Novice teachers often undergo an identity shift from learner to teacher. Along this process, their instructional beliefs change considerably which in turn affect their teacher identity formation. Drawing on data collected mainly through interviews with three novice English teachers for more than one year, the present study examines their first-year teaching experience in Hong Kong secondary schools, focusing on changes of their English teaching beliefs and the impact of these changes on their identity construction. Findings reveal that while the teachers’ initial teaching beliefs were largely shaped in their prior school learning and learning-to-teach experience, these beliefs changed and were reshaped a great deal when encountering various contextual realities, and these changes further influenced their views on their teacher identity establishment, unfortunately in a more negative than positive direction. The study sheds light on the importance of institutional support in affording opportunities for novice teachers’ workplace learning and professional development. Copyright © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

In Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) programmes, students are expected to master content knowledge and language simultaneously. The worldwide popularity of this kind of programme has called for professional development, particularly for content subject teachers who have to shoulder some responsibilities of language teaching in CLIL. There have been several frameworks or proposals for professional development of CLIL teachers. Yet, empirical studies investigating the effectiveness of CLIL professional development programmes remain scarce. This gap is particularly important, since the relationship between professional development and teacher change is complicated and there are various factors affecting whether and how teacher would change. This study implemented a 6-month professional development programme for a group of content subject teachers in CLIL in Hong Kong. With data gathered with questionnaires, interviews, lesson observations and post-lesson reflections, this paper reports the trajectory of three case teachers who seemed to experience different degrees of changes in beliefs and language awareness. These differences could be explained by the influence of such factors as school context, learning experience and subject discipline. This study yields important implications for teacher education in CLIL and teacher change.
[Copyright of International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism is the property of Routledge.]

This editorial provides an overview of the articles which are featured in this issue of Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice. This issue includes a number of contributions which deal, directly or indirectly, with teacher learning, and particularly with the development and role of teacher professional learning communities. It also addresses the issue of learning from teaching as teachers describe, analyze and reflect upon their teaching experiences in the classroom, including the connection between their behavior and beliefs and student learning. One of the ethnographic studies focuses on the development of a community of practice for sustainable professional development among 18 teachers of English as second language in Hong Kong. Another article discusses the complex role of special education teachers in Israel. All seven papers included in this issue, in a way or another, look at the complexities of teaching and learning. Overall, a number of overarching themes may be identified: the importance of analyzing teachers beliefs and practices; the key role of professional communities in enhancing teacher learning and change; the need for relevant professional development opportunities to support teacher learning and commitment to teaching; the pedagogies of teaching and their role in fostering teacher reflection and growth as well as student learning taking into account the diversity and guidance provided to them; and the link between the complexity of teaching and the dynamic of classrooms and school culture.
Copyright of Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13540602.2014.928118

Researchers in teacher education have suggested that many of teachers classroom decision-making and actions are based on some sort of theoretical framework which are beliefs driven (Armour-Thomas, 1989; Clark & Peterson, 1986; Marland, 1995, 1998). Such beliefs driven theoretical framework constitute teacher's conceptions about teaching and learning and build up their principles of classroom practice. These beliefs or theoretical frameworks are given various labels in literature including implicit theories or personal theories about teaching and learning. Studies of teacher's personal theories are often conducted by means of qualitative methods such as interview, narratives and analysis of reflective journal about teaching. Quantitative measure by means of questionnaire or inventory to study personal theories are few but they are useful to provide a global picture or profiles of teachers beliefs/conceptions about teaching and learning. This paper attempts to develop and validate an instrument to measure teacher's personal theories. By means of which teacher educators and teacher education students can have an understanding of student teachers beliefs and conceptions about teaching and learning, which is considered a functional way of helping them learn how to teach in their course of professional development. Thus the validated measure assists teacher educators to evaluate the effectiveness of the teacher education program with reference to the identified profile of personal theories of their students. Also, the relations of demographic variables of teacher education students and their personal theories were analysed to investigate if there is any influence of age, gender and electives studied on the students beliefs or personal theories about teaching/learning, based on which implications and suggestions are drawn for teaching education development and research.
[Copyright of Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) at http://www.aare.edu.au]