This paper recognizes the pressures to teachers in the broader climate of educational reform, and asserts that rich opportunities of professional learning are situated in challenges and critical incidents. By drawing data from experienced teacher, this paper elucidates teachers' guilt and resolution with a framework for promoting a culture of personal growth and professional development. The paper concludes by highlighting the creative energy inside teachers who can team up as networks of learners. When sharing deeply the minds and the hearts, they can re-discover deep values in realities of everyday life in a journey of life-long learning together.
[Copyright of Hong Kong Special Education Forum is the property of Special Education Society of Hong Kong Ltd.. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
https://sites.google.com/a/seshk.org.hk/seshk-org-hk/c_publication]

This study aims to establish a robust measurement to obtain a comprehensive understanding of perceptions of programming education (POPE) of teacher and principal groups. In this study, the POPE scale contains three dimensions: (a) understanding in programming (UP), (b) support for programming (SP), and (c) expectation of programming (EP). Self-reported questionnaires were administrated among 258 teachers and 229 principals. Multigroup analyses were used among the two groups. The results of measurement invariance tests show that configural and metric invariance are fully supported, and scalar invariance is partially supported, suggesting the factor structures, loadings, and most item intercepts of the POPE scale are equivalent across the groups examined. Implications of the study are discussed.
[Copyright of Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment is the property of SAGE Publications. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0734282918787670]

STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education is vital for incubating future scientists, engineers, and inventors. Teaching and learning in STEM education require teachers and students to employ design thinking and multi-disciplinary knowledge to formulate new solutions for emerging problems. School teachers are facing multiple challenges in implementing STEM education. With the application of the Self-efficacy and stages of concern theories, this quantitative study (with 235 teacher respondents) aims to unearth Hong Kong teachers’ responses regarding STEM education. The results show that 5.53% of the respondents regard themselves as “well prepared” for STEM education. On the other hand, the respondents have intense “information”, “management”, and “consequence” concerns about implementing STEM education in schools. The findings reflect that there is an urgent need to provide teachers with articulated professional development, pedagogic support, and curricular resources for empowering them to implement STEM education in practice.
[Copyright of The Asia - Pacific Education Researcher is the property of Springer Science & Business Media. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s40299-018-0414-1]

Understandings of social media and its pedagogical potentials remain controversial. Teachers tend to integrate social media in their teaching, which may bring about considerable impacts on their pedagogies in practices. In fact, this is an imperative issue which teacher educators in Hong Kong and those in other places are concerned. This paper reports a multi-case study about preservice teachers’ pedagogies when using social media in teaching. A classification of the social media landscape is called for due to confusion regarding the meanings of such terms as social media, Web 2.0 and user-created content. Two research questions were addressed: (1) What social media did the preservice teachers prefer to use in during their practicums; and (2) what pedagogies did the teachers adopted while involving social media in teaching in the placement schools? A total of 33 preservice teachers (N = 33) from a higher education institution in Hong Kong voluntarily participated in this study after open invitation. YouTube was the most popular standalone social medium and was also used in combination with other social media and non-social media websites to reflect the teachers’ practices in kindergartens, primary and secondary schools. Despite this, the preservice teachers mostly adopted didactic pedagogy with high frequencies of social media use during teaching practicums. This study contributes the salient understandings of pre-service teachers’ pedagogical orientations in using social media. Implications for teacher education are discussed. Copyright © 2018 ADTEL. All Rights Reserved

Outsourcing of the curriculum delivery to educational service providers (ed-outsourcing) has been widely practiced around the globe. Hong Kong is not an exception, but the phenomenon remains rather hidden and under-researched. Drawing on a survey with teachers from 62 schools in Hong Kong (N=215), this study investigates the current practice of ed-outsourcing across subjects, teachers’ and school leaders’ perceptions of it, and its implications on the issues of quality and equity of education. Some interesting and even controversial findings from the study show that there are efforts to ensure the quality and equity of outsourced education, but more is needed. Copyright © 2018 CESHK.

This study investigates the characteristics of the organizational environment perceived by 627 teachers in 64 Hong Kong secondary schools. From the cluster analysis, the perceived school organizational environments can be classified into four typical styles: commitment, control, disengagement, and headless. All of them have contrasting organizational characteristics. The findings are consistent with the studies conducted in Western societies.

This paper reports on an investigation into two pre-service teachers' reflective learning through a series of integrated and interactive tasks (i.e., collaborative lesson planning, group consultation, microteaching and videoed reflections) in a teacher education course in Hong Kong. Relying on data gathered from interviews and reflection videos and informed by a tripartite model on teacher identity in practice, discourse and activity, the study revealed how the pre-service teachers engaged in reflective practice and identity construction in the course. The paper concludes with practical implications on how to design and implement effective reflective tasks in preparing and developing competent language teachers. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

This study explored the role realization journey of 11 English Teaching Assistants (ETAs) in Hong Kong. Their journey is framed through the lenses of Shulman’s (1987) teaching elements of content pedagogical knowledge, knowledge of learners and their characteristics, and knowledge of educational contexts. Data from four different inquiry methods were analyzed and triangulated to map out the journey of the ETAs. During this journey, the ETAs were faced with demands for content knowledge and teaching whilst encountering educational and cultural differences in terms of students’ learning styles and working environment. The ETAs perceived these experiences as shaping their role as supportive teachers, but hoped for structured professional development to enhance their preparedness and credibility – an implication for teaching assistant training. Fundamentally, the ETAs’ readiness to embrace their role as teaching assistants through the many faces of culture, experiences and challenges surmounts their journey to understand the world of teaching. Copyright © 2011 EERA.

Educational-policy makers worldwide are concerned with finding effective strategies to recruit and retain high-quality teachers. The recruitment of second-career teachers has been seen as one means of fulfilling this aim. Against a background of calls to better understand SCTs, this article reports the results of a qualitative study investigating the experiences of six second-career teachers in Hong Kong. Based on a theoretical framework of teacher-identity construction, discourse analysis was used to explore the participants' perceptions of their professional development. In-depth interviews were conducted to gain detailed insights into how the teachers construct their identities-in-practice and identities-in-discourse within Hong Kong schools. The findings expose tensions between attempts the positioning of SCTs within dominant discourses as 'traditional' and 'conventional' teachers, for example, and the participants' self-positioning in practice as 'innovative' and 'risk-taking' teachers. Ways in SCT agency, and hence identity construction, can be facilitated through the introduction of the innovative pedagogical practices which many SCTs seek to pursue in Hong Kong schools are considered. Copyright © 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

This paper reports the results of a qualitative study that examined the perspectives of one group of teacher educators and pre-service teachers about a teaching internship in Hong Kong. Reflecting recent interest in both a practice turn in pre-service teacher education as well as teacher identity construction, the study uses in-depth interviews to reveal how both teacher educators and pre-service teachers construct the meaning of a teaching internship. The results suggest that two discourses dominate such meanings: the discourse of integration and the discourse of separation. The study not only reveals the presence of these discourses but, moreover, considers how their interplay provides affordances for and constraints upon the capacity of pre-service teachers to construct their professional identities during the teaching internship. This exploration suggests that this interplay can lead to identity conflict for pre-service teachers. Implications for overcoming such conflict in ways that support the construction of pre-service teachers' professional identities are considered and suggestions for future comparative research discussed. Copyright © 2018 Teacher Development.