Document Type: Conference Papers
Year published: 1997
Conference: Hong Kong Educational Research Association (HKERA) 14th Annual Conference: Compulsory Education and Beyond (1997: The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China)
This paper examines the statistics on the official provision of teacher and teaching training in Hong Kong primary schools. It is found that there is no clear and operational definition of the expertise of teaching in the primary workforce, nor teachers are well-prepared for their development of teaching expertise. Under such an unfavourable teacher preparation and development, the writer called for teachers' self-initiation to develop "group expertise among themselves and make improvement in primary education. Introduction: This paper intends to evaluate whether the provision of teachers and teacher training can facilitate the identification and development of teaching expertise with, and for primary school teachers in Hong Kong. Data of such provision are compiled from the official teacher surveys and will be used for analysis. It is noticed that 'provision' of teachers and teacher training is the input to the education system and is only one of the many aspects that constitutes the development of teaching expertise. Other aspects like 'teaching and learning processes', 'teacher performance' and 'pupil achievement' are related and influential. Nevertheless, attention to the input condition can never be dispensable. The Theoretical Framework: Sternberg et al. (1995) argued that there exists 'no well-defined standard that all experts meet and that no nonexperts meet.' A prototype view is proposed to consider teaching expertise as a category of resemblance that 'is structured by the similarity of expert teachers to one another rather than by a set of necessary and sufficient features'. They postulated the following categories which they called the 'expert teaching prototype': The prototype expert teacher has 'extensive, accessible knowledge of subject matter and of teaching per se as well as knowledge of the political and social context in which teaching occurs. The prototype expert teacher posseses a broad perspective of well-organized domain knowledge which is contributive