Learning Study, in the form of an action research, has been proved to be an effective platform for school-based teacher professional development in Hong Kong. It is grounded in the Variation Theory developed by Ference Marton. In each Learning Study, teachers of a certain subject in a school work collaboratively with staffs from the Hong Kong Institute of Education to plan and teach a lesson targeting to achieve some important goals and/or to solve some learning difficulties in the curriculum of that subject. This presentation is about a Learning Study of a junior secondary school science topic "Eyes and Vision". In this Learning Study, drawing of ray diagram was identified to be a critical learning difficulty of the students. Activities were then designed based on the Variation Theory. Students were expected to develop the ability to use ray diagrams to describe, explain and predict phenomena about seeing sharp and blurred images through these activities. They could investigate light propagation and the formation of image through one phenomenon without involving advanced knowledge in either reflection or refraction. The whole process of conducting the Learning Study will be reported. It includes the identification of learning difficulties, the planning and the teaching of the lesson and the evaluation of the learning outcomes.

Curriculum orientations are beliefs about what a school curriculum should achieve and how teaching, learning and assessment should occur. Five major orientations to design science curricula were identified. They are academic, cognitive processes, society-centred, humanistic, and technological. This article reports the results of a survey on the primary science curriculum orientations of 437 pre-service student-teachers studying 2 primary education programmes. A 41-item questionnaire was developed to measure their beliefs about these five curriculum orientations. Statistical results show that the instrument is reliable and the student-teachers strongly believed in the cognitive-processes orientation, but they generally did not reject the other four orientations. The effects of science background knowledge, teaching practice experiences and the nature of science modules studied were tested. Implications of these findings are discussed.
課程取向是指有關學校課程的目標、教學方法與評估的信念。本文界定了五種有關科學課程的主要取向，它們是學術取向、認知過程取向、社會中心取向、人文取向和科技取向。本文報告一個對小學科學課程取向的調查研究，調查的對像是分別修讀兩個教育課程的437 位職前師訓學員，調查工具是一份有41 項問題的問卷，統計結果顯示工具的信度頗高，而學員最認同認知過程取向，不過他/她們亦不排斥其他四種取向。同時亦測試了有關學員的科學知識背景、教學實習的經驗和曾修讀科學單元的性質等因素可能產生的影響。從以上研究結果所得出的啟示都會在本文作出討論。
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