Visit to the Education University of Hong Kong
The Education University of Hong Kong is located just outside the downtown and surrounded by green “jungle”. There are three faculties in the university, including a total of 18 departments, and with approximately 8500 students.
At the university, we were greeted by our collaborators Mari and Kerry, from the Department of Early Childhood Education. We were shown around the campus area, which was pretty quiet at this time of the year, as the semester had already ended and the students had left the campus.
Getting more familiar with each other, we had discussions about our current research projects. This led to the conclusion that the group’s research work really can be defined being in the core of learning, motivation and well-being, with topics ranging from the development of math skills, role of executive functions and motivation in mathematics learning, to stress regulation. Furthermore, this led to interesting discussions about context of teaching and learning, and the current state of and differences in education systems in Northern Europe vs. Asia.
As the senior researchers of the group started planning of the PhD course more in detail, the PhD students, Terje and Hedda met with Alan, an upcoming PhD student at the Education University of Hong Kong. They exchanged experiences with different measures used in their research projects, and thoughts on the differences in the school systems in Norway and Hong Kong.
Visiting the Early Childhood Learning Center
We had a chance to visit the Early Childhood Learning Center located in the campus area. We were told about the theoretical views that guide the teaching and learning practices in the kindergarten. The kindergartens in Hong Kong are typically really small as it comes to having space, and often without outdoor playground areas. Here, however, the rooms were bigger than typically in Hong Kong kindergartens, and there was a playground area for the children just outside the building. Compared to other kindergartens, playfulness in learning is more emphasized here compared to other kindergartens, which often focus more on learning of academic skills.
Planning of the PhD course
Next autumn, a new collaborative PhD course will be provided at the University of Oslo, namely “Individual differences in learning, motivation and well-being” . So far, we have been planning together the overall course structure only online. Now, we focused on planning and designing more in detail the activities and lectures to be conducted in the course. It is a pleasure to have the collaborators from Hong Kong to visit Oslo, and giving some lectures during the course. We hope that the assignments we now planned around the topics of the course will really engage the students in learning in a collaborative and fun way, with an emphasis of providing a real connection to research and a variety of research activities that are conducted in the field of educational sciences.
Participating the conference
We also had a chance to participate in a one-day conference organized by the Department of Early Childhood, Education Enhancing the Learning Outcomes of Disadvantaged Children. One of the key note speakers, Prof. Mark O’Reilly, presented evidence-based practices to help students with autism-spectrum disorder in inclusive school setting. The two other key notes focused on presenting research work from the local perspective: 1) how to support ethnic minorities in kindergarten, and 2) the early developmental gaps between children from families with different socio-economic status in Hong Kong. These presentations gave us a chance to get more familiar with the cultural aspects in teaching and learning of young children in Hong Kong.
Networking in the jungle
Although the weather was pretty warm and really humid, we spent a day hiking in Tai Po’s jungle. While trying to avoid all the spiders with their webs across the paths, and being amazed by all the beautiful butterflies flying around, there was good time to talk and share our research interests and make some future plans for collaboration.
Thank you for hosting us in Hong Kong, Mari and Kerry, for inspiring conversations and time spent together! Looking forward to the PhD course in autumn, and getting a group of visitors from Hong Kong to Oslo then.