This study, which investigated primary school English teachers’ cognition in English Language Teaching (ELT), was a two-year longitudinal qualitative case study with five cases. Data were collected across two years from June 2014 to June 2016 at two sites (i.e., the informants’ practicum schools and in-service schools) using different sources, including semi-structured interviews, lesson observations, post-lesson conferences and reflective journals (i.e., one retrospective text and one questionnaire) for checking the consistency and inconsistency of the informants’ claimed beliefs about ELT and their pedagogy during actual teaching practice; other artifacts collected during the lesson observation (e.g., lesson plans, learning products, etc.) were also taken into consideration.Data were gathered at three stages: (1) before the teaching practicum (2) during the teaching practicum, and (3) during the 1st year of teaching. These procedures were followed first to identify the initial beliefs, assumptions and pedagogical content knowledge the five informants held before they served in schools, and then to track the stability and changes over time from “schooling to teaching practicum” and “teaching practicum to 1st year teaching.” The analysis revealed that the five informants’ cognition, shaped by both schooling, and professional coursework would change over time when influenced by contextual factors.The perceptions the informants held about ELT were quite consistent with their fond, and negative experiences encountered during their early “schooling.” They regarded the following elements as effective: motivation, inviting learning environments, good teacher-student rapport, availability of learning resources and encouragement from knowledgeable adults, e.g., NETs, favorable teachers, etc. The following traditional teaching approaches were considered ineffective and demotivating to language learning: drilling, rote-learning, and being teacher-centred. Evidence showed that

A shift from the investigation of classroom teaching methodology, learning theoretical rationales, and areas in teacher’s linguistic/subject knowledge (Woods, 1996) into teacher cognition has emerged since the 1970s. Such a shift has a sparkle on the concern of teachers’ mental lives, i.e. the process of how they conceive (beliefs, assumptions, knowledge), implement (teaching practice), reflect on (decision-making) and reconstruct (reflection) knowledge significantly relevant to teachers’ classroom practices (Borg, 2014). The present study is a longitudinal multi-case research implemented across 1 year and 9 months focusing on what 8 Hong Kong student-teachers think, know and do during their pre-service (stage 1) and later in-service teaching practices (stage 2), and how the change of teacher cognition overtime/across context. Data collection instruments include: semi-structured interviews, classroom observations, post-lesson conferences, teaching artifacts and teachers’ own reflective journals. A narrative approach is used for data analysis and report. The present preliminary findings of stage 1 reveal that (i) teachers’ schooling defines early cognitions and shapes teachers’ perceptions of their initial teacher training (ii) professional coursework may affect existing cognitions although especially when unacknowledged (iii) contextual factors may influence practice either by modifying cognitions or else directly (Borg, 2003). Emerging from this is the understanding of “teacher cognition, schooling, professional education, and classroom practice are inter-woven” (Borg, 2014). Teacher trainers can be made aware of the significance in designing teacher education programmes and continue to contribute in longitudinal studies of teachers’ cognition as this area about teacher development across contexts from pre-service to in-service stages is still under-explored locally in Hong Kong or regionally in Asia.