Environmental education has been widely promoted in Hong Kong schools since the 1990s. Teachers have a crucial role in educating students to be well-informed, environmentally aware and responsible green citizens. The environmental literacy and tendencies of teachers are seen as having far-reaching influences on the development of environmental education in Hong Kong. This paper aims to elucidate teachers’ competence in implementing environmental education in schools through their narrative dialogues regarding their engagement in classroom practice and thinking about environmental education. The teachers were selected from a pool of teacher respondents categorized according to their scores for environmental knowledge, attitude and behaviour in a territory-wide survey of Hong Kong primary school teachers. Follow-up interviews with three teachers of varying levels were conducted to explicate their personal stories, focusing on how the teachers’ knowledge–attitude–behaviour associations influence their implementation of environmental education in schools. The teachers’ experiences and perspectives behind their stories provide crucial, specific baseline information, informing the development of more relevant teacher education programmes in environmental education, and subsequently, enhancing environmental education in schools.
[Copyright © 2014 Taylor & Francis]

Good teachers in Hong Kong are usually measured by their ability to help students gain in their academic achievement. Other roles of a good teacher such as the modelling role and guidance role have been neglected. The roles of a teacher have been changing in this era of drastic change brought about by the advancement of high technology. Teachers are not solely relied on for knowledge. Local studies done on teachers and principals generally suggest that other roles besides the teaching role should receive more emphasis. This paper aims to investigate student teachers' perceptions of a good elementary school teacher. Attempt will also be made to compare the result with that of the local studies. It is hoped that the study will help to trigger off more large-scale research in this area with a view to shape the future provision of teacher education. Instruments used to measure the student teachers' perceptions of a good elementary school teacher include a questionnaire survey, a semi-structured interview, and the analyses of their study journals. The sample will be taken from the Hong Kong Institute of Education which is the major body in providing teacher education in Hong Kong.

Chinese is one of the significant subjects in the primary core curricula in Hong Kong. Through the acquisition of the Chinese, the students are expected to master the skills of writing, reading, listening and oral aspects of the language. Although the acquisition of Chinese seems to be similar as the English, it normally embraces more elements other than language acquisition such as the cultural and social aspects since Chinese is also the mother language of the students. It is therefore interesting to explore how the primary teachers make decisions in Chinese teaching: what are the concerns of the teachers before the lessons, what are the emphasis and interactions during their lessons and what are reflections of the teachers after their lessons. In this study, three experienced teachers were interviewed and their lessons were observed. In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted before and after the lessons. The data were triangulated with the data from the lesson observations. The results of the study will shed lights on teacher education in the Chinese teaching.

The State Education Development Commission in China introduced the communicative syllabus in 1992. However, evidence indicated that the traditional structured-based approach was still prevalent in the English classroom. The paper is an attempt to examine rural teachers’ concerns regarding the adoption of a communicative language teaching (CLT) approach in their classroom. The data for the investigation came from teachers’ journals written during a two-week training programme organized by a Hong Kong voluntary group in Gansu Province, classroom observations, interviews, as well as written correspondence between the teachers and the mentors. The analysis showed that the teachers were positive about the effectiveness of CLT in motivating students to learn English. However, a number of teachers’ concerns that might hinder the adoption of CLT were revealed. Examples of these included teachers’ low English proficiency, lack of confidence, a misconception of CLT, poor understanding of language teaching and insufficient acquisition of teaching skills. The measures taken to help the teachers during the programme were discussed. It is hoped that the discussion contained in this paper could lead to a more frequent professional exchange between teachers from the mainland and Hong Kong so that CLT can be elevated to a new level for the benefits of both teachers and students.

In the current curriculum reform of Hong Kong, the Curriculum Development Council (2002) recommends that teachers make use of co-operative learning to cater for their students' individual differences. A common feature of co-operative learning is that students help each other to learn in small groups towards a common goal (Cohen, 1994; Johnson & Johnson, 1999). For such kind of co-operative learning, the success of members of a group is interdependent to one another (Kagan, 1994; Slavin, 1995). The concept of co-operative learning is radically different from competitive learning in which a student's success builds on the failure of others. This paper aims to investigate the factors influencing teachers when they consider using co-operative learning in their classrooms. A questionnaire was administered to a sample of teachers (n = 179) from five primary schools conveniently chosen. Descriptive statistical analysis as well as factor analysis was performed on the data collected. The results suggested that the respondents agreed, to different extent, to all the twenty items of constraints as listed in the questionnaire. Four categories of factors that influenced teachers' decision to use co-operative learning were extracted. They represented the school and system levels, teachers' conceptions of teaching, pupils' ability and discipline, and classroom level. The study concluded that, in view of the various constraints, it would be difficult for teachers to implement co-operative learning to meet the curriculum re-structuring. Based on the findings, some recommendations were made.