Prof. CHENG Yin Cheong

Professor and Director, Centre for Institutional Research and Development, HKIED

Centre Head, the Asia-Pacific Centre for Education Leadership and School Quality

President, Asia-Pacific Educational Research Association

Self Introduction:
Yin Cheong CHENG is the President of the Asia-Pacific Educational Research Association (APERA)(www.apera.org) that was established by 22 national and international organizations in 14 countries in the Asia-Pacific Region in 2001. He is also the Professor and Director of the Centre for Institutional Research and Development and the Head of the Asia-Pacific Centre for Education Leadership and School Quality of the Hong Kong Institute of Education. He had served as a full member of the University Grants Committee, a panel member of Research Grants Council, and a member of the Quality Education Fund Steering Committee of the Hong Kong SAR Government. Previously, he was the associate director of the Hong Kong Institute of Educational Research and professor in the Department of Educational Administration and Policy of the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Prof. Cheng holds a doctorate from Harvard University. He has had extensive experiences in both education and research. His research projects are mainly on education effectiveness, leadership development, and school management reform with the support of Competitive Earmarked Research Grants from the Research Grants Council. Prof. Cheng has published 18 academic books and nearly 200 book chapters and academic journal articles in Australia, Hong Kong, Korea, Mainland, Netherlands, Germany, Slovenia, Israel, Taiwan, Thailand, USA, and UK. Among his books, School Effectiveness and School-based Management: A Mechanism for School Development has been published in four language editions. Some of his publications have been translated into Chinese, Hebrew, Korean, Spanish, Czech, Thai and Persian languages. Recently, he published a new book “A new paradigm for reengineering education: Globalization, localization and individualization” (2005, Springer) that includes 22 chapters and over 500 pages representing his latest research in this area. He was the editor in chief of the Asia Pacific Journal of Teacher Education and Development(1998-2003). He is at present serving on the advisory boards of 12 international journals. He is also the associate editor of the International Journal of Educational Management (UK).

Prof. Cheng’s research has won him a number of international awards and recognition including the Awards for Excellence from the Literati Club in UK in 1994, 1996-98, 2001, 2004 and 2005. In 1999, he was awarded as the Fellow of the Hong Kong Educational Research Association. He has served as panel member, researcher, consultant, external examiner or reviewer of local and international universities and research institutions. In these few years, Prof. Cheng has also been invited to give nearly 50 keynote/plenary presentations by national and international organizations such as APEC, UNESCO, UNICEF, ICER, ICSEI (Australia, Hong Kong, Canada, & China), International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO), Ford Foundation (US, Africa), World Bank, SEAMEO RIHED (with Chulalongkorn University), NIEPA and NCERT (India), ONEC/OEC (Thailand), ACEA (Australia), NIER (Japan), Ministry of Education of Israel, Ministry of Education of Malaysia (with University of Malaya), iAPED (Korea), Scandinavian-Pacific Conference (Sweden), International Seminar (Erfurt, Germany), ICTED (Philippine), International Society of Teacher Education, Singapore Educational Research Association, Japanese Society for the Studies on Teacher Education, and Chinese Educational Research Association (Taiwan).

Prof. Cheng has very fruitful experiences in organizing and conducting leadership development programmes, seminars and workshops for local and international principals and education leaders particularly to implement educational reforms in the past decades. He has been very interested in watercolor painting since the end of 1960s and had two invited personal exhibitions in 2001 and 2005. He was invited by the Hong Kong Museum of Art to conduct art seminars.

Presentation Topic:
Multiple Models of Integrated Learning:Conception, Innovation, and Effectiveness

Abstract:
In response to the paradigm shifts in ongoing educational reforms in different parts of the world, there is a strong movement of curriculum change towards integrated learning. In general, people believe that integrated learning can create a wide range of learning opportunities and possibilities to facilitate development of students’ high-level competence, thinking ability, and multiple perspectives in a more sustainable and holistic way. But, in practice there are also problems of misconception, mismatch between aims and means, misuse of integrated learning in curriculum reforms and classroom teaching and learning. All these result in not only ineffectiveness of learning and wasting time and effort of students but also creating burdens and chaos to teachers, parents and schools.

How integrated learning should be re-conceptualized, re-designed and implemented to facilitate paradigm shift and innovation in learning and create opportunities for maximizing learning effectiveness is a crucial issue in both theory and practice. The keynote speech aims to address this issue and propose a typology of multiple models of integrated learning to analyze the conceptions, aims, approaches, processes, outcomes, effectiveness and limitations of various types of integrated learning ranging from integrated subject learning to enquiry-based learning.

Depending on the nature of integration in learning, there are four basic models of integrated learning including method integration, subject integration, context integration, and cognition/competence integration. Each model has its own characteristics, strengths and weaknesses in conceptualization and application. There are also second-order models of integrated learning in terms of a combination of two or above basic models in curriculum design.

This typology of multiple models provides a new theoretical framework to re-conceptualize research, innovation and new practice of integrated learning in different learning contexts or subject areas. Its implications are completely different from the traditional thinking.