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Mainland Chinese students (hereafter called Mainland students) are a major source of international student applications. Some countries have initiated policies to enable Mainland students to stay and work after graduation. Additions to the literature, particularly more country-specific studies, are much needed to cast light on the employment issues for such Mainland students overseas. The purpose of this paper is to fill this gap by focussing on Mainland students who have completed teacher education programmes in Hong Kong and then served as teachers in Hong Kong schools (Mainland teachers). The incentives that attracted them to stay and work in Hong Kong and the challenges they faced were examined. Their future plans were also probed.

The study adopted a mixed methodology. Data collection comprised both a questionnaire survey and interviews. The semi-structured interviews provided opportunities for respondents to explain their answers, to narrate and widen the scope of data to areas hitherto unanticipated by the researchers.

Mainland teachers were attracted to stay on in Hong Kong to work for both intrinsic and extrinsic reasons. They were in fact settlers. They found the programmes they had taken to be practical and believed that they had acquired a niche situation in the teaching profession. Working and living in Hong Kong was satisfying, but some experienced social distance from local colleagues.

The paper can be read with reference to countries that recruit Mainland students and there is a possibility that some of them may stay behind to work. It sheds light on the selection criteria of such students, on ways to enrich their programmes, as well as their employment, living and social integration issues.

The purpose of the present study was to examine the impact of a student teaching internship program on the self-efficacy of pre-service teachers in China.

With 1,367 participants, structural equation modelling was used to evaluate the fit of the hypothetical model and a latent path analysis was conducted to identify the relationship among various variables.

The results suggested that the program had a significant impact on efficacy in terms of personal skills, general teaching skills and personal qualities of the student interns concerned. Although this study was set in rural China, the findings of this study offered insights for teacher education in other places.

To the best of our knowledge, no research studies have been conducted on this in-service teacher training program in a systematic and comprehensive way using a large sample size and involving all major stakeholders. The aim of the present study is to fill this gap, by exploring the experience of a large cohort of pre-service teachers participating in this student teaching internship program. Studying the experiences of these student teachers will illuminate some of the key challenges faced and how they impacted their teaching and learning during their teaching practices in rural areas. The findings may help teacher education institutions to review and enhance their existing approaches to teaching practices and professional development initiatives not only in rural China but in similar contexts in other countries.

To cope with the challenges of the twenty‐first century, the Hong Kong SAR government initiated the Curriculum Reform in 2001. In 2006, a research team from a tertiary institution was commissioned to review the progress of change for smooth implementation of the reform in its next phase. This paper aims to examine this issue.

The nature of the review is basically a survey, applying questionnaires and follow‐up focus‐group interviews to collect data from different groups of subjects. The sample was around 20 per cent of the population, i.e. a total of 252 primary (n=138) and secondary (n=114) schools.

The paper reports findings on the support for the Reform by primary and secondary schools. Five areas of agreement among school heads are examined, which include challenges to be met, guiding principles of the reform, learning goals, reform framework and the overall agreement with the rationale of the reform. It is found that, while the curriculum reform was supported among school heads, senior teachers and teachers, there was a gap between the views of senior management team and frontier teachers.

This is a very comprehensive research project with a limited timeframe. The paper can only report and discuss findings mainly on the support for curriculum reform by school heads. Other aspects of the study will be discussed and reported separately in subsequent papers.

The gap between the views of senior management team and frontier teachers is worth probing as this is the most obstructive factor to the implementation of the reform. Identifying the cause would be the first step in formulating strategies to address and, hopefully, to facilitate the smooth transition from the phase of implementation to the continuation phase of the change process.

The study has suggested the development of a two‐dimensional framework of agreement areas and stakeholders which will contribute to a better understanding of the change process in general, and achievements of a curriculum reform in particular. Other issues are also discussed.

After direct elections were instituted in Hong Kong and the sovereignty was transferred from Britain to China, politicization inevitably followed democratization. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the pro-democratic political parties’ politics in Hong Kong in recent history.

The research was conducted through a historical comparative analysis, within the context of Hong Kong after the sovereignty handover and the interim period of crucial democratization.

With the implementation of “One country, Two systems,” political democratization was hindered in Hong Kong’s transformation. The democratic forces have no alternative but to seek more radicalized politics, which has caused a decisive and ineluctable fragmentation of the local political parties.

This paper explores and evaluates the political history of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region under “One country, Two systems” and the ways in which the limited democratization hinders the progress of Hong Kong’s transformation.