Speaker: Professor Li-fang Zhang, Division of Learning, Development and Diversity, Faculty of Education, HKU

Respondents: Professor Pauline Chiu, Department of Chemistry, HKU
                         Dr. David M. Pomfret, Department of History, HKU

Date: 18 February 2016 (Thursday )

Time: 12:45-2:00 pm

Venue: Room 204 Runme Shaw Building  [Sandwiches will be served with coffee]

Chair: Professor Amy B. M. Tsui 

Abstract 

Intellectual styles are people’s preferred ways of using the abilities they possess. This talk maintains that a good understanding of intellectual styles can be a key to enhancing learning sciences. It showcases primary research evidence indicating that employing successful intellectual styles (i.e., a wide range of styles led by creativity-generating ones) is crucial to effective teaching and learning and to positive student and faculty development. It presents empirical evidence revealing that styles can be modified through both socialization and training. Finally, implications of the findings are proposed for different parties in the education arena and for the sciences of learning.

About the Speaker

Professor Zhang is the (co)author of over 100 peer-reviewed journal articles and encyclopedic entries – in addition to dozens of book chapters and books. Her most recent award-winning monograph is entitled “The Malleability of Intellectual Styles” (Zhang, 2013; Cambridge University Press).  She is Associate Editor of Journal of Educational Psychology and that of Educational Psychology. She also serves on the editorial boards of several other major journals in psychology and education.

About the respondents

Prof. Pauline Chiu is currently Professor in the Department of Chemistry.  She has been the Associate Dean of Teaching and Learning in the Faculty of Science since 2013.  She obtained her Bachelor’s, Master’s and Doctorate degrees from the University of Toronto, Canada.  She undertook postdoctoral studies in Columbia University, New York, before joining HKU.

David M. Pomfret is Associate Professor of History and chairperson of the Department of History at the University of Hong Kong. He is the author of the Monographs, Youth and Empire: Trans-colonial Childhoods in British and French Asia (Stanford University Press, 2015), and Young People and the European City (Ashgate, 2004), and editor of three collections: Transnational Histories of Youth in the Twentieth Century (Palgrave, 2015), Diasporic Chineseness after the Rise of China (University of British Columbia Press, 2013), and Imperial Contagions (HKUP, 2013).