QualityEducationACareerDevelopmentandSelf.pdfVIP

Quality Education: A Career Development 1 and Self-Concept Approach Abstract This paper argues that career development is a necessary and important dimension in the quality education debate. Career development interventions in schools can be used as means to facilitate the comprehensive development of students. Selected career development theories with an emphasis in self-concept are reviewed and discussed, especially in terms of their applications for primary and secondary schools in Hong Kong. Strategies to implement career development interventions in primary and secondary schools are also examined. Quality education has become a popular idea in the Hong Kong education circle in the 1990s. The call to improve primary and secondary education was supported in 1997 by two important documents. The first document was the Report on Review of Nine-Year Compulsory Education (Sub-committee on Review of School Education, 1997). This report pointed out that primary and lower secondary education suffered from a number of problems including the existence of wide individual differences in ability in the same classrooms, ineffective classroom learning, and 2 students with learning/behavioral difficulties. The second document was the Education Commission Report No. 7 (1997) on quality education. This report highlighted the importance of defining and assuring quality in schools, and recommended a system in which schools would be asked to evaluate their progress toward goals they set according to their unique circumstances. Recognizing that education is a key to continual economic success in Hong Kong, the Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Government declared educat