Secondary Education Curriculum Guide
Booklet 6
Four Key Tasks: Towards Major Renewed Emphases
Prepared by
The Curriculum Development Council Recommended for use in schools by the Education Bureau
HKSARG 2017
Booklet 6 Four Key Tasks: Towards Major Renewed Emphases
This is the Overview of Booklet 6, one of the 11 Booklets in the Secondary Education Curriculum Guide. Other than the Overview, there are four parts in Booklet 6: (6A) Moral and Civic Education: Towards Values Education; (6B) Reading to Learn: Towards Reading across the Curriculum; (6C) Project Learning:
Towards Integrating and Applying Knowledge and Skills across Disciplines; and (6D) Information Technology for Interactive Learning: Towards Self-directed Learning. The contents of the Overview are as follows:
Contents of the Overview
6.1 Background
6.2 Purposes of the Booklet
6.3 Connections among the Four Key Tasks 6.4 Achievements and Strengths
6.5 Way Forward Bibliography
1 3 3 4 4 6
6.1 Background
The Curriculum Development Council’s Report, Learning to Learn – The Way Forward in Curriculum Development (2001), recommends the Four Key Tasks, namely Moral and Civic Education, Reading to Learn, Project Learning and Information Technology (IT) for Interactive Learning, to implement the curriculum reform and develop students’ learning to learn capabilities within and across KLAs.
Over the past decade, schools have taken an active role in incorporating the Four Key Tasks into their school curriculum and students’ abilities of learning to learn have been enhanced. To closely respond to the changing contexts and
prepare our students for the challenges in the 21st century, the Four Key Tasks are updated and renewed as Moral and Civic Education: Towards Values Education, Reading to Learn: Towards Reading across the Curriculum, Project Learning: Towards Integrating and Applying Knowledge and Skills across Disciplines, and Information Technology for Interactive Learning:
Towards Self-directed Learning (see Figure 6.1).
Figure 6.1 Updated Four Key Tasks
Schools are recommended to build on their existing strengths and flexibly adopt the Four Key Tasks with deepened understanding, taking a direction towards the major renewed emphases (MRE) of the ongoing renewal of the school curriculum to foster students’ learning to learn capabilities to achieve self-directed and lifelong learning.
The MRE are suggested to better respond to the changing needs of society as reflected in the Updated Seven Learning Goals for Secondary Education.
Schools may, through one or more Key Tasks, adjust, prioritise and/or integrate the MRE for coherent and systematic implementation of the whole- school curriculum with reference to their own contexts and stages of development. Please refer to Booklet 2 of the SECG, the reports on the Promotion of STEM Education and the Fourth Strategy on Information Technology in Education (ITE4), the EDB One-stop Portal for Learning and Teaching Resources, etc. for further details on MRE-related strategies,
resources and support.
6.2 Purposes of the Booklet
To help schools and teachers incorporate the updated Four Key Tasks into curriculum planning, and put them into action to achieve the overall aims of the school curriculum
To provide suggestions on how the updated Four Key Tasks could be enhanced as strategies for focusing, deepening and sustaining on the ongoing renewal of the school curriculum
6.3 Connections among the Four Key Tasks
The updated Four Key Tasks can be used as separate learning and teaching strategies to achieve particular learning targets and objectives or to develop students’ potential in different aspects. Two or more Key Tasks may be connected to achieve a number of learning objectives. For instance, Project Learning: Towards Integrating and Applying Knowledge and Skills across Disciplines almost always involves Reading to Learn: Towards Reading across the Curriculum when students are in search of information to build up their knowledge of the topic.
By virtue of the rapid development of IT and in view of the large quantity of digital tools and resources, IT for Interactive Learning: Towards Self-directed Learning can always facilitate the incorporation of the other three Key Tasks in the learning and teaching process. Collaboration among students in an interactive context is also conducive to the development of perseverance, self- management and other qualities promoted through values education.
The updated Four Key Tasks should be flexibly used in the learning and teaching of different KLAs and cross-curricular learning to enhance students’
capabilities for constructing knowledge, developing and applying generic skills in an integrative manner, and to nurture positive values and attitudes.
The updated Four Key Tasks also provide opportunities for students to develop information literacy, i.e. the ability and attitude to use information and IT ethically, flexibly and effectively as responsible citizens and lifelong learners.
6.4 Achievements and Strengths
Schools have accumulated a lot of successful experiences in implementing the Four Key Tasks to foster students’ generic skills, independent learning abilities as well as positive values and attitudes. Good practices include integrating the Four Key Tasks into different curricula, linking the Four Key Tasks with each other by relevance or promoting them at the subject level.
6.5 Way Forward
Building on schools’ achievements and strengths, the Four Key Tasks will continue to be used as strategies to facilitate learning with the ultimate goal of fostering students’ whole-person development and lifelong learning capabilities in an integrative manner. The updated Four Key Tasks help schools sustain and deepen the accomplishments achieved and focus on the MRE as a move towards a new phase of ongoing renewal and updating of the school curriculum.
For details of the implementation of each of the updated Four Key Tasks, please refer to the following parts of Booklet 6:
Booklet 6A Moral and Civic Education: Towards Values Education
Schools could continue in the direction of nurturing in students the seven priority values and attitudes and place emphasis on strengthening values education which includes moral and civic education and Basic Law education.
The importance of equipping students with the ability to make value judgements and rational decision-making competencies for their future development should be highlighted. Students’ knowledge and understanding of the Basic Law should also be enriched and deepened.
Booklet 6B Reading to Learn: Towards Reading across the Curriculum
Schools could sustain the impact of Reading to Learn and enrich students’
reading experience by exposing them to multimodal texts to enhance their literacy and critical thinking skills. In addition, the collaboration between language subject teachers and those of content subjects in promoting Reading across the Curriculum (RaC) could be further strengthened so as to widen their reading perspectives and keep up with the momentum for Reading to Learn.
Booklet 6C Project Learning: Towards Integrating and Applying Knowledge and Skills across Disciplines
Schools could improve the planning of Project Learning in the whole-school curriculum through strengthening its connection with other Key Tasks and the collaboration among KLAs. Project Learning could be a powerful learning and teaching strategy to provide opportunities for students to integrate and apply knowledge and skills across disciplines and promote self-directed learning in the context of MRE such as promoting STEM education and Language across the Curriculum (LaC). Holistic planning is conducive to developing students’ generic skills in a systematic and integrative manner.
Booklet 6D Information Technology for Interactive Learning: Towards Self-directed Learning
Aligning with the Fourth Strategy on Information Technology in Education (ITE4), schools could develop a whole-school curriculum planning for IT with the focus on enhancing self-directed learning. With the rapid development of IT, schools could promote e-learning for a more interactive mode in learning and teaching, enable a paradigm shift from teacher- centredness to student-centredness, and prepare students as lifelong and self- directed learners as well as effective, flexible and ethical users of information and IT.
Bibliography
Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (Eds.). (2000). How people learn: Brain, mind, experience, and school. Washington, DC: National Academic Press.
Curriculum Development Council. (2001). Learning to learn: The way forward in curriculum development. Hong Kong: Author.
Curriculum Development Council. (2014). Basic education curriculum guide (Primary 1 – 6). Hong Kong: Author.
Education Bureau. (2012). Report on the review surveys of the third strategy on information technology in education. Hong Kong: Author.
Education Bureau. (2015). The fourth strategy on information technology in education: Realising IT potential, unleashing learning power - A holistic approach. Hong Kong: Author.
Education Commission. (2000). Learning for life, learning through life: Reform proposals for the education system in Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Author.
James, M. et al (Eds.) (2006). Learning how to learn: Tools for schools. London:
Routledge.
Rose, D., & Martin, J. (2012). Learning to write, reading to learn: Genre, knowledge and pedagogy in the Sydney school. Sheffield, UK: Equinox Publishing.
