This paper reports on school-university collaboration during an action research project, which aimed to build a writing pedagogy for students with Learning Disabilities in the trilingual, biliterate educational context of Hong Kong. The project was established through interpersonal relationships built from the ground up between stakeholders from a university department and a secondary school. The informal social networks were the locus of innovation and creativity within the project. This paper examines four broad dimensions of collaboration: the relationships created, the resources shared, the action taken and the pedagogy created. We discuss these dimensions of collaboration from the perspectives of the stakeholders. We found that each stakeholder aligned their motivations and expectations with other stakeholders to achieve the common goals of the research and consequently we call such alignments of interests "research networks". Finally, we suggest that "research networks" constitute an important, yet overlooked component of action research.
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Access via Directory of Open Access Journals: http://edlinked.soe.waikato.ac.nz/research/journal/index.php?id=1]

This paper argues with evidence that conditions for teacher professional development can be enhanced for mentor teachers through a Learning Centre (LC) project which has been introduced in Hong Kong as a collaborative project between the government, a primary school, a secondary school, and the Hong Kong Institute of Education. The LC teachers perform the role of mentor teachers to enhance professional development of other teachers through web-based workshops or forums, face-to-face teacher education workshops, and school-based support. While the LC teachers are expected to gain professional development themselves as mentors, as suggested in the literature, the environment that may enhance their own professional development is not clear. Using structured interviews, the authors identified the professional development environment that the LC teachers experienced. The paper concludes with recommendations for environmental conditions enhancing the professional development of teachers in schools and conditions to support LC teachers.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13664530.2010.504018]

This article reports on both writers' experiences as participants in a collaborative action research project in Hong Kong. The article draws a distinction between teachers as research consumers and teachers as research producers. The authors suggest that active teacher agency in research is a positive element in the professional development of English teachers. Teachers primarily become research producers through involvement in some form of action research project. Although action research is increasingly recognized as a teacher competency in Hong Kong, it is nevertheless difficult for teachers to initiate and conduct when research is not seen as a core professional activity by their school with subsequent limited support. The authors view collaboration with professional researchers as a positive way for teachers to be apprenticed into the research process. The article ends by suggesting possible strategies that would support and encourage teachers to undertake research.
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One hundred seventy secondary schools in Hong Kong responded to a questionnaire designed to assess their needs for leadership training of students in different domains of school activities and their endorsement of university-school collaboration in these activities. The questionnaire also assessed the extent and degree of support and involvement that schools intended to provide in training programs and in organized school activities for students to assume leadership roles in schools. Findings indicated that schools were in need of student leaders in different student activities, especially in those less related to academic concerns. It was stressed that in providing opportunities for student leaders to continue practicing their skills in school activities, other students might eventually benefit through participation in school activities and peer support programs organized by student leaders.
[Copyright of Roeper Review is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02783190009554049 ]