While teacher educator identities have received increasing attention over the past decade, there is a lack of research on teacher educators' professional identities in the complex and shifting higher education contexts. Informed by the sociocultural linguistic perspective, this study investigates two language teacher educators' professional identities in Hong Kong universities. The findings show that the participants discursively constructed their identities, such as "accidental teacher educator," "teacher educator-researcher," "struggling researcher," "teacher of teachers," and "inactive researcher" in their professional work. By drawing on the three interrelated processes of identity formation (i.e. adequation/distinction, authentication/denaturalisation, and authorisation/illegitimation), the study adds to our knowledge of the complex and contested nature of teacher educator identity in relation to the ongoing restructuring and reform in higher education. The study concludes with some implications for teacher education and higher education.
[Copyright © 2015 Australian Teacher Education Association.]

A prominent school issue is health and safety in kindergartens. However, there has been no concerted effort to develop health and safety training as part of the school management of the kindergarten workforce in Hong Kong. A pilot study was designed to assess early childhood teachers' knowledge of and attitudes towards health and safety in kindergartens using a self-reported questionnaire. The participants were 54 early childhood teachers, which included 10 principals, or senior teachers, and 44 frontline teachers of four kindergartens. The results indicated that the teachers' level of knowledge regarding common childhood injuries was high, but their knowledge of health and safety measures was very low. There was a significant difference in the overall knowledge level of the senior teachers and the junior teachers. The principals or senior teachers were more positive towards the need to have a health and safety policy and to develop a health and safety strategy plan and recording system for their kindergartens than the front-line teachers. Furthermore, the teachers with more teaching experience were more concerned about assigning an appropriate staff member to be responsible for different aspects of health and safety than the teachers with less teaching experience. The teachers with a Bachelor degree or above were more likely to indicate the importance of providing professional development training for staff than the teachers with a Diploma degree or below. There is a need for an in-service professional training program for early childhood teachers to increase their health and safety knowledge and attitudes.
[Copyright © 2015 CGPublisher.]

This paper reports a study comparing the immersion pedagogy used by content-trained late English immersion teachers in Hong Kong and language-trained late English immersion teachers in Xi’an, China. The study investigates the classroom discourse of these teachers for evidence of support for their students’ content and target language learning.

The teaching profession has been found as one of the stressful occupations. While numerous research has shown that the school culture contribute to teaching effectiveness and teachers' well-being, it mainly focuses on teachers from the primary or secondary levels of education. Very little attention has been paid to kindergarten teachers despite that preschool education is considered as crucial foundation of young childrenûs learning development. This research examined the relationships between psychosocial work environment of kindergartens and teachersû mental health in Hong Kong. 136 kindergarten teachers were recruited and surveyed on their perceived school culture (School Culture Survey) and general mental health (GHQ-12). Results showed that teachers' perceived school culture correlated negatively with their mental health complaints such as insomnia and tension problems. In other words, teachers who worked in more favourable psychosocial work environment had less mental health complaints than those teachers who worked in less favourable environment. Furthermore, while a significant portion of kindergarten teachers displayed moderate to severe mental health complaints, regression analysis indicated that the school culture domain of collegial support, among other domains such as professional development and learning partnership, contributed significantly and uniquely to teachers' mental health complaints. The implications of developing and sustaining a whole school culture of collegial support in kindergartens are discussed.

It is a cliché that education reform without teachers' contribution would be futile. It is also true that in this fast changing world without change in teachers' fundamental belief and practices the outcome would also be the same. Having gone through eight years of educational reform in Hong Kong, there is a common belief that isolation strategy has disappeared. By this it means so long as one commits oneself to the business of education, a collaborative way of practices both vertically between leaders and the frontline teachers and horizontally among colleagues is deemed to be a culture within which one has to be exposed to influences from all sides. Whether such a condition is taken as a threat to or a resource for professional development depends not only on an individual’s perception and competence but also the kind of condition within which its counterparts have created. It is within this context that this paper attempts to propose a model for organizational development as a whole and teacher's professional growth in particular in light of jazz as a metaphor. The author will explain how this model sheds light on the possibility of how diversity and unity could work together in the service of nurturing excellence and creativity with ethical leadership as the foundation.

Hong Kong has an assessment for learning policy and a cultural context that emphasizes examinations. In addition to associating student grading with improvement, important improvement-oriented conceptions have been identified among Hong Kong teachers and which were not fully instantiated in the original Teachers’ Conceptions of Assessment (TCoA) inventory. An expanded Chinese-TCoA inventory was administered to in Chinese in both Hong Kong and southern China. The intended 6 construct structure was not supported. Exploratory factor analysis (MLE, oblimin rotation) identified 7 factors, which were further reduced to 3 major inter-correlated constructs (i.e., improvement, accountability, and irrelevance). Improvement and accountability were strongly inter-correlated (r=.80), while improvement had a weak negative correlation with irrelevance and accountability had a weak positive correlation with irrelevance. The model had 7 factors based on 33 items and acceptable fit (χ2=3856.97, df=426; χ2/df=9.05, p<.001; CFI=.85; RMSEA=.065; SRMR=.065; gamma=.90). Two group nested invariance testing (i.e., Hong Kong vs. southern China) showed that the model was statistically equivalent, except for item residuals (k=62; χ2=4612.89, df=891; χ2/df=5.18, p=.02; CFI=.83; RMSEA=.047; SRMR=.065; gamma=.94). Differences in mean scores between the two groups showed that Hong Kong teachers agreed more with the ideas of assessments helping student learning, being accurate, and being examinations; whereas southern China teachers agreed more that assessment was irrelevant. This study contributes to our understanding of how assessment is understood by teachers working within Chinese contexts.
[Copyright © 2010 The Authors.]

The World Health Organization has warned that depression, which is an emotional illness, will become the second most prevalent killer in the world. Many young people are showing signs of depression and other mental illness: for example, Hospital Authority figures in Hong Kong show that between 1998/99 and 2000/01, the number of adolescents under 15 receiving mental health treatment rose from 1,355 to 2,321, an increase of over 70 percent. A web-based survey of all first year entrants to HKIEd at two-point: within first month of entrance, and six months later will be conducted, implication will be discussed.

Many Hong Kong schools are concerned with the growing number of enrolment of ethnic minority students. This article examines ethnic minority teachers’ cross-cultural experience and their view of the diverse needs of ethnic minority students and how these needs were fulfilled. Qualitative data were collected from unstructured interviews, where the views of fifteen teachers of Pakistani, Indian, Canadian, Pilipino, from three primary and three secondary schools, were explored. This finding was illuminated by the interview study, showing that the diverse learning needs of ethnic minority students and their classroom behavior were culturally different from the majority of Hong Kong Chinese students. To manage the classroom diversity and promote cultural responsiveness, the teachers struggle for conceptualizing a new rationale for cultural responsiveness to diversity, developing a sense of inter-cultural sensitivity and promoting cultural responsiveness to diversity. This paper argues that like students, teachers simultaneously engage in a crossculture process through which they learn the culture of ethnic minority students, re-learn the culture of their own and re-think about the relevant rationale underlying cultural responsiveness. For ethnic minority group of school practitioners, there was a need to give them hope as a way to get them motivated to learn, face new challenges and explore the new opportunities. At last, the implication of the creation of a culturally responsive classroom will be given.

The primary aim of this paper is to describe what a professional learning community is and how Learning Study can be regarded as a platform to develop such community in schools. This paper also aims to illustrate with a Learning Study case how the knowledge produced in the Learning Study process becomes public, first within the school in which the case is conducted and then widely across schools as part of the dissemination process. A professional learning community is one where teachers relate their professional learning to the improvement of their students’ learning; take collaborative responsibility for students’ learning; and work together to maximize their learning. Learning Study, which is a form of action research premised on a conceptual framework that builds on three types of variation, is employed as the key agent in the development of such community. By focusing on these three types of variation in a specific object of learning, teachers in the professional learning communities are able to learn from their students, from other teachers and from researchers. Dissemination of the Learning Study case through public seminars to other teachers is an integral part of the participating teachers’ learning when they reflect and prepare for it. Each teacher’s personal professional development thus contributes to a collective knowledge base. This paper draws on the data of a Learning Study about the teaching of “Evaporation and Condensation of water” at Primary 3 level to illustrate how teachers’ professional learning can be enhanced through: engaging in the study that permits a professional dialogue among colleagues; enhances collaboration with tertiary institution; encourages teachers taking enquiry stance; opens opportunities for multiple means of dissemination; and opens opportunities for teachers to reflect on their own practices in a more systematic way.