Open attitudes, attribution beliefs, and knowledge of Hong Kong teacher interns in an era of education reform

Abstract

We have investigated how open attitudes, attribution beliefs, pedagogical knowledge, and pedagogical content knowledge were related to teaching performance among teacher interns. The participants were 72 teacher interns in Hong Kong, where large-scale education reform has been launched since 2000. Multiple methods (self-report, academic grades, and ratings from mentors and supervisors) were used to measure the interns' attribution beliefs, open attitudes, pedagogical knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, and teaching performance. It was found that their openness to advice and challenges, effort attribution for failure, and pedagogical content knowledge were positively associated with their teaching performance in an era of education reform.

Keywords:

• openness
• attribution beliefs
• knowledge
• teaching performance
• education reform
• teacher education

Acknowledgement

This research was supported by Research Grant 10205188/24026/30200/323/01 from the Conference and Research Grant Committee (CRGC) at the University of Hong Kong. We owe our gratitude to Gloria Ku, Minerva Lam, Wing-sze Lau, Kathy Lee, Kwan-yu Lee, Annie Shu, and James Wong for their assistance with the data collection. We are also grateful to the interns and students who participated in the study.