Opportunities for pre-service teachers to participate during their initial teacher education (ITE) in teaching-abroad experiences, where they spend time teaching in a foreign country, have become increasingly popular. However, studies to date have collected data during or soon after the participant's return. Little is known about how recently…

This article presents a qualitative study which presents professional competence development in an undergraduate initial teacher education (ITE) programme in Hong Kong. Fifteen student teachers participated in two rounds of interviews, one after the first ITE fieldwork and another after the second ITE fieldwork in a five-year Bachelor of Education…

Competence to work in schools is an important dimension of professional competence, although it is often a neglected dimension of teacher development. This article reports a qualitative study that examined student teachers' learning experiences in initial teacher education (ITE) in relation to competence to work in schools. In-depth interviews…

This article reports on the results of a qualitative case study that addresses recent calls for greater attention to clinical aspects of practice and experiment in teacher education programmes. Grounded in the notion of approximations of practice, this study uses the analytic lens of teacher identity to understand how one group of preservice…

Studies suggest that pre-service teachers' existing beliefs often serve as a lens to interpret the subject matter to be taught, guide their thoughts in lesson planning and shape their behaviour in classroom practices during their teaching practicum. This study examines how these beliefs affect pre-service teachers' conceptualization of…

This study aims to examine the approaches used in mentoring and investigate the interactions occurring between pre-service teachers and mentors during the mentoring process. The study is placed in the context of the implementation of Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU). The theoretical framework of this study was based on situated learning…

This paper reports the results of a qualitative study into the teaching practice experiences of eight preservice English language teachers in Hong Kong. Using in-depth interviews, the preservice teachers' practicum experiences are explored in terms of their understandings of the requirements of their teacher education institution and their…

This study examined the professional self-perceptions and self-esteem of Hong Kong student teachers, investigating the impact of teaching practice. Participants were student teachers in their first or third year of full-time, 3-year courses at 1 of the 4 colleges of education in Hong Kong. A total of 424 student teachers completed a questionnaire…

This study sought to determine how student-teachers perceived their competence as they proceeded through a 2-year certificate program and to identify what changes occurred in their perception during the first year of teaching. The subjects were student teachers in a new Certificate of Education Program (in primary education) at the Hong Kong…

This document is the final report of Phase I of a comparative study of teacher-training practices among 12 nation members of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation. The purposes of the study were to: (1) provide concrete, comparable descriptions of teacher-preparation systems useful to educators, researchers, and policymakers in all APEC member…