Educators are often illustrated as a drizzle in spring for their gentle but impactful contribution to educating students. Despite the drastic changes in the education sector, most teachers stay the course and persist in their duties. As they remain devoted to nurturing young minds, who will tend the nurturers, one can’t help but wonder? Scholars from City University of Hong Kong (CityU) are ready to come to the aid of local educators who long for professional enrichment, refreshing and empowering them with new pedagogy and subject-based knowledge.

As the government initiates refinement in the new senior secondary curricula in 2024, it has heralded a new direction for the professional development of local teachers. Commissioned by the Education Bureau (EDB), CAH has rolled out the Teacher Professional Development Course Series (TPDCS) for Chinese Language teachers from local secondary schools since 2021. It was well-regarded by 1,616 participating teachers and received recognition from the EDB in the first year.

CAH does not rest on its laurels. The department is further scaling up TPDCS, launching another round from October 2022 to June 2023 to deliver 10 three-hour courses that expound on planning and implementing curriculum and assessment at senior secondary schools.

Experts on Board
Powered by the faculty’s erudition in their research areas, the Department Head Professor CHING May-bo, Professor KWOK Pang-fei, Dr CHAN Hok-yin, Dr CUI Wendong, Dr LING Chao, Dr LU Chia-hui, Dr LAM Hok-chung, and Dr LO Kar-kee team up with six other veteran teachers from various secondary schools. The team of experts enables knowledge transfer from academia to local schools. It echoes the EDB’s objective that calls for more professional and scholarly input to the education sector.

Added to the comprehensiveness of TPDCS is the pairing of instructors. From the instructional design to the course delivery, the project team strategically integrates scholars’ expertise and hands-on experiences in teaching. Each session will be conducted by a duo of a scholar and a teacher to facilitate the participants’ holistic understanding of theoretical and practical knowledge.

Extensive Topics
In-service participants have solid teaching experience and their own perceptions of pedagogy. They are eager to learn how frontliners can put the wisdom into practice and carry out the methodologies. Consequently, TPDCS encompasses sundry facets of Chinese Language pedagogy, such as curriculum planning, school-based assessment, teaching strategies, composition writing, guided reading, special topics in culture, and language learning activities.

Wholesome Rewards
With professional guidance from the project team, the participating teachers will tune into the optimisation of the Chinese Language curriculum at senior secondary schools, soaking up teaching skills and subject-based knowledge in the key learning area. TPDCS provides valuable resources that pave the way for further applications of Chinese Language teaching in a classroom.

The reward is not exclusive to the participants. Since the veteran teachers share their successful examples of implementation, it enables them to capture and consolidate the knowledge and experience gained, followed by disseminating the good practices to a broader community of teaching professionals. Eventually, such enhancement of teaching will nourish the learners.

It is expected that over 2,000 Chinese Language teachers will benefit from the courses, with an average of 200 attendees per session. All secondary school teachers, students and the public can also access the course materials on the EDB’s website anytime.

After all, learning is an ongoing journey that may wear one out from time to time, especially for teachers who are swamped with daily tasks. As the saying goes, “The silent treasuring of knowledge, learning without satiety, and instructing others without being wearied.” These sage remarks, imparted by Confucius centuries ago, still carry much wisdom today. May the apothegm kindle the zest in educators who unceasingly absorb professional knowledge for betterment.

Browse CAH’s website to learn more about the Teacher Professional Development Course Series:
https://www.cah.cityu.edu.hk/zh-hk/events/TPDCS_2022-2023