Term Description
skills, self-management skills and study skills.
Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education (HKDSE)
The qualification to be awarded to students after completing the three-year senior secondary curriculum and taking the public assessment.
Internal assessment This refers to the assessment activities that are conducted regularly in school to assess students’ performance in learning.
Internal assessment is an inseparable part of the learning and teaching process, and it aims to make learning more effective.
With the information that internal assessment provides, teachers will be able to understand students’ progress in learning, provide them with appropriate feedback and make any adjustments to the learning objectives and teaching strategies they deem necessary.
Key Learning Area (KLA)
Organisation of the school curriculum structured around fundamental concepts of major knowledge domains. It aims at providing a broad, balanced and coherent curriculum for all students in the essential learning experiences. The Hong Kong curriculum has eight Key Learning Areas, namely, Chinese Language Education, English Language Education, Mathematics Education, Personal, Social and Humanities Education, Science Education, Technology Education, Arts Education and Physical Education.
Knowledge construction This refers to the process of learning in which learners are involved not only in acquiring new knowledge, but also in actively relating it to their prior knowledge and experience so as to create and form their own knowledge.
Learner diversity Learners are individuals with varied family, social, economic and cultural backgrounds and learning experience. They have different talents, personalities, intelligence and interests. Their learning abilities, interests and styles are, therefore, diverse.
Learning community A learning community refers to a group of people who have shared values and goals, and who work closely together to generate knowledge and create new ways of learning through active participation, collaboration and reflection. Such a learning community may involve not only students and teachers, but also parents and other parties in the community.
Learning opportunities Learning opportunities refer to the subject matter and process of learning. Subject matter includes knowledge, skills, concepts, values and attitudes, methods of learning and teaching, and modes of behaviour.
Learning outcomes Learning outcomes refer to what learners should be able to do by the end of a particular stage of learning. Learning outcomes are
Term Description
developed based on the Learning Targets and learning objectives of the curriculum for the purpose of evaluating learning effectiveness. Learning outcomes also describe the levels of performance that learners should attain after completing a particular stage of learning and serve as a tool for promoting learning and teaching.
Learning Targets and learning objectives
Learning Targets set out broadly the knowledge/concepts and skills that students need to learn and develop.
Learning objectives define specifically what students should know, value and be able to do in each strand of the subject in accordance with the Learning Targets at each stage of schooling.
They are to be used by teachers as a source list for curriculum, lesson and activity planning.
Level descriptors A set of written descriptions that describe what the typical candidates performing a certain level is able to do in public assessment.
Metacognition Metacognition is often considered as “thinking about thinking”.
Metacognition involves at least two components: knowledge which refers to an awareness of the skills, strategies and resources that are required for the effective performance of a task; and regulation which requires the ability to use self-regulatory mechanisms to ensure the successful completion of the task.
Public assessment The associated assessment and examination system for the Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education.
School-based Assessment (SBA)
Assessments administered in schools as part of the learning and teaching process, with students being assessed by their subject teachers. Marks awarded will count towards students’ public assessment results.
School-based curriculum Schools and teachers are encouraged to adapt the central curriculum to develop their school-based curriculum to help their students achieve the subject targets and overall aims of education.
Measures may include readjusting the learning targets, varying the organisation of contents, adding optional studies and adapting learning, teaching and assessment strategies. A school-based curriculum, hence, is the outcome of a balance between official recommendations and the autonomy of the schools and teachers.
Standards-referenced Reporting
Candidates’ performance in public assessment is reported in terms of levels of performance matched against a set of standards.
Term Description
Student learning profile It is to provide supplementary information on the secondary schools leavers’ participation in various learning activities and their achievements during senior secondary years, in addition to their academic performance as reported in the Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education, including the assessment results for Applied Learning courses, thus giving a fuller picture of the student’s whole-person development.
Values and attitudes Values constitute the foundation of the attitudes and beliefs that influence one’s behaviour and way of life. They help form principles underlying human conduct and critical judgement, and are qualities that learners should develop. Some examples of values are rights and responsibilities, commitment, honesty and national identity. Closely associated with values are attitudes. The latter supports motivation and cognitive functioning, and affects one’s way of reacting to events or situations. Since both values and attitudes significantly affect the way a student learns, they form an important part of the school curriculum.
Visual Arts To align with the trend of developments in art education and the arts, the Curriculum Development Council Committee on Arts Education endorsed in 2001 the change of subject names from Art and Craft (in primary schools) and Art and Design (in secondary schools) to Visual Arts. This change aims to stress that the subject is to include a wide and diverse coverage of art learning activities and experiences such as appreciation, criticism, and the making of conventional and unconventional visual arts forms using traditional, contemporary and emerging materials, tools and technologies; art from the past and present; and art from diverse geographical and cultural contexts.