Doris Cheng

Dr. Cheng is the  Professor in the Tung Wah College of Hong Kong since September, 2016. She was the former director of the Centre for Childhood Research and Innovation in the Education University of Hong Kong.  While serving the early childhood teaching education for more than twenty years, Doris has established extensive knowledge from the field of the Early Childhood Education. Dr. Cheng’s research interest is on the learning and teaching of young children, especially on the enactment of ‘learning through play’. She was awarded a merit of the Distinguished Teacher Award of the Institute in 1998. Regarding publication, she has published in international referee journals and book chapters in this area. She has also committed herself to international discourse on enhancing the quality of “play-based pedagogy” and has currently collaborated with international scholars in the publication of books. .Recently, she is invited to be a member of the Academic Advisory Board of a Project on play, learning and narrative of writing (PLaNS) from the University of Cambridge, U.K.. Doris has also been involved in a Finnish scholar, Dr. Jyrki Reumano’s agentive orientation project. She has established ways to adapt the project in the Hong Kong context and while she was having her sabbatical leave in Helsinki University in 2013, she has collaborated with Dr. Reumano in the publication of journal papers from the Hong Kong data. Dr Cheng is a subject specialist of ECE in HKCAA (Hong Kong Council for Academic Accreditation) and has reviewed early childhood teacher education programmes for the Hong Kong territory institutions. She has been members of the Government’s curriculum committee, which was responsible for developing the pre-primary Curriculum Guide in 2006. Dr. Cheng is one of the founding members of the Association for Childhood Education International (ACEI) in Hong Kong and Macau. She serves on the international editorial boards of the “Journal of early childhood research”, “Open Education Journal” and “Global Studies of Childhood”. Dr. Cheng is the Educational Consultants of a number of Non-Government Organizations. She is also known in the region as she was invited to conduct workshops and talks to ECE officials and professionals in Taiwan, Macau and Mainland China.

James Ko   

Dr. Ko is an assistant professor in the Hong Kong Institute of Education, Department of Education Policy and Leadership. He has been using the Orientation project research instruments in five  kindergartens in Hong Kong. He has also used the interview instrument in Shenzhen, China. Dr. Ko has found the interview instrument a promising instrument for measuring children’s social development. James has extensive training and education in linguistics, psychology and education, with diplomas and degrees from Canada, Hong Kong, and the U.K. He led several innovative projects in student discipline, counselling and guidance, social and emotional learning, curriculum development, teacher professional development, and organizational learning, receiving external funds from the Educational Department, ICAC and Citibank. His research experience and interests are diverse. He has worked in various large scale research projects funded by the RGC in Hong Kong and by the ESRC and DSCF in the UK. In addition to working in Orientation project, he collaborates with local academics and overseas researchers  in local and international research projects. He does mixed-method research and tries to keep his mind open to ideas of both qualitative and quantitative camps. He is a Research Fellow of the Institute’s Joseph Lau Luen Hung Charitable Trust Asia Pacific Centre for Leadership and Change (APCLC).