For enabling the teachers to achieve the IT competence as required by the Hong Kong government for implementing the recent IT in education policy, we find that when it comes to the competent (or upper intermediate) level, a subject-based training approach is definitely more ideal in catering for the special needs of Science teachers whose subject disciplines are highly specialized in terms of content and pedagogy. The advocacy for a subject-based (or subject-specific) IT training course for Physics teachers is supported by some recent needs analysis. Based on those research findings and the content analysis on features peculiar to the Physics teaching and learning, we shall present an initial sketch on the scope of IT applications for Physics through a subject-based approach. Results from the questionnaire survey on the Physics teachers' perception of the training needs in various kinds of IT skills will also be given in this paper.

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.

The contents of nature of science (NOS) in science curriculum have been changed in the past few decades. In the sixties, the contents were mainly about science process skills. Later, the tentative, replicable, probabilistic, humanistic, historic and empirical natures were included in the seventies and psychological and social factors were included in the eighties. In the recent science education reforms of many countries, students' adequate understandings of NOS were explicitly stated or required. In order to achieve similar educational goal in the current curriculum reform in Hong Kong, we must first develop a valid, reliable, practical and easy-to-analyse research instrument for large-scale probing of students' understanding and views of NOS. The present paper reports on how we have made use of 3 cases from history of physical science (to wit, biography of Galileo Galilei, Thomson and Rutherford's atomic models, and observation of "canali" in Mars) plus three other historical cases and issues from the biomedical field (to wit, Jenner's use of vaccination for immunization against smallpox, discovery of SARS virus in Hong Kong, and discovery of the mosquito's role in transmitting the malaria disease) to develop two new sets of questionnaire research tools. The major criticisms on past paper-and-pencil NOS questionnaire instruments had been properly considered and addressed during the design process. Subsequently, questionnaire surveys were administered to about 640 students at junior secondary level in 6 Hong Kong schools and about 450 science students at senior secondary level in another 6 schools in Hong Kong. Those surveyed data were triangulated with the group interviews of a few randomly selected students in each class. Some key findings on the students' attitudes and misconception towards NOS will be presented in this conference paper together with a brief discussion on their implication in science education.

This paper reports the processes and ways in which a dedicated website has been developed by a group of seven colleagues at the Hong Kong Institute of Education (HKIEd) Science Department to support their student-teachers' development of teaching competence during various kinds of field experience activities such as practicum, teaching practice and school visits etc. From the outcome of our project, a comprehensive web-based system was created with the following specially selected features to help our student-teachers develop confidence and skills for the effective teaching of various science topics in schools: A data bank of 20 sets of video clips on exemplary parts of students' teaching performance in schools or microteaching at HKIEd as identified and selected by their supervisors. A collection of virtual reality resources which include a typical classroom or laboratory environment with a 3D/panoramic view etc. A website called Field Experience Support on Science (FESS) being developed at http://www.ied.edu.hk/fess/ which provides a platform for the management of the aforementioned 2 types of resources in the WWW plus various synchronous or 2 asynchronous communication channels as well as sharing of lesson plans, schemes of work and other teaching resources etc.

In the Science Department of the Hong Kong Institute of Education (HKIEd), on e of our prominent research and teaching development areas is the application of information science and related technologies (which consist of scientific and 3D visualization, virtual reality, scientific computation, computer-simulated experiments, datalogging systems for computer-controlled/interfaced experiments as well as the conventional IT elements such as multimedia and Internet) in Science education. We have been applying our project output not only for teaching a thousand of Science or General Studies and non-Science elective student-teachers enrolled in various HKIEd sub-degree and degree level courses, but also for providing value-free knowledge to the public through the Internet (e.g. Hypermedia And Self-learning Centre with website http://www.ied.edu.hk/has) and some in-service teacher training programs. From a teacher educator’s point of view, we will share our expertise/experience in some practical and plausible applications of information science and related technologies for promoting quality teaching and effective learning through a subject-based or subject specific approach with particular reference to the Science education. We shall also discuss some feasible ways of training/upgrading the IT competence of school science teachers through a series of hands-on and minds-on workshops.

The Learning Centre (LC) Scheme is a collaborative project between the Education and 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. The LC teachers need to take up the role of cascading good practices in curriculum and pedagogical changes through working with other teachers in workshops and outreach school-based support. The LCs work with the HKIEd, which provides mentoring and consultancy services, and evaluates the project. The LC scheme is structured into three phases: the initial phase in leadership or teacher development understanding, the implementation phase, and the evaluation phase. Using structured interviews, the authors identified the professional development that the LC teachers experienced in the initial phase of the scheme, and the support and/or facilitating conditions they hope to obtain in later phases. The findings suggest that support from the funding allocation, the school administration and the HKIEd are essential for the success of the scheme. This support helped the LC teachers realize a new perspective in understanding learning and teaching from the standpoint of a teacher educator, and consider how to facilitate other teachers’ teaching by adopting innovative approaches. The chapter concludes with recommendations for further support and future directions of development of the scheme.
[Copyright © 2008 The Chinese University Press, Hong Kong Institute of Educational Research.]

The restructuring of the academic structure and curriculum of the senior secondary education in 2009 has witnessed the on-going drive of the Hong Kong Education Reform in 2000 for a “more flexible and diversified” curriculum (Education and Manpower Bureau, 2005, p.9). To develop students’ ability to make connections across knowledge and concepts from different disciplines and to examine issues from multiple perspectives, new interdisciplinary subjects like Liberal Studies and Integrated Science are introduced into the new senior secondary curriculum. Whilst their introduction would definitely create stress and concerns of teachers, in preparing for new but broader subject content that may require completely different teaching strategies, teachers of traditional disciplinary subjects would also face new challenges through changes in the subject curriculum, teaching and assessment. This symposium therefore aims to discuss how teachers perceive the challenges of teaching interdisciplinary subjects and discipline-based subjects. Before the actual implementation of those new curricula, we have developed and administered specific research tools (in form of interview guidelines and questionnaires) to collect qualitative and quantitative data from curriculum planners and school teachers for the aforementioned interdisciplinary subjects and a number of disciplinary subjects, including Biology, Physics, Chemistry and Geography. Interview data will be used to discuss on how teacher-practitioners’ views are compared with the curriculum planners towards the implementation of Liberal Studies and Integrated Science, whereas both interview and questionnaire survey data from teachers of disciplinary subjects of Biology, Physics, Chemistry and Geography have been analysed to reveal the teachers’ key concerns and perceived problems as arisen from the change in curriculum organization and structure, emphasis on nature of science, science, technology, society and environment, fieldwork and