The field experience component in the four year Bachelor of Education programme (Primary) at The Hong Kong Institute of Education offers a number of opportunities for students to observe or teach in a school. The aim of this article is to analyse the learning of the studentVteachers and the supporting teachers during the field experience period in the second and the final years of the programme and to explain this learning using a sociocultural view of learning. StudentVteachers and their supporting teachers in their second year of study in 1999-2000 as well as those in their final year of study in 2001-02 were interviewed. The findings describe the professional development of the studentVteachers and the construction of knowledge in teaching. The article analyses the role of supporting teachers as social agents, and describes their use of mediational means, including teaching resources, and information about pupils abilities and habits, in facilitating the learning of the studentVteachers. The findings also compare the sharing of aims between the lecturers and the supporting teachers. Finally, the paper summarizes suggestions on how professional development of the student-teachers during the field experience may be analysed by adopting a sociocultural view of learning.
[Copyright of Teacher Development is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13664530500200259 ]

This paper explores the sociolinguistic awareness in English of tertiary level students in Hong Kong and Wuhan (Mainland China). The language data consisted of specific instances when a native speaker presenter made changes, in the course of oral delivery, to the written text of a conference paper that she had prepared in advance. Matched pairs of sentences/utterances were selected and in each pair the written version was placed side by side with the spoken version. When native speakers were asked to judge which version had been written and which had been spoken, their responses indicated that the changes were based on sociolinguistic intuitions shared by other native speakers. For the present study, the same matched pairs of utterances were given to tertiary-level students of English in Hong Kong and Wuhan. The resulting data are used to explore the extent to which students have access to the same sociolinguistic intuitions as native speakers. Comparisons are also made between the responses of students in the two settings as well as between the responses of English and non-English majors in Wuhan.
[Copyright of Language Awareness is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09658410608668853 ]

Since 1997, Hong Kong's reintegration with China has been founded on the principle of 'One Country, Two Systems', which serves to guarantee the sustainability of the capitalist system in Hong Kong under the rule of the socialist motherland. This paper is an intra-cultural and inter-regional comparative study of the curricula of two systems (socialist and capitalist) under one country, using the junior secondary History curricula in Shanghai and Hong Kong as a case study. In addition to tracing the differences and similarities, divergences and convergences in the junior secondary History curricula of the two systems, the paper also generates proposals for the future improvement of History education in both cities.
[Copyright of Comparative Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0305006042000274836]

The expansion in the number of people entering higher education has resulted in a substantial increase in the proportion of students enrolling in nontraditional modes, such as part-time study. This study examined the question of whether part-time study curtails the development of the types of intellectual capabilities needed for a knowledge-based economy, because the students would have markedly less exposure to a stimulating campus environment than their full-time counterparts. Graduates from discrete full- and part-time programs from 1 university in Hong Kong completed a survey seeking perceptions of the nurturing of a range of capabilities, together with measures of teacher-student relationships and type of teaching experienced. Two hypotheses were tested by structural equation modeling: (a) the same mechanism for capability development operated for full- and part-time modes and (b) the principal element of the mechanism was the nature of teaching and the quality of teacher-student interaction. Hypothesis 1 was supported because configural invariance between hypothesized models for capability development between the 2 modes was found. Hypothesis 2 was also supported because the models showed that the principal influence on capability development came from teaching for understanding, through promoting active learning experiences and the degree and quality of teacher-student interaction.
[Copyright of Structural Equation Modeling is the property of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15328007sem1302_6]

The paper focuses on the development of teacher thinking, specifically L2 teachers' subject-matter cognitions, i.e. their Teacher Language Awareness (TLA) (see e.g. Andrews 2001, 2003). The study examines the evolving TLA, as it relates to grammar, of three teachers, each a graduate with more than 10 years' experience of teaching English in Hong Kong secondary schools. All three teachers took part in a previous TLA study conducted in 1996-97 (see Andrews, 1999a), when they were in their early years of teaching and had received no professional training. In the present study, these three teachers' TLA and cognitions about grammar were investigated once more (in 2004). The aim of this follow-up study was to tell the story of each teacher's evolving TLA and grammar-related cognitions. In both phases of the research a mixed methods approach was adopted. Data from the two studies suggested that the teachers' TLA and grammar-related cognitions had altered very little. Their underlying beliefs about grammar pedagogy and the role of explicit grammar teaching, and their knowledge about grammar (as measured by a test of LA) seemed largely unchanged. The main difference between the three teachers was in their interaction with the context in which they worked.
[Copyright of Language Awareness is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09658410608668846 ]