Collaboration with Local Education and Wider Communities

As the leader in teacher education, the Institute continues to expand the scale of its partnerships with major school sponsoring bodies (SSBs) in Hong Kong. During the year, it signed collaborative agreements with the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Taoist Association and Hong Chi Association. Including these newly sealed agreements, 11 SSBs representing 33 per cent of the primary, secondary and special schools and 25 per cent of the kindergartens in Hong Kong have entered into partnerships with the Institute. The other eight partners include the Catholic Diocese of Hong Kong; Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui; the Hong Kong Council of the Church of Christ in China; the Tung Wah Group of Hospitals; Po Leung Kuk; the Methodist Church, Hong Kong; the Hong Kong Buddhist Association; and Yan Oi Tong. With these agreements in place, the Institute will continue to strengthen its collaboration with partner schools to promote field experience and co-organise conferences and academic seminars that facilitate the sharing of learning and teaching experiences.

Life education has become an increasingly important subject among educators. In 2010-11, the Education Bureau (EDB) sought the Institute’s support in organising the “Programme on Planning Life Education in Primary Schools”. Including the ensuing three cohorts, over 300 principals and teachers from 80 primary schools have received structured training in life education through workshops, overseas study tours, school support projects and professional learning community networks. The training enables participants to use the insights and knowledge gained in the programme to design and implement new initiatives that can be tailored to students’ needs in their individual schools. Highly commended by the school sector, the EDB requested the Institute to organise a similar training programme in 2014-15 – the “Programme on Planning Life Education in Secondary Schools” – for the principals and teachers from 26 secondary schools. The programmes have thus far benefited 10 per cent of the primary and secondary schools in Hong Kong.

Education enhances the quality of people and encourages social progress. Recognising the far-reaching impacts of education, the Institute established a high-level platform – the HKIEd Foundation – to tap into the support of the wider community in advancing the quality of teacher education, learning and teaching and research at the Institute. The inauguration of the HKIEd Foundation was held on 27 April 2015 under the witness of Guest of Honour Mrs Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor, GBS, JP, Chief Secretary for Administration of the HKSAR Government, and more than 400 friends and supporters of the Institute, including leading figures from the business and education sectors, principal government officials and consuls general, HKIEd staff, alumni and scholarship recipients and their parents.

Alliance in the Region and Around the World

The Institute is equally active in extending its collaboration network beyond Hong Kong’s borders. During the year, it fostered ties with close to 180 institutions in the Greater China region (Mainland China, Taiwan and Macau) and various countries in Asia (Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam), the Asia-Pacific region (Australia), Europe (Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Norway, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom), North America (Canada and the United States) and Central America (Mexico).

The Institute also co-launched the Global Alliance for Educational Change and Social Development with a number of renowned universities in the region and beyond to further strengthen its collaboration network. At the Institute’s invitation, 11 leading universities joined the Alliance, including the University of Sydney (Australia), the University of Toronto (Canada), Beijing Normal University and East China Normal University (Mainland China), Nagoya University (Japan), the University of Malaya (Malaysia), Dongguk University (South Korea), the National Taiwan Normal University (Taiwan), the UCL Institute of Education and University of York (UK), Vanderbilt University (US) and the Asia Pacific Higher Education Research Partnership, a regional network dedicated to exploring research into higher education throughout the Asia-Pacific region. The Alliance seeks to tap into the combined strengths of these member institutions to promote knowledge transfer, inform government policy, shape regional and global research agendas and advance positive educational change and social development.

Regional and International Knowledge Exchange

Partners of the Alliance and institutions under different collaborative agreements converge at the Institute to engage in academic and knowledge exchanges through international conferences, symposia, forums and seminars. Some of these academic activities are highlighted as follows.

Under the theme “Educators for the 21st century”, the Institute organised the Third Forum for Presidents of Normal Universities in the Greater China Region on 9 October 2014, with Beijing Normal University and National Taiwan Normal University serving as co-organisers. Sharing their views with academics and experts from the Greater China region, the speakers included, among others, the highly respected Professor Wang Gungwu, Chairman of the East Asian Institute at the National University of Singapore; and Sir Graeme Davies, Chairman of the Higher Education Policy Institute, UK. At the forum, leaders of major normal universities from Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau signed a joint message to foster closer ties and collaboration between member institutions and promote teaching, learning, research and student exchange.

Beyond the higher education exchange, the Institute hosted the Forum for Secondary School Principals in the Greater China Region on 11-12 June 2015. Under the theme “Cultivating the 21st Century Learning – Perspectives and Experiences in the Greater China Region”, the forum established a valuable platform for about 60 school principals from Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau to share their experiences on shaping the future of the region’s secondary schools in the face of upcoming challenges and opportunities. The Institute invited renowned scholars, including Professor Edward Chen, former President of Lingnan University; Professor Zhang Li, a senior official in charge of education affairs in Mainland China; and Professor John Lee, the Institute’s Vice President (Academic), to deliver keynote speeches at the forum. Visits to local secondary schools were also arranged to facilitate in-depth communication between the guests and local practitioners.

Under the theme “Managing Global Changes and Education Reforms: Asia and Pacific Responses”, the Asia Pacific Educational Research Association (APERA) and the Hong Kong Educational Research Association (HKERA) International Conference 2014 was launched on 19 November 2014. The three-day conference hosted by the Institute and co-organised by, among others, APERA, HKERA and the International Research Network “Theory and Practice of Pedagogical Design for Learning in Digital Classrooms” of the World Educational Research Association attracted 500 participants from 41 countries and regions. The conference provided a platform for education practitioners, researchers and policymakers throughout the Asia-Pacific region and beyond to discuss, share and exchange perspectives on designing and implementing the educational reforms needed to meet the education challenges arising from global change.

Sponsored by the Environment and Conservation Fund and co-organised by the Consortium on Health, Environment, Education and Research (CHEER) and Department of Science and Environmental Studies, HKIEd, the three-day International Conference on Biological Waste as Resource, with a Focus on Food Waste was launched on 1 December 2014 at the Institute. The conference attracted 100 participants from Australia, the UK, India, Italy, Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, Singapore and Thailand, in addition to Mainland China, Macau and Hong Kong. The occasion provided a timely platform for participants to exchange information about the imminent waste problem and usage and treatment of organic wastes and to promote public environmental education with a particular focus on the importance of recycling and recovery.

To launch the Global Alliance for Educational Change and Social Development, a two-day conference was kicked off on 9 April 2015 with keynote speeches delivered by world-renowned scholar Professor Lee Shulman of Stanford University and Professor Chris Husbands of the UCL Institute of Education. These speakers shared their insights into the challenges facing education and teacher training in the 21st century. Professor Nicola Yeates of the Open University in the UK also spoke about the new politics of social policy.

Co-organised by the Institute and UNESCO Bangkok (Asia and Pacific Regional Bureau for Education), a three-day meeting of experts on Building the Capacity of Higher Education Institutions in Asia-Pacific for Blended Learning was kicked off on 3 June 2015 at the Institute. The experts who participated in the meeting included academics from several renowned universities in the region, including the University of Western Australia, Tsinghua University, East China Normal University, Universitas Negeri Jakarta, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Seoul National University, Taylor’s University and the University of Chiang Mai. The participating universities each shared a case study from their own institutions with a view to finding effective and innovative blended learning practices and policies and developing a toolkit to enhance the capacity of higher education institutions in the Asia-Pacific region.