ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a keynote address given for a historic ministerial roundtable held in Hong Kong on July 14, 2011, to celebrate the completion of an educational reform process begun in 1997, the year Hong Kong was reunited with Mainland China after 155 years as a colony of Britain. The twentieth century has been dominated by American educational ideas and values, which have an ongoing global influence. The chapter begins by sketching out author's personal experience of Hong Kong's educational development, from the perspective of a Canadian whose education was also profoundly influenced by the British tradition. The expansion of a diverse yet largely public higher education system that thrived under the British-modeled University Grants Committee (UGC) has been one of the important stories of reform. As the newly appointed director of the Hong Kong Institute of Education (HKIEd), author had to think through the consequences of Hong Kong's new identity for teachers at all levels.
