Early Educational Culture:the Watch and Analysis from Hong Kong Kindergarten

Abstract

With the deep-going of the understanding to the problem of "how do children learn", the worldwide early childhood education has changed from knowledge instruction to knowledge construction. This thesis makes an approach to the present Hong Kong main stream Kindergarten educational practice; also, it probes into the social and cultural factors which affect Hong Kong early childhood education. The result of systematical observation shows that Hong Kong has adopted the combination of direct method and inquiring method generally. In other words, in language education, it should accept early germination by reading and writing; and in mathematics education, the traditional method of instructing and practicing has changed to the method based on activity. The cultural idea on children’s socialization is shown in the teaching practice and the interaction to the children. Although the idea of how children could make better studies incarnated well in the present early childhood education, the Chinese traditional ideas are still dominant in the classroom context, the two combined and blended in the educational practice.

隨著對“幼兒是如何學習的”這一問題認識的不斷深入,世界范圍內的幼兒教育從知識傳授向知識建構教育范式轉變。本文對當前香港主流的幼稚園教育實踐以及影響香港幼兒教育的社會文化因素作了探討。系統觀察研究的結果顯示,香港幼稚園普遍采用直接教學和探究式教學相結合的教學方式。在語言教學中,逐漸接受早期讀寫萌發教學的觀念;在數學教育中,從傳統的以講授和練習為主的教學轉向以活動為基礎的教學。關于幼兒社會化的文化觀念反映在教學實踐以及與幼兒的互動過程中。雖然關于幼兒怎樣才能更好地進行學習的理念在當前幼兒教育實踐中得到了較好的體現,但是中國傳統文化中的相關觀念仍然在課堂情境中占據主導地位,二者彼此交織和融合在教學實踐中。