Studies on cognitive process pose a breakthrough in the research of writing in recent decades. Most of them are first language studies and concentrate on the stage development of the process writing, that is to observe the behavioral level of performance of the student. However, related research in helping student aware of improving his writing skills right at the moment of composing is still lacking. This exploratory study is undertaken to investigate the transformation strategies of spoken Cantonese to written English by secondary students in Hong Kong. Students who started extended writing in Form I will be studied, and the major method to gather data is think-aloud---protocol analysis. The subjects will be asked to write a narrative essay that he is familiar to. The whole writing process will be audio-taped, and the resulting protocol will be transcribed and analyzed in comparison with the text produced. The think-aloud protocol is the intended representation of the thought of the subject during writing, while the written text is the executed representation. The discrepancies of the two representations involve the process of transformation by the subjects during writing. With the knowledge, we could have more insights on locating areas to help students the learning of second language to improve the proficiency, on the issue of medium of instruction, and on striking a better balance of our language policy as well. Some possible pedagogical implications are presented.
[Copyright © 2000 The Hong Kong Institute of Education.]

When educators and researchers are talking about, studying or applying IT in education in many parts of the world, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government launched a five-year IT education strategy. It aims at applying IT comprehensively across the curriculum that within ten years, all teachers and secondary 5 graduates will be able to work competently with IT tools. The strategy advocated a big step forward from the existing situation as most of the primary schools have not yet involved any elements of IT in their curriculum. This survey aimed to find out the teachers' readiness and attitude towards IT in art education in local primary schools.

It is widely recognised that teachers' professional development is greatly enhanced through their participation in professional discourse. Professional discourse is a structured form of professional conversation that is widely used in lesson analysis and pre and post-lesson conferencing, within the contexts of mentoring and peer review. In Hong Kong, lesson observation and analysis also arise when conducting Learning Study. In these various contexts, conversation often turns on reconciling different interpretations and understandings of classroom events. When conducting a lesson (teacher talk) and in pre and post-lesson analysis (teacher conversation), meanings are not simply articulated, they are also created. Moreover, the meanings expressed by teachers when both teaching and analysing lessons are not stable; they are in process and change over time. The paper will outline these ideas in detail, with particular emphasis on lesson conferencing, building on the work previously undertaken by one of the authors on the hermeneutics of professional discourse. The conceptual framework discussed in the paper will provide the basis of a research programme that will shortly be undertaken in Hong Kong, as a component of a major government sponsored project conducting Learning Studies in both primary and secondary schools.

This paper describes how a team of teachers and researchers in Hong Kong worked together to develop a research lesson on electro-chemical series in a Learning Study at Secondary 4 level in the subject of Chemistry. Learning study is premised on a conceptual framework that builds on three types of variation: variation in students' understanding of a specific 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). The study reported in this paper illustrates how the conceptual framework, in particular, the use of patterns of variation, helps to enhance student learning. In this study, the same teacher taught the research lesson in two cycles to two Secondary 4 Chemistry classes in the same school. The two cycles of research lesson were videotaped, analyzed and triangulated with the student learning outcomes in a diagnostic test administered before and after the lesson, and a post-lesson group interview with a sample of students. Whereas the theoretical framework of variation was employed to analyze what patterns of variation were created and hence what was made possible to learn in the lessons, the results of the pre- and post- test were compared to trace the students' progress in categories of questions that measured for their understanding. In the research lesson, patterns of variation which served the functions of ìseparation and ìgeneralization were used to help the students to understand how the electro-chemical series is derived, and to discern that the order of the metals in the series and the potential difference between any two given metals are constant and independent of the reference metal used. The student learning outcomes showed that there was substantial growth in the students' understanding of these concepts.

This paper explores the concept of "cultural cross-currents," their implicit nature and the potential they have to effect second language literacy learning, teaching and curriculum reform in Hong Kong primary classrooms. Despite the substantive implications for learning, explorations of cultural influences upon teacher and student thinking and the resultant educational consequences, remains a largely unrecognized area. It is argued that cultural differences in attitudes, beliefs and values of cultural groups toward the way first and second languages are acquired needs to be made explicit in order to facilitate second language literacy teaching and learning.