This paper describes a study investigating the professional development of Hong Kong kindergarten teachers. Tracking the teaching and learning of 'play' of six front-line kindergarten teachers by means of the three levels of reflection put forward by Schon (1983, 1987), the study reveals the challenges in the professional lives of these teachers who are working under the conflicting demands and expectations of the society. The result shows that five out of the six informants are entrapped in a 'technicality' of teaching by developing an obsessive hunt for authentic teaching aids. Unfortunately, this behaviour perpetuates under the effect of a self-fulfilling prophecy working within these teachers. Mismatches between the teaching reform and a number of vital core factors for the reform to be succeeded are identified. This paper calls for a due attention to understand the complexities impeding the teaching reform. It echoes the concern of Bascia and Hargreaves (2000) and appeals to policy makers and the public for a fair demand on the role of teachers, who must not be hold accountable for all that is wrong with education, for the scale of the problems that teachers are expected to address just cannot be solved easily by the teachers themselves.

The Hong Kong government is often criticized for borrowing overseas educational ideas without making reference to local situations and socio-cultural contexts. Yet, policy, as a dominant discourse and a form of disciplinary power, has been a significant shaping force of local practice and particular understandings of early development and education. The presentation will provide a critical examination of such policy impact and challenge prevailing notions of quality.

The aim of the paper is to discuss the thinking process of a preschool teacher's knowledge of child development and the concept of creativity in designing art activities. The design of an art curriculum will reflect the adults' knowledge of child development (Morgan, 1995). Child development knowledge is very important in designing art activities for promoting children's creativity. The design of curriculum will depend on teacher's training, teaching experience, observation skills, concept of their theories of creativity and child development and the ability to reflect (Ngan 2006). Schon (1987) suggested 'theories-in-use' 'reflection-on-action', which indicate the importance of the teacher's thinking. A qualitative methodology was applied in a study of a typical preschool in Hong Kong. A semi-structured interview was conducted. Video-tape recordings of the classroom teaching was used as a stimulated recall of the activities to find out the rationale, focus of the activities and the reflection of the teacher. The findings indicate that the teacher needs to develop her observation skills in order to be more sensitive to children's needs. Finally her knowledge of creativity and children development are very important.

Beginning from the 2003/04 school year onward, all new preschool teachers need to be professionally qualified through completing pre-service teacher education progrmames. The new policy necessarily leads to fast expansion in the provision of pre-service early childhood teacher education. We believe that teacher education in pre-service programmes is fundamentally different from that in in-service programmes, the former serve novice while the latter serve experienced, though untrained, teachers. Pre-service teachers can only draw on their biographical experience and culturally transmitted beliefs, values, and folkways of teaching to process their teacher education experience. As early childhood teacher education largely adopts a professional discourse transplanted from the West, how do pre-service teachers harmonize cultural variations in the ideas and practices of educating young children? What do they learn and how do they learn as they progress through a three-year pre-service programme? This paper reports a case study of pre-service teachers’ experience in a three-year fulltime early childhood teacher education programme at the Hong Kong Institute of Education. The study tracked teacher development of four pre-service teachers in the programme and beyond in beginning teaching. Each research participant was interviewed periodically throughout their progression through the three-year programme to tap their conception of teaching before joining the programme, why they pursued a teaching career at the time they enrolled in the programme, their experience in the programme, particularly in teaching practicum, and changes over time in their teacher knowledge, beliefs and values about educating young children as they progressed through the programme and then embarked on beginning teaching. Two research participants decided to give up preschool teaching as their career by the end of the progrramme. The other two participants started to teach in kindergartens after completing

自香港在一九九七回歸後，在政治地位改變下，香港教育改革無可避免。教育改革更成為香港特區政府重要討論議題之一。在過去十年中，政府更制訂了不少對整體教育影響深遠的政策。這些政策尤其是最近的學券計劃資助政策，更為香港幼兒教育帶來不少迴響和改變。本文旨在討論教育政策為香港幼兒教育帶來的學校變化；深討所引伸的挑戰及有關的啟迪，以至從業者能在學校管理、課程發展和教學上作出專業準備面對挑戰，為幼兒提供優質的學前教育。