Recently, the school and co-operating teachers have an increasingly important role, by offering stronger support during the teaching practice. Being congruent with similar developments in teacher education programmes in other countries, this development in Hong Kong is strengthened by research studies examining the process of learning to teach. By arguing that the process of learning to teach can be examined from a personal constructivist view of learning, this paper examines the experience from the student-teachers' perspective. The finding reports on the problems perceived by the student-teachers during the student teaching practice and the support provided by the co-operating teachers. The problems encountered and the support obtained were compared and contrasted to reveal the possible roles of the co-operating teachers. The process of learning to teach is extended from a personal view to include support from the social milieu. This paper proposes to consider the process from a social constructivist view of learning. Drawing on the findings, it concludes with implications on how the school and the teacher education institute can collaborate and support the student-teachers from a social constructivist view of learning.
[Copyright © Nanyang Technological University & National Institute of Education.]

Participating in Schools Around the World Project (SAW) provides local participating primary and secondary teachers a good opportunity to look into their current teaching practices. Science has been taken as the first investigation subject, which is an area that demands more attention in Hong Kong. Joining the SAW project, it may improve and enhance the quality of Hong Kong science education by promoting and encouraging professional development of the participating teachers through local and international sharing and discussion on the collected samples of student work in science with the aid of technology advancement. This paper focuses on how student work and technology can act as a means to achieve this aim.
[Copyright © 2000 HKIEd APFSLT.]

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.]

The field experience component in the four-year Bachelor of Education programme (Primary) at The Hong Kong Institute of Education offers a number of opportunities for students to observe or teach in a school. The aim of this paper is to analyse the learning of the student teachers and the supporting teachers during the field experience period in the second and the final years of the programme and to explain this using a socio-cultural view of learning. Student teachers and their supporting teachers in their second year of study in 1999-2000 as well as those in their final year of study in 2001-2002 were interviewed. The findings illustrate how supporting teachers and the lecturers can act as agents and describes their use of mediational means including teaching resources, and information about pupils’ abilities and habits, in facilitating the learning of the student teachers. The findings also compare the sharing of intent between the lecturers and the supporting teachers. The professional development of the student teachers and the supporting teachers is then analysed with a plane of participatory appropriation which is characterized by its dynamic nature and changes among the participants. Finally, the paper summarizes suggestions on how professional development of the student teachers during the field experience may be analysed by adopting a socio-cultural view of learning. Drawing on the analysis, the paper concludes with implications on ways to facilitate the learning of the student teachers during the field experience period.

Understanding student teachers’ development of conceptions of teaching and learning is critical for teacher educators. Drawing from the findings of a four-year longitudinal study in Hong Kong, this paper examines the trajectories of the student teachers’ changing conceptions of teaching and learning approaches throughout their undergraduate programme. Three types of trajectories: guided touring, experiential detouring and self-guided touring, as the changes in both conceptions of teaching and learning approaches, are presented. The results suggest that three factors: faculty, learners’ attitudes towards learning and ability to integrate different learning resources, influenced the development of the student teachers’ trajectories. This study adds to the international body of knowledge on the interconnected development of conceptions of teaching and learning approaches. The paper concludes with the implications for teacher education.
[Copyright © 2015 Taylor & Francis.]

Science educators have been placing much effort in attempting to define and illustrate how scientific inquiry may enhance student learning. Learning through scientific inquiry can be seen as an active process when the individual learner makes linkages between existing ideas and new ones. Self-assessment is one of the ways to promote such an active learning process. When the self-assessment is effective, it becomes a topic of discussion with their teachers and amongst one another, which further promotes reflection on one's own thinking that is essential for sound learning. As teaching, learning and assessment should be coherent, the assessment methods, among which is self-assessment, need to be part of the planning of scientific inquiry tasks. This paper aims at reviewing literature in both fields of self-assessment and scientific inquiry, as well as providing evidence of teacher practice in different countries to define how self-assessment for scientific inquiry actually works. Four examples from an international project called "Schools Around the World" are selected for illustration. These examples were contributed by teachers in the U.S.A., France, Hong Kong, and Japan. Though the nature of inquiry is different in each example, they all adopt certain methods of self-assessment that other teachers may refer to as they design scientific inquiry tasks for their students.

This paper describes the outcome of a science school-based curriculum development project, a collaboration between the Hong Kong Institute of Education and four secondary schools. The project was an attempt to promote the development of science investigation skills among secondary students. The aim of the project was (i) to try out the strategies proposed, and (ii) to find out from the students after their participation their interest, their perceived difficulty and ways to solve problems encountered in conducting science investigations. This paper describes the various phases of the school-based curriculum development project including the planning, implementation and evaluation of the project. To formulate effective strategies to develop science investigation tasks, a questionnaire was administered to collect feedback from the students. The findings of the project provide evidence that there were positive influences on students' interest in learning science. The responses from the students suggested that they have a higher level of interest in learning science and in participating in measuring or observing results, and planning science investigations. They perceived themselves having more difficulties in the identification of a problem for investigation, writing hypothesis and designing an investigation. More than half of the students also reported not having sufficient knowledge and time in completing the science investigation project. Finally, drawing on the findings, the paper introduces ways of improving the strategies to support science investigations and a two staged model for planning science investigation tasks.

The literature on the scoiocultural view of learning, and teacher development framed the present study. Five beginning teachers teaching science in Hong Kong elementary schools were interviewed three months after they started their first teaching assignment. Support was then provided in the form of a resource pack, an introductory workshop and personal support from the researcher. During the implementation of the resource pack, lesson observations and interviews were conducted. Findings suggest the science teaching was more consistent with a constructivist view of learning and some were even able to influence their colleagues to give more thought to their science lessons. Teacher development is anaylsed with a sociocultural view of learning and recommendations for teacher education were made.

The Learning Centre (LC) Scheme is a collaborative project between the Education Manpower Bureau, a primary school, a secondary school, and the Hong Kong Institute of Education (HKIEd) for facilitating the implementation of the recent education reform in various key learning areas. As a pilot stage of the LC Scheme, the primary LC works on the subject of General Studies and the secondary LC focuses on the subject of Junior Secondary Science. Both LCs achieve the aim of facilitating professional development in their respective key learning areas through a series of face-to-face teacher education workshops, school-based support service and the web-based Teacher Learning Community. The LC teachers need to take up the role of cascading good practices in curriculum and pedagogical changes through carrying out test-bed trial teaching in their own classes, facilitating other teachers' professional development in workshops and providing outreach school-based support. In carrying out these responsibilities, the LCs work with the HKIEd consultant Team which provides mentoring and consultancy services, and evaluates the project. The project is structured into three phases, to wit (I) preparation in leadership or teacher development understanding, (II) the implementation stage (including teacher professional development workshops, web-based development opportunities and school-based support) and (III) the evaluation stage. Using structured interviews, we identified the professional development that the LC teachers experienced in the first year of the project. The paper concludes with recommendations for future development of the LC Scheme in terms of ways and conditions to support LC teachers in realizing this meaningful mission.

This paper describes the learning experience of the student-teachers in an initial teacher education programme run by the Hong Kong Institute of Education. The focus is on the teaching practice period of the programme and the report is made through the eyes of the student-teachers as regards the support they received from their co-operating teachers. In order to enhance the quality of support provided by the co-operating teachers, the first phase of the study is an intervention in which training sessions for the co-operating teachers are provided prior to the teaching practice period. In the sessions, an introduction to recent educational theories; classroom observation skills and basic counseling skills are discussed. This study also includes an evaluation of the intervention through an examination of the quality of guidance provided by the co-operating teachers. The data collected include interviews with the student-teachers, conversation records between the co-operating teachers and the student-teachers, and journals written by the student-teachers during the teaching practice period. The findings contrast the support provided by the trained and untrained co-operating teachers as well as the experience of the student-teachers under their guidance. This paper concludes with different modes of support perceived and discusses implications on the design of field experience for initial teacher education programmes.
[Copyright © 2000 The Hong Kong Institute of Education.]