Curriculum adaptation in small class environment in Hong Kong

Small class teaching (SCT) has been implemented across many parts of East Asia, even when actual class sizes may differ between countries, and by western standards be considered quite large. In Shanghai in China, SCT encourages teachers to consider curriculum and pedagogical adaptation which includes preparing lessons based on the abilities and needs of individual students, marking individual students’ class work and providing immediate feedback, employing approaches of collaborative and group learning, peer discussion, and setting individualized learning targets, assignments and assessments for students (Hong Kong Education and Manpower Bureau, 2004, pp. 1-2). In Taiwan, the ‘spirit’ of SCT is promoted so that the curriculum becomes more relevant to daily lives, students become more active in learning, the teaching content becomes more broadened to include social issues, and sources of learning become more diversified using information technology (‘Characteristics of Small Class Teaching Spirit’, n.d.). In the context of the United Kingdom, Galton (1998) commented that a small class would be better to facilitate learning activities and enhance thinking skills and ‘learning through doing’ (Education and Manpower Bureau, 2004, p. 5). Copyright © 2016, 2017 P. Blatchford, K.W. Chan, M. Galton, K.C. Lai, and J.C. Lee.