This paper aims to identify the perceptions of the current curriculum innovation in Hong Kong: Target Oriented Curriculum (TOC) by two groups of teachers: the pre-service and in-service teachers. It examines the issues regarding the context, concept and practice of TOC. Focusing on the perceptions of two groups of teachers, it attempts to clarify some issues related to the implementation of TOC and the improvement of teacher education course. When important changes take place in Hong Kong after 1997, a high priority of concern should focus on education.. It is very important that TOC should meet the needs of students and the society.

The Hong Kong Institute of Education, the major teacher education institute in Hong Kong, is launching a personal tutorial system project in an attempt to providing student teachers with advice on personal and professional development in the process of whole teacher education. This paper aims to examine the student teachers' perceptions of the project and its effectiveness. A questionnaire will be administered to the whole sample involved in the project, followed by an interview of a selected sample. It is hoped that the results will have some implications to the 'Whole-Teacher Development'.

The study on effective teachers has been conducted as early as 1890. At that time effective teachers were rated against their personality traits by their superiors. Research done along this line gave discouraging result as the personality traits of an effective teacher were not consistently tied to the rating levels (Barr, 1961 ; Darling- Hammond, 1988). Research focusing on the relationship between teacher behaviour and student learning began to be dominant since the 1960's. Effective teachers were then defined according to their ability to help students gain in their achievement. Lo and Siu (1987) suggest that different people such as principals, teachers, students and parents have different perceptions of an effective secondary school teacher. This paper attempts to investigate the perceptions of student teachers on the characteristics of an effective primary school teacher. The sample subjects consisted of 66 student teachers selected from the Hong Kong Institute of Education. The method of collecting information was by conducting a survey in which all the sampled student teachers were administered to a questionnaire to find out their perceptions of an effective primary school teacher. Four respondents were further asked for interview to look into the reason why they had such perceptions. Frequency counts from the questionnaires revealed that 'possesses a sense of responsibility' ranked top among the ten most essential characteristics selected by the respondents. The findings also showed that an effective primary school teacher should have good personal quality as well as professional skills and abilities. Result of the interview reflected that the respondents' former teachers, their teaching experience, and the Institute in which they were studying were the main factors affecting their perceptions. The implications for teacher education of these findings were finally discussed.

The paper discussed the problems of school-based development of a primary school in Hong Kong.
[Copyright © 2004 Common Ground, Kam Wing Paul Chan.]

Rapid changes have been taken place in Hong Kong since the hand-over of the sovereignty to China in 1997. These changes are far-reaching including the social, cultural economic and political aspects. There is a need to cultivate the kind of people who are creative, knowledgeable and multi-talented for Hong Kong to increase its competitiveness and continue its prosperity. In view of the situation, the Education Commission, the education policy maker of Hong Kong, published a Consultative Document in 1999 namely, Education Blueprint for the 21st Century, Review of Academic System: Aims of Education to review the education aims to enhance the quality of education to meet the challenge. The overall aims of education as stated in the Document are "to enable everyone to develop to their full potential in all areas covering intellect, and social skills, so that each individual is …… ; filled with self-confidence and team spirit; ……." Furthermore, the Document stresses school education should cater for individual differences, foster students positive attitude and increase their motivation as well as creativity. The present paper aims to examine the Document and government archives with the attempt to recommend some teaching modes which are effective to achieve the aims at the stage of school education, excluding the stages of early childhood education and tertiary education. Features of various teaching modes will be analysed and compared to find out the suitable modes.

This paper will report the initial results of a pilot study which will investigate to what extent the use of portfolio assessment is implemented by teachers in public schools in Hong Kong. Levels of acceptance, successful and not successful methodologies and attitudes will be identified. School subject teachers' and principals' perception will be assessed with respect to the implementation process of portfolio assessment strengths, weaknesses, limitations; and how these perceptions have changed over the years since the use of portfolio assessment was first implemented. Constraints and problems identified with the use of portfolio assessment in the schools and classrooms will be investigated. The Project is seen to be important to both Hong Kong and HKIEd as Hong Kong schools move toward reforming the assessment system which will include the use of portfolios. Currently portfolio assessment is underutilized in Hong Kong even though recent policy and reform documents have called for this type of alternate student assessment. The recent call by the HK Examination Authority to review the public examination system also speaks to forms of alternative assessment, including portfolio assessment. However, few education officials thoroughly understand the impact for such an assessment strategy and have done little to prepare teachers and administrators. It is therefore felt that this study can significantly direct the work of educators in a leadership role with a strategy for implementing alternative assessment strategies such as portfolio assessment for education across Hong Kong.

Good teachers in Hong Kong are usually measured by their ability to help students gain in their academic achievement. Other roles of a good teacher such as the modelling role and guidance role have been neglected. The roles of a teacher have been changing in this era of drastic change brought about by the advancement of high technology. Teachers are not solely relied on for knowledge. Local studies done on teachers and principals generally suggest that other roles besides the teaching role should receive more emphasis. This paper aims to investigate student teachers' perceptions of a good elementary school teacher. Attempt will also be made to compare the result with that of the local studies. It is hoped that the study will help to trigger off more large-scale research in this area with a view to shape the future provision of teacher education. Instruments used to measure the student teachers' perceptions of a good elementary school teacher include a questionnaire survey, a semi-structured interview, and the analyses of their study journals. The sample will be taken from the Hong Kong Institute of Education which is the major body in providing teacher education in Hong Kong.

Cooperative learning is only a small component of a core module in the pre-service programmes and an elective module in the in-service programmes of the biggest teacher education institute in Hong Kong. Schools attempting to implement cooperative learning have to rely mainly on the help of external staff developers. Most of the school-based staff development programmes provided by the staff developers start with some introductory talks and workshops, followed by lesson planning, lesson observation and post-lesson sharing by the teachers, and end with a concluding session by the staff developers. Many of these school-based staff development programmes are not effective in attempting to add cooperative learning to the repertoire of the teachers largely because of the weakness of these programmes and the overlooking of the diversified aspects of cooperative learning. This paper suggests a six-phase model of school-based staff development in cooperative learning to enhance the effectiveness of the programmes. These phases are described as setting objectives, participation in workshops, collaborative lesson preparation, peer observation, post-lesson conference and reflection. The model is effective in that it gives ownership to teachers in working in collaboration with their peers as well as staff developers in planning and implementing an innovation.