This study is designed on the basis on the key premises of Activity Theory, in the development of curriculum leadership among two groups of primary teachers in an innovation engaged school in Hong Kong China in April 2005 and 2008. Three curriculum development teams were formed and their membership and leadership were manipulated to create internal tensions and contradictions among members in a flattened leadership context. The aim is to investigate the extent that teacher participation in curriculum decision making processes is mediated by the artifacts such as hierarchical power, roles and leadership styles. The findings based on the analysis of the interviews as well as the video taped meetings of the curriculum teams point to the varying mediation effects of the two artifacts, namely the roles of the consultants and the leadership styles upon teacher participation.

The practical issue for many teacher educators is how to effect change at both the micro and macro levels in education in Hong Kong. Within Hong Kong there is a perception that change is necessary and that traditional ways of teaching and learning are no longer able to maintain Hong Kong’s position into the 21st Century. The questions then become: how does one bring about change at both the macro and micro levels, within the system as a whole and with in individual teachers? How cans one break into the circle of self-perpetuating traditional practice within schooling and teacher education? Is it possible to educate teachers who will not simply duplicate traditional practices when they are appointed to their posts in schools? How can student teachers be encouraged to critically examine deeply established preconceptions of what it really means to be teacher in Hong Kong and become willing agents of change? How does ones create enough but not too much discomfort with the status quo?

This paper reports the effect of Learning Study module on developing the teaching competency of pre-service teachers in Hong Kong. Learning Study module is a research based teacher training course that aims to improve pre-service teachers’ lesson preparation skills and their teaching competency. The module is offered for all Year Two students in the Bachelor of Education programme of the Hong Kong Institute of Education. It comprises a series of lectures, consultation meetings and teaching practices that set the theoretical framework for conducting Learning Study. Activities are organized in such a way that pre-service teachers can practice argumentation, decision making and justification while investigating and solving pedagogical problems. This study aims to validate a theoretical model for exploring the critical successful factors of the Learning Study module for nurturing pre-service teacher’s reflective competency and lesson preparation skills through a quasi-experiment design. 341 preservice teachers took part in a questionnaire survey. A structural equation model was applied to explore the relationships. Lesson analysis, framework for conducting Learning Study, consultation on lesson design and teaching, lesson implementation and peer observation in the teaching practices are identified to be the critical successful factors for developing lesson preparation skills, teaching competency and reflective experiences of the pre-service teachers.

This study aims to explore the relationship between the supporting factors and learning outcomes of a teaching practicum model for an initial teacher education programme in Hong Kong. Identifying the predictive relationships of the supporting factors for pre-service teachers’ teaching practicum and their learning outcome could help promoting the quality of the programme. There were 229 pre-service teachers participated to a questionnaire survey of a quasi-experimental design. Confirmatory factor analysis and reliability test were used to confirm the constructed validity and reliability of the survey instrument. A Structural Equation Model was applied to explore the predictive relationship between the supporting factors and their learning outcomes. Results show that campus-based courses, school mentor support and pre-service teacher’s self-efficacy were identified to be the supporting factors for their learning outcomes which include instructional design, managing learning activities and assessment. Strengthening school partnerships, providing mentor training and enhancing the element of assessment for learning in campus based course are recommended to the teacher education programme.

This paper aims to explore the mechanism of Learning Study in enhancing teacher professional development by adopting community of practices as the analytical framework. Under the curriculum reform in Hong Kong, schools are facing challenges in acquiring pedagogical content knowledge for implementing new curriculum. How to enhance teacher professional development for building school capacity is critical for sustainable development. Learning study is a school improvement project which aims to improve the quality of student learning via enhancing teacher professional development by creating a community of practice among teachers, researchers and educators involved in the design, implementation, evaluation and dissemination of a research lesson, with ultimate goal of developing Learning Community in the school. This study will explore how the community of practice set up by the Learning Study Project can effectively help teachers build their pedagogical content knowledge. Wenger’s theory of Communities of Practices, which postulate that participants have a mutual engagement for a negotiated joint enterprise and they develop a shared repertoire, is adopted as the theoretical framework for exploring teacher learning and professional growth. The study adopts ethnographic approach to investigate social phenomena of teacher interactions in a case selected from Learning Study Project. Results show that the collaborative features of the Learning Study provide opportunities for teachers to create shared knowledge, values and beliefs and to establish overlapping histories among them. Learning Study enhances teacher professional development by creating a community of practice for knowledge sharing and reflective practices on teaching and learning.

To become an effective English language teacher, one needs to have a strong command of the English language, good pedagogical skills and cultural awareness of the target language. Short-term international experiences have therefore become a required component of all pre-service Postgraduate Diploma in Education programmes (English) in Hong Kong. The major aim of the immersion programme is to provide student-teachers with an opportunity to participate in an intensive English language and cultural awareness course at a university in an English-speaking country. Another important aim is for the participants to develop pedagogical knowledge and try out their learning in local schools. In this study the participants were encouraged to reflect on their expectations and experiences of the 6-week immersion programme and to write about these in pre-programme questionnaires, reflective journals, and programme evaluations. Positive feedback about the participants’ language development, understanding of education systems and development of teaching competency was collected. Areas for improvement were also examined. The findings will be of relevance to those institutions which wish to organize similar overseas programmes for student-teachers.

Over the past decades, the art curricula of the Hong Kong Institute have undergone revision in response to the current trend of art education and the needs of the society. In the process of on-going review and modification of course structure and contents, it is essential to study similar programmes offered by other institutions, especially in the Asia-Pacific region. This paper aims to review the strength and weakness of the BEd. (P) art major programme by comparing its rationale, course structure and teaching contents with similar programmes of East China Normal University of Shanghai. The different approaches in course design in relation to individual regions’ historical contexts will be explored and recommendations will be made for future development.

There are still over 14,000 primary teachers and 4,500 secondary teachers in Hong Kong schools who do not have a degree, and there are large number of teachers in both primary and secondary schools who are teaching subjects without either the academic or professional qualifications that would normally be required in an advanced education system. There is also the ongoing need for all teachers, whether qualified or not, to keep up with advances in academic subject knowledge, with good practices in teaching and learning, and with how best to harness new technologies to educational purposes. This paper will draw on the experience of setting up a Division of Continuing Professional Education in the Hong Kong Institute of Education, and put forward a range of ideas for the development of a more robust, better articulated and higher quality continuing professional education scene for teachers in Hong Kong.

This paper will present the findings of a project conducted at the Hong Kong Institute of Education that studied a teaching practicum design that incorporated multimodal support and feedback during a 14-week, semester-long trial with eleven B.Ed. students. The design increased the amount and quality of the critical engagement and reflective practice of student teachers by integrating these several support mechanisms.

This paper aims to examine how Lesson Study of an initial teacher education course develops the instructional design competency of pre-service teachers in Hong Kong. Lesson Study is a collaborative action research approach for developing teacher professional competency. This study assesses the effectiveness of the Lesson Study course conducted in a teacher education institute that based on a quasi-experimental design. There were 341 pre-service teachers participated to a questionnaire survey. Confirmatory factor analysis and reliability test were used to confirm the constructed validity and reliability of the survey instrument. Canonical correlation was applied to explore the relationship between the approaches of their learning process and their learning outcomes. Results show that action research tutorials and collaborative practice are predictors of their instructional design skills and teaching competency. This paper discusses the critical success factors and the potential for using Lesson Study as a model to help pre-service teachers develop their teaching competency.
[Copyright © Time Taylor Academic Journals].