Teacher Development Course 2024

We have just completed our popular Teacher Development Course on Service-Learning.  This course, as the name implies, is designed to train teachers to teach service-learning.  We have been running various versions of if since 2014.  In the beginning, we offer the course to train teachers from our own university.  Then we open it up to teachers from other universities in Hong Kong.  Then we open it up to teachers from secondary schools from Hong Kong.  Then we open it up to teachers from foreign universities.  

In the past, we have often run the course in Cambodia, to coincide with some of our projects over there, so that we have take the participants to visit the projects, speak with teachers, students and partners.  This year we decided to publicise it in a number of foreign countries in South East Asia, and run it in Hong Kong.  We ended up with 20+ participants, with the majority of them coming from Philippines, Malaysia, and Vietnam, in addition to those from Hong Kong.  

We discuss the basic principles of service-learning, how to design a subject, how to design a project, how to teach reflection, how to assess students, how to evaluate a subject and how to do research on SL.  Most importantly, we share with them our vast experience in conducting SL over 15 years, in so many different countries  and regions (HK, Mainland China, Cambodia, Vietnam, Myanmar, Indonesia, Rwanda, Tanzania, South Africa, …) across so many disciplines, targeting such a wide range of clients.  

We also let them observe some of our projects in action.  In one of them, some ethnic minority students come to our School of Hotel and Tourism’s experimental facilities to learn about running a restaurant.  

Our participants are very motivated and passionate.  They ask so many questions, share much of they own experiences.  We ask each of them to make as proposal for a subject.  We then provide them with comments, and then ask them to revise their proposals.  This has been a most exhausting but also satisfying four days.