This paper reports a qualitative study of twelve Hong Kong beginning teachers' lived experiences in their probationary periods in the context of teacher professionalization. Teacher professionalization has been an on going project but the image of a professional teacher has been significantly re-portrayed since the 1980s, which has influenced the induction provision for the beginning teachers. Life history method, which draws on informants' critical career events, was adopted for the study. Information of the beginning teachers' professional development was analysed with reference to the new image of a professional teacher as projected in the literature and policy documents. Results of the study showed that beginning teachers' learning in the workplace was shaped by both individual and contextual factors. Essential components of helpful induction, which facilitates the development of teaching professionals, are identified.

The 1995 primary Art and Craft syllabus in Hong Kong states that there should be emphasis on three learning domains, i.e., understanding art, making art and living with art. In this information age, the World Wide Web has become one of the electronic media providing resources for teachers. In 1997, the Government demonstrated its serious commitment to IT in education. But at that time, there was little evidence of a strong IT culture in primary schools, and teachers in general had little experience in using IT. Four years later, in 2001, I carried out research into Hong Kong 1 primary art teachers’ experiences in computer use and their views on teaching and learning through web sites. Quantitative and qualitative research methods were used. Data for this study were collected from questionnaires, focus group discussion and individual interviews. The data reflected that the Hong Kong art teachers had a firm belief in web site being a helpful source for their own teaching and learning. However, the data also reflected that the teachers had difficulties in finding time to use web sites to support their teaching and learning in practice. The findings indicated that teachers’ workload was too heavy and art as a subject was neglected in primary schools in Hong Kong.
[Copyright © 2002 The Hong Kong Institute of Education.]

Primary school pupils’ attributions of academic success are presented in this study. The sample for the study comprised 1154 Year-3 and Year-5 pupils from ten primary schools in Hong Kong. Pupils’ academic attributions were measured by a 16-item Academic Attribution Scale. Pupils indicated the extent to which they attributed their performance at examinations, tests, homework assignments, and class work to luck, ability, effort and use of strategy, on the scale. It was found that girls tended to have healthier attributions than boys did. Girls attributed significantly more to strategy use and effort than boys did. Boys attributed performance to luck significantly more than girls did. Multilevel analysis showed that there was significant school-level and class-level variance for attributional beliefs. Nevertheless, most of the higher level variances of attributional beliefs occurred at the class-level rather than at school level. Implications for teaching and learning are discussed in the article.
[Copyright © 2006 The Hong Kong Institute of Education.]

This paper describes the experience of a teacher educator in fostering teacher development in a reading project in Hong Kong. The teacher educator is interested in finding out the perceptions of teachers in the project and the factors affecting their perceptions and thus participation in the project. Teachers were interviewed and their lessons observed. A study of documents gave background information of the school. The interactions with the teachers in school functions, lesson observation, discussions and workshops recorded in the researcher’s diary had led to holistic interpretation of the teachers’ participation in the project. It is argued that the teacher’s sense of identity, value and moral purposed play an important but often neglected role in their involvement in an innovation.
[Copyright © 2004 International Society for Teacher Education.]