This editorial provides an overview of the articles which are featured in this issue of Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice. This issue includes a number of contributions which deal, directly or indirectly, with teacher learning, and particularly with the development and role of teacher professional learning communities. It also addresses the issue of learning from teaching as teachers describe, analyze and reflect upon their teaching experiences in the classroom, including the connection between their behavior and beliefs and student learning. One of the ethnographic studies focuses on the development of a community of practice for sustainable professional development among 18 teachers of English as second language in Hong Kong. Another article discusses the complex role of special education teachers in Israel. All seven papers included in this issue, in a way or another, look at the complexities of teaching and learning. Overall, a number of overarching themes may be identified: the importance of analyzing teachers beliefs and practices; the key role of professional communities in enhancing teacher learning and change; the need for relevant professional development opportunities to support teacher learning and commitment to teaching; the pedagogies of teaching and their role in fostering teacher reflection and growth as well as student learning taking into account the diversity and guidance provided to them; and the link between the complexity of teaching and the dynamic of classrooms and school culture.
Copyright of Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13540602.2014.928118

How Chinese language proficiency can be enhanced is a key concern in the Hong Kong community. Education Commission Report No. 6 (1995) suggests that teacher education institutions should give more attention to language awareness and language skills in initial training programs. Before teacher educators work out an ideal program for initial training of Chinese language teachers, research findings in TESOL might have shed light on the direction of developing such a program. Freeman (1989) sees language teaching as 'a decision-making process based on four constituents: knowledge, skills, attitude, and awareness'. Almarza (1996), Bailey & Nunan (1996), Richardson (1996), Grossman (1990, 1991a), Barnes (1989) and Claxton (1985) etc. all observe that student teachers' beliefs and past experience show great impact on the effectiveness of their learning to teach. In the light of these past studies, this paper intends to investigate first year pre-service teachers' perceptions of teaching and learning Chinese in primary schooling. It is hoped that findings in this survey can serve as a reference for the development of Chinese language teacher education especially in the Hong Kong context.

Physical Education (PE) in primary schools in Hong Kong has not been satisfactorily run as it claims. Most PE lessons are found to be ineffective in meeting the desirable needs of the pupils nowadays. It seems that PE lessons have been conducted as 'organized recess' which are mostly 'recreational' rather than 'educational' oriented. Their goals are to keep the pupils 'busy', 'happy' and 'good' rather than 'skilled', 'fit' and 'satisfied' (Placek 1983). No wonder PE is the only cultural subject that has been excluded from the 'Secondary School Places Allocation System'. Has the PE curriculum been effectively implemented? Is it the responsibility of the PE teachers to make the lessons more meaningful to the pupils? How does the teachers' behavior during lessons affect the quality of PE in primary schools? The present study employed the descriptive-analytic methodology to comment or what primary school PE teachers did and how they spent their time during PE lessons. Thirteen PE teachers with an average teaching experience of seven years were involved in the study. One of the lessons from each teacher was studied, which was done through direct observation while video-taping was adopted fro cross referencing. Information concerning 'time' spent on management and instruction of the teachers, and left for pupils to practice their skill was collected by means of duration recording, whereas the actual teaching behaviors of the teachers were done through event recording. Pupils' activity level was monitored by means of the heart rate meters (Polar PE 3000). Correlation analysis was employed to examine the relationship between various context variables and the time spent on each areas of the teachers. Results showed that pupils were generally allotted relatively low percentage of time for skill practice. Teachers' managerial and instructional behaviors occupied nearly two thirds of the lesson time. Relatively high percentage of time was spent on travelling at the beginning and

Despite the fact that PMI is not the government policy, an increasing number of schools in Hong Kong have adopted different modes of using PMI in teaching Chinese Language since 1997. Such a trend has caused general concern because Putonghua (the standardized spoken form of Modern Chinese) is not the mother tongue of most teachers or students in the local community. The switch of medium in teaching the language subject may have profound impact on the cognitive development of students because most teachers and students will need to acquire another system of speech sounds and lexicon in handling the subject matter. Nevertheless, as the PMI trend prevails, language teachers are under "pressure" to adjust their teaching medium so as to meet the changing social expectation of equipping students with the standardized form of a world language. This paper reports the findings of a recent study of teachers' views of teaching Chinese through PMI in Hong Kong. Among the group of 20 serving teachers in a postgraduate course, some are proficient in Putonghua and some are not. Through a series of seminar presentation and discussion, these front line teachers revealed the current practices in different school contexts. Insights of these participants represent an "insider's" view of the issue and should inform the development of effective ways of reforming the teaching medium of Chinese in a complex social context.

Physical education (PE) teachers of Hong Kong are now facing challenges like no other time before. In the current climate of education reform, PE teachers are now encouraged to provide a more holistic education to students, including learning goals related to social development, creativity, imagination, problem solving, as well as intellect. In order to attain these physical education goals, there is a heightened emphasis in the area of dance. However, the Hong Kong education culture stresses the academic subjects and dance is not usually a popular subject, although it is recognized as one of the components of PE. Physical education teachers' unwillingness to teach dance has been attributed to inadequate dance experience, lack of confidence, low interest, limited dance exposure, cultural differences between the East and West, and limited participation in dance training after graduation (Chow, 2001, 2002). Out of the many possible factors that limited dance instruction by PE teachers, teacher self-efficacy may be the most critical one. This study investigated the factors that influence pre-service PE teachers' decision to teach dance. Results provide information that may be used to enhance teacher self-efficacy with regard to teaching dance in Hong Kong.

The value and attitude of teachers can have profound influence on shaping the character of their students. In sport, participation and discontinuation are the two most controversial topics being discussed. This study examines the motivational patterns in sport participation of pre-service physical education teachers in Hong Kong. The pre-service physical education teachers will have direct contact with children in the area of physical education and sports in one or two years' time. They will be the most important media in influencing the attitude and value of the children towards physical activities and sport. This study highlightes the conceptual links among Achievement Goals Theory (Maehr & Nicholls, 1980; Nicholls, 1984), Cognitive Evaluation Theory(Deci, 1975; Deci & Ryan, 1985) and Competence Motivation Theory (Harter, 1978) by examining the relationship between task/ego goal perspective and intrinsic/extrinsic motivational orientation. Eighty-one pre- service physical education teachers from the Hong Kong Institute of Education completed the Chinese version of Task and Ego Orientation in Sport Questionnaire (TEOSQ; Duda, 1989) and Sport Motivation Scale (SMS; Pelletier et. al., 1995). The mean and standard deviations for the scores of the questionnaires were analysed to examine the motivational behavior of the subjects. Simple correlation analysis had been performed to determine the relationship between task/ego goal orientations and intrinsic/extrinsic motivational orientations. Gender differences in goal perspectives and motivational orientations had been examined by using independent sample t-tests. The results were used to compare with another sample of 59 pre-service non-PE teachers in order to examine whether RE elective and non-PE elective teachers differ in their goal perspective and motivational orientations. The results demonstrated significant gender difference and elective difference in motivational orientations; with RE elective and male subjects significantly