The beliefs of a teacher may serve as the lens that affects his or her perception and interpretation of classroom experience in the world of teaching. Prior to becoming a trained teacher, students in pre-service and in-service early childhood teacher education programmes would have acquired certain beliefs about teaching young children, about children and how they learn, and about the goals and values of educating young children through “apprenticeship of teaching” in their experience of schooling, family and community life. In recent years, teacher educators who are concerned about reforming teacher education in Hong Kong have increasingly taken an interest in studying the impact of teacher education on teacher beliefs of pre-service and in-service teachers, as change in teacher beliefs is a crucial element in teacher development. In a series of related studies that we carried out either individually or as a team in the past years, we had access to teacher beliefs held by pre-service teachers at the time they joined a fulltime kindergarten teacher education programme, progressed through the programme, and in the first year of their teaching career as kindergarten teachers. We had access to teacher beliefs of in-service teachers before, during, and after going through teacher education. Studying the changes in teacher beliefs before, during, and after receiving teacher education will shed light on the impact of pre-service as opposed to in-service teacher education programmes in Hong Kong. For the purpose of gauging changes in teacher belief during and after receiving teacher education, we benchmarked teacher beliefs of kindergarten teachers at four points in the teacher development process: novice teacher, teacher-in-training, trained but inexperienced teachers, as well as trained and experienced teachers. Data were collected by individual interviews, focused group interviews, stimulated recall of classroom experience, and classroom observation and debriefing. As change
