With the surging demands for the use of network-based learning environment in primary and secondary schools, the knowledge and practical skills on school LAN management is increasingly critical for our pre-service and in-service IT teachers. Many of our IT graduates will assume the role of IT coordinators in their employed schools on top of their regular teaching duties. Training on network concepts and hands-on communication skills are essential to them. In this paper, we describe our model LAN project for teaching and learning. The model LAN stimulates a school¡¦s networking environment so that our student teachers can acquire the relevant knowledge and practical skills very close to the real school networking environment.

This paper shares the personal experience of a teacher educator in Hong Kong who took the opportunity of lecturer attachment to a local primary school to field-test the application of information technology (IT) in teaching a primary school subject in Hong Kong. This is with the aim to get herself familiar with the application of IT in teaching primary pupils, as well as to initiate more discussion and demonstration in promoting the use of IT to the pre-service teachers. The paper also reports on how the teacher educator planned, implemented and evaluated her teaching, along with the difficulties encountered. The paper concludes with practical suggestions for teacher educators and pre-service teachers in Hong Kong on how to implement IT effectively in primary classrooms.

Since 2000, all schools in the public sector in Hong Kong have implemented school-based management. However, it is only recently that the government has passed a new bill to enforce the setting up of a mandated structure of the school-based council in schools. Many school sponsoring bodies are worried about a possible diminution of their control as a result of the new management committee structure. At individual school level, the readiness of school principals, teachers and parents seems to be the core of the question. Principals’ transformational and curriculum leadership in local schools seems to be weak. As a result, policy-makers attempt to work out ways to enhance the implementation of school-based management by providing training for school managers, promoting home–school relations and encouraging the professional development for principals. In addition, there is a need to enhance leadership development for supervisors and middle managers. Future challenges to schools include carrying out a smooth transformation of the present school management structure to the required incorporated management committees, effective implementation of school-based management under the new bill and quality training for other stakeholders.
[Copyright © Springer 2005.]

How gender operates is a key factor in the ways in which physical education is organized, taught and experienced by students and teachers. This essay highlights the gendered contours of the history of physical education development in Hong Kong, its Chinese heritage and its colonial foundations - the persistent influence of British approaches to physical education teacher education and the promotion of sport. The paper is a collaborative work between Chinese-born and Western scholars. It examines the relative influences of Chinese attitudes towards gender roles and the active, sporting body and the continued impact of Western approaches to physical education and sport in a post-colonial society.
[Copyright © 2005 Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business.]

Reflection is at the heart of continued professional development (Moore, 2002). Many educators view that reflective abilities are desirable characteristics of teachers (Gore and Zeichner, 1991; Herrmann and Sarracino, 1993). Killon and Todnem (1991) indicate in their study of in-service teachers that reflective thinking can be a tool for continued personal and professional development. My previous study (Tsui, 2004) corroborates their viewpoint. Empirical work on reflection in early childhood teachers in-service is seriously underplayed. The purposes of this study were to explore the elements of early childhood teachers' pedagogical reflection as well as factors affecting the development of reflective thinking among early childhood teachers in the authentic settings. Two beginning and two experienced early childhood teachers were recruited from four preschools in Hong Kong. All participants attended an intervention exercise within ten months. The interventions took the form of interviews, workshops and documents. Findings were emerged in the form of themes and categories: on reflective thinking, on children learning, interaction with children, teachers' teaching, curriculum issues, school context and personal characteristics. Several school factors as well as the mechanism of how these factors affecting reflective thinking and its development were identified in this study. We need to probe deeper into the factors, both school workplace conditions and personal factors.

This paper reports a lesson learned from an initial attempt of incorporating ICT into ordinary module teaching of Chinese linguistics in a teacher education programme. In the teaching and learning process, student teachers were found strongly motivated by online exercises but were not interested in using other online facilities. Feedback from the module participants on the reasons underlying the behaviour patterns identified were collected through focus group interviews at different stages of the module. Findings indicate that poor computer literacy in Chinese, frequent contact with other participants and the lecturer and learning styles all hindered the participants from responding to online discussion and sharing. To optimize the use of e-learning facilities in supporting the study of the same module, the participants suggested that more sensible and authentic online activities are needed. Educators interested in adopting e-learning need to plan and structure more tactically in establishing a context for deep online learning.
[Copyright © 2004 The Association for Advancement of Computing in Education.]