This paper reports the processes and ways in which a dedicated website has been developed by a group of seven colleagues at the Hong Kong Institute of Education (HKIEd) Science Department to support their student-teachers' development of teaching competence during various kinds of field experience activities such as practicum, teaching practice and school visits etc. From the outcome of our project, a comprehensive web-based system was created with the following specially selected features to help our student-teachers develop confidence and skills for the effective teaching of various science topics in schools: A data bank of 20 sets of video clips on exemplary parts of students' teaching performance in schools or microteaching at HKIEd as identified and selected by their supervisors. A collection of virtual reality resources which include a typical classroom or laboratory environment with a 3D/panoramic view etc. A website called Field Experience Support on Science (FESS) being developed at http://www.ied.edu.hk/fess/ which provides a platform for the management of the aforementioned 2 types of resources in the WWW plus various synchronous or 2 asynchronous communication channels as well as sharing of lesson plans, schemes of work and other teaching resources etc.

This is a narrative self study of the professional experience of a teacher educator on identity education in Hong Kong. In the process of promoting a set of teaching strategies to teacher educators, in-service and pre-service teachers of history and civic education, he was able to explore their perceptions on identity education for youngsters in Hong Kong after her political handover in 1997. It was found that while even educators felt ambivalent about their identities as Hong Kong Chinese, the directions and approaches for identity education also became controversial in the educational field in Hong Kong. This inquiry has demonstrated, with global significance, both the complexity of the issue of identity and the challenges of promoting identity education on a politically shifting landscape.

Many teacher educator researchers often stand outside of schools to teach others about what is going on inside of them. In 1994 a team of researchers sought a different approach when they embarked upon a journey to enhance the professional development of primary teachers within the teachers' own school settings. The goal of this journey was to facilitate the development of literature-based reading programmes in selected Hong Kong primary schools. This colloquium will describe the process of facilitating and charting the development of the teachers as well as monitoring the growth of their students in reading over a three year period. The conditions and factors that influence teacher development will report briefly on the work in their respective schools and the approaches used to facilitate teacher development. Researchers will offer insights into their personal successes and failures and indicate directions for continuing teachers' professional development after the project. The limitations and strengths of adopting a long term approach to enhancing and studying teacher development from a curriculum initiative and research perspective, will be examined and recommendations offered for the way forward into the new century.

Schön's notion of artistry of professional practice as defined in the notion of 'framing' offers a way to capture an essential process of the practitioner's learning in practice in professional development. In the process of interacting with the practical situation, the practitioner has to rely on his/her past experience and understanding to experimentally impose meaning on the situation in action (Furlong et al, 1988). This involves 'a constant proves of interpretation, action, reflection and adjustment' (ibid: 123) in action-learning cycles, which is important to teachers' development of expertise (Pang, 2005). Applying such a notion of teaching to understand the processes provided in the action-learning cycles inherent in the design of Learning Study carried out in Hong Kong, this paper aims to report on a Learning Study carried out in the context of English language teaching at primary level, in which four primary ELT teachers were involved in an Institute-school collaboration project. In the process of the Learning Study which consisted of 10 to 12 meetings, the teachers involved and the researcher contributed in a collaborative manner their experiences and understandings to the framing of the lesson in focus. While reporting on the stages of the Learning Study, and the effectiveness of learning of the topic in focus, the paper will focus particularly on how the teachers had benefited in such a process of collective framing in addressing the pedagogical problem in focus. Implications will be drawn on the use of Learning Study as a tool for expertise development in teaching.

Self-concept is one of the most widely researched psychological constructs in such related disciplines as educational psychology, developmental psychology, and social psychology. The significance of self -concept lies in the facts that it has been shown to be closely related to other psychological constructs such as academic achievement (for reviews, see Hattie, 1992; Marsh, Byrne & Shavelson, 1992), neurosis and maladjustment (Rogers, 1981), self-schema (Cross & Markus, 1994), mood and self-evaluation (for reviews, see Brown & Mankowski, 1993), which are of great concerns among educators and psychologists. In Hong Kong, few studies has been done to assess the self-concept of pre-service full-time student teachers. The purpose of this paper is to report findings from one of the newly developed instrument based on the Shavelson, Hubner, and Stanton (1976) multidimensional, hierarchical model, the Personal and Academic self-concept Inventory (PASCI: Fleming & Whalen, 1990), and to compare findings of this study with previous findings as reported by Fleming and Whalen (1990), and Watkins, Regmi and Alfon (1990). The subjects were 227 either first year or second year full-time students enrolling in four similar teacher training programmes at the Institute of Education in Hong Kong. 63 male and 163 female (1 gender unknown) were included in the sample, with a mean age of 21 years . The instrument was a three-section, self-report questionnaire. Section A was an invitation letter explaining the purpose of the study and ensuring confidentiality. Section B was the Chinese version of PASCI. PASCI is an expanded version of Fleming and Courtney's (1984) Self-Rating Scale (SRS) which in turn evolved from the Feelings of Inadequacy Scale (Janis & Field, 1959). Its subscales are designed to measure global, social, physical, and academic components of self-concept grounded on Shavelson's (1976) model. Section C was used to collect respondents' demographic information including sex

In view of the recent movement for increasing the schools' involvement in the school experience, the Hong Kong Institute of Education has introduced a new form of school experience in its 4-year full-time Bachelor of education programme. The schools take up a more active and supportive role, which aim to facilitate the development of the student-teachers. During these periods, the schools, the peers and the lecturers have significant influence on the learning experience of the student-teachers. In the programme, the field experience in year 1 includes a one-week attachment period to the kindergarten and a two-week attachment to the primary school. The aim of this paper is to describe the learning experience of the student-teachers during the early stages of the programme. Twenty student-teachers who were randomly sampled from the year 1 cohort were interviewed at the end of their first year of study in the programme. The interview questions were focused to find out the learning experience of the student-teachers in the field experience; the interactions between the student-teachers with their peers; the support that they perceived from the school and the lecturers; their perception about being a primary teacher in school. The findings of the study were interpreted with a sociocultural view of learning which defines learning to teach as influenced by the interactions between the participants of the system including those between student-teachers themselves, those between the student-teachers and the lecturers and those between the school (the teachers, pupils and administrators) and the student-teachers. Implications on teacher education are drawn from the experience and support from the school context to the student-teachers in learning to teach is recommended.

In the last two years, the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region has been actively promoting the use of IT in schools. Virtually every school in the region is now well aware of the implications of these government initiatives and has embarked on the path toward integration of new learning technologies in the classroom. While many teachers may already be well down the track toward use of IT in teaching and learning, the impetus of government initiatives has meant that, all teachers now need to have clearer notions and directions about how to make the transition. Teachers need a strong foundation on which to build their skills toward modifying their teaching strategies to realize the potential of emerging technologies in enhancing student learning outcomes. Teachers themselves need to be willing to change. In the Hong Kong context it would appear that several things would have to occur before schools are able to mount any meaningful use of IT and where teachers are then able to integrate use of IT in their daily teaching and learning activities. It is with this focus that this paper will address some of the broad issues related to change in schools associated with the use of IT and attempt to provide some suggestions based on research findings and worldwide experience.
[Copyright © 2000 The Hong Kong Institute of Education.]