This paper presents a qualitative case study of student teachers' professional learning in the field experience of initial teacher education in Hong Kong. It highlights the social nature of seven student teachers' professional learning by portraying the field experience context as a socio-professional context. The focus of the study is on student teachers' interaction with the school management, teachers and other staff of the school, their peers as well as pupils. Data collected include interviews with student teachers and school teachers as well as field observation over two years. Four types of socio- professional relationship between the student teacher and the field experience context are identified: detachment; affiliation; engagement and isolation. The implications on initial teacher education are discussed.

Action research is a type of applied research. It is action-oriented and a form of professional development. It is conducted by practitioners and is geared toward the improvement of professional practice. Action research as a tool of inquiry can be used to discover solutions to discrete problems that emerge in any classroom or school. Presented here are three cases of action research that aim to improve areas of concern in teaching and learning at the individual subject, school and across-schools level. Queenie CHENG and her team present "The Action Research on Classroom Learning and Professional Development of Teachers" which is a subject-based action research; Stephen LUI presents a whole school action research, "Working on What Works: A Case Study to Improve the Effectiveness of a Government Secondary School in Hong Kong"; and Paul LEE, Siu -Wai WU and Peter TANG of The Hong Kong Primary Education Research Association present "Sharing and Action research on School Self-evaluation in Primary School", an action research project joined by nine primary schools. This symposium provides a chance for open discussion.

Gender issues are some of the core concerns of policy, practice and provision in relation to education. There is a popular notion that boys are naughty while girls are good mannered in primary schools. In many studies, boys were found to engage in more rough-and tumble play and physical fighting than do girls (Thorne, 2002). It seems that it is more difficult for teachers to deal with boys than with girls. However, in the emerging literature, within girls, there are different types of emotional and behavioral problems, such as aggression, which is not unusual that teachers may face with. Research with empirical data on how teachers help girls with emotional and behavioral problems is spare. In order to understand more how teachers in training deal with the gender and the nature of students' problem, this study investigates the responses of pre-service teachers in helping students in a guidance training programme, which is a part of a pre-service new B.Ed. module. The study aims to make some suggestions for effective preparation of the pre-service teachers to play their guidance role in Hong Kong primary schools. In an attempt to explore how pre-service teachers developed their capacity in helping students with different gender and nature of problems, two scenarios were used. Case 1 was a by in a helpless situation (with emotional difficulties) while case 2 was an angry girl with aggressive behavior (with emotional and behavioural difficulties). Qualitative research approach in form of case study was used. The sample, 16 student teachers with some seemed to be very aware of, others largely ignorant about the guidance role of teacher were selected for in-depth interviews to chart their development in the training programme. Their responses for handling of two different cases of pupils' problems in the interview schedule were analyzed. The results of the study show that student teachers had developed their abilities in handling pupils' problems in terms of attitude towards

On teacher preparation, Forlin, Chong and Au conducted a survey on a group of postgraduate students taking a module on catering for diversity in September 2005. A four-part likert instrument was used to obtain pre- and post-data. The survey aimed to find out whether there were changes in teachers' attitudes, beliefs, and concerns following participation in a course of study.

Education values and beliefs in whole child development underpin the aims of education in the 21st century. Literature shows that teacher's belief in humanistic approach in bringing out the holistic development of a child plays a significant part in fulfilling the education ideology. The study of a group of 35 in-service primary school teachers in Hong Kong in 1999/2000 revealed that although a considerable number of them believed in the affective approach, they had technical difficulties in the implementation owing to the constraint of time and resources, whilst teacher development in understanding humanistic education is essential to facilitate the change.