Two teaching departments of a Sixth Form College in Hong Kong with teaching effectiveness are identified by the criteria of students consistently achieving value-added results for the past three years in the Hong Kong Advanced Level Examinations and relatively high students’ satisfaction with the teaching of the departments. Research was conducted to look at possible factors contributing to the teaching effectiveness of the departments. Strong leadership of department heads, outstanding management and good department climate such as high morale, professional interaction and good team work were found to be important factors leading to teaching effectiveness of the departments. Schools should attach importance to the above factors in order to improve teaching effectiveness at the teaching department level and teacher educators should develop skills of potential and serving teachers on leadership, management, and building good working relationship among colleagues.
[Copyright © 2000 The Hong Kong Institute of Education]

The Native English speaking Teacher Scheme is often wrongly termed an innovation, whereas in fact the involvement of expatriate teachers in the system is one aspect of Hong Kong Education “Then” as well as “Now” and “Tomorrow”. The broadening of the Scheme to the primary sector from 2002 is also nothing new, but it does pose some interesting challenges for the majority of primary schools where expatriate teachers have not played a role before. The Monitoring and Evaluating of the Native English speaking Teacher Scheme, the official evaluation of the mainly secondary scheme introduced in 1998, also explored the joys and frustrations of NETs employed in twenty local primary schools from 1998 to 2000. Since then what might be more properly termed innovations in the deployment of NETs have been introduced in the Tsuen Wan district and in the Government PSED Scheme. This paper draws on the results of the official NET evaluation and the successes of these other initiatives to identify possible pitfalls and issue pointers for potentially very exciting successes associated with the wider deployment of expatriates in the local primary schools.

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 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.]

In response to public concerns over the declining language (English) and (Chinese) standards of students and teachers, and the demands to raise the quality of language teaching, the Education Commission, in 1995, published its sixth report (ECR6) in which it proposed, among other things, a system in which all teachers in Hong Kong would need to acquire benchmark qualifications in order to enter or continue in the profession. The proposal received very mixed feelings from different sections of the community. This paper will look into the socio-political context in which the policy was proposed, alongside the factors which are linked to general policy analysis concepts like human capital theory, social reproduction theory and equality opportunity theory. The paper will end on a discussion on how this policy proposal can achieve what it set out for itself.

自從九九年香港教育統籌委員會推動香港教育制度的檢討，教師在教育改革與發展的角色日益受到香港教育界的重視，面對不斷變遷的社會環境，教師必須不斷更新教學的專業知識，才能以最有效的方式，為學生提供最適切的幫助。正如教育署 (1999) 在文件中指出：教師是教育改革的關鍵人物，因為所有教育改革最後都要依靠教師才能得以實現。無論建議再理想，措施再完善，資源再充分，怎樣好的教育改革方案總要教師施行落實。甚至制度不好，資源不足，只要有好的教師，有時也能扭轉乾坤，達到良好的教育效果 (頁4) 。一個社會發展的興衰關鍵在於教育，而要做好人才的培養則依靠學校教育的質素，而學校教育質素的高低又取決於教師素質，故此教師素質的問題對教育發展與改革是十分重要的。事實上中國教育學會會長顧明遠教授也曾指出：提高教育質量的關鍵是在於提高教師的素質。 根據上述的思考，特首董建華先生在二零零一年的施政報告提出要強化師資，一方面是讓教師有足夠的空間，去平衡工作、休息、學習和家庭生活；另一方面，要提供資源鼓勵教師進修，並明確提出特區政府將研究如何普遍加強在職教師的專業發展，為新入職教師提供額外支援，並且加強教師彼此協作和交流，以提升整體教師的專業水平。但上述方針是不能有效促進本況的教師專業的發展呢？如何有效評估有關政策的適切性，看來有必要回顧過去二十年本港教師專業政策的轉變，從中探討其得失與啟示。