Mentoring has been seen as an ongoing effort to professionalize teaching in teacher education since the 1980s. It is commonly believed that collaborating mentors and student teachers can benefit through the dynamics of school-based mentoring. Reflectivity is said to be one mechanism by which changes occur both in the student teacher and the mentor.
Conventional studies on the reciprocal effects of mentoring on mentors have usually used survey and follow-up interviews, after mentors have completed the mentoring process, as the main methods of data collection. Hence, there is scant literature about how mentors' professional growth develops during mentoring and what factors sustain or hinder such development. The present study aims to investigate the effect of mentoring on mentors' development of expertise in teaching.
Ethnographic research methods incorporating direct observation and interviews were employed in studying four mentors' mentoring practices. These mentors are English and Chinese language teachers who acted as mentors in 2005 for Year 4 students of the Bachelor of Education programme at The University of Hong Kong. An analytical framework developed from the literature is used to interpret and illustrate the effects of mentoring practices on their development of expertise in teaching, in terms of reflection, practical knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge.
The results indicate that student teachers' practices in learning to teach become an object about which mentors engage in reflection. Reflection through conversations plays a key role in experienced teachers' development of expertise in teaching. Such reflection requires three kinds of capacities: theorizing practical knowledge, pedagogical reasoning and collaborative inquiry.
Relationships that are reflective and collaborative, involving co-inquiry about teaching and learning, have been found to be pivotal in mentors' development of expertise in teaching. This study demonstrates

西方研究教育改革及教師發展的文獻，主張從教師個人發展的角度，思考教師在改變教學範式過程中如何建立個人的意義，才能為教師在增進知識與發展能力方面帶來真正的轉變。專題研習為香港教改短期發展(2000-05)其中一項關鍵項目，旨在通過嶄新的學習與教學策略，發展學生的共通能力。本文探討職前教師推行專題研習的實際經驗，闡述他們在個人成長及工作意義方面的發現，藉此突顯教師在推行專題研集過程中所得的實踐經驗，不但是個人的深刻體會，更是教師累積知識及提昇能力的基礎。
In light of existing literature on education reform and teacher development, this paper sees teacher development as self understanding rather than merely as knowledge and skills development. Based on the interviews with pre-service secondary schoolteachers, this paper examines how their experiences as project learning tutors echo the recurrent themes of survival and discovery on the early stage of teacher development. It argues that teacher experience and self understanding is the foundation for further pursuit of knowledge and skills development.
[Copyright of Hong Kong Teachers' Centre Journal is the property of Hong Kong Teachers' Centre at http://www.edb.org.hk/hktc]

Despite the imperatives of policy and rhetoric about their integration in formal education, Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are often used as an "add-on" in many classrooms and in many lesson plans. Nevertheless, many teachers find that interesting and well-planned tasks, projects, and resources provide a key to harnessing the educational potential of digital resources, Internet communications, and interactive multimedia to engage the interest, interaction, and knowledge construction of young learners. To the extent that such approaches go beyond and transform traditional "transmission" models of teaching and formal lesson planning, this paper investigates the changing requirements and new possibilities represented by the challenge of integrating ICTs in education in a way which at the same time connects more effectively with both the specific contents of the curriculum and the various stages and elements of the learning process. Case studies from teacher education foundation courses provide an exemplary focus of inquiry in order to better link relevant new theories or models of learning with practice, to build upon related learner-centered strategies for integrating ICT resources and tools, and to incorporate interdependent functions of learning as information access, communication, and applied interactions. As one possible strategy in this direction, the concept of an "ICT-supported learning activity" suggests the need for teachers to approach this increasing challenge more as "designers" of effective and integrated learning rather than mere "transmitters" of skills or information through an add-on use of ICTs.
[Copyright of Language Learning & Technology is the property of Heinrich-Heine-University in Düsseldorf.
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The qualitative educational research literature is increasingly advocating the use of literary/artistic techniques. This article describes and evaluates educational action researches by three art teachers, and questions why they have not capitalised methodologically on their artistic expertise. Analysis of commonalities in practitioner-based research in education and practice-based research in art and design reveals significant differences in these two paradigms however. Whereas artists and educational researchers both engage in qualitative problem solving and may use the same kinds of materials and tools, they develop different kinds of hypotheses, look for different sorts of evidence and apply different quality controls.
[Copyright of Educational Action Research is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09650790500200305 ]