Learning study has been used to enhance teacher professional development in many cities and countries all over the world, including Hong Kong, Sweden, United Kingdom, Singapore and Brunei. Since Learning Study has been regarded as an effective approach for teacher professional development, it was introduced as a core course in the training programmes for pre-service teachers in the Hong Kong Institute of Education in 2007. This paper explores the impact of learning study on pre-service teacher professional development by looking into an English language learning study conducted by a group of pre-service teachers in Hong Kong. It reports how the pre-service teachers learned to teach via participating in Learning Study and discusses what challenges they had encountered in the process. The paper concludes with implications on the further development of learning study and its application in educational programmes for pre- service teachers.

Performance tasks This paper reports the initial stage of a learning study on enhancing kindergarten teachers' teaching of performance tasks in Hong Kong. Data from classroom observation and post-lesson interviews with two kindergarten teachers were analysed to identify the existing teaching practice focusing on four typical classroom performance tasks: storytelling, drawing pictures, singing nursery rhyme and physical movement. The findings have indicated that both teachers often simplified the object of learning into declarative knowledge and used passive receptive activities and neglected the specific disciplinary skill-related aspects and seldom used active productive activities, which will more probably lead to deeper learning. The factors shaping these teaches' practice are also discussed and elaborated. The room for further improvement of these teachers is then identified as the object of learning for the teachers and the critical features of these performance tasks specified for student learning in the coming learning study projects. The paper concludes with implications and recommendations on teacher education for pre-school teachers in Hong Kong.

Lesson Study has been the main collaborative action research approach for enhancing learning and teaching and promoting teacher professional development in Hong Kong in the past decade. Lesson Study innovation in Hong Kong has advocated an unprecedented emphasis on student learning, suggesting that teachers understand students' learning needs and apply tailor-made pedagogical design to maximize student learning (Lo, 2008). However, sustaining Lesson Study may be inhibited by many challenges, including teachers' pressures from the examination-oriented system, heavy workloads, pressures from parents and lack of support and trust among staff (Zhang, 2015). How to sustain Lesson Study in schools is yet to be explored, given few empirical studies have been conducted in the area. This study attempted to identify the strategies school leaders adopted to overcome challenges and promote Lesson Study in two Hong Kong schools (a primary school and a secondary school), which were selected as they had implemented Lesson Study for over 10 years. The study utilized qualitative research methods including interviews with school leaders (3-4 leaders from each school) and observation of leadership practices at management team meetings or in Lesson Study activities. Content analysis (Northcutt & McCoy, 2004) of the data from interviews and observations was conducted and the leadership practices enacted in the two case schools were coded with the five-category leadership practice model (Day & Leithwood, 2007; Hallinger, 2010): 1) establishing vision and setting directions for the school; 2) managing learning programmes; 3) understanding and developing staff in the school; 4) designing the organisation and cultivating a learning culture; and 5) managing internal and external resources to support school development. Descriptions of the leadership practices in the two schools were written up and put side by side for inter-school comparisons (Bray & Thomas, 1995) to identify common characteristics

Learning Study has been used as a teacher professional development programme in the hope of improving classroom teaching and learning in the cities of both Gothenburg and Hong Kong. This case sharing session first presents two English Language Learning Studies focusing on teaching reading comprehension strategies: one is a Primary Six case conducted in Gothenburg and the other a Secondary Two case in Hong Kong. Then comparison is done between the two cases, with their similarities and differences discussed and highlighted. The session is finally concluded with implications drawn on conducting Learning Study and improving the teaching and learning of reading comprehension strategies in English Language.

Learning Study, in the form of action research, provides a platform for school-based teacher professional development in Hong Kong. In each Learning Study, teachers of a certain subject in a school work collaboratively with researchers from the Hong Kong Institute of Education to plan and teach a lesson, aiming to achieve some important goals and/or to solve some learning problems in the curriculum of that subject. This presentation is about a Secondary 2 science Learning Study case on the topic “Action and Reaction”. Findings from the pilot interview indicated that the students had quite a lot of misconceptions about “forces” and they had few chances to make scientific reasoning in their science lessons. The object of learning of this Learning Study case was to infer the relationship between action and reaction based on the observations from some linear motion experiments. The presentation reports the whole process in conducting the Learning Study, including the identification of learning difficulties, planning and teaching of the lesson, evaluation of the learning outcomes and reflections from the teachers.

Since Learning Study has been regarded as an effective approach for teacher professional development, it was introduced as a core module in the training programmes for over 400 year two pre-service teachers in the Hong Kong Institute of Education in 2007, This paper first illustrates the arrangements of the Learning Study module, including the module schedule, module content, mode of assessment and student profiles. It then draws on the data of an evaluation study of the module conduced in year 2007-08 to illustrate the experience of these pre-service teachers in Learning Study, focusing on how they learned to teach via participating in Learning Study and what difficulty they had encountered in the process. The paper also reviews the effectiveness of the module and puts forward suggestions for further improvement. It finally concludes with implications on applying Learning Study as a model of initial teacher education.