In order to help student teachers to clarify what they know about art, thus to improve the quality of learning and teaching about art for kindergarten teachers, an action research was designed and implemented during the Qualified Kindergarten Teacher Education Course offered by the Hong Kong Institute of Education. This paper presents the changes of conception of art for the student teachers in the course. Before and after the art activities, the students were invited to discuss as well as complete open-ended questionnaires to express their own ideas on art. They were requested to explain what they thought art is for themselves as well as for the early childhood children. It is interesting to find that after they had undergone the process of the project they showed that art is not only for art’s sake. Art activities mean more than an abstract term. Then the relationship between art learning and other aspects of children’s development was identified and disputed.
[Copyright © 2000 The Hong Kong Institute of Education.]

The quality of the classroom teachers is a very significant determinant of the quality of an educational programme. One important indicator of a quality teacher is that he or she has high job satisfaction and hence is motivated. The education community needs to be knowledgeable and concerned about the factors in a teachers work environment which may enhance his or her feeling of job satisfaction. Considerable studies on teacher job satisfaction have been undertaken. However, surprisingly few inquiries have been done on the specific case of job satisfaction of kindergarten teachers. In Hong Kong this dearth of research on job satisfaction of kindergarten teachers is especially noticeable. However, in recent years, the quality of kindergarten teachers in Hong Kong is being addressed. The main concern of the study is on finding out the level of job satisfaction of kindergarten teachers. Also to identify the factors affecting the satisfaction and dissatisfaction of the target group will help to prepare and retain the motivated teaching force for the young children in Hong Kong. To investigate the job satisfaction of kindergarten teachers in Hong Kong in sufficient detail, qualitative research was used. Four informants were chosen to provide information for the study. These informants were selected on the basis that they had different length of working experience in the field. Three of them had worked in both profit-making as well as non profit-making kindergartens. The fourth one was a new teacher. Each of the informants was interviewed by the researcher separately. They were asked to describe how they feel about their teaching job. Then, they were asked to elaborate on factors that contribute to their satisfaction or otherwise. Contents of the interviews were analyzed.