CityU is organizing the Teachers Update Course (TUC) 2005, to be held on campus from 1 June to 8 July. Since its inception in 1998, the TUC has continued to strengthen CityU’s commitment to the development of top quality education in Hong Kong and expand the University’s local secondary school network.

 

With the theme “Developing Reflective Professionals”, this year’s TUC comprises seminars and workshops in five areas: supporting change; preparing students for lifelong learning; promoting innovation; updating subject knowledge; and enriching school culture. The “supporting change” programme is a new focus geared to the local education landscape, which recently has undergone academic structure reforms affecting senior secondary and tertiary education. This programme, in particular, aims to provide up-to-date information and skills that help teachers proactively cope with change in the teaching and learning environment.

 

“Over the past seven years, the TUC has helped CityU develop a solid network with the secondary school community,” Professor Richard Ho, Dean of Undergraduate Education, observed. “The Course not only provides a platform for secondary school teachers and principals to explore the latest subject knowledge and pedagogy, but, through ongoing exchanges with fellow educators, it also offers an opportunity for our staff to gain an accurate picture of local students’ educational needs. Through our budding alliance with secondary schools, students and their parents, CityU’s pedagogical methods and curriculum can be designed more appropriately for our future students. This mutual support fosters an interactive learning community.”

 

Some 50 CityU staff members have volunteered to offer TUC sessions free of charge to secondary school teachers, school managers and administrators to exchange views with them on the teaching and learning in Hong Kong. The TUC is recognized by Hong Kong’s Education and Manpower Bureau (EMB) and TUC attendance can be counted towards the secondary school teachers’ required 150 Continuing Professional Development (CPD) hours every three years. Thus far, over 9,000 local educators have participated in the TUC, with 30% of participants taking the Course for two or three years in a row. In 2004, a total of 1,935 teachers from 373 secondary schools registered for the sessions. Two days after registration opened on 10 May this year, almost half of the 2,000 TUC places were filled. The application deadline is 30 May.

 

Previous TUC attendees expressed satisfaction with the Course. “I rate the Course highly because it had pointed out some traps or biases that people easily fall into when making judgement. It enhanced my may of thinking and improved my teaching of Form 4 integrated humanities,” said Mr Tai Wai Sum, Vice Principal of Shatin Methodist College, who attended critical thinking and enhancing science process skills workshops in the TUC last year. “After I taught my students to think out of the box and to construct persuasive arguments, I found that they displayed more creativity in their projects.”

 

Ms Elisa Choi, a Rosaryhill School teacher, said that from the TUC in which she participated she gained insight into new teaching methods. Moreover, she applied the advanced computer skills she learned there to prepare class materials and observed that her students’ concentration on their work improved as a result.

 

With regard to the upcoming TUC, Ms Penny Akers, a Tutor in CityU’s English Language Centre and TUC facilitator, commented, “Because Liberal Studies will be incorporated into our curriculum soon, we hope to equip teachers with the know-how to stimulate oral discussion in a classroom setting. We’ll also encourage them to consider using video, radio programmes and newspaper articles in addition to assigned textbooks.”

 

The TUC 2005 covers:

·  Issue-focused topics --Teaching Liberal Studies; social change in response to educational reform initiatives; challenges for the accounting profession in 2020; using experiments to understand scientific processes in biology, etc.;

·  Teacher-focused topics --Subject knowledge updates on wireless technologies, physics, Chinese language and literature, computer studies; using the problem-based learning approach for teaching science subjects, etc.;

·  Management-focused topics -- Financial analysis for school management, peer counselor training, working with the media, etc.; and

·  Student-focused topics -- Lifelong learning skills; using questionnaires as learning tools; critical and creative thinking skills; career planning, etc.