The Translation of Western Teaching Approaches in the Hong Kong Early Childhood Curriculum: A Promise for Effective Teaching?

This article reports data from a study about the challenges of teaching reform carried out by three in-service kindergarten teachers in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. Intending to improve the quality of teaching and learning, these teachers adapted Western teaching approaches such as High Scope and Project approaches, which they had learnt about in their teacher education course, to Hong Kong classrooms. By tracking the enactment process of an implemented change for half a year, it was observed that teaching reform could not simply be achieved by just putting theories into practice. It requires the constant dialectical interplay of practice with theories in a continuous manner in the specified context. The findings highlight the difficulties of making pedagogical shifts and the merits of employing collaborative inquiry to support the use of effective pedagogies.