Based upon the findings of the study, improvement measures are suggested, namely, government subsidies to help the kindergartens to mediate market forces, restructuring of the bureaucratic-authoritarian management in kindergartens, promotion of home-school partnerships, empowerment of teachers through nurturing their pedagogical competence, and reformation of the philosophical underpinnings of teacher training. / The call for professionalism in kindergarten education has been an important educational issue over the past several decades in Hong Kong. Official expectations have been published to guide the services of kindergarten education and to supervise teachers' pedagogical practice. Kindergarten education services that are child centred and play based, and that practise integrated learning to nourish children's holistic and balanced development are advocated. However, Quality Assurance Inspection reports have shown that kindergarten teaching and learning is still teacher directed. Young children are passive recipients of knowledge. The services run counter to the progressive motives of the 2000 Education Reform in nurturing young children to be active and self-motivated life-long learners. Driven by the interest to study the practice-expectation gap, the present study sought to observe kindergarten teachers' classroom practice, investigate their pedagogical decision making, and reveal the complexities underpinning their pedagogical roles which, to an extent, emerged from the practice-expectation gap. / The data analysis suggests that the teacher informants' pedagogical decision making and practice were shaped by a number of intervening forces. These forces can be categorised into (a) the personal variables of the teacher informants in terms of their personal beliefs and values towards kindergarten education, (b) the contextual variables of school management structure and administrative arrangements within which the teacher informants delivered their teaching and fostered the children's learning, (c) the societal variables of parental expectations of the kindergarten education of their young children, and (d) the professional variables of the teacher training programmes and their training effectiveness that nurtured the teacher informants' pedagogical competence. Each of these variables represents a unique array of interferences for the teacher informants, and when drawn together, the combination of influences that thus emerges illustrates the complexities within which the teacher informants made their pedagogical decisions. Consequently, the pedagogical practices of teachers were pushed and pulled by these intervening forces, causing deviation from the Official Expectations. / The present study, framed by in a qualitative research design, employed on-site observations and teacher interviews, together with official document analysis and training curriculum document analysis. The wealth of data and information collected revealed that a practice-expectation gap does exist. / Fung, Kit Ho. / "December 2007." / Adviser: Chi-Chung Lam. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 69-08, Section: A, page: 3023. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 405-462). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / School code: 1307.

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

This research aims to determine whether the voucher scheme in Hong Kong would really increase professional development of Hong Kong early childhood teachers, and to see how the teachers will react to this change. Few studies have been conducted on how the voucher system affects the teachers. A qualitative approach was employed where a total of twelve teachers and four principals from the four kindergarten schools were asked to participate in the study. The results of the study show that teachers from the different kindergartens were having more convergent views about the pre-primary education voucher scheme among the teachers from these schools. Many of them believe that the voucher scheme is in fact a fair policy and that it could effectively improve teachers‟ quality, though the apprehension of old generation teachers over the influx of the younger and relatively more qualified teachers is a concern that needs to be addressed. / published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

published_or_final_version / toc / Education / Master / Master of Education

Orientador: Theresa Maria de Freitas Adrião / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de Educação / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-27T13:24:50Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Damaso_AlexandraFrasaoFerrari_M.pdf: 3358027 bytes, checksum: 54603029a7f79728c02fe32767f74b61 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015 / Resumo: Esta pesquisa, financiada pela Capes - Unicamp e desenvolvida no âmbito do Grupo de Estudos e Pesquisa em Política Educacional da Faculdade de Educação da Unicamp, buscou identificar e analisar as percepções que professores de creches municipais paulistas tinham a respeito do uso de material apostilado nesta etapa de escolaridade ao que nos possibilitou uma reflexão sobre as implicações deste material na sua identidade profissional. Para tanto, analisamos as respostas a duas questões abertas de 57 professores de creche que em 2011 declararam adotar este tipo de material e que atuavam em 12 municípios do Estado de São Paulo com até cinquenta mil habitantes localizados nas diversas regiões do Estado. O trabalho se articulou ao estudo coordenado por Adrião (2012) intitulado "`Sistemas apostilados de ensino¿ e municípios paulistas: o avanço do setor privado sobre a políticas educacional local" ¿ FASE 2, financiado pela Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (Fapesp) e pelo CNPq que, entre outas coisas, levantou e caracterizou o perfil dos profissionais da educação infantil naqueles municípios. Naquele momento a investigação indicou uma tendência crescente de adesão por parte das prefeituras à compra de "Sistemas de Privados de Ensino", dos quais fazem parte as apostilas. Para avaliar as repostas dos professores de creche utilizamos a análise de conteúdo a qual pressupõe analisar o teor das questões com vistas à possibilidade de inferências a partir do cotejamento do conjunto de respostas a uma determinada enquete (BARDIN, 2011; SILVA, 2013). Os principais resultados mostram a adesão por parte dos professores ao `sistema¿ apostilado, sob a justificativa de que tais materiais facilitavam o planejamento das atividades educacionais na medida que já se encontravam previamente organizados em temas. Salienta-se ainda a função de "socialização" que tais sistemas assumem para os educadores iniciantes / Abstract: This research, funded by CAPES - Unicamp and developed within the Group of Studies and Research in Educational Policy, School of Education at Unicamp, sought to identify and analyze the perceptions that teachers of São Paulo municipal day care centers had on the use of material in this step apostiled of education that enabled us to reflect on the implications of this material in their professional identity. Therefore, we analyzed the answers to two open questions of 57 nursery teachers who in 2011 declared adopt this type of material and who worked in 12 municipalities of São Paulo with up to fifty thousand inhabitants located in different regions of the state. The work is articulated to the study coordinated by Adrião (2012) entitled "'teaching handouts Systems' and counties: the advancement of the private sector on the local educational policies" - PHASE 2, funded by the Foundation for the São State Research Paulo (FAPESP) and CNPq that said, among other things, raised and characterized the profile of early childhood professionals in those municipalities. At that moment the investigation indicated a growing trend of adhesion of municipalities to the purchase of "Private Education Systems", whose members include the handouts. To evaluate the daycare teacher responses used the content analysis which assumes analyze what the issues with a view to the possibility of inferences from the answers set the read-back to a particular survey (Bardin, 2011; Silva, 2013). The main results show membership by teachers to 'system' handouts, on the grounds that such materials facilitated the planning of educational activities as already previously found organized into themes. Note also the function of "socialization" that such systems assume for beginners educators / Mestrado / Politicas, Administração e Sistemas Educacionais / Mestra em Educação

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

University of Macau / Faculty of Education

This paper explores the importance of providing teacher training in the use of technology to reap the benefits of adding computers to the classroom. It describes how a basic software program was used to create an interactive program to teach phonics in Spanish to kindergarten students in a Structured English Immersion Program. A benefit to having good phonemic awareness skills in Spanish is that it will help the student in developing phonemic awareness skills in English and will facilitate learning to read English words.