This paper examines the perceptions of 250 first year student teachers in HKIEd regarding how their educational ideologies affect the effectiveness of the newly designed and implemented Lifeskills Program. Focused on the rationale and premises of Liberal Ideologies, the program witnesses an emergence of a robust sense of 'Liberalism' in a period of political change in Hong Kong. The Lifeskills Program represents a shift from a traditional approach and entails putting liberal learning and teaching theories into practice. The perceptions of the student teachers who have been identified as having distinct educational ideologies toward these changes are to be cautiously investigated to explore the program effectiveness. Equally crucial is to study and draw conclusions from the major findings, particularly concerning the explicit perceptions and beliefs revealed by those student teachers preoccupied with educational ideologies different from the Liberal one, and to place greater emphasis on helping them make the transition to a more liberal orientation.

Initial teacher education programs offered worldwide all aim at developing student teachers with the best and most comprehensive preparation before joining the teaching profession. However, teacher education research reveal that there are discrepancies between the outcome and what is intended in the program. Without sufficient field experience, beginning teachers always find difficulties in assisting administrative duties and curriculum planning in schools. It is a common practice that teachers are expected to perform different roles apart from regular classroom teaching. It appears that current teacher education programs do not provide solid preparation for beginning teachers in these areas. When beginning teachers function in school with a rather low level of competence in various areas, the chance of becoming burnout might be higher. To bridge the gap in teacher training, a Summer Creative School Project has been developed and launched in the summer vacation in 1998 in Hong Kong. The aim of the whole project was to provide opportunities for student-teachers to experience the management of a school for four weeks. The project has three stages, viz., the pre-field stage, field work stage and the debriefing stage. In this program, participants were given a series of intensive training in the form of seminars and workshops. There were a total of 80 student-teachers participating in the project. In the field work stage, a total of four Hong Kong public sector primary school were involved. Twenty student-teachers took over the management of 10-12 classes of one school. All student-teachers took up different functional posts as head teacher, deputy head teacher, coordinators of curriculum and extra-curricular activities, etc. They also designed their own curriculum with creativity development as the central theme. In the debriefing stage, the experience and limitations of student-teachers throughout the project are debriefed. This paper gives a full account

This paper presents a qualitative case study of student teachers' professional learning in the field experience of initial teacher education in Hong Kong. It highlights the social nature of seven student teachers' professional learning by portraying the field experience context as a socio-professional context. The focus of the study is on student teachers' interaction with the school management, teachers and other staff of the school, their peers as well as pupils. Data collected include interviews with student teachers and school teachers as well as field observation over two years. Four types of socio- professional relationship between the student teacher and the field experience context are identified: detachment; affiliation; engagement and isolation. The implications on initial teacher education are discussed.

Teachers have often been placed in the heart of educational reform. They are expected to play a pivotal role in the enhancement of educational quality. Various forces energize the professionalization project of teaching and there has long been advocacy that teachers should be regarded as professionals. Although literature shows that there are divided views on whether it is entirely favorable for teaching to become a 'profession', there is little disparity that teachers should uphold professionalism. While teachers as professionals may well be a conception that denotes different meanings by different people, this paper seeks to understand the conceptions of a professional teacher held by four fist year primary school teachers in Hong Kong. The paper reports the results of a study which entails three main parts. The first part is about the societal expectations of a professional teacher in Hong Kong. With reference to the profession literature, selections of key educational documents of Hong Kong were analyzed to find out the common expectations. The second part involves the analysis of the first year teachers' conceptions of what makes a professional teacher. Each of the four teachers have been followed through in the first year of teaching by four in-depth face to face interviews and at least three telephone interviews. Their conceptions of a professional teacher have been studied and analyzed in the context of their career events. The third part of the paper identifies the similarities and differences of the conceptions between those identified as the societal expectations and those held by the informants. The paper ends with a discussion on the various implications of the findings.