A questionnaire survey was conducted with 106 in-service teacher education students of a university in Hong Kong to study their motives and commitment in teaching. Three motive factors were identified in their choice of teaching as a career, the most influential one is "intrinsic/altruistic motive", the next one is "extrinsic motive/job condition" and lastly "influence from others". Within the intrinsic/altruistic motive, around 80% to 95% teachers considered teaching is meaningful, they desired to teach the subjects they liked, they wished to help others and to work with children/teenagers. Four factors representing the areas or aspects of teaching which influenced the teachers' dedication and commitment were found, viz., "students' learning and school development", "demands on teaching and school practices", "teaching as a career choice", "teacher-pupils interaction and attitudes". Correlational analyses showed that intrinsic/altruistic motive was significantly related to the four commitment factors, suggesting that the motives held by the teachers in joining the teaching profession (in particular, intrinsic/altruistic motive) is influential upon teachers' commitment in teaching. Further analysis of the item responses highlights the elements affecting teachers' commitment in teaching involve school head, colleagues, students, parents and educational changes, which deserve the attention of the education authority to address with appropriate measures.
[Copyright of Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) at http://www.aare.edu.au]

Although all teachers hold beliefs about alternative curriculum designs, researchers know little about how the beliefs are related to each other and to teacher demographic characteristics such as gender and subject areas. In addition, measuring instruments in this area of curriculum enquiry remain primitive. In this article, we review issues surrounding the measurement of teachers' curriculum orientations, report the development and validation of a 30-item curriculum orientation inventory,and use the data gathered from a sample of 648 Hong Kong teachers to examine the relationships between curriculum orientations and some teacher demographic characteristics. The inventory was designed to measure teachers' five curriculum orientations: academic, cognitive process, social reconstruction, humanistic and technological. We found that the reliability and validity of the data were adequate. In contrast to logical expectation, teachers valued all the five theoretically conflicting curriculum orientations and the correlations among the orientations were considerable and positive. There was no significant difference in teachers' curriculum orientations based on gender. Primary and secondary school teachers also did not show significant difference. Furthermore, experienced teachers were more likely to value the academic orientation and English language teachers were more humanistic than science teachers. Directions for future research are suggested.
[Copyright of Curriculum Journal is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09585170210136868]