Teaching development grants final and financial report: Creativity and cross culture in music teacher education: Collaborating school teachers and Cantonese opera practitioners in preparing BEd students for learning to teach the Cantonese opera

Cross culture and creativity are two new initiatives advocated in the recent music curriculum reform. Cantonese opera has been included in the music examination of the Hong Kong Diploma of Education. However, Cantonese opera has not been a familiar genre in the Hong Kong music curriculum. The practice of Cantonese opera has not been examined from the perspective of creativity. Making the links between Chinese culture, Cantonese opera and creativity will be a major challenge for HKIEd's music teacher education programmes. To address the issue, the three-fold aims of this project are: (1) to improve the teaching and learning of Cantonese opera at the Institute, (2) to enable students to examine and apply creative thinking in teaching and learning, and (3) to develop a partnership of teacher educators and teacher trainees at the Institute with school teachers and pupils in promoting Cantonese opera. Two modules from the B.Ed. programmes will be selected as the platforms for students at the Institute to explore the creativity nature of Cantonese opera and how it should be taught in schools. Students will be exposed to the design and implementation of teaching units proposed by school teachers and professional artists. Results of this project will include a theoretical framework of collaboration of the aforementioned parties for teacher education.