As the discovery of penicillin from a 'failed' medical experiment illustrates, it is good practice to revisit apparent teaching and learning 'failures'. Two Hong Kong case studies are here reviewed for they report educational 'failures' evidenced by students displaying a negative learning experience while undergoing Problem-based Learning (PBL). The first case study involved Primary Four and Five pupils; while the second investigated post-Secondary school students. An analysis is, provided of these two negative learning experiences followed by a critique of possible solutions. The findings are intriguing 'Problem-based Learning is shown to provide a flexible, responsive pedagogy that reflects Hong Kong's current learning priorities. It is argued that the reported educational 'failure' reflects a tension between learner diversity and educational: priorities, which raises the possibility that these 'failures' indicate not a 'problem with PBI'; but rather a 'problem with: education'.
[Copyright of Hong Kong Teachers' Centre Journal is the property of Hong Kong Teachers' Centre at http://www.edb.org.hk/hktc]

Changing educational priorities are reflected both in the literature and the models that seek to describe initial teachers' professional formation and learning. However, do new teachers' experiences conform to these models? A sampling of Hong Kong secondary school teachers over their first year as full-time teachers provides data from questionnaires and longitudinal interviews supporting a variety of processes and related models which highlight that becoming a teacher reflects individual differences. To account for this array of individual differences an interaction model is proposed that reflects the Chinese cultural context of this study - the 'dim-sum' model - a model that sites initial teachers' professional formation and learning within a multi-perspective and interactive learning context.
[Copyright of Teacher Development is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13664530500200252 ]

Curriculum reform in Hong Kong is one facet of a broad systemic reform variously explained in terms of addressing a changing sovereignty or more recently, of servicing Hong Kong's economic growth. One initiative supporting this curriculum reform entitled Assessment for Learning seeks to promote formative assessment. Three case studies, of teachers within their Hong Kong classrooms seeking to implement formative assessment, serve to highlight a curious contradiction: caring teachers who appear to work against curriculum reform. To explain this contradiction we offer a three-point philosophical framework comprising Confucianism, Daoism and pragmatism, which provides an answer to our central question: curriculum reform in the Hong Kong primary classroom: what gives?
[Copyright of Music Education Research is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14613800802079122]