Educational Research Journal

Abstract

Do Hong Kong students dislike innovations and want to be taught? Traditional opinions suggest that they do, although there is accumulating evidence to show that students in Anglo-Chinese schools are not particularly predisposed to that expository, didactic mode of teaching. Most of them do like innovations. They prefer their classrooms to be different from what they are, and they should learn much better under innovative than under expository teaching. In the present paper, the author, with two case studies put forward, attempted to show that prior knowledge and learning environment in fact have a sound effect on the learning approach. The results showed that before discussion, students in Hong Kong tended to be more "surface" in their learning strategies as compared to their Canadian counterparts. With the introduction of innovative measures of teaching into the Hong Kong classrooms, it was possible to change students' conception from a lower ordered to a higher ordered one. This throws light on local educators in the teaching and learning of complicated scientific concepts.

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