The author reports that the Curriculum Development Institute (CDI) was established in April 1992 as a new Division of the Education Department. It was characterized by its special contractual staffing arrangement which hopefully could produce a desired working culture expected of a professional agency. The CDI was still in its formative stage, and the author believed that the organizational structure of CDI could be further streamlined to develop a greater degree of autonomy and professionalism and that, to succeed, quality and innovation needed to be initiated and owned by every member of the institute.

This paper reports a study that aims to explore the multifaceted roles of teachers under the curriculum change of Target Oriented Curriculum (TOC). By reviewing the related papers and documents, the principles of learning of TOC and how this initiative works in actual practice are conceptualized. Then, some objective criteria concerning the professional qualities and expertise required of TOC teachers are deduced, and implications of TOC for teacher education are discussed.

文章探討的問題有二：第一，對教師來說,那些教育改革的特色和改革策略出現問題？第二，學校採用了那些有效改革措施？研究顯示教師和學校是憑著已有的經驗和認識來詮釋和對待改革。

The author points out that Hong Kong and Macau share some commonalties: they are geographically close, and share a common cultural heritage; both of them have scheduled for reintegration with the People's Republic of China. In contrast, the author underscores, the education system of Hong Kong is in most aspects centralized, while in Macau is decentralized. The author then tries to account for the differences and in turn comments on the implications with a focus on patterns of curriculum development for secondary schools.

This paper highlights the significance of "ownership" in implementing educational change. It is argued in the paper that all interested groups should have opportunities to participate in the design, planning, and development of the change. Implications are then drawn from the postponement of Targets and Target-Related Assessment for introducing change into the schools of Hong Kong.

This paper analyses aspects of a Hong Kong school curriculum reform, which recommends amongst other things, a greater focus on assessment for learning. It outlines the principles of the reform as it pertains to assessment and discusses how structural changes are being employed to lend support to changes in the assessment culture in Hong Kong. The paper draws on a previous problematic attempt to introduce formative assessment through the Target-Oriented Curriculum initiative. Two examples of assessment for learning practice of 'early adopters' are used to illustrate both the potential and some of the challenges of implementation in the Hong Kong primary school context. From these cases, are drawn out some of the facilitating and inhibiting factors impinging on the implementation of assessment for learning in schools, building on a model of professional growth.
[Copyright of Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0969594042000333904]

The purpose of this paper is to describe the Hong Kong (HK) school curriculum, especially the general curriculum for civic education and other social subjects, in relation to the political events of the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration, the 1989 Tiananmen Square Incident, and the return of HK's sovereignty from the United Kingdom (UK) to the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1997. This paper will argue that since 1984, the school curriculum of HK has been marked by tensions brought about by political cultures shaped by the UK and the PRC, the bureaucratic mechanisms of which are used to make sure that those curriculum contents that are judged to be politically correct are taught in school. Over the last two decades the school curriculum has been depicted as being shaped by the emergence of the nation-state and the transfer of sovereignty. Granted that political and national education forms part of the school culture, the question of how to shape students to be patriotic through the curriculum will continue to be contentious.
[Copyright of Discourse is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01596300701289045]

The authors report that, in assessing the influence of Target Oriented Curriculum (TOC) at the level of resources and implemented curriculum, an ongoing three year project has been pursued to study the interpretation and operation of the 15 case study schools, commercial publishers, and the Education Department of Hong Kong in English language learning based on the TOC curriculum.

The study being reported in this paper examines the professional competencies of teachers who implemented Target Oriented Curriculum (TOC), and makes recommendations concerning the types of resources and professional development programs which may facilitate the development and implementation of TOC initiative.