Learning study has been used to enhance teacher professional development in many cities and countries all over the world, including Hong Kong, Sweden, United Kingdom, Singapore and Brunei. Since Learning Study has been regarded as an effective approach for teacher professional development, it was introduced as a core course in the training programmes for pre-service teachers in the Hong Kong Institute of Education in 2007. This paper explores the impact of learning study on pre-service teacher professional development by looking into an English language learning study conducted by a group of pre-service teachers in Hong Kong. It reports how the pre-service teachers learned to teach via participating in Learning Study and discusses what challenges they had encountered in the process. The paper concludes with implications on the further development of learning study and its application in educational programmes for pre- service teachers.

Performance tasks This paper reports the initial stage of a learning study on enhancing kindergarten teachers' teaching of performance tasks in Hong Kong. Data from classroom observation and post-lesson interviews with two kindergarten teachers were analysed to identify the existing teaching practice focusing on four typical classroom performance tasks: storytelling, drawing pictures, singing nursery rhyme and physical movement. The findings have indicated that both teachers often simplified the object of learning into declarative knowledge and used passive receptive activities and neglected the specific disciplinary skill-related aspects and seldom used active productive activities, which will more probably lead to deeper learning. The factors shaping these teaches' practice are also discussed and elaborated. The room for further improvement of these teachers is then identified as the object of learning for the teachers and the critical features of these performance tasks specified for student learning in the coming learning study projects. The paper concludes with implications and recommendations on teacher education for pre-school teachers in Hong Kong.

The Learning Study approach has been developed over ten years by a research team comprising school teachers and academics in Hong Kong. It is a systematic process of enquiry into teaching and learning, employing an action research methodology, and underpinned by the Variation Theory. Under Learning Study, teachers are expected to learn cooperatively and become reflective practitioners by practicing the theories postulated from others. Learning Study can be used to enhance teachers’ pedagogical capabilities and professional development. This paper describes how Learning Study, which initially started as a modest project to find ways to cater for individual differences in main stream schools in Hong Kong, became a powerful tool for schools in achieving these aims. Working in close collaboration with the Hong Kong Institute of Education, Learning Study developed as a major component of a mentoring system, which resulted in the creation of learning communities in schools, where the focus is on enhancing teaching and learning. Such a system benefits all teachers involved, whether novice or very experienced. Starting with only two schools in 1999, schools in the Learning Study network rapidly expanded to over 200 schools in 2010. The success of Learning Study in Hong Kong will be analyzed under the following factors: its conceptual framework, methodology, partnership with higher education institutions, positioning, reform context and culture, and dissemination strategy and the diffusion process in and across schools. Its potential for moving towards improving the status of the profession as a whole will also be discussed.

The paper discussed the problems of school-based development of a primary school in Hong Kong.
[Copyright © 2004 Common Ground, Kam Wing Paul Chan.]

A qualitative research approach which was used to gather data on teachers’ perspectives on Information Technology in Education (ITEd). Data, drawn from three primary schools in Hong Kong uncovered four major themes. First, the definition of ITEd was inconsistent among schools. Secondly, most teachers were concerned about whether or not students could be motivated to learn by using IT. They viewed knowledge enhancement as the main objective when IT was incorporated into their teaching. Thirdly, ITEd was viewed only as one of the events in the movement for education reform in schools. Successful implementation was mainly determined by the perception of principals and veteran teachers. Fourthly, schools used information technology mainly for school administrative purposes in the early stage of the development of ITEd. This study reveals that insufficient consideration was given to the use of information technology for interactive and communicative learning in our case study schools.
[Copyright © 2007 James Nicholas Publishers.]

This study, conducted over a one-year period, examined the collaboration practices in a large-scale school-university capacity-building collaborative action research project that was designed to help English language teachers develop the skills needed to deal with the reforms to assessment practices in Hong Kong's school curriculum. The study theorized collaboration as a complex construction that must be understood in the context of the prevailing ideologies shaping professional development practices for teachers. Online data generated from the collaborative action research project were analysed to explore the discursive construction of interpersonal relationships. Critical discourse analysis was used to examine the discursive strategies that were used in the emails of two university researchers and two school teachers to negotiate and manage collaboration practices. It examined the complexities of negotiating collaboration as a social practice in institutional cultures in a non-Western sociocultural setting. The implications of the findings for policy, professional development and future research are discussed.
[Copyright of Asia Pacific Journal of Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02188791.2014.906386]