The purpose of the study was to investigate the practice of teaching of beginning secondary school physical education teachers. The problems and the factors that confronted the teachers in their first year of work were examined. Thirteen physical education graduates of the Hong Kong Institute of Education in 2005 teaching in secondary schools were purposely invited to participate in the study. Qualitative data were collected by a combination of techniques: passive participant observation, formal and informal interviews, document analysis, and journal writing. Constant comparison and analytic induction were used to organize and categorize the data. Data generated helped to understand the confrontations faced and the influence of the workplace factors on the practices of beginning teachers. Results indicated that the teachers adjusted their practices according to their school contextual conditions during their first year of teaching. The common practices of teaching were a) instructional approach, b) lesson preparation, c) contents, and d) classroom management. The workplace impact was mainly come from their students, administrators, and work responsibilities. The participants also employed socializing strategies in order to survive in schools. Findings of the study hold implications for the development and preparation of physical education teachers with respect to the influence of organizational socialization.
[Copyright © 2009 Asian Journal of Physical Education & Recreation.]

The understanding of oneself has become an important area of study in the school curriculum. This is usually done through the guidance curriculum to enhance children’s self-understanding, empathy, and relationships with others. This is a worldwide trend in a comprehensive school guidance system (Gysbers & Henderson, 2000; Luk-Fong, 2005). This chapter documents students’ active learning about their own selves, as well as the selves of their future students, in a “Self-Personal Identities Module” in a teaching preparation institute in Hong Kong. The learning and understanding of oneself can best be done with other people in a group (in this paper, in a class) in a safe and inviting culture/environment. Grounded in the core values of respect, trust, optimism, intentionality, and care of invitational education, which was founded on democratic values, the perceptual tradition, and self-concept theory, this chapter demonstrates how educators can create an inviting learning culture and environment in a higher education setting to help student teachers to study their own personal identities and learn how to study the identities of their future students. Implications for student teachers’ learning in other higher education settings are discussed.

This article explores novice teachers’ perspectives on their teacher leadership roles and their principal’s facilitation of their leadership development. A cohort of 20 novice teachers teaching in Hong Kong participated in this study. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and documentary evidence during a two-year period. The results show that six novice teachers performed principal-delegated and teacher-initiated teacher leadership roles facilitated by principals’ practices. Interplay of the teacher’s and principal’s roles as an interface of developing teacher leadership is evidenced. This has important implications for the roles of teachers and principals in fostering teacher leadership in schools. Teacher educators are also informed for enhancement of initial teacher education.
[Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd.]

Enhancing teacher quality and reforming teacher education has attracted international attention. This chapter provides an overview of the book. It examines some of the international trends of teacher education and issues related to quality and change in teacher education. The book consists of three parts. The first part touches upon the contexts, status, and issues of quality in teacher education in the US, England, Australia and the Greater China region (China, Taiwan and Hong Kong SAR). The second part focuses on innovative and effective curriculum, teaching and assessment practices of teacher education. The final part discusses issues of managing change in teacher education.

This chapter first examines the changing international context of teacher education and then the status of teaching and pre-service and in-service teacher education in Hong Kong including the contexts of change that have shaped teaching and teacher education over the last decade. These latter contexts include educational and curriculum reforms, the decline of the school population, and the increase in both student diversity and the children of recent immigrants in local schools. The literature related to teachers’ belief, teachers’ perceptions of success as well as those on teaching and student learning and the development of professional learning communities in Hong Kong are also drawn upon to highlight implications for the future development of teacher education. It is suggested that teacher education programmes could reinforce pre-service teachers’ self-efficacy specifically in classroom management and catering for student diversity as well as teachers’ communication and interaction skills with students. Teacher education institutions could also explore the establishment of partnerships with schools and other organizations which provide policy and resources support for teacher education. Moreover, stress management and stress training activities could be enhanced to help teachers build up habits of work-life balance and enhance their hardiness.

In the Greater China region, there were unprecedented curriculum and teaching reforms around the early years of the new century which have stimulated teacher education institutions to echo changes. This chapter first examines the notion of “quality” of curriculum reforms and teacher education and their contexts of change in Hong Kong, Mainland China and Taiwan. Then innovative curriculum, teaching and assessment practices of teacher education are highlighted. Finally, several directions for the future development of pre-service and in-service teacher education in the Greater China region are proposed.

This longitudinal study investigates how in-service study abroad can improve the professional skills of teachers in regard to the strategies and attitudes they use to better motivate their students to learn English. The subject of this study is an in-service English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teacher from China who undertook a one-year teacher training course in Hong Kong and Australia, including taught modules, school attachment and teaching practicum. A series of interviews and classroom observations were conducted as the course progressed in order to collect the participant's views and practical strategies she plans to employ to enhance student motivation. Benefits of the one-year overseas training course are that the participant has become more sensitive to individual student potential, can more effectively tailor relevant teaching approaches to students' levels of understanding and will better comprehend that a teacher is of critical importance in motivating students to learn English. These three benefits, it is argued, will not only make the teacher more effective, but also tend to further draw out the potential in each student, resulting in better student performance.
[Copyright © 2016 Pedagogy, Culture & Society.]

Teaching professionals are crucial for the successful realization of e-Learning in school education. Major Asian cities/regions such as Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Beijing continuously invest in teacher development on e-Learning to empower frontline teachers and school leaders to advance school education in the digital era. This article aims to review and discuss the activity contents, delivery approaches, and scaling-up methods of teacher development on e-Learning in these four major Asian cities/regions. There is a unique trend identified in each of the four major Asian cities/regions. Singapore focuses on professional peer-learning communities for supporting practice-based teacher development on the effective use of ICT for learning and teaching in the classroom. Hong Kong focuses on building teacher communities for observing, engaging, and reflecting and succeeding school-based e-Learning initiatives for student-centered learning. Taiwan focuses on offering university-supported teacher development on the effective integration of e-Learning into students' learning, especially for learning twenty-first century skills. Beijing focuses on promoting self-directed teacher development on the advancement of ICT infusion in classroom teaching, especially the ICT-supported innovative pedagogies for K-12. Implications are drawn in order to provide a point of reference for other cities/regions in tailoring the future provision of teacher development for e-Learning in the twenty-first century.
[Copyright © 2016 Beijing Normal University.]

In recent years, the role of school principals in providing leadership, and the impact of that leadership in promoting teacher professional development for building school capacity has attracted increasing attention worldwide. The study described in this paper explores the practices of leadership for promoting school-based teacher professional development (SBTPD) through a case study of a preschool in Hong Kong, the Special Administrative Region of China. The case study examines leadership and SBTPD. Semi-structured interviews were used for data collection. The research participants were the management team and teachers from the case study school. The findings of the study indicate that direction setting, communication and collaboration were associated with the practice of leadership for promoting SBTPD. We argue that teacher participation in decision-making is an important factor influencing the practice of leadership and its impact on SBTPD. There are implications for developing a critical awareness of the constraints that limit the extent to which SBTPD can be empowering in the hierarchical school structure in a Chinese educational context.
[Copyright © 2016 Informa UK limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.]

Professional training and development is a major component of updating teachers' pedagogical knowledge and skills. However, transferring such knowledge and skill may not always be successful. Based on the theory of planned behaviour (TPB), the present study has developed a model specifying the factors affecting transfer maintenance intention and behaviour. This model was tested with the partial least square approach to structural equation modelling. The results indicate that the TPB-oriented model is able to explain in-service teachers' intention to maintain what they have learned from training in their jobs and their subsequent transfer maintenance behaviour. Moreover, the β coefficients indicate that attitude towards the behaviour was the major predictor of transfer maintenance intention, which was in turn the major predictor of transfer maintenance behaviour. Finally, research implications and practical implications have been provided in this study.
[Copyright of Educational Psychology is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01443410.2015.1011608]