This paper reports on a macro-level the findings of a VITAL project (Variation for Improvement of Teaching And Learning). VITAL is a large project funded by Hong Kong Education Bureau, under which, each of the selected 120 schools in Hong Kong will participate in a Learning Study project in a selected subject area at a selected grade. This paper will report findings at systemic level, school level and subject level and investigate its impact in teacher professional development, construction of learning communities and student learning outcomes. Finally, the paper will discuss about how the VITAL projects facilitate the education reform in Hong Kong.

This paper aims to explore the mechanism of Learning Study in enhancing teacher learning by adopting community of practices as the analytical framework. Under the curriculum reform in Hong Kong, schools are facing challenges in acquiring pedagogical content knowledge for implementing new curriculum. How to enhance teacher learning for building school capacity is critical for sustainable development. Learning Study is a school improvement project which aims to improve the quality of student learning via enhancing teacher professional development by creating a community of practice among teachers, researchers and educators involved in the design, implementation, evaluation and dissemination of a research lesson, with ultimate goal of developing Learning Community in the school. This study will explore how the community of practice set up by the Learning Study Project can effectively help teachers build their pedagogical content knowledge. Wenger's theory of Communities of Practices, which postulate that participants have a mutual engagement for a negotiated joint enterprise and they develop a shared repertoire, is adopted as the theoretical framework for exploring teacher learning and professional growth. The study adopts ethnographic approach to investigate social phenomena of teacher interactions in a case selected from Learning Study Project. Results show that the collaborative features of the Learning Study provide opportunities for teachers to create shared knowledge, values and beliefs and to establish overlapping histories among them. Learning Study enhances teacher learning by creating a community of practice for knowledge sharing and reflective practices on teaching and learning.

Since Learning Study has been regarded as an effective approach for teacher professional development, it was introduced as a core module in the training programmes for over 400 year two pre-service teachers in the Hong Kong Institute of Education in 2007, This paper first illustrates the arrangements of the Learning Study module, including the module schedule, module content, mode of assessment and student profiles. It then draws on the data of an evaluation study of the module conduced in year 2007-08 to illustrate the experience of these pre-service teachers in Learning Study, focusing on how they learned to teach via participating in Learning Study and what difficulty they had encountered in the process. The paper also reviews the effectiveness of the module and puts forward suggestions for further improvement. It finally concludes with implications on applying Learning Study as a model of initial teacher education.

This paper explores the importance of student teachers' epistemological beliefs in the process of learning to teach. It examines the problematic nature of the conceptual basis of the field and then reports on a series of studies undertaken in Hong Kong to develop a set of scales to map student teachers' epistemological beliefs. By exploring the assumptions and methods used by Schommer to measure such beliefs it is concluded that the basis of her empirical work may be questionable. Adopting her 63 questionnaire and the critique of Hofer and Pintrich the paper reports on studies attempting to map the epistemological beliefs of Hong Kong teacher education students. Conclusions about the assumptions underpinning the study of epistemological beliefs and cross cultural analysis of such beliefs are considered. Additionally, implications of the work for teacher education are considered.

Personal definitions of creativity are described as the implicit theories of creativity, while the conceptions offered by scholars or researchers are referred to as explicit theories of creativity. The implicit theories of creativity may vary from one person to another, from one field to another, and from one culture to another. In this study, twenty pre-service student teachers and ten teacher trainers of Hong Kong Institute of Education are interviewed or asked to complete a questionnaire. They are invited to give their own opinions on: (1) What is teacher creativity? (2) How can you describe a creative teacher? and (3) How do you decide whether a teaching idea is creative or not? The results of this study reveal that, not only imaginative and novel teaching ideas are considered to be creative, however, flexibility in teaching, modifications and improvements of existing teaching ideas and abilities to solve daily problems are also regarded as forms of teacher creativity. As another difference to creativity defined in other (artistic) fields, respondents refer creativity of teaching ideas not only to their newness, but put strong emphasis on their effectiveness in teaching and how interesting they are to students. Unlike findings in western societies, being humorous is not considered necessarily to be a personality trait of a creative teacher. Study on these implicit theories of teacher creativity are important because they usually act as standards for judging and assessing creative behaviors in teaching, and also serve as the basis for training and self-development in the area of teacher creativity.

‘Gazing about with a checklist’ as a kind of method of observation is employed by the Hong Kong Institute of Education to supervise student teachers’ classroom performance in their teaching practicum. Using this as a case, the current paper analyzes this method of observation as a form of supervision. Focusing on some of its advantages and disadvantages in practice, this paper argues that although the method works in some situations, it is not very effective in enhancing the student teachers’ professional development. To make up for its deficiencies, some other observational techniques are suggested.

This is a self-study of three teacher educators in Hong Kong who introduced narrative inquiry as a means of professional development to a group of pre-service teachers during their eight weeks of teaching practice in 2005. The three teacher educators have reflected on their roles in the initiative in this report. How did they introduce narrative inquiry to the student teachers? How did they help the student teachers realize the importance of their own personal experience in shaping their professional practice? How can narrative inquiry be introduced into the formal curriculum of teacher education in Hong Kong? The primary objective of this self study is to document and reflect upon the experience in promoting the narrative inquiry in Hong Kong.

In this presentation, I will report on a network of learning that connects teachers and researchers for the main purpose of improving student learning and analyze the critical conditions that support its development. The term teachers' professional development, and what teachers' should have learnt as a result, may be interpreted in many different ways. The network that I will describe focuses on one specific aspect of teachers' work: helping students to learn specific objects of learning, and so, here, teachers' professional development means the enhancement of teachers' capability to teach for better student learning. It takes place through an arrangement called 'Learning Study' that takes its inspiration from Japanese lesson studies and teaching studies in China, and derives its conceptual framework from the Variation Theory. Through a series of projects over the last six years, our research team in Hong Kong has supported over 200 schools in developing over 260 Learning Studies, with a direct involvement of over 1000 teachers. Although the main aim of the Learning Study is to improve student learning, in the process, it is found that the Learning Study has become a platform for professional learning of all who participated, i.e. students, teachers and researchers. The Learning Study team facilitates the development of a network of learning in schools and across schools by working simultaneously at three levels, firstly, the students' learning; secondly, the teachers' learning; thirdly, the researchers' learning. The network has now grown beyond Hong Kong and is connecting up with many other teacher research groups all over the world through the World Association of Lesson Studies and a web forum. One important achievement of this network is the development of the knowledge base of teaching by teachers themselves. Some critical factors that have an impact on this network will also be discussed.

This paper is based on a study of five primary English teachers within a professional development programme established by the British Council, the University of Nottingham/Hong Kong Institute of Education and the Taipei City Bureau of Education. The research is based on analyses of semi-structured interviews and specially written teacher’s packs for English language teaching (ELT) in schools in Taipei City. The data chart teachers’ perceptions of the impact of three stages in their professional development: improving ELT methodological skills, becoming a trainer and becoming a writer. Teachers’ professional development usually consists of in-service training (INSET), although many studies show that it may have little impact on teachers’ classroom practice. (Lamb, 1995); Bax (1995, 199) stresses the importance of context-sensitivity in teacher education courses; Freeman (1996) outlines factors in successful research on teacher learning, while Tsui (2004) examines features of teachers’ developing expertise in the East Asian context. Three key issues in the development of projects include the levels and quality of support provided, sustainability and ownership. Support was provided and sustainability maintained in five ways: the outside “expert”, a select professional development team, a networking project for primary English teachers in Taipei City, an effective project leader and an excellent level of collegiality established over three years. Ownership was achieved by building in aspects of teacher autonomy and context-sensitivity in the programme, including interviews with local practicing primary teachers for the writing project. Within the three stages of professional development, the data provide insights into teachers’ perceptions of the role of the “expert” and their colleagues. The data also chart teachers’ reflections on their learning processes, showing the extent to which they feel confident enough to continue supporting other English teachers. Longitudinal

In Hong Kong, curriculum is centrally developed and teachers are expected to implement it as designed (Morris P., 1995; Nicholson A.Y.W., 1988, 1993). During the process of curriculum change, professional development plays a significant part to engender desired changes. These professional development efforts are top-down and mainly in the forms of centrally organized activities such as seminars and workshops for teachers (Cooke B.L, 1996). With a few teachers and educators involved during the development process and limited efforts to disseminate the curriculum initiatives, teachers are often left to implement the curriculum with little understanding of the rationale of these changes. Successful implementation, therefore, is left with individual teachers. Continuous professional development has been recognized as the key to school improvement (Rudduck J., 1991). It was even suggested that the extent to which professional development activities succeeded was the extent to which change succeeded (Fullan M., 1992). A whole range of activities has been identified (Huberman M, 1995). They might be individual teacher-centered, school-based or system-wide. However, traditional in- service training and staff development have been shown to be inadequate and"... network can provide fresh ways of thinking about teacher learning" (Lieberman A. & McLaughlin M.W., 1992, p.673) This paper proposes the concept of a cross-school teacher network, and shares the experience of the development of a teacher network in Hong Kong. Such network attempts to provide opportunities for practising teachers and school heads to share their concerns and their ways to deal with imposed curriculum changes. It is an ongoing process involving decisions about details of implementation, which aims to facilitate change. This is also based on the belief that teaching in Hong Kong suffers from the lack of opportunity to share as individuals, and particularly interact' with other teachers to reflect, to discuss