This paper discusses the pedagogical strategies of blended learning to teach Hong Kong school teachers mixed methods research. The authors examine the implications of blending traditional teaching and more updated learning strategies with e-Learning, small group work, peer interaction, and role plays, to increase student comprehension and execution of mixed methods research. The authors utilise a case study to illustrate the blended approach in teaching mixed methods research.

As expectation on academic success is high from parents in Asian societies (Chen & Stevenson, 1989; White, 1993), moving towards inclusive practices in schools received great challenges. Using both quantitative and qualitative methods, this study attempts to study the affective and social outcomes of students in a mainstream primary school in Hong Kong. The sample was 410 elementary students across Grade 3 to Grade 6 level. At the first stage, the academic self concept, teacher-student relationship, social integration, and negative affect were studied by the Assessment Program for Affective and Social Outcomes(APASO) (EMB, 2001). The second stage was interview with school teachers. The sample was studied according to class allocation system with which streaming was used and respective curriculum policy was applied. The findings show that the SEN (N=14) showed no significant difference from the typically developing students. However, students who were allocated in the upper bottom class who were not SEN, as well as the low academic achievers studied in the normal classes, shown to have poorer social and affective outcomes. These students revealed anxiety and tension in their academic study. The 21 low academic achievers who studied a normal curriculum in a normal class setting were identified as trouble makers who created disciplinary problems. The study informs that curriculum tailoring and small class setting (<10) worked well on students with a disability. Recommendations were made on what the school can do to assist students in their school life on both the academic study and psychological well-being.

Considerable evidence has been accumulated in Hong Kong that Learning Study, as a form of action research collaboratively conducted by school teachers and researchers from Higher Educational Institutes, provides a comprehensive platform for school-based teacher professional development. Learning Study is grounded in the Variation Theory developed by Ference Marton. It involves an active collaboration between teachers and academic staff from the Hong Kong Institute of Education. In conducting a Learning Study, teachers, through a rigorous process, first select the topic, then work with the HEI staff to identify the worthwhile object of learning with its critical aspects and collectively design the lesson, which incorporates the application of three forms of variation (V1, V2 and V3). The lesson is taught, video taped and then analysed in a post-lesson conference. A revised plan for teaching the same lesson is then taught by a different member of the research team in his/her class. This process is repeated until all the teachers have taught the lesson to their classes.The Learning Study case will be evaluated and then presented by the teachers to the wider community as part of the dissemination process. This symposium will first provide an overview of Learning Study theory and practice model, then illustrate its actual implementation with several Learning Study cases. The third part discusses how Learning Study builds up an effectively comprehensive platform for classroom teachers to analyze the students' learning achievement, reflect upon their own teaching, develop learning communities and benefit their entire professional development.

This paper aims at describing and explaining how drama pedagogy is appropriated in Chinese language classrooms in Hong Kong. Drawing on the theories of dialogue and appropriation of Mikhail Bakhtin, the research shows that the dialogicality of drama in Hong Kong's classrooms is conditional, and therefore deviant from the conventional as conceptualised and described in the major literature. A spectrum of the appropriation of drama pedagogy in language classrooms in Hong Kong is developed and discussed. At one end of the spectrum, there is still the domination of the teacher's monologic input of official knowledge and skills; at the other end, destabilisation of the centrality of the text and the authoritarian role of the teacher is identified suggesting alteration in the classroom communication routine, and even the opening of the drama world. This spectrum illustrates how the teachers waver between persisting with monologue and embracing dialogue, the result of which is the development of a hybrid approach to appropriate drama pedagogy.
[Copyright of Pedagogy, Culture & Society is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14681366.2010.505717]

Drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin's Carnival theory, this article focuses on specific outcomes of a research project the author undertook in Hong Kong, where drama pedagogy has been recently introduced into the official curriculum. It investigates the ways in which laughter, noise, jokes, frolic and popular literacies commonly appear in classrooms where teachers apply drama pedagogy. On considering the ways in which these phenomena remain unacknowledged and ignored by both teacher(s) and researcher( s), the author highlights the potentials of playful resistance and transgressivity afforded to students by drama pedagogy. The suggestion is that Carnival theory not only illuminates such phenomena but also challenges the emphases and assumptions of conventional epistemology and classroom discourse and offers a model to help us re-learn the unpredictability, plurality and openness to the production and distribution of knowledge that drama pedagogy can engender.
[Copyright of Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13569781003700078]

A review is provided of recent research literature on the topic of troublesome classroom behaviour, published over the past decade or so with particular reference to research carried out in Australian schools. Nine Australian studies are reviewed, as well as a further seven from the USA, Hong Kong, Jordan, Greece and Malta. Seven of the studies deal with the early years and primary level of schooling, with six studies at the secondary level, and three that span primary and secondary levels of schooling. The following main themes are elucidated: the prevalence of behaviourally troublesome students; time spent managing troublesome behaviour; gender differences; and types of classroom (mis)behaviours, their severity and their frequency, Recent research confirms earlier findings that classroom misbehaviour is of widespread concern to teachers but that the main causes of disruption, while being frequent, are often relatively trivial in nature ('talking out of turn' behaviours in particular). While prevalence rates for troublesome students across classes are variable, boys are consistently identified as being more troublesome than girls.
[Copyright of Australasian Journal of Special Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10300110701189014]

This paper presents a case study of how four teachers in one school adopted Learning Study in teaching Visual Arts in Hong Kong. The teachers found that the students at the primary level had difficulties expressing feelings through shapes. In 2003, they used the Learning Study approach to analyse teaching of this difficult topic. Each teacher taught the lesson and observed the lesson of the other three. A discussion, using student feedback, was held immediately after each lesson, aimed at improving the next one. A post-test was conducted to discover what students had learned. The result was good yet there were still many problems. In 2004, the same teachers taught the same topic with revision based on the outcomes of their previous lessons. There was more focus on using artists' artworks and students' expression of human figures. This paper will analyse materials and interviews from the Learning Studies to look at how to improve teachers' teaching of drawing. As drawing is central in children's art and the findings of this paper could be useful for other teachers in teaching visual arts.
[Copyright of Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) at http://www.aare.edu.au]