Among the various approaches that can be used to try to bring about changes in educational initiatives, the main strategies have been broadly classified into three types; those that center on problem solving processes, conceptual changes, and the power and authority of some agents over others (Morris 1996). In a highly centralized educational system such as Hong Kong, the change strategies employed in curriculum initiatives have always been associated with the third. Curriculum renewal tends to be imposed on teachers from the top such as the Education Department. Teachers as one of the major participants in the curriculum development process are rarely involved in the planning and decision-making.
This paper describes phase one of a one-year school-based teacher development initiative in which English teachers of a primary school take the initiative in making changes to their existing curriculum with on-site support from a team of teacher educators. This teacher development project aims at adopting a problem-solving and interactive approach to teacher change in curriculum initiative. It also attempts to explore the roles of teachers and teacher educators in the process of collaboration. It intends to seek the interface between theory and practice in the local educational context, in particular in empowering teachers through mutual communication, negotiation, consultation, rather than top-down persuasion.
This paper also reports the preliminary findings from the qualitative data collected and discusses implications in relation to interactive curriculum change strategies, the interface between theory and practice, and the roles of teachers and teacher educators in a collaborative project.
[Copyright of Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) at http://www.aare.edu.au]

This paper reports the interim findings of a longitudinal study which aims at exploring the effectiveness of a 3-year English Enrichment Programme, on top of the regular English curriculum, in exposing secondary students to more subject-specific English while they learn their content subjects in the mother tongue. The study was carried out in response to the Hong Kong government's decision to firmly promote mother tongue teaching in her post-colonial era after 1997. To evaluate the effectiveness of this programme on students' learning of English, in-depth study with selected schools was done and different research tools including questionnaires, lesson observations, interviews and language proficiency tests were used to collect both qualitative and quantitative data. It is found that the increased exposure to English may have had a positive effect upon students' perception of learning English, if not on actual performance. A closer look at the cases, however sheds light upon the intricate interplay between factors leading to the different degrees of perception about the effectiveness of the programme. These factors include: the willingness of the school to pool resources and efforts in making the most of the programme, the language competence of students, and the teaching focus and methods in class. Recommendations on the way forward will be discussed.
[Copyright of Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) at http://www.aare.edu.au]