作者利用問卷調查香港中學中文教師對下列「專業知識」的了解：一、對中學中文科課程的認識；二、對中學中文科教學目標的認識；三、對中學中文科課程「銜接」的認識。結果顯示：中文教師對本科課程少有深入的了解和研究，對中、小學課程的銜接問題更所知不多。作者指出，有限的「專業知識」會妨礙中文教師的「專業發展」。（馮吳淑瑩整理）

作者回顧了三個範疇的教師效能研究：首先是教師個別教學策略和技巧，繼而是理論教學模式、再而是教師認知和反省思考研究。將理論、策略和模式轉化成實踐經驗，實有賴教學實習和教師反思過程。作者指出，現行教學法課程中最弱的就是這兩個環節，而教學反思訓練更全付厥如，這是師訓教育中一項致命的弱點；「教學法」課程革新主要是將學理方法學習、實習前教程策劃訓練、實習教學興視導教學、實習後教學反思訓練四部份連結，構成一個有機結合，這不但可改進教師教學質素，還可改良教師思想質素。（關之英整理）

This paper looks at the developmental needs of teachers in relation to facilitating the personal and social development of students. It goes on to describe a module, 'Personal and Social Education', offered to all pre-service teachers in the Hong Kong Institute of Education which aims at equipping trainee teachers to carry out the guidance role of a teacher in the context of Hong Kong, particularly in the role of a class teacher. It concludes with the results of a survey seeking the views of these trainees on the module they had undertaken.
[Copyright of Pastoral Care in Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1468-0122.00160]

Twenty-one in-service early childhood students participated in a teaching practicum in Australia as part of the final year of a Bachelor of Arts in Hong Kong. Students spent two weeks visiting a university and early childhood settings in Australia. The university based component of the program included workshops and discussions with lecturing staff located in both the Australian and Hong Kong universities. Students were asked to complete written statements about 'What is children's learning?' before and after their practicum experience. An inductive analysis of students' written statements and practicum evaluations revealed an increase in beliefs about children's learning as 'active understanding' over the two-week period. Implications for teacher education programs are discussed.
[Copyright of Australian Journal of Educational and Developmental Psychology is the property of University of Newcastle, Faculty of Education.
Access via Directory of Open Access Journals: http://www.newcastle.edu.au/journal/ajedp/]

This paper provides a case study of the use of language objectives within a newly developed English language teacher education programme in Hong Kong. The programme development team decided to adopt a content-based language teaching approach to support students' second language development through content learning. The teacher education programme (the content) prepares Chinese-speaking students to become secondary level English teachers. Because of students' level of English language proficiency upon entry, the programme must provide substantial support for students' English language development in addition to their learning of subject content knowledge and ELT pedagogy. There is also a government-stipulated proficiency level for all qualified English language teachers, which essentially becomes the language syllabus for the programme. The language objectives serve as a medium for mapping the language syllabus on the content curriculum. There are reasons to believe that the approach adopted has been successful in supporting students' language and content learning. This paper describes the programme development and implementation process and the problems and constraints met. The paper also shares the lessons learnt from the curriculum development and implementation process.
[Copyright of Language and Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.2167/le771.0]

According to the aims of the current junior science curriculum for Hong Kong, students are expected to master inquiry skills for problem?solving, understand the nature of scientific knowledge, and appreciate the limitations of science. These aims are, however, difficult to achieve because available science textbooks focus mainly on the transmission of scientific facts and concepts and most science teachers do not have a good understanding of the nature of science. In order to improve this situation, the Integrated Science course of the Postgraduate Diploma in Education Program of the Faculty of Education, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, has in recent years incorporated a unit that aims at facilitating teachers to construct understanding of the nature of science. This article reports a small-scale study of the effect of this unit on a group of in?service science teachers. The unit consists of a number of historical vignettes that illustrate the process of development of scientific ideas, through which teachers were guided to construct the key steps of the scientific methods and appreciate the nature of scientific knowledge. A pre-test was administered to the subjects to identify their alternative conceptions on the nature of science. Comparison of the scores of the pre?test and post?test indicates that the subjects were found to demonstrate substantial improvement in their understanding of the nature of science after intervention, but some alternative conceptions were still persistent in most subjects. Implications were made for ways to integrate the historical approach into science teaching in schools.
[Copyright of Teaching Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10476210600680382]

While Western educators caution against contrived collegiality in the midst of enthusiasm for peer coaching as a form of teacher development, Hong Kong educators are struggling to detach discussion and observation of classroom teaching from staff appraisal. The challenges for this task are twofold: to secure a niche for peer coaching in the practice of staff development, and to ward off contrived collegiality in the course. Using an action research paradigm, the present project attempted to meet these challenges in two schools. As a joint work between various parties, the present project had to negotiate its way cautiously to achieve genuine collaboration and avoid imposition from the administrators and outsiders to the front-line teachers. During the course, innovative strategies were taken to cope with various difficulties, including time constraints, teachers' psychological pressure, and the possibility of contrived collegiality and implementation partnership. The evaluation of the project showed that the teachers generally accepted peer coaching and found it helpful to their professional development. The experience in the two schools indicated that true collaboration might emerge from organizationally induced collegiality under certain conditions.
[Copyright of Educational Research is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0013188011010xxxx]