The In-service Courses of Training for Teachers (ICTT) in Hong Kong played a key hole in meeting the minimum training needs of thousands of unqualified non-graduate teachers during the expansion of mass education from the 1950s to 1970s. Though these remedial courses have all along been perceived by the community as of dubious quality, they have lasted for five decades, as untrained teachers continued to join the teaching force, in the absence of a government policy requiring new teachers to be pre-service trained. It is not until recently that their phasing out has become a possibility. This paper provides a critical review of education policies which have allowed the prolongation of these courses for half a century. It illustrates the long and difficult process by which Hong Kong has been moving towards an “all trained” teaching profession.

Non-traditional pathways or alternative routes for initial teacher education have proliferated in the United States and the United Kingdom (Berliner, 2006; Furlong, 2005), and are being advocated in Australia and a number of European countries (Buckingham, 2005; Eurydice, 2004). The impetus for this development has been largely contributed by government efforts to alleviate critical teacher shortages in high need subjects and geographical districts. However, the development has been accompanied by politicized attacks on the traditional requirements of university- or college-based initial teacher education which were perceived as deterring talented prospective teachers from entering the profession. Furthermore, a more fundamental change has been the criticism of the quality of university-based teacher education, and the shift of teacher education to school-based and employment-based routes (Abell Foundation, 2001; US Department of Education, 2002). This paper first provides a comparative analysis of the policy context and the development of alternative routes to teacher education in various countries, and reviews the research literature on the arguments for and against traditional and alternative routes of teacher education. It then traces the development of teacher education policy since the establishment of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region in 1997. It argues that there is substantial evidence to support the claim that government policy has been influenced by the developments of alternative routes of teacher preparation elsewhere, which has partly contributed to its wavering over whether to implement the "all graduate, all trained" policy objective announced by the Chief Executive in 1997. This policy shift has illustrated the long and difficult process of teacher professionalization in Hong Kong and may provide useful insights for other parts of the world.

This paper reported the nature of multimedia teaching materials and focuses of discussions of in-service teachers in a web-based learning environment. The significance of the study was that in-service teachers had developed useful multimedia teaching materials for their daily teaching and these could be shared among their peers. Besides, the study on the focuses of teachers' discussions and sharing provided insight and direction of further implementation of discussion forums for teachers.

In many Western countries such as the United States, Britain and Canada multicultural education has attracted the attention of many researchers. The reason is that the tide of immigrants to these countries has produced a more diverse student body. The presence of these immigrant students has generated problems for teachers and school administrators. Promotion of a spirit of tolerance and helping them to adjust has become important goals for teachers in schools in these countries. Authors such as Banks, Sleeter and Grant have documented various aspects of multiculturalism and multicultural education in the context of Western countries. The conceptualisation by Banks(1997) of multicultural education as a broad interdisciplinary field with five interrelated dimensions are quite well known. In Hong Kong the influx of Mainland Chinese to the territory since the early 1990s has been a prominent feature. As similar to the cases in many Western countries, these newly arrived people from Mainland China to Hong Kong have generated problems of integration with local people and of adjustment to the new environment. Lee(1998) has investigated the issue of new immigrants moving to Hong Kong from Mainland China. He found evidence that the new immigrants in the 1990s are no longer as economically vibrant as those in the 1960s and the 1970s and they are more dependent on social welfare provisions. This helps to offer one explanation for the social exclusion of new immigrants. The problem of adjustment encountered by immigrant children has also aroused the attention of many parties, including teachers and social workers. Researchers have documented the life of these children in Hong Kong. Though these children are of the same race as those of the local school children, the background and culture of the former is quite different from the later. For instance in Hong Kong the traditional version of Chinese character is used. However in Mainland China the simplified version of Chinese character

The literature on the scoiocultural view of learning, and teacher development framed the present study. Five beginning teachers teaching science in Hong Kong elementary schools were interviewed three months after they started their first teaching assignment. Support was then provided in the form of a resource pack, an introductory workshop and personal support from the researcher. During the implementation of the resource pack, lesson observations and interviews were conducted. Findings suggest the science teaching was more consistent with a constructivist view of learning and some were even able to influence their colleagues to give more thought to their science lessons. Teacher development is anaylsed with a sociocultural view of learning and recommendations for teacher education were made.