Secondary School Art Teachers' Concepts of Teaching in Hong Kong

Abstract

Recently, there has been considerable concern among art educators and cultural policy makers to promote art education in Hong Kong. The launch of the new curriculum of a discipline‐based character in 1996 generated debate in the art education circle of Hong Kong. There were diverse opinions on the rationale for teaching art. Concern was expressed about the present constraints of art teaching related to teachers' ability and school administration poses another important issue that seems to inhibit further developments. This paper reports part of the findings of a study on art teachers' concepts of teaching. It explores the concepts of about 20 secondary art teachers in Hong Kong. Several categories of teaching are derived from interviews: aesthetic development, moral development, intellectual development, expression and therapy, and intellectual and aesthetic development. A scheme is developed which can be used to analyze teachers' concepts as education in or through art on a continuum from subject to learner centred.

Understanding Young Children's Three‐Dimensional Creative Potential in Art Making

“…At this point we need to consider whether -in the context of the study that will be presented next -it is possible to distinguish between behavioural changes attributed to development/maturation and behavioural changes attributed to instruction (institutional and/or cultural context). To explore young children's three-dimensional awareness and representational abilities the study presented in this article employed the content-centred/child-initiated approach (Lam 2000;Pavlou 2004). This approach argues that development is fostered and learning opportunities maximised when the teacher plays an active role.…”