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The New Senior Secondary Education structure has been implemented for several months. As the first batch of students will enrol in the four-year undergraduate programme in 2012, the preparatory work of the eight University Grants Committee (UGC)-funded institutions for the new normative four-year curriculum is now in full swing. Although the curricula designed by the institutions are distinct from each other, they all seek to espouse the philosophy of whole-person development and life-long learning. In other words, the new academic structure is to provide students with more diversified learning experience so that they can attain good and balanced development in terms of knowledge, skills and attitude. Provide targeted professional development for teachers The design of curriculum is important, but its success would depend on the effectiveness of implementation. When the emphasis of education is no longer simply on the transmission of knowledge in the classroom, teaching and learning activities and assessment strategies will have to be appropriately adjusted. Otherwise, the introduction of the new curriculum will become form without substance and fail to achieve the objectives of the present academic reform. Therefore, institutions are about to face a big challenge in the coming years. Apart from recruiting more teachers to deal with the increase in student numbers, institutions have to seriously consider how to provide targeted professional development for the newly-recruited, as well as those in-service teachers. Another relevant issue is how to assess the effectiveness of teaching and learning, and to establish a fair and open reward system. The UGC has always considered “teaching and learning” as the principal mission of all institutions. Apart from supporting teaching and learning activities with the allocation of block grant, the UGC has since 1994 introduced Teaching Development Grants (TDGs) to encourage institutions to adopt innovative approaches to teaching and to improve the quality of the learning environment. For the 2009-12 triennium, the total earmarked allocation for TDGs amounts to some $110 million. Teaching Development Group: platform for exchanges among institutions Within the premise of improving teaching and learning, institutions have considerable flexibility in deploying the grants. In the past years, institutions have supported a wide range of different innovative projects. Overall, the TDGs aim to achieve the following main objectives:
To enhance professional exchanges among institutions, the UGC has provided another platform – the Teaching Development Group - for institutional representatives to meet regularly. Among the Group’s terms of reference are to organise joint–institutional exchange activities and to review the use of TDGs. In 2008, the Group invited an international expert to give advice on the TDG scheme. In the expert’s report, he commended Hong Kong for being world class in terms of the funding quantum, mechanism and performance in this area, and supported the continuation of the TDG scheme. The main target of TDGs is teachers, yet its ultimate goal is to deepen students’ learning and development through enhancing teachers’ professional capacity. Teachers who are willing to learn how to teach for the sake of improving students’ learning, and to learn to be better in their teaching set a good example to their students; it is also a testament to the notion of “teaching to learn, learning to teach”. Professor Edmond Ko |
