Reforms call for new culture
A change in culture will be needed if the reforms outlined by the Education Commission are to succeed, an official at the SAR's largest teacher-training institute said. 'If teachers are to implement the curriculum reforms successfully, they will need to master new competencies in school- based curriculum development and the all-round development of students,' Dr Pang King-chee, deputy director, quality assurance and education services, Hong Kong Institute of Education (HKIEd), said.
'They will also have to learn about the new key learning areas and methods of curriculum integration,' Dr Pang said.
This issue will have to be addressed on two levels: students currently undergoing teacher training and teachers who are already in the profession.
'For new teachers, it will be important for what we call pre- service programmes to incorporate all these new competencies so that when they graduate they will have already learned the new knowledge and skills and have developed the appropriate attitudes for supporting the reforms,' Dr Pang said.
Practising teachers, meanwhile, will have to undergo extensive on-the-job training. For administrators, this will mean finding the time and the human resources needed to release staff, so that they can take part in in- service training, Dr Pang said.
This should be done during regular working hours rather than after class or on weekends and on campus rather than at distant locations, Dr Pang said. Ideally, teams of experts would visit schools as often as once a week to work with teachers in implementing the reforms.
'If timetables are not so full and teachers can have fewer classes, they can spend more time on development,' Dr Pang said.
While public debate on the Education Commission's report has focused on calls for structural changes, Dr Pang thought that improvements in the curriculum were what mattered most.
'If you look at the report itself, it is actually quite balanced. It looks at what should be done in early childhood education, nine- year basic education, tertiary education and continuing education,' he said.
There were two threads that ran throughout the reforms: life- long learning and whole person development. According to Dr Pang, the overall objective got down to four things: enjoyment in learning, communication skills, commitment and creativity.
'These are the clear strategic goals: creating balanced individuals that are good at these four things, which are encapsulated in the whole person development concept,' Dr Pang said.
Whereas the institute was producing teachers equipped with the skills needed to carry out the report's objectives, practising teachers would need all the support they could get to deal with changes in the curriculum, teaching methodology and student assessment.
'These three areas are the most critical to the success of the reforms,' Dr Pang said.
'The institute believes a key factor in these critical areas is actually teacher education because the success of all this depends on teacher education,' Dr Pang said.
