Media

HKU Faculty of Education Distinguished Lecture: “Why Won’t Teachers Change the Way They Teach?”

30 May 2011

By Professor Maurice Galton, Senior Research/Teaching Fellow, Centre for Commonwealth Education, Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge

Many authorities, worldwide, are urging teachers to do less talking thereby giving pupils more opportunities to discuss amongst themselves and to engage in more active forms of learning. In Hong Kong, the incentive for these reforms at primary level has been to reduce class size.

But change is slow to come. Teaching has been labelled "one of the most conservative of all professions." In this lecture, Professor Maurice Galton will examine some of the reasons offered for teachers' apparent reluctance to change their classroom practice and put forward possible solutions to this seemingly intractable problem.

The Distinguished Lecture is a knowledge exchange initiative organized by the Faculty of Education, HKU, with details as follows:

Date:           May 31, 2011 (Tuesday)
Time:           5:00pm
Venue:        Rayson Huang Theatre, HKU
Language: English

Professor Maurice Galton was a Professor and Dean at Leicester University before moving to the Faculty of Education at Cambridge University twelve years ago. He is best known for his longitudinal observational studies which have focussed on aspects of teaching and learning in primary classrooms and the transition to secondary school. His many publications include books such as Inside the Primary Classroom: 20 Years On (2000), Learning and Teaching in the Primary Classroom (2006) and Teachers under Pressure (2008).

In the past 25 years, Professor Galton has been a regular visitor to Hong Kong beginning his association as Onwell Fellow at The University of Hong Kong. Since 2004, he has been the consultant on the Education Bureau's studies of small class teaching. In the UK, his latest research has concerned the different ways in which artists and teachers seek to motivate disengaged students and the effect this has had on student wellbeing.

For media enquiries and interview request, please contact Ms Queenie Wong, Development and Communications Manager, Faculty of Education, HKU (Tel: 2219 4270 / Mobile: 9220 5840 / Fax: 2540 6360 / E-mail: qlpwong@hku.hk ).