This project evolved from the efforts of foreign lecturing staff at the Hong Kong Institute of Education. It was found when they first started teaching pre-service teacher education courses, that the language of instruction, although English, was not universally known at a sufficient competence level that all students could understand what was being discussed. The combination of large class size and differential culture expectations, found the lecturing staff themselves in a dilemma of how best to communicate effectively with their students. The following research objectives had to be addressed: 1. Increase collaborative Learning through quality learning teams; 2. To enhance academic outcomes of individual members of the quality learning team; 3. To inculcate a constructivism culture within the quality learning teams; 4. To enhance both learning and instruction strategies; 5. To encourage and increase motivation of both the quality learning team and each of its individual members; 6. To increase student achievement and create a positive student attitude of quality learning teams and their individual members; The formulation of a strategy whereby small groups (maximum of 5 students) took an independent assignment, worked as a "Quality Learning Team", reported back to the class and then with a combination of jigsaw and team presentation styles, a very satisfied, if somewhat initially frightened, group of students emerged. The departure from hand feeding, which was firmly put to one side, resulted in a more independent reflective individual. Team leaders were quickly established, friendships firmly made, trust in ones peers established, relaxed interdependency accepted as the norm, respect of ones peers accepted, leading to the emergence of highly motivated 'Teams' and individuals. The eventual consequence was all of these changed strategies created extremely motivated students for the most part and for those students whose learning style was not suited to this sharing

Assessment and learners’ achievement have an affinity in enhancing teaching and learning in education. At the time academic achievement is stressed, educators ought to re-think the following questions: How is achievement defined? Who defines achievement and in whose interest? What is the purpose of achievement? Who grades? Who defines the criteria for grading? On the other hand, teacher education programs have educated student-teachers to work effectively with one dominant culture. Teachers are then unprepared to acknowledge the cultural differences and educational inequalities that schools often perpetuate. Some teachers find it difficult to understand that minority and poor students have the potential to be successful; they often are not given the opportunity to develop their academic and social skills. All of these barriers may result in the disadvantaged learners’ underachievement (Sleeter & Grant, 1986, 1988). Assessment for learning has an emotional impact as well, i.e. teachers’ comments, marks and grades can have effect on learners’ confidence and enthusiasm (QCA, 2004). Obviously, the diverse awareness of teachers will affect their use of assessment and students’ learning achievements will then be determined. This article will demonstrate that teacher’s multicultural education beliefs are important in a pluralistic society, where teachers must be prepared to make professional decisions about how best to meet the educational needs of all students, especially the disadvantaged learners. This study reports a group of Chinese pre-service teachers and experienced school teachers’ attitudes of cultural difference with the Chinese pre-service teachers and experienced school teachers’ attitudes of cultural difference with the use of an instrument, Cultural Diversity Awareness Inventory, CDAI (Henry, 1991). The study is trying to understand: (1) the cultural sensitivity levels towards alternative assessment of Hong Kong teachers; and (2) the general assessment practices

A method for enhancing the quality of teaching and learning is through encouraging academics to engage in action research projects into some aspect of their teaching which is of interest or problematic for them. Action research is promoted as a means for committed teachers to bridge the gap between their theories and practices, and now it has becoming a required skill of frontline teachers in schools in Hong Kong. However, groups of teachers being sold to the concept, are fresh to such idea and method, and their day to day practice has confined themselves to the more practical and technical management of teaching in schools. This paper explores the use of a case illustration approach for teaching action research on 33 in-service primary school teachers, the application of constructivist theories of learning underpins this approach will be addressed and the result will be discussed while significance of the findings will be highlighted in the light of preparing curriculum leaders to promote change in schools.

The State Education Development Commission in China introduced the communicative syllabus in 1992. However, evidence indicated that the traditional structured-based approach was still prevalent in the English classroom. The paper is an attempt to examine rural teachers’ concerns regarding the adoption of a communicative language teaching (CLT) approach in their classroom. The data for the investigation came from teachers’ journals written during a two-week training programme organized by a Hong Kong voluntary group in Gansu Province, classroom observations, interviews, as well as written correspondence between the teachers and the mentors. The analysis showed that the teachers were positive about the effectiveness of CLT in motivating students to learn English. However, a number of teachers’ concerns that might hinder the adoption of CLT were revealed. Examples of these included teachers’ low English proficiency, lack of confidence, a misconception of CLT, poor understanding of language teaching and insufficient acquisition of teaching skills. The measures taken to help the teachers during the programme were discussed. It is hoped that the discussion contained in this paper could lead to a more frequent professional exchange between teachers from the mainland and Hong Kong so that CLT can be elevated to a new level for the benefits of both teachers and students.

Cooperative learning is only a small component of a core module in the pre-service programmes and an elective module in the in-service programmes of the biggest teacher education institute in Hong Kong. Schools attempting to implement cooperative learning have to rely mainly on the help of external staff developers. Most of the school-based staff development programmes provided by the staff developers start with some introductory talks and workshops, followed by lesson planning, lesson observation and post-lesson sharing by the teachers, and end with a concluding session by the staff developers. Many of these school-based staff development programmes are not effective in attempting to add cooperative learning to the repertoire of the teachers largely because of the weakness of these programmes and the overlooking of the diversified aspects of cooperative learning. This paper suggests a six-phase model of school-based staff development in cooperative learning to enhance the effectiveness of the programmes. These phases are described as setting objectives, participation in workshops, collaborative lesson preparation, peer observation, post-lesson conference and reflection. The model is effective in that it gives ownership to teachers in working in collaboration with their peers as well as staff developers in planning and implementing an innovation.