Teaching Chinese in the international school context involves the complex interactions of various factors. The multilingual and multicultural contexts of the international schools bring a series of new challenges to Chinese language teachers including issues around cross-cultural teaching, teaching Chinese towards and for international education, and so on. A greater understanding of the complexity of the teaching Chinese in the international school context is needed to help push the field forward.
To promote research and practice in Chinese language education in the international school context and to provide a platform for scholars and educators to exchange thoughts and share experiences, the Division of Chinese Language and Literature, the University of Hong Kong, in collaboration with the Centre for Advancement of Chinese Language and Literature (CACLER), the University of Hong Kong, Graduate Institute of Teaching Chinese as a Second/Foreign Language of Taiwan Kaohsiung Normal University, I-Shou International School (IIS), and The ISF Academy, jointly organized the Third International School Chinese Language Education Conference and Workshop on 3-5 December 2015 in our University. Moreover, Yew-Chung International School and Taipei American School gave their great support to the Conference as co-organizers.
It is our great honor to have Dr. Ian Hill (Former Deputy Director General, International Baccalaureate), Dr. Malcolm Pritchard (Head of The ISF Academy) and Prof. Shek-kam Tse to deliver the three distinguished keynote speeches in this Conference. In addition, 17 teacher-held hands-on workshops were featured throughout the event. Furthermore, the pre-conference school visits at Yew-Chung International School and ISF Academy were highly welcomed by the participants as they were able to have interactions with in-service teachers and got to know the international school settings in HK.
Apart from these, the Conference also included 43 accepted paper presentations which are either research studies or teaching practice sharing sessions to enhance our understanding of the teaching field and facilitate the exchange of ideas with special focus on the five sub-themes:
Sub-Theme 1: Teacher Professional Development
Sub-Theme 2: ICT in Teaching and Learning
Sub-Theme 3: Cross-cultural teaching and cultural education
Sub-Theme 4: Teaching Pedagogies and Transformation
Sub-Theme 5: International Education
We are delighted to see 17 invited workshop leaders and over 170 scholars and frontline educators from Taiwan, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Macau, Mainland China and Hong Kong who generously shared their insights with fellow researchers and teaching professionals. Their experiences and perspectives are, without doubt, invaluable assets to those in our field.
Conference Poster
Dr. Ian Hill, our Distinguished Keynote Speaker, delivered a speech on ‘Infusing IB Philosophy and Pedagogy into Chinese Language Teaching’
Prof. SK Tse delivered the 2nd keynote speech on ‘Chinese Language Education in Multi-lingual and Multi-cultural Societies (多元文化和多語言社會的中文教與學)’
Dr. Malcolm Pritchard, Head of The ISF Academy, delivered the 3rd keynote speech on ‘Learning Chinese for Intercultural Understanding: Are Schools the Problem? (學習漢語言，了解漢文化：學校竟然是問題的根源嗎？)’ in bilingual languages (namely Putonghua and English)
Conference Programme Rundown (Download)
Conference Proceeding (Download)