In this article, the Erasmus Mundus programme in Special Education Needs, with the financial support from the European Commission, run in Europe from 2005-2010, is reported. The discussion will focus especially on the learning in the field of collaborative skills and attitudes that have occurred in the programme. With reference to the feedback of the participants, the features such as practices of internationalization, multicultural understanding, collaboration in learning and reflection in professional practice are significantly noted. In comparison, these insights may exert far-reaching impact to course planning of professional development in special needs at different levels in Hong Kong.
[Copyright © 2011 The Special Education Society of Hong Kong Ltd.]

This article reports the results of a multiple qualitative case study which investigated the challenges that seven early career English language teachers in Hong Kong confronted as they constructed their professional and personal identities. A series of in-depth interviews with participants during the entire first year of their full-time teaching experience provided a longitudinal perspective on the teachers’ experiences of becoming teachers. A contribution of this study is to examine such experiences using the analytical lens of teacher identity. The case studies illustrate that these teachers faced considerable challenges in constructing teacher identities as they negotiated the dominant discourses of teaching and learning within individual Hong Kong schools. It is argued that school-based support for early career teachers should include the problematisation of the identity positions available to all teachers within the profession as a whole in order to support the construction of the professional and personal identities that these teachers place a premium upon. Implications for teacher education and future research are also discussed.
[Copyright © 2015 Taylor & Francis.]

This paper reports on the investigation of 15 pre-service teachers' information and communication technology (ICT) adoption during teaching practicums at seven preschool settings. Surveys, classroom observations, interviews, and teaching resources were analyzed to examine the extent to which technologies were applied. In addition to defining eight specific categories of ICT-related pedagogical strategies, this study provides evidence that pre-service teachers generally use ICT more for teacher-directed activity than for teacher-guided or children-initiated activities. Pre-service teachers working within preschools that allocated higher levels of teacher authority in the curriculum decision-making process and provided a rich ICT environment reported using ICT more often in classroom learning activities.
[Copyright © 2014 AACE]

In accordance with the Education Commission's consultation paper "Learning for Life", life-long learning is the hinge of HKSAR's educational development in the new millenium. In the ever-changing world life-long learning is essential to keeping oneself competitive and employable. Teachers need to exemplify and cultivate the ethos of life-long learning among the students. Continuous teacher education is important as it helps reorientate Hong Kong's teachers to embrace a life-long learning attitude. In schools, adjustments and arrangements need to be worked out for continuous teacher education to be fruitful.

This paper aims to study the perception of primary curriculum implemented in Hong Kong through the views of school practitioners and how the gaps were closed through school practice. Parts of the data in this paper were collected through interviews with principals and teachers on their the views of achieving the aims of the Hong Kong primary education curriculum. Their practice and effort in achieving the aims in education is recorded and analyzed. They were asked to pinpoint professional areas which they thought teachers may have difficulties and hence a barrier for the improvement of quality education and achieving the educational aims. These include opinions on subject content and pedagogical knowledge for the primary school subject in Chinese and mathematics and in turns reflect the contents needed in teacher education program. The paper provides insight for future teacher education program development and primary schools to distinguish practice that could be used by them.
[Copyright © 2000 The Hong Kong Institute of Education.]

The background of this paper is the development of field experience in the new Certificated in Secondary Education Course of the Hong Kong Institute of Education. As will be shown, this aims to introduce student teachers to schools and classroom teaching in a gradual and progressive manner. The focus of the paper will be the implementation of the second phase of the field experience – the Supporting Teaching Practice. This involved 199 students from the Chinese Stream and 6.05B student teachers from the English stream being placed in 56 schools. The Supporting Teaching Practice took place in a four-week period in March and April, 1995. The three levels of support which characterize this part of the programme – support from peers, support form teachers and support from Institute supervisor – are examined. As the development of team work is the most innovative aspect of the Supported Teaching Practice, this is examined in detail in terms of its implementation, operation and effectiveness. The general conclusion are that collaborative support from peers was very well received by the students themselves and is acceptable to the placement schools. Its operation in terms of joint post-lesson planning, peer observation and team teaching followed by joint-lesson reflection has been demonstrated to be a powerful tool for promoting reflective hypothesis formation about the teaching-learning process and it enables testing and evaluation of these by emerging teachers.

This paper presents an overview of mathematics education in Hong Kong and the education reform it is experiencing. The original mathematics curricula had been successful in certain ways (as demonstrated by the achievements of Hong Kong students who placed fourth in TIMSS); however, there were also negative aspects. The revision in both primary and secondary mathematics education aims to shift the emphasis to the development of thinking abilities and positive attitudes of students towards learning the subject. Mathematics is expected to provide a basis for making investigations as well as a tool for analyzing data, representing findings, and formulating theories. Teachers are encouraged to adopt a student-centered, activity-based, and hands-on approach to organize students' learning, and to make use of concrete examples from everyday life whenever possible. Student learning is expected to progress from concrete to abstract, and calculators and computers are expected to be used to facilitate student learning. Some implications of these approaches are also discussed.