What is Project Theme

Project work is an essential feature in design education and curriculum and the major assessment that students need to work on. Project-based assessment is one of the promising approaches for assessing students' performance in design education. It is also the appropriate pedagogical approach for teaching design. In project-based assessment, students need to finish several tasks, such as identify a problem, research on relevant materials, suggest possible solutions to the problems, realize the chosen solution, make the artifacts and evaluate it in a project. It is natural and indubitable in the design classes – teachers and students would probably accept it without any questions. However, in the recent years, project work in design education at secondary school levels has been developed in some new directions that it is significantly differentiated from the traditional project work in the past. It is then interesting to review the historical development of secondary school design education and understand the practice of project-based assessment. The design curricula of Singapore and Hong Kong are chosen for case study and comparison in this chapter. Through examining the similar background of curriculum development of Singapore and Hong Kong, the comparison and the discussions of the chapter also highlight some issues and the future development of curriculum and assessment in K-20 education of both places. The aims of the chapter are to (1) review the history of curriculum development in Singapore and Hong Kong secondary school design education; (2) review the project-based assessment in the design curricular in both places; and (3) discuss the general and specific issues of curriculum development and project-based assessment based on the reviews.