Title: The interface between theory and practice: The role of teacher educators and teachers in a school-based teacher development initiative
Abstract: Among the various approaches that can be used to try to bring about changes in educational initiatives, the main strategies have been broadly classified into three types; those that center on problem solving processes, conceptual changes, and the power and authority of some agents over others (Morris 1998). In a highly centralized educational system such as Hong Kong, the change strategies employed in curriculum initiatives have been associated with the third. Curriculum planning tend to be imposed on teachers from the top such as the Education Department, for example initiatives like the Activity Approach, the Communicative Approach and the recent Target-oriented Curriculum. Teachers as one of the major participants in the curriculum development process are rarely involved in the planning and decision-making. This paper describes phase one of a one-year school-based teacher development initiative in which English teachers of a Hong Kong primary school take up the responsibility for the changes made to their curriculum with on-site support from a team of four teacher educators from the Hong Kong Institute of Education. This teacher development project aims at adopting a problem-solving and interactive approach to teacher change in curriculum initiative. It also attempts to explore the roles of teachers and teacher educators in the process of collaboration. It intends to seek the interface between theory and practice in the local educational context, in particular in empowering teachers through mutual communication, negotiation, consultation, rather than top-down persuasion. This paper reports the preliminary findings from the qualitative data collected and discusses implications in relation to the roles of teachers and teacher educators and the interface between theory and practice in a collaborative project.
Publication Year: 1998
Publication Date: 1998-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 7
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