Changing the curriculum: the impact of reform on primary schooling in Hong Kong

The book provides a very interesting and comprehensive historical account of a major component of curriculum reform, which is still unfolding in Hong Kong. Target Oriented Curriculum (TOC), the main focus of the present text, is the successor of the earlier approach (1990), Targets and Target Related Assessment, which itself fell into obscurity in 1999. In its heyday, the latter was brought by global context of a paradigm shift that emphasized over process. Its demise in form (though not necessary in spirit) in a short span of nine years only underscores the rapidity of reform paces. Through this, one might steal a glimpse of the constraints primary schools in particular, and public-funded Hong Kong schools in general, experienced when so many adjustments to the prevailing curriculum objectives, content, pedagogy, and assessment were made. Apparently, all those changes are now "obsolete." Part three takes a closer and more focused look at specific features promoted by TOC, such as task-based learning, student-centred pedagogy, criterion-referenced assessment, and catering for diversity. It examines the relative success or failure of schools in adopting these into their curriculum. Key subjects -- Chinese, Mathematics and English in Hong Kong Primary schools -- are singled out in pairs or trios for review and comparison in separate chapters. Again the writers pinpoint that the relative success of adopting these "new concepts" is contingent upon how well the new elements can be integrated into the old. Not surprisingly, this is related to the evolutionary stages of teachers' professional development. From Lo's insightful analysis (Chapter 3), knowledge derived from an empirical analytical basis is less meaningful to teachers unless they personalize and internalize such knowledge and merge it with their practical interpretive perspective. Confidence in their newly acquired expertise as shown in the earlier part of the text is manifested in a greater desire for mastering their working environment.