Thinking Schools and Learning Communities: Sustaining School Network Leadership through Partnership Initiatives

• In Event: Roundtable Session 90
  In Roundtable Session: School Networks and Sustainable Educational Change

Abstract

The Curriculum Development Council of the Hong Kong Government proposed plans for the Hong Kong school curriculum. These reforms, a more diversified student intake and in greater number, have cultural, social, and political impacts. Any attempt to change school curriculum in Hong Kong must be responsive to (a) the progression of life-long learning and whole person development; (b) the on-going evolving local educational structure/system and the anticipated new local university admission requirements; (c) the increasing demand for a knowledge-based economy and workforce of the region; and (d) the changing market-defined needs of the 21st century.

In assessing a responsive and responsible school curriculum for the Hong Kong schools, various new educational initiatives are taken into consideration. Fifteen secondary schools and five primary schools are included in the study. The research questions are qualitative in nature with focus on curriculum analysis and within the context of teaching thinking movement by a comparative study and interviews of the key players of the local existing school curriculums. The interview follows closely the eight guiding principles of designing the school curriculum including helping students learn to learn; providing essential learning opportunities and experiences; meeting different student needs; building the strength of the educational community; maintaining consistency among different modes of learning, teaching, and assessment; allowing flexibility in school-based implementation; improving the process of curriculum development; and ensuring sustainability of change and improvement.

In an attempt to understand how the learning community is formed and can keep accumulating its experiences and learn from them, an evaluation of the available partnership schemes will be conducted in terms of their designs and implementations from the standpoint of being a participant and/or independent observer.
The investigation focuses on three learning community initiatives, namely, Project Work, Knowledge Community, and Action Research. The Project Work (PW) initiative focuses on the knowledge and skills of the teachers from 30 secondary schools as collaborators, designers, resource managers and facilitators for effective implementation of student-centered learning. In support of student-centered learning, Knowledge Community (KC) as a web-based collaborative learning platform developed by researchers in Hong Kong, allows teachers to design suitable thinking styles with scaffolds to facilitate knowledge building. The Action Research (AR) initiative represents an approach to teachers’ professional development with action research concepts and techniques; a quality assurance process helping schools to identify areas for improvement; and a mechanism for collegiality and team spirit. At the network level, the AR teachers share their instructional prototypes and innovative teaching in the KC and workshops. In all cases, AR training and consultation are provided. For the learning communities to become effective, it is hypothesized that organizational learning can take place from within (PW, AR) and without (school-based in-service training). Both PW and AR initiatives are approaches to student-centered learning and teachers' professional development while maintaining the dynamism of the network schools with internal and external inputs at the school and network levels.

Author

• William Y. Wu, Hong Kong Baptist University