This paper explores the autobiographical narratives of a cross-cultural life as a way of studying and understanding teacher’s identity and knowledge development. Crossing cultures and identities, the paper explores how experience is central to informing and shaping teacher knowledge. The experiences from the autobiographical narratives take place in the United States, China, and Hong Kong and move back and forth between East and West over a span of three generations. Positioned within an educational and curricular context, the research study explores the complexities of cross-cultural lives and their place in the curriculum. The inquiry explores what it means to live cross-cultural lives and how our personal experiential histories are integral to understanding an evolving and contested teacher knowledge.

Professionalism has been a focus of educational study in recent years, with researchers trying to find out if teachers demonstrate certain qualities, mainly external, of being a professional teacher. Instead of focusing on professionalism, this paper narrows its focus to the internal aspect of teacher professional development, examining the development of Hong Kong student-teachers’ professional beliefs, about which the student-teachers hold strong opinion, and which affect their decision-making and are subject to change. This present paper is based on a pilot study involving a total of eight student-teachers. Qualitative research methods, including autobiographies and in-depth interviews, were used to conduct the research. This paper attempts to identify and describe the patterns of development of Hong Kong student-teachers’ professional beliefs, to compare the differences between various patterns and to highlight some key factors influencing professional beliefs. Implications from the study would shed light on future research on the development of student-teachers’ professional conviction.

The development of institute-school partnership to facilitate the implementation of the field-based component of initial teacher education programme has been a dominant theme in teacher education. This paper outlines the development of the Honorary Teaching Adviser Scheme of an initial teacher education programme for cultural and technology subject teachers of secondary schools in Hong Kong. It presents the process of how inputs from a cross-section of stakeholders are integrated in the development of the Scheme. The integration is done through consultation and collaboration between the teacher education institution and the school community. Consulting different groups of stakeholders lays the ground for the introduction of the Scheme. The stakeholders include academics from different departments of the teacher education institution, academics from local and overseas higher education institutions as well as principals and teachers of the school community. Collaboration is done through inviting members of the school community to work on piloting the Scheme before its full implementation. Insights gained from consultation and piloting the Scheme inform its further development. The attempts on consultation and collaboration represent a move from a unidimensional model of institute-school partnership to some form of complementarity (Bines & Welton, 1995). Such development involves a complex process of managing change and redefining roles and responsibilities of higher education and school personnel in initial teacher education.

This paper reports a qualitative study of twelve Hong Kong beginning teachers' lived experiences in their probationary periods in the context of teacher professionalization. Teacher professionalization has been an on going project but the image of a professional teacher has been significantly re-portrayed since the 1980s, which has influenced the induction provision for the beginning teachers. Life history method, which draws on informants' critical career events, was adopted for the study. Information of the beginning teachers' professional development was analysed with reference to the new image of a professional teacher as projected in the literature and policy documents. Results of the study showed that beginning teachers' learning in the workplace was shaped by both individual and contextual factors. Essential components of helpful induction, which facilitates the development of teaching professionals, are identified.

Affective education is a significant dimension of teaching, which is concerned with the values, feelings, beliefs, attitudes and emotional well-being of students. Much research is about how affective education should be put into real practice in elementary and high schools. However, affective education is no less important at tertiary education level. It is especially crucial to examine what values student-teachers taking teacher education programmes hold and how these values change throughout their course of study, since these student-teachers will nurture our next generation and these student-teachers’ moral and spiritual development will directly affect how they teach their pupils. Based on our study on the development of the professional convictions of Hong Kong student-teachers, this paper attempts to find out what values the student-teachers hold, how these values evolve over time, and what factors contribute to their formation and evolution. Qualitative research methods were employed in the study, which include the use of autobiographies and in-depth interviews. The focus of this paper is on examining the dimensions of the student-teachers’ values and how far affective education is effective in achieving its aims in teacher education programmes. Apart from analyzing the common factors associated with teacher professional development such as field experience and reflection, this paper will analyze the issue from the perspective of formal, informal and hidden curriculum. Implications from this study may shed light on ways to improve the design of teacher education programmes to meet the needs of affective education.