Engineering education outreach in Chinese social context : An ethnographical study on IEEE-TISP implementation with rural schools in Hong Kong

Engineering education outreach at pre-university level has become a recent focus of engineering education. Some initiatives, such as IEEE's Teacher-In-Service Programme (TISP), have been offered by professional organizations to support engineering education outreach for pre-university sectors by professional engineer volunteers. The support being offered consists of a variety of forms, e.g., web-based teaching plans, on-campus support for teachers and on-campus experiment sessions. The resourceful support by professional organizations may be appropriate in the urban area but in fact needs much adaptation and customization in the less privileged rural schools. One issue is to address the cultural differences between the city and rural contexts. While the city schools favor professionalism when promoting the outreach programmes, the rural schools emphasize more on trust and social networks with the local community to foster initial acceptance and whole-community support to the programme. We adopt an ethnography approach to investigate the implementation of IEEE TISP in two rural small schools in the Frontier Closed Area (FCA) along the Hong Kong and Mainland China boundary. Our experience provides a set of best practices for those who plan about engineering education outreach programmes in a rural community especially in China.