Background
The Department of Applied Social Sciences of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) set up The Hong Kong Polytechnic University Yan Oi Tong Au Suet Ming Child Development Centre with the support of Yan Oi Tong, to provide all-round services including educational psychology, parent training, and child education for local organizations serving children and adolescents.
Purpose
The purpose of the Child Development Centre is to promote child development. With a quality environment for learning and development, we hope that every child will have an opportunity for gifted development.
Both parents and teacher play an important role in child development. The Child Development Centre will focus on:
- Child education to teach children an effective emotional management and to enhance their attention
- Training for teachers to enhance their professional knowledge and skills, to equip them to promote child intellectual development and learning.
- Parenting education to equip parents with the knowledge, skills and techniques to promote child development in all domains including brain function development, social skill development, emotional and behavioural management.
In response to the rising demand for all-round child development, PolyU also launched the Master of Educational and Child Psychology (MECP) programme in 2009 and the Master of Applied Psychology (MAP) in 2012. These programmes aim at training a group of workers who wish to work in educational settings and organizations that are relevant to child-adolescent workforce development. The Child Development Centre will provide a platform for the training of MECP as well as MAP students.
Research Development
Rigorous research is important to ensure that services to parents and children are effective. Towards this end, the Child Development Centre will:
- Engage in research to develop reliable and valid local instruments measuring child development, learning and behavior, as well as parenting.
- Collaborate with professionals in the evaluation of programmes and services for children and parents, to promote evidence-based practice.
