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EDUCATION

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Graduate Teachers

The training of graduate teachers for secondary schools is undertaken by the Faculty of Education at the University of Hong Kong and the School of Education of the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

In the University of Hong Kong, more than 700 students were enrolled in the Post- graduate Certificate in Education programme, both full-time and part-time, in 1989- 90. For further professional and academic development of teachers, the faculty offered Advanced Diploma and MEd programmes by coursework and dissertation in a variety of curriculum areas. The Advanced Diploma electives offered were Curriculum Studies, Guidance and Counselling, Psychology of Classroom Learning and Religious and Moral Education, and in the MEd, the electives were Curriculum Studies, Early Childhood Education, Special Education Needs, and Education and National Development. Partly as a result of the numbers of students who have graduated from the Masters programme over the 11 years since it was instituted, the numbers of applications for research degrees (MPhil and PhD) in education continued to rise. There were 23 enrolments in 1989–90, and the faculty intends to increase the numbers of places available for study at this level in the next few years.

As well as its regular formal teaching programme, the Faculty of Education provides a wide range of In-service Teacher Education Programme courses of varying length, aiming to cater for a wide diversity of needs in the education community. Fifty-two courses were taken by 1 150 students in 1989–90.

Education Research

Members of the Faculty of Education at Hong Kong University are engaged in over 50 research projects in education, ranging from pre-primary to tertiary level and from broad issues of educational planning and curriculum development to studies of particular learning contexts. The faculty has continued its active co-operation in research with the Education Department, and is gradually extending its work with colleagues in China.

The Chinese University of Hong Kong

The Chinese University of Hong Kong was inaugurated in 1963 as a federal university and a self-governing corporation which draws its income mainly from government grants. The campus occupies 134 hectares of land near Sha Tin.

The university comprises three original colleges - New Asia College (founded in 1949), Chung Chi College (1951) and United College (1956). A fourth college, Shaw College, named after its donor Sir Run Run Shaw, became operational in 1988 at the north-west part of the campus.

For two decades after its inception, the university adopted a curriculum structure based on a combination of the credit unit system and degree examination system. Students admitted to the undergraduate programme after six years of secondary education were granted a Bachelor's degree upon completion of a number of course credits and the passing of a degree examination assessed by external examiners from home and abroad.

The university started a comprehensive curriculum review in 1983 which resulted in the adoption of a new curriculum structure for its undergraduate studies, based solely on the credit unit system. The new curriculum is applicable to students admitted in 1986–7 and thereafter. Under this new structure, general education is strengthened, language standards

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