A university-school partnership teacher-teaching-teacher intervention model to promote reading in Hong Kong: Issues and challenges

Abstract

Hong Kong has excelled in recent years in assessments of its young peoples' reading in international reading tests. These successes reflect well on the goals and objectives of continuous educational reforms as well as numerous projects that have enhanced the education scene in Hong Kong over the past two decades. Since 1998, a total of HK$5 billion (about US$645 million) has been allocated to these initiatives and, as of 2014, 8706 Quality Education Fund (QEF) projects have been supported. Notwithstanding such enormous effort, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) Government commissioned the Centre for Enhancing English Learning and Teaching (CEELT) of the Faculty of Education at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) to implement the Consolidation and Redevelopment (C&R) Work on Quality Education Fund English Language (primary) Projects in order to promote, enhance and sustain quality in the teaching of English reading. From this project, a Resource Package of good practices on teaching English reading was compiled from 57 significant QEF projects (Quality Education Fund Cyber Resource Centre in Consolidation and Redevelopment work, 2014). To effectively disseminate these good practices, a teachers-teaching-teachers model was adopted. Using this bottom-up approach, teachers initiated and contributed to the development and dissemination of the Resource Package. In this chapter, the issues and challenges of the teachers-teaching-Teachers model are discussed in relation to the contribution they have made towards shaping education strategies in the future.