Educational visits
"If you are confined to a single cultural environment, your creative powers will be constrained by that environment. But if you have the opportunity to experience another culture and exchange views with the people in that culture, you will be stimulated to come up with numerous new ideas of your own."
- Chan Hiu-kwan, participant of the Beijing Study Tour

Thanks to a generous donation of over $690,000 from the Hongkong Bank Foundation, 220 participants of pre-service and in-service early childhood education courses offered by the School of Early Childhood Education have been selected to embark on a series of study tours to three major cities in China: Beijing, Guangzhou and Shanghai.

High spirits brave the winter chill
About 60 students of the Certificate in Early Childhood programme, led by four lecturers from the School of Early Childhood Education, studied for one week at Beijing Normal University during the Christmas holidays. The temperature in Beijing was well below freezing, but the spirits of the students were extremely high. They split into two teams, an arts group and a dance group, to attend a series of three-hour workshops. In the workshops, they studied theories related to various aspects of early childhood teaching and tried to test out the practical application of their new knowledge. The workshops were taught by highly experienced professors and related experts and covered a broad range of topics. These included Chinese painting, Chinese calligraphy, Chinese opera facial makeup, folklore, modern art education, the art of paper-cutting, choreography, children's dance and rhythmic exercise, the characteristics of Chinese folk dance and the different schools of oriental dance.

  A pilgrimage to Southern China
During the same period, more than 70 students from the Certificate in Early Childhood programme and the Qualified Kindergarten Teacher Education course joined a three-day study tour to South China Normal University in Guangzhou under the supervision of five lecturers. Music, art and dance workshops were taught by professors from the University on topics including percussion instruments, the structural characteristics, visualisation and tools of Chinese floral and bird paintings, as well as basic theories in dance and key ethnic dance steps.

Learn from others to better yourself
Members of the Beijing tour visited two local kindergartens famed for their art and dance teaching, while those of the Guangzhou tour observed two local pre-schools. Through these visits, participants gained a deeper understanding of the current pre-school teaching modes in the Mainland and experienced the differences and similarities between Hong Kong and the Mainland in early childhood education.

Dance workshop
Students joining a dance workshop learn more about dance theory


<< PREVIOUS
NEXT >>