There have been rapid changes in the economic, social and technological situations of Hong Kong in the last two decades. Because of these, the education systems and policies have changed accordingly. Have these changes affected the primary mathematics education? The official curricula for primary mathematics at different time spans may give us some hints to the answers for this question. The present study is based on the comparison of three official curricula for primary mathematics set in 1973, 1983 and 1995 respectively and one officially drafted version of primary mathematics curriculum disclosed in 1997. It is found that the 1973 curriculum just served as guidelines for mathematical contents of the public examination for Primary Six students. There are five overall objectives clearly stated in the official curriculum of Primary Mathematics printed in 1983. Compared to the one in 1973, it is much more student-centered. This syllabus is now still the main one used by mathematics teachers and book publishers, though a new curriculum initiative named "Target Oriented Curriculum" has been introduced since 1993. This new initiative emphasizes clearly defined learning objectives and outcomes. In the drafted curriculum for 2001, the new topic of "Probability" and the uses of calculators and computers are introduced. This paper elaborates the changes and discusses their implications for pre-service and in-service mathematics teacher education.
[Copyright © 2000 The Hong Kong Institute of Education.]

The Hong Kong Institute of Education (HKIEd) provides training to students who wish to pursue their career in teaching. The authors, computer literacy lecturers, would like to find out if there is any difference between the expectation and perception of the computer knowledge students should possess in order to be competent junior secondary computer subject teacher. The authors would also compare the computer knowledge required with the present Computer Literacy curriculum and suggest amendment if necessary. A questionnaire was distributed to student teachers of Northcote Campus before and after teaching practice in 1996. The questions were grouped under basic computer knowledge, Logo programming, computer applications and others. Student teachers regarded all the computer knowledge as important. They gave highest regards to Logo programming, followed by computer applications, basic computer knowledge and others before teaching practice. However, after teaching practice, student teachers gave lower regards to all categories of computer knowledge except for the topics included in the"others" categories. It might be due to the anxiety they had before teaching practice and they found the reality was not so demanding. Student teachers found that computer applications were more important than the knowledge of Logo programming after teaching practice. The importance of other computer knowledge remained unchanged. It could be due to the fact that not all schools required student teachers to teach Logo programming to their junior form secondary school students. Although the importance for most topics in the"others" category had decreased, there was a slight increase of importance in the topic of artificial intelligence, computer organization, database programming, objected oriented programming language, operating systems and systems analysis and design. The present HKIEd curriculum has covered all the topics in basic computer knowledge, Logo programming and computer applications

The Hong Kong Institute of Education is offering a Three-year Full-time Certificate in Education Course (Primary Education) and an In-service Course of Training for Teachers in Primary Schools. Because the latter course has a fewer course hours than the former course, there is a notion in the Institute of lengthening the latter course in order to upgrade it into a Certificate in Primary Education (Part-time) Course. The author is interested to compare the Final-year trainees in these two courses on their Self-Efficacy Beliefs in Science Teaching, hoping that it would activate the comparative studies on some other aspects of these two courses to see if the findings would support the above-mentioned notion to upgrade the latter course. An instrument HKSTEBI was generated to measure the construct of Science teaching efficacy beliefs. It was found that there is no significant difference between the two cohorts of trainees in the above-mentioned course.

This is a narrative inquiry of the personal and professional experience of three teachers of civic education in post 1997 Hong Kong. This study aims to explore their perceptions of promoting identity education in schools in the context of Hong Kong's reunion with mainland China and how their perceptions have been shaped by their own personal experience of the issue of identity. It is found from the study that while the teachers themselves are still puzzled by their own Chinese identity, their attitudes towards helping students to identify with the People's Republic of China (PRC) look ambiguous, reserved and even resistant in respect to identifying with the Beijing regime. This study has helped illuminate the current situation of identity education in Hong Kong.

The teaching practice is a crucial part of the teacher education program. During the field experience program, student-teachers put the theory learnt into practice, and acquire teaching experience in actual school settings. The quality of learning acquired largely depends on the quality of support provided by the Institute and the schools before and during the practice period. Dispoto's study stated that student-teachers experienced conflict and stress during their field experience. The strain to learn to teach may result in feelings of incompetence and lack of confidence, and may affect the attitude, behaviour and performance of the student-teachers. Besides support from the Institute, student-teachers also receive support from teachers (mentors) in the schools where they perform their practice. With reference to the expectations for mentors concluded by Grimmentt and Ratzlaff, mentors need some pre-requisite knowledge and skills, e.g. observation skills, up-dated knowledge on education theories, ability to undertake critical analysis of one's and other people' lesson in order to involving student-teachers in planing and evaluating learning experience, conferring and evaluating their development through regular observation and feedback. Since the establishment of the Hong Kong Institute of Education in 1994, a new form of teaching practice has been introduced in the 2-year full time primary teacher education program, namely the Co-operating Teacher Scheme (CTS). Co- operating teachers from schools are assigned to student-teachers and perform the functions of the mentors. In a local study student-teachers were found to have lowered the perception of their competence after the teaching practice. Our previous researches revealed that the co-operating teachers (CTs) would like to have more updated knowledge of education theories, teaching strategies, observation and communication skills so as to enhance the learning of the student-teachers. In order to improve the quality