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The following is issued on behalf of the Chief Executive's Award for Teaching Excellence Steering Committee:
The Chief Executive, Mr Donald Tsang, today (July 10) commended the recipients of the Chief Executive's Award for Teaching Excellence (CEATE) (2008-2009) for their devotion to exploring effective teaching methods to bring out students' creativity and potential. This allowed ample opportunity for students to explore and exercise self-learning, thus achieving whole-person development.
The Technology Education Key Learning Area and Pre-primary Education are the two key areas for this year's CEATE. The Chief Executive presented awards to 25 primary and secondary school teachers. Another 16 teachers were presented with the Certificate of Merit by the Secretary for Education, Mr Michael Suen.
Mr Tsang said, "Technology Education teachers have designed interesting learning materials for students and adopted a diversified teaching strategy to nurture students' spirit of exploration and problem-solving abilities. Their teaching is adapted to suit the different needs of the students and this has helped nurture student elites for Hong Kong. In fact, we are pleased to have seen the outstanding performances of many Hong Kong students who have obtained awards in many international technological design competitions in recent years."
The Chief Executive mentioned a case in which some awarded teachers had designed ingenious learning activities for junior secondary students to bring together and apply their knowledge in computer studies, home economics, business, and design and technology while playing the role of young entrepreneurs. These activities allowed the students to experience business activities in virtual business processes and provided a big boost to the fostering of talent in local commerce.
Mr Tsang said, "Pre-primary Education teachers are like gardeners who unearth a happy world of open learning, and sprinkle it with balanced and diversified games and activities to bring out young children's potential.
"Some awardees have adopted the concept of 'humanistic education' and encouraged young children to establish right attitudes and values and acquire knowledge and skills in real-life situations."
The CEATE this year received 75 nominations, of which nine (25 teachers) were selected for the award while eight (16 teachers) were presented with the Certificate of Merit. Assessment of nominations focused on teachers' performance in the areas of professional competence, student development, professionalism and commitment to the community and school development.
The Chairman of the CEATE Steering Committee, Mr Pang Yiu-kai, highly commended the teaching practices of the awarded teachers, which he considered worthy of sharing with fellow teachers. "Not only are their teaching philosophies and practices inspirational to colleagues, they are also effective in providing diversified learning experiences for students to develop their generic skills and to demonstrate their creativity and potential."
Mr Pang praised the awarded teachers of the previous four CEATEs for their active organisation and participation in all kinds of dissemination activities through the CEATE Teachers Association. "The awarded teachers of CEATE have developed into a pioneering force in promoting education reform and enhancing the quality of education," Mr Pang said.
He said the CEATE Steering Committee had completed a comprehensive review of CEATE which set the scene for its future development and thrashed out its implementation details. The review had also fine-tuned the nomination and assessment mechanisms, widened the scope of coverage and strengthened the comprehensiveness of dissemination activities. He said he hoped that with continuing refinements, CEATE could assemble more accomplished teachers, thereby building up a vigorous and professional teaching force.
The awardees and some of their students were invited on stage to share with the audience their teaching and learning insights.
The results of CEATE (2008-2009) are available on the CEATE website (www.ate.gov.hk). "The New Milestone in Teaching – the Chief Executive's Award for Teaching Excellence", a special 30-minute television programme on exemplary teaching practices, will be broadcast on TVB-Jade at 3.30pm on July 19.
Sharing activities on excellent teaching practices will be rolled out in November. Details will be announced on the CEATE website in due course.
Nominations for CEATE (2009-2010) will be accepted from August 10 to October 9. It will cover the Chinese Language Education Key Learning Area and the English Language Education Key Learning Area. For details, please visit the CEATE website.
Ends/Friday, July 10, 2009
Issued at HKT 15:43
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