Teaching development grants final and financial report: researching for teaching

Abstract

This project aims at demonstrating how quality teaching can be enhanced through 'dialogue' as both 1) a research methodology and 2) a means of promoting quality teaching in two of the modules which the applicant is teaching, namely EPA1107 (Professional and Vocational Education in Schools) and GEC1005 (Canto-pop: the mirror of Hong Kong's immediate history). As a research methodology, it entails a phenomenological understanding of how students make sense of the material they are taught by setting up an informing mechanism through which a better-informed curriculum could be generated by checking against the expectations of the students. As a means, guests of related professions will be invited as speakers and to have conversation with the host the videotaping of which will become a resource for enriching the curriculum. The rationale underlying the above arrangement is that the relationship between research and teaching is a cyclical and mutually informed process which happens on the spot - a phenomenological assumption. Seeing that the above two modules are newly developed, they require not only library references but also real time research to enrich what has been established in a timely manner. By this I mean having the lecture and conversation between our guest speakers and the lecturers, and students' feedback videotaped and documented for further study and hopefully a course pack could be developed for each of the module.