This essay explores the nature of the curriculum content of liberal studies--a core school subject in the new senior secondary curriculum in Hong Kong--with reference to the curriculum- making processes entailed in the formation of that subject. The central thesis is that a school subject is introduced to schools and classrooms as a distinct representation of content embodied in curriculum materials, entailing a theory of content--a special way of selecting, organizing, and framing the content for social, cultural, educational, curricular, and pedagogical purposes. Knowing the content of a school subject thus entails knowing more than the content per se; it entails an understanding of the underlying theory of content, which is necessary for disclosing and realizing the educational potential embodied in the content.
[Copyright of Journal of Curriculum Studies is the property of Routledge . Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00220270902767311]

This article reports on a qualitative study that explored the prospects for the promotion of collaborative relationships between English as a Second Language (ESL) and content teachers in Hong Kong. At the time of the study, the eight participants, four content teachers and four ESL teachers, were all teaching in English-medium secondary schools in Hong Kong. The study drew upon interview data to examine how the participants' construction of teacher identities can shape possibilities for collaboration between ESL and content teachers. The paper begins by discussing some of the key issues in promoting collaboration between content and ESL teachers, then draws upon the works of Wenger and Fairclough to describe a framework for understanding the construction of teacher identity in practice and in discourse. The framework is applied to reveal the major challenges facing the promotion of collaboration between content and ESL teachers. Implications for institutional change that might promote these collaborative relations are also discussed.
[Copyright of Asia Pacific Journal of Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02188791003721622]

This study investigated the connection between drawing skill and artistic creativity in relation to age groups and levels of artistic involvement among 223 Chinese primary, secondary, and university students in Hong Kong. Based on the fantasy drawing task, visual-artist judges made expert judgments on students' drawing skill and artistic creativity. There was substantial correlation between drawing skill and artistic creativity among children, adolescents, and young adults, even when artistic involvement was controlled in the partial correlation analyses. The results of correlational and regression analyses suggested that drawing skill contributed most significantly to the prediction of artistic creativity throughout the years at different stages of development, but artistic involvement became more important, especially in young adulthood. Implications of the findings on the skill-creativity relationship for arts education and the directions for future research are discussed.
[Copyright of Creativity Research Journal is the property of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10400410903579528]

Media education has been around for quite some time in the West (Bazalgette et al. 1990), but it only started to gain acceptance in Asia (Cheung 2005), particularly in Hong Kong, in the last decade. Recently, it has been gaining more attention in Hong Kong thanks to the curriculum reform in which liberal studies will become one of the four core subjects to be taken by students in the New Senior Secondary Curriculum and media is one of the six themes to be studied in the subject of liberal studies. This article argues for the need for teaching media education in liberal studies and shows the many connections between the two subjects that facilitate this integration.
[Copyright of Curriculum Journal is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09585170903424997]

Hong Kong children's comprehension of Chinese and English text is of concern to parents and teachers since school leavers need to be proficient readers both of Chinese and English. Although Chinese has been officially designated the medium of instruction in most secondary schools, many parents want their children to be taught in English-medium schools for, although Hong Kong is now a Chinese region, being literate in English is still highly prized by the public. A comparison was made of the bilingual reading attainment of Hong Kong primary students, using instruments and procedures used in the 2001 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study. The average standard of reading English was below the international average, and only 70% of the average standard of reading in Chinese. Only 7% of students read English as well as age-related peers in English-speaking countries. Whereas this minority can be taught via English to no academic detriment, most students understand text much less well in English than in Chinese. The best readers were good both in English and Chinese, the poor readers being particularly weak readers of English. Being taught via English enhanced students' general English reading ability, and being taught in Cantonese enhanced their Chinese reading ability.
[Copyright of Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01434630903514212]