Teachers are the key to any successful educational development or reform and hence teachers' education is always a major aspect to consider in any changes towards quality education. Research and experience world-wide have shown that initial teacher education, no matter how long or how comprehensive, is not sufficient for meeting the career-long needs of teachers, especially for coping with the new challenges brought about by changes and reforms. To keep teachers up-to-date, to help them achieve professional development and meet new challenges for quality education, teacher education has now been widely accepted as a career-long, continuous process, consisting of three distinct stages as depicted by the "Triple-i model". Following the first stage of initial teacher education (first "i"), teachers should be supported throughout their career, both in the first one or two years on entry by "induction" support (second "i"), and continuously thereafter by various forms of "in-service education" (third "i"). To support the systematic planning and provision of induction and in-service education for teachers, a model for an "In-service Education Ladder" has been proposed by the author earlier, based on some earlier research of the author as well as a pilot study of the views of teacher educators at the Institute. This model conceptualized the professional education needs of serving teachers into four major categories: namely, (1) induction, (2) updating and retraining, (3) extension and (4) conversion. Following "induction" needs during the first one or two years of teaching, all teachers possess different ongoing "updating and retraining" and "extension" needs at different stages of their professional career. As they are promoted or as they take up new responsibilities, teachers will have additional "conversion" needs as well. This paper reports on the author's further work on the establishment of the "In-service Education Ladder" for the new millenium, including fine-tuning

In facing the challenges of economic and social developments in the new century, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government and the community are making efforts to review and improve school education and teacher education. This report aims to provide an overall description of the background and current situation of the teaching profession and teacher education in Hong Kong; to analyze the existing constraints and challenges in teacher education; and to report ongoing policy review and initiatives for upgrading the teaching profession and improving teacher provision and education. Particularly the report will discuss the professional quality of teaching forces in kindergarten, primary schools and secondary schools, the existing features of teacher qualifications, teacher education programs, and professional development paths, and the characteristics of teacher education institutions and policy making bodies. In the light of existing educational changes towards school-based management and educational quality and effectiveness, the report will report the direction of teacher education review and reform in the new century. It is hoped that the teacher education development in Hong Kong can provide a good case for ongoing policy discussion and teacher education reforms in both local and international communities.
[Copyright © 2000 The Hong Kong Institute of Education]

This paper will report on the mediation effects of the key artifacts upon teacher participation in two school-based leadership development projects in schools in 2005 and 2006 respectively. This structural approach to taking up more curriculum responsibilities by the schools in Hong Kong was recommended by the Government in 2001, and yet there is little empirical evidence about its implementation and effectiveness. The projects will collaborate with two active schools, setting up two curriculum development teams in each to bring about planned innovations in pedagogy. The teams will conduct a cycle of curriculum activities in the first and second semesters, reviewing the current curriculum, planning an innovation, and designing and implementing it in classroom settings. Afterwards, each team will conduct reflection for further improvement. All participating teachers will be interviewed 4 times during participation. All meetings and tryout lessons will be video-taped. The interview data will be analyzed by identifying and classifying key emerging themes which will illuminate our understanding of the participating teachers' experiences in the curriculum process. The meeting data will be analyzed using activity theory to identify the key factors that facilitate or constrain the effectiveness of the teacher participation. The findings will deepen our understanding of the effectiveness of teacher participation in school-based curriculum development.

The In-service Courses of Training for Teachers (ICTT) in Hong Kong played a key hole in meeting the minimum training needs of thousands of unqualified non-graduate teachers during the expansion of mass education from the 1950s to 1970s. Though these remedial courses have all along been perceived by the community as of dubious quality, they have lasted for five decades, as untrained teachers continued to join the teaching force, in the absence of a government policy requiring new teachers to be pre-service trained. It is not until recently that their phasing out has become a possibility. This paper provides a critical review of education policies which have allowed the prolongation of these courses for half a century. It illustrates the long and difficult process by which Hong Kong has been moving towards an “all trained” teaching profession.

Since the beginning of the 1990s, there have been changes in the rationale and practice of Hong Kong’s teacher education. Apart from the expansion of the initial teacher education, there is also an increase in the provision of refresher teacher training programmes. Many of these training programmes are offered by the Hong Kong Institute of Education. Some of them have become credit-bearing since 1998. To ensure these programmes are effective in meeting the needs of schools, evaluation studies are necessary. Based on a longitudinal investigation with interviews and questionnaires, and with a sample of around 120 course participants, this study attempts to evaluate a primary refresher training programme called “The School as an Organization (SAO)”. The research methodology and preliminary findings from the pilot group are discussed.
[Copyright © 2000 The Hong Kong Institute of Education]