Search

This paper describes the process of school capacity building in Hong Kong's early childhood education at a time when there was a quest for quality education. A local preschool was selected for the study, which took part in a university-school support programme through which consultancy was hired from a university to provide school-based support. An action research approach was chosen in the research design. The process of building capacity was examined in the selected preschool over a year. The findings indicated that the preschool went through a process of capacity building, from the "status quo ante," through the exploration stage to the initial implementation stage of change. Restructuring and reculturing were emerging in the change process, with the support of the school consultants.

The main purpose of this descriptive research is to examine and document the development of a curriculum-based learning portfolio model for children in a preschool for three-six-year-olds in Taiwan. Data collection methods adopted include classroom observation, in-depth interviews, questionnaires and documentation. Participants include a preschool principal, two administrators, six teachers and three assistant teachers. The data collection period lasted for eight months. Triangulation was employed to analyse and interpret the data. The findings are as follows: the framework of the curriculum-based learning portfolio model contained child development checklists, a portfolio and summary report for each child. The target preschool adopted two strategies to systematise documenting works: (1) establishing the performance indicator to replace the professional description, and (2) planning a yearly working calendar for documenting children's learning in advance. Systematised documenting works can reduce the workload for teachers, but the teachers still have to spend some extra time on arranging anecdotal records after class. As the teachers have to document individual portfolios for each child, no child will be neglected. Learning portfolios reveal individual children's development, present teaching results and provide communication between teachers and parents. Parents learn to recognise the advantage of a learning portfolio and then to support the implementation of the model. (Contains 1 table and 2 figures.)

This paper describes the process of school capacity building in Hong Kong's early childhood education at a time when there was a quest for quality education. A local preschool was selected for the study, which took part in a university–school support programme through which consultancy was hired from a university to provide school-based support. An action research approach was chosen in the research design. The process of building capacity was examined in the selected preschool over a year. The findings indicated that the preschool went through a process of capacity building, from thestatus quo ante, through the exploration stage to the initial implementation stage of change. Restructuring and reculturing were emerging in the change process, with the support of the school consultants. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]