Teacher attitudes and practices are considered as essential in fostering parental involvement in school education. In Hong Kong, amongst possible types of home–school links, teacher–parent communication about children's learning has been agreed to be the primary concern of both schools and parents. This paper reports a test of a psychological model of teacher–parent communication in Hong Kong primary schools. The model has taken into account the theory of planned behavior, self-efficacy theory, expectancy theory and theories of family–school relations. Scales for measuring the criterion and predictor variables have been developed. Variables that associated with teacher communication intention and practices were identified and path analyses linking the variables in a conceptual model were conducted. Results show that teacher commitment and teacher efficacy in working with parents have significant predictive power for teacher intention. Teacher intention, together with teacher commitment, has predictive power for teacher's time spent in communicating with parents. Relationships between individual teacher beliefs and the criterion variables are also described and discussed.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03055690050022661]

The current global movement in the reform of education seems to focus on a number of issues that include standards, quality and teacher preparation. With regard to the latter, while teacher education curricula in most parts of the world attempt to strike a balance between content and professional training, the emerging scenario is that of training expert teachers. Three types of knowledge identified as necessary for expert teaching are content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge. For Hong Kong to embark on a satisfactory and effective public education reform, it is essential that its most valuable human resource (i.e. teachers) must be comprehensively and adequately developed. Attention must be paid to both pre-service and in-service to raise an excellent quality-oriented teaching force. Teacher educators and researchers make important and well-informed decisions about what should be included in pre-service and in-service teacher development programmes. However, it is also important to take into account the teachers' own perceptions about the areas in which they feel confident and knowledgeable and those inwhich they do not. One practical avenue of sourcing such information is the teacher in training who is learning to acquire and display expertise. This paper reports on an investigation using a sample of 183 science and mathematics trainee teachers. A 60-item instrument, the Science and Mathematics Expert Teacher Preparation Survey (SMETPS),was developed to gather data on trainee teachers' perceptions of their current knowledge and what they think they need to know to become expert teachers. The data, analysed using both descriptive and inferential statistics, indicated some of the areas in which trainee teachers identified the need for future professional development that would contribute towards expert training. Several issues which emerged from the results are discussed, with reference to implications for current efforts in expert teacher

Viewing education as a complex site for endorsing and contesting knowledges and practices we explore its critical roles in feminist language planning. Many types of language planning have relied heavily on education for the implementation and spread of the particular reform agenda largely reliant on discourses of compulsory obligation (e.g. spelling reforms). The scenario of feminist language planning reveals that education is not a mere external agent of implementation but central to the raising of awareness or provoking an 'Initiating Trajectory' (Winter & Pauwels, 2003). However, the implementation of gender-inclusive practices ('Trajectories of Practices') in education highlights contexts of conflict (and confusion) about grammatical prescriptions and social reform (Pauwels & Winter, 2006). In this paper we probe the adoption, problematisation and invigoration of 'Agency Trajectories' in (language) educators' narratives and classroom practices. Our investigation includes educators operating in diverse English-language communities (e.g. Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong).
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http://dx.doi.org/10.2167/cilp093.0 ]

Interviews with key scientists involved in research on severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), together with analysis of media reports and documentaries produced during and after the SARS epidemic, revealed many interesting aspects of nature of science (NOS) and authentic scientific inquiry. This novel insight into practice in the rapidly growing field of molecular biology was used in the development of instructional materials for use in the pre-service and in-service teacher education programme at The University of Hong Kong. The elements of NOS and scientific inquiry identified in the scientific research on SARS were explicitly emphasized in our instructional materials. The contemporary real-life context of SARS was found to be effective in promoting student-teachers' understanding of NOS and scientific inquiry, particularly in terms of: the realization of inseparable links between science and the social, cultural, and political environment; deeper understanding of how science and technology impact on each other; and a richer appreciation of the processes of authentic scientific inquiry and the humanistic character of scientists. The effectiveness is attributed to immediacy, relevance, and familiarity, making the abstract tangible, personal experience of science history, and the powerful affective impact of the interviews with scientists.
[Copyright of International Journal of Science Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09500690701528808]