One hundred and thirty-eight Hong Kong and 195 Shanghai in-service teachers participated in this study. Three different scales were used namely the trait anxiety scale, the self-esteem scale and the teaching anxiety scale. Each scale was translated from English into Chinese. This study aims to compare the teaching anxiety level of in-service teachers in Hong Kong and Shanghai, and from a psychological perspective, it also aims to find out if trait anxiety and self-esteem can predict teaching anxiety. Overall, the study found that Hong Kong in-service teachers had higher teaching anxiety than their Shanghai counterparts. In addition, it was found that teaching anxiety was predicted by both trait anxiety and self-esteem as assumed. Teaching anxiety has been found to have many negative effects on both students and teachers. Thus, based on results from the questionnaires, factors that may reduce teaching anxiety of Hong Kong in-service teachers were suggested by interviewing 10 Hong Kong in-service teachers who also participated in the first part of the study, and their suggestions could be applied to professional developmental courses in reducing teaching anxiety for in-service teachers.

This article reports on a qualitative study that explored the experiences of eight Hong Kong teachers of academic subjects who undertook a full-time, short-term professional development course (PDC) designed to provide them with specialized knowledge and classroom skills required to teach content subjects through the English medium. Using a theoretical framework for understanding teacher identity, the study examined how these eight teachers believed the experiences of a short-term PDC shaped their ongoing identity construction, particularly upon completion of the course and subsequent return to their respective schools. Based upon in-depth interviews with participants and using methods of discourse analysis, the results suggest that while participants believed the impact of the PDC in terms of their own classroom teaching was positive, they faced significant challenges in realizing their preferred identity positions within the context of their whole school communities. The response of some participants to these difficulties indicated that their PDC experiences may have contributed to the establishment of a rigid division between different types of teachers within schools and that relations of antagonism appeared to exist between these different teacher identities. Implications for overcoming such divisions for the design of PDCs and for future research are discussed.
[Copyright of Roeper Review is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19415257.2011.576262]

This article documents the authors' reflections on a teacher professional development programme conducted in 38 Hong Kong primary schools on the teaching of English through Process Drama. The authors draw upon the views of school principals, subject panel head teachers, English teachers, students and parents in focus group interviews to examine the learning and teaching experiences at the heart of the Programme. These reflections focus on how Process Drama can enhance second language acquisition by accommodating more affective factors in learning, by stressing creativity and by shifting the didactic discourse in the classroom to one that is more authentic and less threatening and which encourages increased amounts of student talk. The authors describe how, based on the focus group interview data, a piece of Verbatim Theatre was created and used as a stimulus to elicit deeper reflective responses to the Programme. They also reflect upon the level of understanding of Process Drama's complex pedagogy and artistry demonstrated by those teachers new to it and consider what further research might help the long-term implementation of drama in Hong Kong classrooms.
[Copyright of Roeper Review is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13569783.2011.617099]

This study investigated the effectiveness of a gratitude intervention programme in promoting life satisfaction and reducing burnout symptoms. Sixty-three Hong Kong Chinese school teachers aged 22-54 participated in an eight-week count-your-blessings study that used a pre-test/post-test design. Increases in life satisfaction and the sense of personal accomplishment and decreases in emotional exhaustion and depersonalisation were observed in the post-intervention assessment. Significant changes were observed on life satisfaction and emotional exhaustion as a result of intervention interacting with the meaningful-life orientation to happiness. These changes favoured teachers who put higher value on the meaningful-life orientation, suggesting that the promotion of a meaningful-life orientation could be an important element in the repertoire of gratitude intervention efforts. Implications of the findings on developing gratitude intervention programmes that focus on human positives and the promotion of gratitude and the meaningful-life orientation in combating teacher burnout are discussed.
[Copyright of Roeper Review is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01443410.2011.608525]

This article discusses the results of a qualitative study that aimed to explore how one group of preservice English language teachers in Hong Kong constructed their identities as teachers. Using in-depth interviews to gain a rich understanding of participants' teacher identity formation in practice and discourse, the paper examines the perspectives of six preservice teachers about teaching and teachers at the completion of their undergraduate teacher education program. In contrast to the theorization of teacher identity construction, the results suggest that the participants often held rigid views about teaching and how they saw themselves, and others, as teachers. The paper argues that this rigidity may lead to antagonistic relations between these preservice teachers and their more experienced colleagues as the participants move into teaching and explores the implications for challenging this rigidity within the context of teacher education programs. Implications for future research are also considered.
[Copyright of Roeper Review is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13540602.2011.602207]

This paper provides a co-director's and co-author's review of and commentary on research carried out with Maurice Galton over the past decade. Its principal focus is the burden that recent education policies and ascent of a deleterious culture of performativity have inflicted on teachers' professional and domestic lives. It reports on four studies conducted for the National Union of Teachers (NUT) and two books: Teachers under pressure and Re-inventing schools, reforming teaching. The latter offers alarming, if not surprising, insights into the process of national policy-making. It goes on to relate mutual experiences of recent work in Hong Kong and draws attention to Maurice Galton's contributions to education internationally. The keys to this paper, however, are the persistence, perspicacity and Maurice's personal concern for teachers and children, that have enabled the insights and injustices uncovered in these studies to be published.
[Copyright of Roeper Review is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0305764X.2011.607152]

Policy borrowing' continues to be an important factor in the construction of higher education policy in East Asia. Many post-colonial societies have continued to look to the West for models that will assist them to reengineer their universities in the quest for creating world class institutions. Against this background, Hong Kong's University Grants Committee adopted an outcomes based approach to teaching and learning in 2005 and gained support from institutions under its responsibility for doing so. Supported with ample resources, the subject of numerous public symposia and incorporated into regular quality audit assessments, outcomes based approaches to teaching and learning are in the process of becoming part of Hong Kong's distinctive approach to quality reform in higher education. This paper reviews the policy context in which this initiative emerged, analyses the policy meaning in terms of its underlying theories and derives a set of principles that could guide the implementation of outcomes based approaches. The multiple possibilities associated with outcomes based teaching and learning demonstrate how systemic reform agendas are subject to interpretation and local adaptation.
[Copyright of Roeper Review is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1360080X.2011.564995]

This paper argues that, despite government support in financial and contractual matters, ongoing problems of retention of Native-speaking English Teachers (NETs) in Hong Kong stem, in part, from problems of cross-cultural adjustment. The paper reports a small-scale qualitative investigation into the experiences of NETS in Hong Kong and finds problems of cross-cultural adjustment of the NETs themselves, the host schools and the government's induction practices. The paper reports a diversity of problems in cross-cultural adjustment and a variety of ways in which NETs handled them. The argument is made for increased and differentiated attention to be given to the cross-cultural adjustment of NETs, for greater social networking and for reducing the isolation and cross-cultural stresses that they experience. It is suggested that this might attenuate the problem of high NET turnover in Hong Kong.
[Copyright of Roeper Review is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03055698.2010.539667]