This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of a wellness programme for preservice teachers, Promoting Educational Excellence through Resilience to Stress (PEERS). The intervention group participants, who took part in the 4-week PEERS programme, and the comparison group participants were recruited online. A battery of self-report scales assessed various psychological constructs, including coping self-efficacy, resilience, mental health, well-being, mindfulness and self-compassion. Data were collected at three time points: before the intervention (T1), immediately after programme completion (T2) and 4 weeks after programme completion (T3). Results suggested that the intervention group participants reported significant improvements in coping self-efficacy, resilience and the nonjudging facet of mindfulness. High programme satisfaction was also reported, with 96% of the participants rating the overall programme as good or excellent. Therefore, the results demonstrate the effectiveness and positive impact of the PEERS programme on the resilience and coping efficacy of preservice teachers in Hong Kong. Copyright © 2025 The Author(s).

Globally, pre-service and early career teachers report high levels of stress and emotion regulation difficulties, leading to high rates of burnout and attrition in the first five years of the profession. Therefore, there is an urgent need for the development and evaluation of programming to support pre-service teachers’ emotion regulation and stress management and examine the relevance of the program across cultural contexts. The present study investigated the effectiveness of a program for preservice teachers’ emotion regulation and stress management in Montreal-Canada and Hong Kong-China. Participants were 378 preservice teachers, with 158 from Hong Kong (81.6% women; program group: n = 70) and 220 from Canada (85.9% women; program group: n = 157). Data were collected at three points: before the program, immediately after the program, and two to four weeks after the program. The findings from the latent growth models suggested that both Canadian and Hong Kong program groups displayed significant improvements in coping self-efficacy after participating in the program whereas no changes were detected for well-being. Moreover, the Canadian sample demonstrated significantly higher baseline coping self-efficacy compared to the Hong Kong Chinese sample. Gender and age, considered as covariates in the study, did not yield any significant findings. The study provides valuable insights into the potential benefits of emotion regulation programming for preservice teachers’ coping abilities and emphasizes that such benefits can be comparable across contexts. Copyright ©  2025 The Author(s).

Procrastination tendencies are prevalent and are associated with negative psychosocial outcomes. However, how preservice teachers’ procrastination tendencies prior to the COVID-19 pandemic link to their experiences during and after the COVID-19 pandemic have not been investigated. The present study collected data from three time points, examining how preservice teachers’ procrastination tendencies before the COVID-19 pandemic related to their life satisfaction at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, and their perceived work stress and the COVID-19 impact two and a half years after the outbreak of the pandemic. A total of 385 preservice teachers from Hong Kong were included in this study. Results from structural equation modeling revealed that preservice teachers’ higher procrastination tendencies before the COVID-19 pandemic were associated with lower life satisfaction at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, which in turn was linked to higher perceived work stress and a more severe COVID-19 impact two and a half years after the COVID-19 outbreak. The results indicated that preservice teachers with procrastination tendencies may be especially vulnerable to experiencing work stress and life disruption in the face of traumatic events or crises. The findings provide valuable insights to both researchers and practitioners, highlighting the importance of addressing procrastination tendencies among preservice teachers. Copyright © 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V.

Along with the global trend of developing students’ 21st-century skills, teacher education must enable preservice teachers (PSTs) to improve students’ learning outcomes with Information and Communications Technology (ICT), and school practicum plays an essential role in the process. This study investigated Hong Kong PSTs’ ICT competency with or without teaching practicum completed and explored factors contributing to ICT competency in and beyond the practicum. This mixed-methods study began with a questionnaire to give a broad picture of the ICT competence of Hong Kong PSTs of English (N = 127), who were found to perceive themselves as competent with educational technology and their competencies of understanding ICT related policy and using ICT for professional development was enhanced after school practicum. A purposeful subset of the sample (N = 10) was interviewed based on their ICT competency scores, exploring the factors shaping interviewees’ readiness and ICT use in their teaching practicum. It highlights that digital native students do not naturally transform into teachers with ICT competency to facilitate 21st-century learning, and the practicum could play a more critical role in enhancing their ICT competence to future-proof their skills. Promoting ICT-friendly school culture and designing better teaching practicum programmes are suggested. Copyright © 2022 National Institute of Education, Singapore.

The purpose of this study was to investigate how 22 preservice science teachers' (PSTs') beliefs about teaching socioscientific issues (SSI) changed after experiencing SSI instruction and reflection from both a learner's perspective and a teacher's perspective during a 12-week initial teacher education course. The study also explored the learning experiences associated with these changes. This study was conducted in Hong Kong, where the science, technology, society and environment (STSE) framework has been integrated into the secondary science curriculum but no SSI instruction is provided. Data were collected through learning tasks completed by the participants: (a) curriculum designs (pre-, mid- and post-course), (b) lesson plans (mid- and post-course) and (c) weekly reflective journals. Six profiles characterising teaching beliefs about SSI emerged from the data analysis. Qualitative analysis showed that the teaching beliefs of the PSTs had shifted from the traditional view that SSI should not be covered in science education to embracing SSI teaching. Three illustrative cases were used to capture key learning experiences and explore how these had led to a change in beliefs over time. These cases explained how PSTs' reflection on the why, what and how of teaching SSI to students can shape their beliefs about teaching SSI. The results have implications for the development of a closer alignment between PST beliefs and the SSI paradigm. Copyright ©2021 Springer.

This paper reports on the design, implementation, and results of a video-based study that focused on supporting an individualized viewing experience, keeping a record of what was noticed, providing a degree of guiding framework, and facilitating a combination of individual and collaborative reflections in noticing activities for STEM professional development. A cohort of 20 prospective mathematics teachers at a public university in Hong Kong participated in the study. The participants engaged in a series of blended learning activities with a feature that allowed them to leave comments while viewing of a lesson video, which focused on technology integration in mathematics classrooms. The designed activities were helpful for the participants to document and reflect on their observations, while viewing videos outside the classroom allowed them to meaningfully engage with the course materials. Moreover, the use of videos supported the participants' broad but crucial STEM classroom practices that would help them prepare for future lessons. Copyright © 2021 International Forum of Educational Technology & Society (IFETS).

In the last 20 years, humane education (HE) has undergone a paradigm shift from a simple animal welfare education model to a teacher-led positive education approach that cultivates kindness, love, and empathy in children and youth. While teachers’ humane attitudes are considered a prerequisite for HE program success in school settings, their attitudes toward animals have received little attention to date. This study investigated pre-service teachers’ humane attitudes toward animals and assessed whether and to what extent these attitudes are correlated with empathetic tendencies as well as variables such as gender and current and previous pet ownership. A total of 226 pre-service teachers in Hong Kong completed the Animal Attitude Scale (AAS) and the Davis Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI). The results showed that pre-service teachers showed moderate concern for the humane treatment of animals, and a difference in humane attitude was identified based on sex: female pre-service teachers tended to express more humane attitudes than their male counterparts. Moreover, pre-service teachers with greater tendencies toward warmth and compassion demonstrated a more welfare-oriented attitude toward animals. The results of the current study support using HE as a positive education approach and imply that the provision of training for pre-service teachers and teachers should be given higher priority by humane educators. Humane educators are recommended to recruit pre-service teachers as HE program instructors in their research projects. Copyright © 2020 ISAZ.

In contrast to a burgeoning research literature on the role of emotions in learning and instruction in Western culture, research on how emotions impact student and teacher development in Asian countries is lacking. The present paper reviews seven publications included in the 2019 Special Issue of The Asia--Pacific Education Researcher examining the role of emotions in Asian learners and in Asian educators. Three studies conducted with Asian students across education levels (primary, secondary, post-secondary) and countries (China, Singapore) explored students' emotions ranging from global constructs (engagement, satisfaction) to discrete experiences (hope, gratitude) in relation to personality, self-regulation, persistence, and contextual variables (perfectionism, self-compassion, resilience, relatedness). Four studies additionally investigated the emotional experiences of pre-service and practicing Asian teachers (China, Hong Kong, Philippines) in relation to varied motivational variables (self-efficacy, self-theories, passion, psychological capital), social-environmental factors (cooperative interactions, practicum evaluations), as well as psychological and physical health (coping styles, burnout, sleep quality). Study findings and protocols are discussed with respect to specific directions for future research on academic emotions in an Asian educational context.
[Copyright of Asia-Pacific Education Researcher is the property of Springer.]

Effective teaching and learning strategy is one of the most important topics in the field of teachers' professional development. Teachers' education and pre-service teachers' training programmes provide necessary coursework, field experience, and student teaching internship experience to pre-service, potential, and second career teachers who are seeking initial license status. Due to the rapid developments in Hong Kong, China, school teachers face challenges, difficulties, and social problems due to excess enrolment of teachers from different backgrounds. The regular curriculum and material also fail to cover all these issues. The current study applied the seminar technique as recommended in Polya's "Four-Step Problem-Solving Model" with targeted discussion topics and engaged 12 STEM pre-service teachers at one of the Postgraduate Diploma in Education (PGDE) programmes. The results indicated that beyond regular coursework, field experience, and internship experiences embedded in the curriculum, additional seminars allowed the participants to establish inter-disciplinary teaching strategies and critical thinking skills. The results of this study serve as a blueprint for teachers' education programme leaders and school administrators to establish similar seminars and conduct such sessions for their pre-service and in-service teachers to refresh and advance their teaching and learning strategies.
[Copyright of International Journal of Education and Practice is the property of Pak Publishing Group.]

The greatest difficulty in educating pre-service teachers is cultivating their ability to reflect on the learning in course work and apply this reflection in their teaching. Many academic articles have shown that organised learning portfolios can help pre-service teachers reflect and improve their teaching. This study focused on 20 pre-service teachers who studied the Chinese Language Teaching Methodology I module of the Postgraduate Diploma in Education (PGDE) at The Education University of Hong Kong (EdUHK). They were asked to develop organized learning portfolios for use in their study programme (the first phase) and during field experience when they practise teaching (the second phase). The aim of the study was to explore the content of pre-service teachers’ learning portfolios. The research methodology focused on document analyses of artefacts and reflection reports in the portfolios. The study found that the learning portfolios could help teacher educators understand what the pre-service teachers had learnt in the lessons and the problems they encountered. In teaching reading, most pre-service teachers grasped how to help students understand the content of the passages, vocabulary, and sentence structure. However, they still lacked confidence in teaching different writing skills and rhetoric, and helping students deepen their understanding of 146 passages. The study also found the pre-service teachers’ reflections were generally limited to analysing the strengths and weaknesses of lessons and seldom included suggestions for improving future practice.教師培訓課程最大的困艱是培養準教師如何將課堂所學應用在實際教學中，如何幫助他們從反思中學習。很多文獻指出組織學習檔案能幫助準教師反思，改善教學。本研究的研究對像是20 名在香港教育大學修讀「中國語文教學法 I」的中文科準教師，他們須在大學課堂 (第一階段) 和實習期間 (第二階段) 建立學習檔案。研究旨在分析和探討準教師的學習檔案內容。研究方法採用檔分析，分析檔案中的顯證和反思報告。研究發現學習檔案能幫助導師暸解準教師的課堂所學和實踐教學時遇到的問題。準教師能掌握讀文教學中的理解課文，釋詞和句式的教法，但部分準教師對形式和內容深究教學仍欠信心。研究又指出準教師的反思只側重分析教學的優點和不足，較缺乏提出改善的建議。 Copyright © 2018 The Education University of Hong Kong.