The resulting contrast between American institutions discarding curricular breadth while foreign universities rediscover it is telling. This topic has particular relevance for Christian colleges and universities as they seek the holistic development of their students.
Copyright of Christian Higher Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15363759.2015.973344

The Curriculum Development Council of the Education Department of Hong Kong takes the role to prepare official curriculum for the schools in Hong Kong. On the part of art education, it seldom mentions the impact of Museum visits on the study of art. Since the official art curriculum is a guide for Art teachers in Hong Kong to prepare their taught curriculum, they often overlook art museum as a supportive resources center for the teaching of art. In 1985 the NAEA published the goals for quality art education, which are among the basic skills addressed in virtually all art museum program planning. Art museums serve as resources for teachers in the schools, the setting of art museum provided a sound physical resource, whereas the docent service, lectures and seminars, and workshops on different themes are very effective human resources in the teaching of art. Referring to local situation, the Hong Kong Museum of Art plays similar role in the field of art education in Hong Kong. The education section of the museum conducts talks, seminars, and workshops on different themes. Docent service is also provided. The museum serves both as sites for field trips and extension services. But it is scarcely considered as a teaching resources / support for the art teachers in Hong Kong. The idea of this paper is to study the use of the Hong Kong Museum of Arts by Kindergarten, Primary and Secondary school art teachers of Hong Kong. First, it provides a background on the art education in Hong Kong. Second, it describes the research findings of the use of the Hong Kong Museum of Arts by the kindergarten, primary and secondary school art teachers of Hong Kong. Third, collected data is interpreted and discussed. Finally, recommendation is made for the improvement of art education in Hong Kong.

In Hong Kong, except for Art and Craft and Physical Education, official proved school textbooks for pupils and teacher's handbooks are widely adopted by all primary school subjects. When Art and craft primary teachers in Hong Kong schedule their lessons, they can only follow the official curriculum prepared by the Curriculum Development Council of the Education Department of Hong Kong. Thus, the official curriculum plays a very important role in guiding the primary Art and Craft teachers in planning their taught curriculum. In this paper, the writer tries to examine the developmental trend of the aims of the planned Hong Kong Primary Schools Art and Craft Curriculum from 50's to 90's.

In recent years there are increasing global interests and concerns in interdisciplinary and integrative learning across various subjects. Locally in Hong Kong, the concept of integrated learning of the arts subjects is at its blooming stage. Since 2001, the Department of Creative Arts in the HKIEd has implemented programme modules and explorative research projects on "Integrative arts learning and teaching" for students in the pre-service and in-service teacher-education programmes. A constructivist approach (Sunal, 2000) is adopted in the design of the modules in which students are exposed to the experiences of integrative learning of visual art, music, dance and drama activities. The module implementation data and project research findings have shown some facts that students successfully constructed meaning through the authentic experiences they involved and were able to integrate ideas and skills being learned. However, we are still facing a lot of constraints that are to be resolved, especially in the curriculum planning and implementation in the local school settings. The presentation will discuss on exemplars of our module implementation and explorative projects in schools; and analyze the strength, weaknesses and constraints of implementing integrated learning of the arts subjects in Hong Kong.