School of Education and Languages
The School of Education and Languages plays an important role in nurturing Hong Kong’s future generations. It contributes to the professional development of our future teachers with its teacher education programmes, and it also helps to satisfy Hong Kong’s language needs with comprehensive language enhancement programmes.
The School offers about 40 programmes leading to the award of qualifications from the sub-degree to the doctoral level. The education programmes examine a wide range of aspects of the educational process, such as school curricula, policy-making and management, child and adolescent development, and teaching methodologies, from both theoretical and practical perspectives. There are also several programmes in English language/language education and a number of language enhancement courses in English, Chinese and Putonghua.
Putonghua testing and courses
The School operates the Centre for Putonghua Education and Testing which organizes and administers the National Putonghua Proficiency Test in collaboration with the State Language and Writing Commission. The Centre also runs face-to-face, non-credit-bearing short courses which aim at preparing students to take the National Putonghua Proficiency Test, and offers an e-learning programme on basic Chinese for non-Chinese speakers.
Learning and teaching Liberal Studies
To meet the needs of Hong Kong’s education sector, which introduced Liberal Studies as one of four core courses in the new senior secondary school curriculum in 2009, Prof. Yvonne Fung, the Dean of the School of Education and Languages, Associate Professor Dr Thomas Tang and Assistant Professor Dr Chan Chi-wai jointly published a book entitled Learning and Teaching Liberal Studies: Theory and Practice, in which they shared their thinking on this subject with teachers, principals, student teachers and any others interested in Liberal Studies.
The publication covers the theoretical foundations of the curriculum and its methodology, while also providing practical guidance on the teaching and learning of this interdisciplinary subject. Apart from this publication, the School also offers programmes in Liberal Studies for educators and others who wish to broaden their knowledge in this area.
