PECERA (Hong Kong) Annual Meeting 2011 cum seminar on “Creativity Development and Arts Education in Young Children”.

The Pacific Early Childhood Education Research Association (Hong Kong), established since 2006, has been playing the role as an international forum facilitating dialogue and exchange among local and international professionals working for the benefit of young children. The PECERA (HK) Annual Meeting 2011 cum Seminar was held on June 1, 2012 (Fri).

Dr. Anna Hui, Executive Committee Member of PECERA (HK), was invited as the guest speaker who gave a presentation on “Creativity Development and Arts Education in Young Children”. Dr Hui shared 2 recent studies on the effectiveness of an artists-in-residence project in 7 kindergartens funded by the Arts Development Council and a drama-in-education project in 26 kindergartens funded by the Quality Education Fund. The assessment tools vary from consensual assessment in children’s story telling, standardized assessment on children’s creative potentials and teacher observation in children’s creativity, dramatics and communicative characteristics. Results indicated that significant gains were found in children’s verbal and figural creativity as well as teachers’ observations. The collaboration between artists and teachers is crucial to the successful implementation of arts education and creativity education in Hong Kong.

Dr. Anna Hui received her B.A. (English Language & Literature), Dip. Ed. (English Language), M. Phil and Ph.D. (Educational Psychology) from the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). She is currently the Assistant Professor of Department of Applied Social Studies, City University of Hong Kong.

There was also a report session on work and activities of PECERA (HK) in 2011 and on the 12th PECERA International Annual Conference which was held in Aug 2011 in Kobe, Japan.