The paper focuses on the close collaborative work our research team has been engaged in with two local schools to study how action research measures may help to facilitate the improvement of the Integrated Humanities (IH) curriculum through school-university partnerships. It attempts to understand action research as a form of cultural practice for education, and examines how such collaborative work with local schools may contribute to sustainable cultural work of education and intervene at different levels of the schooling practices. In all, the paper seeks to offer preliminary analysis and reflection on the re-orientation of Cultural Studies as a research and problem-solving, intellectual and critical project with a potential for long-term input to cultural policy-making. It also aims at examining the role of cultural studies practitioners as action researchers in the process of doing cultural work of education.
[Copyright of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2011.534586]

This pilot study is to examine whether it is valuable to implement jazz choral practice in Hong Kong primary school setting. The findings can serve as a reference to explore the possibilities of promoting jazz education in Asian countries or in China. The participants were 70 public primary school students from grade 2 to 5 in Hong Kong. All participants were asked to sing jazz warm up exercises written by Kirby Shaw in their choral rehearsals. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected. Findings were presented from two perspectives - student perspective and observer perspective - in this study. After rehearsals, students were asked to complete a questionnaire related to the response in singing jazz music. Video recording and field notes were captured to observe the behaviour and expression of the participants. Six dimensions of contents were observed during the rehearsal including physical actions, verbal behaviour, expressive behaviour, spatial relations, temporal patterns and verbal records. The results have indicated that it is beneficial to use Jazz warm up exercises in the traditional choral practice in Hong Kong primary school setting.
[Copyright of Music Education Research is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14613808.2013.788142]

The purpose of the study is to analyse and discuss the influences of globalisation and localisation on music education in Hong Kong and Taiwan. It argues that the reform of music education concerns changes to the contents of the curriculum that envisage the cultural and political developments that arise from processes of globalisation and localisation in these two Chinese societies. 'Glocalisation' throughout this essay refers to the interface of the global and the local. I conclude by discussing three issues relating to the processes of glocalisation that have shaped music education and cultural identity in these two changing societies: (1) the multiculturalism of music education; (2) the promotion of local music cultures in the curriculum; and (3) the inclusion of Confucian ethics in song lyrics. This study argues that education that promotes family values and social harmony can satisfy concerns that glocalisation involves the adoption of both Chinese and foreign songs in the school curriculum.
[Copyright of Comparative Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03050068.2012.686678]

Humanities includes a diverse range of disciplines in which little literature has explored in any depth the desired learning outcomes. This study was designed to articulate and illustrate learning outcomes in the humanities from students' voices and work. Undergraduate students in their final year, postgraduate students and recent alumni from the Faculty of Arts at a Hong Kong university were interviewed individually or in groups of three to four. They discussed their desired and actual learning outcomes in three areas: the overall university experience, studying in the humanities and their studies in their specific majors. The students' comments were grouped into 16 categories of description. Seventy-three pieces of student work were collected and matched to the 16 categories to illustrate students' perceptions. A common set of qualities was found in all the humanities programs. From the data, knowledge is the most valued by humanities students, followed by rational thinking. Accomplishment and self-direction are relatively less mentioned. Further discussion is presented on how and why humanities students value different qualities, based on students voices interfaced with some relevant literature. The findings have been helpful in bringing the student voice into internal discussions about outcomes-based approaches to teaching and learning and how these approaches relate to internal quality-assurance and curriculum-change processes.
[Copyright of Higher Education Research & Development is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2010.542558 ]