While much of the current teacher training in Hong Kong adopts a knowledge transmission mode, a means allowing more active participation by story telling is introduced in our study. It aims to explore alternatives to the field of local teacher education. Our focus is on promoting learning and professional development among in-service teachers. This paper documents how we enhance the awareness of teachers’ experiential knowledge through story telling, and our reflections on the achievements and limitations in the study. The experience and implications drawn from this study helps us further develop a useful program for in-service teachers.

The traditional assessment landscape in Hong Kong has been changed since a large scale educational reform was launched six years ago. Recommendations for change encouraged more diverse forms of student assessment. However, the traditional examination-oriented culture within a Chinese context has added difficulty to the implementation of assessment reform in Hong Kong. This paper reports a case study of four project schools. It investigates how teachers experimented with assessment reform in school policy and practice. The focus lies on how teachers express their understanding of student assessment reform in classroom practice. The findings show how teachers understand student assessment, how they put their ideas of formative assessment into practice, and the challenges they face in the reform process.

Initial teacher education programs offered worldwide all aim at developing student teachers with the best and most comprehensive preparation before joining the teaching profession. However, teacher education research reveal that there are discrepancies between the outcome and what is intended in the program. Without sufficient field experience, beginning teachers always find difficulties in assisting administrative duties and curriculum planning in schools. It is a common practice that teachers are expected to perform different roles apart from regular classroom teaching. It appears that current teacher education programs do not provide solid preparation for beginning teachers in these areas. When beginning teachers function in school with a rather low level of competence in various areas, the chance of becoming burnout might be higher. To bridge the gap in teacher training, a Summer Creative School Project has been developed and launched in the summer vacation in 1998 in Hong Kong. The aim of the whole project was to provide opportunities for student-teachers to experience the management of a school for four weeks. The project has three stages, viz., the pre-field stage, field work stage and the debriefing stage. In this program, participants were given a series of intensive training in the form of seminars and workshops. There were a total of 80 student-teachers participating in the project. In the field work stage, a total of four Hong Kong public sector primary school were involved. Twenty student-teachers took over the management of 10-12 classes of one school. All student-teachers took up different functional posts as head teacher, deputy head teacher, coordinators of curriculum and extra-curricular activities, etc. They also designed their own curriculum with creativity development as the central theme. In the debriefing stage, the experience and limitations of student-teachers throughout the project are debriefed. This paper gives a full account

Hong Kong is famous for its examination-dominated culture, which heavily relies on the public examinations. So ingrained has it become that the whole society is sensitive to any change in such an assessment mechanism. In recent years, the Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority has used both external and school-based assessment as part of high stakes end of schooling assessment. Recent reforms have increased this reliance on school based assessment. The objectivity of external assessment is easily accepted by the society and the addition of school-based assessment components is often supported by tertiary institutions. Yet the practice of including school-based assessment results in addition to public examinations has been challenged by practitioners such as teachers in secondary schools as well as by the public. This paper focuses on understanding the views of teachers concerning school based assessment since such views are likely to add pressure to its implementation. In particular it will examine why teachers and the public appear to have more faith in external assessment rather than the professional judgment of teachers.

Large-scale curriculum reform initiated 2001 in Hong Kong has set the stage for change in the school curriculum as well as assessment. In the past, Hong Kong education was characterized by its elitist system with highly selective examinations at different levels of learning. The selective examination oriented policy had its influential impact on the schooling of Hong Kong where teaching and learning were inclined towards examinations. Since 1990, there have been changes in the assessment policy in the school curriculum with more emphasis on formative assessment, e.g. Target Oriented Curriculum. The new forms of assessment have therefore posed a different teaching and learning environment for the schools, teachers and students. By looking at the previous experiences regarding implementation in the local context, this paper will analyze various aspects of implementation of assessment policies adopted by the schools in Hong Kong. Implications will also be drawn to address the possibilities of implementation for the current policy.

This study is the second phase of a long term evaluation exercise namely: An Evaluation of the 9-year Compulsory Education of Hong Kong. This research is planned to focus on the following areas to delineate the causes of students' learning problems which have not been addressed thoroughly and deeply enough during the first phase: A. the nature (selective vs. universal education) of the formal and instructional curriculum; B. teachers' knowledge and belief learned from teacher education institutions; C. classroom climate and students' cognitive and effective learning process.

Stress is an inseparable part of teacher development (Fimian and Blanton, 1986; Kelly and Berthelsen, 1995). The present study tries to look at late entrants' stress experiences when undertaking teacher training programme in the Hong Kong Institute of Education. The research focuses on the strategies adopted by late entrants to cope with stress during teaching practice. The subjects of the study were formerly professionals in industries but were attracted to enroll in teaching training course. It is a small scale empirical study using stress log (Gmelch, 1993), recordings of group sharing meetings and interviews to investigate into the ways student teachers deal with stress. Qualitative research procedures were employed for data analysis. Various strategies were adopted by the student teachers. It is found that these subjects used both generic and idiosyncratic strategies to cope with stress. They also showed some interesting perception on handling difficult situations in the classroom. Useful implications are found for assisting student teachers in coping with stress.