Faculty of Arts

Master of Arts in Liberal Studies and Ethics

Programme Director: Dr Kwan Kai Man

This is a one-year programme to be pursued in a part-time mode from September to mid-July and in a full-time mode in mid-July and August.

The aims of this programme are:

To help students in acquiring the technical knowledge required for teaching the senior secondary course in liberal studies;

To enhance students' ability to articulate an informed understanding of themselves, their society, their nation and the world;

To enable students to develop multiple interpretive perspectives (religious and philosophical) on perennial and contemporary issues in different social and cultural contexts;

To help students nurture independent thinking so that they can help senior secondary students extend their knowledge and apply evaluations appropriate to their own changing personal and social circumstances;

To motivate students by providing a range of skills for life-long learning;

To help students appreciate and respect cultural diversity within modern society in order to assess and handle conflicting values in critically informed and creative ways; and

To help students further develop and reflect on their own values, so that they will be able to justify their own decisions, judgments and convictions, and so become informed and responsible citizens in their community, nation and the world.

The objectives of the programme are to enable would-be teachers in liberal studies:

To deepen their own sense of self-understanding and to develop habits of self-management so that they will be able to lead senior secondary students to reflect effectively on themselves and on their relationships with others;

To enhance their pedagogical skills in teaching senior secondary courses in liberal studies and ethics;

To advance senior secondary students' sense of belonging to the local society and to enhance their recognition of the interconnectedness of their own local and national identities; and

To develop senior secondary students' collaboration skills, communication skills, critical thinking skills, problem solving skills, self-management skills, study skills and creativity through the enquiry learning process.

Requirements

Students are required to complete nine 3-unit courses (2 Foundation Courses, 6 Required Courses and 1 Elective Course), totalling 27 units and 378 hours in a year. Alternatively, students can choose an optional 6-unit course, Dissertation, and complete seven 3-unit courses (2 Foundation Courses and 5 Required Courses), to finish the programme. In exceptional cases, an extension of one more year may be granted.

Foundation Courses				6 units
	LSE	7010	Approaches to the Study of Values	3 units
	LSE	7020	Critical Thinking for Liberal Studies	3 units

Required Courses				15/18 units
	LSE	7030	Ethical Issues in Personal Development & Interpersonal Relationships	3 units
	LSE	7040	Values & Socio-Cultural Issues in Hong Kong Today	3 units
	LSE	7050	Traditional Values & Moral Challenges in Modern China	3 units
	LSE	7060	Globalization: Cultural & Ethical Issues	3 units
	LSE	7070	Public Health & the Common Good	3 units
	LSE	7080	Science, Technology & Environmental Ethics	3 units

Elective Courses				0/3 units
	LSE	7090	Religion & Liberal Studies	3 units
	LSE	7100	Cross-modular Topics in Liberal Studies	3 units

Dissertation				0/6 units
	LSE	7111-2	Dissertation	6 units
				─────
				27 units