Identifying professional development environment for mentor teachers at a Learning Centre

Abstract

This paper argues with evidence that conditions for teacher professional development can be enhanced for mentor teachers through a Learning Centre (LC) project which has been introduced in Hong Kong as a collaborative project between the government, a primary school, a secondary school, and the Hong Kong Institute of Education. The LC teachers perform the role of mentor teachers to enhance professional development of other teachers through web‐based workshops or forums, face‐to‐face teacher education workshops, and school‐based support. While the LC teachers are expected to gain professional development themselves as mentors, as suggested in the literature, the environment that may enhance their own professional development is not clear. Using structured interviews, the authors identified the professional development environment that the LC teachers experienced. The paper concludes with recommendations for environmental conditions enhancing the professional development of teachers in schools and conditions to support LC teachers.

Keywords:

• Learning Centre
• teacher professional development
• mentors
• teaching innovations
• information technology

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Education and Manpower Bureau for funding the project, and the Principals and teachers of the two participating schools (Immanuel Lutheran College and Fanling Public School). Also, the authors would like to thank all the respondents for participating in the interviews.