The potential of digital fabrication technology (DFT) in education has attracted the attention of many educational stakeholders over the last decade. However, there is scant literature on how in-service teachers take part in teacher professional development (TPD) to equip themselves with necessary DFT skills and knowledge. In response, this qualitative exploratory study aimed to identify characteristics of effective DFT-related TPD and the current status of the implementation of DFT in K–12 education in Hong Kong through interviews with local teachers and stakeholders. The findings reveal that DFT-related TPDs have had positive effects on teachers’ skills and knowledge overall, but they were found to lack in-depth hands-on training and guidance on pedagogical aspects with practical class models. Teachers flexibly adopted formal and informal TPD depending on their own backgrounds, competencies, and needs. In addition, the following barriers to applying TPD learning outcomes to classroom practices were identified: limited hardware availability and access as well as a lack of open-learning classrooms, technical support and sustained professional development for teachers, technology integration into different subjects, and government-provided guidelines and frameworks. However, these limitations were found to afford new opportunities with respect to student-centered and collaborative teaching and learning environments. Copyright © 2021 International Council for Educational Media.

The quality of teachers is an essential element of a strong vocational education and training (VET) system. VET performs many important functions in society, including responding to a constantly changing labour market as a result of rapid changes to the economy and society. Recent changes in VET have focused specifically on meeting the needs of the world of work in order to support countries’ development agendas. These improvements, which target the efficiency and effectiveness of VET systems, also need to be reflected in VET teacher training. This has become a priority for governments and other stakeholders, however, there are numerous challenges related to different aspects of VET teacher training, including curriculum design. This chapter provides an overview of VET teacher training in Mainland China (with some reference to Hong Kong SAR), and highlights the approaches/models used for teacher training, as well as the challenges encountered in improving the effectiveness of teacher training in response to the various development trends in VET. The overview is based on a review of literature, curriculum and policy documents. Copyright © 2022 selection and editorial matter, John Chi-Kin Lee and Timo Ehmke; individual chapters, the contributors.

Building on the previous works on Western and Chinese perspectives on quality and change in teacher education (Lee & Day, 2016), this anthology of an international group of scholars from China, Hong Kong (Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) of the People’s Republic of China) and Germany aims to provide an analysis of issues related to teacher education in both educational systems. Our target group is an international readership that is interested to learn more about the specific challenges and current developments in the field of teacher education in both educational systems. Copyright © 2022 selection and editorial matter, John Chi-Kin Lee and Timo Ehmke; individual chapters, the contributors.

In the recent decades, there has been a trend of adopting community of practice (CoP) approach to a university-school partnership (USP) to promote teaching and learning and teacher professionalism since the Hong Kong education reform in 2000. Particularly, a CoP project entitled ‘Support Programme on Fostering Communities of Practice to Enhance Small Class Teaching’ has been lunched in 2015, which aims to enhance teachers’ pedagogical knowledge and effective teaching practice in applying self-directed learning (SRL) to students. Given that it is a pioneering initiative in promoting SRL in Hong Kong, this chapter intends to offer a conceptualization of CoP-USP within the local education context. In this chapter, the successful criteria and challenges of USP will be discussed, with brief introduction on the development of USP and SRL development in Hong Kong. A single-cluster case study method was adopted to review a case from a CoP project, a comprehensive scope of professional development programme for in-service teachers (ISTs) in Hong Kong, aiming at examining how the CoP project can work out as a USP to help develop teachers’ SRL-based instruction skills and strategies. The findings were revealed in themes through qualitative data analysis, with discussion on whether the CoP Project is a successful USP. Finally, this chapter attempts to offer further insights for future development of USP in other contexts. Copyright © 2022 selection and editorial matter, John Chi-Kin Lee and Timo Ehmke; individual chapters, the contributors.

Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education has continued to attract attention and sizeable funding worldwide. Given the important role that teachers play in the provision of quality STEM education, this chapter provides an overall landscape of STEM teacher education in China and Hong Kong. The chapter presents an overview of policies, practices and research in teacher education and professional development in STEM education that have been and continue to be implemented in Mainland China and Hong Kong for the purpose of supporting teachers to effectively implement STEM education. Literature from a range of sources, including discussion and research papers, government reports and policy papers with respect to STEM teacher education in Mainland China and Hong Kong have been selected. The analysis of policies and practices is useful to provide a review of what has been done and to inform new directions for teacher education for STEM education. Copyright © 2022 selection and editorial matter, John Chi-Kin Lee and Timo Ehmke; individual chapters, the contributors.

This chapter presents two case studies on e-Learning policy and implementation in universities dedicated to teacher education in Hong Kong and Beijing. The case studies provide an overview of e-Learning in teacher education in the two cities in China; introduce strategies of the university-specific policy on e-Learning in teacher education; share examples of the policy-informed practice for e-Learning in teacher education and then discuss issues for the successful implementation of e-Learning in teacher education. In the case study from Hong Kong, the university-specific policy concerns the development of both e-Learning competency and digital competency to empower student-teachers to be lifelong learners who are active, constructive, interactive and reflective in their learning and professional life. The strategies for e-Learning are implemented to engage student-teachers in blended learning in course delivery, mobile technology-supported learning hub, online assessment-submission platform with plagiarism check and digital portfolio. The strategies for digital competency are implemented to nurture student-teachers with coding, app development, 3D printing, STEM/STEAM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics/science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics) literacy and artificial intelligence literacy to groom creativity and innovation for their competitiveness in the digitalised society. In the case study from Beijing, the university-specific policy aims to develop student-teachers’ digital literacy and the capability of design, development and utilisation of digital learning resources and to develop the ability of ICT-based instructional design. The e-Learning strategies are implemented through engaging student-teachers in learning in technology-rich environments (such as smart classrooms, MOOCs [massive open online courses] or SPOCs [small private online courses]), and through the compulsory course of ‘Introduction to Modern Educational Technology’

This book addresses the past and changing contexts of Chinese and German teacher education under the impact of globalization and echoes “quality” issues of teacher education. This edited book provides a comprehensive discussion on other issues in the management and implementation of change in teacher education related to teacher education curricula for professional development of teachers. A combination of chapters provides an overview, a review of literature and research as well as offering examples of teacher education practice and updated empirical research on these topics co-edited by two senior scholars and written by experts from Mainland China (including Hong Kong) and Germany. The volume addresses key issues on teacher standards, ICT in education and e-learning in teacher education, STEM education, vocational teacher education, university-school partnership in teacher education and teaching Chinese or German as a second language. This is an up-to-date academic book to look at profound issues related to quality in teacher education and teachers’ professional development in mainland China and Germany. It will be a useful reference for graduate students and researchers in the field of international and comparative education, teacher education and curriculum studies, teacher educators and practitioners to learn from trends, best practice and challenges that have been encountered in Mainland China and Germany. Copyright © 2022 selection and editorial matter, John Chi-Kin Lee and Timo Ehmke; individual chapters, the contributors.

The purpose of this study was to investigate how 22 preservice science teachers' (PSTs') beliefs about teaching socioscientific issues (SSI) changed after experiencing SSI instruction and reflection from both a learner's perspective and a teacher's perspective during a 12-week initial teacher education course. The study also explored the learning experiences associated with these changes. This study was conducted in Hong Kong, where the science, technology, society and environment (STSE) framework has been integrated into the secondary science curriculum but no SSI instruction is provided. Data were collected through learning tasks completed by the participants: (a) curriculum designs (pre-, mid- and post-course), (b) lesson plans (mid- and post-course) and (c) weekly reflective journals. Six profiles characterising teaching beliefs about SSI emerged from the data analysis. Qualitative analysis showed that the teaching beliefs of the PSTs had shifted from the traditional view that SSI should not be covered in science education to embracing SSI teaching. Three illustrative cases were used to capture key learning experiences and explore how these had led to a change in beliefs over time. These cases explained how PSTs' reflection on the why, what and how of teaching SSI to students can shape their beliefs about teaching SSI. The results have implications for the development of a closer alignment between PST beliefs and the SSI paradigm. Copyright ©2021 Springer.

Informed by the perspective of complexity theory, this study seeks to explore two English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) teacher educators' expertise in Hong Kong. Drawing on data from interviews, field observation, and informal communication over one academic year, the study revealed that the teacher educators' expertise entailed different components: 1) a dialogic teaching approach informed by research-based and contextualized knowledge; 2) emotional intelligence for maintaining personal emotional wellbeing and channeling emotions for effective teaching; 3) a reflective and agentive mindset for continuous learning; as well as 4) willingness and capacity to promote and distribute expertise in multiple communities. The participants' expertise functioned and transformed through their continuing engagement in different forms of teacher education practice, influenced by their personal beliefs and situated contexts. The study concludes with practical implications for language teacher educators on how to develop their expertise as a complex, adaptive, and evolving system in daily practice. Copyright ©2021 Wiley.

The inclusion of all learners in mainstream classrooms is an objective for schools internationally. The aim of this study was to test the psychometric properties of the newly developed Inclusive Practices Scale (IPS) to determine if the intention to use inclusive practices could be predicted from participants' atti-tudes and efficacy scores. Participants included 390 pre-service educators from four countries (Australia, India, Canada, and Hong Kong). Results suggest that the IPS is both a reliable and valid instrument, with teaching efficacy the strongest predictor of inclusive practice intentions. The IPS could be a meaningful tool in determining pre-service and in-service educators' intentions to use inclusive practices. Crown Copyright © 2021 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).