Over the last decade, educational reformers in Hong Kong have targeted teacher development and learning as a key area of need As part of this movement, different external change agencies began developing partnerships with school as attempts to enhance the quality of teacher professional development Such partnerships have operated for a number of years, but, to date, their efficacy has been largely unexplored This research, taking teachers' implementation of project learning as an example, aims to explore the impact of teacher-change agency partnerships on teacher learning The study is important in helping educators to better understand the difficulties teachers face when engaging in changes and also teachers' learning need This research also reveals the effects of teacher-change agency partnership and its impact on teacher learning This study can shed lights on ways of curriculum change and teacher development
The research posed four questions: (1) What difficulties do teachers face while carrying out project learning in school? (2) What kind of learning did teachers experience while involved in the teacher-change agency partnership? (3) Within the context of educational change, did teacher-change agency partnerships have an impact on teacher learning? (4) What do teacher-change agencies need to consider if partnership is to achieve positive results?
Five experienced primary school teachers were involved in the study In-depth interviews and non-participatory observation were used to collect data Based on thick description of five cases individually and a comprehensive comparison among them, the research revealed: (1) Teacher trainers need to take a multi-dimensional view to study the difficulties teachers encountered in implementing reform initiatives; (2) Teacher learning should take account of both "teacher" and "learning" The research highlighted that teacher professional development and personal growth are closely interrelated; (3) In different sectors