Supervision is a powerful intervention into student teachers' learning in the field experience of initial teacher education. This paper presents a study on the supervision of seven student teachers in an initial teacher education programme for secondary school teachers in Hong Kong. Data related to the supervision of the seven student teachers include 16 tape-recorded post-observation conferences, interviews conducted with the 7 student teachers and the 21 tertiary supervisors. The research addresses four issues related to supervision. First, tertiary supervisors' supervisory behaviour in post- observation conferences is examined. Second, the supervisory discourses in the post-observation conferences are situated in the theory-practice continuum. Third, student teachers' and supervisors' perception towards the supervision occasions is explored. Finally, on the basis of the insights gained from the examination of these post-observation conferences and the two parties' perception, attempt is made to draw implications on the role of supervision in the field experience of initial teacher education.

Teaching practice is regarded as an indispensiable component of teacher education programmes. Supervisors from teacher education institutions contribute to student teachers’ learning in teaching practice by paying lesson observation visits and holding post-observation supervisory meetings with student teachers. The question of what constitutes a good supervisory meeting is of great interest to teacher educators. This paper presents a study which looks into supervisors’ subjective accounts of the best supervisory meeting in teaching practice. The study was conducted with lecturers of a former College of Education in Hong Kong who paid lesson observation visits to student teachers in secondary schools. Seventy-five college supervisors completed a self-report inventory on the perceived best supervisory meeting during a block teaching practice period. These meetings involved observed lessons of fifteen subjects at the junior secondary level. Supervisors reported what happened in the perceived best supervisory meeting in retrospect in the inventory. They gave a quantitative account of the time spent on and the themes of discussion in the meetings. Qualitative data were also collected in the inventory. Supervisors reported the conferencing approaches which they adopted in the perceived best meetings. They quoted examples of questions which they asked to facilitate student teachers’ reflection and expressed their views on the characteristics of good supervisory meetings. The time spent on the best supervisory meetings varied a great deal among different supervisors, with a range of 15 to 120 minutes. The most frequently discussed themes in the meetings were student teacher’s instructional approach to the lesson and student teacher’s mastery of the subject matter while the school environment was the least frequently discussed theme. There was also slight difference between elective subject supervisors’ and general supervisors’ focuses of discussion in the meetings. As far as

The development of institute-school partnership to facilitate the implementation of the field-based component of initial teacher education programme has been a dominant theme in teacher education. This paper outlines the development of the Honorary Teaching Adviser Scheme of an initial teacher education programme for cultural and technology subject teachers of secondary schools in Hong Kong. It presents the process of how inputs from a cross-section of stakeholders are integrated in the development of the Scheme. The integration is done through consultation and collaboration between the teacher education institution and the school community. Consulting different groups of stakeholders lays the ground for the introduction of the Scheme. The stakeholders include academics from different departments of the teacher education institution, academics from local and overseas higher education institutions as well as principals and teachers of the school community. Collaboration is done through inviting members of the school community to work on piloting the Scheme before its full implementation. Insights gained from consultation and piloting the Scheme inform its further development. The attempts on consultation and collaboration represent a move from a unidimensional model of institute-school partnership to some form of complementarity (Bines & Welton, 1995). Such development involves a complex process of managing change and redefining roles and responsibilities of higher education and school personnel in initial teacher education.

Whilst institute-school partnership have been affirmed as potentially valuable routes for the professional preparations of student teachers (Booth, Furlong & Wilkin, 1990; McCullough & Fidler, 1994), relatively less is known as to how teaching advisers perceive their roles and the impact of their collaborative relationships with student teachers on their own professional lives. This paper attempts to present the voices of four teaching advisers who participated in a mentoring scheme of an initial teacher education program in Hong Kong. Data collected through semi-structured interviews, lesson observations, and post-observation conferences present a general picture of the promises of the scheme as perceived by the teaching advisers in enhancing their own professional development, as well as challenges at the 'action' level. Findings point to the need for re-envisioning the roles and responsibilities of teachers for their own professional development as well as that of others. The paper will conclude with suggestions for fostering an effective and productive learning experience for both student teachers and teaching advisers.
[Copyright © 2004 De La Salle University, Philippines.]

This paper attempts to explore the complex and multi-dimensional nature of student teachers’ learning to teach in teaching practice from the life history perspective. It first reviews the relevant literature portraying the life history perspective, with particular reference to student teachers’ learning. It then presents the methodology and findings of a pilot study of student teachers’ learning to teach in Hong Kong, adopting the life history lens to analyze the qualitative data collected. The tentative analysis of the data collected tells that the life history perspective is far from offering an adequate explanation of the complexity of student teachers’ learning. Suggestions are made on using the teacher socialization perspective as a conceptual alternative to guide future research.

This paper presents evidence that contemporary teachers in Hong Kong are confronted with professional role diffusion. The phase of stabilization, which characterized many teachers with four to six years of teaching experience in Huberman’s (1989) study, seems to have deferred. In a life history study of four teachers with six to ten year teaching experiences, the absence of a stabilization phase was found in the professional life of the informants. It is argued that the quest of excellence and accountability in school education has contributed to a prolonged period of survival and discovery phase and a rapid recurrence of stabilized and destabilized cycle.