One of the roles of music teacher education is to produce music teachers with proficiencies in delivering music education at different educational levels. The impact of the development of IT in education in Hong Kong has been tremendous. The Hong Kong Education Department and the teacher education institutions are urging teachers in every discipline (including music) to apply the technology to a certain proportion of teaching and learning. Teacher proficiency requirements in IT have been developed quickly. As such, the philosophy that has prompted the inclusion of technology in music teacher education must be evident. The paper aims to investigate some aspects of the philosophy behind promoting IT to a level of such importance. A paradigm shift has come about in the approaches of teaching and learning from teacher-centered to student-centered for a range of reasons including the advent of IT. The teacher has to take on more of a facilitator role in stimulating students to learn how to learn rather than teaching what to learn. This aligns with the advocacy of flexible and life-long learning which are prevailing thoughts in the education world nowadays. These generic values are to be considered with the more unique values of IT in music teacher education. A new philosophy could imply more drastic changes in education in the near future. This could affect music teacher education as well as music education. The issues of how far a philosophy will induce quality learning and whether this application of IT could equate to quality teaching are to be considered. In a world which calls for reflective thinking as well as quality assurance and excellence, it is hoped that this paper will contribute to the discussion on the philosophy of the application of IT in music teacher education.
[Copyright © 2001 Aichi University of Education.]

This paper discusses the problem of discriminating between individual contributions in the assessment of group projects. It is argued that peer assessment is a necessary element of any proposed structure but that the use of any 'weighting-factor' system is contrary to the philosophy underpinning collaborative groupwork. A structure that separates the process and product elements of the assessment is described and a set of generic criteria for the process peer assessment identified. This structure was implemented with a group of students at Hong Kong University and evaluated using questionnaires and in-depth interviews. The paper discusses the results of this evaluation and, in particular, identifies the need for 'benchmarking' when using the criteria and also the problematic nature of the 'insider-outsider' syndrome as an important cultural factor.
[Copyright © 2003 Open University of Hong Kong Press.]

Teachers may be one major agent in shaping students’ gender identities construction through schooling. This paper reports the rationale, development and evaluation of a “women studies modules” at the Hong Kong Institute of Education which uses teachers’ subjectivities and lived gender experiences in its conceptualization. Post-structural theory of fluid gender identity is used as conceptual framework. Evaluation of the module draws particularly on two cohorts (the 2004 and 2004 year groups). Data were obtained from student teachers’ personal reflections in their end-of-term paper as well as end-of-module open ended evaluation questions. Student teachers reported awareness of gender lived gender practices. Implications of this module to teaching education and gender equity education are discussed.
[Copyright © 2008 Nova Science Publishers.]

This chapter presents the Unified Professional Development Project for Teachers and Student Teachers (UPDP), an educational initiative at the Department of Curriculum Studies, the University of Hong Kong. UPDP attempted to link teacher education with school improvement and was committed to enhancing the professional development of teachers from teacher preparation throughout their entire teaching careers by means of collaboration between Hong Kong schools and the University of Hong Kong in partnership. This chapter describes the major components of UPDP – the School-University Partnership Scheme, the Unified Professional Development Fellowship, and the School-based Development Consultancy. It also examines the project’s impact on schools, particularly student teachers and school mentoring teachers, and how UPDP interacted with the culture of the schools to contribute to teachers’ learning and professional development. It also explores the possible contributions of the development of a mentoring force in schools to improving the quality of education in Hong Kong.
[Copyright © 2004 The Chinese University Press, Hong Kong Institute of Educational Research.]

Many music teachers in Hong Kong secondary schools have ignored creative music making. In order to encourage creativity and imagination in music education, the Hong Kong Education Department is undertaking an education reform in which creative music making is advocated. However, recent studies reveal that many music teachers do not have relevant and sufficient training in these activities. This paper reports a study of designing and implementing a new teacher education module, which aims to equip in-service music teachers to undertake creative activities in school teaching. Results indicated that the trainees preferred learning more existing teaching packages to learning theories in creativity. Owing to the poor discipline and other contextual constraints, some of the trainees expressed a negative attitude towards creative activities. However, the lack of discipline-based knowledge and composition skills of the trainees was one of the major reasons leading to the negative attitude. These results imply that theory and practice should be closely related when preparing teachers to understand why and how creative projects should be delivered, with a number of teaching strategies derived from the study. The discipline-based knowledge should be more emphasized, which should be well integrated with pedagogical skills in teacher education programmes.
[Copyright © 2004 International Society for Music Education.]