Noting that there are few studies conducted in Hong Kong to clarify the critical issues of the teaching of science process skills at the primary schooling level, the author made an effort to investigate primary teachers’ perceptions concerning the teaching of the skills. A total of 159 General Studies (GS) teachers in 30 primary schools responded to a questionnaire survey. The analysis shows that, first, 68.6% of GS teachers had not studied science at the matriculation level and in post-secondary courses, with many of them had had studied science merely up to F.3 level. Second, secondary science education is a crucial training in building up primary teachers’ self-perceived ability in teaching science process skills. And third, the teachers themselves were deficient in such high-level science process skills as inferring, predicting, formulating hypotheses, and investigating. Implications are discussed.
[Copyright © 2002 The Hong Kong Institute of Education.]

Elsewhere, serious research attention has been paid to the needs and concerns of beginning teachers so that rational efforts can be expanded to optimize the benefits of teacher education programs for supporting and reinforcing those teachers’ professional development. Hong Kong researchers, however, have yet to place a premium on collecting and analyzing those teacher needs and concerns. The authors perceived the research need and had conducted a study that involved the administration of a questionnaire to 500 final year student teachers and interviews with 19 student teachers. The principal findings are that the student teachers in Hong Kong were at the stage of task concerns and had begun to realize the importance of academic impact concern, that they stressed more on impact concerns with regard to the role of a primary teacher and on task concerns when they considered the daily assignments of a teacher, and that the female student teachers were more concerned with student discipline and welfare than the male counterparts.
[Copyright © 2002 The Hong Kong Institute of Education.]

Research on Hong Kong pre-service teachers’ concerns and their perception about effective teaching is meager. Thus, this author tried to help fill the knowledge gap by conducting a survey that involved the use of an open-ended, semi-structured questionnaire administered to 106 student teachers. The key findings are, firstly, three types of concerns were identified: the "Self", "Task", and "Impact" concerns. Secondly, the "Self" concerns constitute the largest proportion of concerns identified by the 106 student teachers; in this category, the most important concerns as ranked by these pre-service teachers are class discipline, acceptance by pupils, and teachers’ mastery of subject knowledge and teaching skill. And thirdly, the concerns are also closely related to such factors as subject matter knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge and teacher pupils’ relationship that the student teachers considered important for effective teaching. The principal conclusions are that teacher education programs in Hong Kong have room for improvement in catering for the needs of pre-service teachers, and that teacher educators need to help reduce pre-service teachers’ concerns so as to facilitate their professional development.
[Copyright © 2002 The Hong Kong Institute of Education.]

This paper reports the implementation of a project designed to involve in service teachers in peer support for the learning of the core values of personal and social education so as to raise self-esteem, to enhance co-operation, to promote rationality and empathy. Project participants were 27 in-service teachers attending an undergraduate program of the Hong Kong Institute of Education. Project evaluation reveals that the project succeeded in generating for the teacher participants emotional, academic, social, technical, and extended supports, and that the benefits of the project also spilled over to their relationships with their primary school pupils and daily lives. Research and practical implications are discussed.
[Copyright © 2003 The Hong Kong Institute of Education.]

How Chinese language proficiency can be enhanced is a key concern in the Hong Kong community. As the current literature suggests that student teachers' beliefs and past experience show great impact on the effectiveness of their learning to teach, this researcher made an attempt to investigate pre-service teachers' perceptions of teaching and learning Chinese in primary schools - a survey that involved 501 student teachers was conducted. The key findings include, first, over 80% of the respondents rated their own Chinese proficiency average or above average, and over 10% respondents considered themselves poor in the mastery of Chinese. Second, while a total of 86% of the respondents considered themselves average or good at speaking Chinese, they still expressed the need to receive more training in oral presentation and writing. And third, among the 13 prescribed teaching objectives set in the syllabi of Chinese, "fostering students' thinking ability" came first in the survey responents' ranking of the importance of teaching objectives, reflecting they needed training in both the subject knowledge of Chinese and pedagogical content knowledge.
[Copyright © 2002 The Hong Kong Institute of Education.]

While creativity is now an important skill to be acquired by Hong Kong school pupils, little empirical research has been conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the teaching and learning of creativity in the Hong Kong context. Absence is also a knowledge-based critical review of the related problems and issues confronting Hong Kong teachers. Remedying those problems and addressing the issues are necessary to the enhancement of effective teaching and learning of creativity. This paper reviews four fundamental problems and issues, which can be categorized basing on their nature and essence – disciplinary, theoretical, cultural, and managerial – and then presents knowledge-based suggestions and theory-driven solutions, as well as research, professional, and the policy implications.
[Copyright of Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education & Development is the property of Hong Kong Institute of Education.]