Empowering Local School Teachers' Capabilities in Responding to Covid-19-Related Legal Issues Through Experiential Learning
以體驗式教學增強本地老師應對新冠病毒引致相關法律問題能力
This interdisciplinary project aims to empower local teachers’ capabilities by equipping them with common law concepts and values to respond to COVID-related legal issues in the school setting. Legal knowledge with real life examples will be delivered through experiential learning workshops by academics from HKU Law Faculty, Chinese University of Hong Kong and Education University of Hong Kong, as well as barrister-at-law and legal counsel with knowledge and experience in dealing with COVID-related legal issues. Moreover, this project seeks to create social impact by raising local school teachers’ awareness of legal issues in the school setting that may arise from COVID-19.
這個跨學科項目旨在通過為本地教師配備普通法的概念和價值觀來增強他們的能力，以應對學校環境中與COVID相關的法律問題。香港大學法學院，香港中文大學和香港教育大學的學者，以及在處理與COVID有關的法律問題方面具有知識和經驗的大律師和律師將通過經驗學習工作坊,提供具有現實生活實例的法律知識。此外，此項目旨在通過提高本地學校教師對學校環境中可能由COVID-19引起的法律問題的意識來創造社會影響。
In the past decade, Wu has engaged in teaching and research projects related to common law concepts and values as well as experiential learning both within and outside HKU. In 2012, Wu and Leung designed and taught a course titled “Law, Ethics and Justice in Global Cinema” for third year M.B.B.S. students at the University of Hong Kong as their Special Study Module. In this course, Wu taught common law concepts and values through experiential learning to M.B.B.S. students in HKU. Wu and Leung also asked students to watch six law movies in different areas (like the Oscar-winning movie Philadelphia in the area of discrimination) and invited judges, lawyers and professionals like medical doctors and social workers to share stories on these themes (like lawyers from the Equal Opportunity Commission and consultant doctors from the Medical and Health Department). Students were asked to write down their reflections after watching the law movies and listening to the stories shared by these invited guests. The feedback from students was overwhelmingly positive.
In 2015, Wu and Leung re-designed and taught a course with similar title of “Law, Ethics and Justice in Global Cinema” to civil law students at the School of Transnational Law, Peking University, China. In this course, Wu taught common law concepts and values to civil law students through experiential learning outside HKU. Wu and Leung asked students to watch six law movies and students were asked to write down their reflections after watching the law movies. Like the first course taught to M.B.B.S. students at HKU, the feedback from civil law students at Peking University was equally encouraging.
We have invited Shui-fong Lam, a professor from the Faculty of Social Sciences at the HKU as the consultant of our this KE project. Lam is an experienced educational psychologist with research interest in teaching and learning strategies as well as parent education. She completed a project “School-based support for promoting social inclusion for ethnic minorities in Hong Kong” funded by Jockey Club (“The Social-Inclusion Project”) which was to promote social inclusion of ethnic minority students. In that project, Lam, Wu, Jen, Lee and Leung started common law education workshops for local school stakeholders through experiential learning.
Consequently, Wu, Jen, Lam, Lee and Leung were awardedtwo Knowledge Exchange Impact Grants by HKU (details of the two grants set out in para.13 below) for two project (‘KE Projects’) to engage local school stakeholders with common law concepts and values through experiential learning. The findings from the first KE project revealed that the experiential learning workshops empowered local school stakeholders with conceptual understanding of the legal issues in the school setting. The workshops were also found to have enhanced their confidence and self-efficacy in dealing with legal issues in the school setting. The findings of the research undertaken in the first KE project will form the knowledge base in this proposed KE project which will focus specifically on Covid-19 related legal issues.
It is expected that the proposed project will impact the target beneficiaries, namely, local school teachers, by strengthening their capabilities to cope with COVID-19 related legal issues through experiential learning. Specifically, this project will impact them by enhancing their mastery of the relevant common law concepts and values in responding to COVID-19 related legal issues in school setting. What is more, the project will create social impact by raising the legal awareness of local school teachers so that they can identify potential legal issues that may arise from COVID-19 both within and outside the school setting. Finally, the project aims to create social impact by enhancing teachers’ appreciation of common law values like non-discrimination in dealing with COVID-19 related legal issues.