Heads up: This post is 13 years old. My thinking may have evolved since then — read it with that in mind.
In order to better understand Hong Kong’s early childhood education system, we started to do secondary research, which means reading existing research others had done, based on some questions we want to find out. Some of my questions are:
What are parents doing with their young children?
What options do parents have?
What attributes do parents value or feel it’s important for the 0-3 age group?
What do parents hope to get out of the playgroups / activities?
How much are they spending?
How early do parents start taking their children to playgroups / activities?
Who is the primary caregiver? (Domestic helper? Grandparents? Parents?)
How many have used daycare services? How often?
What is their perceived current situation Vs. what’s their ideal, wishful world?
I just finished reading Dr. Li Hui’s paper: “Developing School-based Curriculum in Hong Kong Kindergartens”, here are some excerpts and my take aways.
“Kindergarten principals and teachers are stuck between the Education Bureau and the parents. The Education Bureau follows the new SBC policies, they say schools are teach too much and should lower homework volume. Parents say the opposite! The role of policy makers and parents has reversed.”
“Many HK kindergartens had tried some ‘Reggio Emilia Activities’, but encountered problems. Teachers described how the activities are supposed to be done in a way, but they can’t seem to make the right ‘flavor’. One must take into account of cultural differences when importing western ideas. Heidi Laylin(?) cautioned American Early Childhood Educators to learn and research the Reggio Emilia Approach (REA) but don’t blindly copy as most American kindergartens don’t have the right conditions. Li & Wong (2001) pointed out, HK is not suitable for the REA as HK’s Early Childhood Education conditions are much worse than the US.”
“HK Kindergartens’ environment do not reach China’s requirements. Mainland Chinese government has many standards (minimize space, teacher qualifications) that are higher than HK. HK’s ‘high land prices policies’ have caused great harm to Early Childhood Education.”
Teacher qualifications is low. HK Early Childhood Education teachers typically have lower professional and academic qualifications than Beijing and Shanghai’s (Li & Rao, 2000)
Problems found in school-based curricular:#
97.1% of principals think their curriculum could cater for children’s needs. 35% teachers disagree.
- Too much content to cover within very limited time (29.4%)
- Teaching focused on academic achievement, irrelevant to children’s daily experiences (23.5%)
- Curricular were not develop mentally appropriate (17.6%)
- Curriculum could not cater for individual variations (11.8%)
- Their kindergartens lacked curriculum and teaching resources (5.9%)
- Teacher-student ratio was very low (5.9%)
- Teachers not able to satisfy high-demanding parents when developing school-based curriculum (5.9%)
Difficulties encountered in SBCD#
Principals (78%) and teachers (75%) reported they encountered difficulties in preparing teaching plans:
Their curriculum couldn’t match with parental needs (29%, 21%)
Teaching resources were insufficient or mismatched (27%, 60%)
Daily time for learning and teaching were not sufficient or mis-arranged (27%, 39%)
Teachers’ qualifications were not enough to develop SBC (26%, 17%)
Teacher-student ratio very low (13%, 11%)
School management didn’t allow teachers to develop curriculum (7%, 16%)
Confined by environmental constraints (0, 2.8%)
They couldn’t properly handle linkages and differences between the curricular for different age groups (0, 1.4%)
Insights of the reality of SBCD in HK Kindergartens#
Li’s study found teacher’s qualification was main factor influencing SBCD, which is consistent with Zhou’s (2004) studies.
Li’s study found 4 major barriers for SBCD in HK kindergartens:
- Lack of curriculum experts and their guidance
- short of resources for curriculum development
- under-qualified teachers
- overlook on SBCD by school management which, again, are identical with findings in Zhou’s (2004) Shanghai study.
The big gap between the reality and educational authority’s ideals about SBCD reflects the policy-makers are idealistic in nature and have no idea about the operational difficulties of implementing SBC in HK / Shanghai.
Balancing teacher-directed and child-centered approaches#
NAEYC and High/Scope have advocated the child-centered approach since 1980’s. HK and Mainland China have followed this direction to fight against traditional teacher-directed approach since 1990’s (Li & Li, 2004).
Effective teacher training made almost all early childhood educators accepted the so-called “child-centered approach” in their teaching beliefs. However, their daily practice in classroom is still “teacher-directed”.
Reflections - Keeping Myself on Track#
In my questions, I had identified parents as one of the main stakeholders in the system. While Li’s research is on what schools are doing for the children and doesn’t directly answer my questions, we can still see indirectly how parents and the greater socio environment had impacted the schools, particularly the curricular. Based on this indirect evidence, I believe that parents are not aware of what’s truly good & important for young children, and are pushing for academic excellence too much, too early. Further problem discovery is needed for “parents stakeholder” in our user research phase later.
As for the research itself, one thing most of the respondents and Dr. Li himself repeatedly iterate is the low level of teacher qualifications. This reflects several interesting observations:
Early childhood educators are undervalued, underpaid and general disrespected.
Typical Chinese mentality - low self-esteem, low self-worth, often think they’re “not good enough”.
How do teachers overcome the fact that they themselves lack a good, creative early childhood education? (Assuming they grew up in Hong Kong.)
Is further education and certifications the right way to improve teacher “qualifications”?