The outbreak of Covid-19 has posed serious challenges to schools and teachers as it forced schools to close and traditional face-to-face teaching was suspended. How did Hong Kong geography teachers respond to these challenges in the first nine months of the outbreak? How did they adapt to the social distancing measures such as school closure? Why did they adapt in the way they did? The researchers interviewed 18 teachers with different lengths of teaching experiences and teaching students of different academic abilities to answer these questions. It was found that even though there were few specific suggestions from the Government and their schools, the teachers interviewed, as a whole, have taken self-initiated steps to adapt teaching strategies and proactively try various means to help their students continue to learn under the constraints of the Pandemic. Copyright © 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

This chapter introduces the reform of teacher preparation for primary General Studies teachers and secondary science teachers to implement STEM education in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (Hong Kong/ HKSAR) of China. In response to the call for the promotion of STEM education in recent policy addresses, STEM education is to be promoted through the Key Learning Areas of Science Education, Technology Education, and Mathematics Education in the school curriculum. Given the imperative role that teachers play in the provision of quality STEM education, the government, universities, and other stakeholders have contributed significant resources and funding to provide training programmes, workshops, projects, and research to prepare teachers to provide students with relevant school-based STEM learning opportunities. The discussion includes mainly pre-service teacher education comprising the degree programmes, subjects, and courses offered at undergraduate and postgraduate levels to nurture qualified teachers in STEM education and some brief information about in-service teacher professional development. Data is collected and analysed from government reports, policy documents, research articles, discussion papers, and programme information on STEM education and teacher education. This chapter provides an overview to inform future directions of teacher preparation for STEM education in Hong Kong. Copyright © 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Few studies have empirically explored the specific elements of schoolteachers’ feedback literacy in spite of its crucial role in supporting student learning in classrooms. To address this research gap, individual interviews were conducted with 20 teacher educators in Hong Kong. The interviewees were asked to explicate the mind maps of schoolteacher feedback literacy that they had previously drawn. Data analysis revealed that the participants perceived schoolteacher feedback literacy as a three-dimensional concept, comprising knowledge, competence and disposition with specifications. In addition, the participants believed that schoolteacher feedback literacy was gradually evolving from a qualified level to a fully professional level over time. In their views, understanding subject content knowledge and developing positive feedback dispositions were prerequisites for developing feedback competencies. The findings of this study enhance the understanding of schoolteacher feedback literacy from the perspective of teacher educators and offer guidance for providing effective feedback training in teacher education programmes. Copyright © 2022 Edith Cowan University. All rights reserved.

Social contagion has been documented across various domains. However, this phenomenon has not been explored in relation to formative assessment in schools. This study examines the social contagion of school teachers’ formative assessment practices and self-efficacy. A sample of 296 teachers from 12 Hong Kong primary and secondary schools participated in this study. All participants completed the same questionnaire twice, one year apart. The longitudinal results showed that formative assessment practices and self-efficacy were socially contagious. When teachers had colleagues who engaged in formative assessment practices and had high self-efficacy, they were more likely to engage in formative assessment and become more efficacious themselves. Also, school-level formative assessment self-efficacy predicted individual-level formative assessment practices demonstrating the importance of collective efficacy. The findings can inform the provision of school support and the design of teacher professional development programmes for promoting formative assessment in schools. Copyright © 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Effective teacher training programs entail cultivating not only professional teaching competencies but also promoting psychological strengths. However, there is a lack of investigation into how different modes of delivering psychological interventions influence well-being outcomes in the teaching profession, such as preschool educators. This study examines the effects of different technologically driven modes of implementing a PROSPER-based psychological intervention on positivity, relationship, outcome, strengths, purpose, engagement, and resilience. One hundred twenty-eight pre-service preschool teachers were randomly assigned to (1) the full intervention (i.e., online workshop and smartphone app); (2) the online workshop; (3) the smartphone app; and (4) the wait-list control group. The results demonstrated that the online workshop mode yielded the strongest intervention effects on well-being outcomes: positivity, purpose, engagement, and resilience. Although the smartphone app mode did not significantly improve psychological outcomes, combining this approach with the online workshop format appeared to have positive retention effects on positivity at the Time 3 follow-up. The findings suggest that the traditional mode of implementing positive psychological interventions could be more effective than the smartphone app-based mode in bolstering pre-service teachers' well-being. Copyright © 2023 International Association of Applied Psychology.

The persistent challenges posed by COVID-19 and political unrest have urged teacher educators in Hong Kong to develop innovative strategies in curriculum design, pedagogies, and assessment and feedback practices in the online environment. The challenges in online teaching have also encouraged teacher educators to reflect on their practices and conduct practitioner-based research to enhance their scholarship of teaching, to respond to the changing society, changing schools and diverse needs from students. The crises caused by the pandemic of COVID-19 and political unrest have driven almost all school teachers and teacher educators to exercise various modes of online teaching, which undoubtedly presents the importance of technology-supported teaching and learning in schools and in teacher education. In the post-COVID-19 era, technology will continue to be one of the major driving forces of educational changes. However, a few issues concerning the negative impacts of online teaching have been rarely addressed in the existing literature. In this concluding chapter, we look into three issues that are relevant to online teaching in the post-COVID-19 era. They are virtual teaching and technology-enhanced curriculum, social and emotional learning, and digital divide and inequity. The discussion of these issues provides a basis to suggest the ongoing innovations in teacher education and directions that deserve further research in future. Copyright © 2023 selection and editorial matter, Kevin Wai Ho Yung and Huixuan Xu; individual chapters, the contributors.

In the past few years, the education sector, including teacher education, has encountered unprecedented challenges resulting from the global pandemic of the Coronavirus (COVID-19). In Hong Kong, it was fuelled by protests and campus occupation due to the unstable political situation. Many universities were forced to suspend face-to-face instruction and adopt online teaching. This volume is a response to the global transformation of teaching and learning from the face-to-face mode to the online mode triggered by these challenges, with a focus on teacher education in Hong Kong. This introductory chapter pulls together the narrative of the volume by detailing such challenges and showcasing how the challenges have accelerated the use of e-technology in teaching and learning online. It provides an overview of the chapters included in this volume and discusses how they contribute to the rationale of the volume and the various sections, which include challenges in teaching and learning in times of crisis, curriculum and pedagogical innovations, assessment and feedback practices, and the scholarship of teaching and learning in the teacher education context. Copyright © 2023 selection and editorial matter, Kevin Wai Ho Yung and Huixuan Xu; individual chapters, the contributors.

This study focused on Hong Kong mathematics teachers' experiences and challenges in online distance teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic. A total of 109 frontline mathematics teachers participated in the survey. Their teaching experiences and challenges during the pandemic were investigated through an online questionnaire and followed up through in-depth interviews. The results show that most teachers believed that their way of teaching mathematics had somewhat changed and that they had tried to offer e-learning as an alternative teaching mode to maintain the quality of teaching during the pandemic. They also tended to focus on external factors rather than internal factors during online teaching. Teachers agreed that a paradigm shift had occurred in the role of teaching during this time of crisis. Although they had developed sufficient levels of technology use, these did not necessarily translate to competence in achieving instructional goals. Ultimately, teachers' personal experiences with online teaching and their beliefs about mathematics teaching are crucial factors affecting the role and effectiveness of online teaching. Copyright © 2023 selection and editorial matter, Kevin Wai Ho Yung and Huixuan Xu; individual chapters, the contributors.