Reciprocal learning values the cooperative learning abilities of students. Learning takes place in different occasions when students help each other and receive immediate feedback from others. In doing so, it also helps the teacher to get a good sense of where students are with the lesson. Learning strategies it employs include student forming structured-learning teams, assigning roles, and using team building activities, etc. The core principle of such learning thus comes from peer teaching and coaching theories. This paper reports an attempt of using reciprocal learning in the higher education in Hong Kong. The discussion starts first from a review of the rationale of reciprocal learning, its effect and application in teacher education. Second, its effect and use in higher education in form of a case study in Hong Kong. Then, implications are made for teacher education in general. The course under investigation takes into consideration of reciprocal learning principles throughout the teaching and learning design. The learning concepts are incorporated into the construction of the classroom activities and assessment modes. Classroom activities using reciprocal ideas include personal storytelling and giving feedback. Students are encouraged to reflect on their past, share their experiences, and tell their life stories in class. Audiences respond by writing individual feedback to the storytellers. This allows for peer learning to take place among the students. When they are telling and listening the stories, they are at the same time learning from each other, performing both roles of learning and coaching at the same time. As one of the assignments, students are asked to write weekly journals throughout the course. An on-line learning platform is created for students to write the journal entries once a week and read their classmates’ journal entries and give feedback to each other.

This is a self-study of three teacher educators in Hong Kong who introduced narrative inquiry as a means of professional development to a group of pre-service teachers during their eight weeks of teaching practice in 2005. The three teacher educators have reflected on their roles in the initiative in this report. How did they introduce narrative inquiry to the student teachers? How did they help the student teachers realize the importance of their own personal experience in shaping their professional practice? How can narrative inquiry be introduced into the formal curriculum of teacher education in Hong Kong? The primary objective of this self study is to document and reflect upon the experience in promoting the narrative inquiry in Hong Kong.

While much of the current teacher training in Hong Kong adopts a knowledge transmission mode, a means allowing more active participation by story telling is introduced in our study. It aims to explore alternatives to the field of local teacher education. Our focus is on promoting learning and professional development among in-service teachers. This paper documents how we enhance the awareness of teachers’ experiential knowledge through story telling, and our reflections on the achievements and limitations in the study. The experience and implications drawn from this study helps us further develop a useful program for in-service teachers.

This is a review of the curriculum of religious education of the Catholic primary and secondary schools in Hong Kong over the last three decades. Of the subject matter of religious education, there has witnessed an obvious shift of the focus from an emphasis on transmission of biblical knowledge to the call for reflection of life experiences of students in the light of the biblical teachings. As far as the teachers are concerned, a phenomenon has persisted that most of them are not properly prepared for the job in terms of their mastery of essential subject matter knowledge and pedagogical knowledge. The most notable feature of the learners in the context of this study lies in the fact that over 95% of them are not baptized Catholics. The challenge of religious education in such a context has thus become a matter of relevance and attractiveness of the subject to them. Finally, the school milieu has been found not particularly favourable to religious education as academic achievement, instead of character formation, has been given top priority in even prestigious Catholic schools.

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.

This is a narrative self study of the professional experience of a teacher educator on identity education in Hong Kong. In the process of promoting a set of teaching strategies to teacher educators, in-service and pre-service teachers of history and civic education, he was able to explore their perceptions on identity education for youngsters in Hong Kong after her political handover in 1997. It was found that while even educators felt ambivalent about their identities as Hong Kong Chinese, the directions and approaches for identity education also became controversial in the educational field in Hong Kong. This inquiry has demonstrated, with global significance, both the complexity of the issue of identity and the challenges of promoting identity education on a politically shifting landscape.

In this paper, I have inquired into the issue of identity in civic education in Hong Kong in the face of the 1997 political handover through an incident of my personal experience. This is a narrative self study in which the perceptions of civic educators of the issue of identity education for 1997 were revealed. The story of preparing a Catholic civic education project has helped show the complexity of the issue of identity education in Hong Kong. Three major observations were made in the inquiry. First, there was a general acceptance among civic educators of the pluralistic identities of Hong Kong Chinese. Second, the contention aroused over the issue of identity in Hong Kong during the transitional period did not lie in its plurality, but in the relative importance to be assigned to each of the identities, in particular to the national identity of Hong Kong Chinese. Third, a major concern over nationalistic education was focused on the approaches to be adopted in inculcating national identity.