Father Deignan received the honorary degree of Doctor of Education for his commitment to education in Hong Kong and the region. He has contributed tremendous effort, love and caring to nurture the growth of young people in Hong Kong for more than 50 years, with many of them now playing key roles in all walks of life.
Father Deignan began his service in
education at Wah Yan College, serving in
both the Hong Kong and Kowloon schools in a number of capacities, including teacher, principal and supervisor. During his long service at Wah Yan College, Father Deignan put the pedagogical principles of the Society of Jesus into practice, introducing various education programmes, which has resulted in both schools becoming two of the most respected education institutions in Hong Kong.
His active participation in social and community service has won the respect of the community. His service on education and community service bodies include being Chairman of the Appeals Board (Education), Member of the Advisory Council on AIDS, Executive Board Member and Vice-Chairman of the Hong Kong AIDS Foundation, Chairman of the Expert Panel for HIV Infected Health Care Workers, Member of the Catholic Board of Education, Chairman of the Religious Schools Council, and Vice-Chairman of the Grant Schools Council.
Father Deignan believes education goes beyond academic learning in the classroom. He has cooperated with leaders of religious bodies and school principals to urge the government to revitalise moral education, resulting in the release of the official Guidelines on Moral Education in 1981. In 1997 he brought educators, school principals and teachers together to start the Hong Kong International Institute of Educational Leadership. Since then the group has been promoting the development of the whole person, and in particular the learning of positive values, in schools.
Professor Halliday is a prominent linguist who has developed an internationally influential grammar model, Systemic-Functional Linguistics (SFL), which examines how language functions in a social context. His work stresses the point that language cannot be disassociated from meaning, sparking considerable interdisciplinary studies that incorporate the values and diversity of multicultural societies.Professor Halliday was born and raised in England. While serving in the army during World War II he learnt Chinese for military intelligence purposes. He went on to
study linguistics in China at Peking and Lingnan universities, returning to take his Ph.D. degree at Cambridge in 1954. After teaching at Cambridge and Edinburgh, he was appointed to the first Chair of General Linguistics at University College London. In 1976, he moved to Australia as Foundation Professor of Linguistics at the University of Sydney, where he remained until he retired in 1987. He has since held visiting appointments in Singapore, the UK, Japan and Hong Kong.
Professor Halliday has published widely in educational, computational and sociological linguistics in the Chinese language, including the theory and teaching of intonation, stylistics, the discourse of science, and the development of protolanguage and their mother tongue in children.
Professor Lu is a well known female educator in China who has made a remarkable contribution to the country’s teaching and research development in the areas of moral education and principles of pedagogy.
Professor Lu graduated in 1953 from what is now Nanjing Normal University, where she has spent
her entire academic career, beginning as an education assistant instructor and rising to professor of education, head of the department of education and later to head of the institute of educational research. Professor Lu is currently Professor and Dean Emeritus of the Faculty of Education at Nanjing Normal University. She is also director of the Moral Education Academic Committee of China National Education Academic Association.
Professor Lu has long been committed to the rehabilitation and reconstruction of moral education in China, making a profound contribution to the establishment of a moral education system there. She has written a number of prize-winning textbooks, which are widely used in normal universities. They include: The Study of Education, In The Sociology of Education and A New Theory of Moral Education, which were awarded various top class prizes at the national level.
In recognition of her dedication and contribution to education in the country, Professor Lu was honoured as one of the Country’s Young and Middle Aged Experts with Outstanding Contributions in 1988 and National Pioneer by the State Council in 1995, among the many other national and provincial awards she has received.
Professor van Manen is a leading scholar in the fields of curriculum studies, pedagogy hermeneutic phenomenology, teacher education, and human science research methods. He has had a profound impact on the conduct of educational research with his work on phenomenological research in understanding human perception and experience, which is considered as providing a major alternative to the “objectivistic” experimental approach to education.
Professor van Manen believes pedagogical thoughtfulness is the condition for effective teaching
and for ethical and moral practice . In his popular books for parents and teachers, The Tone of Teaching and The Tact of Teaching, he unveils how educators nurture children with caring attentiveness to the uniqueness of each child, an orientation which is not normally found in teaching texts.
Professor van Manen currently teaches courses in qualitative research methods and pedagogy in the University of Alberta, Canada. He has been a visiting professor, teaching at several universities in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and China. He also helped to establish the collaborative International Research Centre for Phenomenological Pedagogy and Teacher Education at the China National Institute for Educational Research in Beijing, China.
The exceptional quality of Professor van Manen’s research has been recognised with a number of prestigious awards, including the Award for Outstanding International Accomplishments in Research in Pedagogy from the Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies, and the Lifetime Achievement Award presented by the American Educational Research Association.
