科主任作為中層領導的角色，既要掌握管理能力，又要在學科專業知能有所增長，才能發揮學科領導的功能。如何培訓科主任，讓他們協助學校有效推動校本課程政策、帶領學科發展及促進教學效能？過往在這方面的討論較少，而香港語文科教師在獲委任當科主任前，大多沒有得到適當的培訓。本文擬通過一個支援科主任專業成長計劃的經驗，讓業界對小學中文科主任，尤其是新任的科主任的專業成長及其所需培訓重點有更清楚的了解。
[Copyright © 2015 香港教師中心.]

Higher education institutions around the world have increasingly been concerned with staff professional development (SPD) programmes for academic and teaching (A/T) staff. Since its establishment in 1994, an education university in Hong Kong (which we will refer to as the University) has offered primarily teacher education to foster the development of quality teachers. To meet the demand for students’ holistic and whole-person development for the twenty-first century, the University has sought to broaden the range of programmes offered, introducing the concept of ‘Education-Plus’. Under the ‘Education-Plus’ vision, the University has been expanding non-education programmes rapidly since 2010. Many new A/T staff with limited teaching experience have been recruited, needing professional development (PD) to enhance their skills and knowledge. Since 2013, the Centre for Learning, Teaching and Technology (LTTC) has designed and developed an SPD programme to allow A/T staff to enrich their PD and ultimately enhance student learning. The evaluation of the current SPD programme activities revealed that the PD activities were beneficial to A/T’s teaching and their PD, but the question has arisen as to whether the current SPD programme is effective, e.g. whether A/T staff have obtained and applied new knowledge and skills to teaching. This paper will discuss the design of the current SPD programme and analyze its activities. The design outlined in ‘Three Stages of Professional Development: The Cycle of Change’ (Bellanca, 2009) will be referred to in order to develop an effective SPD programme. The paper will also design and propose a framework to evaluate the effectiveness of the SPD programme and its implementation cycle.

The paper explores how Learning Study, a collaborative action research approach, can be integrated with eLearning activities to enhance personal knowledge management (PKM) competencies of pre-service teachers for effective instructional design and assessment for learning. PKM competencies are conceptualized as knowledge retrieving, organizing, analyzing and collaborative skills for effective learning. The study adopts Cheng’s (2011) PKM model to proposal a curriculum for developing teacher’s PKM skills through a teaching development project conducted in The Hong Kong Institute of Education. A Solomon four group quasi-experimental research design was adopted to collect data from pre and posttest of PKM measurement from the participants of the Learning Study course. All items were measured using a 5-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). Another professional study course is set as the control group. Lesson observation and qualitative interviews were conducted to evaluate the development of the pre-service teacher. The effectiveness of the e-learning activities, the use of PKM tools and the collaborative action research approach were evaluated. Results showed that integrating learning activities in the Learning Study course had impacts on the retrieving, organizing, analyzing skills for instructional design and student assessment. A set of learning activities for planning the PKM curriculum could be articulated from the result of this study. For example, access databases and websites for information retrieval; operate electronic tools for information integration to design lesson plans; use spreadsheet and statistical software for data and information analysis to assess student learning problems; use collaborative PKM tools to support both synchronous and asynchronous communication for the purpose of collective learning; and construct knowledge that is based on an appropriate understanding of the nature of data, sound inference

Learning Study has been implemented for teacher professional development in Hong Kong since 2000. Guided by variation theory, Learning Study has three unique features. First, it focuses on student learning of the object of learning in planning, teaching and reviewing lessons. Second, variation is used as a pedagogical tool for lesson design in the hope of enabling students to discern the critical features. Thirdly, teachers collaborate together throughout the process of planning, teaching and reviewing lessons (Lo, et al., 2005). However, sustaining Learning Study may be inhibited by many challenges, including teachers’ pressures from the examination-oriented system, heavy workloads, pressures from parents and lack of support and trust among staff (Zhang, 2015). How to sustain Learning Study in schools is yet to be explored. This presentation reports a study investigating the Learning Study practices in two Hong Kong schools (a primary school and a secondary school), which have adopted Learning Study for teacher professional development for over 10 years. The study utilized qualitative research methods including interviews with school leaders and teachers (2 leaders and 4 teachers from each school) and observation of Learning Study activities to identify the forces facilitating and inhibiting Learning Study in the schools.
Content analysis (Northcutt & McCoy, 2004) of the data from interviews and observations was conducted and the data were coded with the theoretical framework in Markee (1997), which categorizes the contextual factors facilitating and inhibiting the sustainability of Learning Study into four aspects: features of Learning Study, macro-context (e.g., socio-economic development, education reform, teacher education), school leadership practices (e.g., understanding and developing staff in the school; designing organization and cultivating a learning culture; managing internal and external resources) and teacher characteristics (e.g., personality, motivation

This article draws upon the experiences of a five-year government-funded university–school partnership project known as the Partnership for Improvement of Learning and Teaching (PILT) (2004–09), aimed at supporting teachers through improving their teaching quality and enhancing their professional growth in key learning areas – particularly mathematics, education and personal, social and humanities education – and initial experience of another completed project, the School Improvement Project for Early Childhood Education (SIP-ECE). The article first describes the rationale and operation of the PILT and SIP-ECE, respectively, and then explores the application of a 4-P (problem clarification, planning, programme action and progress evaluation) action learning approach to the improvement of subject teaching practice. This is followed, through case studies, by an exploration of teachers' own perceptions and university partners' perceptions of professional development and instructional improvement through the project. The final part of the article refers to Western concepts of professional development and university–school partnership, and suggests ways forward for school-based teacher development and instructional improvement in Hong Kong.
[Copyright © 2012 by the Editor.]

This research linked 47 Hong Kong and 35 Canadian teacher candidates in a new participatory culture project within the theoretical framework of new media literacies. This paper reports the qualitative data with quantitative descriptions of participants' social interactivity within the cross-border communities of practice. Besides the constraints of the designated online forum, findings relate that participants' engagement in the new participatory culture contributed to their knowledge- and awareness-building of harnessing online participation, new media technologies, and cultural/linguistic diversity in education. The paper concludes with implications of cultivating communities of practice buttressed by new media literacies for teacher professional development.

This article reports on a mixed-method inquiry into pre-service and in-service secondary school teachers' knowledge about Attention-deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and attitudes toward students with this disorder in Hong Kong. The inquiry revealed no differences between pre- service and in-service secondary school teachers concerning their knowledge of ADHD and attitudes toward students with ADHD. It also identified possible sources of participants' knowledge and a variety of factors underlying their attitudes toward students with ADHD including sociocultural beliefs and working conditions. The findings call for teacher educators to develop better education programs to support both pre-service and in-service teachers in undertaking the challenging task of teaching students with ADHD.