Tammy Kwan

In the words of children and young people: The opinions and concerns about their environments of some Brisbane school students

This paper reports on a study into the environmental opinions and concerns of a sample of Brisbane children in the upper primary, junior and senior secondary years. The study adopted a qualitative approach. Childrens opinions about the environments around them and beyond were gathered using open-ended question items and focus group discussions. The study revealed that the upper primary children participating were most obviously concerned about their immediate personal environments. The junior and senior secondary students were more concerned about their natural environments to which they showed strong positive associations. On the other hand, all participants wanted to undertake personal action for change in their social environments at local, national and global levels.

Student‐teachers' evaluation on the use of different modes of problem‐based learning in teacher education

Problem‐based learning (PBL) has been widely adopted in many university programmes. Evaluations of PBL in medicine, dentistry, nursing and social work reveal positive outcomes from both tutors and learners. However, few evaluations have been published about using PBL in teacher education programmes. This paper reports how the 13 student‐teachers in the Integrated Humanities Major Method course evaluated the use of three different modes of PBL delivery, namely: the classical PBL; an alternate pattern of PBL and teacher‐led deductive workshops; and a modified PBL using problem‐based scenario inductive inquiry workshops. The learning experiences of the student‐teachers were captured via an open‐ended questionnaire to discuss the feasibility and receptivity of endorsing full or partial use of PBL in the teacher education programme. The outcome shows strong preference for the use of the modified PBL approach while the majority agreed the classical PBL style is the most challenging among the three modes.

Using Theory of Learning and Awareness to Bring About Learning Through a School-based Environmental Field Project

A school-based environmental field project ‘What Happens Around You and Your School Area?’ was designed under the School-based Curriculum Project Scheme (2001–2002) supported by the Hong Kong Education Manpower Bureau (formerly the Education Department). This school-based environmental field project, with heavy inclusion of environmental elements, was designed in the form of issue-based field inquiry based on student-centred learning to encourage subsequent meaningful learning activities such as group discussion, role-playing exercises and photograph exhibition in class. The field project possesses distinctive geographical and environmental characteristics of the school surrounding environments to bring about meaningful learning among students who study in a local standard new town secondary school in Hong Kong. This paper aims to share this field project experience of designing meaningful issue-based field inquiry using the theory of learning and awareness (Marton & Booth, 1997) to open up the space of learning for students (Marton et al., 2004; Runesson & Marton, 2002). Also based on the framework of educational and environmental ideologies (Fien, 1993), the intended learning outcomes of the field project are to empower students to become active small environmentalists (Kwan, 1995) who are well prepared in terms of geographical and environmental knowledge, skills and values.

Geography and Citizenship Education in Hong Kong

Elsewhere (Kwan, 2002), I have written about the teaching of geographical knowledge and skills as two easily taught explicit aspects of the subject, with the values aspect of the syllabus often seen by teachers as too subtle to handle. Although values education is always included in syllabuses, its very nature of being difficult to teach andassess often leads teachers topay only lip service to its actual teaching. Yet I believe it is values education that has the most profound effect on students’ personal development. The problem is that such learning and development is not detected easily or immediately within the classroom, and its long-lasting effects may only be evident much later in time when the students have grown up to act upon what they have learned, believing it to be useful, meaningful and important. I also encouraged geography teachers (at least in Hong Kong) to take advantage of syllabus revision and curriculum reform, to bring this subtle hidden element of values education upfront by highlighting the necessity to bring about better cultural understanding in students. This refers to both understanding their own culture and becoming a sympathiser and empathiser with cultures other than their own. Through such deliberation, we stand a better chance of preparing geography students to become responsible and committed global citizens beyond the four walls of the classroom. There is no doubt that geography has a significant and uniquely supportive role to play in preparing students to become responsible citizens. The question is how to achieve this generic goal of citizenship education through geographical education. Porter (1991) described citizenship education in three aspects:

The Development of Geomatics Education in Hong Kong

Exactly what is ‘geomatics’? This is a question frequently raised by university applicants, their parents and the public. It is not surprising as the term is still missing from many world-renowned dictionaries. Nevertheless, the label ‘geomatics’ has been replacing the name of many traditional departments of surveying around the world, including North America, Europe and Asia, for almost ten years. The new name in fact has reflected a broadening of the curriculum from traditional land surveying to a variety of land data collection, manipulation and analysis techniques of related disciplines like remote sensing, photogrammetry, global positioning systems (GPS), geographic information systems (GIS) and digital mapping. It also embraces the idea of technological integration and application in environmental and human science related disciplines such as Earth science, biology, geography and social studies. Geomatics is a much broader concept than GIS. A GIS is a system of hardware, software and procedures designed to support the capture, management, manipulation, analysis, modelling and display of spatially-referenced data for solving complex planning and management problems (Goodchild & Kemp, 1990). Hence GIS is a tool to provide access to various data sources and formats arising from maps, satellite imageries, aerial photographs and field measurements which can be used within the broader context of geomatics. These changes in knowledge boundaries raise some questions. Should the high school curriculum also be expanded or modified from a traditional data collection and measurement approach in response to this changing technology? Is there sufficient support, in terms of facilities, expertise and financial input, to promote such curriculum expansion and integration? To answer these questions, an examination of the development of geomatics throughout the various education sectors in Hong Kong may illustrate the possibilities and problems. In Hong Kong, land surveying at university level was uniquely offered by the Centre of Land Surveying and Engineering Surveying of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (formerly The Hong Kong Polytechnic) from 1984 to 1991 in its three-year Higher Diploma (HD) course in land surveying and cartography. Only high school science students who had taken physics and mathematics were

Pre-teenage Children's Vernacular Perception and Experience of Maps in Hong Kong

This paper reports a questionnaire study conducted with a group of 87 pre-teenage children (age 11-12 years) in Hong Kong to show their vernacular perception and experience of maps before they began formal mapwork learning in their first year of secondary education. This study reveals major findings that these pre-teenage children see the main purpose of using maps is to find unfamiliar places and to locate them in most everyday situations. As a result, they like to deal with practical, real maps such as street maps and the MTR (Mass Transit Railway) transport maps where the above mentioned practical map purpose can be achieved. Most of these pre-teenage children are aware of maps available in their surroundings. However, they may not be observant enough to notice or pay attention to reading them carefully. It is rather a matter of map awareness that puts these pre-teenage children into the two broad groups of map and non-map-users. It also revealed that even those pre-teenage children who claimed to be n...

Geographical Education Research in Teacher Education: Sharing of Four Cases in the Asia Pacific Region

The world had undergone a lot of changes when it approached the closing decade of the 20th century and prepared itself to launch into the new millennium. While one may say the international leading countries are still playing the pivotal role in many of the international affairs, the Asia Pacific Region has taken the centre stage of attention in terms of its socio-economic-political development. The sudden realisation that the region has become a vast market for economic investment, the intention to open itself up to link better and closer with other leading countries has made the region a potential to all kinds of development. Among all these developments, they also point to the crystal clear critical realisation that education has a profound role to play to lead cities and countries of this region to prepare themselves with appropriate wisdom to lead a better way of living and establish a distinctive cultural image in the international scene.

Asian Migrant Adolescents' Experience of Wayfinding in Using a Map

Abstract Cross-cultural studies in wayfinding have not been a focus for researchers. Although there has been extensive research into different aspects of wayfinding, mainly in Western cultural settings, virtually all of this research has been monocultural. The study reported, here, commences the investigations of cross-cultural studies in wayfinding by working with a group of 14 adolescents who had recently settled in Australia from Asian and Pacific countries. These students had lived for less than two years in Australia and for them English was their second or third language. The purpose of the study was to investigate how they used a large scale local map to find their own way by walking approximately two to three kilometers from a suburban post office to their school in its natural setting. Each student was shadowed by a researcher as they found their way back to school and notes were taken to record their behavioural performance. At the conclusion of their walk, the students were interviewed for thei...