Approaches to teaching art were studied through interviews with 18 art teachers at secondary schools in Hong Kong. Grounded analysis revealed that the approaches to teaching fitted into a four category model with category labels: instructional, discipline inquiry, social interactive, and personal. The categories were defined and described by six dimensional features: aim; content; role of teacher; role of student; teaching methods; and assessment orientation. The four categories of approaches to teaching could be placed under a higher-order spectrum between subject-and student-centred poles.

Teacher efficacy has been shown to be an important variable predicting teachers' capacity to contribute to reform efforts. Given the role that future teachers are expected to play in educational reform, this research aimed to measure the teacher efficacy of samples of pre-service teachers in Hong Kong and Macao using the Chinese version of the 12-item Teachers' Sense of Efficacy Scale (C-TSE). A cross-cultural perspective was important because it provided that opportunity to test the robustness of the instrument and to look at broader socio-cultural issues of teacher efficacy in two locations through the use of C-TSE. Sixty-six Hong Kong pre-service teachers and 66 Macao pre-service teachers participated in the study. In general, Hong Kong pre-service teachers were found to be more efficacious than the Macao cohort. However, the factor structures of the scale were not the same for the sub-samples. It is suggested that, on the one hand, programme characteristics and/or local cultures need to be considered when interpreting these results. On the other hand, the full 24-item scale, with more items that envisage and reflect particular classroom tasks and situations, could be useful to explore the dimensionality of pre-service teachers' sense of efficacy. This work contributes to an understanding of issues and problems relating to the measure of Chinese pre-service teachers' efficacy beliefs.
[Copyright © 2006 De La Salle University, Philippines.]

Whilst institute-school partnership have been affirmed as potentially valuable routes for the professional preparations of student teachers (Booth, Furlong & Wilkin, 1990; McCullough & Fidler, 1994), relatively less is known as to how teaching advisers perceive their roles and the impact of their collaborative relationships with student teachers on their own professional lives. This paper attempts to present the voices of four teaching advisers who participated in a mentoring scheme of an initial teacher education program in Hong Kong. Data collected through semi-structured interviews, lesson observations, and post-observation conferences present a general picture of the promises of the scheme as perceived by the teaching advisers in enhancing their own professional development, as well as challenges at the 'action' level. Findings point to the need for re-envisioning the roles and responsibilities of teachers for their own professional development as well as that of others. The paper will conclude with suggestions for fostering an effective and productive learning experience for both student teachers and teaching advisers.
[Copyright © 2004 De La Salle University, Philippines.]

How Chinese language proficiency can be enhanced is a key concern in the Hong Kong community. As the current literature suggests that student teachers' beliefs and past experience show great impact on the effectiveness of their learning to teach, this researcher made an attempt to investigate pre-service teachers' perceptions of teaching and learning Chinese in primary schools - a survey that involved 501 student teachers was conducted. The key findings include, first, over 80% of the respondents rated their own Chinese proficiency average or above average, and over 10% respondents considered themselves poor in the mastery of Chinese. Second, while a total of 86% of the respondents considered themselves average or good at speaking Chinese, they still expressed the need to receive more training in oral presentation and writing. And third, among the 13 prescribed teaching objectives set in the syllabi of Chinese, "fostering students' thinking ability" came first in the survey responents' ranking of the importance of teaching objectives, reflecting they needed training in both the subject knowledge of Chinese and pedagogical content knowledge.
[Copyright © 2002 The Hong Kong Institute of Education.]

This paper is concerned with a qualitative study of how three pre-service physical education teachers who were comparatively less skilful in sports, socialised professionally in their first field experience. It was a part of the two-year study project investigating the occupational scoialisation of pre-service physical education teachers in the Hong Kong Institute of Education. With the interpretive paradigm as the conceptual framework, data concerning the professional conceptions, socialising strategies and perceptions on their socialising agents during their first field experience were collected through interviewing and writing of reflective journals. The findings demonstrated a particular socialisation process of this type of recruits. Interestingly, they were found shaping their early belief from "being liked by the pupils" to "being proficient in sports skills and instructional competence" as important requirements for PE teaching after the first field experience. The wash out effect of the field experience on the physical education teacher programme was particular significant on them. The findings provide information about how a particular group of recruits socialised professionally in their first field experience. In return, such implications can be facilitated positively in teacher education.
[Copyright © 2002 Department of Physical Education, Hong Kong Baptist University.]

This paper describes the experience of a teacher educator in fostering teacher development in a reading project in Hong Kong. The teacher educator is interested in finding out the perceptions of teachers in the project and the factors affecting their perceptions and thus participation in the project. Teachers were interviewed and their lessons observed. A study of documents gave background information of the school. The interactions with the teachers in school functions, lesson observation, discussions and workshops recorded in the researcher’s diary had led to holistic interpretation of the teachers’ participation in the project. It is argued that the teacher’s sense of identity, value and moral purposed play an important but often neglected role in their involvement in an innovation.
[Copyright © 2004 International Society for Teacher Education.]

A brief narrative description of the journal article, document, or resource. First-hand experiences in learning art are very important. In Hong Kong secondary art, teachers must follow the syllabus and examination schedule suggested by the Education Department. Thus, these teachers cannot undertake art projects because they are locked into the structure of the syllabus and the limits of the timetable. This paper investigates two artist-in-residence projects implemented in Hong Kong. One project is an artist based in a secondary school and the other is an artist based in the studio. The paper finds that the students had greater exposure to various artforms and developed new ideas to make their work more creative. The art teachers participated in different activities and gained new ideas and stimulation for teaching. The paper concludes that, through their participation in teaching and exhibitions, the artists made successful contributions to schools and the community.

Following the education reform in 2001, the Education Bureau (EDB) in Hong Kong initiated a review of early childhood education (ECE) in 2006. The main focus of this review is the quality assurance mechanism for ECE, including the training of teachers, teaching quality, the potential pressures on teachers to upgrade their qualifications etc. This review is supported by the Chief Executive’s Policy Address (2006), which outlines concrete ways to achieve the targeted goals. This paper compares the provision of music training at four major ECE professional teacher-training institutions and examines the perspectives of in-service teachers, principals and early childhood education lecturers on the music training of ECE teachers. Using focus group interviews and survey, in-service ECE teachers expressed their general satisfaction with their pre-service training in music teaching. However, they did not feel prepared and confident enough to teach music in their schools compared to other subjects. They suggested aspects of pre-service training which would have better prepared teachers to teach music and identified three areas of professional development needs of ECE teachers in music teaching. A practical framework of professional development is also presented.
[Copyright © 2007 The Hong Kong Institute of Education.]

This study aimed at examining the instructional practice of Hong Kong primary physical education student teachers. Twenty student teachers were videotaped teaching two lessons during their practicum. They were coded using the Physical Education Teacher Assessment instrument. Data generated were comprehensively described. Three randomly selected student teachers participated in the second phase of the study. They were observed teaching two lessons and attended two pre-lesson and post-lesson interviews. Results indicated that the student teachers spent 73.18% of their time in instructional behaviours and 26.82% of their time in managerial behaviours. They held common features in instructional practice during teaching.
[Copyright © 2008 The International Council for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, Sport and Dance.]