This study tests mediated principal leadership effects on teacher professional learning through collegial trust, communication, and collaboration in Hong Kong primary schools. It is based on a series of single mediator studies, and uses the same convenience sample of 970 teachers from 32 local primary schools. It also adopts Hayes’ (2013) regression-based macros, integrated with bootstrapping method, to examine and compare sizes and proportions of potential mediating effects of the three human relational variables. The findings affirm the role and nature trust, communication, and collaboration play in the mediated relationship. In contrast, the mediating power of collaboration is non-significantly stronger than that of communication, and is more than doubled that of trust. The conclusion is that, a school environment featuring mutual trust, effective communication, and genuine collaboration is a core condition for teacher learning and change. Provided that the forces that bind people together in schools are multiple, principals are recommended to create school culture and conditions strategically for teacher learning to thrive.

Teacher leadership plays a critical role of school improvement. However, the leadership development of beginning teachers is often neglected. This presentation examines the impacts of principal-teacher interactions on the teacher leadership development of twenty beginning teachers in Hong Kong. Case study approach was adopted. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and documentary evidence such as school development plans and school reports. Results show that the beginning teachers were able to take up formal and informal roles of teacher leadership early in their teaching career. The characteristics of the principal practice and three types of impacts of principal-teacher interactions on developing teacher leadership are identified. This presentation highlights the role of principal in teacher’s leadership development. Implications for school leadership and teacher education programmes are also discussed.

Despite school middle leaders are growing in their importance in the school in recent years, the understanding of their leadership roles and practices are unclear. In addition, the changing expectations of middle leadership lead them into confusion of roles and an unknown space of practice. This paper intends to portrait the conception of middle leadership in schools in light of the teachers' perception and expectation of middle leadership. Data were collected from interviews of four subject department heads/coordinators and five subject teachers who worked with the middle leaders closely in three special schools in Hong Kong. Initial findings show that the middle leaders were struggling with role ambiguity – unclear positioning of work, which led to overloading and frustration in work as they often developed a symptom of doing this and that. Although both the middle leaders and teachers often had high and broad expectations for middle leaders, i.e. excellency in both professional and management duties, it is found that the middle leaders were usually ill-prepared for the multiple roles. The paper concludes that middle leaders have to understand the breadth, depth and substances of middle leadership in school so that they can be prepared well for performing their roles and responsibilities.

This article examines language teachers’ attitudes towards use of the first language (L1) in second language (L2) learning and teaching from the perspective of teacher identity. Drawing on a theory of identity as both experiential and relational, in-depth interviews are used to explore the perspectives of six pre-service English language teachers in Hong Kong who had recent experiences of medium of instruction (MOI) policies and their implementation within Hong Kong secondary schools during an eight-week teaching practicum. The results suggest that MOI issues presented significant challenges to the participants as they struggled with multiple identities at the institutional, interpersonal, and intrapersonal levels. Implications for language teacher education, the formation and implementation of policies towards use of the L1 in L2 teaching and learning, and future research are discussed.
[Copyright © 2013 Asian EFL Journal.]

The four presentations of the symposium are as follows: 1. Professionalization of Teacher Education: An Initial Review of the Trends and Change Forces of Teacher Education in Hong Kong since the Second World War 2. An Evaluation of the Teacher Education Curriculum in Hong Kong 3. An Innovative and Effect System for Evaluation of Classroom Teaching 4. Teaching as a Profession in Hong Kong: Its Economic Status