Teachers and teacher salaries are the two major scarce resources in the provision of education. Teacher shortage problems are common and have been a concern in nearly all countries. High teacher attritions other than retirement have called public and government attention in enhancing retention of teachers as a way to solve teacher shortage problems. The shortage of teachers varies with subjects and levels. In Hong Kong, the shortage of quality English teachers has long been a social concern because of the importance for its citizen to attain high English proficiency levels to maintain the competitiveness as an international city.
The purpose of this study is to investigate the predictors affecting the retention tendency of inservice English teachers in Hong Kong secondary schools from the labour economics perspective with a quantitative survey. Through a more thorough understanding of the predictors affecting their retention tendency, policies can be formulated with a view to enhancing the retention of English subject teachers. The survey was carried out in September, 2002. Questionnaires were sent to 111 publicly funded secondary schools in Hong Kong. A total of 490 completed questionnaires have been collected from an estimated sample size of 1332 English subject teachers in Hong Kong secondary schools. The response rate is 36.8%.
The results show that three domains of predictors: compensation structure, working conditions and personal variables affect the retention tendency of English teachers to continue teaching English. The variance explained by the whole model is 0.211.
For the domain of compensation structure, the three factors extracted from the alternative bases for paying teachers including differential pay, competencies pay and teach load pay are significant predictors of their retention tendency.
For the domain of working conditions for teachers, the results show that the classroom teaching conditions and the school support are two extracted

The "Certificated Teachers' Pay Dispute in 1973" ("the Dispute") was, historically the first collective insurgency of indigenous teachers as well as the first industrial action taken by local civil servants. Teachers from publicly funded schools successfully claimed their economic demands from the then colonial administration. Prima facie the subject matter of this study seems to be concerned only with the economic interest of a certain group of people. However, an in-depth inquiry brings to the fore its underlying political theme, i.e. the redistribution of power. Herein I use the "Political Process Model" as the theoretical framework and the "struggling for power" as the conceptual tool to operate the empirical data. This study also verifies that the Dispute was the confluence of two major political processes, namely (1) an unprecedented political opportunity provided by changes in the political structure, and (2) the change of indigenous organizational strength. The notion of "collective grievances" cannot provide a convincing explanation of the issues aforesaid.
Academically, this study's significance is two-fold. First, by way of comparative study, it proves the applicability of the "Political Process Model" to an authoritarian polity, provided that adjustment is made on the basis of the parameters proposed by Cook (1996). That is to say, political opportunity is rare in a closed political system and only arises in a particular "proximate environment" or a certain specific period of time. It is non-structural. Therefore the opportunity can only be measured by its functionality, which includes the diminution of the possibility of suppression and the access to the polity. In respect of the latter, this study ushers in the new concept of "leverage" to explain how those groups far from the core of power used their numerical strength to successfully challenge the authoritarian colonial government.
Secondly, in the process of sorting out the historical context

九七年版香港小學普通話科課程綱要頒行以來， 配應的教科書陸續面世。由於課程架構和理念的翻新， 教科書編者又嘗試從不同的角度體現綱要的精神， 各種教材的編排系統、內容重點等難免有不同程度的差異。要有效運用及發揮這些教材， 是新教師面臨的一大挑戰。透過一項新入職教師專業成長的研究，我們探討了一些新教師在教材運用方面遇上的困難和限制， 並歸納出他們有待增強的知識和技能。
Since the implementation of the current Putonghua curriculum in Hong Kong in 1997, corresponding teaching materials have been developed to meet the requirements of the curriculum. Because different textbook writers interpret the curriculum differently in terms of teaching objectives, teaching contents and teaching approaches, etc., teaching materials generated vary in focal points. To use these materials effectively in teaching becomes a big challenge, especially for beginning teachers. In a study on the professional growth of beginning Putonghua teachers, their problems in adopting commercial teaching materials are investigated, and the knowledge and skills with which they need to become competent language teachers are identified.
[Copyright of New Horizons: The Journal of Education, Hong Kong Teachers' Associationl is the property of Hong Kong Teachers' Association at http://www.hkta1934.org.hk/]

This paper details the development and validation of the multiple-choice cloze test for the Hong Kong SAR Government's English language benchmarking initiative. The paper briefly describes the background to and rationale behind the benchmarking initiative. It then discusses how well the test worked and the suitability of a cloze test for use with teachers in a high-stakes examination context. The paper describes two cloze tests, set within the Reading Test component of the test battery, which were destined to be used as specimen benchmark test material and prepared for trailing, together with an established anchor test with known values. Efforts were made to include item types which tapped more than mere lexical / grammatical features, e.g., features of discourse and cohesion. The means which emerged on the two cloze tests would appear to indicate that the difficulty levels of the cloze tests trailed for use with teachers are appropriate. Item discrimination figures were also high, indicating that item types generally worked well and that the cloze test is able to differentiate teachers of differing abilities effectively.
本文詳述由香港特別行政區政府倡議的英語基準試中的多項選擇填空測驗(Multiple-choice clozetest) 的發展與成效。文中先簡介基準試的背景及其理論基礎，然後討論這個測驗運用上的適切性。本文論述的兩個填空測驗是屬於閱讀理解組內的測試類別，是預定作為基準試的測試材料樣本，同時更與一已建立信度的測驗一併使用。在測試項目的揀選方面，已盡量包括各項不同的類別，不僅側重詞匯及語法，還有其他如篇章結構等之特點。而這兩個填空測驗所得出的平均值正好標示上述測驗之程度是適合的，且各項目間的數據區分亦高，由此可見測試的項目大體上是運用成功的。填空測驗確能有效地辨別教師的不同能力。
[Copyright of New Horizons: The Journal of Education, Hong Kong Teachers' Associationl is the property of Hong Kong Teachers' Association at http://www.hkta1934.org.hk/]