Reflection has long been used as a professional development tool in teacher education. However, researchers have criticised that reflection is a loosely defined term and that there is little agreement on how reflection should be conducted. To achieve a more systematic application, a critical incident framework is proposed in this study and used as a reflective tool in a workshop with in-service teachers in Hong Kong. This small-scale study is based on the stories of critical incidents, journal entries and follow-up interviews provided by a sample of Hong Kong teachers. The results show that after being given the opportunity to reflect on their practices with a small community of peers, the participants showed more engaging participation in professional development and became more mindful of their ability to learn from personal experience. Moreover, after practising reflection, the teachers engaged in self-cure and used the knowledge of their previous experiences to effect changes in their classroom practices. Copyright © 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

This paper was inspired by three important concerns in higher education, namely, changes in higher education curricula (Bourner, 2004), concept of a fully functioning university (Bourner, 2008), and nature of education, such a university offers (Bourner, Heath, & Rospigliosi, 2013). To prepare university graduates for the unpredictable changes and diversified needs of a fast-growing world, the authors explore the use of narrative knowing in designing a student-centered curriculum. This paper reports the learning achieved by students when a Hong Kong university applies the under-developed narrative pedagogy in teaching and learning. Copyright © 2018 James Nicholas Publishers.

Consequences of competition for global university rankings, such as changes in funding modes, have been extensively discussed in the field of higher education. However, few studies have reviewed its implications on knowledge production. This study provides a contextualised method for theorising the implications of this competition on the development of East Asian higher education, specifically teacher education. It identifies the new forms of knowledge being produced in two teacher education institutions in Hong Kong and Macau by reviewing the publications of new recruits in a five-year period. The study considers the following variables: author(s), date and form of publication, abstract, title, keywords, journal name, language, data source, research context and methods. The findings show that the dominant publication trends are towards quantitative research and multiple authors. Psychological research is the most popular area and studies of other long-term issues in teacher education are being marginalised.
[Copyright © 2017 British Association for International and Comparative Education.]

The General Education Consolidation Course (GECC) is a capstone course in the Hong Kong Institute of Education (HKIEd) which requires students approaching the end of their undergraduate studies both to reflect critically on their experience – within general education, in their disciplinary, professional and co-curricular studies, and in their lives beyond the classroom – and to develop an integrated view of how and where they position themselves in relation to their future goals, plans, and aspirations. The course is designed to help students to synthesize their learning experiences, by reflecting critically on the value and significance of what they have learned in their university years, making connections to their lives, and imagining their own futures. As a new course in its early stage of development, a high degree of flexibility and autonomy is allowed and indeed required of the GECC tutors to experiment with different learning and teaching strategies with the students to facilitate achievement of the course objectives. The structure of the GECC involves a number of experimental and innovative elements, including a strong student-centered orientation, guided group and independent learning, and the development of a comprehensive e-portfolio as the main assessment component. The authors of this paper have participated in the pilot run of this GECC in early 2015, before its full scale implementation in the fall of the same year. In this paper, we will reflect on our experiences in preparing and conducting the course, with particular focus on the uses of narrative learning and teaching strategies with the students. Our reflection and evaluation will be based on and substantiated by concrete examples of our students’ works and performance. We will also explore the potentials of adopting the reciprocal learning framework in the further development of this and other similar courses with strong student-centered orientation in higher education.

Reciprocal learning values the cooperative learning abilities of students. Learning takes place in different occasions when students help each other and receive immediate feedback from others. In doing so, it also helps the teacher to get a good sense of where students are with the lesson. Learning strategies it employs include student forming structured-learning teams, assigning roles, and using team building activities, etc. The core principle of such learning thus comes from peer teaching and coaching theories. This paper reports an attempt of using reciprocal learning in the higher education in Hong Kong. The discussion starts first from a review of the rationale of reciprocal learning, its effect and application in teacher education. Second, its effect and use in higher education in form of a case study in Hong Kong. Then, implications are made for teacher education in general. The course under investigation takes into consideration of reciprocal learning principles throughout the teaching and learning design. The learning concepts are incorporated into the construction of the classroom activities and assessment modes. Classroom activities using reciprocal ideas include personal storytelling and giving feedback. Students are encouraged to reflect on their past, share their experiences, and tell their life stories in class. Audiences respond by writing individual feedback to the storytellers. This allows for peer learning to take place among the students. When they are telling and listening the stories, they are at the same time learning from each other, performing both roles of learning and coaching at the same time. As one of the assignments, students are asked to write weekly journals throughout the course. An on-line learning platform is created for students to write the journal entries once a week and read their classmates’ journal entries and give feedback to each other.

This paper reports a case study of four project schools in the primary school context of Hong Kong. It has investigated how teachers who were assigned subject panel head's and curriculum leader's roles perceived the student assessment reform and how they experimented with new assessment strategies in the school policy and classroom practice. The major focus of the paper lies on how these teacher leaders expressed their understanding of student assessment reform in classroom practice. The main discussion of findings shows the perception of these teacher leaders on student assessment reform, how they put their ideas of formative assessment into practice, and in addition, the challenges they faced in the reform process.
[Copyright © 2015 Illinois State University.]

Hong Kong has an assessment for learning policy and a cultural context that emphasizes examinations. In addition to associating student grading with improvement, important improvement-oriented conceptions have been identified among Hong Kong teachers and which were not fully instantiated in the original Teachers’ Conceptions of Assessment (TCoA) inventory. An expanded Chinese-TCoA inventory was administered to in Chinese in both Hong Kong and southern China. The intended 6 construct structure was not supported. Exploratory factor analysis (MLE, oblimin rotation) identified 7 factors, which were further reduced to 3 major inter-correlated constructs (i.e., improvement, accountability, and irrelevance). Improvement and accountability were strongly inter-correlated (r=.80), while improvement had a weak negative correlation with irrelevance and accountability had a weak positive correlation with irrelevance. The model had 7 factors based on 33 items and acceptable fit (χ2=3856.97, df=426; χ2/df=9.05, p<.001; CFI=.85; RMSEA=.065; SRMR=.065; gamma=.90). Two group nested invariance testing (i.e., Hong Kong vs. southern China) showed that the model was statistically equivalent, except for item residuals (k=62; χ2=4612.89, df=891; χ2/df=5.18, p=.02; CFI=.83; RMSEA=.047; SRMR=.065; gamma=.94). Differences in mean scores between the two groups showed that Hong Kong teachers agreed more with the ideas of assessments helping student learning, being accurate, and being examinations; whereas southern China teachers agreed more that assessment was irrelevant. This study contributes to our understanding of how assessment is understood by teachers working within Chinese contexts.
[Copyright © 2010 The Authors.]

The beliefs teachers have about assessment influence classroom practices and reflect cultural and societal differences. This paper reports the development of a new self-report inventory to examine beliefs teachers in Hong Kong and southern China contexts have about the nature and purpose of assessment. A statistically equivalent model for Hong Kong and southern China teachers had three factors (i.e., improvement, accountability, and irrelevance). The Chinese teachers very strongly associated accountability with improvement (r = .80). This is consistent with the Chinese tradition and policy of using examinations to drive teaching quality and student learning and as a force for merit based decisions. Small differences between the two groups of teachers are consistent with assessment policy differences in the two jurisdictions.
[Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.]

This is a self-study of three teacher educators in Hong Kong who introduced narrative inquiry as a means of professional development to a group of pre-service teachers during their eight weeks of teaching practice in 2005. The three teacher educators have reflected on their roles in the initiative in this report. How did they introduce narrative inquiry to the student teachers? How did they help the student teachers realize the importance of their own personal experience in shaping their professional practice? How can narrative inquiry be introduced into the formal curriculum of teacher education in Hong Kong? The primary objective of this self study is to document and reflect upon the experience in promoting the narrative inquiry in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong has an assessment for learning policy and a cultural context that emphasizes examinations. In addition to associating student grading with improvement, important improvement-oriented conceptions have been identified among Hong Kong teachers and which were not fully instantiated in Brown’s Teachers’ Conceptions of Assessment (TCoA) inventory. An expanded Chinese-TCoA inventory was administered to 601 teachers (85% primary school) in Chinese. The intended 10 factor structure had poor fit to the data. Exploratory factor analysis (MLE, oblimin rotation) identified 7 factors. Confirmatory factor analysis of 7 inter-correlated factors, with 28 items, had acceptable fit (χ2=1061.87; df=329; χ2/df =3.23, p=.07; gamma hat = .92; RMSEA=.061; SRMR=.056). The strongest inter-correlation (r=.74) was between assessment is for school quality & control and assessment is for teacher quality & control. Correlations >.60 were seen between assessment is examinations and assessment is for student personal development and teacher quality & control and between assessment is for school quality & control and assessment is for student personal development. Factor inter-correlations among these 4 factors and the remaining three (assessment is irrelevant, assessment has error, assessment improves learning) were less than .60. Teachers gave mean scores over moderately agree to Improve Learning and Error, weak agreement was given to Personal Development, School Quality & Control, and Examinations. Disagreement was given to Irrelevance and Teacher Quality & Control. We conclude that, in keeping with the highly selective system, Hong Kong primary school teachers predominantly conceived of assessment as examinations for improved learning, rather than as a means of personal development and reject it as a means of teacher quality assurance.