The full day pre-conference session will take place on 23 March 2019 at Hong Kong SkyCity Marriott Hotel. These sessions are specially selected for educators that are looking for opportunities to enhance their professional skills. It will be conducted by industry professionals and university professors.
Leadership skills for new and aspiring head of departments (full day)
Are you a new or aspiring middle leader that is keen to maximize your effectiveness in your role? Do you want to understand the key issues relating to policy, strategy, and resources in the ever-changing leadership and management landscape in schools? This session will help new leaders to reflect on and further develop their leadership and management potential including:
- A practical approach to making the move from a teaching role to Head of department to make it seem less daunting by helping you to develop your existing skills to facilitate your new role
- Suitable for teachers from PYP, MYP and DP schools
- Help to understand the role of the department leaders and teaches how to effectively lead the team to meet the plan along with maximizing performance.
Speaker:
Paul Ch’ng – Senior Consultant, Quest Learning
Find out more about the speaker [150 KB]
Coaching and mentoring skills to lead your team (full day)
Looking at how to better equip yourself or your team leaders to develop team work and improve leadership skills? How about enhancing communication and interpersonal skills and augmenting levels of assertiveness and performance? If you aim to build on your leadership skills and maximise your team’s potential using one-to-one or team coaching and mentoring, then join this workshop. This session will cover:
- Develop skills to help team thrive and enable each individual to fulfil their potential and get job done
- Improve team-working
- Set work standards and monitoring performance
- Explore ideas for designing and implementing formal/informal programme of coaching to suit the setting
- Manage the people – team leadership behavior
- Understand the team’s needs – giving credit and encouragement
- Discipline members of the team
- Create positive effects on student learning and outcomes
- Improve questioning techniques to access staff’s skills and abilities.
Speaker:
Kamarul Zaman Alias – Senior Consultant, Quest Learning
Find out more about speaker [153 KB]
Getting the most out of your day – time management for school leaders (full day)
Always feel like there is too much work to be done and wish for more time just to keep up? Thinking of techniques to get more out of each day to improve work-life balance? This session is packed with ideas and proven practical tips created for anyone who works in the education setting. At the end of this session, you will be able to:
- Reduce stress and enhance personal skill set for effective time and resource management
- Identify and deal with causes and effects of stress
- Prioritize the demands which are made for you
- Explore proven techniques to get more out of your time
- Develop effective time management skills
- Gain control of your workload
- Enhance communication and reduce conflict with all levels of the staffing structure
- Improve delegation skills
- Maximize your strengths and minimizing your weaknesses.
Speaker:
Edgar K Tham – Founder, Chief Sport & Performance Psychologist, SportPsych Consulting
Find out more about speaker [164 KB]
Learning-centred leadership (full day)
Is learning-centred leadership becoming an alternative approach to leadership in education contexts? Do you wish to develop a leadership style with the learner at heart for curriculum leadership? Join this one-day course to get an insight into how every aspect of leadership and decisions can and should impact the life of the learner. The delegates will also:
- Explore examples of current good practice and academic studies that underpin up-to-date leadership development within schools
- Maximize the impact of qualified staff and the need to embrace new teaching models and methodology becomes crucial so that we will be able to match the strategic and operational need
- Help highlight organizational need
- Find the best solutions that fit
- Analyze cost versus benefit curriculum
- Marry learner and school needs.
Speaker:
Gerard Calnin – Research Fellow, Graduate School of Education at The University of Melbourne & Senior-Practitioner, Education University of Hong Kong
Find out more about the speaker [130 KB]
Leading professional development in your school (full day)
This workshop focuses on a critical examination of what professional development is, and what it means in schools and how it interconnects with their practices. We challenge conventional ways of approaching and planning for professional learning given the complex nature of education. Practically, we will look at how to analyse our decisions on upcoming professional development with a view to providing better offerings for our staff. Sustaining professional learning and practices for the benefit of our students are also explored.
Participants will:
- Explore various professional development models in relation to the connectivity between multiple human capital practices that take place in schools
- Investigate how professional learning, within schools, is a complex adaptive system
- Effectively analyse different professional development options, in order to make better choices
- Will investigate the fundamental approaches for creating longālasting PD based on research into effective learning.
Speakers:
Jacques-Oliver Perche – Head of Continuous Professional Development, English Schools Foundation Hong Kong
Stewart Redden – Learning and Teaching Adviser, English Schools Foundation Hong Kong
Find out more about the speakers [192 KB]
Theory of knowledge: Curriculum, assessment and implementation (full day)
The theory of knowledge (TOK) course plays a special role in the Diploma Programme, asking students to think deeply about how they know what they know. This unique course can be a hugely stimulating and meaningful experience for both students and teachers. However, it often also raises its own set of particular challenges and frustrations.
This interactive session will provide an opportunity to dive deeply into the curriculum, assessment and implementation of TOK. Designed for DP teachers, coordinators and administrators, this session aims to explore this complex subject in an accessible, down to earth and practical way, helping to “demystify” the subject and to clarify expectations.
Aims of the session:
- To deepen participants’ understanding of the unique role and purpose of the TOK course
- To highlight the exciting opportunities created by the TOK course, and the benefits for students and teachers
- To provide an opportunity to explore issues relating to TOK curriculum and assessment, including dedicated time to discuss concerns about approaching the TOK assessment tasks
- To explore issues relating to the implementation of TOK, including ideas for making effective links to TOK across the curriculum
- To provide an opportunity for participants to share experiences and ideas, and to identify practical action points to take back to their schools.
Speaker:
Jenny Gillett – Senior Curriculum Manager, International Baccalaureate Organization
Find out more about the speaker [118 KB]