A constructivist strategy for developing teachers for change: A Hong Kong experience

Abstract

In Hong Kong, teacher development for curriculum change is usually a top-down process in which the Education Department plays a major role. To date, new ideas were usually introduced to teachers through short courses, seminars and talks. This form of in-service programmes has been argued as the main reason to explain why innovations have rarely been implemented as intended. This article reports on a small-scale case study in which a constructivist approach was used to prepare four teachers of the same class level in a primary school to implement, what to them is, a novel strategy to teach a school subject–General Studies. The results indicated that, in general, teachers reacted positively to the constructivist approach adopted in this study and gained professional, personal and social development through participating in the project. © 2000 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.