ABSTRACT
The contributors to this book participated in one of three cross-departmental projects at the Hong Kong Institute of Education (HKIEd). Each project was concerned with developing some aspect of their pedagogical practice to prepare their students to participate in the large-scale postcolonial curriculum reforms that the Hong Kong government had initiated. These reforms created considerable space for school-based curriculum development within a national curriculum framework that specifies “Key Learning Areas,” “Core Tasks,” “Generic Thinking Skills,” and the major “Values and Virtues,” (Curriculum Development Council, 2002) pertaining to life in civil society, that are to be promoted through the curriculum. The projects at HKIEd involved teacher educators in the reflective development through action research of some aspect of their practice to match the challenges newly qualified teachers would face in their classrooms and schools. These included changing the way learning was assessed to provide formative feedback to both the teacher and his/her learners, developing innovative and imaginative pedagogies aimed at promoting more self-directive and less passive modes of learning, and developing a capacity to use educational theory as a resource for developing one’s practice. Each of the three projects involved groups of teachers attempting to change their own customary practice to model one of these aspects of curriculum change for their students. Within their groups they frequently met together to share the data about the problems and difficulties they encountered in their teaching and to discuss ways of resolving them.
