Rapporteurs Overview

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Rapporteurs Overview

• Lee Wing On

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The seminars quotation

• To ensure that HK will not lose out in a
  knowledge-based, globalized economy, the HKSAR
  has made education and skill training the number
  of one priority of our social policy. We have
  launched a massive education reform program which
  aims, among other things, to help our young
  people learn how to learn and to inculcate in
  them a commitment to lifelong learning.
• Fanny Law, 2002

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Common Needs/Problems Common Solutions
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Common Needs/Problems

• China the better the teacher teaches, the more
  the students dislike learning
• HK Not to lose out in the knowledge-economy
• Malaysia Public outcry that the existing
  curriculum is overloaded, student no. sizeable,
  students unable to read

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Common Needs/Problems

• Singapore globalization challenges
• Thailand economic crisis, science and technology
  and way of life
• Korea standardized individuals who lack
  individuality intellectuals who lack creativity
  students who lack moral values
• Japan achievement decline

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Common solutions

• Integration and diversification of the curriculum
• Lifelong and lifewide learning
• Civic moral values
• Individual development, creative and critical
  thinking
• Key Learning Areas (HK, Taiwan, Malaysia)
• General education

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Common terminologies

• Generic skills
• Reducing loads
• ICT
• Decentralization
• School-based curriculum development
• Flexible curriculum
• Relevance

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Change in Curriculum Definitions

• Static, content-based perspectives
• Narrow Definition of the curriculum
• French scolarie
• German Lehrplan
• English syllabus

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Change in Curriculum Definition

• Change-oriented perspectives with various foci
• The complicated, dynamic and continuous process
  of organizing education
• Objectives intended for students
• Teaching strategies schools plan to use
• The actual implementation and learning
  achievements
• An ongoing search for qualitative improvement, in
  response to changes in society

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Challenges for the Implementation of Change

• Reminders from Torres comments on teacher
  education reform
• Each new policy, plan or project starts from
  zero, disregarding pervious knowledge and
  experience
• Considers training principally as a need for
  teachers rather than their supervisors
• Views training isolated from other dimensions
• Adopts a top-down approach
• Provides homogeneous proposal
• Oriented toward correcting mistakes

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Challenges for the Implementation of Change

• Udo Bude
• The implications of the panic approach to
  curriculum reform
• Changes come about often as a reaction to problem
  or emergency situation
• Based on perceived problems and solutions rather
  than systematic and planned research
• Often come from high authority
• Experts tend to be fashionable in proposals
• Teachers are regarded as conveyors of the
  curriculum

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Challenges for the Implementation of Change

• What will happen to our curriculum reform, if we
  adopt the view that curriculum means continuous
  response to changing social circumstances, what
  kind of mechanism can we think of? Who has the
  right to respond? And at what stage are
  unintended response become legitimized?

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Challenges for the Implementation of Change

• Collective decision making (from the Malaysian
  paper)
• This implies the need for widened participation
  in curriculum reform, decision, and curriculum
  design. How much, and how, are we opening up for
  participation?
• What roles do the teacher play in curriculum
  responses?
• What roles do the students play in knowledge
  creation?

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Challenges for the Implementation of Change

• The concept of teaching still seems to be a
  top-down or unidirectional concept. Even the best
  approaches aim at students receiving teaching in
  the most pleasant way. If we agree that the new
  curriculum concept requires responsiveness to
  change, what role do students play in this
  process? How can their contribution be
  recognized? How can their lifewide experiences be
  formalized as a part of learning?

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Challenges for the Implementation of Change

• School-based development has become a natural
  direction of development under the new concept of
  curriculum. However, its not a matter of whether
  we agree development to be school-based, but how
  far can their autonomy go? How far
  decentralization can be accepted by the
  government?

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Thank You

• References
• Bude, U. (2000) Who should be doing what in
  adapting the curriculum? The roles of various
  protagonists with particular focus on
  policy-makers, curriculum developers and
  teachers., Globalization and living together
  The challenges for educational content in Asia.
  Paris IBE.
• Torrres, R.M. (1996) Teacher Action From
  Rhetoric to Action. In Partnerships in Teacher
  Development for a New Asia. Bangkok UNESCO PROAP.