GE Insights

Recommendations on Gifted Education Policy
- after Serving at the HKAGE for 6.5 years
Author: Prof Ng Tai Kai

Background 

After serving as Executive Director for the Hong Kong Academy for Gifted Education (HKAGE) for 6.5 years, I think it’s my responsibility to write down some of my thoughts and recommendations about future gifted education in Hong Kong before returning to the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) as a university faculty.

I try to position myself as an independent observer (which is of course not quite possible) who has been observing how gifted education has evolved in Hong Kong in the past 15 years, hoping my experiences will be helpful to those who will take up the challenge of further developing gifted education in Hong Kong. Some of the ideas presented in this article have been flowing around in the gifted education sector for many years already (point (1) below) whereas others reflected what I have observed more recently worldwide (point (2) and (3) below).

Acknowledgement

I have benefited from the support and discussions with numerous people in different sectors during my last 6.5 years at the HKAGE and I wish to express my heartful thanks to them here.

The list is too long, and I have to apologise to those whose names I have not included here. I wish to thank the support and encouragement from many current and former HKAGE board members, including Dr KK Chan, Mr Frederick Lam, Mr Philip Tsai, Mrs Vivian Lo, Ms Emily Lau, Mr Alan Lam, Mrs TW Hong, Mr Gyver Lau and Mr SK Leung; my colleagues Prof Rachel Zorman, Prof Jonathan Plucker, Prof Alex Wai, Prof King L. Chow, Prof Albert Chau, Prof Tai-Lok Lui, Prof Tan Lee, Prof Alexis Lau; and my friends Dr Edmund Lam and Mr Jon Goldstein.

I wish to acknowledge the strong support from Mr Kelvin Yeung and Prof Wei Shyy who have made it possible for me to take such a long leave from HKUST. I also wish to thank all the HKAGE staff members who have contributed to the innovative developments the HKAGE has gone through in the past few years; the Education Bureau’s Gifted Education Section team led by PT Chan and then Candice Ng; and the new HKAGE Senior Management team led by Dr Jimmy Wong, who will take up the leadership of the HKAGE for the next stage of its development. Of course, I have to thank my wife Shirley Kwok, who has supported me through my adventure at the HKAGE.

For people who are not familiar with the basic concepts in gifted education, I have also written an article ‘A Brief Introduction to Gifted Education’ posted on the HKAGE website (GE Insights) [1] which may help you navigate through this article.

Introduction

Gifted Education in Hong Kong: Opportunities and Challenges

Hong Kong’s gifted education provision employs a 3-tier model based on an inclusive education philosophy – that all kinds of students should go through more-or-less the same basic school experiences. Diversity in student learning should be treated mainly within the classroom, except for very special cases (exceptionally gifted students or extreme Special Educational Needs (SEN) students) which are served by pull-out programmes run by the HKAGE or by other special schools.

In the following, I shall outline what many of us have observed to be the major challenges and opportunities Hong Kong’s gifted education has experienced in the past 10+ years and discuss the new challenges we are expecting to face in the coming 10+ years. First, I shall start with the existing challenges/opportunities Hong Kong’s gifted education is facing.

1) Lack of career path for gifted education practitioners: the importance of gifted education as part of the Hong Kong education system is not clearly recognised in the existing gifted education policy.

This is perhaps what most educators working on gifted education have in mind when asked about the biggest challenges/difficulties they are facing. The most frequently quoted example is the huge disparity between policies on gifted education and SEN and the associated differences in teacher’s opportunity in schools. Whereas SEN is viewed as an essential component of general school education, gifted education is considered ‘optional’. The difference is reflected in teacher training programmes where there is no requirement for the pre-service teachers to learn anything about gifted education to be qualified as teachers whereas SEN is one of the required subjects in teacher training. Furthermore, universities are not encouraged/rewarded for performing research on gifted education or providing special programmes for exceptionally gifted students in secondary/primary schools. The lack of strong, clear support for gifted education leads to two serious consequences:

1. Hong Kong educators are unaware of the recent developments in gifted education or talent development (*). Most of the materials available for teachers are based on education research 20 to 30 years ago.
2. A lack of young, good educators who are willing to learn about, participate, or contribute to gifted education because there is no clear career path in gifted education!

(*) See my articles on GE Insights for A Brief Introduction to Gifted Education and the relation between gifted education and talent development.

2) Excellence Gap: lack of policy to systematically identify and nurture gifted students from low-income families.

A consequence of treating gifted education as optional in schools is that we do not have a gifted education policy to systematically identify and nurture gifted students. This is fine if the existing school system can cater to the basic needs of gifted students. However, this becomes questionable in the last few decades in many countries because of the problem of the excellence gap.

‘Excellence gap’ refers to the disparity in the percentage of students from lower-income versus higher-income families who reach top levels in academic or job performances. The ‘gap’ is found to start appearing in primary school and widen as students move through secondary school, college, and beyond. It is a worldwide observation (**) that the gap is formed because students from low-income families have less (or are unaware of) opportunities to join high-quality enrichment or academic programmes that can benefit their development compared with students from higher-income families.

Research shows that the excellence gap started to develop when students were at a very young age (grade 8-10) and was widening gradually as students grew up (**). It reflects the fact that conventional school education is largely insufficient in preparing our students to meet the challenge of the 21^st century and children from low-income families are disadvantaged when facing this situation.

(**) See references [2-4]. Unfortunately, there seems to be no systematic study on the phenomenon of the excellence gap in Hong Kong.

A proposal to solve this problem is to provide systematic government-funded gifted education (or talent development) programmes to gifted students from low-income families starting at the primary school level. This is difficult at present because of the lack of clear government policy or will along this direction.

3) 21^st Century Competencies and STEM: opportunities and challenges

The emphasis on 21^st century competencies in recent years reflects that current school education practices are not catered for the skills students need to flourish in the 21^st century. The situation is getting worse with the rise of STEM, which introduces new, ever-developing knowledge and skills and the demand of students to be self-motivated to catch up with these changes. This is a problem faced by the education sector worldwide and Hong Kong is no exception.

The 21^st century competencies (+ STEM) emphasises (practical) creativity, infusion of knowledge from different domains, and the development of students’ soft skills and self-motivated mindsets. This is contrary to mainstream school education nowadays which emphasises teaching domain-specific knowledge. It is now understood that creativity often requires a supportive environment, strong personal motivation and soft skills, and a growth mindset before it can flourish in real life, and nurturing these skills requires very different approaches compared with conventional school teaching. Therefore, new learning materials and school environments must be developed, and existing teachers must be re-trained to understand these skills and learn how to facilitate students learning these new skills. This is difficult because it involves changing the mindset of a large number of teachers.

A workable long-term approach to changing the mindset of teachers is to encourage teachers to learn and participate in the research and development of new teaching materials and methodologies catered for 21^st century competencies and to report their works at international conferences or publish them in education journals, i.e., we encourage teachers to learn actively via research and creation of new teaching methodologies, but not passively through conventional classroom training. Unfortunately, this is a long-term approach that may not be able to meet the demand for training many teachers in a short time.

This difficulty has led many educators to suggest that we may first develop and try 21^st century competencies (+ STEM) education programmes in specialised gifted education, STEM, or Art schools. In Hong Kong, the HKAGE is a natural place to develop and try out these new education approaches or programmes in collaboration with universities.

Strategic directions in education?

A related question is whether Hong Kong should consider strategically the unique needs of the city when formulating its long-term education policy. For example, should we especially invest in fields like quantum information/ technology, 5G, AI or Smart City which will be the focuses of Big Bay Area development in the next 20 years? The existing Hong Kong education system focuses on all-round development, and most students are not exposed to these pioneer, fast-changing fields before entering university. This is another reason why special STEM Schools are built in many countries for a small number of targeted students. The problem is serious in Hong Kong because insufficient top students are committed to study/ work in science/ technological areas.

4) Existence of a large group of seasoned professionals and HKAGE alumni who are willing to contribute to gifted education.

It should be noted that the HKAGE has built very strong relationships with a large number of seasoned top professionals in different fields in Hong Kong who are willing to help as mentors, or even as instructors in some cases, to bring their knowledge and experiences to our students. A similar situation occurs with our alumni. The existence of this enthusiastic, seasoned pool of talents who are willing to contribute to education provides the strongest resources for furthering gifted education or talent development strategies in Hong Kong.

Recommendations

My recommendations follow from the above observations. I shall assume that the current 3-tier model for gifted education in Hong Kong remains intact and propose to further strengthen gifted education as an integral part of the Hong Kong education system:

1. With an overarching education policy/strategy that supports long-term sustainable gifted education development in Hong Kong with systematic gifted education training provided to all teachers.
2. With systematic identification and support to gifted students in low-income families.
3. By encouraging applied research in talent development and gifted education in both universities and schools, in particular on practical issues associated with STEM education and 21^st century competencies.
4. I also suggest forming a special task force to review whether strategic directions in education should be considered (including the establishment of special STEM gifted education programmes or special STEM schools) in the future Hong Kong education system.

Specifically, I propose that:

1. An overarching policy on gifted education should be developed.
   
   
   1. basic training in gifted education provided to all pre-service and in-service schoolteachers.
   2. the effort of schoolteachers in developing/facilitating school-based gifted education programmes being recognised and rewarded.
   3. the role of the HKAGE and universities as parts of holistic education efforts in nurturing gifted students being acknowledged and encouraged in the policy.
   
   (With the above policies I wish new blood in gifted education from both the school, and the university sectors will continue to appear and flourish.)
   
   
   
2. A policy addressing the problem of the excellence gap should be established where systematic identification and support to gifted students from low-income families should be provided.
   
   (To be fair Hong Kong is doing much better than most other countries in the sense that the excellence gap between rich and poor families is narrower than most countries. However, the gap exists and would become a social problem in Hong Kong if not addressed on-time. (see PISA-2018)!)
   
   
   
3. A policy encouraging applied education research for both university academics and schoolteachers in developing/testing teaching materials and methodologies for STEM and 21^st century competencies, excellence gap, gifted education, and talent development should be established.
   
   (It is important that schoolteachers be encouraged to report their research findings in regional/international education conferences and/or education journals as discussion with educators outside their familiar circle is often necessary for the schoolteachers to understand and see the weakness of their established teaching practices.)
   
   
4. A special Task Force should be set up to study whether strategic directions in education should be considered in the future Hong Kong education system that matches the need of the future city and if the answer is affirmative, what should be the targeted education areas in the next 10 years and how to implement these special education measures including, for example, the establishment of formal special STEM gifted education programmes or STEM Schools.
   
   A related eminent problem Hong Kong is facing nowadays is the lack of top students who are willing to commit to science/technological areas. To address the problem, I propose to form a number of long-term, structured gifted education programmes in targeted STEM areas. The programmes should be designed together by experts in universities, industry professionals, and STEM education experts in secondary schools so that:
   
   
   1. the programmes are recognised by universities or at least some of the courses in the programmes are recognised as HKDSE equivalent by relevant university faculties/departments.
   2. the programmes are recognised by the corresponding industries.
   3. the programmes can provide enough support and are realistic programmes for secondary school students.
   4. the programmes can be run by the HKAGE or a similar organisation in STEM education.

References:

[1] https://www.hkage.org.hk/en/publications/geinsights/a-brief-introduction-to-gifted-education

[2] Grissom, J. A., & Redding, C. (2016). Discretion and disproportionality: Explaining the underrepresentation of high-achieving students of colour in gifted programs. AERA Open, 2(1), 1-25.

[3] Plucker, J. A., & Peters, S. J. (2016). Excellence Gaps in Education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.

[4] Rambo-Hernandez, K., Peters, S. J., & Plucker, J. A. (2019). Quantifying and exploring elementary school excellence gaps across schools and time. Journal of Advanced Academics, 30, 383-415. https://doi.org/10.1177/1932202X19864116 Available at: https://link.growkudos.com/1pclxnsod1c