This study explores the views of mentoring held by mentors, mentees and university teachers in a distance education programme for in-service teacher education offered by the Open University of Hong Kong. Ten pairs of mentors and mentees and three university teachers participated in in-depth individual interviews designed to explore their views of mentoring with respect to five aspects: mentor roles and responsibilities; mentor-mentee relationships; mentoring programmes; mentor preparation; and school-university relationships. The findings show that mentors, mentees and university teachers held different views of mentoring and that the impact of mentoring on the mentees was different from what the University had expected. This study is significant in the following ways. First, it will contribute to a better understanding of mentoring in the context of in-service teacher education. Second, it will provide important information on how different views of mentoring will influence how mentoring is realized. Third, with the proposed teacher registration requirements in Hong Kong that place a heavy emphasis on the role of mentoring during internship, there is a critical need for information on views of mentoring held by different stakeholders to facilitate dialogue with teachers and schools and to build a common vision of mentoring.
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A questionnaire survey was conducted with 106 in-service teacher education students of a university in Hong Kong to study their motives and commitment in teaching. Three motive factors were identified in their choice of teaching as a career, the most influential one is "intrinsic/altruistic motive", the next one is "extrinsic motive/job condition" and lastly "influence from others". Within the intrinsic/altruistic motive, around 80% to 95% teachers considered teaching is meaningful, they desired to teach the subjects they liked, they wished to help others and to work with children/teenagers. Four factors representing the areas or aspects of teaching which influenced the teachers' dedication and commitment were found, viz., "students' learning and school development", "demands on teaching and school practices", "teaching as a career choice", "teacher-pupils interaction and attitudes". Correlational analyses showed that intrinsic/altruistic motive was significantly related to the four commitment factors, suggesting that the motives held by the teachers in joining the teaching profession (in particular, intrinsic/altruistic motive) is influential upon teachers' commitment in teaching. Further analysis of the item responses highlights the elements affecting teachers' commitment in teaching involve school head, colleagues, students, parents and educational changes, which deserve the attention of the education authority to address with appropriate measures.
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A survey study was conducted with 251 preservice teacher education students in Hong Kong by administering a questionnaire comprising three inventories to measure their conceptions of learning, culturally oriented achievement motivation and learning strategies. Preliminary correlational analyses of the above three variables showed significant relationships between some subscales, consistent with previous research findings in literature which suggested that conceptions of learning are related to a number of variables such as students' learning approaches and the quality of learning. Further analysis was conducted by testing a structural model on selected categories of conceptions of learning (learning as an increase in knowledge and learning as personal fulfilment), culturally oriented achievement motivation and learning strategies. Satisfactory goodness of fit index was obtained with the proposed model. Path analysis showed that the conception "learning as an increase in knowledge" was positively and significantly related to social oriented achievement motivation, deep strategy and surface strategy; individual oriented achievement motivation was positively and significantly related to deep strategy but negatively and significantly related to surface strategy. The conception "learning as personal fulfilment" was positively and significantly related to individual oriented achievement motivation but negatively and significantly related to social oriented achievement motivation. Implications for learning and teaching were drawn based on the model result.
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A case study of an undergraduate Educational Psychology course that incorporated both constructivist and teacher-centred teaching was conducted. The learning processes and higher-level learning outcomes were examined through participant observation, interviews with students and analyses of student assignments. The lessons were audio recorded and transcribed, and a total of 68 interviews, each about 1.5 hours long, were conducted. In general, the constructivist teaching facilitated students' creation of their own knowledge, as they were allowed to think more over the problems together and generate original ideas. Students' performances in recalling, critiquing and generating with the knowledge gained in the constructivist teaching context were also better than those in the teacher-centred context. This could be explained by the deeper processing of the material, the activation of students' prior knowledge and the similarity between the situations of knowledge construction and knowledge application. The strengths and limitations of constructivist teaching are also discussed.
[Copyright of Innovations in Education & Teaching International is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14703290600750861 ]