In the paper, the author compares Hong Kong and Australia in the following aspects: computers used in schools; number of computers in schools; syllabus; examination; and service training.

The authors argue that activities in integrated workshops should be organized in such a way to implement concepts and materials taught in different parts of a study program and supervised practical sessions so that the teachers could help students overcome technical difficulties. The authors further point out that teaching methods and resource should also be considered.

School-based assessment of science students' practical skills has two important roles—as a complement to written papers in public examinations and as a catalyst for enriching the science curriculum in schools. This article describes a quantitative study of the concerns chemistry and biology teachers experience as they engage in the process of implementation of a school-based assessment scheme for practical work. A 23-item questionnaire was developed to measure five categories of teacher concern: evaluation, information, management, consequence and refocusing. The nature of each category of teacher concern is discussed in relation to innovation adoption and implementation. Data were collected from 400 chemistry and 412 biology teachers in Hong Kong. Teachers' information and management concerns lessened in intensity when they became experienced users of a school-based assessment scheme. However, teaching experience alone could not motivate teachers to think more about the impact of school-based assessment on student learning, their professional development in student assessment and the possible refinements in their school-based assessment scheme. Concerns-based interventions are suggested to help teachers grow professionally.
[Copyright of Research in Science & Technological Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0263514042000290877]

Over the past few years, curriculum innovation has been regarded as an essential strategy for educational reform throughout the era of educational change. Because of the changing nature of the knowledge age, students need to develop ways of dealing with complex issues and problems that require different kinds of skills and knowledge they have ever learned. Given the advancement of information and communications technologies (ICT), a number of cases of building learning communities in classrooms have been developed in recent years. Realizing the impact of this new learning culture, six primary schools in Hong Kong participated in the implementation of building learning communities through science project works. During the project, students from different schools engaged in the discussion and knowledge construction using a computer mediated communication (CMC) platform called Knowledge Forum. The aim of this case study is to explore the role of ICT in building learning communities and the conditions are essential to building learning communities from the different ways that students and teachers experienced the processes of community and knowledge construction using Knowledge Forum. Through the analysis of the interviews of students and teachers, conditions that support learning community building were emerged in three major themes, namely; conceptions of learning, knowledge construction processes, and development of social processes.
[Copyright of Educational Media International is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0952398032000092198]