This interpretive study of the implementation of a school-based assessment scheme of biology practical work in Hong Kong examines three teachers' struggles with the issue of fairness in relation to their classroom actions. Though the teachers' discourses were dominated by, and their classroom actions were pre-eminently influenced by, the notion of fairness, they did so in three qualitatively different ways: (1) fair in the sense of assessing students on a fair basis; (2) fair in the sense of not jeopardizing students' chances to learn the subject matter while they are being assessed; and (3) fair in the sense of not depriving students' of opportunities of receiving all-round education. The implication is that assessment innovation is a necessary, but not a sufficient, mechanism for changes within our educational system. The role of the teacher is challenged by the new assessment scheme—the co-existence of assessment and learning requires a significant change in the teacher's pedagogy. For teachers to implement the new programme their existing understanding and beliefs concerning assessment must be challenged and opportunities provided for them to come to terms with the philosophy of the new assessment scheme. Most importantly, the teachers themselves must undertake such a learning process.
[Copyright of International Journal of Science Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09500690010017129]

Thirty-seven Chinese teacher-counsellors in Hong Kong were assessed on their theoretical orientations using a 45-item self-report checklist at the beginning of their advanced training and at the end of a course on counselling theories. Based on their ratings on nine theoretical orientations, it could be inferred that the beliefs and values of these teachers were most congruent with those of the Person-Centred approach. With ratings above a cutoff score as endorsement, teachers were found to endorse more orientations in the post-course assessment, reflecting an increase in flexibility in approach. Despite the fact that teachers' reported self-efficacy toward helping significantly increased in post-course assessment, teachers' membership in low, medium, and high self-efficacy groups did not have any bearing on teachers' changes in flexibility in approach or changes in primary approach. Implications of the findings for understanding teacher-counsellors' process of finding an integrative approach personally meaningful for their future practice are discussed.
[Copyright of Counselling Psychology Quarterly is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09515070802479339]

Teacher attitudes and practices are considered as essential in fostering parental involvement in school education. In Hong Kong, amongst possible types of home–school links, teacher–parent communication about children's learning has been agreed to be the primary concern of both schools and parents. This paper reports a test of a psychological model of teacher–parent communication in Hong Kong primary schools. The model has taken into account the theory of planned behavior, self-efficacy theory, expectancy theory and theories of family–school relations. Scales for measuring the criterion and predictor variables have been developed. Variables that associated with teacher communication intention and practices were identified and path analyses linking the variables in a conceptual model were conducted. Results show that teacher commitment and teacher efficacy in working with parents have significant predictive power for teacher intention. Teacher intention, together with teacher commitment, has predictive power for teacher's time spent in communicating with parents. Relationships between individual teacher beliefs and the criterion variables are also described and discussed.
[Copyright of Educational Studies is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03055690050022661]

The current global movement in the reform of education seems to focus on a number of issues that include standards, quality and teacher preparation. With regard to the latter, while teacher education curricula in most parts of the world attempt to strike a balance between content and professional training, the emerging scenario is that of training expert teachers. Three types of knowledge identified as necessary for expert teaching are content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge. For Hong Kong to embark on a satisfactory and effective public education reform, it is essential that its most valuable human resource (i.e. teachers) must be comprehensively and adequately developed. Attention must be paid to both pre-service and in-service to raise an excellent quality-oriented teaching force. Teacher educators and researchers make important and well-informed decisions about what should be included in pre-service and in-service teacher development programmes. However, it is also important to take into account the teachers' own perceptions about the areas in which they feel confident and knowledgeable and those inwhich they do not. One practical avenue of sourcing such information is the teacher in training who is learning to acquire and display expertise. This paper reports on an investigation using a sample of 183 science and mathematics trainee teachers. A 60-item instrument, the Science and Mathematics Expert Teacher Preparation Survey (SMETPS),was developed to gather data on trainee teachers' perceptions of their current knowledge and what they think they need to know to become expert teachers. The data, analysed using both descriptive and inferential statistics, indicated some of the areas in which trainee teachers identified the need for future professional development that would contribute towards expert training. Several issues which emerged from the results are discussed, with reference to implications for current efforts in expert teacher

Viewing education as a complex site for endorsing and contesting knowledges and practices we explore its critical roles in feminist language planning. Many types of language planning have relied heavily on education for the implementation and spread of the particular reform agenda largely reliant on discourses of compulsory obligation (e.g. spelling reforms). The scenario of feminist language planning reveals that education is not a mere external agent of implementation but central to the raising of awareness or provoking an 'Initiating Trajectory' (Winter & Pauwels, 2003). However, the implementation of gender-inclusive practices ('Trajectories of Practices') in education highlights contexts of conflict (and confusion) about grammatical prescriptions and social reform (Pauwels & Winter, 2006). In this paper we probe the adoption, problematisation and invigoration of 'Agency Trajectories' in (language) educators' narratives and classroom practices. Our investigation includes educators operating in diverse English-language communities (e.g. Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong).
[Copyright of Current Issues in Language Planning is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.2167/cilp093.0 ]