The Hong Kong Institute of Education is offering a Three-year Full-time Certificate in Education Course (Primary Education) and an In-service Course of Training for Teachers in Primary Schools. Because the latter course has a fewer course hours than the former course, there is a notion in the Institute of lengthening the latter course in order to upgrade it into a Certificate in Primary Education (Part-time) Course. The author is interested to compare the Final-year trainees in these two courses on their Self-Efficacy Beliefs in Science Teaching, hoping that it would activate the comparative studies on some other aspects of these two courses to see if the findings would support the above-mentioned notion to upgrade the latter course. An instrument HKSTEBI was generated to measure the construct of Science teaching efficacy beliefs. It was found that there is no significant difference between the two cohorts of trainees in the above-mentioned course.

In the last two decades, a lot of effort has been put into protection of Hong Kong’s marine environment. The environment, ecology and conservation strategies are all excellent teaching resources for executing environmental education in local schools. In 2013, Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department (AFCD) has commissioned the Hong Kong Institute of Education (HKIEd) to develop an educational programme to promote our marine environment, its ecological value and marine conservation work among Hong Kong local schools. The programme provided innovative and comprehensive education kits and web Apps for primary and secondary schools as well as school visits and field studies to effectively deliver marine ecological knowledge and messages of marine conservation to local students. The programme also involved a “train-the-trainer” project in which AFCD organized informative marine conservation seminars, field trips and poster competition for undergraduate students in HKIEd who helped to provide interactive school talks for primary and secondary school students. All these activities target to educate the young generation our marine environment and raising their concerns and awareness on marine conservation issues and equip the potential teachers from HKIEd with essential marine conservation knowledge and field experience in their future career.

This paper describes the outcome of a collaboration project, a science school-based curriculum development proje between the Hong Kong Institute of Education and five primary schools. The project was an attempt to address thre problems perceived by the teachers concerning primary science teaching including, lack of subject knowledge, lacki resources and feeling of insufficiency in facilitating pupils' learning. In addressing these problems, the project tea devised a number of strategies for the teaching of science based on a constructivist view of learning and supported teachers through a school-based curriculum development model. Strategies used include: designing a series of teachir packages to lessen the burden of teaching in terms of time and resources constraints; and organizing school-bas workshops to facilitate professional discussion and reflection on teaching practices. This paper describes the variourj phases of the school-based curriculum development project including the planning, implementation and evaluation of I project. The effectiveness of the project in terms of professional interaction and application of the teaching kit examined by analyzing the interview responses. The findings of the project provide evidence that there were improvements in the learning and teaching of science in primary classrooms. Finally, drawing on the findings, the paper introduces ways of improving the project and future directions of research.

Whether a person's mother tongue affects his learning of science concepts is a constant controversy among educators. In a bilingual society such as Hong Kong, terminologies commonly used in English and Chinese, such as energy and force, create frequent misconceptions and sometimes different types of misconceptions. The purpose of this study is to ascertain if there are different patterns of misconceptions in science concepts between Chinese speaking students and English speaking students. If so, how can we benefit from these patterns and help science teachers to be more effective. In May and June of 1988, 7.01 Form 1 and Form 4 Hong Kong science students completed a questionnaire on energy and force. Forty-one Form 4 students were interviewed using the Interview-about-Instances technique. Fifty percent of the student sample were English-speaking while the rest were Chinese-speaking. Results of this study were analysed using a list f common misconception frameworks. Amazing patterns of misconceptions were found in both language groups. Come patterns can be seen clearly to have derived from the language used. Different patterns of misconception between the two language groups were demonstrated remarkably. It was clear that everyday usage of the terms contributed to the differences. The history of the terms and the common usage of the related terms in their respective languages were also accountable to the patterns. Science teachers are strongly advised to be aware of the students' alternative frameworks in the learning of science concepts within the context of their mother tongue. Everyday meaning of terminologies used for important science concepts should be considered thoroughly in writing up lesson plans. Related terms and their meaning should also be checked before actually teaching the concept. List of common misconception patterns of students for each important science concept should also be discussed. As evident from the findings of this research, a person's language