The increasing number of Mainland Chinese immigrant children with difficulties in Hong Kong schools mandates understanding of the complex interactions between cultural-linguistic differences and disabilities. This case study adopted narrative inquiry to probe deep into participants' lived experiences to reveal that the special education teacher was primarily concerned about the student participant's difficulty associated with his disabilities, totally unaware of the impact of her limited proficiency in the child's first language. Researchers called for government policies to integrate special and multicultural teacher education.
[Copyright © Elsevier Ltd.].

This paper explores the predictive relationship between knowledge management and school capacity. A cross-sectional quantitative survey was designed to collect data from 427 teachers at 15 secondary schools in Hong Kong. A structural equation model was applied to explore the factor structure of the latent variables and their relationships. The results showed that knowledge accessibility, application and sharing were identified as the predictive factors for teacher learning capacity and organizational learning capacity.
[Copyright © Elsevier Ltd.].

This paper reports a study on the leadership capacities of a group of 185 aspiring principals. A questionnaire consisting of 24 questions was constructed to examine the levels of leadership capacities of these aspirants. The findings indicate that the aspirants seemed to feel more competent in the leadership area of 'teacher professional growth and development' than they did with regard to 'quality assurance and accountability', 'learning, teaching and curriculum', 'strategic direction and policy environment', 'external communication and connection to the outside world', and finally 'staff and resources management'.
[Copyright © Elsevier Ltd].

The New Senior Secondary (NSS) curriculum has been implemented in Hong Kong since September, 2009. One major objective of this initiative is to help students acquire critical thinking, information technology and life-long learning skills through the Independent Enquiry Learning (IEL) approach. Geographical Information System (GIS) and Satellite Remote Sensing (RS) can be very effective tools for multiple subjects in the NSS curriculum, particularly in Geography and Liberal Studies. However, there exists a huge technical barrier for teachers to apply the technologies in the ordinary classrooms. Hence, this project, funded by the Quality Education Fund of the Hong Kong SAR Government, aims to support the teachers of Hong Kong using GIS and satellite remote sensing in their classrooms. The implementation approach is designed totally from a practitioner's perspective; hence, the fundamental brief of this project is to develop useful resources for teachers and the products shall be; 1.) Teachers and Students - Friendly; 2.) Encourage students to practice critical thinking and spatial thinking skills; 3.) Encourage students to apply knowledge / experience acquired through the learning activities to the other field of interests; 4.) Lowering the barrier of transforming teachers’ / students’ creativity to practical GIS / Remote Sensing projects and learning activities. Products of this project include a comprehensive resources pool of GIS Data and Remote Sensing Images; a teacher-friendly GIS and satellite image processing software; teachers’ training workshops and mostly important, school-based supports. This paper will highlight the first batch of achievements and products, evaluations, successful cases of classroom implementation as well as the feedback from the frontline teachers.
[Copyright © 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Yasushi Asami.]

This paper presents an evaluative study exploring a tripartite field experience model of an initial teacher education programme for enhancing pre-service teachers’ learning. The learning process of the model incorporates campus-based courses, school mentor supports, and activating pre-service teachers’ self-efficacy. A cross-sectional quasi-experimental questionnaire was applied to collect data from 229 pre-service teachers of the biggest teacher education institute in Hong Kong. A structural equation model was applied to explore the relationships between the learning process and their learning outcomes in their teaching practices. The results show that the model could improve pre-service teachers’ skills in instructional design, assessment strategies, and managing class activities.
[Copyright © 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd.]

Since the 1980 s, Outcome-Based Learning (OBL) has been gaining popularity around the world. In 2006, the University Grants Committee (UGC) of Hong Kong decided that all higher education institutions in Hong Kong should adopt OBL formally stage by stage to enhance learning and teaching quality. As OBL is new to most Hong Kong higher education institutions, there is an urgent need for a close study of the design and implementation of OBL in the Hong Kong context. This paper reports on a case study of designing and implementing OBL in a linguistics course in the Hong Kong Institute of Education (HKIEd).
[Copyright of Procedia: Social and Behavioral Sciences.]