This paper describes a study investigating the professional development of Hong Kong kindergarten teachers. Tracking the teaching and learning of 'play' of six front-line kindergarten teachers by means of the three levels of reflection put forward by Schon (1983, 1987), the study reveals the challenges in the professional lives of these teachers who are working under the conflicting demands and expectations of the society. The result shows that five out of the six informants are entrapped in a 'technicality' of teaching by developing an obsessive hunt for authentic teaching aids. Unfortunately, this behaviour perpetuates under the effect of a self-fulfilling prophecy working within these teachers. Mismatches between the teaching reform and a number of vital core factors for the reform to be succeeded are identified. This paper calls for a due attention to understand the complexities impeding the teaching reform. It echoes the concern of Bascia and Hargreaves (2000) and appeals to policy makers and the public for a fair demand on the role of teachers, who must not be hold accountable for all that is wrong with education, for the scale of the problems that teachers are expected to address just cannot be solved easily by the teachers themselves.

Beginning from the 2003/04 school year onward, all new preschool teachers need to be professionally qualified through completing pre-service teacher education progrmames. The new policy necessarily leads to fast expansion in the provision of pre-service early childhood teacher education. We believe that teacher education in pre-service programmes is fundamentally different from that in in-service programmes, the former serve novice while the latter serve experienced, though untrained, teachers. Pre-service teachers can only draw on their biographical experience and culturally transmitted beliefs, values, and folkways of teaching to process their teacher education experience. As early childhood teacher education largely adopts a professional discourse transplanted from the West, how do pre-service teachers harmonize cultural variations in the ideas and practices of educating young children? What do they learn and how do they learn as they progress through a three-year pre-service programme? This paper reports a case study of pre-service teachers’ experience in a three-year fulltime early childhood teacher education programme at the Hong Kong Institute of Education. The study tracked teacher development of four pre-service teachers in the programme and beyond in beginning teaching. Each research participant was interviewed periodically throughout their progression through the three-year programme to tap their conception of teaching before joining the programme, why they pursued a teaching career at the time they enrolled in the programme, their experience in the programme, particularly in teaching practicum, and changes over time in their teacher knowledge, beliefs and values about educating young children as they progressed through the programme and then embarked on beginning teaching. Two research participants decided to give up preschool teaching as their career by the end of the progrramme. The other two participants started to teach in kindergartens after completing

At present, it is very difficult to retrieve relevant and comprehensive literature on the historical development of PE teacher education in Hong Kong. One of the problems might be due to the fact that in the past PE teacher education was offered by the college of education which was run by the government. Under civil regulations, PE lecturers were not encouraged to conduct any research or projects. In order to improve the quality of teaching and learning in the PE teacher education history, there is a need to develop enriched, empirical teaching resources to strengthen this area. The purpose of this project is to study the historical development of PE teacher education in Hong Kong since the 1930s, focusing on the areas of physical education teacher education and physical education development at school levels. To collect primary empirical data about programmes, pedagogy, curriculum changes, school-based curriculum development, and professional development of PE teachers, 19 retired and serving PE lecturers and 10 secondary and primary schools PE teachers were invited to participate in interviews. The results of this study will provide a comprehensive reference for teaching and learning purposes to be used in teaching PE history and other contexts.

This paper explores how Learning Study, a Hong Kong version of the Japanese Lesson Study, serves to relate teaching to learning at the classroom level. Learning Study is premised on a conceptual framework that builds on three types of variation in a specific object of learning: variation in students' understanding of the object of learning (V1); variation in teachers' understanding and ways of handling the object (V2); and the use of patterns of variation based on the Theory of Variation (V3). Each Learning Study begins with a careful consideration of what pupils are supposed to learn (i.e. object of learning) and what is/are critical for them to be able to learn it (i.e. critical features). A pre- test is used to help the team to collect pupils' prior understandings of the object of learning which may constitute their learning difficulties. Taking into account students' different understandings of the object of learning, teachers collaborate with researchers from tertiary institutes to develop ways to structure the lesson in terms of pattern of variation aiming to make possible the learning of the critical features identified for the object of learning. Teachers in the team then teach the lesson in cycles. Lesson observation, post-lesson conference, post- test and post-lesson student interview are arranged after each cycle of lesson and the data collected are analyzed and triangulated to optimize the improvement that can be made in the next cycle. This paper draws on the data of two learning studies supported by the government-funded Progressive and Innovative Primary Schools Project of the Hong Kong Institute of Education and discusses how the teachers became aware of what was crucial in teaching the chosen topic – the critical features that students had to attend to, by relating the act of teaching to the corresponding student learning outcomes.

An ongoing project is investigating online learning-oriented assessment (Carless, 2003) on a two-year project to redesign seven teaching and learning modules at the Hong Kong Institute of Education. Simultaneously the project team is developing key principles for online learning assessment. The project uses 'design experiments' (Brown, 1992; Collins, 1992), 'development research' (van de Akker, 1999) or 'use-inspired research' (Stokes, 1997) for the ongoing project. Use-inspired research "includes basic research that seeks to extend the frontiers of understanding but is also inspired by considerations of use" (Stokes, 1997, p. 74). Our focus has been to improve the use of learning-oriented assessment in eight separate modules (four completed and three in-progress) in teacher-education. Four teacher-educators from four different departments: Early Childhood Education, Information and Applied Technology, Creative Arts and the Centre for Learning, Teaching and Technology participated in the project. Throughout the project we have examined teachers' perceptions of assessment, teaching and learning and technology through video-interviews and concept mapping. In addition we have conducted video-focus groups with students within our classes to determine their perceptions about the new forms of assessment that we have trialled. Online learning technology has significantly changed the landscape of teaching, learning and assessment and allows new possibilities. Learning management systems like Blackboard have unique affordances in allowing collaboration between students. The use of group activities and student-centred approaches like project-based learning allow students to collaborate, debate, negotiate and crystallize their ideas whilst working within a socio-constructivist framework. The nature of the learning task is a predominant factor in the collaborative skills developed by the students. Project-based learning is defined as "an instructional technique in which meaningful